As an aficionado of Byzantine history, of imposture and of clerical squabbling - even more vicious than the conflicts within academia - I was amused by a reader's pointer this morning regarding allegations against South Australian religious figure Prokopios Kanavas. He has reportedly been called to a meeting of Greek Orthodox Community of South Australia council leaders to discuss claims Kanavas has made on his Facebook profile.
Kanavas has been in the news over the past two years. Kanavas was sacked as an SA police chaplain in 2011 when the state government was made aware of information that allegedly affected his "suitability" for the role, apparently centred on claims that he had been defrocked as a priest in 2008, joined the Greek army, subsequently being ordained by other church authorities and then moving to Adelaide.
His profile reportedly features claims that Kanavas completed a degree of theology and international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, represented the Patriarchate of Jerusalem at conferences and restored a monastery at his own expense. The university reportedly indicates that there is no record of him studying at the institution. What's claimed to be a letter from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem contests the other claims.
If Kanavas has indeed been creative with his CV, he's not alone. Past entries in this blog have highlighted the creativity of figures such as Stephen Wilce, Dusan Milosevic, Greg Mortenson, Vitomir Zepinic, James Montgomery and Rex Crane.
Those figures were more modest than some pre-modern identity criminals, crazies or enthusiasts. Matthew vii 15 warns of false prophets "who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". Some of those wolves were impressively dressed.
Gregory of Tours' Historia for example features an enthusiast who at the end of the sixth century declared himself to be Christ, travelling in the neighbourhood of Arles in company of Mary, performing miracles and gathering followers until struck dead by a representative of Bishop Aurelius. Ecclesiastical fraudster Paulus Tigrinus successfully conned Pope Boniface IX and Antipope Clement VII into colluding in his assertion that he was the wandering Patriarch of Constantinople. False bishops Adelbert and Clement, active in Germany around 744 CE, gained attention for unorthodoxy (Adelbert told his followers it was unnecessary to confess their sins because he already read their hearts) and assertion that their authority was confirmed by a miraculous letter from Jesus Christ that had supposedly fallen from heaven and been picked up by the Archangel Michael. Lest we scoff too much about mediaeval credulity regarding unorthodox delivery of correspondence we might recall the golden tablets and magic spectacles of Latter Day Saints founder Joseph Smith or the beliefs espoused by Tom Cruise after conversion to Scientology. Franciscan friar James of Jülich was sentenced to be boiled alive in 1392 after the bad career move of pretending to be a bishop and falsely ordaining numerous priests.
Meanwhile Christian Gerhartsreiter (aka Christopher Chichester and Clark Rockefeller) has been ordered to stand trial for the 1985 murder of landlord John Sohus. Gerhartsreiter's career of imposture is described in The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter (Viking, 2011) by Mark Seal.
