Phrygia
In classical antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empires of the time. Stories of the heroic age of Greek mythology tell of several legendary Phrygian kings: Gordias, whose Gordian Knot would be cut by Alexander the Great Midas, who turned whatever he touched to gold Mygdon, who warred with the AmazonsAccording to Homer's Iliad, the Phrygians participated in the Trojan War as close allies of the Trojans, fighting against the Achaeans. Phrygian power reached its peak in the late 8th century BC under another, king: Midas, who dominated most of western and central Anatolia and rivaled Assyria and Urartu for power in eastern Anatolia; this Midas was, however the last independent king of Phrygia before Cimmerians sacked the Phrygian capital, around 695 BC. Phrygia became subject to Lydia, successively to Persia and his Hellenistic successors, Pergamon and Byzantium.
Phrygians became assimilated into other cultures by the early medieval era. Phrygia describes an area on the western end of the high Anatolian plateau, an arid region quite unlike the forested lands to the north and west. Phrygia begins in the northwest where an area of dry steppe is watered by the Sakarya and Porsuk river system and is home to the settlements of Dorylaeum near modern Eskisehir, the Phrygian capital Gordion; the climate is harsh with cold winters. South of Dorylaeum, there is another important Phrygian settlement, Midas City, situated in an area of hills and columns of volcanic tuff. To the south again, central Phrygia includes the cities of Afyonkarahisar with its marble quarries at nearby Docimium, the town of Synnada. At the western end of Phrygia stood the towns of Aizanoi and Acmonia. From here to the southwest lies the hilly area of Phrygia that contrasts to the bare plains of the region's heartland. Southwestern Phrygia is watered by the Maeander and its tributary the Lycus, contains the towns of Laodicea on the Lycus and Hierapolis.
Inscriptions found at Gordium make clear that Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language with at least some vocabulary similar to Greek, not belonging to the family of Anatolian languages spoken by most of Phrygia's neighbors. One of the so-called Homeric Hymns describes the Phrygian language as not mutually intelligible with that of Troy. According to ancient tradition among Greek historians, the Phrygians anciently migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans. Herodotus says, he and other Greek writers recorded legends about King Midas that associated him with or put his origin in Macedonia. Some classical writers connected the Phrygians with the Mygdones, the name of two groups of people, one of which lived in northern Macedonia and another in Mysia; the Phrygians have been identified with the Bebryces, a people said to have warred with Mysia before the Trojan War and who had a king named Mygdon at the same time as the Phrygians were said to have had a king named Mygdon. The classical historian Strabo groups Phrygians, Mysians and Bithynians together as peoples that migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans.
This image of Phrygians as part of a related group of northwest Anatolian cultures seems the most explanation for the confusion over whether Phrygians and Anatolian Mygdones were or were not the same people. The apparent similarity of the Phrygian language to Greek and its dissimilarity with the Anatolian languages spoken by most of their neighbors is taken as support for a European origin of the Phrygians. Phrygian continued to be spoken until the 6th century AD, though its distinctive alphabet was lost earlier than those of most Anatolian cultures; some scholars have theorized that such a migration could have occurred more than classical sources suggest, have sought to fit the Phrygian arrival into a narrative explaining the downfall of the Hittite Empire and the end of the high Bronze Age in Anatolia. According to this "recent migration" theory, the Phrygians invaded just before or after the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the beginning of the 12th century BC, filling the political vacuum in central-western Anatolia, may have been counted among the "Sea Peoples" that Egyptian records credit with bringing about the Hittite collapse.
