The General Council of Constantinople of 1872

This article focuses on the General Council of Constantinople of 1872, convened in the context of the Bulgarian ecclesiastical crisis of the nineteenth century. Michel Stavrou offers an introductory study accompanied by a translation of the conciliar text. The author traces the historical circumstances that led to this council: the unilateral proclamation of the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church and its claim to its own bishopric in Constantinople, removed from local patriarchal jurisdiction. The central idea is that this ecclesiological dispute led the assembled Orthodox Churches to condemn the principle of organizing the Church on an ethnic or national basis, referred to by the term phyletism. The contribution of the article lies in making available the conciliar definitional text, a foundational document for understanding the Orthodox position on the relationship between national belonging and ecclesial belonging.