Catholic Church in the MR

There were numerous attempts by Catholic missionaries after the Fall of Constantinople who attempted to convert Orthodox Christians to Catholicism either by force or by material benefit.

Contacts between the Jesuits and Athos go back to at least the early seventeenth century when an Athonite monk was among the students at the Jesuit school in Constantinople (and is reported to have taken to practising the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola). In 1628 the Jesuits were approached by a former abbot of Vatopedi who offered to negotiate the reunion of the Mountain with Rome (nothing came of the scheme). More tangibly, in 1635 a Jesuit school was founded, by invitation, at the Protaton. Much of the curriculum was based on the teaching of classical Greek, but it also involved lectures on the sacraments. The head of the school, Fr Nicolas Rossi, also spoke out against the degeneracy of the idiorrhythmic system. We have no evidence that the presence of the Jesuits on Athos was in any way resented by the monks. Quite to the contrary, we have from 1643 records of an offer by the Holy Community of a permanent residence for Italian monks on Athos, provided the Jesuits could produce in exchange a church in Rome, a metochion to be served by Athonite monks. The project foundered when the church offered by the Jesuits was turned down by the Holy Community on the grounds that it was in an unsatisfactory location. Athonite enthusiasm for the Jesuits is, at least in part, a testament to the Jesuits’ own openness in dealing with the monks, and indeed with the Orthodox more generally. The Jesuits were careful to acknowledge the jurisdiction and prerogatives of Orthodox bishops and abbots. They recognized, at least implicitly, the validity of Orthodox orders and sacraments. They also valued similar texts to those of the fathers of the Mountain.