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[German Version] capital of the Republic of Lithuania (Baltic countries), with a population of 554,060 (2011); it is situated in southeastern Lithuania where the Vilnia joins the Neris, a tributary of the Memel. Its earliest mention in a document is in a 1323 letter of Grand Duke Gediminas. When Grand Duke Jogaila accepted baptism in 1387 and saw to the building of a cathedral, he also granted Vilnius a city charter modeled on the Magdeburg Law. The personal union of Lithuania with Poland in 1385 …

[German Version] (1875, Sep 10 – 1960, Paris) was one of the most prominent lay theologians of Russia in the 20th century. He lectured in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) until 1917, where he also chaired the Society for Philosophy of Religion, and was from 1925 at the theological institute of St. Serge in Paris (of which he was a cofounder), where he taught church history as well as Old Testament. In 1959, he was able to publish his main work in two volumes, Očerki po istorii Russkoj Cerkvi, sketches of the history of the Russian Church. Appointed chief procurator of the Holy Synod by…

[German Version] (c. 1036–1040, Szczepanów – Apr 11, 1079, Cracow), martyr bishop and patron saint of Poland. Initially a parish priest in Czembocz, as bishop of Cracow (from 1072) he came into bitter conflict with King Boleslav II, which cost ¶ him his life. Church tradition has it that he was slain by the king himself during mass in the Church of St. Michael because he had rebuked the king for his immoral way of life, but the alternative tradition is more believable – that he was condemned to death as a traitor for his political opposition and was gruesomely executed by truncatio membrorum. His…

[German Version] (c. 1520, Chios island – 1585, Rome), radical Antitrinitarian who claimed to be descended from the last imperial dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. In trouble with the Inquisition as a Dominican friar in Italy, he was able to flee in 1559. He was in Prague in 1570/1571, in Krakow in 1571/1572, and in Klausenburg from 1572 to 1574. In 1573, he traveled to Turkey and twice to Poland. In 1575, Palaeologus lived in Alzen near Sibiu (Ger. Hermannstadt), Romania, then in Poland and Moravi…

[German Version] (Goddert; c. 1517, near Lippstadt – 1587, Kurland) was the last grand master of the Teutonic Order in Livonia. Following the collapse of the order state, he accepted Polish suzerainty and became the first duke of Kurland in 1562, a part of the territory that had previously belonged to the order and for which the capital Mitau (Jelgava) was eventually built in the vicinity of an old castle. Marrying Anna of Mecklenburg in 1566, he established a dynasty which lasted until 1737. Kurl…

[German Version] (Matěj Pavlík; May 26, 1879, Hrubá Vrbka, near Hodonín – Sept 4, 1942. Prague). Gorazd, bishop of Moravia and Silesia, was the founder of Czech Orthodoxy. Having been a Roman Catholic chaplain in ¶ Kromeríz, in 1920 he joined the Czechoslovakian Church, which had broken its ties with Rome. In 1921 he was sent to Belgrade to be consecrated bishop by the Serbian patriarch, thus securing apostolic succession. As this went together with a sincere conversion to Orthodoxy, in 1924 he broke with the Czechoslovakian Churc…

[German Version] (Polish Chełmno), a city founded on the lower course of the Weichsel River in 1232 and a bishop's seat from 1243. The cathedral chapter established there by Bishop Heidenreich in 1251 was incorporated into the Teutonic order (Orders of Germany) from 1264 to 1466. Originally suffragan to the archbishopric of Riga, the diocese was integrated into the ecclesial province of Gniezno (Gnesen) in 1466. Bishop Johannes Dantiscus (1530–1538) and S. Hosius (1549–1551) succesfully warded off…

[German Version] (Dimitrii Aleksandrovich; Feb 5, 1807, Pokrovskoe, near Gryazovets – Apr 30, 1867, Nikolo-Babaev, near Kostroma) was a Russian ascetic, spiritual writer, and bishop. In 1827, when the aristocratic graduate of the St. Petersburg Engineering School was released from military service for medical reasons, he struck up an acquaintance with the monk…

[German Version] (12th/13th cent.), has a place in world literature as the greatest Georgian poet, earned by his Vephistqaosani (“The Knight in the Panther’s/Tiger’s Skin”), an epic poem of 1669 four-line stanzas. Hundreds of legends, stage plays, and stories about his life and work bear witness to the central place he holds in the Georgians’ sense of identity. But regarding his life and person – like Homer’s – we have no reliable sources. The territorial epithet tells us little, since there are many places in Ge…

[German Version] (c. 1501, Mantua – Nov 12, 1574, Sopnica, near Sandomierz), Hebraist, physician, and theologian, whose contentiousness triggered violent disputes wherever his unsettled life took him. Probably of Jewish descent and initially a priest or monk, after studying in Basel and in southern Germany he was appointed professor of Hebrew in Vienna in 1544 and in Cracow in 1549. Called to the University of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), he left after three months because of a clash with A. Osiander…

[German Version] (Olmütz) is a city on the middle reach of the March river (Morava; Czech Republic) with 106,000 inhabitants (1989). First mentioned in records in 1055, Olomouc developed from a settlement at the foot of the Fürstenberg, subsequently in the center of the city. The cathedral of St. Wenceslas was erected on the site of an old castle complex between 1107 and 1131, rebuilt in the 13th and 14th centuries, and again between 1883 and 1890. As a bishop’s seat from 1063 (until 1344 under Mainz, and from 1344 to 1421 under Prague), and an archbishop’s seat from 1777 (with suf-¶ fragans in …

