APOCAUCO, GIOVANNI

APOCAUCO, GIOVANNI. – Metropolitan of Naupaktos (12th–13th centuries). Educated in Constantinople, he was a deacon (ca. 1175–87) under his uncle Manasse, metropolitan of Naupaktos. At the emergence (ca. 1204) of the Despotate of Epirus (v. ALBANI), we find him having succeeded his uncle in that dignity, which held special importance in the region, since all the episcopal sees of the Byzantine rite in the Epirote and southern Albanian area of the despotate depended upon II. Thus, ACCIDIA (v.) and the metropolitan of Dyrrachium, he formed the triad of the great hierarchs of this kind of autocephalous Church; indeed, although Acrida took precedence, A. was entrusted with presiding (1216–17) over the Synod that elected Demetrios Komatianos to that see, over the one that elected (1219) the bishop of Corcyra, and over that of Arta, in which (between 1225 and 1230) the Church of the Empire of Thessalonica, founded by the former despot of Epirus, Theodore Angelos, defended its autocephaly against the Constantinopolitan patriarchate of Nicaea. In fact, although he was at times persecuted by dynasts of the Angelos family, A. always displayed toward the civil power the characteristic deference of the Eastern hierarchy, wavering among Rome, Nicaea, and autocephaly according to the policies that political circumstances suggested to the Angeloi. Having withdrawn to monastic life ca. 1230, he died before 1233. His numerous acts have some importance among the sources of Eastern canon law, even greater importance for the history of Albanian legal customs, and, in various cases, decisive importance for the history of the despotate. He was also a poet, and some of his epigrams have been preserved.