This Church History is the product of my teaching at the Theological School of Halki and the University of Athens. The principles, which I adhered to in this work, were outlined in my inaugural address of my university lectures.

I understand the advantages of the modern trend, which divides Church History into small chronological segments and brings the individual issues of each segment into close connection with one another to form a coherent image of it.

However, for reasons I deem unnecessary to elaborate on here, I did not follow this approach but maintained the ancient division.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the text of the preface]