Timeline of Church History

The History of the Church is a vital part of the Orthodox Christian faith. Orthodox Christians are defined significantly by their continuity with all those who have gone before, those who first received and preached the truth of Jesus Christ to the world, those who helped to formulate the expression and worship of our faith, and those who continue to move forward in the unchanging yet ever-dynamic Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church.

New Testament era

• ca. 6-7BC Christ is born in Bethlehem; 14,000 Holy Innocents slain in Bethlehem.
• ca. 25-26 Death of Joseph the Betrothed.
• ca. 27 Christ's baptism in the Jordan.
• ca. 28 Beheading of John the Baptist.
• ca. 30 Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ.
• ca. 30 Martyrdom of Stephen.
• 30 Conversion of Apostle Paul on road to Damascus.

Apostolic era (33-100)

• 33 The Holy Spirit descends on the day of Pentecost, filling the followers of Jesus Christ with power from on high.
• 34 Apostle Peter founds See of Antioch.
• 35 The name Christian first used in Antioch.
• 37 Joseph of Arimathea travels to Britain and lands in Glastonbury.
• 49 Apostolic Council of Jerusalem rules that Gentiles do not have to become Jews before becoming Christians.
• 50 Apostle Matthew finishes the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic.
• 62 Martyrdom of Apostle James the Just; crucifixion of Apostle Andrew in Patras.
• 63 Aristobulus consecrated as first bishop of Britain.
• 64-67 Persecution of Christians by Emperor Nero.
• 64 Martyrdom of the Apostle Paul in Rome.
• 67 Martyrdom of the Apostle Peter in Rome; Apostle Linus elected first bishop of Rome.
• 68 Suicide of Emperor Nero.
• 69 Ignatius of Antioch consecrated bishop of Antioch.
• 70 Apostle Mark writes Gospel; Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed by the Romans; expulsion of the Christians from the synagogues; Johanan Ben Zacchai founds college at Jamnia that becomes seat of Sanhedrin and center of Judaism A.D. 70-135, enabling emergence of Rabbinic Judaism.
• 71 Apostle Mark introduces Christianity to Egypt.
• 75 Judea, Galilea and Samaria are renamed Palaestina by the Romans.
• 80 Gospel of Luke written by the Apostle Luke; Jewish historian (and former general) Josephus writes Antiquities.
• ca. 80-90 Didache written.
• 85 Acts of the Apostles written by Apostle Luke.
• 90 Council of Jamnia (Javneh) marks final separation and distinction between the Jewish and Christian communities, including rejection of the Septuagint widely then in use among the Hellenized Jewish diaspora.
• 95 Apostle John writes Book of Revelation.
• 96-98 Persecution of Christians under Emperor Domitian.
• 96 Gospel of John written by Apostle John as supplement and further theological illumination of the Synoptic gospels.
• 100 Death of Apostle John.

Ante-Nicene era (100-325)

• 107 Martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch; death of Apostle Symeon.
• 124 Apostles Quadratus and Aristides present Christian apologies to Emperor Hadrian at Athens.
• 130 Conversion of Justin Martyr.
• 132 Jews, led by Bar Kochba, whom some identify as the Messiah, revolt against Rome.
• 135 Christmas instituted as a feast day in Rome.
• 136 Emperor Hadrian crushes Jewish resistance, forbids Jews from returning Jerusalem, and changes city name to Aelia Capitolina; first recorded use of title Pope for the bishop of Rome by Pope Hyginus.
• 144 Excommunication of Marcion for his heretical rejection of the Old Testament and for his semi-Gnostic teachings, particularly Docetism.
• 150 Justin Martyr describes Divine Liturgy.
• 155 Martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna.
• 156 Beginning of Montanism.
• 165 Martyrdom of Justin.
• ca. 170 Emergence of Muratorian Canon.
• 180 Irenaeus of Lyons writes Against Heresies.
• 190 Pantaenus founds the Catechetical School at Alexandria.
• 197 Quartodeciman controversy.
• 200 Martyrdom of Irenaeus of Lyons.
• 202 Martyrdom of Haralampus of Magnesia.
• 203 Emperor Septimus Severus issues edict against Christianity and Judaism.
• 206 King Abgar IX converts Edessa to Christianity.
• 208 Tertullian writes that Christ has followers on the far side of the Roman wall in Britain where Roman legions have not yet penetrated.
• ca. 209 Martyrdom of Alban in Britain.
• 215 Conversion of Tertullian to Montanism.
• 225 Death of Tertullian.
• 232 Heraclas becomes Pope of Alexandria.
• 246 Paul of Thebes retreats to the Egyptian desert and becomes first Christian hermit.
• 249-251 Persecution under Emperor Decius.
• 251-253 Persecution under Emperor Gaius.
• 253-260 Persecution under Emperor Valerian.
• 255-256 Three Councils of Carthage.
• 260 Paul of Samosata begins his heretical preaching against the divinity of Christ.
• 264 Excommunication of Paul of Samosata.
• 270 Death of Gregory Thaumaturgus.
• 272 Martyrdom of Sabbas Stratelates ("the General") of Rome and 70 soldiers.
• 284 Diocletian becomes Roman emperor, persecutes Church and martyrs an estimated one million Christians; martyrdom of Cosmas and Damian, Andrew Stratelates ("the General") and 2,593 soldiers with him in Cilicia.
• 285 Anthony the Great flees to the desert to pursue a life of prayer.
• 301 Gregory the Illuminator converts King Tiridates I of Armenia to the Christian faith.
• 302 20,000 Martyrs burned at Nicomedia.
• 303 Outbreak of the Great Persecution, as Diocletian launches the last major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire; martyrdom of George the Trophy-bearer.
• 305 Martyrdom of Panteleimon and Catherine of Alexandria. Martyrdom of Bishop Ianouarios of Beneventio of Campania and his Companions.
• 306 Martyrdom of Demetrius of Thessaloniki.
• 310 Armenia becomes first Christian nation; persecution of Christians under Persian King Shapur II (310-379).
• 311 Galerius issues Edict of Toleration ending persecution of Christians in his part of the Roman Empire; rebellion of the Donatists in Carthage.
• 312 Vision and conversion of Constantine the Great; defeat of Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, making Constantine Emperor of the West.
• 313 Edict of Milan issued by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Licinius, officially declaring religious freedom in the Roman Empire, specifically naming religious toleration for Christianity, restoration of property to Christian churches, and legal recognition.
• 314 Council of Ancyra held; Council of Arles condemns Donatism.
• 315 Council of Neo-Caesaria held.
• 318 Publication of On the Incarnation by Athanasius the Great, influencing the condemnation of Arianism; beginnings of Arian Controversy.
• 318 Pachomius the Great, disciple of Anthony the Great, organizes a community of ascetics at Tabennis in Egypt, founding cenobitic monasticism.
• 319 Translation of relics of Theodore Stratelates ("the General").
• 320 Expulsion of Arius by Alexander of Alexandria; martyrdom of Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
• 323 Constantine the Great builds church on the site of the martyrdom of Peter in Rome.
• 324 Constantine defeats Licinius and becomes sole emperor.

Nicene era (325-451)

• 325 First Ecumenical Council held in Nicea, condemning Arianism, setting the Paschalion, and issuing the first version of the Nicene Creed.
• 326 Discovery of the True Cross by the Empress Helena.
• 326 King Miraeus of Georgia becomes Christian.
• 328 Athanasius the Great becomes bishop of Alexandria (328-373).
• 329 Athanasius ordains Frumentius (Abba Selama) to priesthood and commissions him to evangelize Ethiopia.
• 330 Constantinople is founded as New Rome as the Christian capital of the Roman Empire; Amoun and Macarius the Great found monasteries in the Egyptian desert.
• 333 Constantine commissions Eusebius, to prepare 50 copies of the Bible for churches in the new capital.
• 335 Death of Sylvester, Pope of Rome.
• 336-338 Athanasius the Great goes into exile in Treves, telling Europeans about the monastic rule of Pachomius the Great, awakening interest in monasticism in Europe.
• 337 Death of Constantine.
• 339-346 Second exile of Athanasius.
• 340 Conversion of Wulfila to Arianism, subsequently missionizing the Goths with heretical doctrine; Council of Rome under Pope Julius where Athanasius and Marcellus are declared innocent and maintained in the communion of the western churches; Council of Gangra held.
• 341 Council of Antioch held; Emperor Constans bans pagan sacrifices and magic rituals under penalty of death.
• 345 Death of Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia.
• 347 Council of Sardica.
• 348 Death of Pachomius the Great; death of Spyridon of Trimythous.
• 350 Ninian establishes the church Candida Casa at Whithorn in Galloway, Scotland, beginning the missionary effort to the Picts.
• 351 Apparition of the Sign of the Cross over Jerusalem.
• 355 Death of Nina, Enlightener of Georgia.
• 356 Death of Anthony the Great.
• 357 The Council of Sirmium, the high point of Arianism, issues the Blasphemy of Sirmium.
• 358 Basil the Great founds monastery of Annesos in Pontus, the model for Eastern monasticism.
• 359 Councils of Seleucia in the east and Rimini in the west.
• 360 Martin of Tours founds first French monastery at Liguge; first church of Hagia Sophia inaugurated by Emperor Constantius II.
• 362 Synod of Alexandria; Antiochian schism (362-414).
• 361-63 Julian the Apostate becomes Roman emperor, attempting to restore paganism.
• 363 Emperor Jovian reestablished Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, stating that he preferred the Orthodox view, and that Athanasius was to be permitted to return to his see at Alexandria.
• 364 Council of Laodicea held..
• 365-66 Brief exile and final restoration of Athanasius of Alexandria.
• 367 Athanasius of Alexandria writes his Paschal letter, listing for the first time the canon of the New Testament of the Holy Scriptures, including all 27 New Testament Books; death of Hilary of Poitiers.
• 373 Death of Athanasius the Great; death of Ephrem the Syrian.
• 374 Election of Ambrose as bishop of Milan.
• 375 Basil the Great writes On the Holy Spirit, confirming the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
• 376 Visigoths convert to Arian Christianity.
• 378 Meletius returns to his see as bishop of Antioch; at Battle of Adrianople Emperor Valens defeated by the Visigoths, permanently weakening northern borders of the empire.
• 379 Death of Basil the Great; Emperor Gratian's rescript Ordinariorum Sententias extends power of Bishop of Rome by allowing him authority over bishops within his own jurisdiction.
• 380 Christianity established as the official faith of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius the Great; Council of Saragossa condemns Priscillianism.
• 381 Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople, condemning Macedonianism/Pneumatomachianism and Appollinarianism, declaring the divinity of the Holy Spirit, confirming the previous Ecumenical Council, and completing the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed; Council of Aquileia led by Ambrose of Milan deposes Arian bishops.
• 382 Pope Siricius of Rome first to bear title Pontifex Maximus.
• ca. 383 Death of Frumentius.
• 384 Council of Bordeaux condemns Priscillian.
• 385 Death of Gregory of Nyssa.
• 386 Panagia Soumela Monastery founded in Trebizond, Pontus, Asia Minor; death of Cyril of Jerusalem; Theodosius the Great begins to rebuild the present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
• 387 Augustine baptized at Pascha by Ambrose of Milan.
• 391 Death of Gregory the Theologian.
• 391-92 All non-Christian temples in the Empire closed; Theodosius the Great ends pagan Eleusinian Mysteries by decree and causes surviving pagan sacrifices at Alexandria and Rome to cease.
• 392 Death of Macarius the Great.
• 393 Council of Hippo publishes Biblical canon; Emperor Theodosius bans Olympic Games as a pagan festival.
• 394 Epiphanius of Salamis attacks teachings of Origen as heretical; Council of Constantinople held; Donatist Council of Bagai in Africa held with 310 bishops.
• 395 Augustine becomes bishop of Hippo in North Africa; the placing of the cincture (sash) of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Church of the Virgin in Halkoprateia-Constantinople (395-408).
• 395 Re-division of Empire with death of Emperor Theodosius the Great.
• 397 Council of Carthage publishes Biblical canon; death of Martin of Tours; death of Ambrose of Milan.
• 398 John Chrysostom becomes Archbishop of Constantinople.
• ca. 398 Martyrdom of 10,000 Fathers of the Scetis by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria.
• 399 Anastasius of Rome and other bishops condemn doctrine of Origen.
• 401 Augustine of Hippo writes Confessions; Pope Innocent I of Rome supports John Chrysostom and condemns pelagianism.
• 402 Emperor Honorius transfers capital of the Western Empire from Milan to Ravenna; Porphyry of Gaza obtains imperial decree ordering closing of pagan temples in Gaza.
• 403 Abduction of Patrick to Ireland to serve as a slave; visit of Victricius of Rouen to Britain; Synod of the Oak held near Chalcedon, deposing and exiling John Chrysostom.
• 404 Martyrdom of Telemachus, resulting in Emperor Honorius' edict banning gladiator fights.
• 405 Translation of Holy Scriptures into Latin as the Vulgate by Jerome; martyrdom of Moses the Black.
• 406 Invasion of Gaul by Germanic tribes, severing contact between Rome and Britain.
• 407 Death of John Chrysostom in exile.
• 410 Fall of Rome to the Visigoths under Alaric I; escape of Patrick back to Britain; Emperor Honorius tells Britain to attend to its own affairs, effectively removing the Roman presence; Honoratus founds a monastery on island of Lerins.
• 410 Council of Seleucia declares Mesopotamian Nestorian bishops independent of Orthodox bishops.
• 411 Pelagius condemned at council in Carthage; Rabbula becomes bishop of Edessa.
• 412 Cyril succeeds his uncle Theophilus as Pope of Alexandria; Honorius outlaws Donatism; Lazarus, bishop of Aix-en-Provence, and Herod, bishop of Arles, expelled from sees on a charge of Manichaeism.
• 413 Martyrdom of Marcellinus of Carthage.
• 414 Resolution of the Antiochian division.
• 415 Pelagius cleared at a synod in Jerusalem and a provincial synod in Diospolis (Lydda); John Cassian founds convent at Marseilles.
• 416 Councils in Carthage and Milevis condemn Pelagius and convince Pope Innocent I of Rome to excommunicate him.
• 418 Foundation of the (Arian) Visigothic Kingdom, as Emperor Honorius rewards Visigoth federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania on which to settle.
• 418-24 Council in Carthage anathematizes Pelagianism by way of endorsing Augustinian anthropology.
• 425 Sanhedrin disbanded by the Roman Empire; University of Constantinople founded as the first university in the world.
• 426 Augustine of Hippo writes The City of God.
• 428 Nestorius becomes patriarch of Constantinople.
• 429 Pope Celestine I dispatches prominent Gallo-Roman Bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes to Britain as missionary bishops and to combat the Pelagian heresy; death of Sisoes the Great.
• ca. 430 Death of Nilus of Sinai.
• 430 Peter the Iberian founds Georgian monastery near Bethlehem.
• 431 Third Ecumenical Council held in Ephesus, condemning Nestorianism and Pelagianism, confirming the use of the term Theotokos to refer to the Virgin Mary, and confirming autocephaly of Church of Cyprus; Pope Celestine sends Palladius to Ireland.
• 432 Return of Patrick to Ireland to begin missionary work; death of Ninian, Apostle to the Picts.
• 433 Formulary of Peace completes the work of the Third Ecumenical Council by reconciling Cyril of Alexandria with John of Antioch.
• 435 Death of John Cassian; death of Acacius of Melitene; Nestorius exiled by Imperial edict to a monastery in a Sahara oasis.
• 438 Codex Theodosianus published.
• 439 Carthage falls to Vandals.
• 444 Death of Cyril of Alexandria; Pope Leo the Great abolishes Gallican vicariate.
• 445 Founding of monastery at Armagh in northern Ireland; Emperor Valentinian III issues decree recognizing primacy of the bishop of Rome.
• 447 Earthquake in Constantinople, when a boy was lifted up to heaven and heard the Trisagion.
• 449 Robber Synod of Ephesus, presided over by Dioscorus of Alexandria, with an order from the emperor to acquit Eutyches the Monophysite.
• 450 First monasteries established in Wales; Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britian; death of Peter Chrysologus.

