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The ‘Ecclesiarum Belgicarum Confessio’ and the Attempted ‘Calvinisation’ of the Orthodox Church under Patriarch Cyril Loukaris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2012

VASILEIOS TSAKIRIS
VASILEIOS TSAKIRIS
Affiliation:
Religious Studies (Orthodox Christianity), Faculty of Philosophy, University of Erfurt, Nordhäusser Strasse 63, D-99084 Erfurt, Germany; e-mail: vastsak@yahoo.com
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Abstract

The Calvinistic Confession of Faith written by the patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Loukaris, is considered to be the most important product and at the same time the manifesto of the attempted union of the Protestant and Orthodox Churches. Presenting evidence which has been neglected in previous research, this article aims to revise this communis opinio by demonstrating that the book that was actually meant to become the theological foundation for the envisaged union was in fact the Ecclesiarum Belgicarum Confessio, a bilingual (Latin and Greek) publication (1623, 1627, 1648) containing the Βelgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and several canons of the Synod of Dordrecht.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 475 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Hering, Gunnar, Ökumenisches Patriarchat und europäische Politik, 1620–1638, Wiesbaden 1968, 204Google Scholar n. 118.

2 This was affirmed, for example, by the Capuchin monk Joseph (1577–1638), in a text published under the pseudonym van Tilen: ibid. 25 n. 25, 227 n. 69.

3 Thomas Papadopoulos, Ἑλληνικὴ Βιβλιογραϕία (1466ci–1800) [Greek bibliography (1466ci–1800)], Athens 1984, 225, no. 3042; cf. Legrand, Émile, Bibliographie hellénique … au dix-septième siècle … publiée par Louis Petit et Hubert Pernot, i, Paris 1894Google Scholar, 288f., no. 209.

4 Papadopoulos, Ἑλληνικὴ Βιβλιογραϕία, nos 3045–7; cf. Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, i. 305f., no. 247.

5 Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 71.

6 On this issue see John Karmiris, Τὰ Δογματικὰ καὶ Συμβολικὰ Mνημεῖα τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας [The dogmatic and symbolic monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church], 2nd edn, Graz 1968, ii. 562f., 575f.

7 Ibid. 664ff. See also Georgi, Curt, Die Confessio Dosithei, Munich 1940Google Scholar, 31f.

8 See Meletios Syrigos, Κατὰ τῶν καλβινικῶν κεϕαλαίων, καὶ ἐρωτήσεων Κυρίλλου τοῦ Λουκάρεως, Ἀντίῤῥησις [A refutation of the Calvinist chapters and questions of Cyril Loukaris], [Bucharest] 1690.

9 On the efforts to Calvinise the Orthodox Church see Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 176f.

10 The political goals of the patriarch's Confession are testified by Sir Thomas Roe, who says in a report that the reason why the French ambassador in Constantinople hindered the printing of the Confession in the first place was Loukaris's dedicatory letter to the king of England (this letter was not included in later editions): The negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, in his embassy to the Ottoman Porte, from the year 1621–1628, London 1740, 760Google Scholar.

11 Namely, the battles of Wesel (19 August 1629) and of s'Hertogenbosch (14 September 1629). According to Hering, Loukaris interpreted these events as divine signs encouraging him to publish his Confession: Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 190.

12 To what extent the two patriarchs really supported the Confession is not known. They certainly had full trust in the person of Loukaris as regards his anti-Catholic struggle and his church leadership, but it is doubtful whether they really endorsed the plans of the patriarch's Reformed Protestant friends, even though they had very good relations with them. After the publication of Loukaris's Confessio, the patriarch of Alexandria, Gerasimos Spartaliotes, would reject in a letter to Antoine Léger the latter's request that he should take part in the planned reformation of the Orthodox Church: Allatius, Leon, De Ecclesiae occidentalis atque orientalis perpetua consensione, Coloniae 1648Google Scholar, repr. 1970, cols 1013–17.

13 Indeed even before Loukaris's Confession was first published in Latin, his Greek opponents were looking for a copy of the Greek original in order to demonstrate his ‘heresies’ to the Greek public: Karalevskij, C. ‘La missione greco-cattolica della Cimara nell’ Epiro nei secoli xvi–xviii’, Bess ix (1912), 181–99Google Scholar at pp. 181f.; Bârlea, O., De confessione orthodoxa Petri Mohilae, Frankfurt-am-Main 1948, 39Google Scholarn. 16.

