Jeremias II

Jeremias II (born c. 1530, Anchialos, Ottoman Empire [now Pomorie, Bulg.]—died 1595, Constantinople [now Istanbul]) was the patriarch of Constantinople and one of the most capable leaders of the Greek Orthodox church.

Elected patriarch in 1572 by popular acclaim, Jeremias immediately instituted a reform by disciplining the clergy and prosecuting simony (the sale and purchase of ecclesiastical offices). Having irritated the Holy Synod, the council of bishops, by his zeal, he was deposed in 1579. Public clamour, however, returned him to office after nine months. In 1584 he was again deposed; but once again, after two years, his popularity, backed by the goodwill of the Ottoman sultan, secured his return, and he reigned until his death.

To collect funds for a new patriarchate (the Turks had transformed the patriarchal church into a mosque), Jeremias traveled to Poland and Russia, the first such trip by a reigning patriarch of Constantinople. In the Polish-dominated Ukraine he gave the support of his authority to the Orthodox resistance against Latin pressure for an unfavourable union with Rome. In Moscow in 1589 he consecrated Job, metropolitan of Moscow, as the first Russian patriarch. Upon his return, having received generous contributions, he held a council (1593), which confirmed the erection of the Moscow patriarchate and organized a Patriarchal Academy in Constantinople that was to serve as an intellectual centre for Orthodoxy and to raise the educational level of the clergy.

From 1572 to 1581 Jeremias corresponded with German Lutheran theologians who sought Orthodox support for the Lutheran articles of faith contained in the 1530 Confession of Augsburg. Although he expressed some agreement with certain articles of the Lutheran creed, Jeremias repudiated the Lutheran beliefs on grace and sacramental worship. The proceedings of this Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue were published at Wittenberg, Ger., as Acta et Scripta Theologorum Wirtembergensium et Patriarchae Constantinopolitani, D. Hieremiae (1584; “Acts and Writings of the Württemberg Theologians and His Lordship Jeremias, Patriarch of Constantinople”). Jeremias also rejected the Gregorian calendar, the new style of chronological computation instituted in March 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.