Nicephorus Gregoras

NICEPHORUS GREGORAS. - Called "the Philosopher," b. in 1296 at Heraclea in Pontus, in Bithynia. From a very young age he began to deal in his writings with philosophical, theological, scientific-mathematical, hagiographic and ascetic problems. A lay celibate, he never wished to accept the ecclesiastical state or the dignities offered to him. Deeply attached to the Palaeologi and a member of their household, he followed their changing fortunes.

After the flight of Barlaam, N. G. upheld intellectual primacy at Constantinople, through his intervention in the question of the reform of the calendar (rendered fruitless by Andronicus II) and in that of the Union of the Churches, always siding against Rome, whose primacy and whose authority in matters of faith he never recognized. He owes his greatest fame, however, to his tenacious and learned opposition to Palamism, in whose public disputes he always won the palm from 1347 to 1351 over the innovator Palamas himself, down to the Τόμος of anathemas left against him and his partisans by the emperor Cantacuzenus. Relegated to his house, he continued to struggle through his writings until his death, at the beginning of 1360.

Of his very many works (not a few still unpublished) the Byzantine History and his Correspondence are precious for appreciating the turbulent state of his time. One must not, however, seek in N.'s works a defined doctrinal system: to refute Palamas it was enough for him to entrench himself in the traditional theology of divine simplicity.

Emmanuele Candel