14 In the second half of the sixteenth century dozens of Protestant catechisms and confessions in Greek translation were already circulating in western Europe; but these were intended for the teaching of Classical Greek.

15 Another work which comes into this category is the Confession book of Metrophanes Kritopoulos (1589–1639), Loukaris's collaborator and later patriarch of Alexandria. That book remained unpublished however. Some of the arguments of the present article are included in an attempt to reconstruct the genesis of this Confession book: Tsakiris, Vasileios, Die gedruckten griechischen Beichtbücher zur Zeit der Türkenherrschaft: ihr kirchenpolitischer Entstehungszusammenhang und ihre Quellen, Berlin–New York 2009Google Scholar, 71ff.

16 On this dialogue see Wendebourg's, DorotheaReformation und Orthodoxie: der ökumenische Briefwechsel zwischen der Leitung der württembergischen Kirche und Patriarch Jeremias II. von Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1573–1581, Göttingen 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Allatius, De perpetua consensione, col. 1074; Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 25 n. 25. See also Periklis Zerlendis, Ἡ πρώτη πατριαρχία τοῦ Κυρίλλου Λουκάρεως, ὁ θάνατος τοῦ πατριάρχου Τιμοθέου καὶ Ἰωάννου Θαλασσηνοῦ ἀναγραϕὴ τῶν πατριαρχευσάντων ἔτεσι 1612–1707 [The first tenure of the patriarch Cyril Loukaris, the death of the patriarch Timotheos, and the list of the patriarchs for the years 1612–1707 by John Thalassinos] Athens 1921, 16–21.

18 Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 38 n. 27.

19 In fact, Loukaris had had contacts with the English embassy since the beginning of his ecclesiastical career. These he had inherited from his mentor and relative Meletios Pegas, patriarch of Alexandria, who had been a very close collaborator and friend of the English ambassador to Constantinople Richard Barton: The travels of John Sanderson in the Levant, 1584–1602, ed. Sir William Foster, London 1931, 26.

20 The fact that the activities of the Jesuits, who served the interests of France and Rome in the eastern Mediterranean, were working against those of all other European powers in the same region, is clearly demonstrated by the Venetian edict forbidding Jesuit activities in Venetian territories: Chapin Frederic Lane, Storia di Venezia, Turin 1978, 456–9. For the same reason Venice supported the anti-Catholic actions of Loukaris on Ottoman territory.

21 The negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, 36.

22 Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 78. The patriarch's protégé Metrophanes Kritopoulos had been sent to study in England, while another close collaborator, Nikodemos Metaxas, learned the printer's art in London and printed, with English financial support, a certain number of mostly anti-Catholic books by Orthodox authors. On relations between Loukaris and the Anglican Church see W. B. Patterson, ‘Cyril Loukaris, George Abbot, James vi and i, and the beginning of Orthodox-Anglican relations’, in Peter M. Doll (ed.) Anglicanism and Orthodoxy 300 years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford, Oxford 2006, 39–55. On Metrophanes Kritopoulos and his work see Davey, Colin, Pioneer for unity: Metrophanes Kritopoulos (1589–639) and relations between the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches, Warrington 1987Google Scholar.

23 Thus the tradition, initiated by Stephan Gerlach, of Lutheran pastors serving in Constantinople was now to be continued by Calvinist pastors. Gerlach was the first Lutheran pastor to be sent to Constantinople, as a member of the escort of the imperial ambassador, David Ungnad, Freiherr von Sterneck-Preuburg. He remained there until 1578 when he was succeeded by Salomon Schweiger, also a member of the entourage of the imperial ambassador, Graf Joachim de Sinzendorff: Mordtmann, A., Eine Deutsche Botschaft in Konstantinopel anno 1573–1578, Bern 1895Google Scholar, 4f. See also Benz, Ernst, Die Ostkirche im Lichte der Protestantischen Geschichtsschreibung von den Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 1952Google Scholar, 24f., 29f., and (for Gerlach) Hans Eideneier, ‘Ἕνας Γεϱμανὸς εὐαγγελικὸς παπὰς στὴν Πόλη τὸ 1573–1578’ [‘A German Protestant pastor in Constantinople, 1573–1578’], in Encarnación Motos Guirao and Moschos Morfakidis Filactós (eds), Constantinopla: 550 años de caída, Granada 2006, 313–17. In 1622 Haga invited the Dutch pastor Antonius Piscator to serve in Constantinople and he was replaced in 1628 by Antoine Léger, the envoy of the Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs et Professeurs de l' Église et École de Genève: Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 181; Baud-Bovy, Samuel, ‘Antoine Léger, pasteur aux vaudoises du Piémont et son séjour à Constantinople: d'après une correspondance inédite, 1622–1631’, Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Geschichte xxiv [1944], 191–219Google Scholar. Léger was replaced in turn by a pastor Sartorius, who died in Constantinople in 1637: Wätjen, Hermann, Die Niederländer im Mittelmeergebiet zur Zeit Ihrer höchsten Machtstellung, Berlin 1909Google Scholar, 80 n. 1.

