became Metropolitan of Acre; in 1777 he was translated to Aleppo, the second see of the Patriarchate.[1] As Metropolitan of Aleppo he had many quarrels with the Latin missionaries. Cyril Charon says, with truth, that not all the wrongs in these quarrels were on his side.[2] Thus the Custos Terræ sanctæwanted to reconfirm children confirmed at their baptism according to their own rite. Germanos supported his Patriarch in the affair of Ignatius Ṣarrūf of Beirut (see p. 204); but on other occasions he seems to have quarrelled with him too.
Now comes the great matter of his Gallicanism. He had made friends with Scipio Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia, while he was in Italy. No doubt it was from him that he acquired these ideas. In 1799 he wrote against the missionaries in the affair of Ṣarrūf. Here already appears the poison. He thinks that the Primacy of the Pope is only of honour, that a General Council is above the Pope. In the controversy that followed he appealed to the Declaration of the Gallican clergy of 1682. Then he took up and defended the ideas of Febronius. Already in 1802 the news of his ideas had reached Rome. Pius VII (1800-1823) then ordered his works to be sent to be examined.
On July 23, 1806, the Patriarch Agapios III opened the Synod of Ḳarḳafah, in the monastery of St Antony at that place. Nine bishops attended, as also the Superiors General of St Saviour and of Shuwair; the Egyptian Melkites were represented by a Salvatorian monk, those of Damascus by another, those of Aleppo by Michael Maẓlūm, the future Patriarch. Lewis Gandolfi, the Papal Visitor, was also present, and signed the acts. The only explanation of this seems to be that he did not know enough Arabic to understand what they were. The Maronite Patriarch Joseph Tiān also approved of them. There is no doubt that Germanos Ādam was the soul of the synod, and that he drew up the acts. They contain all his views, that a General Council is above the Pope, that not the Pope, but only the whole Church, is infallible; the Primacy is reduced to hardly more than an honorary precedence.
Ādam defended other theories displeasing to the authorities at Rome in his many works, notably that the Consecration of the holy Eucharist is effected not only by the words of Institution, but also by the Invocation of the Holy Ghost. But not
