CABASILAS, NICOLA. - Famous 14th-century Byzantine theologian (d. after 1396), whose life is almost unknown, but whose works, remarkable for several reasons, have been the subject of a number of recent studies. Some authors have confused him both with his uncle, Nilus C. (v.), of whom he would have been — an assertion without foundation — the successor on the see of Thessalonica; and with Michael C. the Sacellarius, his contemporary (cf. S. Salaville, C. le Sacellaire et N. C., in Echos d'Orient, 35 [1936], pp. 421-27). In fact, we have no proof that he belonged to the secular or regular clergy. In the Palamite controversy, he took his stand alongside Gregory Palamas, as attests the unpublished opuscule Adversus Gregoras deliramenta, in cod. Paris. 1213, f. 282-84 v.; but he was a moderate Palamite. He was also anti-Latin, and it is he who inaugurated the controversy between Greeks and Latins over the form of the Eucharist and the question of the epiclesis (cf. chaps. 29 and 30 of his Explanation of the Byzantine Mass: PG 150, 429-37). Moreover, he came under the influence of Latin theology, which he knew through the Greek translation of the two Summae of St. Thomas, due to his friend Demetrius Cydones, a convert to Catholicism.
The list of C.'s writings, published only in part, has not yet been completely compiled. They consist chiefly of treatises on spirituality, homilies and panegyrics, letters and epigrams. The principal ones are gathered together in cod. Paris. 1213 of the 15th century. Among the published works one must note: De vita in Christo (PG 150, 493-725), a treatise, and one of the best, on the spiritual life; the Explanation of the Byzantine Mass (PG 150, 368-492), a work highly esteemed by liturgists; the Homilies on the Nativity, the Annunciation and the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin, edited by M. Jugie (PG 19, 465-510; cf. by the same author, La dottrina mariale di N. C., in Echos d'Orient, 18 [1919], pp. 373-88). On C.'s other published and unpublished writings cf. I. Ehrhard in Krumbacher's Geschichte der byzant. Literatur, 2nd ed., Munich, 1897, p. 159, and PG 150; to be completed by means of the following publications: Panégyrique de Matthieu Cantacuzène et Anne Paléologine, ed. M. Jugie, in Bollettino dell'Istituto archeologico russo di Costantinopoli, 15 [1911], pp. 112-21; Prière inédite à Jésus Christ, ed. S. Salaville, in Echos d'Orient, 35 [1936], pp. 43-50.