METROFANE, CRITOPULOS. — A schismatic and Protestantizing theologian of the seventeenth century, b. in Berea of Macedonia in 1589. A monk of Mount Athos, he was sent abroad by Cirillo Lucaris for his education, always among Protestants: he then spent six years in England (1617–24), already a priest and in close relations with the Anglicans, another three in Germany (1624–1627), and thereafter in Switzerland with Calvinist pastors. Important documents from the Geneva Archive (E. Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique du XVIe siècle, V, Paris 1903, pp. 203, 206–208) show him, under the inspiration of Lucaris, attempting the union of the Eastern Churches with the Calvinists. He then went to Alexandria, where he is found first as grand archimandrite, then as bishop of Memphis, and finally, in 1636, as patriarch. And, strangely enough, in this capacity he signed at the Synod of Constantinople in 1638 the condemnation of Lucaris, his own initiator into Calvinism. He died in Wallachia in the first months of 1639.
His works are numerous, but only one has remained famous: the Ὁμολογία τῆς ἀνατολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας τῆς καθολικῆς, published in all the collections of the Eastern Church’s symbolic books. The original is preserved in the Wolfenbüttel Library, ms. 1048. This Confession of M., however, was neither accepted by everyone nor ever officially approved. And while, on the one hand, it almost always represents the doctrine of the «Orthodox» Church fairly well, on the other, in questions concerning the Sacraments, the inspirations and canon of Scripture, and the conception of the Church, it has a distinctly Calvinist character. M. was the first to deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the Byzantine Church (art. 17 of the Ὁμολογία).