GERMANO II, patriarch of NICEA-CONSTANTINOPLE. — Born at Anaplusa on the Bosporus around 1175, he was a deacon of Hagia Sophia, then became a monk in Asia Minor after 1204; elected against his will as patriarch at the request of the emperor Giovanni Vataces and ordained at the end of June 1222, he died on his throne at Nicea (1240), after receiving in extremis the habit under the name Giorgio. After his death he enjoyed a reputation as a wonderworker and was the object of liturgical acclamations, if not of veneration, on the part of individual Churches (for example, the Greek Church).
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 G. sanctioned by establishing there the patriarchate of Tirnovo (spring 1235); attempts at rapprochement with Rome, which proved unsuccessful (1232–34); and negotiations, continued by his successors, for the union of the Armenian Church of Cilicia with the Byzantine Church (1239–40). Internally, moreover, G.’s long pontificate made it possible to reorganize and reaffirm the ecumenical throne within its Anatolian frontiers and to assert the principles of patriarchal continuity.
G.’s writings are as varied as they are numerous. In addition to the chancery acts, which do not necessarily come from his pen and whose critical inventory is found in fascicle IV of the registers of the acts of the patriarchs of Constantinople, the following may be distinguished: 1) a series of letters that can be attributed to him and that belong to the preceding category; 2) strongly anti-Latin polemical treatises; 3) religious poems whose authenticity is not always certain; 4) a long series of discourses, homilies, and catecheses preserved for the most part in the valuable Paris Coislin Greek manuscript 278. Many other works attributed to G., however, belong to his celebrated namesake and predecessor G. I. A critical study on this matter is still lacking.