Prologue

An event took place in 1924 that would shake the edifice of the Orthodox Church up to the present day and bring about disastrous effects for Orthodox Christians. This event was the calendar change in the Church of Greece, which replaced the age-old Church Calendar, dating back to the First Œcumenical Synod (325), with the so-called Revised Julian Calendar, a variation of the Gregorian Calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII of Rome (1502–1585) in 1582. This reform violently divided the Flock of Christ into two parts: those who remained true to the original Church Calendar, the Old Calendarists (οἱ Παλαιοημερολογῖται), and those who adopted the innovative Revised Julian Calendar, the New Calendarists (οἱ Νεοημερολογῖται). As a result of the implementation of the New Calendar in the liturgical life of the Church of Greece, a group of pious individuals sprang up who fearlessly resisted this reform, because they saw it for what it truly was—a deviation from the time-honored traditions of the Church. These holy strugglers realized that behind the adjustment of the difference of the thirteen days between the Old Calendar and the New Calendar was the hidden goal of subjugating the Eastern Orthodox Church to Western political and religious powers. The Greek Old Calendarists, as these strugglers came to be known, stood unwavering in their confession of the Faith and in their adherence to the dogmas and traditions as established by the Holy and God-Bearing Fathers of the Church. Despite fierce persecutions by the Church of Greece and by the Greek government for the first forty years after the calendar change, the Old Calendarists continued to survive. Their story is one of perseverance in the face of adversity….