The so-called Handmade Knobbed Ware found in Western Anatolia during this period has been tentatively identified as an import connected to this invasion. However, most scholars reject such a recent Phrygian migration and accept as factual the Iliad's account that the Phrygians were established on the Sakarya River before the Trojan War, thus must have been there during the stages of the Hittite Empire, earlier; these scholars seek instead to trace the Phrygians' origins among the many nations of western Anatolia who were subject to the Hittites. This interpretation gets support from Greek legends about the founding of Phrygia's main city Gordium by Gordias and of Ancyra by Midas, which suggest that Gordium and Ancyra were believed to date from the distant past before the Trojan War; some scholars dismiss the claim of a Phrygian migration
Hierapolis
Hierapolis was an ancient city located on hot springs in classical Phrygia in southwestern Anatolia. Its ruins are adjacent to modern Pamukkale in Turkey and comprise an archaeological museum designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the hot springs have been used as a spa since the 2nd century BC, with many patrons retiring or dying there. The large necropolis is filled with sarcophagi, most famously that of Marcus Aurelius Ammianos, which bears a relief depicting the earliest known example of a crank and rod mechanism; the great baths were constructed with huge stone blocks without the use of cement and consisted of various closed or open sections linked together. There are deep niches in the inner section, including the bath and gymnasium. Hierapolis is located in the Büyük Menderes valley adjacent to the modern Turkish cities of Pamukkale and Denizli, it is located in Turkey's inner Aegean region. There are only a few historical facts known about the origin of the city. No traces of the presence of Hittites or Persians have been found.
The Phrygians built a temple in the first half of the 7th century BC. This temple used by the citizens of the nearby town of Laodicea, would form the centre of Hierapolis. Hierapolis was founded as a thermal spa early in the 2nd century BC within the sphere of the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus the Great sent 2,000 Jewish families to Lydia and Phrygia from Babylon and Mesopotamia joined by more from Judea; the Jewish congregation grew in Hierapolis and has been estimated as high as 50,000 in 62 BC. The city was expanded with the booty from the 190 BC Battle of Magnesia where Antiochus the Great was defeated by the Roman ally Eumenes II. Following the Treaty of Apamea ending the Syrian War, Eumenes annexed much of Asia Minor, including Hierapolis. Hierapolis became a healing centre where doctors used the thermal springs as a treatment for their patients; the city began minting bronze coins in the 2nd century BC. These coins give the name Hieropolis, it remains unclear whether this name referred to the original temple or honoured Hiera, the wife of Telephus, son of Heracles and the Mysian princess Auge, the supposed founder of Pergamon's Attalid dynasty.
This name changed into Hierapolis, according to the Byzantine geographer Stephanus on account of its large number of temples. In 133 BC, when Attalus III died, he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Hierapolis thus became part of the Roman province of Asia. In AD 17, during the rule of the emperor Tiberius, a major earthquake destroyed the city. Through the influence of the Christian apostle Paul, a church was founded here while he was at Ephesus; the Christian apostle Philip spent the last years of his life here. The town's Martyrium was alleged to have been built upon the spot where Philip was crucified in AD 80, his daughters were said to have acted as prophetesses in the region. In the year 60, during the rule of Nero, an more severe earthquake left the city in ruins. Afterwards, the city was rebuilt in the Roman style with imperial financial support, it was during this period. The theatre was built in 129 for a visit by the emperor Hadrian, it was renovated under Septimius Severus. When Caracalla visited the town in 215, he bestowed the much-coveted title of neocoros upon it, according the city certain privileges and the right of sanctuary.
This was the golden age of Hierapolis. Thousands of people came to benefit from the medicinal properties of the hot springs. New building projects were started: two Roman baths, a gymnasium, several temples, a main street with a colonnade, a fountain at the hot spring. Hierapolis became one of the most prominent cities in the Roman Empire in the fields of the arts and trade; the town became wealthy. During his campaign against the Sassanid Shapur II in 370, the emperor Valens made the last-ever imperial visit to the city. During the 4th century, the Christians filled Pluto's Gate with stones, suggesting that Christianity had become the dominant religion and begun displacing other faiths in the area. A see of Phrygia Pacatiana, the Byzantine emperor Justinian raised the bishop of Hierapolis to the rank of metropolitan in 531; the Roman baths were transformed to a Christian basilica. During the Byzantine period, the city continued to flourish and remained an important centre for Christianity. In the early 7th century, the town was devastated first by Persian armies and by another destructive earthquake, from which it took a long time to recover.