24 Haga wrote to Nicolas van Wassenaer about Loukaris's open self-identification with the Dutch Reformed Church: ‘Den Heere Patriarch verklaerde, dat hy door dese seghenighe Codes, aen onse Republycke ende de Chereformeerde Christelycke kercken geschieht, niet minder verblyt was als yemandt anders, van de ingesetene der landen. Daerenboven van my versoechende, da tick sulks aen de Nederlandsche kercke, en de Chemeente soude laten weten, dat hy als een lidmaet van deselve versoekt gehouden te worden, en bereyt is, tot voortplantinge ende opbouwinge van deselve, alles te doen wat in syn vermoghen is’: K. J. H.Harderwijk, ‘Levenschets van Mr. Cornelis Haga’, Jaerboekje voor de stad en het kanton Schiedam (1848), 5–38 at p. 14f; Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 190 n. 67.

25 This is demonstrated most clearly by the answer that the Consistorium of Geneva gave to Metrophanes Kritopoulos after their negotiations on church union: their own Church ‘estant seule et séparée elle ne peut rien faire, mais faut qu'il y ait consentement universel tant des Églises de Suisse, Allemagne, Pays-Bas, Angleterre, que autres’: Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, v, Paris 1903. 208.

26 On this synod see Paterson, William Brown, King James VI and I and the reunion of Christendom, Cambridge 1997Google Scholar, 260ff.

27 Heussi, Karl, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 16th edn, Tübingen 1981, 381Google Scholar.

28 Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 176f.

29 Ibid. 88 n. 130. See also Documente privitóre la istoria Românilor, culese de Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, ed. Gr. G. Tocilescu and A. I. Obebescu, supplement i, I: (1518–1780), Bucharest 1886, 220f.

30 ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΩΝ / τῆς / ΒΕΛΓΙΚΗΣ / ΕΞΟΜΟΛΟΓΗΣΙΣ / καὶ / ΚΑΤΗΧΗΣΙΣ / Hoc est: / ECCLESIARUM / BELGICARUM / CONFESSIO / interprete JACOBO REVIO / ET / CATECHESIS / Qua in Ecclesiis et Scholis Belgicarum / provinciarum traditur; / Interprete FR. SYLBURGIO / LUGD. BATAVORUM, / Ex Officinâ ELZEVIRIANA, 1623. The book was printed twice in the same year.

31 Rozemond, Keetje, Archimandrite Hierotheos Abbatios, Leiden 1966, 28Google Scholar.

32 On the Greek translations of Protestant Calvinist catechisms, which were used as handbooks for learning Greek in the European schools, and, more generally, on the history of Greek catechetical literature during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see the comprehensive table of first editions and reprints in Reinhard Flogaus, Die griechische katechetische Literatur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, forthcoming.

33 For Festus Hommius see Paquot, N. J. (ed.), Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire littéraire des dix-sept provinces des Pays-bas, de la principauté de Liege & de quelques contrées voisines, Louvain 1766, vii. 233–41Google Scholar.

34 Hofmann, Georg, Griechische Patriarchen und Römische Päpste: Untersuchungen und Texte, II/1: Patriarch Kyrillos Lukaris und die Römische Kirche, Rome 1929, 53–5Google Scholar.

35 Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 28; Hoffman, Kyrillos Lukaris, 53–5.

36 Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 29.

37 Ibid.

38 On his opportunistic designs on the patriarch's throne see Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 289, 295; Hofmann, Georg, Griechische Patriarchen und Römische Päpste: Untersuchungen und Texte, II/2: Patriarch Athanasios Patellaros, Rome 1930Google Scholar, 12f., and Ammann, M. A., ‘Athanase iii Patelaros patriarche de Constantinople, ex-catholique et Saint Russe’, Revue des études slaves xviii (1951), 7–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Patelaros finally ended up in Russia, where he was received with honours by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovitch.

