NICEFORO GREGORAS. — Called “the Philosopher,” born in 1296 at Heraclea Pontica in Bithynia. From a very young age he began addressing in his writings philosophical, theological, scientific-mathematical, epigraphic, and ascetic questions. A celibate layman, he never wished to accept the clerical state or the dignities offered to him. Deeply attached to the Palaiologoi and a member of their household, he followed their varying fortunes.
After the flight of Barlaam, N. G. upheld the intellectual primacy in Constantinople through his intervention in the question of calendar reform (which Andronicus II failed to carry through) and in that of the Union of the Churches, always taking a stand against Rome, whose primacy and authority in matters of faith he never acknowledged. He owed his greatest fame, however, to his tenacious and learned opposition to Palamism, in whose public disputations from 1347 to 1351 he consistently prevailed over Palamas himself, until the Τόμος of anathemas issued against him and his supporters by the emperor Cantacuzenus. Confined to his house, he continued to fight through his writings until his death, at the beginning of 1360.
Of his very numerous works, not a few of them still unpublished, the Historia Byzantina and his Correspondence are invaluable for assessing the turbulent state of his age. One should not, however, seek a defined doctrinal system in N.’s works: to refute Palamas, it is enough for him to entrench himself in the traditional theology of divine simplicity.