1st ORTHPOL Conference – “Orthodoxy, Schism, Heresy in Early Modern Europe: The Loukaris ‘Affair’”

A spectre is haunting Eastern Christianity since Early Modern times – the spectre of Kyrillos Loukaris († 1638). The Greek Patriarch of Constantinople – Saint Hieromartyr, as of January 2022 – owes most of his enduring fame to a “Calvinist” Confession of faith that was published in Geneva, first in Latin, in 1629, then in Greek, with additions, in 1633. Translated into French, English, German, and Italian, and re-edited several times, this laconic text triggered passionate debates across Europe, forcing Eastern Christianity to address theological issues never tackled before. Yet there is much more to Loukaris than his Confession of faith, as the first ORTHPOL Conference shows. Taking recent scholarship on Loukaris as starting point and favouring a source-oriented approach, the project members and their guests discuss the catalytic role played by the controversial Patriarch in the making of Eastern Orthodoxy. The focus is on the factional shaping of “True Faith,” seen as a cultural system, at the crossroads of Christian and Islamic reforming currents.