SIMEONE, ARCIVESCOVO DI TESSALONICA - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. XI, p. 387

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

SIMEON, archbishop of THESSALONICA. — Byzantine theologian, polemicist, and liturgist; d. at Thessalonica in March 1429. Little is known of his life beyond that after being a monk he succeeded Metropolitan GABRIEL about 1418 and died six months before the fall of Thessalonica to the Turks.

Among his writings the principal ones are a dialogue against all heresies and a treatise on the Holy Rites, i.e. the Sacraments. To these must be added the pamphlets On the Divine Temple, Exposition of the Creed, Explanation of the Constantinopolitan Creed, Treatise on the Priesthood, 83 replies addressed to GABRIEL, metropolitan of the Pentapolis, and some poems and prayers. S. is to be numbered among the great Byzantine writers. Speaking generally, his trinitarian, christological, and sacramental doctrine is profound and sound, save in those points where the polemicist has overridden the theologian. For S. is an ardent Palamite, fought against the Latins, and together with NICHOLAS CABASILAS is the greatest exponent of the Byzantine view on the epiclesis as the form of the Most Holy Eucharist.

BIBL.: cf. apart from the passages translated and inserted by G. MORIN in his Libri de Paenitentia, Paris 1651, and on Ordinations, ibid. 1655, the works of S. were published in Greek by Dositheus, Jassy 1683, later at Leipzig 1791. They are also in PG, 155. Noteworthy are the Rumanian translation, Bucharest 1875, and the Russian, Moscow 1916. L. ALLACCI, Diatriba de Symeonibus: PG, 155; F. K. LUKMAN, Nicolai Kabasilas in Simeon Salunski e epiclezi, Bog. Vestn., 7 (1927), pp. 1-14; M. JUGIE, Simeon de Thessalonique, in DThC, XIV, cols. 2076-84; id., De forma Eucharistiae, De epicleibus Eucharistiae, Rome 1943, pp. 61-64.