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Hesychasm

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Hesychasm (/ˈhɛsɪkæzəm, ˈhɛzɪ-/)[1] is a contemplative monastic tradition in the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches in which stillness (hēsychia) is sought through uninterrupted Jesus prayer.[2] While rooted in early Christian monasticism, it took its definitive form in the 14th century at Mount Athos.

Etymology

Hesychasm (Greek: ἡσυχασμός [isixaˈzmos]) derives from the word hesychia (ἡσυχία [isiˈçia]), meaning "stillness, rest, quiet, silence"[3] and hesychazo (ἡσυχάζω [isiˈxazo]) "to keep stillness".

Origins and development

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a scholar of Eastern Orthodox theology, distinguishes five distinct usages of the term "hesychasm":[4][5]

  1. "solitary life", a sense, equivalent to "eremitical life", in which the term is used since the 4th century;
  2. "the practice of inner prayer, aiming at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language";
  3. "the quest for such union through the Jesus Prayer";
  4. "a particular psychosomatic technique in combination with the Jesus Prayer", use of which technique can be traced back at least to the 13th century;
  5. "the theology of St. Gregory Palamas", on which see Palamism.

Early Christian monasticism

Solitary ascetic life

Christian monasticism started with the legalisation of Christianity in the 4th century.[6] The term hesychast is used sparingly in Christian ascetical writings emanating from Egypt from the 4th century on, although the writings of Evagrius and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers do attest to it. In Egypt, the terms more often used are anchoretism (Gr. ἀναχώρησις, "withdrawal, retreat"), and anchorite (Gr. ἀναχωρητής, "one who withdraws or retreats, i.e., a hermit").

The term hesychast was used in the 6th century in Palestine in the Lives of Cyril of Scythopolis.[7] Many of the hesychasts Cyril describes were his own contemporaries; several of the saints about whom Cyril was writing, especially Euthymios and Savas, were in fact from Cappadocia. The laws (novellae) of the emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) treat hesychast and anchorite as synonyms, making them interchangeable terms.

Inner prayer

The practice of inner prayer, which aims at "inward stillness or silence of the heart",[8] dates back to at least the 4th century. Evagrius Ponticus (345–399), John Climacus (St. John of Sinai; 6th–7th century), Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), and Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) are representatives of this hesychast spirituality.[8] John Climacus, in his influential Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes several stages of contemplative or hesychast practice, culminating in agape.

The earliest reference to the Jesus prayer is in Diadochos of Photiki (c. 450). Neither Evagrius, Maximus, nor Symeon refers to the Jesus prayer.[9] Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), who transmitted Evagrius Ponticus's ascetical teachings to the West, forming the basis of much of the spirituality of the Order of Saint Benedict and the subsequent western mystical tradition, presents as the formula used in Egypt for repetitive prayer "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me."[10][11]

Addition of psychosomatic techniques

St. Nicephorus the Hesychast (13th century), a Roman Catholic who converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith and became a monk at Mount Athos, advised monks to bend their heads toward the chest, "attach the prayer to their breathing" while controlling the rhythm of their breath, and "to fix their eyes during prayer on the 'middle of the body'", concentrating the mind within the heart in order to practice nepsis (watchfulness).[12] While this is the earliest attestation of psychosomatic techniques in hesychast prayer, according to Kallistos Ware "its origins may well be far more ancient",[13] influenced by the Sufi practice of dhikr, " the memory and invocation of the name of God", which in turn may have been influenced by Yoga practices from India,[14] though it's also possible that Sufis were influenced by early Christian monasticism.[14][15]

In the early 14th century, Gregory Sinaita (1260s–1346) learned a form of disciplined mental prayer from Arsenius of Crete, rooted in the tradition of John Climacus.[16] In 1310, he went to Mount Athos, where he remained until 1335 as a monk at the Skete of Magoula near Philotheou Monastery,[17] introducing hesychast practice there.[16] The terms Hesychasm and Hesychast were used by the monks on Mount Athos to refer to the practice and to the practitioner of a method of mental ascesis that involves the use of the Jesus Prayer assisted by certain psychophysical techniques.

Hesychast controversy and Palamism

About the year 1337, hesychasm attracted the attention of Barlaam of Seminara, a Calabrian monk who at that time held the office of abbot in the Monastery of St. Saviour in Constantinople and who visited Mount Athos. Mount Athos was then at the height of its fame and influence, under the reign of Andronicus III Palaeologus and the leadership of the Protos Symeon. On Mount Athos, Barlaam encountered hesychasts and heard descriptions of their practices, also reading the writings of the teacher in hesychasm of St. Gregory Palamas, himself an Athonite monk. Trained in Western Scholastic theology, Barlaam was scandalized by hesychasm and began to combat it both orally and in his writings. As a private teacher of theology in the Western Scholastic mode, Barlaam propounded a more intellectual and propositional approach to the knowledge of God than the hesychasts taught.

