BRYENNIOS, JOSEPH

Byzantine preacher and theologian; b. c. 1350; d. apparently c. 1438. Little is known of his origin and career. He was sent to Crete in 1381 to defend the Orthodox position against Roman propaganda on the part of the Venetians who then governed the island. Twenty years later he was forced to leave as a result of his criticism of the local clergy, and he became a monk at the Studion monastery outside Constantinople. In 1405 he went to Cyprus to recall the Eastern Catholics to Orthodoxy and presided over a local synod. A strong opponent of union with the Roman See, he criticized the negotiations between the Emperor manuel ii and Pope martin v aimed at reunion. After a final break with the policies of John VIII Palaeologus, he set sail for Crete and disappeared effectively from subsequent history.

A preacher of renown and a redoubtable polemicist, he was known for his erudition, but he did not produce original theological thought. In his controversies he restated the complaints of his predecessors against the Latin filioque and use of azymes. His extant writings consist mainly of homilies and controversial tracts: 21 homilies on the Trinity, three treatises on the procession of the Holy Spirit, a discourse on the union of the Churches, and reflections on the return of the Cypriots to Orthodoxy. His writings had been forgotten until Eugenius bulgaris published some of them in 1768. A. Papadopulos-Kerameus discovered the acts of the synod in Cyprus over which he presided.

Bibliography: p. meyer, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 5: 74–111, life. Theologia dogmatica christianorum orientalium ab acclesia catholica dissidentium v. 2. a. palmieri, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris 1903–50) 2.1:115–661. Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich.

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