Palamas and Palamism

PALAMAS AND PALAMISM. - Gregory P., Byzantine theologian of the 14th century, founder of the new doctrinal movement called Palamism after him, born of a noble family around 1269 in Constantinople, died at Thessalonica on 14 November 1359. On Mount Athos he received the monastic habit and thereafter always undertook to defend Hesychasm (v.), although he could practice the retired life of prayer but little because of the continuous disputes he had to sustain in the capital of the Empire with the adversaries of his system, namely the patriarch Calecas and the philosophers Barlaam, Akindinos and Nicephorus Gregoras.

Having obtained the see of Thessalonica, he was recalled twice to Constantinople, and after having suffered harsh imprisonment at the hands of the Turks, he died in his see (Philotheos Kokkinos, Λόγος ἐγκαμισατικός: PG 151, 635 D). A most prolific writer, he left many ascetic, hagiographic, homiletic and, above all, polemical-theological works, for the most part still unpublished. In the Byzantine-Russian schismatic Church he has been honored as a saint since the year 1368, on the day of his death, and is solemnly commemorated in the acclamations of the "Feast of Orthodoxy."

PALAMISM

The origin of the theological system promoted by P. must be sought in the oral and written controversies with Barlaam of Calabria before 1340, and the new system may be said to have been fundamentally constructed, under the pressing onslaught of the philosopher, with the publication of the famous Triads, still unpublished, whose authoritative summary was made by Athos in the Hagiorite Tome of 1339-40.

When silence was imposed on the two contending parties in 1341, Barlaam having disappeared in flight, and the Empire having been thrown into turmoil by the ambitious maneuvers of Cantacuzenus after the sudden death of Andronicus III, P. succeeded in obtaining approval of his ideas in the synod of Hagia [Sophia] presided over by Cantacuzenus the same year and in the (interpolated) Tome written afterwards (Ἐπανετός: PG 151, 679-92). Then the patriarch John Calecas synodically condemned the writings of P. and, despairing of his repentance, launched the excommunication (4 Nov. 1344). But then fortunes changed rapidly and decisively when in May 1347 Cantacuzenus entered Constantinople in triumph, made a friendly settlement with the Empress Anna, deposed Calecas from the patriarchate, and the Palamites occupied the principal episcopal sees, among them Thessalonica, which was entrusted to P. by the new patriarch Isidore. Isidore was succeeded after two years by Callistus, who with the favor of Cantacuzenus had the most important Palamite Synod celebrated in May-June 1351, in which the very new doctrinal chapters of P. were approved, sanctioned by Nilus Cabasilas and Philotheus Kokkinos in the famous Tome Οὔτε μὲν τὴν κατὰ τῆς ἐκκλησίας (Dositheus, Τόμος Ἀγάπης, pp. 52-84; PG 151, 717-64). For the final triumph of Palamism there remained only the solemn acceptance of the new theology as official of the Church of Byzantium, which was done in July 1352, including a summary of it in the acclamations of the so-called Sunday of Orthodoxy. After the last Palamite Synod of 1368, for the condemnation of Prochorus Cydones and the canonization of P., there were no further official decisions among the "orthodox" concerning Palamism, which nevertheless continued always to exist, albeit mitigated, and finds even today a new awakening among certain Greek-Russian writers.

The Palamite doctrine, starting from purity of heart for contemplation and believing the Taboric light to be the divine reality manifested to the soul of the righteous man who otherwise cannot see God, took strength in the real distinction of God and divinity, divine nature and divine Persons, divine essence and divine properties that proceed from the essence, establishing, therefore, primary and secondary elements in the very notion of God. This distinction constitutes the central point of the system.

Hence it is that Palamism directly opposes the Catholic dogma of the all-comprehensive divine simplicity, which was also always upheld by the Byzantine Church, so that it had to to be rejected at the outset by the patriarch Calecas as a dangerous and anti-traditional novelty. The development of this basic point then necessarily vitiated many other aspects of the ancestral theology, above all those concerning the doctrine of Grace, identified by the P. with the light of Thabor, as one of the infinite properties of God, uncreated and eternal, inseparably united with and at the same time distinct from the divine essence. The notion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and of the inabi-

tion of the divine Persons in the righteous, as well as the true possession and vision of God in glory.

The Catholic Church in not a few documents has indirectly condemned Palamism (Denz-U, 294, 389-392, 431-32) and, taking into account the history of the decree Pro Graecis, also directly in the Council of Florence in the question of the Novissimi (Denz-U, 693; E. Candal, Concilium Florentinum, II, 1, Rome 1942, pp. L-LI and 86-90, nn. 101-107).

Emanuele Candal