Concubine or daughter? On words that cannot be used about the Church
An archon of the Church of Constantinople likened the UOC to Moscow’s “concubine.” But for St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, “concubines” are heresies.
On September 9, 2026, Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Elias Damianakis published an article titled "A Parody of Canonical Order", directed against Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv. The UOJ has already addressed its arguments. But one passage deserves separate attention, because here the issue is no longer canons or jurisdiction, but the language that may – or may not – be used when speaking about the Church.
The archon’s article, it should be recalled, appeared in two versions – English and Greek. In English, he writes: “Ukraine is a daughter of Constantinople, not a mistress of Moscow.” At the end of the article, the point is repeated more sharply: “Ukraine is not Moscow’s ecclesiastical mistress.” In the Greek version, the same phrases read: “Ἡ Οὐκρανία εἶναι θυγάτηρ τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, οὐχὶ παλλακὶς τῆς Μόσχας” and “Ἡ Οὐκρανία δὲν εἶναι ἐκκλησιαστικὴ παλλακὶς τῆς Μόσχας.”
At first glance, this may seem like a straightforward translation, with the English “mistress” corresponding to the Greek “παλλακίς.” But in fact, these are very different words. More than that, there is a gulf between them.
For an English-speaking reader, “mistress” is a rather crude everyday metaphor: a kept woman, a lover, a woman engaged in an extramarital relationship. The word is insulting, but it has no theological history. The Greek “παλλακίς,” however, is a word found in the Bible and in the Fathers of the Church. And it has a precise ecclesiological meaning established by a saint held in particularly high esteem in the Greek-speaking world. An educated Greek church reader knows this, and the question of what exactly was said in the Greek version therefore becomes not a matter of style, but of theology.
What παλλακίς means in Scripture
In the Septuagint, the word “παλλακή” or “παλλακίς” occurs dozens of times and always means one thing: a concubine – a woman who lives with a man but is not his lawful wife. Nahor has a concubine (Gen. 22:24); Jacob has one (Gen. 35:22, where Reuben’s sin with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, is mentioned); so does the Levite in the Book of Judges (Judg. 19), Saul (2 Sam. 3:7), David (2 Sam. 16:21–22), and Solomon, who, according to Scripture, had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3). In every case, the concubine stands below the lawful wife: she does not have the rights of a wife, a marriage covenant, or property rights.
The crucial distinction between a wife and a concubine concerns their children. Genesis says: “But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country” (Gen. 25:6). Isaac, the son of the lawful wife, receives the inheritance. The sons of the concubines receive gifts and are sent away. The Apostle Paul, speaking of Abraham’s sons by the bondwoman and the free woman, quotes Scripture: “Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman” (Gal. 4:30). Paul is speaking of Hagar the bondwoman rather than a concubine, but the contrast is the same: the lawful wife and her children inherit the husband’s and father’s estate; an unlawful union and its offspring do not.
Finally, there is a verse that opens the way to an ecclesiological reading of the word. The Song of Songs says: “There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my undefiled is but one” (Song 6:8–9). Church tradition has always seen in the “one dove” the Church, the Bride of Christ. The question remained: who, in an ecclesial context, are the “concubines”? St. Epiphanius of Cyprus answered that question.
St. Epiphanius: the concubines are heresies
In the fourth century, St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia (Salamis) in Cyprus, wrote the Panarion, an extensive work against heresies. There are exactly eighty of them in the book, and that number was not chosen by chance. Epiphanius explains it explicitly in his concluding “Brief and True Account of the Faith,” interpreting the verse quoted above about the “eighty concubines.”
First, Epiphanius notes that the Bridegroom speaks of the concubines differently from the Bride: “ἐπὶ δὲ ταῖς παλλακαῖς τὸ ἀλλότριον τέλεον ἀπεφήνατο” – “as for the concubines, He declared them to be altogether alien” (De fide, 3). He then explains how a concubine differs from the Wife, that is, from the Church. All the communities that arose before and after her are “παλλακίδες ὠνομασμέναι… μὴ πεπροικισμέναι δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου καὶ μὴ δεξάμεναι ὑποδοχὴν τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος” – “called concubines… not having received a dowry from the Word and not having received the Holy Spirit” (De fide, 6). The saint also gives a Hebrew etymology of the word, which in his interpretation means “half-wife”: “ἵνα εἴπῃ ἥμισυ γυναικός” (De fide, 6).
