Case studies
Historical Cases
How the Church actually handled communion, heresy and resistance, with the established chronology kept distinct from the competing interpretations and a labelled conclusion.
- 428 to 431Documented
Nestorius and the Third Ecumenical Council
A test case for how the Church treats a reigning bishop who teaches error: he held real office until a council deposed him.
Read the case → - 449Documented
The Robber Council of Ephesus
A council convened with full imperial authority and a patriarch presiding, which the Church refused to receive: the clearest proof that a synod is not the Church's synod merely by convening.
Read the case → - 726 to 843Documented
Iconoclasm
Two periods of imperial war on the icons, during which the Orthodox withdrew communion from iconoclast bishops before and until the councils ruled.
Read the case → - 7th centuryDocumented
Monothelitism and St Maximus the Confessor
A saint out of communion with the great sees while they held an imperially backed error, vindicated only after his death by an ecumenical council.
Read the case → - 795 to 811Documented
The Moechian controversy
St Theodore the Studite's stand against an adulterous imperial marriage blessed by a priest, and against the economy that later rehabilitated him: the tradition's clearest lesson on the limits of economy.
Read the case → - 1438 to 1439Documented
The Union of Florence and St Mark of Ephesus
A union with Rome signed by the Greek delegation under pressure and rejected by St Mark of Ephesus, later repudiated by the Orthodox Church.
Read the case → - 1964 to 1973Documented
The Athonite cessation of commemoration (1970 to 1973)
The modern precedent this library's line descends from: most of the Holy Mountain ceased commemorating Patriarch Athenagoras, and neither founded a church nor stayed away forever.
Read the case → - 451 onwardDocumented
The Non-Chalcedonian separation
The oldest enduring separation in the Christian East, and the ancient prototype of the modern ecumenical question: a proposed reunion resting on the claim that a conciliar difference is only verbal.
Read the case → - 20th to 21st centuryDisputed
The modern ecumenical question
An unresolved, contested debate within Orthodoxy over ecumenism, the 2016 Council of Crete, and whether contemporary conditions meet those Canon 15 describes.
Read the case →