North Rhine-Westphalia Zentralabitur Orthodox Religious Education cheat sheet

Church History and the Orthodox Tradition

• The seven ecumenical councils: Nicaea I (325, homoousios), Constantinople I (381, Spirit), Ephesus (431, Theotokos), Chalcedon (451, two natures), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680–81, two wills), Nicaea II (787, icons).

• The Great Schism of 1054: mutual excommunications between Cardinal Humbert and Patriarch Michael Cerularius; the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople (1204) deepened the rupture.

• The fall of Constantinople (1453) made the Ecumenical Patriarchate a millet under Ottoman rule; the Russian Church autocephalous from 1448 and a patriarchate from 1589.

• Autocephaly and autonomy are canonical statuses granted by a mother church; the 2019 grant of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is contested by Moscow.

• Hesychasm and the Palamite controversy: Gregory Palamas distinguishes the divine essence from the uncreated energies; the councils of 1341–1351 vindicated him.

• The Philokalia (compiled by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth, 1782) is the classic anthology of hesychast spirituality.

• The Russian Revolution (1917) and the Soviet persecution produced the emigration, the Paris school (Florovsky, Lossky) and the 'return to the Fathers' (neo-patristic synthesis).

• The Orthodox Church in Germany is organised in dioceses (e.g. the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Germany, the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Berlin and Germany) and is represented in the Orthodox Bishops' Conference in Germany (OBKD).