Byzantine era (451-843)

• 451 Fourth Ecumenical Council meets at Chalcedon, condemning Eutychianism and Monophysitism, affirming doctrine of two perfect and invisible but separate natures of Christ, and recognizing Church of Jerusalem as patriarchate.
• 451 Attila the Hun defeated at Battle of Chalons.
• 452 Proterios of Alexandria convenes synod in Alexandria to reconcile Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian groups; second finding of the Head of John the Forerunner.
• 452 Attila the Hun invades northern Italy, but is convinced to withdraw from Ravenna by Pope Leo the Great; Venice founded by fugitives from Attila's army.
• 455 Vandals under Gaiseric sack Rome; Germanic Saxons and Angles conquer Britain, founding several independent kingdoms.
• 457 Victorius of Aquitania computes new Paschalion; first coronation of Byzantine Emperor by Patriarch of Constantinople.
• 459 Death of Symeon the Stylite.
• 461 Death of Leo the Great; death of Patrick of Ireland.
• 462 Indiction moved to September 1; Studion Monastery founded.
• 466 Church of Antioch elevates bishop of Mtskheta to rank of Catholicos of Kartli, rendering the Church of Georgia autocephalous.
• 473 Death of Euthymius the Great.
• 475 Emperor Basiliscus issues circular letter to the bishops of his empire, supporting the Monophysite Christological position.
• 476 Fall of Western Roman Empire.
• 477 Timothy Aelurus of Alexandria exiles Chalcedonian bishops from Egypt.
• 482 Byzantine emperor Zeno I issues Henotikon in an attempt to reconcile the differences over the Christology of Chalcedon.
• 484 Acacian Schism.
• 484 Founding of Mar Sabbas Monastery by Sabbas the Sanctified; Synod of Beth Lapat in Persia declares Nestorianism as official theology of Assyrian Church of the East, effectively separating the Assyrian church from the Byzantine church.
• 488 Death of Peter the Fuller.
• 489 Emperor Zeno I closes Nestorian academy in Edessa, which was then transferred under Sassanian Persian auspices to Nisibis.
• 490 Brigid of Kildaire founds monastery of Kildare in Ireland.
• 494 Pope Gelasius I of Rome delineates relationship between church and state in his letter Duo sunt, written to Emperor Anastasius I.
• 496 Pope Gelasius I of Rome dedicates February 14 to Valentine of Terni in the West, banning the pre-Christian Roman festival of Lupercalia; Bp. Remigius of Rheims baptizes Franks into Orthodox Christianity.
• ca. 500 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite writes The Mystical Theology.
• 502 Start of Byzantine-Sassanid wars lasting until 562.
• 506 Church of Armenia separates from Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
• 507 Clovis I defeats Visigoths at Battle of Vouillé near Poitiers, ending their power in Gaul.
• 512 Death of Genevieve of Paris.
• 518 Severus of Antioch deposed by Emperor Justin I for Monophysitism.
• 519 Eastern and Western churches reconciled with end of Acacian Schism.
• ca. 520 Elesbaan (Caleb), King of Ethiopia (Axum), invades Jewish Himyarite kingdom of Yemen, which was persecuting the Christians there, thus establishing Axumite control of South Arabia.
• 521 Birth of Columba of Iona.
• 527 Dionysius Exiguus calculates the date of birth of Jesus incorrectly; foundation of St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai peninsula by Justinian the Great.
• ca. 528 Death of Procopius of Gaza.
• 529 Pagan University of Athens closed and replaced by Christian university in Constantinople; Benedict of Nursia founds monastery of Monte Cassino and codifies Western monasticism; Council of Orange condemns Pelagianism; Church of the Nativity burned down in Samaritan revolt of 529; death of Theodosius the Great.
• 529-534 Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis issued from 529 to 534.
• 530 Brendan the Navigator lands in Newfoundland, Canada, establishing a short-lived community of Irish monks.
• 532 Justinian the Great orders building of Hagia Sophia; death of Sabbas the Sanctified.
• 533 Mercurius elected Pope of Rome and takes the name of John II, the first pope to change his name upon election.
• 533 Foundation of the Diocese of Selefkia in Central Africa by the Emperor Justinian.
• 534 Roman Empire destroys the Arian kingdom of Vandals; Malta becomes Byzantine province.
• 536 Mennas of Constantinople summons a synod anathematizing Severus of Antioch.
• 537 Construction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople completed.
• 539 Ravenna becomes exarchate of the Byzantine Empire.
• 541 Jacob Baradeus organizes the Non-Chalcedonian Church in western Syria (the "Jacobites"), which spreads to Armenia and Egypt.
• 543 Doctrine of apokatastasis condemned by Synod of Constantinople.
• 544 Jacob Baradeus consecrates Sergius of Tella as bishop of Antioch, opening the lasting schism between the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chalcedonian Church of Antioch; founding of the monastery at Clonmacnoise in Ireland by Ciaran.
• 545 Synod of Brefi at Llandewi Brefi in Wales condemns Pelagianism.
• 546 Columba founds monastery of Derry in Ireland.
• 547 Our Lady of Sadnaya convent founded in Damascus of Syria.
• ca. 550 David of Wales takes Christianity to Wales.
• 553 Fifth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in an attempt to reconcile Chalcedonians with non-Chalcedonians—the Three Chapters of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa are condemned for their Nestorianism, and Origen and his writings are also condemned.
• 553 Bishops of Aquileia, Milan, Venetia and the Istrian peninsula in Italy all refuse to condemn the Three Chapters, causing the Schism of the Three Chapters in those areas, leading to independence of Patriarch of Venice from Patriarch of Aquileia; Ostrogoth kingdom conquered by the Byzantines after the Battle of Mons Lactarius.
• 554 Church of Armenia officially breaks with the West in 554, during the second Council of Dvin where the dyophysite formula of Chalcedon was rejected.
• 556 Columba founds monastery of Durrow in Ireland; death of Roman the Melodist.
• 557 Brendan the Navigator founds monastery at Clonfert, Ireland.
• 563 Re-consecration of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople after its dome is rebuilt; Columba arrives on Iona and establishes his monastery there, founding mission to the Picts.
• 564 Death of Petroc.
• 569 Final schism between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians in Egypt; David of Wales holds Synod of Victoria to re-assert the anti-Pelagian decrees of Brefi.
• 570 Death of Gildas; birth of Muhammad, founder of Islam.
• 579 400 Martyrs slain by Lombards in Sicily.
• 580 Monte Cassino sacked by Lombards, sending its monks fleeing to Rome; Slavs begin to migrate into the Balkans and Greece.
• 587 Visigoth King Reccared renounces Arianism in favor of Orthodox Christianity.
• 589 Council of Toledo adds Filioque to Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in an attempt to combat Arianism.
• ca. 590 Parthenon in Athens converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Theotokos.
• 590 Columbanus founds monasteries in France.
• 593 Anastasius the Sinaite is restored as Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
• 596 Gregory the Dialogist sends Augustine along with forty other monks to southern Britain to convert pagans.
• 597 Death of Columba of Iona.
• ca. 600 The Ladder of Divine Ascent written by John Climacus; Gregory the Dialogist inspires development of Gregorian Chant through his liturgical reforms.
• 601 Augustine of Canterbury converts King Ethelbert of Kent and establishes the see of Canterbury.
• 602 Final series of wars between Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Empire; Augustine of Canterbury meets with Welsh bishops to bring them under Canterbury.
• 604 Mellitus becomes first Bishop of London and founds the first St. Paul's Cathedral; death of Gregory the Dialogist.
• 605 Death of Augustine of Canterbury.
• 609 Pantheon in Rome converted into church, consecrated to the Virgin Mary and All Saints (Santa Maria dei Martiri).
• 610 Heraclius changes official language of the Empire from Latin to Greek, already the lingua franca of the vast majority of the population.
• 612 Holy Sponge and Holy Lance brought to Constantinople from Palestine.
• 614 Persians sack Jerusalem under Chosroes II of Persia; Church of the Holy Sepulchre damaged by fire, True Cross is captured, and over 65,000 Christians in Jerusalem are massacred.
• 615 Death of Columbanus in Italy.
• 617 Persian Army conquers Chalcedon after a long siege.
• 618 Death of Kevin of Glendalough.
• 620 Slavs attack Thessaloniki.
• 622 Year one of the Islamic calendar begins, during which the hejira occurs, Muhammad and his followers emigrating from Mecca to Medina.
• 626 Akathist Hymn to the Virgin Mary written, after Constantinople liberated from a siege of 80,000 Avars, Slavs and the Persian fleet.
• 627 Emperor Heraclius decisively defeats the Sassanid Persians at Battle of Nineveh, recovering the True Cross and breaking the power of the Sassanid dynasty.
• 628 Muhammad issues Charter of Privileges to monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery.
• 630 Second Elevation of the Holy Cross.
• 633 Death of Modestus of Jerusalem.
• 635 Founding of Lindisfarne Monastery by Aidan, a monk from Iona; Cynegils, king of Wessex, converts to Christianity.
• 636 Capture of Jerusalem by Muslim Arabs after Battle of Yarmuk.
• 638 Muslim Arabs allow Jews to return to Jerusalem.
• 640 Muslim conquest of Syria; Battle of Heliopolis between Arab Muslim armies and Byzantium opens door for Muslim conquest of Byzantine Exarchate of Africa.
• 641 Capture of Alexandria by Muslim Arabs.
• 642 Muslim conquest of Egypt; Arabs invade Christian Nubia for the first time.
• 646 Alexandria recaptured by Muslim Arabs after a Byzantine attempt to retake Egypt fails, ending nearly ten centuries of Greco-Roman civilization in Egypt.
• 648 Pope Theodore I of Rome excommunicates patriarch Paul II of Constantinople.
• 649 Arabs invade and conquer Cyprus.
• 650 Final defeat of Arianism as Lombards convert to Orthodox Christianity.
• 651 End of Persian Empire as the last shah of Persia Yezdegherd III of the Sassanid dynasty is killed at Merv.
• 653 Pope Martin the Confessor arrested on orders of Byzantine Emperor Constans II.
• 654 Invasion of Rhodes by Arabs.
• 655 Martyrdom of Martin the Confessor.
• 657 Founding of Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire, England.
• 662 Death of Maximus the Confessor.
• 663 Emperor Constans II is last Eastern emperor to set foot in Rome; Constans II declares the Pope of Rome to have no jurisdiction over the Archbishop of Ravenna, since that city was the seat of the exarch, his immediate representative.
• 664 Synod of Whitby held in northern England, harmonizing Celtic and Roman liturgical practices in England; Ionian monk Wilfrid appointed as Archbishop of York; death of Cedd.
• 668 Theodore of Tarsus appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 669-78 First Arab siege of Constantinople; at Battle of Syllaeum Arab fleet destroyed by Byzantines through use of Greek Fire, ending immediate Arab threat to eastern Europe.
• 670 Composition of Caedmon's Hymn by Caedmon of Whitby.
• 680-681 Sixth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople, condemning Monothelitism and affirming Christology of Maximus the Confessor, affirming that Christ has both a human will and a divine will; Patr. Sergius of Constantinople and Pope Honorius of Rome are both explicitly anathematized for their support of Monothelitism.
• 680 First Bulgarian Empire established after a successful war with Byzantium.
• 682 Foundation of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey in England.
• 685 First monastics come to Mount Athos; death of [[Anastasius of Sinai.
• 685 John Maron elected first Maronite Patriarch, becoming the founder of what is known today as the Maronite Catholic Church, which embraced Monothelitism, rejected the teaching of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and separated from the Orthodox Church.
• 687 Destruction of Whitby Abbey by Danish raiders; death of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
• 688 Emperor Justinian II and Caliph al-Malik sign treaty neutralizing Cyprus.
• 691 Dome of the Rock completed in Jerusalem.
• 692 Quinisext Council (also called the Penthekte Council or Council in Trullo) held in Constantinople, issuing canons which are seen as completing the work of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, and declaring the Church of Jerusalem to be a patriarchate.
• 694 Byzantine army of Justinian II is defeated by the Maronites, who became fully independent afterwards.
• 697 Council of Birr accepts Roman Paschalion for northern Ireland; at this synod, Adomnán of Iona promulgates his Cáin Adomáin.
• 698 Muslim conquest of Carthage; at Synod of Aquileia, bishops of the diocese of Aquileia end the Schism of the Three Chapters and return to communion with Rome.
• ca. 700 Death of Isaac of Syria.
• 705 Long period of fighting begins between Trebizond in eastern Asia Minor and the Arabs.
• 706 Greek replaced by Arabic as administrative language in Egypt.
• 707 Byzantines lose the Balearic Islands to the Moors; death of John Maron.
• 710 Pope Constantine makes last papal visit to Constantinople before 1967.
• 711 Umayyad Islamic invasion of Spain.
• 712 Death of Andrew of Crete.
• ca. 715 Lindisfarne Gospels produced in Northumbria (Northern England).
• 715 Grand Mosque of Damascus built over the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist; Al-Aqsa Mosque is constructed over the site of the Church of St. Mary of Justinian; Pictish King Nechtan invites Northumbrian clergy to establish Christianity amongst the Picts.
• 716 Monastery at Iona conforms to Roman liturgical usage; Boniface's first missionary journey to Frisia.
• 717 Pictish king Nechtan expels monks from Iona.
• 717-18 Second Arab siege of Constantinople.
• 719 Nubian Christians transfer allegiance from the Greek Orthodox Church to the Coptic Church.
• 723 Boniface fells Thor's Oak near Fritzlar.
• 726 Iconoclast Emperor Leo the Isaurian starts campaign against icons.
• 730 Emperor Leo the Isaurian orders destruction of all icons, beginning the First Iconoclastic Period.
• 731 Bede completes Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
• 732 Muslim invasion of Europe stopped by the Franks at the Battle of Tours, establishing a balance of power between Western Europe, Islam and the Byzantine Empire.
• 733 Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian withdraws the Balkans, Sicily and Calabria from the jurisdiction of the Pope in response to Pope Gregory III of Rome's support of a revolt in Italy against iconoclasm.
• 734 Egbert becomes bishop of York, founding a library and making the city a renowned centre of learning.
• 735 Death of Bede; See of York achieves archepiscopal status.
• 739 Emperor Leo III (717-41) publishes his Ecloga , designed to introduce Christian principle into law; Byzantine forces defeat Umayyad invasion of Asia Minor at Battle of Akroinon; death of Willibrord.
• 740 Khazars voluntarily convert to Judaism.
• 742 After a forty-year vacancy, Stephen IV becomes Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, at the suggestion of Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik.
• 746 Byzantine forces regain Cyprus from the Arabs.
• 749 Death of John of Damascus.
• 750 Donation of Constantine accepted as a legitimate document, used by Pope Stephen II to prove territorial and jurisdictional claims.
• 751 Lombard king Aistulf captures Ravenna and the Romagna, ending Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna.
• 752 Death of Pope Zacharias of Rome.
• 754 Iconoclastic Council held in Constantinople under the authority of Emperor Constantine V Copronymus, condemning icons and declaring itself to be the Seventh Ecumenical Council; Constantine begins dissolution of the monasteries.
• 754 Death of Boniface.
• 756 Donation of Pepin cedes lands including Ravenna that became basis of Papal States.
• 768 Church of Wales adopts Orthodox Paschalion at the teaching of Elbodugus.
• 769 Pope Stephen III of Rome holds a council at which papal election procedure is changed and veneration to icons is confirmed.
• 772 Charlemagne starts fighting Saxons and Frisians; Saxony is subdued and converted to Christianity.
• 781 King Charlemagne of the Franks summons the monk and scholar Alcuin of York to head palace school at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) to inspire revival of education in Europe.
• 786 Beatus of Liébana publishes Commentary on the Apocalypse.
• 787 Seventh Ecumenical Council held in Nicea, condemning iconoclasm and affirming veneration of icons; two councils held in England, one in the north at Pincanhale, and the other in the south at Chelsea, reaffirming the faith of the first Six Ecumenical Councils (the decrees of the Seventh having not yet been received), and establishing a third archbishopric at Lichfield.
• 793 Sack of Lindisfarne Priory, beginning Viking attacks on England.
• 794 Charlemagne convenes council in Frankfurt-in-Main, rejecting decrees of Seventh Ecumenical Council and inserting Filioque into Nicene-Constantinipolitan Creed.
• 796 Alcuin made Abbot of Saint-Martin in Tours by Charlemagne.
• 800 Charlemagne crowned as Holy Roman Emperor by Leo III of Rome on Christmas day, marking the break of Frankish civilisation away from the Orthodox Christian Roman Empire; Book of Kells produced in Ireland.
• 800 Ambassadors of Caliph Harunu al-Rashid give keys to the Holy Sepulchre to Charlemagne, acknowledging some Frankish control over the interests of Christians in Jerusalem.
• 803 Council of Clovesho abolishes archbishopric of Lichfield, restoring the pattern of the two metropolitan archbishoprics (Canterbury and York) which had prevailed before 787.
• 814 Bulgarians lay siege before Constantinople; conflict erupts between Emperor Leo V and Patr. Nicephorus on the subject of iconoclasm; Leo deposes Nicephorus, Nicephorus excommunicates Leo.
• 824 Byzantine Crete falls to Arab insurgents fleeing from the Umayyad Emir of Cordoba Al-Hakam I, establishing an emirate on the island until the Byzantine reconquest in 960.
• 826 Ansgar arrives in Denmark and begins preaching; King Harald Klak of Denmark converts to Christianity.
• 828 Death of Patr. Nicephorus I of Constantinople.
• ca. 829-842 Icon of the Panagia Portaitissa appears on Mount Athos near Iviron Monastery.
• 836 Death of Theodore the Studite.
• 838 Caliph al-Mu'tasim captures and destroys Ammoria in Anatolia.
• ca. 839 First Rus'-Byzantine War, where the Rus attacked Propontis (probably aiming for Constantinople) before turning east and raiding Paphlagonia.
• 843 Triumph of Orthodoxy occurs on first Sunday of Great Lent, restoring icons to churches.

Late Byzantine era (843-1453)