In the 12th century, the area came under the control of the Seljuk sultanate of Konya before falling to crusaders under Frederick Barbarossa and their Byzantine allies in 1190. About thirty years the town was abandoned before the Seljuks built a castle in the 13th century; the new settlement was abandoned in the late 14th century. In 1354, the great Thracian earthquake toppled the remains of the ancient city; the ruins were covered with a thick layer of limestone. Hierapolis was first excavated by the German archaeologist Carl Humann during June and July 1887, his excavation notes were published in his 1889 book Altertümer von Hierapolis. His excavations included a number of drilling holes, he would gain fame for his discovery of the Pergamon Altar, reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. After the large white limestone formations of the hot springs became famous again in the 20th century, it was turned into a tourist attraction named "Cotton Castle"; the ancient city was rediscovered by trav
Church of England
The Church of England is the established church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor; the Church of England is the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain by the third century, to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury; the English church renounced papal authority when Henry VIII failed to secure an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1534. The English Reformation accelerated under Edward VI's regents, before a brief restoration of papal authority under Queen Mary I and King Philip; the Act of Supremacy 1558 renewed the breach, the Elizabethan Settlement charted a course enabling the English church to describe itself as both catholic and reformed: catholic in that it views itself as a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ in unbroken continuity with the early apostolic church.
This is expressed in its emphasis on the teachings of the early Church Fathers, as formalised in the Apostles', Athanasian creeds. Reformed in that it has been shaped by some of the doctrinal principles of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, in particular in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer. In the earlier phase of the English Reformation there were both Catholic martyrs and radical Protestant martyrs; the phases saw the Penal Laws punish Roman Catholic and nonconforming Protestants. In the 17th century, the Puritan and Presbyterian factions continued to challenge the leadership of the Church which under the Stuarts veered towards a more catholic interpretation of the Elizabethan Settlement under Archbishop Laud and the rise of the concept of Anglicanism as the via media. After the victory of the Parliamentarians the Prayer Book was abolished and the Presbyterian and Independent factions dominated; the Episcopacy was abolished. The Restoration restored the Church of England and the Prayer Book.
Papal recognition of George III in 1766 led to greater religious tolerance. Since the English Reformation, the Church of England has used a liturgy in English; the church contains several doctrinal strands, the main three known as Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church. Tensions between theological conservatives and progressives find expression in debates over the ordination of women and homosexuality; the church includes both liberal and conservative members. The governing structure of the church is based on dioceses, each presided over by a bishop. Within each diocese are local parishes; the General Synod of the Church of England is the legislative body for the church and comprises bishops, other clergy and laity. Its measures must be approved by both Houses of Parliament. According to tradition, Christianity arrived in Britain in the 1st or 2nd century, during which time southern Britain became part of the Roman Empire; the earliest historical evidence of Christianity among the native Britons is found in the writings of such early Christian Fathers as Tertullian and Origen in the first years of the 3rd century.
Three Romano-British bishops, including Restitutus, are known to have been present at the Council of Arles in 314. Others attended the Council of Serdica in 347 and that of Ariminum in 360, a number of references to the church in Roman Britain are found in the writings of 4th century Christian fathers. Britain was the home of Pelagius. While Christianity was long established as the religion of the Britons at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, Christian Britons made little progress in converting the newcomers from their native paganism. In 597, Pope Gregory I sent the prior of the Abbey of St Andrew's from Rome to evangelise the Angles; this event is known as the Gregorian mission and is the date the Church of England marks as the beginning of its formal history. With the help of Christians residing in Kent, Augustine established his church at Canterbury, the capital of the Kingdom of Kent, became the first in the series of Archbishops of Canterbury in 598. A archbishop, the Greek Theodore of Tarsus contributed to the organisation of Christianity in England.
The Church of England has been in continuous existence since the days of St Augustine, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its episcopal head. Despite the various disruptions of the Reformation and the English Civil War, the Church of England considers itself to be the same church, more formally organised by Augustine. While some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the Christian in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times. Queen Bertha of Kent was among the Christians in England who recognised papal authority before Augustine arrived, Celtic Christians were carrying out missionary work with papal approval long before the Synod of Whitby; the Synod of Whitby established the Roman date for Easter and the Roman style of monastic tonsure in England. This meeting of the ecclesiastics with Roman customs with local bishops was summoned in 664 at Saint Hilda's double monastery of Streonshalh called Whitby Abbey, it was presided over by King Oswiu, who made the final ruling.
