great church
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.08 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
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.
name
Hagia Sophia before the fall of the Byzantine Empire or one of the churches that previously occupied its site, the Great Church of Constantinople.
name
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Example Sentences
- "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."
Etymology
Calque of Koine Greek μεγάλη ἐκκλησία (megálē ekklēsía). In sense of “orthodox Christian church”, cf. Celsus (2nd century) describing mainstream Christian believers, quoted in Origen, Contra Celsum, 5.59: “Σαφῶς γε τῶν ἀπὸ μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας τοῦτο ὁμολογούντων […] ” (“Certainly, the members of the Great Church agree […] ”).
Inflected Forms
the Great Church (canonical)