Sylvester of Alexandria

Saint Sylvester was Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and of all Africa between 1569 and July 1590. He came from Crete. The Patriarchate of Alexandria canonized him by decision of its Holy Synod on 8 October 2025. His commemoration is on 19 February.

Before he became patriarch he was abbot of the Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Agarathos, in Crete. Then he went to Alexandria, where he served as archdeacon of the Patriarchate. He was elected Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria between 1565 and 1569 (according to another source, on 12 April 1569).

In the time of his shepherding, the condition of the Church and of Christians in Egypt was hard. After the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto in 1571 by the allied forces of Venice, Spain and Italy, anti-⁠Christian pogroms broke out in Egypt. The Roman Catholic Church intensified its proselytizing activity, spreading various writings, founding Catholic schools and trying to persuade the Orthodox to accept the Gregorian calendar, which Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople and Sylvester as Patriarch of Alexandria firmly rejected.

In such circumstances he called into the service of the Patriarchate of Alexandria the young scholar from Crete Meletios Pigas, educated at the University of Padua, whom he had met in 1574 in Jerusalem. Patriarch Sylvester ordained him deacon and priest and appointed him his successor on the throne of Alexandria.

In the time of his patriarchate Egypt was visited by two Russian embassies, which brought gifts to the Patriarchate of Alexandria: that of I. Mishenin and T. Korobeynikov (1582 to 1583) and that of M. Ogarkov and T. Korobeynikov (1593). The last date falls after Sylvester's death in 1590, so it does not fit his reign.