Great Church

English

Etymology

Calque of Koine Greek μεγάλη ἐκκλησία (megálē ekklēsía). In sense of “orthodox Christian church”, cf. Celsus (2nd century) describing mainstream Christian believers, quoted in Origen, Contra Celsum, 5.59: “Σαφῶς γε τῶν ἀπὸ μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας τοῦτο ὁμολογούντων […] ” (“Certainly, the members of the Great Church agree […] ”).

Proper noun

the Great Church

1. (historical) The orthodox Christian church of antiquity, after 380 C.E. the established church of the Roman Empire, especially as distinct from smaller Christian movements or heresies.
   • 1981, Christopher Butler, The Theology of Vatican II, revised edition, page 104:

     Such was the view held within the Great Church of the third and fourth centuries, from which all our existing forms of Christianity can trace their descent.

   • 1991, William Montgomery Watt, Muslim–Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions, page 1:

     Round about AD 600 there was a main body of Christians constituting the Great Church, which later divided into the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches of today; but there were also important bodies of Christians who had been expelled from the Great Church as heretics, notably those often known as the Monophysites (Jacobites and Copts) and the Nestorians.

   • 1995 [1989], Aloys Grillmeier, Theresia Hainthaler, translated by John Cawte and Pauline Allen, Christ in Christian Tradition, volume 2/2, page 1:

     Although Chalcedon seemed to offer the possibility of their reconciliation with the Great Church, this hope was not fulfilled.

2. (historical) Hagia Sophia before the fall of the Byzantine Empire or one of the churches that previously occupied its site, the Great Church of Constantinople.
   • 1975, Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Pre-anaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, page 33:

     We must remember that the Byzantine rite is basically the rite of the Great Church, and in a cathedral the size of Hagia Sophia to have done all this in the church itself just before the transfer of gifts would have taken an enormous amount of time.

   • 1990, Kallistos Ware, “Eastern Christendom”, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, page 123:

     The ‘Great Church’, as it was called, standing at the heart of the city of Constantinople, may serve as a fitting visual symbol of Eastern Christendom.

   • 2000, Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom, page 42:

     At Constantinople, on the other hand, it appears that the bishop of the city, while based at the Great Church, preached according to a developed system in other churches of the city also.

3. (Eastern Orthodoxy) The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
   • 1968, Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence:
   • 2002, Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of Central Europe, revised edition, page 1907:

     Central Europe and eastern Europe (Muscovy/Russia) came under the jurisdiction of the so-called Great Church, or Patriarchate of Constantinople (the New Rome)

   • 2010, Eleonora Naxidou, “The Transition from Ecumenical Tradition to a Multinational Perspective: The Historical Evolution of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire”, in Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe Between Karlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829, page 149:

     The Great Church managed to regain its essentially ecumenical character that was challenged in the Middle Ages by the ecclesiastical independence of Ohrid, Peć and Tărnovo.

Usage notes

(orthodox church of antiquity): Historians of Christianity seeking to take a neutral or critical position towards claims of orthodoxy may avoid the term “Great Church” or qualify it with quotation marks.