Finally, he gives a direct definition: “παλλακίδες γοῦν αἱ καθεξῆς ἀριθμηθεῖσαι αἱρέσεις, ὡς ἄνω ἔφην, ὀγδοήκοντα” – “the concubines, then, are the heresies enumerated above, eighty in number, as I have said” (De fide, 6).
Epiphanius does not stop with the image but draws a conclusion about inheritance from the same story of Abraham: “εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἀπὸ Χεττούρας τῆς παλλακίδος ἔσχεν ὁ Ἀβραὰμ τέκνα, οὐ συγκληρονόμα τυγχάνει τὰ τέκνα τῆς Χεττούρας τῷ Ἰσαάκ” – “although Abraham had children by Keturah the concubine, Keturah’s children are not co-heirs with Isaac” (De fide, 7). The saint then concludes without qualification: “αὗται αἱ αἱρέσεις παλλακίδες ὑπάρχουσι” – “these heresies are concubines” (De fide, 8).
Thus, in patristic language, the word “παλλακίς,” when applied to an ecclesial community, has a clear meaning: a community outside the Church, without the grace of the Holy Spirit, without the “dowry” of the Word, and without an inheritance. In other words, a heresy.
What is actually said in the Greek version
We can now reread the archon’s phrase through the eyes of a Greek church reader: “Ἡ Οὐκρανία δὲν εἶναι ἐκκλησιαστικὴ παλλακὶς τῆς Μόσχας” – “Ukraine is not Moscow’s ecclesiastical concubine.” The word “ἐκκλησιαστική” is especially important here because it removes any possibility of reading the phrase as purely political. It is specifically about the Church, and the Church is described with a word St. Epiphanius used for heresies.
One might object that the archon uses the word negatively, precisely to emphasize that Ukraine is not Moscow’s concubine. But the rhetorical force of the phrase lies in its description of an existing state of affairs that, in the author’s view, must be brought to an end.
The archon explicitly contrasts the “daughter of Constantinople” – that is, the OCU – with what, in his view, existed in Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. And that is none other than the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: millions of faithful, thousands of communities, and a hierarchy whose episcopal consecrations were and continue to be recognized throughout the Orthodox world, including by the Church of Constantinople. It follows that it is precisely the UOC’s connection with Moscow that is portrayed as an illicit union, while the UOC itself becomes a “concubine,” a “half-wife” with no right to an inheritance. In other words, it is placed in the same category as heresies.
A Greek reader is well acquainted with St. Epiphanius. His relics once rested in Salamis, and churches in Greece and Cyprus bear his name. When the saint wrote about the eighty concubines, he meant Gnostics, Manichaeans, Arians – those who had distorted the faith itself. It is impossible to imagine him placing in that category a Church that preserves the Orthodox confession, celebrates the same Mysteries, and commemorates the same saints.
Against his own Church
The most paradoxical thing about this image is that it contradicts the official position of the very Patriarchate of Constantinople the archon is defending.
The Phanar has never officially declared the UOC’s Mysteries invalid or its bishops devoid of grace. On the contrary, until 2018 Constantinople remained in full Eucharistic communion with the Metropolitan of Kyiv as a canonical hierarch, and hierarchs of Constantinople concelebrated with UOC bishops and priests.
Moreover, in a 1992 letter to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, Patriarch Bartholomew recognized the Russian Church’s decision to depose Filaret (Denysenko), and in 1997 he likewise recognized the anathema imposed on him. For almost three decades, all Orthodox Churches, including Constantinople, regarded the UOC as the only canonical Church in Ukraine. If the UOC was a “concubine” in the patristic sense – that is, a heretical community without grace – then for 332 years, from 1686 to 2018, and especially during the final decades of that period, Constantinople was in communion with a heresy. It is doubtful that anyone at the Phanar would accept such a conclusion. Yet that is precisely where the archon’s choice of word leads.
There is another contradiction as well. In the Tomos issued to the OCU on January 6, 2019, Constantinople used a different language, one traditional to the Church – the language of family, not concubinage. In the text of the Tomos published by the OCU, it is called a “spiritual daughter,” while all the Local Churches are called upon to recognize it “as a sister.” Mother, daughter, sister – this is the vocabulary the Church has used for centuries to describe relations between sees.
