LICHUDI, GIOANNICIO AND SOFRONIO. - Byzantine monks, born in Cephalonia: Gioannicio in 1633, Sofronio in 1652. They studied in Venice, then at the University of Padua, where they obtained their degrees. In 1685 they were sent to Russia by the patriarch Dositheos, and they remained there until their deaths. The patriarch Gioannicio entrusted to them in 1685 the Academy of Moscow, which took the name of "Greco-Slavic Academy." Suspected in their doctrine and in their pro-Turkish politics, they were interned in the monastery of Novopasskij (1689); from there they were sent to the monastery of Ipatiev (1704) and two years later (1706) to that of Novgorod. Sofronio was recalled to Moscow in 1707, and Gioannicio in 1716, dying there on 7 August 1717; Sofronio died at Novopasskij in June 1730.
The L. represent in Moscow the Byzantine tradition, against the pro-Catholic tendency of Kiev and against the more or less veiled Protestantism of the school of Teofane Prokopovič. As soon as they arrived in Moscow they provoked the controversy over the epiclesis, against Simeon of Polock and Silvestro Medvedev. The controversy ended five years later with the victory of the brothers L. and the death sentence of Medvedev, beheaded in February 1691. To this struggle belongs the Greek work of the L. entitled "Ακος (1685-87), later translated into Slavonic and published in the Ctenija Obesit. Istor. Mosk. Univ. (1896, pp. 538-577). Against the Protestants they composed during the time of their exile (1698-1704) L'eresia luterana (edited by Cvetsev [Tsvetajev], Monum. Protest. in Russia, Moscow 1880). Against the Catholics they drafted in 1690 the "Dialogues between a professor and a Jesuit" with the title Mež duchvenyi ("Spiritual Sword"; printed at Kazan', 1866-67). Furthermore the L. are authors of numerous other literary and pedagogical works listed by their biographer Smentskovskii.
Bibliography3 works
Maurizio Gordillo