An Oration

Where is the Church of Christ to be found in a world fractured by conquest, confessional division, and the collapse of ancient Christian centers?

In this remarkable work, the Lutheran theologian and historian David Chytraeus surveys the condition of Christian churches in Greece, Asia, Africa, Hungary, Bohemia, and beyond. Drawing upon travel, diplomatic correspondence, patriarchal letters, eyewitness testimony, and Eastern Christian documents, he describes worship and ecclesiastical life under Ottoman rule and across the contested frontiers of sixteenth-century Europe.

Chytraeus's original 1569 oration is accompanied by a rich documentary appendix containing letters from the Patriarch of Constantinople and Mount Sinai, accounts of Athens and the Ottoman capital, descriptions of Greek doctrine and rites, and materials concerning Ethiopian and Armenian Christianity. Together, these texts preserve a rare Lutheran encounter with Eastern Christendom during an age of profound religious and political upheaval.

Throughout the volume, Chytraeus writes as a historian of the visible Church-attentive to doctrine, the Sacraments, liturgy, ecclesiastical institutions, and the testimony of trustworthy witnesses. His concern is not merely antiquarian. He seeks to demonstrate that, despite persecution, war, error, and division, Christ continues to preserve His Church throughout the world.

This English edition makes available an extraordinary Reformation-era account of global Christianity and offers modern readers a vivid portrait of the Church in a world of empires.