Byzantine polemicists called the Church of Rome a sister while insisting that she was not mistress over the others. Constantinople calls itself the Great Church and the Mother of Churches. One may dispute who is mother to whom and who is sister to whom, but there has never been room in the Church’s vocabulary for a “concubine” and her “keeper” when speaking of relations between canonical Churches.
Can the Church have a "lover"?
The archon’s metaphor is flawed at an even deeper level. In it, Constantinople appears as the lawful father or mother, Moscow as an illicit partner, and the Church of Kyiv as a woman living with someone other than the one with whom she ought to live. But in Orthodox ecclesiology, every Local Church has only one Bridegroom – Christ.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians: “For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). In the Epistle to the Ephesians, he unfolds the mystery of marriage as an image of the union between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:25–32). No see – Rome, Constantinople, or Moscow – can act as the “husband” of another Church. Relations among Local Churches are relations of kinship, canonical primacy, and, within certain limits, subordination – but not marriage. Thus, the very question of “whose wife or concubine she is” substitutes political categories for Christological ecclesiology.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, whose treatise On the Unity of the Church became a classic, wrote: “The bride of Christ cannot be made an adulteress; she is undefiled and chaste.” For St. Cyprian, this is a criterion: where the Church is, there can be no adultery, because the Bride is faithful to her one Bridegroom. If an assembly of the faithful is recognized as the Church, it cannot at the same time be a concubine; and if it is a concubine, then it is not the Church. There is no third option. That is why the word “παλλακίς,” when applied to an ecclesial community, can never be merely a vivid metaphor. It always contains a judgment about whether that community is the Church or not.
When Scripture speaks of harlotry
It may be objected that Scripture itself uses such imagery. The prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, for example, spoke of Israel as an unfaithful wife, while Revelation speaks of the “great harlot.” That is true. But we should look at who spoke this way, about whom, and why.
The prophets rebuked their own people, not someone else’s. They spoke on God’s behalf, having been called by Him. The reason for the rebuke was idolatry – apostasy from the faith – not administrative subordination to one center rather than another. And these words had one purpose: a call to repentance and the restoration of communion with God. The marriage of the prophet Hosea, whom God commanded to take a harlot as his wife, became an image of God’s inexhaustible love for a people who had betrayed Him. The image of the “harlot” in Scripture is the language of grief and love, not contempt.
But when this language was transferred into polemics among Christians, the results were grim. The Reformers of the 16th century identified the papacy with the “Whore of Babylon” in Revelation, and that metaphor shaped the tone of Catholic-Protestant relations for centuries. It persuaded no Catholics, but it made dialogue impossible. Orthodox tradition, despite the sharpness of its theological disputes with the Latins, generally avoided using such language about the Roman Church itself. The disputes concerned the Filioque, primacy, and unleavened bread, but polemicists remembered that they were speaking of a Church that had once been a sister.
Here, however, there is not even a dispute over the faith. No council and no Local Church, including the Church of Constantinople, has accused the UOC of heresy. The dispute concerns jurisdiction, the events of 1686, and Constantinople’s right to grant autocephaly. It is a canonical dispute, however bitter. And for canonical disputes, the Church has developed its own language – the language of canons, precedents, and conciliar decisions. By introducing into it a patristic designation for heresies, the author turns a dispute over jurisdiction into an accusation of apostasy from God.
Dowry and inheritance
The archon’s metaphor has another implication, one that sounds particularly grave in today’s Ukraine. In Scripture and in St. Epiphanius’ interpretation, a concubine is deprived of an inheritance. Her children are sent away with gifts, while the house, land, and property remain with the lawful heir.
This is precisely what is happening to the UOC. Under Law No. 3894-IX, which took effect on September 23, 2024, a process has been launched that could end with the liquidation of its communities. Churches built and maintained by its parishioners are transferred to another jurisdiction by decisions of local councils and are often seized by force, as happened in Cherkasy. Metropolitan Theodosiy, against whom the archon’s article is directed, has lost his cathedral and is on trial.
To his credit, the archon condemns violence. But the image he chose suggests to the reader that the UOC was never entitled to inherit anything in the first place. If it is a “concubine,” then the churches of the Kyiv Metropolia rightfully belong to the “lawful daughter,” while UOC believers are the children of Keturah, entitled at best to gifts before being sent away. The author may not intend this. But rhetoric that portrays the persecuted as illegitimate claimants to someone else’s inheritance makes what is happening psychologically easier for the reader to accept. First the language changes, then perception changes, and what yesterday would have been called persecution today begins to look like the restoration of justice.
