LICHUDI, GIOANNICIO and SOFRONIO. — Byzantine monks, born in Cephalonia: Gioannicio in 1633, Sofronio in 1652. They studied in Venice and then at the University of Padua, where they obtained their degrees. In 1685 they were sent to Russia by Patriarch Dositeo, and remained there until their deaths. In 1685 Patriarch Gioannicio entrusted them with the Moscow Academy, which took the name “Greek-Slavonic Academy.” Suspected on account of their doctrine and their pro-Turkish politics, they were interned in the Novopasskij Monastery (1689); from there they were sent to the Ipatiev Monastery (1704), and two years later (1706) to that of Novgorod. Sofronio was recalled to Moscow in 1707, and Gioannicio in 1716; he died there on 7 August 1717. Sofronio died at Novopasskij in June 1730.
The L. represent the Byzantine tradition in Moscow, in opposition to Kiev’s pro-Catholic tendency and to the more or less concealed Protestantism of Teofane Prokopovič’s school. As soon as they arrived in Moscow, they sparked the controversy concerning the epiclesis, against Simeone di Polock and Silvestro Medvedev. The controversy ended five years later with the victory of the L. brothers and the death sentence imposed on Medvedev, who was beheaded in February 1691. To this struggle belongs the L.’s Greek work 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 period of their exile (1698–1704), The Lutheran Heresy (edited by Cvetsev [Tsvetajev], Monum. Protest. in Russia, Moscow 1880). Against the Catholics, in 1690 they drafted the “Dialogues between a professor and a Jesuit,” under the title Mež duchvenyi (“Spiritual Sword”; printed at Kazan', 1866–67). The L. were also the authors of numerous other literary and pedagogical works listed by their biographer Smentskovskii.