39 For this job Patellaros suggested his nephew Neophytos, who would many years later become bishop in Crete and, moreover, leader of the Orthodox bishops who were appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople at the very moment that the Ottoman army began its efforts to conquer the island (1645). On the military operations see Apostolos Vakalopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ νέου Ἐλληνισμοῦ [History of the modern Greek people], Thessaloniki 1973, iii. 498. Neophytos accepted the proposal and took part in the translation project, as testified by some verses about him that were added to the edition of the modern Greek New Testament printed in 1638 in Geneva.

40 It is impossible to say exactly what the patriarch meant by ‘Galatians’. He must have had in mind the Dutch and the francophone Reformed Protestants, and was thus trying to translate some Latin adjective such as ‘Gallici’.

41 ‘Ἀνέγνον τε καὶ ὅ μοι ἐγχειϱίδιον τῆς ἐξομολογήσεως τῶν Γαλατῶν ἐπεπόμϕεις ἀσκεπτὶ μέντοι καὶ τῆς ἀκϱιβεστέϱας ἐπιμελείας ἄνευ, καὶ ἔγνον καὶ εἰσί τινα ἀποϱίας τε καὶ ἀποκϱίσεως ἄξια· ἅτινα δι’ ἄλλης σημειώσῳ’: Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, iv. Paris 1896, 407.

42 Layton, Evro, ‘Nikodemos Metaxas, the first Greek printer in the eastern world’, Harvard Library Bulletin xxv (1967), 140–68Google Scholar at p. 152.

43 See Zacharias Tsirpanlis, Τὸ Ἑλληνικὸ Κολλέγιο τῆς Ρώμης καὶ οἱ μαθητές του 1576–1700 [The Greek College at Rome and its students, 1576–1700], Thessaloniki 1980, 439.

44 On Marc Vretos see Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, v. 256ff., and Tomadakis, N., ‘Ἐπισκοπὴ καὶ ἐπίσκοποι Κυδωνίας’ [‘Bishopric and bishops of Kydonia’], ΚρητικὰΧρονικὰ xi (1957), 1–42 at p. 29Google Scholar.

45 Augliera, Letterio, Libri politica, religione nel Levante del Seicento: la tipografia di Nicodemo Metaxas, primo editore di testi greci nell'oriente ortodosso, Venice 1996Google Scholar, 89f.

46 ‘come moro catholico othodoxo nella fede del N.S. J. Chr. nella dottrina Evangelica, conforme la confessione Belgica, la confessione mia, ele altre delle chiese Evangeliche, che sono tutte conformi’: Schlier, Richard, Der Patriarch Kyrill Lukaris von Konstantinopel, Marburg 1927Google Scholar, 44 n. 155.

47 Three more editions followed, one published in Utrecht in 1660, one in Amsterdam in 1661, and a further one in Utrecht, in 1666.

48 On Konopios see Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, v. 294ff.; Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 32; Patterson, King James VI and I, 206–10 ; Pinnington, Judith, Anglicans and Orthodox: unity and subversion, 1559–1725, Leominster 2003, 15Google Scholar; and Kemke, Johannes, Patricius Junius: Bibliothekar der Könige Jacob I. und Carl I. von England, Leipzig 1896, 136–8Google Scholar.

49 ‘μεταϕϱάσω τὴν Κατήχησιν τῆς Βελγικῆς Ἐκκλησίας καὶ τοῦ ἐλλογίμου καὶ σοϕοῦ ἀοιδίμου ἀνδϱὸς τοῦ κῦϱ Καλλουΐνου καὶ πέμψω τῇ σῇ λογιότητι εἰς τὸ παϱαδοῦναι τοῖς χαλκότυποις ὅπως ἔξειν (sic) καὶ οἱ ἡμέτεϱοι γνῶναι τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ὅπως χϱὴ πιστεύειν· ἔγνωκας γὰϱ εἰς ὅσην σκότωσιν τοῦ νοὸς εὑϱίσκονται’: Chysostomos Papadopoulos, ‘Ἀπολογία τοῦ Λουκάϱεως, Πατϱιάϱχου Κωνσταντινουπόλεως’ [‘Apology of Loukaris, patriarch of Constantinople’], Νέα Σιὼν ii (1905), 17–35 at p. 19.

50 ΤΩΝ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΩΝ / ΤΗΣ / ΒΕΛΓΙΚΗΣ / Χϱιστιανικὴ κ(αὶ) Ὀϱθόδοξος Διδασκαλία / καὶ τάξις: Ἤγουν, / ΕΞΟΜΟΛΟΓΗΣΙΣ, / ΚΑΤΗΧΗΣΙΣ, / ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑ, / καὶ / ΚΑΝΟΝΕΣ Ἐκκλησιαστικοί. / Εἰς τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων κοινὴν γλῶτταν μεταϕϱασμένη. / Ἐτυπώθη ἐν Λουγδούνῃ τῶν Βατάβων, παϱὰ Βοναβεντούϱα καὶ / Ἀβϱαάμῳ τοῖς Ἐλζεβιϱίοις, τῷ ᾳχμή ἔτει / τῆς Χϱιστοῦ γεννήσεως. For detailed information on Hierotheos Abbatios as well as on the translation and printing see Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 17f.

51 Legrand, Émile, Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire, Paris 1880, v. 333Google Scholar. Some information on the monastery can be found in Elias Tsitselis, Κεϕαλληνιακὰ Σύμμικτα [Cephalonian mélanges], Athens 1960. ii. 302.

52 Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 20.

53 On 23 December they matriculated at the University of Leiden: ibid. 23, 53.

54 Ibid. 33.

55 Ibid. 35.

56 On this translation see Papoulidis, Kiriakos, Problemes de traduction et d'interpretation du Nouveau Testament en grec moderne: le cas de Maxime de Gallipoli (1638), Thessaloniki 2004Google Scholar, with a full list of the relevant publications at pp. 271–95. A new edition of this work appeared in 1703, by then in a totally different context: Vasilios Makrides, ‘Greek Orthodox compensatory strategies towards Anglicans and the west at the beginning of the eighteenth century’, in Doll, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy, 249–87 at p. 269ff.

57 On these plans see Hering, Ökumenisches Patriarchat, 184f.

58 Rozemond, Hierotheos Abbatios, 46f., 92f. A few years earlier Hierotheos had also undertaken, together with Meletios Pantogallos, to distribute in the Orthodox East copies of this translation of the New Testament that had been sent to Constantinople by the Dutch: Correspondance intégrale d' André Rivet et de Claude Sarrau, ed. Hans Bots-Pierre Leroy, Amsterdam 1982, iii. 105.

59 What is more, the patriarch's close collaborator, Meletios Pantogallos, metropolitan of Ephesus, who had refused to sign the official condemnation of Loukaris and had himself composed a pro-Calvinist confession of faith, could still have had some serious expectation of becoming patriarch of Constantinople as late as 1644: Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, iv. 520).

60 ‘Τοῖς ἀναγινώσκουσι τὸ βιβλίον τῆς Βελγικῆς Ἐξομολογήσεως, οὗ ἡ ἀϱχή: Πιστεύομεν … πάντες τῇ καϱδίᾳ· καὶ τὰ κεϕάλαια τὰ ἐπιγϱαϕόμενα τοῦ Κυϱίλλου τὸ ὄνομα, ὧν ἐστὶ τὸ πϱῶτον κεϕάλαιον πιστεύομεν ἕνα θεὸν ἀληθῆ, ἀνάθεμα· καὶ ἁπλῶς τοῖς μὴ πειθομένοις ταῖς ἁγίαις καὶ οἰκουμενικαὶς ἁπάσαις συνόδοις ἀνάθεμα’, ms no. 535 of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople (today in the Greek National Library), fo. 20v.

61 ‘Der tote Msgr. von Veria verdient den Kranz dafür, dass er in diesen Gebieten alles, was die Irrgläubigen in zwanzig Jahren gebaut, zu Boden warf. Wenn die griechischen Patriarchen in Zukunft nicht katholisch werden, wird es immerhin ein Gewinn sein, dass sie nicht mehr kalvinisch sind, und sie werden nicht aufrichten können, was der gennante Msgr. von Veria vom Kalvinismus niederriss’: Georg Hofmann, Griechische Patriarchen und Römische Päpste: Untersuchungen und Texte, II/3: Patriarch Kyrillos Kontaris von Berröa, Rome 1930, 17Google Scholar. Remarkably enough, Parthenios i, patriarch of Constantinople from 1639 to 1644, ascribes these very same merits to the ambassador Schmid himself in a letter to the Emperor Ferdinand iii: Iorga, N., ‘Nichifor Dascălul Exarch Patriarchal şi legáturile lui co Ţarile noastre (1580–1599)’, Analele Academiei Romane 2nd ser. xxviii (1904–5), 183–200Google Scholar at p. 194.