CABASILAS, NICOLA. — Celebrated Byzantine theologian of the fourteenth century (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, Nilo C. (v.), of whom he was allegedly—an assertion without foundation—the successor to the see of Thessalonica, and with Michele 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 In the Palamite controversy, he sided with Gregory Palamas, as is attested by the unpublished booklet Adversus Gregoras deliramenta, in cod. Paris. 1213, f. 282–84 v.; but he was a moderate Palamite. He was also anti-Latin, and it was he who inaugurated the controversy between Greeks and Latins concerning the form of the Eucharist and the question of the epiclesis (cf. chs. 29 and 30 of his Explanation of the Byzantine Mass: PG 150, 429–37). Nevertheless, he was influenced by Latin theology, which he came to know through the Greek translation of the two Summae of St. Thomas, made by 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 works are gathered in the fifteenth-century cod. Paris. 1213. Among the published works, the following should be noted: 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 On C.’s other published and unpublished writings, cf.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 supplemented by 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.