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[German Version] The Arabic name of Morocco is al-Mamlaka al-maġribīya (“The Western Kingdom”). The name Morocco derives from Marrakesh (Arab. Marrākuš). The country is located at the intersection or Europe, the Middle East, and West Africa. A clear ethnic distinction between Berbers and Arabs is not always possible. Some 60% of the population speak Arabic, the rest Berber languages. Obscurity still surrounds many aspects of the cultural, political, economic, and religious life of the population before the arrival of the Arabs and Islam in the 7th and 8…

[German Version] Stylitism was a special form of early Christian asceticism, in which the stylite stood for long periods, usually for life, on a platform atop a pillar (Gk στῦλος/ stýlos, hence “stylite”), which often was raised in stages, sometimes to a height of more than 20 m, as a visible expression of the ascetic ideal of extreme homelessness and immobility. It was the duty of monks to provide the stylite with sustenance and communion. As motivation the sources speak of total separation from the world and proximity to heaven. Proposed non-Christian models have been ruled out. ¶ This rad…

[German Version] (Eukratas; c. 540/550, Aigai in Cilicia? – 634, Rome?), monk of the monastery of St. Theodosius in Jerusalem and of the laura of Pharan; after 578, he set off with his disciple Sophronius to visit monasteries and ascetic communities in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. A journey to Rome in 614 in the face of the impending threat of Persian invasion remains unclear. In the tradition of the Apophthegmata Patrum , Moschus collected his travel experiences in the ¶ form of edifying anecdotes, gathered from monks and ascetics, in a compilation dedicated to Sophronius …

[German Version] was a Roman presbyter who became bishop of Rome after the execution of Sixtus II in 259. He was able to reorganize the church, which had suffered greatly from the persecution by Licinius Valerianus. He died in 267/268. Almost nothing of him is recorded in the Liber pontificalis ; an exchange of letters with Dionysius of Alexandria and the congregation in Cappadocian Caesarea is attested. The authenticity of the fragment against the Origenistic theology of Dionysius of Alexandria (preserved in Athanasius, De decretis Nicaenae symboli [decr.…

[German Version] (521 Antioch – May 24 [or Sep 3?], 592), son of St. Martha and a father from Edessa, became a stylite and miracle worker (Simeon Thaumaturgus) at the age of six. Located after c. 540/541 on the mons mirabilis near Antioch, he was ordained to the diaconate and later to the priesthood as a stylite; he was sought out by pilgrims as a thaumaturge. He wrote works on asceticism, hymns, prayers, and letters (to Justinian I and Justin II). The pilgrimage activity associated with his pillar, as well as his contact relics and p…

[German Version] 523–526. At the command of Theodoric the Great, John I, of whom almost nothing is known, had to travel in 525 to Constantinople with a delegation of Roman senators and bishops and intervene there for the religious freedom of the homoean Goths, who were affected by the heresy laws. The triumphal reception of the pope in Constantinople must be regarded as a political demonstration against Theoderic, who, for that reason, had John held in Ravenna after his return; shortly afterward John died there. In ¶ the hagiographic tradition, he is therefore regarded as a victim…

[German Version] The so-called Eutychian Controversy was an episode in the christological controversy (Christology: II, 1), that forced the Roman and Latin West to take a dogmatic position and led directly to the christological formula of Chalcedon (Monophysites/Monophysitism). The unstable equilibrium of the Union of 433 between moderate Antiochenes and Alexandrians ( DH 272) was always in danger. Dioscorus of Alexandria, the successor of Cyril of Alexandria, was not prepared to accept a signif…

[German Version] (died 370) first appears as bishop of Germanicia at the Council of Antioch in 341. He was one of the leading supporters of the ecclesiastical policies of Constantius II and participated in almost all the important councils of the Eastern church as an opponent of Athanasius; he nevertheless played a role in the unsuccessful attempts to frame a theological compromise with the West ( formula macrostichus, Hahn, BSGR, §159). After he became bishop of Antioch in 357, his support of Aetius and Eunomius led to a breach with the…

[German Version] (“Stammerer,” or “hoarse”; died 490). In 477 Peter was elected bishop (patriarch) of Alexandria by opponents of the decrees of Chalcedon, as successor to Timotheus Aelurus, but he was able to take office only after the death of Timothy Salophaciolus and the recognition of the Henotikon in 482; because of the intervention of John Talaia (Acacius of Constantinople), he was not recognized by the West. He was also opposed in Egypt by Monophysites because he had signed the Henotikon and refused to condemn Chalcedon. Theologically, Peter must be considered less a…

