THE GENUINE ORTHODOX CHURCH

1455 Gutenberg makes first printed Bible.

1455-1456 Confession of Faith by Patr. Gennadius of Constantinople.

1456-1587 Byzantine Church of Theotokos Pammakaristos became the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

1492 Millennialist movements in Moscow, due to end of church calendar (year 7,000, according to the Byzantine Date of Creation).

1503 Possessor and Non-Possessor controversy.

1516 Desiderius Erasmus publishes "Textus Receptus" of New Testament on the basis of six late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type.

1517 Maximus the Greek invited to Russia to translate Greek service books and correct Russian ones; Ottomans conquer Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria.

1526 Non-Possessors attack Tsar Vassily III for divorcing his wife and are driven underground.

1529 First Ottoman Siege of Vienna, marking Ottoman Empire's apex and end of Ottoman expansion in central Europe.

1551 Council of the Hundred Chapters in Russia.

1555 Abp. Gurian begins mission to Kazan.

1557 Death of Basil the Blessed.

1568 Pope Pius V recognizes four Great Doctors of the Eastern Church, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Athanasius.

1569 Union of Lublin unites Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, placing the Ruthenian Orthodox lands of Belarus, and modern Ukraine under direct Roman Catholic rule.

1571 Restoration of Church of Cyprus to Orthodox rule.

1573-1581 Correspondence of Patr. Jeremias II of Constantinople with Lutherans.

1575 Church of Constantinople grants autonomy to Church of Sinai.

1582 Institution of the Gregorian Calendar by Pope Gregory XIII.

1583 Council of Constantinople (Pan-Orthodox Synod), convened and presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II, called the Illustrious, of Constantinople, and attended by Patriarchs Sylvester of Alexandria and Sophronius of Jerusalem and several other bishops, condemns those who uncanonically and heretically insert the filioque clause in the Nicene creed, thereby believing that the Holy Spirit proceeds essentially and hypostatically from both the Father and the Son, rather than essentially from the Father alone, and from the Father and Son together only in a temporal sense; those who do not administer both the body and blood in the Eucharist, bur rather only the body, claiming that it is sufficient, although Christ administered both kinds; those who administer the body in the form of unleavened bread, contrary to the gospels and ancient tradition; those who perform the mystery of holy baptism by sprinkling, rather than by triple immersion; those who believe that at the Second Coming the Lord will judge only bodies and not also souls, or embodied souls; that Christians who had failed to repent on earth go to a mythical purgatory where they are cleansed by fire before entering paradise, or that hell is not everlasting but only temporary, as in the teachings of Origen; that the Pope of Rome, rather than the Lord Jesus Christ, is the head of the Church, and supposedly has certain rights to admit people into paradise by way of indulgences, passports or licenses to sin; and those who trample upon the decrees of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea by adopting the unorthodox Gregorian Paschalion and Menologion (i.e. the new calendar).

1587 Council of Constantinople (Pan-Orthodox Synod), convened and presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II and attended by Patriarchs Sylvester of Alexandria, Joachim V of Antioch, Sophronius of Jerusalem and several bishops, condemns any attempt to adopt the new, papal, Gregorian calendar or to revise the Julian calendar.

1587-Present. The relatively modest Church of St George in the Phanar district of Istanbul becomes the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

1589 Autocephaly and canonical territory of Church of Russia recognized, as Patr. Jeremias II of Constantinople raises Metr. Job of Moscow to the rank of Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia.

1593 Council of Constantinople (Pan-Orthodox Synod), convened by Russian Emperor Theodore I, presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II, and attended by Patriarchs Meletius Pegas of Alexandria, Joachim VI of Antioch, Sophronius of Jerusalem, Job of Moscow and several bishops, condemns the use of the new, Gregorian calendar.

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.

1600-1700 Conversion of Albania to Islam mainly through discriminatory tax system, the Djize.

1625 Confession of Faith by Metrophanes Kritopoulos written.

1627 Pope Cyril Lucaris of Alexandria presents 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.

1646 Union of Uzhhorod joins 63 Ruthenian Orthodox priests from the Carpathian Mountains to Roman Catholic Church on terms similar to Union of Brest.

1652-1658 Patriarch Nikon of Moscow revises liturgical books to bring them into conformity with the Greek liturgical customs, leading to mass excommunication and schism of dissenters, who become known as Old Believers.

