Orthodoxia is a small, independent English-language library devoted to the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The site collects short, readable introductions to four overlapping subjects: the lives of the saints, the meaning of the great feasts, the prayers Orthodox Christians say every day, and the long history of the Christian East.

What you will find here

The articles are written for people who already know something about Christianity but who may be new to its Eastern expression — converts, students, the curious, and anyone who has wandered into an Orthodox church and wanted to understand what was happening. The pieces are short by design: most can be read in five to ten minutes. They aim to give a true picture without pretending to say everything.

Where a saint or a feast has a long and complicated history, we have tried to summarize the consensus of standard Orthodox sources rather than to argue for a single school of thought. Where the tradition disagrees with itself — and it sometimes does — we say so.

Sources

The articles draw on the Greek and Slavic synaxaria (collections of saints’ lives), the standard liturgical books (the Menaion, the Triodion, the Pentecostarion, and the Horologion), and modern scholarly works on Eastern Christianity by writers like John Meyendorff, Andrew Louth, Sergei Bulgakov, Alexander Schmemann, and Kallistos Ware. Where we quote scripture we use the New King James Version unless noted otherwise.

This site is not affiliated with any particular Orthodox jurisdiction. It is the work of laypeople who love the tradition and want to make a small contribution to its English-language presence online.

What this site is not

This site is not a substitute for parish life. The Orthodox Christian tradition is, before anything else, a way of worshipping together; reading about it is no replacement for the liturgy. If you live near an Orthodox church and the articles here interest you, the best next step is to attend a service.

This site is also not a place for polemics. We do not litigate the differences between Orthodoxy and other Christian confessions, and we have nothing to say about contemporary intra-Orthodox jurisdictional disputes. The goal is positive: to describe a tradition, not to argue with anyone.

Contact

Questions, corrections, and suggestions are welcome through the contact page.