 Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (Greek: Παῦλος Παλαιολόγος Τάγαρις, ca. 1320 / 40 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a connection with the imperial Palaiologos dynasty. He fled his marriage as a teenager and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he travelled widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine and Hungary to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France. During his long and tumultuous career he was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and finally managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he repented and confessed his sins before a synod in 1394.
