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November 13, 1572

Kirillos Lucaris was born on the island of Crete on November 13, 1572. A Greek Orthodox theologian and hierarch, he was appointed by Patriarch Meletios Pegas of Alexandria as exarch in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and rector of the theological academy in Vilnius.

In 1596 he attended the Orthodox sobor called by Prince Kostiantyn Ostrozky to oppose the Union of Brest, which split the Church in Ukraine into Catholic and Orthodox. As the Alexandrian protosyncellus, Lucaris stayed on to restore Orthodox primacy in the country and made several attempts to undo the union.

In 1602 Lucaris succeeded Pegas as Patriarch of Alexandria and in 1620 became Orthodox Christendom's highest official, Patriarch of Constantinople. His tenure was a stormy one because of his toleration of Protestantism and support for clerical reforms, and he was deposed, only to be reinstalled, five times.

Throughout, Patriarch Lucaris maintained close relations with Ukraine, and in 1623 ratified the statutes of the Lutsk Brotherhood of the Elevation of the Cross and its school.

When the Polish government officially legalized the Orthodox Church hierarchy in November 1632, Isaia Kopynsky, a staunch foe of Catholicism and a pro-Muscovite, was Metropolitan of Kyiv. An Orthodox council in the Polish Sejm, wishing to act upon the right to chose its own hierarchs granted under the Polish Commonwealth's "acts of appeasement," voted to replace Kopynsky with Petro Mohyla.

Patriarch Lucaris recognized the strategic value of the move and confirmed Mohyla's election as metropolitan, and the latter was duly consecrated in May 1633 in Lviv's Dormition Church. Patriarch Lucaris then named Mohyla as his exarch in Ukraine.

Patriarch Lucaris died near Constantinople on June 27, 1638.

Source: "Lucaris, Cyril," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 9, 1997, No. 45, Vol. LXV

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