The final ruling was decided in favor of Roman tradition because St. Peter holds the keys to the gate of Heaven. In 1534, King Henry VIII separated the English Church from Rome. A theological separation had been foreshadowed by various movements within the English Church, such as Lollardy, but the English Reformation gained political support when Henry VIII wanted an a
Syria (region)
The region of Syria is an area located east of the Mediterranean sea. Throughout history, the region has been controlled by numerous different peoples, including ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Babylonia, the Achaemenid Empire, the ancient Macedonians, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid Caliphate, the Crusaders, the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic. In the most common historical sense,'Syria' refers to the entire northern Levant, including Alexandretta and the ancient city of Antioch or in an extended sense the entire Levant as far south as Roman Egypt, but not including Mesopotamia; the area of Greater Syria extends over the medieval Arab Caliphate province of Bilad al-Sham, encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean or the Levant, Western Mesopotamia. The Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century gave rise to this province, which encompassed much of the region of Syria, became overlapping with this concept.
Other sources indicate that the term Greater Syria was coined during Ottoman rule, after 1516, to designate the approximate area included in present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The uncertainty in the definition of the extent of "Syria" is aggravated with the etymological confusion of the similar-sounding names Syria and Assyria; the question of the ultimate etymological identity of the two names remains open today, but regardless of etymology, the two names have been taken as exchangeable or synonymous from the time of Herodotus. In the Roman Empire,'Syria' and'Assyria' referred to two separate entities, Roman Syria and Roman Assyria. Killebrew and Steiner, treating the Levant as the Syrian region, gave the boundaries of the region as such: the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia to the east, the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia to the north. For Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela, Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent. In Late Antiquity, "Syria" meant a region located to the East of the Mediterranean Sea, West of the Euphrates River, North of the Arabian Desert and South of the Taurus Mountains, thereby including modern Syria, Jordan, the State of Palestine, parts of Southern Turkey, namely the Hatay Province and the Western half of the Southeastern Anatolia Region.
This late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām. After the Islamic conquest of Byzantine Syria in the 7th century, the name Syria fell out of primary use in the region itself, being superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām, but survived in its original sense in Byzantine and Western European usage, in Syriac Christian literature. In the 19th century the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya, which replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I, the name'Syria' was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria; the oldest attestation of the name'Syria' is from the 8th century BC in a bilingual inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician. In this inscription the Luwian word Sura/i was translated to Phoenician ʔšr "Assyria." For Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys and as far south as Arabia and Egypt.
The name'Syria' derives from the ancient Greek name for Syrians, Greek: Σύριοι Syrioi, which the Greeks applied without distinction to various Near Eastern peoples living under the rule of Assyria. Modern scholarship confirms the Greek word traces back to the cognate Greek: Ἀσσυρία, Assyria derived from the Akkadian Aššur; the classical Arabic pronunciation of Syria is Sūriya. That name was not used among Muslims before about 1870, but it had been used by Christians earlier. According to the Syriac Orthodox Church, "Syrian" meant "Christian" in early Christianity. In English, "Syrian" meant a Syrian Christian such as Ephrem the Syrian. Following the declaration of Syria in 1936, the term "Syrian" became to designate citizens of that state, regardless of ethnicity; the adjective "Syriac" has come into common use since as an ethnonym to avoid the ambiguity of "Syrian". The Arabic term Sūriya refers to the modern state of Syria, as opposed to the historical region of Syria, but that distinction was not as clear until the mid-20th century.
Baalshamin, was a Semitic sky-god in ancient Palmyra. Hence, Sham refers to. Moreover. For instance, the Hebrew word for the sun is shemesh, where "shem/sham" from shamayim means "sky" and esh means "fire", i.e. "sky-fire". Other sources indicate that the term etymologically means "land of the left hand", referring to the fact that for someone in the Hejaz facing east, north is to the left (so the name of Yemen correspondingly means "the right (
Santi Apostoli, Rome
Santi Dodici Apostoli known as Santi Apostoli, is a 6th-century Roman Catholic parish and titular church and minor basilica in Rome, dedicated to St. James and St. Philip whose remains are kept here, to all Apostles. Today, the basilica is under the care of the Conventual Franciscans, whose headquarters in Rome is in the adjacent building; the Cardinal Priest of the Titulus XII Apostolorum is Angelo Scola. Among the previous Cardinal Priests are Pope Clement XIV, whose tomb by Canova is in the basilica, Henry Benedict Stuart. Built by Pope Pelagius I to celebrate a Narses victory over the Ostrogoths, dedicated by Pope John III to St. James and Saint Philip the Apostle, the basilica is listed as'Titulus SS Apostolorum' in the acts of the synod of 499. Santi Apostoli was ruined by the earthquake of 1348, left abandoned. In 1417, Pope Martin V, whose Colonna family owned the adjacent Palazzo Colonna, restored the church, while the facade was built at the end of the same century by Baccio Pontelli.
