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[German Version] (Ger. Gnesen), a town situated roughly 50 km east of Poznań with approx. 50,000 inhabitants, which, as the seat of the first Piaste kings and the center of the archdiocese established in 999, was the cradle of both the Polish state and its church (Poland). The original suffragans Krakow, Wrocław (Ger. Breslau) and Kołobrzeg (Ger. Kolberg) were joined in subsequent centuries by Poznań (Ger. Posen), Włocławek (Ger. Leslau), Płock, Lebus, Vilnius, Łuck and Samogitia. The addition of …

[German Version] (Sep 4 or 16, 1893, Odessa – Dec 4, 1966, Paris) was a Russian Orthodox theologian, forced from his homeland with the White Army, who studied theology in Belgrade from 1921 to 1925 and immigrated to Paris in 1929, where, beginning in 1932, he taught at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Serge. He was ordained as a priest in 1940; he led a community in Tunis from 1941–1947, then returned to St. Serge where he was named professor of canonistics in 1950. His main achievement was the rediscovery of the original ecclesiology (Church) which, in …

[German Version] (1478 – Apr 28, 1550, Balga am Frischen Haff [Kaliningrad]), bishop of Samland from 1519. Polentz belonged to the Meissen nobility; after studying in Leipzig and Italy, he was a lawyer in papal and imperial service, before entering the Teutonic Order (Orders of Germany) in 1511 and becoming commander in Königsberg (Krolewiec, Poland) in 1516. Between 1522 and 1525 he ruled the order’s territory of Prussia as the grand master’s deputy. Converted to the Reformation from 1522, he ced…

[German Version] I. City and Bishopric Albert I, bishop of Livonia, founded the city of Riga in 1201 near a Gotland merchants’ trading center on the Daugava river, not far from the Baltic Sea. He immediately made it the seat of the mission diocese founded in 1186 by Bishop Meinhard at Ikšķile (about 25 km up-stream). Immigration from Germany began as early as 1202. Riga also became the seat of the master of the order of warrior knights in Livonia. From 1207, Riga was an imperial fief, and in 1255 it w…

[German Version] I. Western Church – II. Eastern Church I. Western Church CD=Corpus (Corpora) doctrinae, CO=Church Order 1. Concept and Content. Articles of faith are officially authorized, textually authenticated doctrinal statements (Confession [of faith]), confession collections, CD) through which a constitutionally organized (Church order) Christian church articulates its own confessional insights, formulates a normat…

[German Version] I. City and Bishopric Tartu (Estonian; Ger. Dorpat, Russ. Yuryev) is the oldest city in Estonia (Baltic countries); with a population of 103,000 (2009), it is also the second largest. It was founded in 1224 by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword after their capture of an ancient fortress on the Emajogi, connecting Lake Võrtsjärv with Lake Peipus. Bishop Hermann, appointed as bishop for the Ests, established his residence in Tartu in 1224 and in 1228 began construction of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the 14th and 15th centuries the largest spec-¶ imen of sacred …

[German Version] I. Church History – II. The Branches of Orthodoxy – III. Orthodoxy throughout the World – IV. History of Orthodox Theology I. Church History 1. Terminology. The term orthodox (cf. also Orthodoxy: I) goes back to Hellenistic Judaism. Flavius Josephus, for example, commends τὴν ὀρϑὴν δόξαν περὶ Θεοῦ/ tḗn orthḗn dóxan perí Theoú instead of Greek myths and reports that the Essenes viewed other Jews as ἑτερόδοξοι/ heteródoxoi ( Apion. II 256; Bell. II 129). ¶ This idiom passed into Christian usage in the 2nd century. The critical moment for its ecclesiastica…

[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Catholic Catechisms – III. Orthodox Catechisms – IV. Protestant Catechisms – V. Catechetical Instruction I. Terminology Linguistically and semantically, the word catechism is derived from the Greek verb κατήχειν/ katḗchein, “to echo.” This etymology suggests a semantic connotation, according to which the transmission of the faith is fundamentally seen as a mediation of the content of the faith through personal testimony (cf. the Lat. personare, “to sound through”). Only when used in a transitive sense does κατήχειν acquire the meani…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. The Early Church – III. Middle Ages, Reformation, Counter-reformation – IV. The Modern Period – V. Martyrs of the Orthodox Church – VI. Judaism – VII. Islam – VIII. Missiology I. History of Religion The term martyrium (Greek μαρτύριον/ martúrion) was coined in early Christianity, where it denotes a self-sacrificial death in religious conflict as a witness to faith Historical and systematic references are found in many contexts, in which comparable terms imply something slightly different. For example, the Islamic šahīd, “witness…