• 845 The The 42 Martyrs of Ammoria in Phrygia, taken as hostages from Ammoria to Samarra (in Iraq) and executed there.
• 846 Muslim raid of Rome.
• 850 Third Finding of the head of John the Forerunner.
• 852 Ansgar founds churches at Hedeby and Ribe in Denmark.
• 858 Photius the Great becomes patriarch of Constantinople.
• 860 Second Rus-Byzantine War, a naval raid and the first siege of Constantinople by the Rus.
• ca. 860 Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate.
• 861 Cyril and Methodius depart from Constantinople to missionize the Slavs; Council of Constantinople attended by 318 fathers and presided over by papal legates confirms Photius the Great as patriarch and passes 17 canons.
• 862 Rastislav of Moravia converts to Christianity.
• 863 First translations of Biblical and liturgical texts into Church Slavonic by Cyril and Methodius.
• 863 Venetians steal relics of Apostle Mark from Alexandria.
• 864 Baptism of Prince Boris of Bulgaria; Synaxis of the Theotokos in Miasena in memory of the return of her icon.
• 865 Bulgaria under Khan Boris I converts to Orthodox Christianity.
• 866 Vikings raid and capture York in England.
• 867 Council in Constantinople held, presided over by Photius, which anathematizes Pope Nicholas I of Rome for his attacks on the work of Greek missionaries in Bulgaria and the use by papal missionaries of the heretical Filioque; Pope Nicholas dies before hearing news of excommunication; Basil the Macedonian has Emperor Michael III murdered and usurps the Imperial throne, reinstating Ignatius as patriarch of Constantinople.
• 867 Death of Kassiani, Greek-Byzantine poet and hymnographer, who composed the Hymn of Kassiani, chanted during Holy Week on Holy Wednesday.
• 869-870 Robber Council of 869-870 held, deposing Photius the Great from the Constantinopolitan see and putting the rival claimant Ignatius on the throne, declaring itself to be the "Eighth Ecumenical Council."
• 870 Conversion of Serbia; death of Rastislav of Moravia; Malta conquered from the Byzantines by the Arabs; martyrdom of Edmund, King of East Anglia.
• 874 Translation of relics of Nicephorus the Confessor, interred in the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople.
• 877 Death of Ignatius I of Constantinople, who appoints Photius to succeed him.
• 877 Arab Muslims conquer all of Sicily from Byzantium and make Palermo their capital.
• 878 King Alfred the Great of Wessex defeats Vikings; the Treaty of Wedmore divides England between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes (the Danelaw).
• 879-880 Eighth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople attended by 383 fathers passing 3 canons, confirms Photius as Patriarch of Constantinople, anathematizes additions to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and declares that the prerogatives and jurisdiction of the Roman pope and the Constantinopolitan patriarch are essentially equal; the council is reluctantly accepted by Pope John VIII of Rome.
• 883 Muslims burn the monastery of Monte Cassino.
• 885 Mount Athos gains political autonomy.
• 885 Death of Methodius.
• 886 Glagolitic alphabet, (now called Old Church Slavonic) adopted in Bulgarian Empire; St Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, captures London from the Danes.
• 902 Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid Arabs.
• 904 Thessalonika sacked and pillaged by Saracen pirates under Leo of Tripoli, a Greek pirate serving Saracen interests.
• 907 Third Rus-Byzantine War, a naval raid of Constantinople (or Tsargrad in Old Slavonic) led by Varangian Prince Oleg of Novgorod, which was relieved by peace negotiations.
• 899 Death of Alfred the Great.
• 911 Holy Protection of the Virgin Mary.
• 911 Russian envoys visit Constantinople to ratify a treaty, sent by Oleg, Grand Prince of Rus'.
• 912 Normans become Christian; Nicholas I Mysticus becomes Patriarch of Constantinople.
• 927 Church of Bulgaria recognized as autocephalous by Constantinople.
• 931 Abbott Odo of Cluny reforms monasteries in Aquitaine, northern France, and Italy, starting the Cluniac Reform movement within the Benedictine order, focused on restoring the traditional monastic life, encouraging art and caring for the poor.
• 933 Death of Patr. Tryphon of Constantinople.
• 935 Martyrdom of Wenceslaus, prince of the Czechs.
• 941 Fourth Rus-Byzantine War.
• 944 City of Edessa recovered by Byzantine army, including Icon Not Made By Hands.
• 945 Dunstan becomes Abbot of Glastonbury.
• 948 Holy Roman Emperor Otto I the Great founds missionary dioceses of Brandenburg, Havelburg, Ribe, Aarhus, and Schleswig.
• ca. 950 Monastery of Hosios Loukas founded near Stiris in Greece.
• 957 Olga of Kiev baptized in Constantinople.
• 960 Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas re-captures Crete for the Byzantines; Dunstan becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, reforming the monasteries and enforcing the rule of Benedict.
• 962 Denmark becomes a Christian nation with the baptism of King Harald Blaatand ("Bluetooth"); Holy Roman Empire formed, with Pope John XII crowning Otto I the Great Holy Roman Emperor; Diploma Ottonianum is co-signed by Pope John XII and Otto, confirming the earlier Donation of Pepin, granting control of the Papal States to the Popes, regularizing Papal elections, and clarifying the relationship between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors.
• 963 Athanasius of Athos establishes first major monastery on Mount Athos, the Great Lavra.
• 965 Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas gains Cyprus completely for the Byzantines; Sviatoslav of Kiev destroys Khazar imperial power, as the Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fall to the Rus.
• 966 Anti-Christian riots in Jerusalem.
• 968 Rila Monastery founded; Sviatoslav of Kiev defeats Bulgarians at the Battle of Silistra, precipitating the collapse of the First Bulgarian Empire.
• 968-71 Fifth Rus-Byzantine War, resulting in a Byzantine victory over the coalition of Rus', Pechenegs, Magyars, and Bulgarians in the Battle of Arcadiopolis, and the defeat of Sviatoslav of Kiev by John I Tzimiskes.
• 969 Death of Olga of Kiev; Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas captures Antioch and Aleppo from Arabs.
• 972 Emperor John I Tzimiskes grants Mount Athos its first charter (Typikon).
• 973 Moravia assigned to the Diocese of Prague, putting the West Slavic tribes under jurisdiction of German church.
• 975 Emperor John I Tzimiskes in a Syrian campaign takes Emesa, Baalbek, Damascus, Tiberias, Nazareth, Caesarea, Sidon, Beirut, Byblos and Tripoli, but fails to take Jerusalem.
• 978 Death of King Edward the Martyr.
• 980 Revelation of the Axion Estin (the hymn "It Is Truly Meet"), with the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to a monk on Mount Athos.
• 983 Martyrdom of Theodore the Varangian and his son John of Kiev.
• 987 Sixth Rus-Byzantine War, where Vladimir of Kiev dispatches troops to the Byzantine Empire to assist Emperor Basil II with an internal revolt. agreeing to accept Orthodox Christianity as his religion and bring his people to the new faith.
• 988 Baptism of Rus' begins with the conversion of Vladimir of Kiev who is baptized at Chersonesos, the birthplace of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches; Vladimir marries Anna, sister of Byzantine emperor Basil II.
• 992 Death of Michael, the first Metropolitan of Kiev.
• 995 Olaf of Norway proclaims Norway to be a Christian kingdom; the relics of Cuthbert are transferred with his community to Durham.
• 1000 Conversion of Greenland and Iceland.
• 1008 Conversion of Sweden.
• 1009 Patriarch Sergius II of Constantinople removes the name of Pope Sergius IV of Rome from the diptychs of the Church of Constantinople, because the pope had written a letter to the patriarch including the Filioque.
• 1009 Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, founder of the Druze.
• 1012 Death of Hieromartyr Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury; Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah issues oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians including the destruction of all Christian and Jewish houses of worship.
• 1013 Jews expelled from the caliphate of Córdoba.
• 1014 Filioque used for the first time in Rome by Pope Benedict VIII at the coronation of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1015 Death of St. Vladimir of Kiev.
• 1017 Danish king Canute converts to Christianity.
• 1022 Death of St. Simeon the New Theologian.
• 1024 Seventh Rus-Byzantine War, Byzantine naval victory.
• 1027 Frankish protectorate over Christian interests in Jerusalem is replaced by a Byzantine protectorate, which begin reconstruction of Holy Sepulchre.
• 1036 Byzantine Emperor Michael IV makes a truce with the Caliph of Egypt to allow rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by Byzantine masons; Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Emperor sent to protect pilgrims.
• 1043 Eighth and last Rus'-Byzantine War, an unsuccessful naval raid against Constantinople; Edward the Confessor crowned King of England at Winchester Cathedral; University of Constantinople is re-organized under Michael Psellos.
• 1045-50 Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Novgorod built, the oldest Orthodox church building in Russia, executed in an architectural style more austere than the Byzantine, reminiscent of the Romanesque.
• 1048 Re-consecration of Holy Sepulchre.
• 1051 Monastery of the Kiev Caves founded.
• 1052 Edward the Confessor founds Westminster Abbey, near London.
• 1053 Death of Saint Lazarus the Wonder-worker of Mount Galesius near Ephesus.
• 1054 Cardinal Humbert excommunicates Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, a major centerpoint in the formation of the Great Schism between East and West; the First Letter of Michael Cerularius to Peter of Antioch.
• 1059 Errors of Berengar of Tours condemned in Rome; term transubstantiation begins to come in to use, ascribed to Peter Damian.
• 1064 Seljuk Turks storm Anatolia taking Caesarea and Ani and conquering Armenia.
• 1066 Normans invade England flying the banner of the Pope of Rome, defeating King Harold of England at the Battle of Hastings, beginning the reformation of the church and society there to align with Latin continental ecclesiology and politics.
• 1071 Seljuk Turks defeat Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert, beginning Islamification of Asia Minor; Norman princes led by Robert Guiscard capture Bari, the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy, bringing to an end over five centuries of Byzantine rule in the south.
• ca. 1071-1176 Byzantine epic poem Digenes Akrites is written, set in the ninth and tenth centuries, inspired by the almost continuous state of warfare with the Arabs in eastern Asia Minor, presenting a comprehensive picture of the intense frontier life of the Akrites, the border guards of the Byzantine Empire.
• 1073 Hildebrand becomes Pope Gregory VII and launches the Gregorian reforms (celibacy of the clergy, primacy of the papacy over the empire, right of the Pope to depose emperors); Seljuk Turks conquer Ankara.
• 1074 Death of Theodosius of the Kiev Caves.
• 1075 Dictatus Papae document advances Papal supremacy.
• 1077 The Seljuk Turks capture Jerusalem and kill 3,000 citizens; Seljuks capture Nicea.
• 1084 Antioch is captured by the Seljuk Turks from the Byzantines.
• 1087 Translation of the relics of Nicholas of Myra from Myra to Bari.
• 1088 Founding of monastery of John the Theologian on Patmos.
• 1095 Launching of the First Crusade.
• 1096 Persecution of Jews by Crusaders.
• 1098 Anselm of Canterbury completes Cur Deus homo, marking a radical divergence of Western theology of the atonement from that of the East.
