PARASTRON (BARASTRON), GIOVANNI. — Minorite, a Greek citizen of Constantinople, born around the middle of the 13th century, died in Constantinople in 1275. Learned in theology and in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, he rendered eminent services to the cause of the Union before, after, and during the Second Council of Lyons.
The emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos had already sent P. to Pope Gregory X in 1272 for negotiations concerning the Union; he arrived in Italy after 1 April 1272, as appears from the Pope’s letter to the Emperor written on 24 October 1272. After 29 October 1272 (the date of another papal letter to the nuncios assigned to the Emperor), P. returned to Constantinople in the company of the Pope’s nuncios, Girolamo d’Ascoli and his companions. P. again went to the West, specifically to Lyons, as companion of the Franciscan nuncios and the Greek legates, and arrived in that city before the fourth session of the Council (24 June 1274). At the proclamation of the Union, on 29 June 1274, the Greek legates sang the Constantinopolitan Creed with the Filioque during the Pope’s solemn Mass in Greek, together with P. and the Dominican Guglielmo Moerbeke.
After the Council the Pope charged P. with returning to Constantinople, emphasizing that P. had worked for this cause of the Union for a long time and successfully («diu et utiliter»). The Union was proclaimed at Constantinople in January 1275; and the Catholic patriarch of the Greek rite, Giovanni Bekkos, was elected on 26 May 1275. In the same year the zealous apostle of the Union died.