Who gave the "daughter" away as a concubine?
If we nevertheless take the archon’s metaphor seriously, we must ask a question he himself did not: How did Constantinople’s daughter become Moscow’s concubine?
According to the Phanar’s own account, in 1686 Patriarch Dionysius IV granted Moscow the right to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv. Constantinople today describes this as a temporary concession, but the fact remains: the decision was made by the Ecumenical Throne. For more than three centuries afterward, Constantinople did not claim that the Kyiv See belonged to it, recognized the Metropolitans of Kyiv appointed by Moscow, and remained in communion with them. Even in the 1924 Tomos of the Polish Church, where the Phanar described the separation of the Kyiv Metropolia as uncanonical, it did not demand its return. Constantinople formally established its present interpretation of the events of 1686 by synodal decision only in October 2018. Throughout all that time, there was no talk of “concubines.”
And so, if we follow the archon’s metaphor, the Mother herself gave her daughter away as a concubine and silently tolerated it for three centuries, all the while continuing to celebrate the Eucharist together with the “lover.”
That image hardly does honor to the Ecumenical Throne. A metaphor, like a weapon, is dangerous to wield without knowing whom it will hit. This one strikes Constantinople first.
Is such language permissible?
So, can such imagery be used when speaking about the Kyiv Metropolia? The answer given by Church tradition is unequivocal, and there is no need to invent anything.
First, the word “παλλακίς” in ecclesiastical Greek is associated with heresies. Applying it to a community that no Local Church has declared heretical, and with which Constantinople remained in full communion until 2018, amounts to pronouncing a theological judgment the author has no authority to make. In the Church, such judgments are made by councils, not publicists.
Second, the image is ecclesiologically false. The Church has no “husband” or “lover” among ecclesiastical sees; she has one Bridegroom – Christ. Relations among Local Churches are described in terms of kinship – mother, daughter, sister – not marital or extramarital relationships.
Third, it violates the moral norms of Church polemics. When the Apostle Paul learned that he had spoken sharply to the high priest, he immediately apologized: “I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people” (Acts 23:5). The Apostolic Canons prescribe severe penalties for clergy who insult a bishop. An archon is not a cleric, and these rules do not apply to him directly. But an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate bears an honorary title associated with the See of Constantinople. And when a man bearing such a title calls an Orthodox metropolitan’s appeal “διπλοπροσωπίαν ἀνάξιον ἱεραρχικοῦ θρόνου” – duplicity unworthy of an episcopal throne – and likens his Church to a concubine, it casts a shadow on the See he represents.
Fourth, such imagery destroys the very possibility of reconciliation. In his article, the archon speaks of the need for the “restoration of communion.” But communion is restored with a sister, not with a concubine. Anyone who seeks peace will not choose words that make peace impossible.
What the Phanar can do
The author of the article is a private individual, albeit one who bears an honorary title. No one is claiming that his words express Patriarch Bartholomew’s position. That is precisely why it would be important for the Phanar, or those who speak on its behalf, to make clear that language likening the canonical Church in Ukraine to a concubine is unacceptable. Not because Constantinople must agree with the UOC in the jurisdictional dispute, but because such language contradicts the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s own position, the Tomos it itself issued, and the patristic tradition of which the Great Church rightly considers itself a guardian.
Instead of a conclusion
Words in the Church are never just words. The dispute over the Filioque began with a single word in the Creed, and for a thousand years Orthodox theologians have explained why that word should not have been inserted. The controversy surrounding Nestorius was a controversy over the word “Theotokos.” The Church has always understood that an imprecise word about God or the Church reflects an imprecise thought, and an imprecise thought sooner or later becomes an unrighteous deed.
Archon Ilias likely intended to say that the Kyiv Metropolia is historically connected with Constantinople. No one disputes that. But by choosing the word “παλλακίς” for the Greek reader, he said far more. In the language of St. Epiphanius, he repeated a judgment the saint applied to heresies and turned it against a Church with which Constantinople itself remained in full communion until 2018. Such words cannot be excused as mere polemical fervor; they can only be withdrawn. Doing so requires no concessions in the canonical dispute and no acknowledgment that one side or the other is right. It requires only what the Church has always expected of her children in times of controversy: to remember that the Bride of Christ must be spoken of with reverence, even when one disagrees with her.
