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THE

BRITISH MAGAZINE.

JANUARY 1, 1844.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

CYRIL LUCAR.

NO. III.

In this year (1619) or the next Cyril was called to Constantinople by the death of the patriarch, Timotheus; the administration of that see devolving on him as oecumenical judge, during the vacancy. Here he renewed his intimacy with M. Von Haga, who was now ambassador of the united provinces at Constantinople, and by him was introduced to the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Rowe. Here, too, his protégé, Metrophanes Critopulus, returned to him, having completed his education in England; and having spent some time in Germuany, in order to make himself acquainted with the condition of the continental protestants. This visit to Constantinople led to an important change in his life, which proved very calamitous; for he was unanimously and without any opposition chosen patriarch of Constantinople. Hitherto he had enjoyed power and honour undisputed, although secondary, and for an uninterrupted continuance; but from this time he was tossed backwards and forwards by contending influences, and at last brought to a premature and violent end in 1638, having enjoyed his dignity only five consecutive years during the whole of that period. But I am anticipating.

When Cyril came to this highest dignity in the Greek church, his attention was immediately drawn to the machinations of the Jesuits, who had a college in Constantinople. They had first settled there in the year 1603, and having built suitable edifices, they employed themselves in the work of perverting the Greeks through their children and wives. To the former they offered an education much better than that which they had themselves received, and that gratuitous; the latter they allured by their ready conversation and agreeable manners, and by giving them absolution for their sins upon terms much easier than the fasts and penances prescribed by the Greek confessors.

October 26, 1621. Smith's Account of the Greek Church, p. 250. † Narratio turbarum quæ moverunt Jesuitæ adversus Cyrillum, a Chrysosculo Logotheta magnæ Ecclesiæ, in Aymon, p. 201--236.

VOL. XXV.-Jan. 1844.

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