SIRIGO, MELEZIO. — Byzantine orator and anti-Protestant polemicist, born in Candia (Crete) in 1586, died in Galata (Constantinople) on 13 April 1664.
He began his studies in Candia under Melezio Blastos and continued them in Italy, where he studied logic in Venice and mathematics and physics in Padua. Returning to his homeland, he became a hieromonk of the monastery of Angarathos; after entering into conflict with the Catholic governor of Candia, he fled to Alexandria in 1626, remaining there until 1629. Passing through Rhodes and Chios, he arrived in Constantinople the following year and was installed by Patriarch Cirillo Lucaris in the church of Crisoppe in Galata. Involved in the continual vicissitudes of the Byzantine patriarchate and having taken a stand against the pro-Calvinist party, he was sent into exile in 1645 to Jași, in 1648 to Shenlek in Bithynia, and in 1649 to Cyprus, until the death of Partenio II (1650) enabled him to return to Constantinople.
S.’s literary activity took place in the fields of sacred oratory, the composition of liturgical offices and hymns, and the translation of several works. His name, however, is chiefly remembered for the part he played in the anti-Protestant controversy. S., who on his first arrival in Constantinople enjoyed the confidence of Patriarch Cirillo and of the Calvinist Antonio Leger, composed in 1638 a refutation of the Confession of Lucaris: Ὀρθόδοξος ἀντίρρησις κατὰ τῶν κεφαλαίων καὶ ἐρωτήσεων τοῦ Κυρίλλου, published in 1690. In 1642 he represented the patriarchate of Constantinople at the Conference of Jași with the delegates from Kiev. On this occasion he translated into Greek the Confession of Faith of Pietro Moghila, and corrected several opinions in it, especially concerning Purgatory and the moment of consecration, on which Moghila agreed with the Catholics. S.’s Greek Confession became the most celebrated of the symbolic books of the Greek Church and was printed for the first time in Holland in 1667.
BBL.: E. Legrand, Bibliographie Hellénique, XVII sec., vol. II, Paris 1804, pp. 458–73; C. Erbiceanu, Scrierea lui Meletii Sirig contra Cahuilor și a lui Ciril Lucaris, in Biserica Ortodoxă Română, 18 (1804–95), pp. 6–27; G. Galitakis, Βιογραφικὸν σχεδίασμα παρὶ τοῦ Μελετίου Εὐρίου, in Ἐκκλησιαστικὸς Φέρος, 24 (1925), pp. 3–132 (the article was written in 1908); J. Pasquière, Meletios Syrigos. Sa vie et ses oeuvres in Echos d'Orient, 11 (1908); 12 (1909), V. indice; K. Dyobuniotis, Μελέτιος Σύριγος, Athens 1914; O. Bălăra, De Confessione orthodoxa Petri Mobiliae, Frankfurt 1948, pp. 41–43, 87–102. Maurizio Gordillo