Sometimes called the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church is the Church founded by our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, which was given life by God the Father and the descent of God the Holy Spirit upon the Disciples on the Day of Pentecost. The origins and early years of our Church is described in the pages of the New Testament, in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles. Our history can be traced in unbroken continuity all the way back to Christ and His Twelve Apostles. For twenty centuries, she has continued in her undiminished and unaltered faith and practice. Today her apostolic doctrine, worship and structure remain intact. The Orthodox Church maintains that the Church is the living Body of Jesus Christ. Read our Discover Orthodox Christianity section, and the Nicene Creed, to learn more about our Faith.
For the first thousand years after Christ, the Christian Church was united worldwide. Then in the year 1054 A.D., the Patriarch ("Pope") of Rome (who was one of five co-equal leaders of the Church), who had leadership of the churches in the western part of the Roman Empire, broke away from the rest of the Church. This "Great Schism" is the origin of what today we call the Roman Catholic Church. The churches in the eastern part of the Roman Empire remained unified, and continued in the traditions and teaching of the Church as it had done from its very origin on the Day of Pentecost. These "eastern" churches formed what today we call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Over the past 1000 years, the Orthodox Church has grown and spread so that the number of Patriarchates has expanded from the original 5 (minus the Patriarch of Rome), to 21 {see graphic below}.
The First Ecumenical Council of the Church was called by the Emperor Constantine in the year 325 AD. It addressed several pressing theological questions, but it also took steps to organize, regularize, and systemitize the liturgical practices and theological exposition of the Faith across the vast Roman Empire (and beyond). The world was divided into four sections (north, south, east, and west), and one bishop was placed in charge of all missionary activity and oversight of all local churches in their respective quarter. These bishops received the title "Patriarch" ("father-overseer") of the Church. The oversight of the 4 quarters of the world were given to the bishops of the 4 most prominent cities of the Roman world, the city of Jerusalem also received a Patriarch. The four cities (in order of their precedence) were: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The "precedence" -- functionally speaking -- meant that whenever the whole Church gathered together in a council, the Patriarch of Precedence would hold the gavel. This "precedence" -- theologically speaking -- is of no consequence in spiritual authority, since each and every bishop has equal Sacramental authority, and full authority of oversight in his own diocese. Unfortunately, as the Church moved through the centuries, the worldly-minded understanding of "precedence" crept into the minds of some bishops. On Christmas Day in the year 800, the Bishop of Rome ("Pope") crowned the Goth, Charlemagne, as the Holy Roman Emperor, citing his own authority as the "First among equals" and without regard to the conciliar nature of the Church. Consequentially, there was already an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who had his throne in Constantinople (Constantine the Great had moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople in the year 323). This crowning of a rival Emperor was the opening of a schism which fully breached the unity of the Church in the year 1054. In this year, the Bishop of Rome insisted that all of the other Patriarchs, and indeed all bishops everywhere in the Church, received their authority from him (rather than from Christ and through the Holy Councils of the Church). This insistence on Universal Jurisdiction, which had been expressly rejected by our Lord when James and John had sought the same priority among the Apostles (See Mark 10:35), became the excuse that the Pope of Rome used to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople, and to abrogate the Episcopal authority of all of his fellow bishops (after which he named new bishops to sit in the Episcopal Sees across the Christian world).
The Church of Antioch was formally established by the the efforts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and Barnabas (one of "the 70"), sometime soon following the beginning of the persecution of the Believers by the leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem (the date is postulated to be around 34 A.D.). St. Peter served as a point of unity for the many Believers in the city of Antioch and its surrounding area. These Believers were, at the early stages Jewish believers, many of whom had fled persecution in Jerusalem. Some, however, had been Jews from Antioch who had been in Jerusalem to witness the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Lord, and who received the anointing of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Upon returning home to Antioch, they preached the resurrection to those who would hear. Thus, the Believers in Antioch were loosly joined together by their common Faith in Jesus Christ, but they had no means of gathering as an organized congregation. It was the presence of St. Peter that drew these Believers together to form an "ecclesia" -- a congregation of the Faithful. St. Peter lived and worked among them for the next eight years as the "overseeer" ("episcopus" -- i.e., bishop) of the Faithful. The growth and organization of the Church of Jesus Christ at Antioch is emblematic of the way the Church grew all across the Roman Empire, and beyond. The assemblies which coalesced around the presence of one of the Apostles (or in Antioch's case, two of the Apostles) became prominent in the leadership of the widely dispersed Body of Christ. Thus, Antioch was one of the five ancient "Patriarchates" of the Christian Church, along with Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Rome.
![His Beatitude JOHN X [the tenth]](https://stmichaelsgeneva.org/images/Patriarch_JOHN_X--Yazigi.jpg)
