Patriarch Athanasius III of Alexandria explained

Athanasius III served as Greek Patriarch of Alexandria between 1276 and 1308.

Relations with the Church of Rome

Athanasius, then ill with gout, attended the Council of Blachernae in 1285 which repudiated the attempted union at Lyons.^[1] However, that council did not place the Latins under formal anathema, and this may have been due to the influence of Athanasius. According to Kenneth M. Setton, "Athanasius III of Alexandria was also in communion with Rome at the time of his death in 1308 at the hands of the Moslems. He had, it seems, accepted the provisions of union enunciated at the Council of Lyons in 1274."^[2]

Since Pope Innocent III appointed a titular Latin Patriarch of Alexandria in 1310, it is likely that ecclesiastical communion with Rome had been broken shortly after the Athanasius III episcopate.^[3] The schism between Rome and Alexandria, then, could be reasonably dated to 1308.

References

Notes

Sources

• Web site: Athanasius III (1276–1316) . Official web site of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa . 2011-02-07.

Notes and References

1. Book: Papadakis, Aristeides . Crisis in Byzantium : the Filioque controversy in the patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283-1289) . 1983 . New York : Fordham University Press . Internet Archive . 978-0-8232-1088-6.
2. Kenneth M. Setton, A History of the Crusades, Volume V: The Impact of the Crusades on the Near East, 1985, p. 467
3. Steven Runciman. The Eastern Schism. (Oxford, 1955). p. 100.