Barlaam took exception to the doctrine entertained by the hesychasts as to the nature of the light, the experience of which was said to be the goal of hesychast practice, regarding it as heretical and blasphemous. It was maintained by the hesychasts to be of divine origin and to be identical to the light which had been manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.[18][19] This Barlaam held to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. Hesychasm was linked with Messalianiam and Bogomilism.[20][21]

On the hesychast side, the controversy was taken up by St. Gregory Palamas, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was asked by his fellow monks on Mt Athos to defend hesychasm from the attacks of Barlaam. St. Gregory himself was well-educated in Greek philosophy. St. Gregory defended hesychasm in the 1340s at three different synods in Constantinople, and he also wrote a number of works in its defense.

In these works, St. Gregory Palamas uses a distinction, already found in the 4th century in the works of the Cappadocian Fathers, between the energies or operations (Gr. energeiai) of God and the essence of God. St. Gregory taught that the energies or operations of God were uncreated. He taught that the essence of God can never be known by his creature even in the next life, but that his uncreated energies or operations can be known both in this life and in the next, and convey to the hesychast in this life and to the righteous in the next life a true spiritual knowledge of God. In Palamite theology, it is the uncreated energies of God that illumine the hesychast who has been vouchsafed an experience of the uncreated light.[22]

In 1341, the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople and presided over by the Emperor Andronicus III; the synod, taking into account the regard in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held, condemned Barlaam, who recanted and returned to Calabria, afterwards becoming a bishop in the Catholic Church.

One of Barlaam's friends, Gregory Akindynos, who originally was also a friend of St. Gregory Palamas, took up the controversy, which also played a role in the civil war between the supporters of John Cantacuzenus and John V Palaiologos.[23] Three other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the followers of Barlaam gained a brief victory. But in 1351 at a synod under the presidency of the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church.

Introduction in Russia

St. Paisius Velichkovsky and his disciples made the practice known in Russia and Romania, although hesychasm was already previously known in Russia, as is attested by St. Seraphim of Sarov's independent practice of it.

Practice

Acquiring inner stillness

The hesychast interprets Jesus's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to "go into your closet to pray" to mean that one should ignore the senses and withdraw inward. Saint John of Sinai writes:

Hesychasm is the enclosing of the bodiless primary cognitive faculty of the soul (Orthodoxy teaches of two cognitive faculties, the nous and logos) in the bodily house of the body.[24]

Stages in hesychast practice

Theosis is obtained by engaging in contemplative prayer resulting from the cultivation of watchfulness (Gk: nepsis). This doesn't mean that human, created energy obtains theosis by itself, i.e., without God. Holy Spirit is a doer of theosis, because He gives Christ's grace and Father's love to the purifying ones. According to the standard ascetic formulation of this process, there are three stages:

Katharsis (ascese/purification)

Sobriety contributes to this mental ascesis that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all. While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the hesychast cultivates nepsis, watchful attention, to reject tempting thoughts (the "thieves") that come to the hesychast as he watches in sober attention in his hermitage. St. John of Sinai describes hesychast practice as follows:

Take up your seat on a high place and watch, if only you know how, and then you will see in what manner, when, whence, how many and what kind of thieves come to enter and steal your clusters of grapes. When the watchman grows weary, he stands up and prays; and then he sits down again and courageously takes up his former task.[26]

The hesychast is to attach Eros (Greek: eros), that is, "yearning", to his practice of sobriety so as to overcome the temptation to acedia (sloth). He is also to use an extremely directed and controlled anger against the tempting thoughts, although to obliterate them entirely, he is to invoke Jesus Christ via the Jesus Prayer.

Much of the literature of hesychasm is occupied with the psychological analysis of such tempting thoughts (e.g., St. Mark the Ascetic). This psychological analysis owes much to the ascetical works of Evagrius Pontikos, with its doctrine of the eight passions.[27]

Theoria (illumination)

The primary task of the hesychast is to engage in mental ascesis. The hesychast is to bring his mind (Gr. nous) into his heart so as to practise both the Jesus Prayer and sobriety with his mind in his heart. In solitude and retirement, the hesychast repeats the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner." The hesychast prays the Jesus Prayer 'with the heart' – with meaning, with intent, "for real" (see ontic). He never treats the Jesus Prayer as a string of syllables whose "surface" or overt verbal meaning is secondary or unimportant. He considers bare repetition of the Jesus Prayer as a mere string of syllables, perhaps with a "mystical" inner meaning beyond the overt verbal meaning, to be worthless or even dangerous. This emphasis on the actual, real invocation of Jesus Christ mirrors an Eastern understanding of mantra in that physical action/voice and meaning are utterly inseparable.[28]

The descent of the mind into the heart is not taken literally by the practitioners of hesychasm, but is considered metaphorically.[29] Some of the psychophysical techniques described in the texts are to assist the descent of the mind into the heart at those times that only with difficulty it descends on its own.

