Internal problems and prolonged wars by the Ottoman Empire raised the expectations of Greek subjects to end Ottoman rule; as such a rebellion broke out in Himara at 1596 under metropolitan bishop Athanasios of Ohrid, while at 1600 a delegation from central Greece on behalf of Dionysios arrived in Madrid to propose a major revolt. The later had already incited a failed rebellion in Thessaly in 1600. In 1601, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople deposed him for "plotting with madness the uprising against the rule of the lifelong sovereign Sultan Mehmet III".
