DAVIDE DISHYPATOS. - Byzantine polemicist of the 14th century. The particulars of his life are unknown; it is certain, however, that he was originally from Tessalonica and that he probably embraced the monastic life in the monastery of S. Atanasio on Mount Athos. Du Cange makes him a member of the noble Dishypatos family (cf. Historia Byzantina, I, Familiae Augustae Byzantinae, Venezia 1729, p. 207). In the struggles over hesychasm, to whose doctrines he was wholly devoted, he had frequent relations with the most prominent figures at the court of Byzantium and with the emperors themselves.
It was precisely in order to explain to the empress Anna Paleologa (Giovanna di Savoia) the passionate controversies between Palamas and Accindino, his contemporaries, that, at her request, he wrote a brief and objective account of the historical-doctrinal origins of that dispute. Knowledge of this work, first edited by Uspenskij and then critically by Candal, is important for the ideological history of Palamism. D. also wrote two other Palamite treatises, one of them in iambic verse, against Accindino and the Calabrian Barlaam.