It was frescoed by Melozzo da Forlì whose wall-paintings at Santi Apostoli were renowned for their innovative techniques of foreshortening and came to be regarded as Melozzo's masterpiece. Pope Clement XI instigated dramatic renovations of the church. Melozzo's frescoes were either destroyed or moved to the Quirinal and to the Vatican Museums. A new Baroque interior was designed by Carlo Fontana and Francesco Fontana, was completed in 1714; the church was restored again, with the facade completed by Giuseppe Valadier in 1827. The inscriptions found in SS. XII Apostoli, a valuable source illustrating the history of the church, have been collected and published by Vincenzo Forcella; this church has three naves, divided by a row of Corinthian pillars, supporting the ceiling, on the middle of, painted in 1707 the Triumph of the Order of St Francis, by Baciccio. There are frescoes of the Evangelists by Luigi Fontana; the use of perspective is good, the angels appear to come out of the vault. Above the sanctuary is a fresco from 1709 by Giovanni Odazzi, representing the "Fall of Lucifer and his Angels".
To the right of the high altar are the tombs of Count Giraud de Caprières and Cardinal Raffaele Riario, tentatively attributed to Michelangelo. To the left is a monument to Cardinal Riario, by the school of Andrea Bregno and possible designed by Andrea Bregno himself. There is a Madonna by Mino da Fiesole. On the wall, to the right of the portico of the ancient church, is an antique bas-relief of an eagle surrounded by an oak crown that it holds in its talons. Opposite is the monument of the engraver Giovanni Volpato executed and erected by his friend and countryman Antonio Canova, it consists of a large bas-relief, representing "Friendship" in the form of a woman weeping before the bust of the deceased Volpato. On a pier of the nave on the right-hand side, near the first chapel, is enshrined the heart of Maria Klementyna Sobieska, wife of the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart, her tomb is in St Peter's Basilica. Her monument is by Filippo della Valle, her husband used to pray here every morning.
James III was laid in state here himself in 1766. Melozzo da Forlì painted, on the ceiling of the great chapel, the Ascension of our Lord. According to Giorgio Vasari, "the figure of Christ is so admirably foreshortened as to appear to pierce the vault; this painting was executed for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV about the year 1472. During the dramatic renovation of the church, it was removed and placed in the Quirinal Palace in 1711, where it is still seen, bearing this inscription: "Opus Melotii Foroliviensis, qui summos fornices pingendi artem vel primus invenit vel illustravit". Several heads of the apostles which surrounded it, were cut away, were deposited in the Vatican palace; the twelve chapels in total, with three domed ones on each side, are adorned with marbles and fine paintings. The Chapel of St. Anthony contains eight fine marble columns, a painting by Benedetto Luti; the first chapel on the right-hand side is the Chapel of the Immaculate. It has a 15th-century Madonna donated by Cardinal Bessarion.
The Chapel of the Crucifixion on the right-hand side is divided into two aisles. The 8 columns are from the 6th-century church; the tomb of Raffaele della Rovere, brother of Pope Sixtus IV and father of Pope Julius II, is found in the chapel on the left side of the crypt. It was designed by Andrea Bregno; the confessio was constructed in 1837. During its construction, the relics of St James and St Philip, which were taken from the catacombs in the 9th century to protect them from invaders, were rediscovered; the wall paintings are reproductions of ancient catacomb paintings. An inscription explains that Pope Stephen IV walked barefoot in 886 from the catacombs to the church carrying the relics on his shoulders; the other chapels were decorated 1876-1877. Pope Clement XIV is buried in the last chapel near the door of the sacristy, his Neo-Classical tomb is by Antonio Canova, made in 1783-1787. Besides the statue of that Pope, there are two uncommonly fine figures of "Temperance" and "Clemency"; this was the first major work.
