Great Church

Such was the view held within the Great Church of the third and fourth centuries, from which all our existing forms of Christianity can trace their descent.

We must remember that the Byzantine rite is basically the rite of the Great Church, and in a cathedral the size of Hagia Sophia to have done all this in the church itself just before the transfer of gifts would have taken an enormous amount of time.

1968, Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence: