Cyril VI Tanas
Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch
Patriarch Cyril VI Tanas, also known as Cyril VI of Antioch (1680, Damascus – January 10, 1760), became the first Patriarch of Antioch and of All the East, of Alexandria, and of Jerusalem of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, following the schism of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in 1724. Cyril established full communion with the Catholic Church.
Life
Seraphim Tanas was born in Damascus in 1680, and he was the nephew of Euthymios Saifi, bishop of Sidon. On August 3, 1701, he arrived in Marseille, France, and from 1702 to 1710 he studied in the College of the Propaganda in Rome. Returning to Syria, he was ordained as a priest by his uncle; he (Tanas) became distinguished for his sermons, and Patriarch Cyril V Zaim appointed him "Preacher of the Patriarchate of Antioch".
Like many of his fellow clerics, Seraphim Tanas favored re-establishing full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The Damascene Melkites elected him as the new Patriarch of Antioch on September 24, 1724, and he was consecrated as Cyril VI by Neophytos Nasri, eparch of Saidnaya—assisted by Basile Finas, eparch of Baniyas, and Euthymius Fadel, eparch of Zahle and Forzol—in the patriarchal cathedral of Damascus on October 1, 1724. As Cyril was a prominent pro-Westerner, the Orthodox Patriarch Jeremias III of Constantinople felt that his authority was challenged thereby; Jeremias declared Cyril's election to be invalid, excommunicated him, and appointed a young Syrian monk—Sylvester of Antioch (1696–1766)—to the patriarchal See of Antioch. Jeremias consecrated Sylvester as bishop on October 8, 1724, in Constantinople.
Sultan Ahmed III withdrew the recognition he had initially conferred upon Cyril, who was forced to flee as emissaries of Sylvester arrived from Constantinople with a mandate for his arrest.
The public source identifies “Cyril VI Tanas” as melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cyril, Tanas and Melkite.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyril VI Tanas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.