The Legacy of St Gregory Palamas

The theology of St Gregory Palamas (1296-1357) casts a long shadow in late Byzantium, influencing the religious culture and literary production of the greatest writers from the middle Palaiologan period to the fall of Constantinople and beyond. As a major theological polemic that unfolded over more than a decade (from 1338 to 1351), the Palamite controversy would shape Byzantine theological discourse, especially in its interaction with the Latin West, for over a century, from the condemnation of Prochoros Kydones in 1368 to the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438/39. As new texts and new research into the sources of the period have become available, our knowledge of the controversy, its background, and its afterlife continues to deepen. This volume brings together new research from a variety of specialists in patristics, Byzantine philosophy, and medieval theology, to further broaden our understanding of Palamite theology and its impact in history.

Tikhon Alexander Pino, Introduction

Part I: Palamas, Barlaam, and Akindynos

Norman Russell, The Relationship of the Divine Energies to the Holy Trinity in Gregory Palamas

Christopher Howard, Gregory Palamas’s Theophanes: Translation and Introduction

Elga Kanaeva, The Patristic Sources of Barlaam’s Against the Latins, with a comparison to St Gregory Palamas’s Apodictic Treatises

Andreas Zachariou, The Heretical Conception of Gregory Akindynos: The Identification of the Angels with the Divine Energies

Part II: The Palamite School

Mihail Mitrea, ‘Hail, Glory of the Fathers!’ Patristic Sources and References in the Hagiographical Works of Philotheos Kokkinos

Grant W. Gasse, Select Letters from John VI Kantakouzenos’s Disputatio cum Paulo: Translation and Introduction

Christiaan Kappes, George-Gennadios Scholarios and the Byzantine Science of Second Intentions: The Influence of Thomas Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis, and Prochoros Kydones on Palamite Logic

Part III: The Modern Reception of Palamas

Dmitry Biriukov, Two Russian Thinkers in Dialogue on Palamism: The Sophiological Palamism of Protopriest Sergius Bulgakov and the Neo-Palamism of Priest Georges Florovsky in the 1920s

Vladimir Cvetković, The Reception of St. Gregory Palamas and Palamite Tradition in Justin Popović