MARGUNIOS, MASSIMO. - A sixteenth-century “theologian and orthodox believer.” Born in Candia (Crete) in 1549, he died in Venice on 1 July 1602, prematurely snatched from scholarship. He studied at Padua, but did not obtain a degree in order not to have to make a profession of Catholic faith.
This uncertainty of his between the Roman faith and that of the schismatics subsequently gave rise, in his very numerous treatises, to the ever intermediate theories of Giorgio Scholarios on the Trinity and divine Providence. His effort to reconcile the differing viewpoints of the Latin and Greek Fathers is nevertheless of interest. M. was accused of heresy by Gabriele Severo as tending toward Catholicism, but the Holy Synod of Constantinople considered him “orthodox.” Geremia II consecrated him bishop of Citerea, a see which he never reached. Some of M.’s works have been published; many others remain unpublished in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Moscow, and Bucharest.