[German Version] I. Definition – II. Early Christianity and Military Service – III. The Militia Christi in Primitive Christianity and the Early Church – IV. Middle Ages – V. Modern Period I. Definition Latin militia Christi (“military service for Christ”; cf. the more common miles Christi/ dei, “soldier/warrior of Christ/God”) is a metaphorical description of the life and service of Christians in the world (cf. “the church militant”). Borrowing the language of apocalypticism and imagery common to antique philosophy, it interprets the C…

[German Version] priest and archimandrite of the Monastery of Job in Constantinople, exercised great influence at the court so that Cyril of Alexandria sought his assistance as mediator as early as 432. As a radical proponent of the theology of one nature (Monophysites/Monophysitism) and an opponent of the union of 433, he was accused of Apollinarianism (Apollinaris of Laodicea) in 447/48 at over 70 …

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Church Law – III. Dogmatics I. Church History 1. Early Church Council (Lat. concilium, Gk σύνοδος [Lat. synodum]; the two terms were first differentiated in modern usage; see also synod) are meetings of bishops from various communities for binding clarification of disciplinary, organizational, or doctrinal questions, whose decisions, as inspired by the Holy Spirit, are not in principle revisable and claim validity for the whole church r…

[German Version] (c. 1050 – c. 1126), student of Michael (actually Constantine) Psellus, deacon of the Hagia Sophia and royal tutor at the court of Michael VII. Around 1090 he was made archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria, de facto the Byzantine metropolitan even though Bulgaria remained autocephalous de iure under Byzantine rule. The majority of his literary output consists of biblical commentaries in a traditional vein; in the conflict with the Latins, he took a moderate position. Other surviving works include homilies, encomia of martyrs, a m…

[German Version] Leo of Ochrid, 11th-century Byzantine theologian, chartophylax of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, after 1025 in Achrida/Ochrid as autocephalous archbishop of Bulgaria under Byzantine rule. To support the anti-Western campaigns of the patriarch Michael Cerularius, in 1053 Leo composed an encyclical to “the Franks” ( RAPC 2, no. 862), addressed to the southern Italian bishop John of Trani, in which he attacked Western liturgical practices (Saturday fasting, unleavened bread in the Eucharist) as Judaizing heresy. Commissioned b…

[German Version] I. Early Church – II. Middle Ages and Reformation – III. Modern Period and Today – IV. Chronological List of the Popes I. Early Church 1. Definition. If papacy is defined as the claim (based on Matt 16:16–19; 28:20; Luke 22:31f.; John 21:15–19) of the bishops of Rome as successors and heirs to Peter to leadership along with jurisdictional and magisterial primacy (I) within the universal church, papacy in the strict sense dates only from the Middle Ages in the Latin West. In the Early Church, the point at iss…

[German Version] ( Jan 31, 314 – Dec 31, 335). According to the Liber pontificalis and hagiographic tradition, Silvester was a Roman presbyter under Bishop Miltiades and a confessor in the Diocletian persecution (Persecutions of Christians: I). He did not come forward as bishop of Rome in succession to Miltiades during the reign of Constantine the Great. ¶ He was informed of the results of the Synod of Arles (Donatism), which he probably did not attend out of fear of endangering his episcopate; he played no role in the conflict with Arius and Arianis…

[German Version] I. History – II. Theological Faculty I. History In the early modern period, as territorial states were being formed on the soil of the Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg-Ansbach/Bayreuth took the side of the Reformation in 1526. In 1529, at Luther's suggestion, it set out to establish a territorial university, but this hope was never realized, not least because …

[German Version] (pontificate Mar 1, 492 – Nov 21, 496). According to the Liber pontificalis , Gelasius was an African. Entrusted with the papal correspondence under Simplicius and especially Felix III, in the context of the Acacian Schism, Gelasius maintained the schism with the East even after the death of Acacius of Constantinople. In a dispute with the emperor Anastasius, Gelasius developed the “two powers” doctrine, building on the doctrine of papal primacy stated by Leo I, in a situati…

[German Version] (died c. 360), a presbyter in Alexandria, was deposed and expelled because of his support for Arius. In the context of the reversal of church policy after the Council of Nicea (325), he was bishop of Syrian Laodicea after around 335. As one of the leading Eusebians, he was deposed and excommunicated in absentia in 342/43 at the (Western) Synod of Sardica, actions that remained without effect in the East. Through his protest in 358 against the usurpation of the Antiochene episcopacy by Eudoxius of Constantinople and his support by Ge…

[German Version] I. Definition The expression papal primacy denotes the juridical supremacy in the universal church of the pope as bishop of Rome, i.e. his supreme and immediate administrative authority as head of the College of Bishops, pastor of the universal church, and vicar of Christ on earth ( CIC/1983, c. 331: “The Bishop of the Church of Rome . . . is the head of the College of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the Pastor of the universal Church here on earth; consequently, by virtue of his office, he has supreme, full, immediate, and…