Timeline of Orthodoxy in Greece

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This is a timeline regarding the presence of Orthodoxy in Greece.

Apostolic era (33-100)

  • ca. 47-48 Apostle Paul's mission to Cyprus.
  • ca. 49 Paul's mission to Philippi, Thessaloniki and Veria.
  • 49 Paul's mission to Athens.
  • ca. 51-52 Metropolis of Korinthos founded in its Apostolic form (Paul's first mission to Corinth); Paul writes his two Epistles to the Thessalonians are written in
  • ca. 54 Paul writes his First Epistle to the Corinthians.
  • ca. 55 Paul revisits Corinth.
  • ca. 56 Paul revisits Macedonia; he writes his Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
  • ca. 61 Paul shipwrecked in Crete.
  • ca. 95 Apocalypse of John written on the island of Patmos.
  • ca. 96 Dionysius the Areopagite, of the Seventy, martyred.
  • 124 Apostles Quadratus and Aristides present Christian apologies to Emperor Hadrian at Athens.
  • ca. 130 Apostle Quadratus, of the Seventy, reposes. [1]

Ante-Nicene era (100-325)

  • ca. 100 During the second and third centuries, Greece was divided into provinces including Achaea, Macedonia, and Moesia.
  • ca. 251 Martyric death of Isidore of Chios under the persecutions of Decius.
  • 306 Martyric death of Demetrios in Thessaloniki.
  • 313 The first period in the history of the Church ended with the edict of toleration in 313 under Constantine the Great, which prepared the way for Christianity to become the state religion of the later Roman/Byzantine empire.

Patriarchate of Rome Era (325-733)

Nicene era (325-451)

  • 325 First Ecumenical Council held in Nicea, condemning Arianism, setting the Paschalion, and issuing the first version of the Nicene Creed, also establishing the supremacy of honor of the Apostolic Sees as Rome, followed by Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
  • ca. 337 Under Constantine the Great Greece was part of the prefectures of Macedonia and Thrace.
  • ca. 330-337 Church of Panagia Ekatontapyliani - Hundred Doors (Paros) (literally: "church of the hundred doors") founded by St. Helen, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
  • ca. 395 Theodosius I divided the prefecture of Macedonia into the provinces of Creta, Achaea, Thessalia, Epirus Vetus, Epirus Nova, and Macedonia; the Aegean islands formed the province of Insulae in the prefecture of Asiana.
  • ca. 431 Church of Cyprus autocephalous.

Early Byzantine era (451-843)

  • 529-534 Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis issued; Justinian's Novella 131 formulated the proposed government of universal Christendom by five patriarchal sees under the auspices of a single universal empire (Pentarchy).
  • ca. 590 Parthenon in Athens converted into a Christian church dedicated to Aghia Sophia.
  • 662 Parthenon in Athens rededicated to the Mother of God (Panagia of Athens).
  • Mid-6th-Century Death of David of Thessaloniki
  • Late 6th-Century St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki saves Thessaloniki from Avar-Slav siege.
  • 692 The "Pentarchy" form of government of universal Christendom by five patriarchal sees received formal ecclesiastical sanction at the Council in Trullo (692), which ranked the five sees as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
  • 7th-Century Arab pirates attack coastal areas, many islands deserted.
  • 720 Martyrdom of Nicholas the New of Vounina

Patriarchate of Constantinople Era (733-1850)

  • 733 Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian withdraws Sicily and Calabria, Greece, and the Aegean from the jurisdiction of the Pope in response to Pope Gregory III of Rome's support of a revolt in Italy against iconoclasm.
  • 780 Metropolitan Gregory I
  • 803 Death of Irene of Athens, wife of Byzantine Emperor Leo IV. St. Luke's icon brought to Agiassos on Mytiline.
  • 840 Panagia Proussiotissa icon found near Karpenissi

Byzantine Imperial era (843-1204)

Latin Occupation (1204-1456)

  • 12th-Century Skete life begins in Meteora
  • 1204 Latin Occupation, mainland Greece under Franks and Venetians
  • 1222 The Byzantines recover Thessaloniki (Salonica)
  • 1235 St. Olympiada and nuns martyred by pirates on Mytilene of Lesbos
  • 1249 Mystras citadel built by Franks in the Peloponnese
  • 1275/76 Persecution of Athonite monks by Emp. Michael VIII and Pat. John Vekkos, Death of 26 martyrs of Zographou monastery on Mt. Athos, martyred by the Latins
  • 1309 Rhodes falls to the Knights of St. John, who establish their headquarters there, renaming themselves the "Knights of Rhodes"
  • 1336 Meteora in Greece are established as a center of Orthodox monasticism
  • 1338 Gregory Palamas writes Triads in defense of the Holy Hesychasts, defending the Orthodox practice of hesychast spirituality and the use of the Jesus Prayer
  • 1359 Death of Gregory Palamas
  • 1360 Death of John Koukouzelis the Hymnographer
  • 1382 Founding of the Great Meteora Monastery
  • 14th-Century "Golden Age" of Thessaloniki, many churches and monasteries are built; Hesychast controversy, defense of St. Gregory Palamas
  • 1426 Death of New Martyr Ephraim of Nea Makri
  • 1429 The Turks capture Thessaloniki
  • 1430 The monks of Mount Athos submit to Sultan Murad II and keep their autonomy
  • 1438 Council of Florence unsuccessfully tries to unit Greek East and Latin West.
  • 1450 Death of Empress Helena Palaeologus (St. Ipomoni of Loutraki)
  • 1453 Fall of Constantinople to invasion of the Ottoman Turks, ending the Roman Empire; Death of [[Constantine XI Palaiologos, last of the Byzantine Emperors, martyred by the Ottoman Turks.

