Assumption of the BVM
The belief that the BVM, ‘having completed her earthly life, was in body and soul assumed into heavenly glory’ (definition, 1950). The belief was unknown in the early Church; it first appears in ...
canon
In the E. Church stanzas of poetry began in the 7th cent. to be inserted between the verses of the biblical canticles sung during the second part of Orthros. In most places the text of the canticles ...
François Combefis
(1605–79),patristic scholar. A native of Aquitaine, he entered the Dominican Order in 1624. He published first editions of the Greek text of several of the Fathers, among them Amphilochius ...
Immaculate Conception
The dogma that the Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her being conceived, free from all stain of original sin. It and the feast of the conception ...
Joseph Kalothetos
Palamite apologist and hagiographer; died after 1355/6. Sometime before 1336 Kalothetos (Καλόθετος) became a monk at the Athonite monastery of Esphigmenou, where he met Gregory Palamas and came under ...
Kosmas and Damianos
Also called the anargyroi, legendary saints. The cult of Kosmas and Damianos apparently developed by the 5th C. in Constantinople, where, according to local tradition, two churches (in Zeugma and ...
Last Judgment
DoctrineIconographyDoctrineIconographyAnnounced by the New Testament (mainly Mt 24-25; Rev 20; 1 Th 4), held by St Paul to be an article of faith (Heb 6, 1-2), and ...
Nativity of the BVM
The feast, which is observed on 8 Sept., is attested in the E. in the 8th cent. It was not generally observed in the W. until the 11th cent. The choice of date is unexplained.
Palaia
(παλαιά, “old,” paleja in Slavonic), a narrative of events from the Creation to Daniel, based on paraphrased and apocryphal versions of Old Testament episodes and supplemented with passages from, in ...
Panteleemon
(originally Pantoleon or Pantaleon), saint, one of the anargyroi; born Nikomedeia, died ca.305; feastday 27 July. Theodoret of Cyrrhus first mentions a feast in honor of Panteleemon, though not all ...
St John
Apostle. According to tradition, the author of the Fourth Gospel, of Revelation, and of three of the Catholic Epistles. Together with his brother St James and St Peter, he belonged to the inner group ...