• 1098 Crusaders capture Antioch.
• 1099 Crusaders capture Jerusalem founding the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and other crusader states known collectively as "Outremer."
• 1108 Death of Nicetas of the Kiev Caves, Bishop of Novgorod.
• 1113 Latin Order of Knights Hospitaller founded as a religious/military order under its own charter, charged with the care and defense of the Holy Land and pilgrims.
• 1118 Latin Order of Knights Templar founded.
• ca. 1131-45 Coptic Pope of Alexandria Gabriel II initiates acceptance of Arabic as a liturgical language (in addition to the Coptic), with his Arabic translation of the Liturgy.
• ca.1120-1220 Spread of Aristotelian philosophy throughout Western Europe, mostly via the translations of Averroes and Maimonides.
• 1120 The Council of Nablus is held in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• 1144 Bernard of Clairvaux calls for a Second Crusade to rescue the besieged Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; Kings Louis VII of France and Konrad III of Germany join Crusaders, but are defeated by Muslims; Muslims take Christian stronghold of Edessa.
• 1147 Moscow founded by Prince Yuri Dolgoruki, a ruler of the northeastern Rus'; Roger II of Sicily takes Corfu from the Byzantine Empire, and pillages Corinth, Athens and Thebes.
• 1149 Crusaders began to renovate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Romanesque style, adding a bell tower.
• 1159 John of Salisbury authors Policraticus, an important treatise on government drawing from the Bible, the Codex Justinianus, and arguing for the Divine Right of Kings.
• 1164 Uncovering of the relics of Leontius of Rostov.
• 1170 Miracle of the weeping icon of the Theotokos "of the Sign" at Novgorod; Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland; city of Dublin is captured by the Normans.
• 1176 Sultanate of Rum defeats Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Myriokephalon, marking the end of Byzantine attempts to recover the Anatolian plateau; Al-Adil I, the Muslim ruler of Egypt, suppresses a revolt by the Christian Copts in the city of Qift, hanging nearly 3,000 of them.
• 1177 Latin King Baldwin of Jerusalem and his knights, with the Templars, defeat the Muslim army of Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.
• 1179 Death of Hildegard von Bingen.
• 1180 Last formal acceptance of Latins to communion at an Orthodox altar in Antioch.
• 1182 The Maronites, who assisted the Crusaders during the Crusades, reaffirmed their affiliation with the Holy See in Rome in 1182.
• 1185 Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396).
• 1186 The Byzantine Empire recognized the independence of Bulgaria and Serbia.
• 1187 Saladin retakes Jerusalem after destroying crusader army at the Battle of Hattin, and returns Christian holy places to the Orthodox Church.
• 1189 Third Crusade led by King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, King Philip Augustus II of France, and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
• ca. 1189 Ethiopian Emperor Gebre Mesqel Lalibela orders construction of Lalibela.
• 1191 Cyprus taken from Byzantines by English King Richard I "Lion Heart."
• 1198 Cyprus sold by England to Frankish crusaders.
• 1204 Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, laying waste to the city and stealing many holy relics and other items; Great Schism generally regarded as having been completed by this act; Theodore I Lascaris establishes the Empire of Nicaea; death of Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, author of Guide for the Perplexed which harmonized the Old Testament with Aristotle.
• ca. 1204-61 Martyrdom by Latins of monks of Iveron Monastery.
• 1211 Venetian crusaders conquer Byzantine Crete, retaining it until ousted by the Ottoman Turks in 1669.
• 1212 Children's Crusade, led by 12-year-old Stephen of Cloyes, sets out for the Holy Land from France.
• 1213 Death of Tamar of Georgia.
• 1216 Latin Dominican Order formally recognized.
• 1217-21 Fifth Crusade.
• 1223 Latin Franciscan Order formally recognized.
• 1226 Latin Carmelite order formally recognized.
• 1228 Sixth Crusade results in 10-year treaty starting in 1229 between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Egyptian sultan; Jerusalem ceded to the Franks, along with a narrow corridor to the coast, as well as Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa and Bethlehem.
• 1235 Death of Sava of Serbia.
• 1237 Golden Horde begin subjugation of Russia.
• 1240 Mongols sack Kiev; Prince Alexander Nevsky defeats Swedish army at Battle of the Neva.
• 1242 Alexander Nevsky's Novgorodian force defeats Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Lake Peipus, a major defeat for the Catholic crusaders.
• 1244 Jerusalem conquered and razed by Khwarezmian mercenaries (Oghuz Turks) serving under the Ayyubid ruler of Egypt Salih Ayyub, triggering the Seventh Crusade.
• 1245 First Council of Lyons in the Roman Catholic Church mandates red hat for cardinals and a levy for the Holy Land.
• 1247 Ayyubids conquer Jerusalem, driving out the Khwarezmian Turks.
• 1248-54 Seventh Crusade.
• 1258 Michael VIII Palaiologos seizes the throne of the Nicaean Empire, founding the last Roman (Byzantine) dynasty, beginning reconquest of Greek peninsula from Latins.
• 1259 Byzantines defeat Latin Principality of Achaea at the Battle of Pelagonia, marking the beginning of the Byzantine recovery of Greece.
• 1261 End of Latin occupation of Constantinople and restoration of Orthodox patriarchs.
• 1261 Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos makes Mystras seat of the new Despotate of Morea, where a Byzantine renaissance occurred.
• 1268 Egyptian Mamelukes capture Antioch.
• 1269 The Orthodox Patriarchy of Antioch returns to Antioch after a 171-year exile, during which it had been replaced by the Latin Patriarch of Antioch.
• 1270 The Eighth Crusade is launched by Louis IX, King of France.
• 1271-72 Ninth Crusade led by Prince Edward of England to Acre, is considered to be the last of the medieval Crusades to the Holy Land.
• 1274 Second Council of Lyons held, proclaiming union between the Orthodox East and the Roman Catholic West, but generally unaccepted in the East.
• 1275 Unionist Patriarch of Constantinople John XI Beccus elected to replace Patriarch Joseph I Galesiotes, who opposed the Council of Lyons; 26 martyrs of Zographou monastery on Mt. Athos, martyred by the Latins.
• ca. 1280 Kebra Nagast ("Book of the Glory of Kings") compiled, a repository of Ethiopian national and religious feelings.
• 1281 Pope Martin IV authorizes a Crusade against the newly re-established Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, excommunicating Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and the Greeks and renouncing the union of 1274; French and Venetian expeditions set out toward Constantinople but are forced to turn back in the following year.
• 1291 Fall of Acre; end of crusading in Holy Land.
• 1298 Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Pope Gregory I are named collectively as the first Great Doctors of the Western Church.
• 1302 Papal Bull Unam Sanctum issued by Pope Boniface VIII proclaims Papal supremacy.
• 1326 Moscow became the seat of the Russian Orthodox Metropolitanate, as Metropolitan Peter moved his see from Kiev to Vladimir and then to Moscow.
• 1309 Rhodes falls to the Knights of St. John, who establish their headquarters there, renaming themselves the "Knights of Rhodes."
• 1311-12 Council of Vienne in the Roman Catholic Church disbands the Knights Templar.
• 1332 Amda Syon, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces, allowing for the spread of Christianity to frontier areas.
• 1336 Meteora in Greece is established as a center of Orthodox monasticism.
• 1338 Gregory Palamas writes Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts, defending the Orthodox practice of hesychast spirituality and the use of the Jesus Prayer.
• 1341-47 Byzantine civil war between John VI Cantacuzenus (1347–54) and John V Palaeologus (1341–91).
• 1341-51 Three sessions of the Ninth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople, affirming hesychastic theology of Gregory Palamas and condemning rationalistic philosophy of Barlaam of Calabria.
• 1342 The Patriarch of Antioch is transferred to Damascus under Ignatius II.
• 1344 Death of Amda Syon, Emperor of Ethiopia.
• 1349 Prince Stephen Dushan of Serbia assumes the title of Tsar (Caesar); principality of Galicia (Halitsh) comes under Polish control.
• 1352 Death of Ewostatewos (Eusthathius), Ethiopian monk and religious leader.
• 1353 Death of Sergius and Herman, Abbots of Valaam.
• 1354 Ottoman Turks make first settlement in Europe, at Gallipoli.
• 1359 Death of Gregory Palamas.
• 1360 Death of John Koukouzelis the Hymnographer.
• 1365 Crusaders under Latin King Peter I of Cyprus sacked Alexandria, Egypt.
• 1378 Death of Alexis of Moscow.
• 1379 Western Great Schism ensues, including simultaneous reign of three Popes of Rome.
• ca. 1380 English Church reformer John Wyclif writes that the true faith is preserved only in the East, "among the Greeks."
• 1382-95 First English Bible translated by John Wyclif.
• 1383 Stephen of Perm, missionary to the Zyrians, consecrated bishop; appearance of the Theotokos of Tikhvin icon.
• 1385 Kreva Agreement provides for conversion of Lithuanian nobles and all pagan Lithuanians to Roman Catholicism, joining Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kingdom of Poland through a dynastic union.
• 1387 Lithuania converts to Roman Catholicism, while most of the Ruthenian lands (Belarus and Ukraine) remain Orthodox.
• 1389 Serbs defeated by Ottoman Turks of Sultan Murad I at the battle of Kosovo Polje; death of Great-martyr Lazarus (Lazar), prince of Serbia.
• 1390 The Ottomans take Philadelphia, the last Byzantine enclave of any significance in Anatolia.
• 1391-98 Ottoman Turks unsuccessfully besiege Constantinople for the first time.
• 1410 Iconographer Andrei Rublev paints his most famous icon depicting the three angels who appeared to Abraham and Sarah, the angels being considered a type of the Holy Trinity.
• 1414-18 The Council of Constance in the Roman Catholic Church represented a high point for the movement that promoted the authority of councils over the authority of the pope, but in the end the pope's authority was re-affirmed.
• 1417 End of Western Great Schism at the Council of Constance.
• 1422 Second unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Constantinople.
• 1423-24 Council of Siena in the Roman Catholic Church was the high point of conciliarism, emphasizing the leadership of the bishops gathered in council, but the conciliarism expressed there was later branded as a heresy.
• 1439 Ecclesiastical reunion with the West attempted at the Council of Florence, where only Mark of Ephesus refuses to capitulate to the demands of the delegates from Rome.
• 1440-41 Encyclical Letter of Mark of Ephesus.
• 1444 Donation of Constantine proved forgery.
• 1448 Church of Russia unilaterally declares its independence from the Church of Constantinople; the Vatican Library is formally established by Pope Nicholas V.
• 1452 Unification of Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches in Hagia Sophia on West's terms, when Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, under pressure from Rome, allowed the union to be proclaimed.
• 1453 Constantinople falls to invasion of the Ottoman Turks, ending the Roman Empire; Hagia Sophia turned into a mosque; martyrdom of Constantine XI Palaiologos, last of the Byzantine Emperors, martyred by the Ottoman Turks; many Greek scholars escape to the West with books that become translated into Latin, triggering the Renaissance.

