Hesychast controversy

The Hesychast controversy was a theological dispute in the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the fourteenth century between supporters and opponents of Gregory Palamas.

While not a primary driver of the Byzantine Civil War, it influences and is influenced by the political forces in play during thiswar.

The dispute concludes with the victory of the Palamists and the inclusion of Palamite doctrine as part of the dogma of the Eastern Orthodox Church as well as the canonization of Palamas.About the year 1337, Hesychasm attracts the attention of a learned member of the Orthodox Church, Barlaam, a Calabrian monk who had come to Constantinople some seven years earlier.

Reacting to criticisms of his theological writings that Gregory Palamas, an Athonite monk and exponent of hesychasm, had courteously communicated to him, Barlaam encounters Hesychasts and hears descriptions of their practices.

Trained in Western Scholastic theology, Barlaam is scandalized by the descriptions that he hears and writes several treatises ridiculing the practices.

Barlaam takes exception to, as heretical and blasphemous, the doctrine entertained by the Hesychasts as to the nature of the uncreated light, identical to that light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, the experience of which was said to be the goal of Hesychast practice.

His informants say that this light was not of the divine essence but was contemplated as another hypostasis.

Barlaam holds this concept to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulates two eternal beings, a visible (immanent) and an invisible (transcendent) God.Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica, is asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend Hesychasm from Barlaam's attacks.

Well-educated in Greek philosophy (dialectical method) and thus able to defend Hesychasm with methods in use also in the West, Palamas defendes Hesychasm in the 1340s at a series of synods in Constantinople, and writes a number of works in its defense.The dispute comes before a synod held in 1341 at Constantinople which, taking into account the regard in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held, condemns Barlaam, who recants and almost immediately returns to Calabria, afterwards becoming bishop of a Byzantine-Rite diocese in communion with the Pope.

Five other synods on the subject are held, at the third of which the opponents of Palamas gain a brief victory.

However, in 1351, at a synod under the presidency of Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, Palamas' real Essence-Energies distinction is established as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church.Gregory Akindynos, who had been a disciple of Gregory's and had tried to mediate between him and Barlaam, had become critical of Palamas after Barlaam's departure in 1341.

Another opponent of Palamism is Manuel Kalekas who seeks to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches.

Following the decision of 1351, there is strong repression against anti-Palamist thinkers.

Kalekas reports on this repression as late as 1397, and for theologians in disagreement with Palamas, there is ultimately no choice but to emigrate and convert to union with the Latin Church, a path taken by Kalekas as well as Demetrios Kydones and John Kyparissiotes.

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