DOSITHEUS, Saint. - Monk of Palestine, of the cenobium of St. Siridius near Gaza, died around 530, attended by St. Barsanuphius. The famous master of him, St. Dorotheus, wrote his eulogy (Institut, I, 15; PG 88, 1636-37). From it one learns the manner in which this young man, educated in a comfortable life and almost without religious instruction, arrived, in the brief course of five years, at the highest sanctity, not through the rigors of penance but through simplicity in obeying and through the abnegation of his own will.
Bibliography
Emanuele Candal
DOSITEO. - Dissident Greek patriarch of Jerusalem from 1669 to 1707, born at Arakhovo in the Peloponnese on 31 May 1641. He was ordained deacon, contrary to the canons, at barely eleven years of age, and was only 28 years old when he was named patriarch of Jerusalem, succeeding the resigning Nectarius, who had made him metropolitan of Caesarea in 1666.
The long patriarchate of D. was spent in soliciting alms to restore the finances of the Greek confraternity of the Holy Sepulchre; in polemicizing vigorously with the Protestants and especially with the Catholics; in developing the influence of Hellenism in the East, and particularly in Russia, where he sought to hinder Latin culture.
In 1680 he founded at Jassy a Greek printing press at the expense of the patriarchate of Jerusalem, with the aim of publishing vast collections of anti-Latin polemical writings, composed by the ancient Byzantines and by modern Greeks.
The principal of these collections have the following titles: Τόμος καταλλαγής ("Tome of Reconciliation"), Jassy 1692; Τόμος ἀγάπης ("Tome of Charity"), ibid. 1698; Τόμος χαρές ("Tome of Joy"), Rimmie 1705. They had been preceded by the edition of the work of his predecessor Nectarius on the primacy of the pope: Περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ πάπα, Jassy 1682. D. also published De haeresibus by Symeon of Thessalonica, ibid. 1685; the Manual against the schism of the papists by Maximus of the Peloponnese, Bucharest 1690; the great work of Meletius Syrigos Against the Calvinist chapters of Cyril Lucaris, ibid. 1690, to which he added an Ἐγχειρίδιον ἔλεγχον τὴν καλβινικὴν φρενοβλάβειαν of his own composition, in which the question of the Eucharist is chiefly agitated.
Besides this pamphlet he left a great Ἱστορία περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις πατριαρχευσάντων, Bucharest 1715, published after his death by his nephew and successor Chrysanthos Notaras, who divided it into 12 books, whence the name Δωδεκάβιβλος by which it is often cited.
The Acts of the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 and the Profession of faith in 18 articles and 4 questions that accompanies them are what D. has left that is best from the theological point of view. The whole published under the title: Ἀσπίς τῆς ὀρθοδοξίας, Paris 1676, is directed against the Calvinist errors contained in the profession of faith of Cyril Lucaris (v.).
D. strives to prove, without succeeding, that the Calvinist Confession of faith that goes under the name of Lucaris is not authentic. The proofs he adduces demonstrate simply that Lucaris was not always a Calvinist, or that at certain moments of his life he concealed his heretical opinions.
As for the Confession of faith of D. himself, it is notable for its clarity and concision and stands opposed point by point to that of Lucaris. It is almost entirely in conformity with Catholic doctrine, especially on the priesthood, the Eucharist, Purgatory and the biblical canon.
In 1723 it was sent to the Russian synod, shortly before created by Peter the Great, by the four patriarchs of the East, as the authentic expression of "orthodoxy." For this reason it is called by the Russians the Letter of the Patriarchs.
Some Greek and Russian theologians have wished to make of this document a symbolic book properly so called of the Greek-Russian Church and to place it on the level of the definitions of the ecumenical councils. But in our days such an opinion is increasingly abandoned and recent theologians do not scruple to contradict the said confession. Philaret, metropolitan of Moscow, made corrections and deletions in it in the Russian and Greek editions published in Russia in 1838-40. They find it contaminated by Latinisms.
Bibliography5 works
Martino Jugie