DEMETRIO (DIMITRI), TUPTALO. - Dissident bishop of Rostov, b. in 1651, d. in 1709, declared a saint by the Russian dissident Church in 1757. Of Ukrainian origin, he was a pupil of the college of Kiev. He received the priesthood from the bishop of Černigov, Lazaro Baranovič. Even before the patriarch of Moscow, he upheld the doctrine of his school concerning the moment of eucharistic transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption of Mary. In the time of Stefano Javorskij he came to Russia, and only then was he elected first metropolitan of Siberia (1701) and then of Rostov (1702).
D. wrote a book against the ‘Old Believers’; his masterpiece is the «menci», that is, the lives of the saints for each month. Since the middle of the 16th century this was the first reworking, officially published by the Holy Synod in 1759. The school founded at Rostov by D. disappeared after his death.
Alberto M. Ammann