BRYENNIOS. - Two Orthodox ecclesiastics of this name.
IÖSEPH, famous Byzantine controversialist, who lived between 1350 and 1439, little known in the West in the past. After preaching Greek Orthodoxy in Crete and teaching from 1395 in the Monastery of Studios, in 1404 he was appointed court preacher in Constantinople. In 1416 and 1418 he was sent to the West to negotiate union, where he displayed great activity against the Latin Church. Falling into disfavour, he withdrew from public life. His works were published in Leipzig (1468-84), in 3 vols., by Eugenio Bulgaris.
Among his writings are 21 discourses on the Most Holy Trinity delivered between 1420 and 1430, and the conference held in Candia on the procession of the Holy Spirit.
PHILOTHEOS, ecclesiastical writer, b. in Constantinople in 1833, d. in 1914. He studied in Leipzig, Berlin and Munich; taught Church history and biblical exegesis at Chalki from 1861; was director of the patriarchal school in Constantinople from 1867, metropolitan of Serres (Macedonia) in 1875 and of Nicomedia in 1877. In 1875 he represented his Church at the conference of Old Catholics (v.) in Bonn.
His greatest renown comes from having discovered in a parchment codex of 1056, in the library of the Hospice of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople (now in the library of the patriarchate of Jerusalem), the text of the First Epistle of Clement of Rome, published in 1875, and especially of the Didache, published in 1883 (v. DIDACHÉ).