Post-Imperial era (1453-1821)

• 1455 Gutenberg makes first printed Bible.
• 1455-56 The Confession of Faith by Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople.
• 1461 Death of St Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow; commemoration of the Apparition of the Pillar with the Robe of the Lord under it at Mtskhet in Georgia, October 1.
• 1462 Wonderworking icon of the Archangel Michael of Mantamados is created after the Byzantine monastery of the Taxiarchis (Archangel) Michael is destroyed by invading Ottoman Turks and all the monks are slaughtered; the sole surviving novice-monk credited his salvation to a miracle of the Archangel and made the icon, in relief, using clay earth mixed with in with the blood of his slain brothers.
• 1463 Bosnia became a province of the Ottoman empire, with an estimated 36,000 families voluntarily accepting Islam, (thus joining the ruling priviledged Muslim class, the Ummah), a voluntary mass conversion practically without parallel in the annals of Islam, followed by a sustained long and slow process of assimilation to Islam.
• 1480 Spanish Inquisition; meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos in memory of saving Moscow from the invasion of Khan Ahmed, observed on June 23.
• 1492 Millennialist movements in Moscow, due to end of church calendar (year 7,000, according to the Byzantine Date of Creation).
• 1497 Hieromartyr Macarius, Metropolitan of Kyiv, martyred by invading Tatars.
• 1503 Possessor and Non-Possessor controversy.
• 1512 First Christian church erected in the Americas in Santo Domingo by the Spanish.
• 1516 Desiderius Erasmus published the "Textus Receptus" (received text) of the New Testament, on the basis of some six late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type.
• 1517 Maximus the Greek invited to Russia to translate Greek service books and correct Russian ones; Martin Luther nails his Ninety-Five Theses to the door at Wittenburg, sparking Protestant Reformation; Ottomans conquer Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria.
• 1522 Martin Luther's translates New Testament in German and principle of Sola Scriptura becomes formal principle of Protestant Reformation.
• 1526 Non-Possessors attack Tsar Vassily (Basil) III for divorcing his wife, and are driven underground.
• 1529 First Ottoman Siege of Vienna, marking the Ottoman Empire's apex and the end of Ottoman expansion in central Europe.
• 1534 King Henry VIII declares himself supreme head of the Church of England.
• 1536 Publication of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.
• 1536-41 Dissolution of the Monasteries in England, Wales and Ireland, with over 800 religious houses dissolved during the English Reformation.
• 1540 Death of Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia; formal founding of the Jesuits.
• 1541 Portuguese expeditionary force arrives in Ethiopia.
• 1542 Ethiopians and Portuguese defeat Ahmad ibn Ibrahim Gran of Adal, neutralizing Adal threat to Ethiopia.
• 1545-63 Council of Trent held to answer the Protestant Reformation.
• 1551 Council of the Hundred Chapters in Russia.
• 1552 Death of St. Basil the Blessed, Fool for Christ.
• 1555 Archbishop Gurian missionary in Kazan (until 1564).
• 1563 Anglican Church's Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion were established, the historic defining statements of Anglican doctrine.
• 1564 Jesuits arrive in Poland.
• 1568 Pope Pius V recognized the four Great Doctors of the Eastern Church, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Athanasius.
• 1569 Martyrdom of St. Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow, at the hands of Ivan IV Grozny.
• 1569 Union of Lublin united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, placing the Ruthenian Orthodox lands of Belarus, and modern Ukraine under a direct Roman Catholic sphere of influence.
• 1573 Pope Gregory XIII established the Congregation for the Greeks, a committee of cardinals who addressed issues relating to the Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily in the hope of resolving tensions between Greeks and Latins.
• 1573-81 The Replies of Jeremias the Second to the Lutherans.
• 1575 Church of Constantinople grants autonomy to Church of Sinai.
• 1576 Pope Gregory XIII established the Pontifical Greek College of St. Athanasius (popularly known as the 'Greek College') in Rome, which he charged with educating Italo-Byzantine clerics.
• 1579 Death of Gerasimos, the New Ascetic of Cephalonia, Greece, who was given the gift of healing and of casting out evil spirits.
• 1581 Ostrozhsky Bible printed by Prince Kurbsky and Ivan Fedorov.
• 1582 Institution of the Gregorian Calendar by Pope Gregory XIII; death of Teresa of Ávila, prominent Spanish mystic.
• 1583 The Sigillion of 1583 was issued against the Calendar of Pope Gregory XIII of Rome by a council convened in Constantinople.
• 1589 Autocephaly of the Church of Russia recognized, as Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople raises Metropolitan Job of Moscow to the rank of Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia.
• 1596 Union of Brest-Litovsk, several million Ukrainian and Byelorussian Orthodox Christians, living under Polish rule, leave the Church of Constantinople and recognize the Pope of Rome, without giving up their Byzantine liturgy and customs, creating the Uniate church.
• ca.1600-1700 The conversion of the Albanians to Islam was achieved during the 17th century largely through a discriminatory tax system, the Djize, which imposed severe burdens on those who remained Christians, so that by the end of that century the Muslim Albanian community was the largest religious community in Albania.
• 1604 Death of the Righteous Juliana of Lazarevo.
• 1607 Death of St Job, First Patriarch of Moscow.
• 1609-10 The Douay-Rheims Bible (D-R) is printed, the first complete English Roman Catholic Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate.
• 1611 The Authorized King James Version of the Bible (KJV-AV) is printed, including all of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books (officially removed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885).
• 1612 Death of Hieromartyr Hermogenes, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; the Kazan Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, commemorating the deliverance from the Poles, October 22.
• 1625 The Confession of Faith by Metrophanes Kritopoulos.
• 1627 Pope Cyril Lukaris of Alexandria presents the famous Codex Alexandrinus to King Charles I of England for "safe keeping."
• 1633 Ethiopian emperor Fasilides expels Jesuits and other Roman Catholic missionaries from Ethiopia.
• 1642 Council of Jassy (Iaşi) revises Peter Mogila's confession to remove overtly Roman Catholic theology and confirms canonicity of certain deuterocanonical books.
• 1645-69 Cretan War between the Ottoman Empire and Venice.
• 1646 At the Union of Uzhhorod 63 Ruthenian Orthodox priests from the Carpathian Mountains, then within the Kingdom of Hungary, joined the Roman Catholic Church on terms similar to the Union of Brest from 1596.
• 1647 Orthodox church erected in Tunisia.
• 1649 Martyrdom of Saint Athanasius, Abbot of Brest, by the Latins.
• 1652 School and hospital established in Old Cairo by Patriarch Joannikios.
• 1652-1658 Patriarch Nikon of Moscow revises liturgical books to bring them into conformity with the Greek liturgical customs, leading to excommunication of dissenters, who become known as the Old Believers.
• 1654 Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Kievan Brotherhood.
• 1656 The New Jerusalem Monastery, also known as the Voskresensky Monastery is founded by Patriarch Nikon at Istra near Moscow, intended to represent the Heavenly Jerusalem.
• 1665 The Greek Jewish kabbalist Sabbatai Sevi (Shabbatai Zvi) is hailed by the Jews of Palestine as the Messiah, on Jewish New Year 1665, but then accepts conversion to Islam before the Ottoman Sultan to save his life.
• 1669 Greek island of Crete taken by Turkish Muslim Ottoman Empire from the Roman Catholic Latin Venetians.
• 1672 Synod of Jerusalem is convened by Patriarch Dositheos Notaras, refuting article by article the Calvanistic confession of Cyril Lucaris, defining Orthodoxy relative to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and defining the Greek Orthodox Biblical canon; the acts of this council are later signed by all five patriarchates (including Russia); the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica called the Synod of Jerusalem "the most vital statement of faith made in the Greek Church during the past thousand years."
• 1675 Icon of the Theotokos of God of Pochaiv, commemorating her Miraculous Appearance at Pochaiv, which saved the monastery from the assault of the Tartars and Turks, celebrated on July 23.
• 1683 Second Ottoman Siege of Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire.
• 1685 Orthodoxy introduced in Beijing, China by the Church of Russia.
• 1688 Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos "The Joy of All Who Sorrow", October 24.
• 1689 Kosovo was greatly disrupted by the Great Turkish War (1683-1699), prompting the Velika Seoba or "Great Serbian Migration", said to have accounted for a huge exodus of hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees from Kosovo and Serbia proper, which left a vacuum filled by a flood of Albanian immigrants.
• 1700-02 Submission of the the dioceses of Lemberg (Lviv) and Luzk (Lutsk) in the Galician area of Ukraine to the Roman Catholic Church completes the Union of Brest-Litovsk, so that two-thirds of the Orthodox in western Ukraine had become Greek Catholic.
• 1707-20 Grabbe's edition of the Septuagint was published at Oxford, reproducing (imperfectly) the "Codex Alexandrinus" of London.
• 1715 Metropolitan Arsenios of Thebaid sent to England by Pope Samuel of Alexandria to negotiate with Non-Juror Anglican bishops.
• 1718 The Answers of the Orthodox Patriarchs to the Non-Jurors (1718, 1723).
• 1721 Czar Peter I replaces Russian patriarchate with a ruling holy synod.
• 1724 Melkite schism, in which many faithful from the Church of Antioch become Uniates.
• 1731 Death of St. Innocent, first bishop of Irkutsk.
• 1754 The Hesychast Renaissance begins with the Kollyvades Fathers of Mount Athos led by saints Makarios Notaras, Nicodemus the Athonite, and Athanasios of Paros, which over the next half century stressed the study of the church fathers, Orthodox liturgical life, and frequent communion, also representing a movement against the influence of the Western Enlightenment in Greece.
• 1755 Synod of Constantinople where the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem declared Roman Catholic baptism invalid, and ordered the rebaptism of converts.
