A melancholy characteristic of the depression and degeneration of the later Greek Church is the absence of conspicuous names from its dismal history. If there were any village Hampdens or Miltons, the former started no successful rebellions and the latter were mute and inglorious. During outbreaks of popular fanaticism, and under the cold, calculating persecutions instigated by the government from time to time in opposition to its professed policy, no doubt the noble army of martyrs was enriched by the addition of many a humble hero of the faith. But either the ability or the opportunity for any conspicuous feat of fidelity was lacking. The story of the Church had left the noble highlands where striking landmarks rivet our attention and descended to a featureless plain with the monotony of the desert. There was more learning silently cherished in the monasteries than is commonly supposed, and a higher standing of education was maintained among the Greeks than among most of their contemporaries in Europe. Moreover, Greek merchants grew rich in spite of fiscal disabilities. But there was no intellectual originality, no literature of genius, no movement of distinction. In all this barren age there is just one name that has emerged out of the fog of oblivion into European fame, and that largely owing to the accident of Western connections. This is the name of Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Alexandria, and subsequently of Constantinople, who lived at the time of the Reformation, and became the courageous author of an abortive attempt to introduce the principles of Protestantism into the East.
The Greek Church came into contact with Lutheranism under the patriarchs Joseph ii. and Jeremiah ii., and later with Calvinism by means of the activity of Cyril Lucar. In the year 1559, Melanchthon, taking advantage of the return of Demetrius, a deacon of Constantinople who had been staying at Wittenburg, sent a copy of the Augsburg confession to the patriarch Joseph, claiming agreement between its tenets and the doctrines of the Eastern Church. It was received in chill silence, the prosaic interpretation