The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). By the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer.

This stage is called the guard of the mind. This is a very advanced stage of ascetical and spiritual practice, and attempting to accomplish this prematurely, especially with psychophysical techniques, can cause very serious spiritual and emotional harm to the would-be hesychast. St. Theophan the Recluse once remarked that bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his youth, since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only "in ruining their lungs".

The guard of the mind is the practical goal of the hesychast. It is the condition in which he remains as a matter of course throughout his day, every day until he dies.

There is a very great emphasis on humility in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, great cautions being given in the texts about the disaster that will befall the would-be hesychast if he proceeds in pride, arrogance, or conceit. It is also assumed in the hesychast texts that the hesychast is a member of the Orthodox Church in good standing.

Theosis (deification)

Theosis is from the guard of the mind that he is raised to contemplation by the grace of God.

The hesychast usually experiences the contemplation of God as light, the "uncreated light" of the theology of St. Gregory Palamas. The hesychast, when he has by the mercy of God been granted such an experience, does not remain in that experience for a very long time (there are exceptions – see for example the Life of St. Savas the Fool for Christ (14th century), written by St. Philotheos Kokkinos (14th century), but he returns "to earth" and continues to practise the guard of the mind.

The uncreated light that the hesychast experiences is identified with the Holy Spirit. Experiences of the uncreated light are allied to the 'acquisition of the Holy Spirit'. Notable accounts of encounters with the Holy Spirit in this fashion are found in St. Symeon the New Theologian's account of the illumination of "George" (considered a pseudonym of St. Symeon himself); in the "conversation with Motovilov" in the Life of St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833); and, more recently, in the reminiscences of Elder Porphyrios (Bairaktaris) of Kafsokalivia (Wounded by Love pp. 27–31).

Prelest

Orthodox tradition warns against seeking ecstasy as an end in itself. Hesychasm is a traditional complex of ascetical practices embedded in the doctrine and practice of the Orthodox Church and intended to purify the member of the Orthodox Church and to make him ready for an encounter with God that comes to him when and if God wants, through God's grace. The goal is to acquire, through purification and grace, the Holy Spirit and salvation. Any ecstatic states or other unusual phenomena that may occur in the course of hesychast practice are considered secondary and unimportant, even quite dangerous. Moreover, seeking unusual "spiritual" experiences can itself cause great harm, ruining the soul and the mind of the seeker. Such a seeking after "spiritual" experiences can lead to spiritual delusion (Ru. prelest, Gr. plani) – the antonym of sobriety – in which a person believes himself or herself to be a saint, has hallucinations in which he or she "sees" angels, Christ, etc. This state of spiritual delusion is, in a superficial, egotistical way, pleasurable but can lead to madness and suicide, and, according to the hesychast fathers, makes salvation impossible.

Liturgy and sacraments

Hesychasts fully participate in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Orthodox Church, including the daily cycle of liturgical prayer of the Divine Office and the Divine Liturgy. However, hesychasts who are living as hermits might have a very rare attendance at the Divine Liturgy (see the life of Saint Seraphim of Sarov) and might not recite the Divine Office except by means of the Jesus Prayer (attested practice on Mt Athos). In general, the hesychast restricts his external activities for the sake of his hesychastic practice.

Texts

Books used by hesychasts include the Philokalia, a collection of texts on prayer and solitary mental ascesis written from the 4th to the 15th centuries, which exists in several independent redactions; the Ladder of Divine Ascent; the collected works of St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022); and the works of St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century), as they were selected and translated into Greek at the Monastery of St. Savas near Jerusalem about the 10th century.[30]

External views of hesychasm

Oriental Orthodox

Coptic Orthodox

Some Coptic Orthodox clerics are "wary of the hesychastic practices of the Jesus Prayer that developed later in the Eastern churches".[31]

Matta el-Meskeen, a Coptic Orthodox hieromonk, commented that hesychasm rid the concept of unceasing prayer from its simplicity, shifting "its ascetical position as a humbling practice by itself to a mystical position, with programs, stipulations, technical and mechanical bases, degrees, objectives, results".[31]

In 2016, Metropolitan Bishoy of Damietta, the head of the theology department in the Institute of Coptic Studies and secretary of the Coptic Orthodox Church Synod from 1985 until 2012 criticized the essence-energy distinction and rejected Palamism.[32]

Roman Catholic

Western theologians have tended to reject the idea that the distinction between essence and energies is real rather than, albeit with a foundation in reality, notional (in the mind). In their view, affirming an ontological essence–energies distinction in God contradicted the teaching of the First Council of Nicaea[33] on divine unity.[34] Adrian Fortescue, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), claimed that "the real distinction between God's essence and operation remains one more principle, though it is rarely insisted on now, in which the Orthodox differ from Catholics".[35] According to Fortescue, the Scholastic theory that God is pure actuality prevented Palamism from having much influence in the West, and it was from Western Scholasticism that hesychasm's philosophical opponents in the East borrowed their weapons.[35]

In some instances, these theologians equated hesychasm with quietism, an 18th-century mystical revival condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps because "quietism" is the literal translation of "hesychasm". However, according to Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian Kallistos Ware, "To translate 'hesychasm' as 'quietism,' while perhaps etymologically defensible, is historically and theologically misleading." Ware asserts that "the distinctive tenets of the 17th-century Western quietists is not characteristic of Greek hesychasm".[36]

The Roman Catholic Church has never expressed any condemnation of Palamism, and uses in its liturgical readings from the work of Nicholas Kabasilas, a supporter of Palamas in the controversy that took place in the East. Its Liturgy of the Hours includes extracts from Kabasilas's Life in Christ on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter in Year II of the two-year cycle for the Office of Readings.[37]

The later 20th century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Roman Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized.[38] Some Western scholars have argued that there is no conflict between Palamas's teaching and Catholic thought.[39] According to Kallistos Ware, some Western theologians, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, see the theology of Palamas as introducing an inadmissible division within God; however, others have incorporated his theology into their own thinking.[40][41]

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Hesychasm — (Greek hesychos, quiet).

The story of the system of mysticism defended by the monks of Athos in the fourteenth century forms one of the most curious chapters in the history of the Byzantine Church. In itself an obscure speculation, with the wildest form of mystic extravagance as a result, it became the watchword of a political party, and incidentally involved again the everlasting controversy with Rome. It is the only great mystic movement in the Orthodox Church. Ehrhard describes it rightly as "a reaction of national Greek theology against the invasion of Western scholasticism" (Krumbacher, Byzant. Litt., p. 43). The clearest way of describing the movement will be to explain first the point at issue and then its history.

I. The Hesychast System

Hesychasts (hesychastes — quietist) were people, nearly all monks, who defended the theory that it is possible by an elaborate system of asceticism, detachment from earthly cares, submission to an approved master, prayer, especially perfect repose of body and will, to see a mystic light; which is none other than the uncreated light of God. The contemplation of this light is the highest end of man on earth; in this way is a man most intimately united with God. The light seen by Hesychasts is the same as appeared at Christ's Transfiguration. This was no mere created phenomenon, but the eternal light of God Himself. It is not the Divine essence; no man can see God face to face in this world (John i, 18), but it is the Divine action or operation. For in God action (energeia, actus, operatio) is really distinct from essence (ousia). There was a regular process for seeing the uncreated light; the body was to be held immovable for a long time, the chin pressed against the breast, the breath held, the eyes turned in, and so on. Then in due time the monk began to see the wonderful light. The likeness of this process of auto-suggestion to that of fakirs, Sunnyasis, and such people all over the East is obvious.

Hesychasm then contains two elements, the belief that quietist contemplation is the highest occupation for men, and the assertion of real distinction between the divine essence and the divine operation. Both points had been prepared by Greek theologians many centuries before. Although there was comparatively little mysticism in the Byzantine Church, many Greek Fathers and theologians had maintained that knowledge of God can be obtained by purity of soul and prayer better than by study. The quotations made by Hesychasts at the councils (see below) supply many such texts. Clement of Alexandria was most often invoked for this axiom. Pseudo-Dionysius seems to have brought the statement a step nearer to Hesychasm. He describes a medium in which God may be contemplated; this medium is a mystic light that is itself half darkness. But it was Simeon, "the new theologian" (c. 1025-c. 1092; see Krumbacher, op. cit., 152-154), a monk of Studion, the "greatest mystic of the Greek Church" (loc. cit.), who evolved the quietist theory so elaborately that he may be called the father of Hesychasm. For the union with God in contemplation (which is the highest object of our life) he required a regular system of spiritual education beginning with baptism and passing through regulated exercises of penance and asceticism under the guidance of a director. But he had not conceived the grossly magic practices of the later Hesychasts; his ideal is still enormously more philosophical than theirs. There seems also to have been a strong element of the pantheism that so often accompanies mysticism in the fully developed Hesychast system. By contemplating the uncreated light one became united with God so intimately that one became absorbed in Him. This suspicion of pantheism (never very remote from neo-Platonic theories) is constantly insisted on by the opponents of the system.

The other element of fourteenth-century Hesychasm was the famous real distinction between essence and attributes (specifically one attribute — energy) in God. This theory, fundamentally opposed to the whole conception of God in the Western Scholastic system, had also been prepared by Eastern Fathers and theologians. Remotely it may be traced back to neo-Platonism. The Platonists had conceived God as something in every way unapproachable, remote from all categories of being known to us. God Himself could not even touch or act upon matter. Divine action was carried into effect by demiurges, intermediaries between God and creatures. The Greek Fathers (after Clement of Alexandria mostly Platonists) had a tendency in the same way to distinguish between God's unapproachable essence and His action, energy, operation on creatures. God Himself transcends all things. He is absolute, unknown, infinite above everything; no eye can see, no mind conceive Him. What we can know and attain is His action. The foundation of a real distinction between the unapproachable essence (ousia) and the approachable energy (energeia) is thus laid. For this system, too, the quotations made by Hesychasts from Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, especially from Pseudo-Dionysius, supply enough examples. The Hesychasts were fond of illustrating their distinction between God's essence and energy (light) by comparing them to the sun, whose rays are really distinct from its globe, although there is only one sun. It is to be noted that the philosophic opponents of Hesychasm always borrow their weapons from St. Thomas Aquinas and the Western Schoolmen. They argue, quite in terms of Latin Aristotelean philosophy, that God is simple; except for the Trinity there can be no distinctions in an actus purus. This distinct energy, uncreated light that is not the essence of God, would be a kind of demiurge, something neither God nor creature; or there would be two Gods, an essence and an energy. From one point of view, then, the Hesychast controversy may be conceived as an issue between Greek Platonist philosophy and Latin rationalist Aristoteleanism. It is significant that the Hesychasts were all vehemently Byzantine and bitter opponents of the West, while their opponents were all latinizers, eager for reunion.

II. History of the Controversy

The leaders of either side were Palamas the Hesychast and Barlaam, from whom the other side is often called that of the Barlaamites. Gregory Palamas (d. about 1360; Krumbacher, op. cit., 103-105) was a monk at Athos, then from 1349 Bishop of Thessalonica. He wrote no less than sixty works in defence of Hesychasm, one especially against the Scholastic identification of God's essence and attributes. He found fifty heresies in his opponents. He was also vehemently anti-Latin, wrote a refutation of John Beccus's latinizing work, and did his duty by Orthodoxy in supplying the usual treatise against the double procession of the Holy Ghost. Naturally his opponents call him a ditheist, while he considers them Arians, Sabellians, and Epicureans. Barlaam (Krumbacher, op. cit., 100), his chief adversary, was a monk from Calabria who came to Constantinople in the reign of Andronicus III (1328-1341). At first he opposed the Latins, but eventually he wrote in defence of reunion, of the Filioque, and the papal primacy. In 1348 he left Constantinople and became Bishop of Gerace in Calabria. The date of his death is unknown. It was from this Barlaam that Petrarch learned Greek. Gregory Akindynos, a friend and contemporary of Barlaam, also a monk, wrote a work against the Hesychasts "Peri ousias kai energeias," in six books, of which the first two are nothing but translations from St. Thomas's "Summa contra Gentes". Nicephorus Gregoras (ib., 101, 293-298), the historian (d. after 1359), was also one of the chief opponents of Hesychasm. He came to the emperor's court as a young man, was educated by the most famous scholars of that time the Patriarch John Glycus (John XIII, 1316-1320), and the Great Logothete Theodorus Metochites, and became himself perhaps the most distinguished man of learning in the Greek world of the fourteenth century. He wrote theology, philosophy, astronomy, history, rhetoric, poetry, and grammar. His best-known work is a Roman history in thirty-seven books, describing the period from 1204 to 1329. In the midst of so many occupations he made the acquaintance of Barlaam, and entered the lists with him against Palamas and the Hesychasts. He wrote a number of controversial works to confute these people, and tells the story of the quarrel in his history (books XV, XVIII, XIX, XXII) with much animus against them. Like most of the anti-Hesychasts Gregoras was a pronounced latinizer. At the time when Barlaam was opposed to the Latins Gregoras wrote against him; with Palamas too he discussed the question of reunion with the West in a friendly and conciliatory way. Eventually Gregoras fell into disfavour with the Court and disappeared.

