SIRIGO, MELEZIO. — Byzantine orator and anti-Protestant polemicist, b. at Candia (Crete) in 1586, d. at Galata (Constantinople) on 13 Apr. 1664.
He began his studies at Candia under Melezio Blastos and continued them in Italy, where he studied logic at Venice and mathematics and physics at Padua. On returning to his homeland, he became hieromonk of the monastery of Angaratto; after a dispute with the Catholic governor of Candia, he fled to Alexandria in 1626, where he remained until 1629. Passing through Rhodes and Chios, he arrived in Constantinople the following year and was installed by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in the church of Chrysopēga in Galata. Involved in the continual vicissitudes of the Byzantine patriarch and aligned against the Philocalvinist party, he was sent into exile in 1645 to Iași, in 1648 to Slemish in Bithynia, and in 1649 to Cyprus, until the death of Parthenius II (1650) allowed him to return to Constantinople.
Sirigo’s literary activity ranged over sacred oratory, the composition of liturgical offices and hymns, and the translation of certain works. But his name is chiefly remembered for his role in the anti-Protestant controversy. On his first arrival in Constantinople he enjoyed the trust of Patriarch Cyril and of the Calvinist Antonio Leger. In 1638 he composed a refutation of Lucaris’s Confession: Ὀρθόδοξος ἀντίρρησις κατά τῶν κεφαλαίων καὶ ἐρωτήσεων τοῦ Κυρίλλου, published in 1690. In 1642 he represented the patriarch of Constantinople at the Conference of Iași with the delegates from Kiev. On that occasion he translated into Greek the Confession of Faith of Peter Mogila and corrected certain opinions, especially on Purgatory and on the moment of consecration, in which Mogila had concurred with Catholics. Sirigo’s Greek Confession became the most celebrated of the symbolical books of the Greek Church and was first printed in the Netherlands in 1667.