was a determined enemy of union with Rome all his life. He was appointed in 1582. Towards the Government and the Patriarch of Venice he concealed his feelings, and professed to be converted to union with the Holy See. But to his own community he preached the usual Orthodox things about the horns of Roman pride, the chains of Latin slavery now imposed by proud barbarians on the descendants of Achilles and Agamemnon. So from his time it seems that by far the greater part of the Greek Venetian community was schismatic at heart. It accepted the position of Uniates only as an unpleasant necessity. From the time of Seberos[1] the Greek bishop at Venice always kept the title of Philadelphia.[2] Then the Venetian Government began to connive at the breaking of its own law. It ignored the rule that the bishop should make a Catholic profession of faith. He began openly to pray in his church for the Patriarch of Constantinople; when he was not already a bishop he went to Constantinople to be ordained. The Greek community had become schismatical. More and
- ↑ Seberos died in 1616 and is buried in the Greek church at Venice.
- ↑ It is curious that, although the Venetian Greeks were still supposed officially to be Uniates, the Patriarch of Constantinople always legislates for them as if they were his people — so ambiguous was their position. In 1644 the Patriarch Parthenios II (1644-1645, 1648-1651) decrees that the See of Philadelphia has been transferred to Venice "from ancient times," and that its occupant shall be Exarch of the Patriarch for all Greeks under the Venetian Government. In 1651 Ioannikios II (1646-1648, 1651-1652, 1653-1654, 1655-1656; these Patriarchs are constantly being deposed and restored) grants further privileges. The titular Metropolitan of Philadelphia is to ordain the
arch the office of Ἐπίτροπος (Vicar) for the vacant see of Monembasia, which apparently means authority over all the Orthodox in the Venetian states. It is clear then that, all the time, he was really a schismatic. He published his views so openly that the Venetian Government must have known them and connived at them. At Venice he came into conflict with Maximos Margunios (who also lived there; † 1602). Margunios was a friend of union with Rome; Seberos opposed him in a number of books and pamphlets. Seberos wrote a book with a long title in defence of the adoration of the Holy Gifts at the Great Entrance in the Liturgy (Venice, 1604), a treatise on the Sacraments (ibid., 1600), a defence of the Orthodox Church against the charge of schism (his chief work, unpublished; it is against Bellarmin), and many short theological treatises, mostly against the Latins. See E. Legrand, "Bibliographie Hellénique (Paris, 1885), ii, pp. 144-151; Richard Simon, "Fides Eccl. Orient. seu Gabrielis Metr. Phil. opuscula" (Paris, 1671); Ph. Meyer, "Die theolog. Litter. der griech. Kirche im XVI Jahrht." (Leipzig, 1899) pp. 78-85.