• 1756 The Sigillion of 1756 was issued against the New Calendar by Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril V of Constantinople.
• 1760 Holy Trinity St. Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent founded in Russia.
• 1767 Community of Orthodox Greeks establishes itself in New Smyrna, Florida; Ottoman Empire legally divides Church of the Holy Sepulchre among claimants.
• 1767-1815 Suppression of the Jesuits in Roman Catholic countries, subsequently finding refuge in Orthodox nations, particularly in Russia.
• 1768 Jews are massacred during riots in Russia-occupied Poland.
• ca.1770 As a result of increasing Russian presence in Ukraine, some 1,200 Kiev region Uniate churches returned to Orthodoxy.
• 1774 Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, bringing Russia for the first time into the Mediterranean as the acknowledged protector of Orthodox Christians.
• 1779 Death of St. Kosmas Aitolos, who founded 200 elemenatry schools and 10 higher schools in different parts of Greece.
• 1782 First publication of the Philokalia; autonomy of Church of Sinai confirmed by Church of Constantinople.
• 1793-95 Under Catherine the Great over 2,300 Uniate churches became Orthodox.
• 1794 Missionaries, including St. Herman of Alaska, arrive at Kodiak Island, bringing Orthodoxy to Russian Alaska; death of St. Paisius Velichkovsky of Moldova and Mt. Athos.
• 1796 Nicodemus the Hagiorite published the “Unseen Warfare” in Venice, revising Venetian priest Lorenzo Scupoli's two works the “Spiritual Combat” (1599 ed.) and “Path to Paradise” (1600), to remove Latinisms and give a fuller expression to the Patristic doctrine of pure prayer.
• 1800 The Rudder published and printed in Athens.
• 1803 Death of St Xenia of Petersburg, Fool-for-Christ.
• 1804 The British and Foreign Bible Society founded.
• 1805 Death of St. Makarios of Corinth (1731-1805), a central figure in the Kollvades movement.
• 1808 Death of Hieromartyr Nikita the Slav, of Mount Athos.
• 1809-10 Rotunda and edicule exterior of Church of the Holy Sepulchre rebuilt after fire in Ottoman Baroque style.
• 1811 Autocephaly of the Church of Georgia revoked by the Russian imperial state after Georgia's annexation, making it subject to the Church of Russia.
• 1814 New-Martyrs Euthymius, Ignatius, and Acacius (1816) of Mount Athos.
• 1815 Peter the Aleut tortured and martyred in Roman Catholic San Francisco, California.
• 1816 The American Bible Society founded.
• 1819 A council at Constantinople endorsed the standpoint of the Kollyvades fathers.

Modern era (1821-1917)

• 1821 Greek independence declared on the Day of Annunciation (March 25), also Kyriopascha; execution of Hieromartyrs Patr. Gregory V of Constantinople, Abp. Kyprianos of Cyprus, and Abp. Gerasimos of Crete in retaliation.
• 1823 Miracle-working icon of Panagia Evangelistria is excavated on the Greek island of Tinos, according to a vision from St. Pelagia, becoming the most venerated pilgrimage item in Greece, at Church of Evangelistria (Tinos, Greece).
• 1825 Russia and Britain established the Alaska/Canada boundary.
• 1827 Anglican priest John Nelson Darby became an influential member of the movement now known as the Plymouth Brethren, and advocate of dispensational premillenialism.
• 1829 Treaty of Adrianople ends Greek War of Independence, culminating in the creation of the modern Greek state.
• ca.1830 Drawing on the works of Greek patristics, Russian poets and literary critics, the Slavophile movement began in Russia attempting to reinforce Orthodox Christian values and Slavic cultural traditions, denouncing "westernizations" by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, and preferring Russian mysticism to Western rationalism.
• 1831 The reunion of the 3,000,000 Uniates with the Orthodox Church at Vilna in 1831, celebrated on May 24.
• 1832 Church of Serbia becomes de facto autocephalous.
• 1833 Church of Greece declares its autocephaly, making it independent of the Church of Constantinople; death of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
• 1839 Synod of Polotsk (in Modern Belarus) abolished the Union of Brest-Litovsk in all areas under Russian rule as Greek Catholic dioceses in Lithuania and Belarus re-entered the Orthodox Church (with the exception of the eparchy of Chelm, in Polish territory, which was itself integrated into the Russian Orthodox Church in 1875).
• 1847 Restoration of Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem by Pope Pius IX.
• 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs sent by the primates and synods of the four ancient patriarchates of the Orthodox Church, condemning the Filioque as heresy, declaring the Roman Catholic Church to be heretical, schismatic, and in apostasy, repudiating Ultramontanism and referring to the Photian Council of 879-880 as the "Eighth Ecumenical Council."
• 1850 Church of Constantinople recognizes autocephaly of Church of Greece.
• 1851 Translation of Septuagint by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton; Ottoman Empire recognizes France as supreme Christian authority in Holy Land and grants it possession of the keys to the Church of the Nativity.
• 1852 Ottoman Empire makes division of Church of the Holy Sepulchre permanent.
• 1853-56 Crimean War fought between Russia and the Ottoman Empire together with Britain and France, begins over which church would be recognized as the "sovereign authority" of the Christian faith in the Holy Land.
• 1854 Immaculate Conception declared dogma by Roman Catholic Church.
• 1859 Constantin von Tischendorf discovered Codex Sinaiticus at St. Catherine's Monastery; Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection published, the pivotal work in evolutionary biology; the Christian Quarter of the city of Damascus is sacked by a Muslim mob also involving Turkish troops.
• 1860 Death of Aleksey Khomyakov, co-founder of the Slavophile movement.
• 1864 First Orthodox parish established on American soil in New Orleans, Louisiana, by Greeks; Pope Pius IX presented his Syllabus of Errors.
• 1865 Church of Romania declares its independence from the Church of Constantinople.
• 1867 Sale of Alaska to United States; death of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Russian bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea and ascetical writer.
• 1869 Celebration of the first miracle of the Icon of the Theotokos at Chernigov-Gethsemane.
• 1870 Papal Infallibility declared Roman Catholic dogma necessary for salvation by the First Vatican Council; Papal States ceased to exist (1870-1929).
• 1871 Nikolai Kasatkin establishes Orthodox mission in Japan.
• 1872 Council in Jerusalem declares phyletism to be heresy; Church of Bulgaria gains de facto autocephaly by a decree of the Sultan.
• 1873 Philotheos Bryennios discovered the Didache among an important manuscript with copies of several early Church documents.
• 1875 The Uniate diocese of Chelm in Poland was incorporated back into the Russian Orthodox Church under Alexander II, with all of the local Uniates converted to Orthodoxy; the Vatican never withdrew its claim to jurisdiction over it, until the town had been restored to newly-reborn Poland in 1918.
• 1876 Theophan the Recluse began issuing a translation of the Philokalia, in five volumes, in Russian.
• 1877 Death of Arsenios of Paros.
• 1879 Church of Constantinople recognizes autocephaly of Church of Serbia; death of St. Innocent of Alaska.
• 1881 Wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia causes mass migration of Jews (2.5 million Jews settle in the United States, thousands settle in Palestine).
• 1884 The Way of a Pilgrim is first published in Kazan, detailing the narrator's journey across Russia while discovering Orthodox mysticism.
• 1885 Church of Constantinople recognizes autocephaly of Church of Romania; English Revised Version published; the Archbishop of Canterbury officially removed all of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books from the King James Bible.
• 1886 Church of Maria Magdalene is built on the slope of the Mount of Olives, in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, by Tsar Alexander III.
• 1889 Federation of Old Catholic Churches, not in communion with Rome, at the Union of Utrecht.
• ca.1890 The “Unseen Warfare” is further revised by Bishop Theophan the Recluse, to remove unnecessary Latinisms and give a fuller expression to the Patristic doctrine of pure prayer.
• 1895 The Reply of the Synod of Constantinople to Pope Leo the Thirteenth.
• 1896 Pope Leo XIII issues the bull Apostolicae Curae which declares Anglican Orders "absolutely null and utterly void".
• 1896-1906 Oxyrhynchus papyri discovered in Egypt dating from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, including portions of the New Testament.
• 1898 Last Greek patriarch of Antioch deposed.
• 1899 Restoration of Arabs to the Patriarchal throne of Antioch.
• 1900 Martyrdom of Orthodox Christians in Chinese Boxer Rebellion.
• 1901 "Evangelakia" riots in Athens Greece in November, over translations of the New Testament into Demotic (modern) Greek, resulting in the fall of both the government and the Metropolitan of Athens.
• 1903 Uncovering of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
• 1904 The Ecumenical Patriarchate publishes the "Patriarchal" Text of the Greek New Testament, based on about twenty Byzantine manuscripts.
• 1905 Death of Apostolos Makrakis; Tsar Nicholas Romanov's decree on freedom of religion results in about 250,000 Ruthenians returning to Uniatism; seat of Russian Orthodox bishop in America moved from San Francisco to New York, as immigration from Eastern Europe and the reception of ex-Uniates shifts the balance of Orthodox population to eastern North America; the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State established state secularism in France.
• 1907 Archim. Eusebius Matthopoulos founds Zoe Brotherhood; Papal Bull Ea Semper issued, effectively subordinating the Greek Catholic Clergy in the United States to the local Roman Catholic bishops.
• 1908 Fr. Nikodemos Sarikas sent to Johannesburg, Transvaal, by Ecumenical Patriarchate as first Orthodox priest there, leaving after a short time for German East Africa (later Tanzania) because of the opposition of Johannesburg Greeks to mission among Africans.
• 1908 Death of St. John of Kronstadt.
• 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference is the formal beginning of the modern Protestant Christian ecumenical movement, a precursor to the World Council of Churches.
• 1912 Death of St. Nicholas of Japan.
• 1915-18 Armenian Genocide in Turkey.

