Meaning of Great Church | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The orthodox Christian church of antiquity, after 380 CE the established church of the Roman Empire, especially as distinct from smaller Christian movements or heresies.
   historical
2. Hagia Sophia before the fall of the Byzantine Empire or one of the churches that previously occupied its site, the Great Church of Constantinople.
   historical
3. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Examples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CEFR level