Chapter 6. The Church and the Churches: The Calvinist Patriarch

On November 13, 1572, in Candia in Crete, the wife of the prosperous butcher Stephen Lokaris gave birth to a son, whom his parents gave the name Constantine.404 He was a brilliant, precocious boy, and his father decided to give him a good education. The Venetian police in Crete were hostile to the Orthodox Church, which, in their opinion, was inclined to rebellion.405 As a result, there were only a few Greek schools there. But boys from Crete were easily allowed to go to Venice. Therefore, Constantine's father sent him at the age of twelve to Venice, to a school at the Greek church. His mentor was Maximus Margunius, a man of an independent way of thinking, who had already been in trouble with the Orthodox authorities for suspicion of pro-Latin sympathies, and later met with difficulties with the Inquisition for his anti-Latin position. He had recently been appointed bishop of Kythira, but many years elapsed before the Venetian authorities allowed him to go to his see; and during this time he continued to teach at school.406 Constantine made a great impression on him, and he paid special attention to him. Four years later, Stephen Lukaris took his son back to Crete, possibly because of financial difficulties. There the boy spent a year, attending the classes of the learned monk Meletius Vlastos at the monastery of St. Catherine, on the outskirts of Candia; from there he wrote many letters to Margunius. He found it difficult to obtain books, except those which Margunius had left in his old house—the works of Plutarch, one of Aristotle's books (we do not know which one), the speeches of Demosthenes, two volumes of Eusebius' History, two books of Cicero, Flaminius' Logic, and a Latin dictionary.407 Local sources add that because of the crisis of the family finances, his mother worked as a laundress, and he himself was assigned to a fisherman and had to go fishing from time to time. One of these voyages took him to Alexandria, where he called on his relative, Meletius Pigasus, the secretary of the Patriarch of Alexandria. Tradition diverges here; it is more likely that he met Meletius while he was visiting his family in Crete.408

In 1589 Constantine Lucaris returned to Italy and was enrolled as a student at the University of Padua, perhaps thanks to Margunius, who took paternal care of him, scolded him when he neglected his studies, or bought himself an expensive sword to wear. Padua was now the birthplace of neo-Aristotelianism. In order to counterbalance the influence of this materialistic philosophy, Margunius sent Constantine topics for essays on the more spiritual aspects of Greek thought and prepared him for examinations.409 Probably during the holidays the young man traveled. It is said that he visited Germany; it is possible that he also visited Geneva, where there was a small Greek colony founded by a professor from Crete of Italian origin, Francis Portus, who became a Calvinist.410

In 1595, he brilliantly passed the exams and received the degree of laureate. He must have already decided to take the priesthood then, because it provided the best career for a young man who did not feel inclined to trade or medicine. This decision was approved by a letter of encouragement from his cousin Meletius Pigas, who in 1590 was elected to the Patriarchal throne of Alexandria.411

The duties of the Patriarch of Alexandria were not burdensome. Most Egyptian Christians belonged to the Coptic Church; His flock consisted mainly of visiting Greek merchants. Patriarch Meletios thus spent most of his time in Constantinople, where he had direct access to the Sublime Porte. He was able to help his overworked fellow patriarch by visiting Orthodox communities outside the Ottoman Empire. In 1595, when Lukaris left Padua, Meletius lived in Constantinople, performing the function of locum tenens of the patriarch, since at that time the throne was vacant. It was to Constantinople that Lukaris went in order to receive deacon and priestly ordinations from his cousin. At the same time as his consecration, which probably took place at the end of 1595, he took monastic vows with the name Cyril.412

The ecclesiastical authorities of Constantinople at that time were preoccupied with the fate of Orthodoxy in Poland. In recent years, the Polish kingdom had spread eastward, and now it held the western Russian lands: most of Ukraine, where the population was exclusively Orthodox; in Galicia and Lithuania, which were officially annexed to Poland in 1569, Orthodox communities existed for a long time. In Poland, in addition, there were many Lutherans and Calvinists. King Stephen Batory, thanks to whom these conquests were accomplished, was a tolerant Catholic; And although he encouraged the Jesuits in their work among the Orthodox population, he granted the Orthodox and Lutheran bishops the same rights that the Catholics enjoyed – to sit in the Polish Senate. Stephen's successor, Sigismund III, elected in 1587, belonged to the Catholic branch of the Swedish Vasa dynasty. His mother, the Lithuanian heiress Catherine Jagiellonia, was a zealous Catholic; and Sigismund himself lost the Swedish throne because of his religious affiliation. Soon Sigismund took measures against both Protestants and Orthodox. He issued a decree that all public offices should be reserved for Catholics; And he had about 20,000 of them. He deprived non-Catholic bishops of their seats in the Senate. He was particularly irritated by the trip of Patriarch Jeremias II through Ukraine on his way back from Moscow in 1588, and he ordered the Jesuits to intensify their propaganda among all Orthodox subjects. They lured into their ranks Michael, Metropolitan of Vilna, and Ignatius, Bishop of Vladimir, with the help of whom the king was able in 1595 to convene a council of Polish Orthodox bishops in Brest-Litovsk to discuss their subordination to Rome, according to the direction set by the Florentine Union. Few bishops attended the council, and only slightly more than half of them voted in favor of the primacy of the pope, provided that the Orthodox retained their worship, communion under both forms for the laity, marriages of the white clergy, and the Julian calendar. When the conditions were presented to Rome, they were accepted by Pope Clement VIII, and on December 23, 1595, the creation of the Polish Uniate Orthodox Church was proclaimed. Then a second council was convened in Brest-Litovsk in 1596, which confirmed this resolution.413

When this news was received in Constantinople, they decided to send their representatives to the council. The Patriarch of Constantinople appointed a certain Nicephorus Kantakouzenos as exarch, or patriarchal representative, and Meletius appointed Cyril Loukaris. Both young priests went to Poland, having with them three letters on dogmatic questions, compiled by Meletius in defense of the faithful.