The monks of Athos might have contemplated their uncreated light without attracting much attention, had not the question become mixed up with the unending Latin controversy and with political issues. They had already practised their system of auto-suggestion for a long time when Barlaam, arriving at Constantinople, began to denounce it as superstitious and absurd. There had been some opposition before. People had heard Palamas boast that he could see the light of God with his eyes, and had accused him of blasphemy; but, since Isaias, the Patriarch of Constantinople (1323-1334), was himself a monk of Athos and a disciple of Palamas, the opposition had not been very successful. However, from the year 1339, when Barlaam arrived in the city, began the really serious quarrel which for twenty years was to rend Orthodox theology, cause enormous commotion at Constantinople, Athos, and all the great centres of the Orthodox world, and lead even to active persecution. Barlaam, like all opponents of Hesychasm, based his objections mainly on a vehement denial of the possibility of an uncreated light that was yet not God's essence; throughout the controversy he and his party used the arguments they had learned in the West to show the impossibility of such distinctions in God. He also made bitter mockery of what he calls the Homphalopsychia of the monks who sit with bent heads gazing at their own person, and brought various accusations against Palamas's life and manners. After Isaias, John XIV (John Aprenus, 1334-47) had become patriarch. Barlaam demanded of him a synod to settle the question. For a time the patriarch refused to take the matter so seriously; eventually, since the quarrel became more and more bitter, in 1341 the first synod of the Hesychast question was summoned at Constantinople. The emperor (Andronicus III) presided. This first synod considered only two questions; (1) Whether the light of Thabor (that of the Transfiguration) was created or not; (2) a certain prayer used by Hesychasts, stated by Barlaam to contain ditheism. The enormous influence of the monks at Court and the want of energy of the patriarch (who was in his heart on Barlaam's side) made this first synod a victory for Hesychasm. In both points the monks and their theory were approved, and Barlaam was forced to withdraw his accusations. Soon afterwards he left Constantinople forever; his cause was taken up by Gregory Akindynos. The emperor died a few days after the synod. John VI, Cantacuzenus (1341-1355), who gradually usurped the imperial power, first as rival, then as fellow-emperor, of Andronicus's son John V, Palæologus (1341-76), was always a friend of Palamas and the Hesychast monks. The second Hesychast synod under Cantacuzenus, but without the patriarch, condemned Akindynos and introduced a new element by representing him and all its opponents as latinizers who were trying to destroy Orthodoxy.

In 1345 the patriarch summoned the third synod. By now he had definitely made up his mind to withstand the Hesychasts. This synod then, under his direction, excommunicated Palamas and Isidore Buchiras, Bishop elect of Monembasia in Thessaly, one of Palamas's disciples. Buchiras and Palamas withdrew their heresy outwardly, and waited for a better chance. The chance came in 1347. By this time their protector John Cantacuzenus had entered Constantinople in triumph and had been crowned emperor. The other party (that of the child-emperor John Palæologus and of his mother Ann of Savoy) was now helpless. The controversy from this time is complicated by a political issue. Cantacuzenus and his friends were Hesychasts; the party of the Palæologi were Barlaamites. As long as Cantacuzenus triumphed the Hesychasts triumphed with him; by the time he fell Hesychasm had become so much identified with the cause of the Orthodox Church against the Latins that the other side never succeeded in ousting it. On 2 February, 1347, the fourth Hesychast synod was held. It deposed the patriarch, John XIV, and excommunicated Akindynos. Isidore Buchiras, who had been excommunicated by the third synod, was now made patriarch (Isidore I, 1347-1349). In the same year (1347) the Barlaamites held the fifth synod, refusing to acknowledge Isidore and excommunicating Palamas. From this time Nicephorus Gregoras becomes the chief opponent of Hesychasm. Isidore I died in 1349: the Hesychasts replaced him by one of their monks, Callistus I (1350-1354). In 1351 the sixth synod met in the Blachernæ palace under Cantacuzenus. Gregoras defended his views boldly and skillfully, but again the Hesychasts had it all their own way, deposed Barlaamite bishops, and used violence against their own opponents. In this synod six questions about God's essence and attributes were answered, all in the Hesychast sense, while Palamas was declared to be without any doubt orthodox and unimpeachable. The synod finally published, in defence of Palamas and his views, a decree (Tomos) which eventually was looked upon as an authentic declaration of the Orthodox Church. From this time Hesychasm may be said to have defeated all opposition. Gregoras was arrested and kept in custody in his own house. He was not set free till Cantacuzenus (with whom rests the eternal disgrace of having first invited to Turks to Europe) was deposed and the Palæologi triumphed in 1354. Cantacuzenus then withdrew to Athos, became a monk himself, taking the name of Joasaph, and spent the rest of his life writing a history of his own times and contemplating the uncreated light. This history in four books (in Migne, P.G., CLIII, CLIV) covers the period from 1320 to 1356, and tells the whole story of the Hesychast controversy. Being written by a violent partisan, it forms an interesting contrast to that of Gregoras.

