Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/340

314 of which may be that since it only existed in Latin and German—languages not studied at Constantinople—the patriarch did not put himself to the trouble of getting his deacon to explain it to him. Fifteen years later ( 1574), Martin Crusius produced a Greek version of the confession and sent it to Jeremiah, who was then the patriarch of Constantinople, and received in return a polite reply. Thus encouraged, Crusius proceeded to point out how Lutheranism differed from Romanism and to express a hope of union with the Eastern Church. Jeremiah's reply is uncompromising. The only way to union with the orthodox Church is to "follow the apostolical and synodical decrees." There can be no broadening out of a common basis of union; the sole possibility is conversion to the Greek Church and admission into that communion as it now stands in its changeless rigour of doctrine and discipline. In the year 1578, Jeremiah received a fuller account of Lutheranism; but nothing came of any of these Lutheran overtures.

Cyril's action was on different lines. It was at once less ambitious and more courageous. He knew the Greek Church too well to ignore its errors or imagine that in its present condition any fusion with a Protestant Church -was either practicable or desirable. His aim was a reformation within the Eastern Church on Calvinistic lines—not the High Church idea of the reunion of Christendom, but the Protestant conception of a true gospel and a pure Church.

Cyril Lucar was born at Candia, the chief town of Crete, in the year 1572. The island was then under the mild rule of the Venetians, who allowed more religious liberty than any other power. Several Greeks of interest in the movements of this time came from Crete. But Cyril was sent to Alexandria at the early age of ten, and there put under the tuition of his uncle Meletius Pega—another Cretan—who had been in Italy and seen enough there to return with strong anti-Roman convictions. Before he was twelve years old the lad was sent to Venice, and thence to Padua, where he came under the influence of an