Euthymius II Karmah

Euthymius II Karmah
Patriarch of Antioch
Church	Melkite Church
See	Patriarch of Antioch
Installed	1 May 1634
Term ended	1 January 1635
Predecessor	Ignatius III Atiyah
Successor	Euthymius III of Chios
Personal details
Birth name	Abdel-Karim Karmah
Born	1572 Hama, Syria
Died	1 January 1635 (aged 62–63) Damascus

Patriarch Abdel-Karim Meletios Euthymius II Karmah (1572–1635) was Melkite Patriarch of Antioch from 1634 to 1635. He had been a leading figure in the Melkite Church and metropolitan bishop of Aleppo. He died a few months after his election as Patriarch, probably poisoned because his will to proceed with a union with the Catholic Church.

Abdel-Karim Karmah was born in 1572 in Hama, Syria, son of a priest. In his twenties he went to Jerusalem where he entered in the monastery of Saint Michel, a cloister associated with Mar Saba Monastery. After two years of prayer, he was asked by his bishop Simeon to return to Hama where he was ordained deacon and later priest. A few years later he moved for service to Aleppo where he got appraisal as preacher.

On 12 February 1612 Karmah was consecrated metropolitan bishop of Aleppo by Patriarch Athanasius II Dabbas, and he took the name of the saint of that day, ‘’Meletios’’. One of his aims as metropolitan was to increase the literacy and the education of his flock and his presbyter, which needed liturgical and religious books in Arabic. Thus Karmah in 1612 published in Arabic the Typicon of Mar Saba, a Liturgicon and a Sticherarion, but to go on with further publications he needed money. For this purpose he asked a grant to Rome, and he relied on the Franciscans missionaries for financial support and for teaching. He succeeded also to persuade the Vatican to stat preparing an Arabic translation of the whole Bible, something quite difficult to obtain in the years after the Council of Trent, but the translation took time and only the Gospels were published.

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