After the deposition of Cantacuzenus, the Barlaamites held an anti-Hesychast synod at Ephesus; but the patriarchs of Constantinople and the great mass of the people had by now become too firmly persuaded that the cause of Hesychasm was that of Orthodoxy. To oppose it was to incur the guilt of latinizing; so even Cantacuzenus's fall was not enough to turn the scale. Hesychasm from this time is always triumphant. About 1360 Palamas died. In 1368 the seventh Synod of Constantinople (concerning this matter) under the Patriarch Philotheus (1364-1376: Callistus's successor) excommunicated the Barlaamite monk Prochorus Cydonius, confirmed the "Tomus" of 1351 as a "Faultless Canon of the true faith of Christians", and canonized Palamas as a Father and Doctor of the Church. So by the end of the fourteenth century Hesychasm had become a dogma of the Orthodox Church. It is so still. The interest in the question gradually died out, but the Orthodox still maintain the Tomus of 1351 as binding; the real distinction between God's essence and operation remains one more principle, though it is rarely insisted on now, in which the Orthodox differ from Catholics. Gregory Palamas is a saint to them. They keep his feast on the second Sunday of Lent and again on 14 November (Nilles, "Kalandarium manuale", Innsbruck, 1897, II, 124-125). The office for this feast was composed by the Patriarch Philotheus. In the nineteenth century there was among the Orthodox a certain revival of interest in the question, partly historical, but also speculative and philosophical. Nicodemus, a monk of Athos, defended the Hesychasts in his Egcheiridion symbouleutichon (1801); Eugenius Bulgaris and others, especially Athos monks, have again discussed this old controversy; it is always evident that their theology still stands by the Tomus of 1351, and still maintains the distinction between the Divine essence and energy.

There was a very faint echo of Hesychasm in the West. Latin theology on the whole was too deeply impregnated with the Aristotelean Scholastic system to tolerate a theory that opposed its very foundation. That all created beings are composed of actus and potentia, that God alone is actus purus, simple as He is infinite — this is the root of all Scholastic natural theology. Nevertheless one or two Latins seem to have had ideas similar to Hesychasm. Gilbertus Porretanus (de la Porrée, d. 1154) is quoted as having said that the Divine essence is not God — implying some kind of real distinction; John of Varennes, a hermit in the Diocese of Reims (c. 1396), said that the Apostles at the Transfiguration had seen the Divine essence as clearly as it is seen in heaven. About the same time John of Brescain made a proposition: Creatam lucem infinitam et immensam esse. But these isolated opinions formed no school. We know of them chiefly through the indignant condemnations they at once provoked. St. Bernard wrote to refute Gilbert de la Porrée; the University of Paris and the legate Odo condemned John of Brescain's proposition. Hesychasm has never had a party among Catholics. In the Orthodox Church the controversy, waged furiously just at the time when the enemies of the empire were finally overturning it and unity among its last defenders was the most crying need, is a significant witness of the decay of a lost cause.

I. Sources: The chief sources for the whole story are NIKEPHOROS GREGORAS, Romaike historia, ed. by SCHOPEN in 2 vols. (Bonn, 1829-1830), MIGNE, P.G., CXLVIII-CXLIX; JOHN VI KANTAKUZENOS, Historiai, ed. SCHOPEN in 3 vols. (Bonn, 1828-1832); and in P.G., CLIII-CLIV. The published works of PALAMAS are in P.G., CL-CLI; those of BARLAAM in P.G., CLI; of AKINDYNOS, ib., CLI. KYDONES, Adv. Greg. Palam. in ARCUDIUS, Opusc. aurea theol. (Rome, 1670). Further bibliography and accounts of the various writers who took part in the controversy in KRUMBACHER, Byzantinische Litteratur (2nd ed., Munich, 1897), 100-06, 293-300, etc.

II. Literature: ALLATIUS, De eccl. occid. et orient. perpetua consensione (Cologne, 1648); STEIN, Studien über die Hesychasten des XIV Jahrh. (Vienna, 1874); HOLL, Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt bei dem griechischen Mönchthum (1898); ENGELHARDT, Die Arsenier und Hesychasten in Zeitschr. f. histor. Theologie, VIII (1838), 48 sqq.; MIKLOSICH AND MÜLLER, Acta patriarchatus Constantinop. (Vienna, 1860).

