GERMANUS II, Patriarch of NICAEA-CONSTANTINOPLE. - Born at Anaplusa on the Bosporus c. 1175, deacon of Hagia Sophia, later a monk in Asia Minor after 1204, reluctantly elected patriarch at the request of Emperor John Vatatzes and ordained at the end of June 1222, died on his throne at Nicaea (1240), having received the monastic habit in extremis under the name of George; after his death he enjoyed a reputation as a wonderworker and was the object of liturgical acclamations, if not of cult, on the part of individual Churches (e.g., the Greek).
His administration had to resolve four serious problems: the struggle against the autonomist tendencies of the European episcopate supported by the despots of Epirus, later emperors of Thessalonica; the regulation of the status of the Bulgarian Church, whose independence he sanctioned by establishing the patriarchate of Tirnovo (spring 1235); attempts at rapprochement with Rome that came to nothing (1232-34); negotiations, continued by his successors, for the union of the Armenian Church of Cilicia with the Byzantine (1239-40). Within the Church, moreover, the long pontificate of Germanus allowed the reorganization and reaffirmation of the ecumenical see within its Anatolian frontiers and the prevalence of the principles of patriarchal continuity.
His writings are as varied as they are numerous. Apart from the acts of the chancery, which do not necessarily come from his pen and whose critical inventory is found in fasc. IV of the registers of the acts of the patriarchs of Constantinople, the following may be distinguished: 1) a series of letters that may be attributed to him and which fall into the preceding category; 2) polemical treatises strongly anti-Latin; 3) a few religious works whose authenticity is not always certain; 4) a long series of discourses, homilies and catecheses preserved for the most part in the excellent codex Paris Coislin Greek 278. Many other works attributed to Germanus in fact belong to his celebrated namesake and predecessor, Germanus I. Critical work on this matter is still lacking.