The Orthodox Poles were horrified by the first council. Their bishops hastened to Brest to express their protest, and with them a number of prominent laymen, at the head of whom was Prince Konstantin Vasilyevich of Ostrog, the governor of Kiev, a man of more than a hundred years of age, who many years before had set up the first Slavonic printing press for the printing of liturgical books.414 The opposition under his leadership was very solid, as it turned out a few years later. when, during the wars of Sigismund with the Turks, the Ukrainian Cossacks, who revered him, refused to fight for the king. But Sigismund stubbornly stood his ground. His representative, Prince Radziwill, refused to admit the bishops from the opposition to the Church of Our Lady, where the council was held and the elegant epistle of the pope was read, accompanied by the Te Deum. The non-aligned bishops were forced to gather in a private house nearby. Only there could Pigas's letters on dogmatic questions be read.415

This was followed by a series of measures against the Orthodox, who refused to join the Uniate Church. Only Uniates, including the Metropolitan of Kiev, were appointed bishops, although Uniate candidates never risked living there. The revenues of the non-aligned sees were confiscated, and the bishops who headed them were deprived of their privileges, although there was no active persecution of the ordinary clergy. Kirill and his friend decided to stay in Poland. He saw that the Orthodox, both priests and laity, were at a disadvantage because of their lack of education. He went to Vilna, where there was an Orthodox school, transformed it and lived there himself for twenty months. Then he moved to Lviv at the request of the Galician Orthodox priest Gabriel Dorotheidis and founded a school there according to the same principles. In the meantime, however, the King's agents watched his actions with suspicion. At the beginning of 1598, Cyril and Nikephoros Kantakouzenos were declared Turkish spies. Nicephorus was arrested by Sigismund's police and immediately executed. Cyril had the opportunity to flee to Ostrog, where the prince gave him refuge until he left the country. By August 1598 he was already in Constantinople; He spent Christmas with his family in Crete.416

During his stay in Vilna, Cyril met many Lutheran theologians; they discussed the possibility of uniting the Churches. The Lutherans proposed several formulations on the basis of which mutual communion could take place, and Cyril and his Orthodox friends promised, not without hesitation, to accept them, on condition that they would be approved by the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria. Neither Matthew II of Constantinople nor Meletius were enthusiastic about the proposals, and would not have given the matter a go. But in 1599 Sigismund issued a decree prohibiting foreigners from entering and leaving the country without his permission, and wrote a letter to Meletius urging him to cease his obstinacy and submit to Rome. In response, Meletius composed an epistle, very politely asking permission to send to Poland as many spiritual leaders as the Orthodox might need; he handed the letter to Cyril with an accompanying paper, entrusting it to the king's mercy. At the same time, he handed Cyril a letter addressed to Lutheran theologians, in which he proposed to discuss questions of mutual political interests; theological points were avoided in it. When Cyril arrived in Poland, Sigismund received him coldly, but allowed him to remain in the country. Cyril, however, did not give the letter to the Lutherans, fearing that he would be accused of secret contacts with them.417

On his second visit, Kirill spent a whole year in Poland, mainly in the school he founded in Lviv. 17 years later, in one of his letters, the Jesuit Peter Skarga says that in January 1601 Cyril wrote to the Catholic Bishop of Lviv, Dimitri Sokolovsky, in which he expressed deep respect for the throne of St. Peter, as well as the hope that the Churches would soon unite. This letter, which was used by the Jesuits to undermine his position among the Orthodox, even if it was genuine, served the Jesuits for their purposes. Indeed, it is possible that Cyril was trying to reach some understanding with the Catholic authorities for the benefit of his school, and he may have expressed the absolutely Orthodox view that the unification of the Churches is desirable, and that the bishop of Rome will be honored with the highest honors, if only he renounces his errors. But the supposition that he bought his personal safety by becoming a secret Catholic is quite out of the question, if we bear in mind his very obstinate and direct character.

In the spring of 1601, Cyril received a letter from Meletius Pigas, who had returned to Egypt, and offered him the position of abbot in one of the Egyptian monasteries and in fact promised him to inherit the Patriarchal Throne of Alexandria.419 He therefore left Poland and, after a short stay in Moldavia, where the Patriarchate owned large estates, arrived in Alexandria on September 11. Two days later, Pigas died, and the Synod of Alexandria elected Cyril patriarch. The Greek Catholic Leo Allatius later published a rumor that Cyril had bought the patriarchate with money collected in Moldavia, bribing the bishops who were going to elect a certain Gerasimus Spartaliot. This is hardly so, because Spartaliot was later one of Cyril's most devoted friends.420