[German Version] (Palaiohemerologites) is the name given to the opponents of change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian system in the Church of Greece from Mar 10 to 23, 1924, which happened under state pressure. They understand themselves, however, as the “true Orthodox Christians” who stand for the maintenance of tradition in its entirety. Individual circles quickly grew into a church organization which since 1932 worships in its own buildings, and since the accession of three bishops in 1…

[German Version] (Nov 1, 1844, Khalan, near Kursk – Feb 17, 1925, Prague), pioneer Russian art historian and student of iconography. Kondakov began to teach at the university in Odessa in 1871, went to St. Petersburg in 1888, to Sofia in 1920, and finally to Charles University in Prague in 1922. Of his three-volume iconography of the Theotokos ( Ikonografiia Bogomateri), he was able to publish the first two volumes in 1914/1915 while he was still in St. Petersburg; the third remained in manuscript, kept in the Vatican Library. His incomplete magnum opus on Russian icons ( Russkaia ikona) was…

[German Version] (May 30, 1220, Jaroslav – Nov 14, 1263, Gorodok) was Prince of Novgorod from 1236 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1252; he defeated the Swedes on the Neva in 1240 (whence his nickname) and the Knights of the Teutonic Order on the ice of Lake Peipus; in contrast, he submitted to the Tatars whom he saw as less of a threat to Russian Orthodox identity than the Latin West. He died as a monk and has been venerated as a saint since as early as the 14th century. Peter the Great transported his remains to the Lavra in St. Petersburg, which was named after Alexander in 1724. Peter Hauptmann Bibl…

[German Version] (1589, Krempe, Holstein – 1657, Danzig [Gdańsk]), polymath adherent of Socinianism (Socinians). While Ruarus was studying at Altdorf, the physician E. Soner won him to the Socinian cause. After traveling through Denmark, Holland, England, France, and Italy, in 1621/1622 he served as rector of the academy of the Polish Brethren in Raków, near Sandomierz; after further travels, he settled in Danzig in 1631. Coupled with these travels, his extensive correspondence served to propagand…

[German Version] (Čavčavadze, Ilja) (Oct 27, 1837, Qvareli – Aug 30, 1907, Cicamuri), Georgian poet and writer, journalist and politician of royal origins, who was canonized as “St. Ilia the Righteous” on Jul 20, 1987. ¶ After studying philosophy as well as administration and economics in St. Petersburg, he worked as a magistrate in Georgia from 1864, and from 1874 as the chair of the administration of the Bank of the Nobility. In 1906, he was elected to the State Council of the Russian Empire. His verses and …

[German Version] (Mar 25, 1886, Vasilikon, Epirus – Jul 7, 1972, Istanbul). The ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I (born Aristokles Spyrou) was the son of a physician. After completing his theological studies at the seminary on Halki (1910), he was ordained hierodeacon and assigned administrative duties in the metropoly of Pelagonia. In 1919, after half a year on …

[German Version] This term, first used in the 17th century, denotes the main stream of the anti-Trinitarian movement (Antitrinitarians), moderated in many respects by F. Socinus after 1579. The Socinians explicitly kept the Trinitarian formula in the command to baptize (Matt 28:19). According to the Racovian Catechism, anyone who rejected it could not be a Christian. It was the Early Church’s doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son and the personhood of the Holy Spirit that the…

[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…

[English Version] I. Stadt und Bistum Nachdem Bf. Albert I. von Livland 1201 nahe einem Handelsplatz gotländischer Kaufleute vor der Mündung der Düna in die Ostsee die Stadt R. gegründet hatte, machte er sie sogleich zum Sitz des 1186 von Bf. Meinhard in Uexküll (etwa 25 km flußaufwärts) begründeten Missionsbistums. Schon 1202 setzte die Zuwanderung aus Deutschland ein. R. wurde auch Sitz des Ordensmeisters in Livland. Seit 1207 Reichslehen, wurde R. 1255 zum Erzbistum erhoben. Seine Suffragane waren…

[English Version] I. Stadt und Bistum 1224 nach der Eroberung einer alten Festung am Embach, der Wirz- und Peipussee miteinander verbindet, durch den Schwertbrüderorden gegründet, ist T. (estnisch, dt. Dorpat, russ. Jur'ev) die älteste Stadt Estlands (baltische Länder) und mit 101 000 Einwohnern (2001) die zweitgrößte. Der 1219 für die Esten berufene Bf. Hermann nahm 1224 seinen Sitz in T. und begann 1228 mit der Errichtung der Domkirche St. Peter und Paul, die im 14. und 15.Jh. zum größten Sakralbau…

[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 …

[English Version] I. Kirchengeschichtlich 1.  Begriffsgeschichte Der Orthodoxiebegriff (vgl. auch Orthodoxie: I.) stammt aus dem hell. Judentum. So empfiehlt Flavius Josephus »τη`n̆ ο᾿ρϑη`n̆ δο´ξαn̆ περι` Θεου˜/tē´n orthē´n do´xan peri´ Theou´« anstelle der griech. Mythen und überliefert, daß die Essener die anderen Juden als »ε῾τερο´δοξοι/hetero´doxoi« betrachtet hätten (Flav.Jos.Apion. II 256; Bell. II 129). Dieser Sprachgebrauch griff seit dem 2.Jh. auch auf das Christentum über. Entscheidend für seine kirchl. Ausprägung wurde 843…

[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…