ANTIMO VII, Patriarch of COSTANTINOPOLI. - Born at Gianina around 1835, died in 1913. After occupying various sees, he was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople in Jan. 1895. He remained in office only until Sept. 1896. In Sept. 1895 he issued his Encyclical letter against that of Pope Leone XIII,
Praeclara gratulationis (20 June 1894). In it A. reviews the so-called “novelties of the Roman Church,” adding to the usual charges the dogmas recently defined of the Immaculate Conception and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.
BIBL.: The Encyclical first appeared in Russian in the journal Tserkovija Viedomosti, 6 (1894), pp. 1523-34, then in the original Greek in Ezekopuovskij Ἀλέξα, 15 (1895), p. 375 ff. On it and on the controversy it aroused in Catholic and separated Eastern circles V. gli articoli: La polemica religiosa in Oriente, in Bessarione, 1-3 (1896-98) and L. Duchesne, L'encyclique du Patriarche Autisme, in Eglises séparées, Parigi 1896, pp. 30-112. Maurizio Gordillo