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successful in obtaining in 1588 the consent of Pope Sixtus V to abstain
from applying the new Gregorian calendar in Venice’s Greek colonies, in
order to avoid strife. The relevant document only mentions Corfu, Zante,
and Cephalonia, but other sources indicate that a similar arrangement
was implemented on Crete as well. Yet under the same pope, attempts
were also made to subject Greek liturgical books to censorship.177
The following pope, Clement VIII, in 1596 sent elaborate directions to
all Catholic prelates with instructions on how to handle Greek Ortho-
dox Christians living in their dioceses. These instructions were meant
to suppress in Catholic countries all traces of an episcopal jurisdiction
that would not depend on papal authority, according to the papal inter-
pretation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Venice admonished the
governors of its overseas territories not to allow the bishops to implement
these instructions.178 Not surprisingly, when in 1593 that pope demanded
that Maximos Margounios, the Greek bishop of Cerigo, be extradited to
Rome for an examination on the charge of printing a theological text in
Germany, Venice refused do to so.179
The Greek Orthodox Challenge
Both before 1453 and after the fall of Byzantium, the intervention of
the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople in matters related to Venice’s
Orthodox subjects had political repercussions, even when he was acting
purely as an ecclesiastical leader. It is in this light that we have to
understand Venice’s recognition, in 1578, of the independence of Corfu’s
great protopapàs from both the Roman Catholic authorities and the Greek
patriarchate, a decision that was apparently linked to the concurrent
establishment of a Greek Orthodox archbishopric in Venice. The Republic
insisted that all the correspondence of the Corfiot Great Protopapàs with
the patriarch should pass through the Venetian bailo in Constantinople
and that the permission of the Venetian authorities in Corfu would be
required for any act of excommunication or for monitories issued by the
Great Protopapàs or by the patriarch. It also declared that any sentence on
matrimony, ordination of priests, and the like would not be put into effect
unless first submitted to and confirmed by the Venetian governors.180
177 Fedalto, Ricerche, p. 103; Peri, “L’incredibile risguardo,” pp. 615–17, 621; for Crete, see
Corner, Creta sacra, 2:30; Panagiotakes, El Greco, p. 72.
178 Peri, “L’incredibile risguardo,” pp. 619–20.
179 Fedalto, Ricerche, p. 109.
180 Lunzi, Della condizione, p. 377.