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Cyrillos Lucaris

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CYRILLOS LUCARIS (1572-1637), Greek prelate and theologian, was a native of Crete. In youth he travelled, studying at Venice and Padua, and at Geneva coming under the influence of the reformed faith as represented by Calvin. In 1602 he was elected patriarch of Alexandria, and in 1621 patriarch of Constantinople. He was the first great name in the Orthodox Eastern Church since 1453, and dominates its history in the 17th century. The great aim of his life was to reform the church on Calvinistic lines, and to this end he sent many young Greek theologians to the universities of Switzerland, Holland and England. In 1629 he published his famous Confessio, Calvinistic in doctrine, but as far as possible accommodated to the language and creeds of the Orthodox Church. It appeared the same year in two Latin editions, four French, one German and one English, and in the Eastern Church started a controversy which culminated in 1691 in the convocation by Dositheos, patriarch of Jerusalem, of a synod by which the Calvinistic doctrines were condemned. Lucaris was several times temporarily deposed and banished at the instigation of his orthodox opponents and of the Jesuits, who were his bitterest enemies. Finally, when Sultan Murad was about to set out for the Persian War, the patriarch was accused of a design to stir up the Cossacks, and to avoid trouble during his absence the sultan had him killed by the Janissaries (June 1637). His body was thrown into the sea, recovered and buried at a distance from the capital by his friends, and only

brought back to Constantinople after many years.

The orthodoxy of Lucaris himself continued to be a matter of debate in the Eastern Church, even Dositheos, in view of the reputation of the great patriarch, thinking it expedient to gloss over his heterodoxy in the interests of the Church.

See the article "Lukaris" by Ph. Meyer in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop. (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1902), which gives further authorities.