Ottoman Turkish Occupation (1456-1821)

Greek War of Independence (1821-1829)

First Hellenic Republic (1829-1832)

  • 1829 First Hellenic republic (1829-1832)
  • 1832 European powers establish Greek protectorate; Otho I enthroned as Greek King

Kingdom of Greece (1833-1924)

Autocephalous Era (1850-Present)

  • 1850 autocephaly of the Church of Greece recognised by Patriarch Anthimos IV of Constantinople; certain conditions issued in "Tomos" decree; as a result the Greek National Church must maintain special links to the "Mother Church".
  • 1863 George I enthroned as King of Greece
  • 1866 Greek church takes the diocese of the Ionian Islands from Constantinople; the holocaust of Arkadi Monastery in Crete.
  • 1871 Patriarch Gregory V returned to Athens and entombed in cathedral.
  • 1877 Death of Arsenios of Paros (August 18).
  • 1878 Council of Athens, convened and presided over by Metropolitan Procopius I of Athens, condemned the Makrakists, obtaining closure of Makakris' "School of the Logos" on the pretext that it taught doctrines opposed to the tenets of the Church, and addressed an encyclical to the whole body of Christians in Greece that was read in the churches, charging Makrakis with attempting to introduce innovations.
  • 1881 Turks cede Thessali and Arta regions to Greece; Thessaly and part of Epirus added to the Church of Greece.
  • 1888 Death of Panagis of Lixouri (Cephalonia)
  • 1901 "Evangelakia" riots in Athens Greece in November, over translations of New Testament into Demotic (Modern) Greek, resulting in fall of both government and Metropolitan of Athens, and withdrawal of publications from circulation.
  • 1904 Ecumenical Patriarchate publishes the "Patriarchal" Text of the Greek New Testament, based on about twenty Byzantine manuscripts, the standard text of the Greek-speaking Orthodox churches today.
  • 1905 Death of Apostolos Makrakis.
  • 1907 Archim. Eusebius Matthopoulos founds Zoe Brotherhood.
  • 1912 Epirus, Macedonia and eastern islands, from Northern territories of Greece, are liberated and come under the administration of the Greek Church.
  • 1912-13 First and Second Balkan Wars; liberation of Thessaloniki from the Turks
  • 1913-14 Greeks anex Crete, Chios and Mytiline, World War I
  • 1917 Hierarchy of the Greek Church changed in accordance with political control of the country of Greece.
  • 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War; a million refugees flee to Greece joining half a million Greeks who had fled earlier; Pontic Greek Genocide eliminates the Christian population of Trebizond.
  • 1920 Death of Nektarios of Pentapolis (Aegina); Dodecanese Islands ceded to Greece by Italy
  • 1922 Metropolis of Aitolia and Akarnania founded in its modern form; death of Ethnomartyr Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Kalafatis) of Smyrna, lynched by a Turkish mob on Sunday September 10; Greek troops advancing on Constantinople are routed by Turks; the predominatly Orthodox Christian city of Smyrna is destroyed, ending 1900 years of Christian civilization.
  • 1923 Exchange of Christian and Moslem population between Greece and Turkey; Treaty of Lausanne hands over control of the Holy Mountain to Greece

Second Hellenic Republic (1924-1935)

Kingdom of Greece Restored (1935-1967)

Military Dictatorship (1967-1974)

Third Hellenic Republic (1974-Present)

Notes

  • Some of these dates are necessarily a bit vague, as records for some periods are particularly difficult to piece together accurately.
  • The division of Church History into separate eras as we do here will always be to some extent arbitrary, though we have tried to group periods according to major watershed events.
  • This timeline is necessarily biased toward the history of the Orthodox Church, though a number of non-Orthodox events are mentioned for their importance in history related to Orthodoxy.

See also


Under the Patriarchate of Rome

The Byzantine "themes" of Greece rebelled against the iconoclast emperor Leo III in 727 and attempted to set up their own emperor, although Leo defeated them. Up to this time Greece and the Aegean were still technically under the ecclesiastic authority of the Pope, but Leo also quarreled with the Papacy; the defiant attitude of Popes Gregory II and Saint Gregory III, who summoned councils in Rome to anathematize and excommunicate the iconoclasts (730,732) on behalf of image-veneration, led to a fierce quarrel with the emperor. Leo retaliated however by transferring the territories of southern Italy, Greece and the Aegean from the papal diocese to that of the the Patriarch of Constantinople, in effect throwing the Papacy out of the Empire.

Names of the Greeks

The Greeks have been known by a number of different names throughout history. Their rise to great heights of power and lapse to near complete destruction were situations that were repeated more than once, which is perhaps why they are such a polyonymus people. The onset of every new historical era was accompanied by a new name, either completely new or old but forgotten, extracted from tradition or borrowed from foreigners. Every single one of them was significant in its own time. From anceint times to the present these included:

  • Achaeans (Αχαιοί)
  • Hellenes (Έλληνες)
  • Graeci (Γραικοί)
  • Romans (Ρωμαίοι)
  • Byzantines (Βυζαντινοί)

Notes

  1. ↑ Date from the 'Prologue from Ohrid
  2. ↑ Church of Piraeus 91.2 FM Website (Greek)
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