Lucaris was one of those creative figures condemned to live at the wrong moment. His enemies fomented a poisonously anti-Protestant mood in the Orthodox Church, and the Jesuits sealed their triumph over Lucaris as Greek Orthodoxy moved closer to Roman Catholicism during the seventeenth century, encouraged by steady investment by the Catholic monarchy of France, both commercial intervention and discreet royal diplomatic support of Eastern Christians within the Ottoman domains (see p. 715). In the sixteenth century, while the Ottomans remained a vigorous and expansive military power, Western
...more
