I owe to Rodotà. Indeed, without his work all this account of the Italo-Greeks would shrink to a very small compass.
Against so many great names we must reckon a few defections. There have been students of the Greek College who, when they returned to the East, forgot the lessons they had learned there and joined the schismatical majority. The chief of these are Pantaleon Ligarides and Hilarion Tzigalas. Ligarides entered the college in 1623. He took his degree in theology brilliantly in 1636, and was ordained priest at Rome. Propaganda then sent him as a missionary to Zakynthos; thence he passed to Constantinople and eventually to Rumania. Here he began to play a double game. To the Orthodox he represented himself as one of them; while all his life he went on writing to Propaganda for money He met Paisios, Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem (c. 1646-1660), who made him an Orthodox monk, with the name Paisios. So he became Orthodox Metropolitan of Gaza in 1652. But he quarrelled with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and was by him degraded. Then he went to Russia and helped the famous Patriarch of Moscow, Nikon (1652-1665), in his revision of the Russian service books. But soon he quarrelled with him too. Propaganda had long begun to suspect him, and had ordered him to come back to Rome. But he did not obey this order either; and so he died (1678) rejected by all. Ligarides is an unhappy example of what often happened; trying to please both sides, to pretend to each that he was with them, lying to both, he ended by being denounced by both.[1]
Tzigalas is also an ambiguous person. Less culpable than Ligarides, he committed one great fault which placed him permanently in a false position. His original name was Jerome; after he had left the college he became a monk in the East and then took the name Hilarion. For a time he was a missionary in Greece under Propaganda and a firm defender of the Catholic faith. Then he became professor at Padua. Eventually he went back to the Levant, and again for a time preached Catholic principles. But it appears that he was hurt at not receiving promotion or as much recognition from Rome as he expected. So he came to Constantinople. Here there was no lack of appreciation of his talents. So he went over to the Orthodox, and allowed the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem to ordain him to the Archiepiscopal See of Cyprus. He is thus counted one of the Orthodox Archbishops of Cyprus (1674-1678). But he remained a Catholic at heart, in spite of his
- ↑ Rodotà, op. cit., ii, 208-209; De Meester, 65-66.
