Page 200 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
detail here.
However, it is important to note that these centers of lead-
ership in the Church did not constitute units identical or anal-
ogous to what Canon 34 of the Apostolic Canons referred to
as nations (ἔθνη), which likely represented regions or eparchies
of the Empire. Instead, they were respected for their historical
significance and the roles they played in the life of the Church.
Given that the idea of tradition was absolutely central in the
life of the ancient Church—along with the concept of the
“Mother Church,” which protects and safeguards the faith of
younger Churches—pentarchy was rightly regarded as funda-
mental to the structure of the Church during the Byzantine
era and in the subsequent period of Orthodoxy.
To the concept of pentarchy, a new factor was later added,
contributing to the development of autocephaly. With the
conversion of the Slavs to Christianity, a large part of Ortho-
doxy gradually developed its own culture, distinct from that
of Greek- and Latin-speaking Christians. Byzantium not only
did not hinder this evolution but, in fact, initiated it. The first
Greek missionaries among the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius
(9th century), laid the foundations of Slavic Christianity,
which from the outset involved the use of the Slavic language
and the creation of a specific alphabet—the Cyrillic alphabet.
It was thus inherent in the very nature of Orthodoxy to
encourage the development of the Church based on local cul-
tures. Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians, while always
drawn to the Byzantine Church and the imperial capital as
both a model to imitate and, at times, surpass—or even re-
place—asserted their independence from Constantinople.
The first to achieve this was the Church of Russia, which was
integrated into the pentarchy as the fifth Orthodox Church in
the canonical order (the Great Schism with Rome had already
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