1666-1667 Council of Moscow (Pan-Orthodox Synod), convened by Russian Emperor Alexis, presided over by Patriarch Païsius of Alexandria, and attended by Patriarchs Macarius of Antioch and Joasaph of Moscow, Metropolitans Athanasius of Iconium (representing the Ecumenical Patriarch), Ananias of Sinai (representing the Patriarch of Jerusalem), and several bishops and fathers, condemn the Old Ritualists (who refused to comply with corrections made in order to comply with the Church's liturgical unity, such as celebrating feastdays on the same day as the rest of the Orthodox Churches, making the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two, not kneeling on Sundays, etc); and forbids the iconographic depiction of the Holy Trinity with God the Father as an old man and the Holy Spirit as a dove, due to the fact that it transgresses the rules of Orthodox iconography as expressed by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, and because the form of this image is of unorthodox Western origin.

1672 Council of Jerusalem (Pan-Orthodox Synod), convened and presided over by Patriarch Dositheus, and attended by several bishops, condemns the Patriarch Cyril Lucaris for his heretical Calvinist theories (that salvation is by grace alone and therefore God supposedly predestined the salvation or damnation of each individual without taking any of their deeds into account, making man's free will irrelevant to salvation; prating that God wills the damnation of souls for no fault of their own; and that holy communion is not truly the Lord's holy body and precious blood, but rather only symbolic of the Lord's suffering). The acts of this council are later signed by all five patriarchates, including that of Russia, thereby making its decisions equivalent to that of a Pan-Orthodox Council.

1682 The Sabaite Typikon was published in its final form in Russia; from 1682 to 1888 the Greek and Russian Churches shared a common Typikon.

1685-1687 The Slavic Greek Latin Academy is organized as the first higher education establishment in Moscow, under the guidance of two Greek brothers, Joannicus and Sophronius Likhud, on the premises of the Zaikonospassky Monastery with over 70 students.

1685 Orthodoxy introduced in Beijing by Church of Russia.

1698 Consecration of the first Orthodox Church in China, in the name of Sophia (Divine Wisdom), when Emperor Kangxi ordered a Buddhist temple to be cleared for Russian inhabitants in Beijing.

1700 The Creation Era calendar in Russia, in use since AD 988 was changed to the Julian Calendar by Peter the Great; Peter the Great published an Ukase on June 18th that made a resounding appeal for the propagation of the faith in Siberia and China.

1700-1702 Submission of the dioceses of Lemberg (Lviv) and Luzk (Lutsk) in the Galician area of Ukraine to Roman Catholic Church completes Union of Brest-Litovsk, so that two-thirds of the Orthodox in western Ukraine had become Greek Catholic.

1715 Metr. Arsenios of Thebaid sent to England by Pope Samuel of Alexandria to negotiate with Non-Juror Anglican bishops.

1715-1956 Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China.

1716-1725 Correspondence of Ecumenical Patriarch and Russian Czar with English Non-Jurors.

1721 Czar Peter I of Russia replaces Russian patriarchate with a ruling holy synod.

1724 Melkite schism, in which many faithful from the Church of Antioch become Uniates.

1728 The Ecumenical Patriarchate formally replaced the Creation Era (AM) calendar with the Christian Era (AD).

1731 Death of Innocent of Irkutsk.

1754 Hesychast Renaissance begins with the Kollyvades Movement.

1755-1756 Council of Constantinople (Pan-Orthodox Council), convened and presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril V, and attended by Patriarchs Matthew of Alexandria and Parthenius of Jerusalem, and several bishops representing the Orthodox patriarchates (the acts of this council are also later signed by Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch), decree that Western converts must be baptized upon their reception into the Orthodox Church. This council also condemns and anathematizes anyone that dares to change the calendar.

1756 Sigillion of 1756 issued against the Gregorian Calendar by Patr. Cyril V of Constantinople.

1767 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.

1770 About 1,200 Kiev region Uniate churches return to Orthodoxy under political pressure from Russia.

1774 Russia and Ottoman Empire sign treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, bringing Russia for the first time into the Mediterranean as the acknowledged protector of Orthodox Christians.

1779 Death of Kosmas Aitolos.

1782 First publication of Philokalia; autonomy of Church of Sinai confirmed by Church of Constantinople.

1793-1795 Over 2,300 Uniate churches became Orthodox under Tsarina Catherine the Great.

1794 Missionaries, including Herman of Alaska, arrive at Kodiak Island, bringing Orthodoxy to Russian Alaska; death of Paisius Velichkovsky of Moldova and Mt. Athos.

1796 Nicodemus the Hagiorite publishes Unseen Warfare in Venice.

1798 Patriarch Anthimus of Jerusalem contended that the Ottoman Empire was part of the Divine Dispensation granted by God to protect Orthodoxy from the taint of Roman Catholicism and of Western secularism and irreligion.

1800 The Rudder published and printed in Athens.

1805 Death of Makarius of Corinth, a central figure in the Kollyvades movement.

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.

1819 Council at Constantinople endorses views of Kollyvades fathers.