Barlaam di Seminara

BARLAAM DI SEMINARA. - Theologian and scientist of the 14th century, b. around 1290 at Seminara (Calabria) and d. bishop of Gerace in 1350. Contrary to the opinion commonly held until our own days, B. was not born in the Catholic Church, but in schism (cf. his testimony in one of his opuscules against the dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit ab utroque, the 7th of the series, in cod. Parisinus graec. 1218, fol. 506v of the 15th century). As a young man he received a careful education in one of the Calabrian monasteries nominally dependent on some Catholic bishop of the Byzantine rite, but in fact faithful to the dissident patriarchate of Byzantium. Having moved to Constantinople in 1326-27 as a teacher of sciences in the monastery of St. Saviour, he soon became its abbot. He was also appointed professor of theology and patristic exegesis at the imperial University, thereby arousing the jealousy of Nicephorus Gregoras, who challenged him to a public scientific disputation. Gregoras gives an account of this, and he published his Florentios to demonstrate that he had defeated the Calabrian. B., after a stay at Thessalonica, was summoned back to Constantinople to treat of the union together with the legates of Pope John XXII.

It was then that he composed his 21 opuscules against the Latins (PG 151, 1249-53; the titles and incipits of the treatises).

Some of these opuscules were criticized by Gregory Palamas. Perhaps for this reason B. wrote, shortly afterwards, against the method of prayer of the Hesychasts (v.) of Mount Athos, tainted with illuminism, and against the new theology of Palamism. The dissident Byzantine patriarch then intervened (1341), and B., disavowed, had to recant. Humiliated, B. returned to the West, where in 1339 he had been at the pontifical court of Avignon as legate of Andronicus III, who demanded from the Pope a crusade against the Turk. Nothing was obtained because the Pope laid down as a preliminary condition union with the Roman See. B.'s ideas on this question are known to us from two discourses composed at that time and recently published (C. Giannelli, in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, III [Studi e Testi, 123], p. 52, under the title: Un progetto di B. Calabro per l'unione delle Chiese), not to be confused with the minutes of the session held at Avignon of which Allatius gives us extracts (PG 151, 1331-43).

At Avignon B. formed a friendship with Petrarch, who received from him lessons on Platonic philosophy. These contacts and the studies he made on the dogmatic discrepancies between the East and the West induced B. to become a Catholic. It was Petrarch who urged him to this step in 1342, again at Avignon, where B. had returned once more. Thanks to his influential friend, B. obtained from the pontifical court a pension and a little later the bishopric of the Byzantine rite of Gerace near his native Seminara. Consecrated at Avignon by Card. Bertrando del Poggetto, he was again summoned to the court in 1346 for a mission to the Byzantine empress Anna of Savoy, then regent. The matter was undoubtedly religious union, but the triumph of John Cantacuzenus in 1347 caused everything to collapse. B. returned to Gerace where he died.

We preserve numerous works of his, many still unpublished, and almost always brief though of dense content. Among the lost books mention should be made of his Against the Messalians, that is, against the Palamites. Having become a Catholic, B. refuted himself concerning the primacy of the Pope and the procession of the Holy Spirit. Three of his opuscules (PG 151, 1255 ff.) are a notable defense of Catholicism. Among the published works we further note: 1) Two books on ethics according to the Stoics, in Latin (PG 151, 1341-64); 2) Λογιστική, that is, reasoned Arithmetic in 6 books (Strasbourg 1572); 3) Commentarius arithmeticus secundi libri Euclidis (published among the Opera omnia of Euclid in the Biblioth. classic. graecor. et latinor. Teubneriana, of Leipzig); 4) Seven letters on the beginnings of the Hesychast controversy (ed. G. Schirò in Archivio storico per la Calabria, 1-8 [1931-38]; the edition is unfortunately defective).

Martino Jugie