17th century
Saint Athanasios III Patellaros
A Cretan scholar who twice served as Patriarch of Constantinople in the seventeenth century and died a missionary in Russia, where he was recognised as a saint.
Biography
Athanasios III, born Alexios Patellaros, was born in the village of Axos near Rethymno around 1580–1597 and studied philology, philosophy and theology, even translating part of the Bible into modern Greek. He became a monk, spent time on Mount Athos, and was ordained Metropolitan of Thessaloniki in 1631.
He served as Patriarch of Constantinople twice, briefly, in 1634 and 1652, with periods of removal in between. In his final years he went to Russia, where he carried out significant missionary work, and died in 1654 at the Lubny monastery near Kharkiv, where the Russian Church formally recognised him as a saint in 1662.