Beyond the sacristy is the chapel of St. Francis, painted by Giuseppe Chiari. On the altar of the following chapel, The second chapel on the left has an altarpiece from 1777 by Giusepp
Oriental Orthodoxy
Oriental Orthodoxy is the fourth largest communion of Christian churches, with about 76 million members worldwide. As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, it has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Armenia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and parts of the Middle East and India. An Eastern Christian communion of autocephalous churches, its bishops are equal by virtue of episcopal ordination, its doctrines can be summarised in that the communion recognizes the validity of only the first three ecumenical councils; the Oriental Orthodox communion is composed of six autocephalous churches: the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Collectively, they consider themselves to be the One, Holy and Apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles.
Most member churches are part of the World Council of Churches. All member churches share a identical theology, with the distinguishing feature being Miaphysitism. Three different rites are practiced in the communion: the western-influenced Armenian Rite, the West Syrian Rite of the two Syriac churches, the Alexandrian Rite of the Copts and Eritreans. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, the Oriental Orthodox churches separated from the Imperial Roman Church over differences in Christology. Oriental Orthodoxy developed distinctively under the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Egypt part of the Pentarchy, the only episcopal see besides the Holy See to maintain the title "Pope"; the majority of Oriental Orthodox Christians live in Egypt, Ethiopia and Armenia, with smaller Syriac communities living in the Middle East–decreasing due to persecution–and India. There are many in other parts of the world, formed through diaspora and missionary activity; the Oriental Orthodox churches are distinguished by their recognition of only the first three ecumenical councils during the period of the State church of the Roman Empire –the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the First Council of Constantinople in 381 and the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Oriental Orthodoxy shares much theology and many ecclesiastical traditions with the Eastern Orthodox Church. The primary theological difference between the two communions is the differing Christology. Oriental Orthodoxy rejects the Chalcedonian Definition, instead adopts the Miaphysite formula, believing that the human and divine natures of Christ are united; the early prelates of the Oriental Orthodox churches thought that the Chalcedonian Definition implied a possible repudiation of the Trinity or a concession to Nestorianism. Other differences include minor deviations in social teaching and different views on ecumenism. Oriental Orthodox churches are considered to be more conservative with regard to social issues as well more enthusiastic about ecumenical relations with non-Orthodox churches; the break in communion between the Imperial Roman and Oriental Orthodox churches did not occur but rather over 2-3 centuries following the Council of Chalcedon. The two communions developed separate institutions, the Oriental Orthodox did not participate in any of the ecumenical councils.
The Oriental Orthodox churches maintain their own ancient apostolic succession. The various churches are governed by holy synods, with a primus inter pares bishop serving as primate; the primates hold titles like patriarch and pope. Among these patriarchs, the Pope of Alexandria takes precedence, is sometimes considered the "face" of Oriental Orthodoxy; the Alexandrian Patriarchate, along with Rome and Antioch, was one of the most prominent sees of the early Christian Church, contains a majority population of Coptic Christians, unlike Antioch is still a major population center. That said, the Pope of Alexandria has no governing powers with respect to the non-Coptic churches. Oriental Orthodoxy does not have a magisterial leader like the Roman Catholic Church, nor does the communion have a leader who can convene ecumenical synods like the Eastern Orthodox Church; the schism between Oriental Orthodoxy and the adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity was based on differences in Christology. The First Council of Nicaea, in 325, declared that Jesus Christ is God, to say, "consubstantial" with the Father.