Communist era (1917-1991)

• 1917 Restitution of the Moscow Patriarchy with Tikhon as patriarch; British forces capture Jerusalem from Ottoman Empire; Church of Georgia's autocephaly restored de facto by political chaos in Russia; Bolshevik Revolution throws the Church of Russia into chaos, effectively stranding the fledgling Russian Orthodox mission in America; the Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".
• 1917-40 Persecution of the Orthodox Church in Russia began, with 130,000 Orthodox priests arrested, 95,000 of which were put to death, executed by firing squad.
• 1918 St. Nicholas Romanov, Tsar of Russia murdered together with his wife St. Alexandra and children; Hieromartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev, the first bishop to be tortured and slain by the Communists at the time of the Russian Revolution.
• 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War; a million refugees flee to Greece joining half a million Greeks who had fled earlier; Pontic Greek Genocide eliminates the Christian population of Trebizond.
• 1920 Death of St. Nektarios of Aegina; the Encyclical Letters by the Patriarchate of Constantinople on Christian unity and on the 'Ecumenical Movement' (1920, 1952).
• 1921 Church of Constantinople renounces all claims to jurisdiction in any part of Africa, and Patriarch of Alexandria thenceforth known as the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa; Greek Archdiocese of America is formed.
• 1922 Church of Albania declares autocephaly from the Church of Constantinople; formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia; British Mandate of Palestine begins; Vladimir Lenin proclaimed the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); the Solovetsky Monastery was converted by Lenin's decree to the "Solovki Special Purpose Camp", one of the earliest forced-labor camps of the Gulag where eight Metropolitans, twenty Archbishops, and forty-seven Bishops of the Orthodox Church died, along with tens of thousands of the laity.
• 1923 Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia granted autonomy by the Church of Constantinople.
• 1924 Church of Constantinople recognizes autocephaly of Church of Poland; Bp. Daniel William Alexander convenes meeting in Kimberley, South Africa, which decides to secede from the African Church (a Protestant denomination) and affiliate with the "African Orthodox Church" in New York under George McGuire; the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the USA split into two separate jurisdictions, one for those from Galicia, and another for those from the territories Carpatho-Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia.
• 1925 Church of Romania becomes a patriarchate; first Africans in sub-Saharan Africa baptized in Tanganyika by Fr. Nikodemos Sarikas; death of Patriarch Saint Tikhon of All Russia.
• 1927 Daniel William Alexander travels from South Africa to America to be consecrated a bishop of the African Orthodox Church; Orthodox Archbishopric of Johannesburg established.
• 1928 The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius is founded to pray and work for Christian Unity.
• 1929 Papal Bull Cum data fuerit regulated Eastern Rite (Uniate) clergy in the US, mandating that they were to be celibate, resulting in the return of several parishes back to Orthodoxy in 1938; the kingdom of Italy and the Papacy ratify the Lateran Treaty, recognizing the full sovereignty of the Papacy within the new state of Vatican City; the "Russicum" (Russian College or 'College of St. Therese') is founded in Vatican City by Pope Pius XI and run by the Jesuits, often associated with the proselytism dispute spoken about in the context of the 'conversion of Russia'.
• 1931 Reception of the Patriarchal Exarchate for Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe into the Ecumenical Patriarchate, led by Metr. Eulogius (Georgievsky) of Paris; the USSR banned the sale or importation of Bibles; the Bonn Agreement established full communion between the Church of England and the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht.
• 1932 Daniel William Alexander travels to Uganda to meet Reuben Spartas, establishing African Orthodox Church there.
• 1933 Church of Greece bans Freemasonry.
• 1934 Daniel William Alexander travels to Kenya, establishing African Orthodox Church led by Arthur Gathuna; Clergy who opposed the Nazi regime in Germany had their homes raided by secret police.
• 1935 Critical edition of Septuagint published in Gottingen Germany by Alfred Rahlfs at the Septuaginta-Unternehmens (Institute).
• 1935-40 Italian forces occupy Ethiopia and begin intermittent persecutions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
• 1936-37 Many Russian Orthodox Clerics die in Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.
• 1937 Church of Constantinople recognizes autocephaly of Church of Albania.
• 1938 St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, New York) and St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary (South Canaan, Pennsylvania) founded; death of St. Silouan the Athonite; American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese (ACROD) founded, when a group of 37 Carpatho-Russian Eastern Catholic parishes, under the leadership of Fr. Orestes Chornock, were received into the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
• 1939 Galicia is divided as Poland gets partitioned between the German Empire and the Soviet Union approximately along the Curzon-Line, so that Western Galicia goes to the German Empire, and Eastern Galicia is affiliated with Soviet-Ukraine.
• 1941 Legion of Christ, Roman Catholic priestly-order founded.
• 1941-45 Croatian Ustasa terrorists kill 500,000 Orthodox Serbs, expel 250,000 and force 250,000 to convert to Catholicism.
• 1943 Church of Russia recognizes autocephaly of Church of Georgia; first constitution of the African Orthodox Church in East Africa signed by Reuben Spartas and Arthur Gathuna; Joseph Stalin meets with hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church to establish a "patriotic union," granting concessions to the church, including the gathering of the holy synod and the election of Sergius I as Patriarch of Moscow.
• 1943-44 Hundreds of Orthodox priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were eliminated, tortured and drowned by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Rebel Army (OUN-UPA), aided by Uniate Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj who was a spiritual leader of the Nazi Western-Ukrainian military units SS-Galicia division (Galichina/Galizien) and the Wehrmacht Nachtigal battalion (condemned by the Nuremberg tribunal) and was subsequently imprisoned by Soviet authorities for aiding the UPA.
• 1945 Church of Bulgaria's autocephaly generally recognized; library of early Christian texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt; Soviet Union annexes Czechoslovakia; Church of Russia claims jurisdiction over the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.
• 1946 Reuben Spartas of the African Orthodox Church visits Alexandria; Holy Synod of the Church of Alexandria officially recognizes and accepts the African Greek Orthodox Church in Kenya and Uganda; a state-sponsored synod is held at Lviv, Ukraine in March, which officially dissolved the Union of Brest-Litovsk, and re-integrated the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) into the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities arresting resisters or deporting them to Siberia.
• 1947 Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered near Qumran in Egypt; death of St Alexei Kabalyiuk, who played a major role in reviving Orthodoxy in Transcarpathia in the early 20th century.
• 1948 Establishment of State of Israel and end of British Mandate of Palestine; Church of Russia re-grants autocephaly to the Church of Poland (after having revoked it in the aftermath of World War II); World Council of Churches is founded; the Council of Moscow is held on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the independence of the Russian Church from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, with representatives of the local Orthodox Churches rejecting all participation in the World Council of Churches.
• 1949 Soviet authorities revoked the Union of Uzhhorod of 1646, creating the Orthodox Eparchy of Mukachiv-Uzhhorod, under the Patriarch of Moscow.
• 1950 Pope Pius XII proclaims the Bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a dogma.
• 1951 Church of Russia grants autocephaly to the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia; 1500th anniversary celebration of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
• 1952 New Monastery of Panagia Soumela built in the village of Kastania, in Macedonia, Greece, housing the wonderworking icon of Panagia Soumela, becoming a center of religious pilgrimage.
• 1957 Church of Russia grants autonomy to Church of China.
• 1958 Creation of Western Rite Vicariate in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America with the reception of multiple Western Rite parishes into Orthodoxy.
• 1959 Archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos) of Albania establishes inter-Orthodox mission agency Porefthentes to revive the church's mission activities; Autocephaly granted for the Church of Ethiopia as Coptic Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria crowned Abune Baslios as the first Patriarch of Ethiopia.
• 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council held in Rome, initiating major liturgical and theological reforms for the Roman Catholic Church, including restriction of ancient Tridentine Mass and introduction of the Novus Ordo.
• 1961 Death of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky) of Crimea; consecration of first Orthodox Church in Uganda; first Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes; Orthodox Christian Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in outer space.
• 1963 1900th anniversary of martyrdom of Apostle Mark; second Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes; 1000th anniversary celebration of founding of Mount Athos.
• 1964 Meeting of Pope Paul VI of Rome and Patriarch Athenagoras I (Spyrou) of Constantinople in Jerusalem; third Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes; Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov established by resolution of His Holiness Patriarch Alexis I and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.
• 1965 Pope Paul VI of Rome and Patriarch Athenagoras I (Spyrou) of Constantinople mutually nullify the excommunications of 1054.
• 1967 Church of Macedonia declares its autocephaly, making it independent of the Church of Serbia (as yet unrecognized).
• 1968 Visit to Patriarchate of Alexandria by Vatican representatives; fourth Pan-Orthodox Conference in Chambesy, Switzerland.
• 1968-71 Millions of Christians, Muslims, Jews and others witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary many times over a three year period over the Coptic Orthodox Church of St Mary at Zeitoun, Cairo, recognized as authentic by the Coptic Orthodox Church and other churches.
• 1970 Orthodox Church in America reconciles with Church of Russia and is granted autocephaly, returning control of Church of Japan to Moscow, which grants it autonomy; glorification of Herman of Alaska in separate services by the ROCOR and the OCA; Abp. Makarios III (Mouskos) of Cyprus baptizes 10,000 into the Orthodox Church in Kenya.
• 1971 Halki Seminary Greek Orthodox Theology Patriarchal School on Heybeliada Island near Istanbul closed by Turkish authorities.
• 1974 1600th anniversary of death of Athanasius the Great.
• 1975 Division in the Antiochian church in North America overcome by the uniting of the two Antiochian archdioceses into one by Metr. Philip (Saliba) of New York and Abp. Michael (Shaheen) of Toledo.
• 1976 First Pre-Synodal Pan-Orthodox Conference at Orthodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambesy, Switzerland.
• 1977 Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia published.
• 1979 Pope John Paul II visits Ecumenical Patriarchate; Hieromartyr Archimandrite Philoumenos, keeper of the Greek monastery of Jacob's Well in Samaria (Nablus, West Bank), is tortured and executed on November 29 by Israeli Fanatics who also desecrated the church.
• 1979 Joint Commission of Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches for Theological Dialogue established by Pope John Paul II and Patr. Demetrius I (Papadopoulos) of Constantinople.
• 1980 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue, 1st plenary, met in Patmos and Rhodes.
• 1981 The Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission met for the first time in Espoo, Finland.
• 1982 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, 2nd plenary, publishes in Munich first official common document, The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity; second Pre-Synodal Pan-Orthodox Conference in Chambesy, Switzerland.
• 1984 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, 3rd plenary, meets in Khania, Crete.
• 1985 Founding of Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) as Greek Archdiocesan Mission Center; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 3rd plenary, in Allentown, USA, issues the statement Divine Revelation.
• 1986 Third Pre-Synodal Pan-Orthodox Conference in Chambesy, Switzerland.
• 1987 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, 4th plenary, issues common document Faith, Sacraments and the Unity of the Church in Bari, Italy; Visit by Patr. Demetrius I (Papadopoulos) of Constantinople to the Vatican.
• 1987 A group of twenty parishes of the Evangelical Orthodox Church, originally formed by former Campus Crusade for Christ leaders Peter Gillquist and Jon Braun, are received into the Antiochian Archdiocese, becoming the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission (AEOM); Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 4th plenary, in Crete, issues the statement Scripture and Tradition.
• 1988 Millennial anniversary of Orthodoxy in Russia; Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, 5th plenary, meets in Valamo, Finland and publishes common document The Sacrament of Order in the Sacramental Structure of the Church.
• 1989 Church of Constantinople recognizes the autocephaly of the Church of Georgia; Elder Ephraim begins founding Athonite-style monasteries in North America; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 5th plenary, in Bad Segeberg , issues statement "The Canon and the Inspiration of the Holy Scripture"; Glorification in Russia of St. Tikhon of Moscow; the Uniate Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) was legalized, with Greek Catholics beginning seizure of property from the Russian Orthodox Church, which they claimed as theirs prior to the synod of 1946.
• 1990 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Theological Commission, 6th plenary session, meets in Freising, Germany; the first Russian Orthodox service in seventy years was held in St. Basil's Cathedral in October.

