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 earned their degrees. In 1685 they were sent to Russia by Patriarch Dositheus, where they remained until their deaths. In 1685, Patriarch Joachim entrusted them with the Academy of Moscow, which took the name "Greek-Slavic Academy." Suspected of heretical doctrine and pro-Turkish politics, they were confined to the Novopasskij monastery in 1689; from there they were transferred to the Ipatiev monastery in 1704 and two years later (1706) to that of Novgorod. Sofronio was recalled to Moscow in 1707, and Gioannicio in 1716, dying there on August 7, 1717; Sofronio died at Novopasskij in June 1730.
The Lichudis represented the Byzantine tradition in Moscow, opposing the pro-Catholic tendencies of Kiev and the more or less veiled Protestantism of Theophan Prokopovich’s school. Upon their arrival in Moscow, they provoked a controversy over the epiclesis against Simeon of Polotsk and Sylvester Medvedev. The controversy ended five years later with the victory of the Lichudi brothers and the condemnation to death of Medvedev, who was beheaded in February 1691. The Greek work by the Lichudis, titled *Axos* (1685–87), which was later translated into Slavonic and published in *Ctenija Obsest. Istor. Mosk. Univ.* (1896, pp. 538–577), belongs to this dispute. During their exile (1698–1704), they composed *L’eresia luterana* (*The Lutheran Heresy*, edited by Tsvetaev in *Monum. Protest. in Russia*, Moscow 1880) against the Protestants. Against Catholics, they wrote in 1690 the *Dialoghi tra un professore ed un gesuita* (*Dialogues between a Professor and a Jesuit*), published under the title *Mede duchewnyi* (*Spiritual Sword*; printed in Kazan, 1866–67). The Lichudis are also authors of numerous other literary and pedagogical works, listed by their biographer Smentskovskii.