Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople. — Born in Candia in the island of Crete, 13 Nov. 1572; killed in Constantinople, 27 June 1638.
I. LIFE
C. led a very stormy life. He studied in Venice and Padua; after becoming a monk he changed his name from Constantine to C. After completing his studies he went to Constantinople at the invitation of his protector, Meletius Pegas, Patriarch of Alexandria. He was already a priest in 1594. In 1595 he was promoted to patriarchal syncellus of Alexandria and the following year was sent to Poland; in 1596 he became rector of the Academy of Vilna and, in agreement with Prince Constantine of Ostrog, he used all his influence to oppose the union of the Ruthenians of Poland with Rome, which had been decided at the Synod of Brest-Litovsk (1595). To this end he approved the political agreement concluded by Prince Ostrogski with the Protestants in 1599 and was accused of Calvinism. In 1601 he left Poland, made a tour of his native land and returned to Egypt, where Meletius Pegas died shortly afterwards (1602). He was immediately designated to succeed him, although he was barely thirty years old: the age required by canon law.He remained Patriarch of Alexandria until
1620. There was, however, a brief interruption of one month (Jan
Feb. 1612), during which he occupied the ecumenical see of Constantinople at the time of the deposition of Neophytus II. This was his first patriarchate in Constantinople, followed by six others between the years 1620 and 1638.This series of depositions and reinstatements is explained by the Turkish custom of awarding the patriarchal throne to the prelate who offered the most money and by a kind of secret diplomatic struggle for religious ends in which the ambassadors of the Catholic and Protestant courts at the Sublime Porte engaged. On one side were the ambassadors of France, Austria and Venice; on the other, those of England and Holland. During his Alexandrian patriarchate, and even before, C., while secretly abandoning Greek Orthodoxy, had assimilated Calvinist doctrines which he intended to introduce into the Greek Church, and as early as 1629 a brief Latin confession of faith appeared in Geneva under his name, compiled by the Dutch ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Cercolano van Haga, containing the principal dogmas of Calvin. From that time onwards he had a current account with the English and Dutch ambassadors, who financed his candidature at every new election. Opposed to the Calvinist candidate by the Catholic ambassadors was their own candidate, who was none other than the scarcely commendable Cyril of Berrhoea. The latter had secretly made a profession of Catholic faith. On 27 June 1638 he had his rival strangled by the Turks and suffered a similar fate himself the following year.
C.’s attempt to convert the Greek Church to Calvinism failed completely. The clearest result of these struggles was to strengthen the influence of Catholic theology among the dissident Greeks and to provide our theologians with new weapons to combat the heresies of the Protestants, which several Eastern councils condemned after C.’s death.
II. WORKS AND DOCTRINES
The principal writing of C. is without doubt his Confession of Faith, in 18 articles, composed by himself in Latin and first printed in 1629; he then translated it into Greek (1631) and published it in Geneva in 1633, together with the original Latin text.The original Greek manuscript, written in his own hand, is preserved in Geneva. Most Greeks have always denied that this document was the work of C. But he himself declares his Calvinist doctrine, especially in the letter written in 1634 to his friend, Antonio Léger, chaplain of the Dutch embassy in Constantinople.
In his other published and unpublished works, especially in the four collections of homilies which Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, used at the Council of Jerusalem in 1672 to try to prove that C. was not the author of the Confession published under his name, and in the apology addressed to the “Orthodox” in the parish of the Virgin at Leontopolis, he expresses himself as a “Greek Orthodox,” rather favourably disposed towards Catholic doctrines: he clearly affirms the Immaculate Conception. There are thus two Cyrils: the Calvinist Cyril and the “Orthodox” Cyril, according as he addresses himself to his Calvinist friends or to his compatriots, indeed to the Latins.
Among his other writings may be noted: a pamphlet Against the Jews, published in Constantinople in 1627; Dialogue Against the Jesuits of Galata, edited by Papadopulos-Kérameus (St. Petersburg 1891, pp. 220–230); treatises on Penance, the Incarnation, the virtues and vices, still unpublished; the four collections of homilies mentioned above, all unpublished except for the passages cited by the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672. C. gave his approval to the first translation of the New Testament into modern Greek, executed by Maximos of Gallipoli (1st ed. in Geneva in 1638 with the original text). He sent to Charles I, King of England, the famous Codex Alexandrinus of the Bible, which dates from the 5th century.