The third ecumenical council, the Council of Ephesus, declared that Jesus Christ, though divine as well as human, is only one being, or person. Thus, the Council of Ephesus explicitly rejected Nestorianism, the Christological doctrine that Christ was two distinct beings, one divine and one human, who happened to inhabit the same body; the churches that became Oriental Orthodoxy were anti-Nestorian, therefore supported the decisions made at Ephesus. Twenty years after Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed the view that Jesus Christ was a single person, but at the same time declared that this one person existed "in two complete natures", one human and one divine; those who opposed Chalcedon saw this as a concession to Nestorianism, or as a conspiracy to convert the Church to Nestorianism by stealth. As a result, over the following decades, they separated from communion with those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon, formed the body, today called Oriental Orthodoxy. At times, Chalcedonian Christians have referre
Martyr
A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, refusing to renounce, or refusing to advocate a belief or cause as demanded by an external party. This refusal to comply with the presented demands results in the punishment or execution of the martyr by the oppressor. Applied only to those who suffered for their religious beliefs, the term has come to be used in connection with people killed for a political cause. Most martyrs are considered holy or are respected by their followers, becoming symbols of exceptional leadership and heroism in the face of difficult circumstances. Martyrs play significant roles in religions. Martyrs have had notable effects in secular life, including such figures as Socrates, among other political and cultural examples. In its original meaning, the word martyr, meaning witness, was used in the secular sphere as well as in the New Testament of the Bible; the process of bearing witness was not intended to lead to the death of the witness, although it is known from ancient writers and from the New Testament that witnesses died for their testimonies.
During the early Christian centuries, the term acquired the extended meaning of believers who are called to witness for their religious belief, on account of this witness, endures suffering or death. The term, in this sense, entered the English language as a loanword; the death of a martyr or the value attributed. The early Christians who first began to use the term martyr in its new sense saw Jesus as the first and greatest martyr, on account of his crucifixion; the early Christians appear to have seen Jesus as the archetypal martyr. The word martyr is used in English to describe a wide variety of people. However, the following table presents a general outline of common features present in stereotypical martyrdoms. In the Bahá'í Faith, martyrs are those who sacrifice their lives serving humanity in the name of God. However, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, discouraged the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life. Instead, he explained. Martyrdom was extensively promoted by the Kuomintang party in modern China.
Revolutionaries who died fighting against the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution and throughout the Republic of China period, furthering the cause of the revolution, were recognized as martyrs. In Christianity, a martyr, in accordance with the meaning of the original Greek martys in the New Testament, is one who brings a testimony written or verbal. In particular, the testimony is that of the Christian Gospel, or more the Word of God. A Christian witness is a biblical witness. However, over time many Christian testimonies were rejected, the witnesses put to death, the word martyr developed its present sense. Where death ensues, the witnesses follow the example of Jesus in offering up their lives for truth; the concept of Jesus as a martyr has received greater attention. Analyses of the Gospel passion narratives have led many scholars to conclude that they are martyrdom accounts in terms of genre and style. Several scholars have concluded that Paul the Apostle understood Jesus' death as a martyrdom.
In light of such conclusions, some have argued that the Christians of the first few centuries would have interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus as a martyrdom. In the context of church history, from the time of the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire, it developed that a martyr was one, killed for maintaining a religious belief, knowing that this will certainly result in imminent death; this definition of martyr is not restricted to the Christian faith. Though Christianity recognizes certain Old Testament Jewish figures, like Abel and the Maccabees, as holy, the New Testament mentions the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist, Jesus's possible cousin and his prophet and forerunner, the first Christian witness, after the establishment of the Christian faith, to be killed for his testimony was Saint Stephen, those who suffer martyrdom are said to have been "crowned." From the time of Constantine, Christianity was decriminalized, under Theodosius I, became the state religion, which diminished persecution.
As some wondered how they could most follow Christ there was a development of desert spirituality, desert monks, self-mortification, following Christ by separation from the world. This was a kind of white martyrdom, dying to oneself every day, as opposed to a red martyrdom, the giving of one's life in a violent death. In Christianity, death in sectarian persecution can be viewed as martyrdom. For example, there were martyrs recognised on both sides of the schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England after 1534, with two hundred and eighty Christians martyred for their faith by public burning between 1553 and 1558 by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I in England leading to the reversion to the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559 and three hundred Roman Catholics martyred by the Church authorities in England over the following hundred and fifty years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More modern day accounts of martyrdom for Christ exist, depicted in books such as Jesus Freaks though the numbers are disputed.
There are claims that the numbers of Christians killed for their faith annually are exaggerated. Despite the promotion of ahimsa within Sanatana Dharma
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