Post-Communist era (1991-Present)

• 1991 Soviet Union collapses, ending Cold War; representatives of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches meet in Chambesy, Switzerland, discussing relations with World Council of Churches; the Ruthenian Byzantine rite Catholic Church in Transcarpathia was restored as a separate entity from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) based in Galicia, having about 23% of Transcarpathia's parishes compared to 60% of the Orthodox total there.
• 1992 Civil war begins in former Yugoslavia; synaxis of primates of Orthodox churches in Constantinople; Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem presented a list of firm declarations of Orthodox convictions of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which was entered into the minutes of the assembly of Orthodox leaders at the Phanar on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.
• 1993 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Theological Commission, 7th plenary session meets in Balamand, Lebanon, issuing common document on Uniatism: Method of Union of the Past, and Present. Search for Full Communion; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 7th plenary, in Sandbjerg, issues statement "The Ecumenical Councils".
• 1993 Church of Cyprus condemns Freemasonry as a religion incompatible with Christianity; Orthodox Study Bible: New Testament and Psalms published; Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church becomes autocephalous; Optina Pustyn New Martyrs Hieromonk Vasily (Roslyakov), Monk Ferapont (Pushkarev), and Monk Trophim (Tatarinov) are martyred in a satanic ritualistic manner.
• 1994 Ligonier Meeting in Western Pennsylvania at Antiochian Village held by the majority of Orthodox hierarchs in North America votes to do away with the notion of Orthodox Christians in America being a "diaspora;" death of Elder Paisios of Mount Athos.
• 1995 Ecumenical Bartholomew I visits Vatican; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 8th plenary, in Limassol Cyprus, issues statement "Understanding of Salvation in the Light of the Ecumenical Councils"; Pope John Paul II issued the encyclical Orientale Lumen, encouraging reunion between East and West.
• 1996 The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America was reorganized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, dividing the administration of the two continents into four parts, the new jurisdictions being the Archdiocese of America, the Metropolis of Toronto (Canada), the Metropolis of Mexico (Central America), and the Metropolis of Buenos Aires (South America).
• 1997 Visit by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (Archontonis) of Constantinople to US; establishment of dioceses of Bukoba, Madagascar, Ghana and Nigeria; Russian Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations enshrined Orthodox Christianity as the country's predominant religion.
• 1998 Church of Constantinople, not recognizing Russia's right to issue a tomos of autocephaly in 1951, issues its own tomos for the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia; the Thessaloniki Summit is held in May, with delegates from the local Orthodox Churches meeting to discuss the matter of Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement (WCC); uncovering of the Relics of St Ambrose of Optina; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 9th plenary, in Sigtuna, issues statement "Salvation: Grace, Justification and Synergy".
• 1999 Numerous Serbian Orthodox sites in Kosovo and Metohia destroyed and desecrated during NATO peacekeeping presence; the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church sign the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
• 2000 Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Theological Commission, 8th plenary session meets in Baltimore, discusses text on The Ecclesiological and Canonical Implications of Uniatism, but is suspended; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 10th plenary, in Damascus, issues statement "Word and Sacraments (Mysteria) in the Life of the Church"; the Russian Orthodox Church announced the canonization of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family, executed in 1918; in spite of very stiff opposition from the Church of Greece and the majority of the public, the government of Greece ordered the removal of religious affiliation from state identity cards.
• 2001 Pope John Paul II of Rome apologizes to Orthodox Church for the Fourth Crusade; the Greek Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox Patriarchates of Alexandria agreed to mutually recognize baptisms performed in each other's churches, making rebaptisms unnecessary, and to recognize the sacrament of marriage as celebrated by the other.
• 2002 Bartholomew I (Archontonis) of Constantinople and Pope John Paul II co-sign Venice Declaration of Environmental Ethics; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 11th plenary, in Oslo , issues statement "Mysteria/Sacraments as Means of Salvation".
• 2003 Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America granted "self-rule" (similar but not identical to autonomy) by Church of Antioch.
• 2004 Pope John Paul II returns relics of Ss. John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian to the Church of Constantinople; Bartholomew I (Archontonis) of Constantinople consecrates church in Havana, Cuba; consecration of first Orthodox church in Antarctica by Church of Russia; Wonderworking Tikhvin Icon returned to Tikhvin Dormition Monastery after six decades in the United States; the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Canonized Fr Alexis Medvedkov (1867-1934), Fr Dimitri Klepinine (1904-1944), Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945), George (Yuri) Skobtsov (1921-1944) and Elie Fondaminskii (1880-1942), personalities from the spiritual history of the Russian emigration in France; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 12th plenary, in Durau, issues statement "Baptism and Chrismation as Sacraments of Initiation into the Church".
• 2005 Major controversy in Ukraine involving the almost exclusively western Ukraine-based Uniate Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) moving its administrative centre on August 21 from Lviv to Kiev, constructing a huge uniate cathedral there (sponsored by the first lady Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko), and its plans to establish a patriarchate, all of which was roundly criticized not only by the UOC(MP), but also by the whole Eastern Orthodox Communion.
• 2006 Publication of first Orthodox prayer book in Chinese and Russian; Pope Benedict XVI drops Patriarch of the West title; Russian Orthodox parish opened in Pyongyang, North Korea; Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Theological Commission, 9th plenary, meets in Belgrade, Serbia; Pope Benedict XVI visits Ecumenical Patriarchate, drawing criticism from Mount Athos; Abp. Christodoulos (Paraskevaides) of Athens visits Vatican; Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission, 13th plenary, in Bratislava, issues statement "The Holy Eucharist in the Life of the Church".
• 2007 Restoration of full communion between Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR; 1600th anniversary celebration of the repose of St. John Chrysostom; the Vatican formally abolishes doctrine of Limbo; the number of Orthodox believers in Italy reaches almost one million as a result of intensive migratory flow from Romania and Ukraine; a synod of over 50 bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) announced in December in Kiev that the UOC-MP is “an autonomous, historical part of the Russian Orthodox Church;” the 10th plenary assembly of the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Joint Commission met in Ravenna, Italy, led by co-presidents Cardinal Walter Kasper and Metropolitan Ioannis Zizioulas of Pergamon, agreeing upon a joint document consisting of 46 articles providing an ecclesiatical road map in discussing union.
• 2008 First Orthodox Liturgy is celebrated at the North Pole, under Archbishop Ignaty of Petropavlovsk and Kamchatka; Orthodox Study Bible (Septuagint) is published.

Notes

• Some of these dates are necessarily a bit vague, as records for some periods are particularly difficult to piece together accurately.
• The division of Church History into separate eras as we do here will always be to some extent arbitrary, though we have tried to group periods according to major watershed events.
• This timeline is necessarily biased toward the history of the Orthodox Church, though a number of non-Orthodox events are mentioned for their importance in history related to Orthodoxy.

See also

• Timeline of Orthodoxy in America
• Timeline of Orthodoxy in Australia
• Timeline of Orthodoxy in Greece
• Timeline of Orthodoxy in New Zealand
• Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan

Published works

The following are published writings that provide an overview of Church history:

From an Orthodox perspective

• Schmemann, Alexander. The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy.
• Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church: New Edition. (ISBN 0140146563)

From a Heterodox perspective

• Boer, Harry R. A Short History of the Early Church. (ISBN 0802813399)
• Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church. (ISBN 0310208122)
• Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. (ISBN 0140231994)
• Collins, Michael, ed.; Price, Matthew Arlen. Story of Christianity: A Celebration of 2000 Years of Faith. (ISBN 0789446057)
• Eusebius Pamphilus; Cruse, C.F. (translator). Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History. (ISBN 1565633717)
• Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon. (ISBN 0687171822)
• Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought, Volume 2: From Augustine to the Eve of the Reformation. (ISBN 0687171830)
• Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought, Volume 3: From the Protestant Reformation to the Twentieth Century. (ISBN 0687171849)
• Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Reformation. (ISBN 0060633158)
• Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume 2: Reformation to the Present Day. (ISBN 0060633166)
• Hall, Stuart G. Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church. (ISBN 0802806295)
• Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. (ISBN 0802848753)
• Hussey, J. M. The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire: Oxford History of the Christian Church. (ISBN 0198264569)
• Jones, Timothy P. Christian History Made Easy. (ISBN 1890947105)
• Noll, Mark A. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. (ISBN 080106211X)
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). (ISBN 0226653714)
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700). (ISBN 0226653730)
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300). (ISBN 0226653749)
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700). (ISBN 0226653773)
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 5: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700). (ISBN 0226653803)
• Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church. (ISBN 156563196X)
• Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C., ed. A Dictionary of Christian Biography: Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D. With an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies. (ISBN 1565630572)
• Walton, Robert C. Chronological and Background Charts of Church History. (ISBN 0310362814)

External links

• A Timeline of Church History provided by St. Ignatius of Antioch Orthodox Christian Church

• History of Orthodox Christianity (QuickTime movies)
  • Part 1: Beginnings - Journey begins with the founding of the Church, the spread of Christianity to "nations" by the Apostles, the Gospel and the institution of Sacraments
  • Part 2: Byzantium - After the stabilization of the Church, the journey continues through the period of the Nicene Creed, Patristic Scriptures, Divine Liturgy and Icons. During this same period, however, the official division of East and West is witnessed and concludes with a gradual rift in matters of faith, dogma, church customs, politics and culture
  • Part 3: A Hidden Treasure - The Church becomes the only institution perceived by Greeks as the preserver of their national identity during 400 years of Turkish rule. By the end of the 19th century, a worldwide Orthodox community is born and the Church expands its influence to major social and philanthropic concerns