References

  1. Back to citation "hesychasm". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. OCLC 1032680871. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
  2. Back to citation Encyclopedia Britannica, Hesychasm
  3. Back to citation Parry (1999), p. 230.
  4. Back to citation Ware (1995), pp. 4–7.
  5. Back to citation Payne (2006), pp. 130–131.
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  7. Back to citation Stearn (2020), pp. 269–324.
  8. Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Ware (1995), p. 5.
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  10. Back to citation Cassian, John. "10–11". Conferences. Fathers. New advent. Archived from the original on 2021-10-23. Retrieved 2014-02-06.
  11. Back to citation John Cassian is not represented in the Philokalia except by two brief extracts, but this is most likely due to his having written in Latin. His works (Coenobitical Institutions and the Conferences)
  12. Back to citation Ware (1995), p. 6; Palmer, Ware & Sherrard (1999), p. 205; Encyclopedia Britannica, Hesychasm
  13. Back to citation Ware (1995), p. 7.
  14. Back to citation occurrence 14.0 Back to citation occurrence 14.1 Ware (1992).
  15. Back to citation Other authors have also speculated about Indian influences on Hesychasm via the Sufis. Dupuche, Dunn & Cross (2003) states that Indian monks were present in Mesopotamia and Syria in the 8th and 9th centuries, while Nath yogins were in Central Asia and Iran in the 11th century, influencing Sufi brotherhoods.
  16. Back to citation occurrence 16.0 Back to citation occurrence 16.1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Gregory of Sinai Archived 2022-12-16 at the Wayback Machine
  17. Back to citation Palmer, Ware & Sherrard (1999), p. PR7.
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  19. Back to citation Slobodskoy, Serafim Alexivich (1992). "The Sundays of Lent". The Law of God. Translated by Price, Susan. Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, New York). ISBN 978-0884650447. Archived from the original on 12 August 2018. Retrieved 21 March 2019. Original: Слободской, Серафим Алексеевич (1957). "Недели Великого Поста" [The Sundays of Lent]. Закон Божий [The Law of God] (in Russian) (published 1966). Archived from the original on 25 July 2017. Retrieved 21 March 2019. “Паламы […] учил, что за подвиг поста и молитвы Господь озаряет верующих благодатным Своим светом, каким сиял Господь на Фаворе.”
  20. Back to citation Russell, Norman (2019). "1. The Orthodox struggle to assimilate Palamite thinking". Gregory Palamas and the making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780199644643.003.0001.
  21. Back to citation Meyendorff, John (1988). "Mount Athos in the Fourteenth Century: Spiritual and Intellectual Legacy". Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 42: 157–165. doi:10.2307/1291594. JSTOR 1291594.
  22. Back to citation Payne (2006), pp. 152–153.
  23. Back to citation Hero, Angela Constantinides (1983). Letters of Gregory Akindynos (PDF). p. 408.
  24. Back to citation Ladder, Step 27, 5, (Step 27, 6 in the Holy Transfiguration edition).
  25. Back to citation Purification, and illumination of the noetic faculty, prepare for the vision of God. Without this it is impossible for man's selfish love to be transformed into selfless love. This transformation takes place during the higher level of the stage of illumination called theoria, literally meaning vision, in this case vision by means of unceasing and uninterrupted memory of God. Those who remain selfish and self-centered with a hardened heart, closed to God's love, will not see the glory of God in this life. However, they will see God's glory eventually, but as an eternal and consuming fire and outer darkness. From Franks, Romans, feudalism, and doctrine: Diagnosis and Therapy, Father John S. Romanides Diagnosis and Therapy "Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine – Part 2". Archived from the original on 2023-12-23. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
  26. Back to citation St. John of Sinai, Step 27, 21 of the Ladder (Step 27, 22–23 of the Holy Transfiguration edition)
  27. Back to citation Payne (2006), p. 308.
  28. Back to citation Hisamatsu, Eiji (20 December 2024). "Hesychasm and Sufism—A Comparison Between Jesus Prayer and Dhikr". Religions. 15 (12): 1556. doi:10.3390/rel15121556.
  29. Back to citation The Philokalia: the complete text. the Hagiorite, Saint Nicodemus, Saint, Metropolitan of Corinth Makarios, G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Bishop of Diokleia Kallistos. London: Faber and Faber. 1979–1986. p. 193. ISBN 0571130135. OCLC 9196947.
  30. Back to citation Brock, Sebastian (2001). "Syriac into Greek at Mar Saba: the translation of Isaac the Syrian". The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the fifth century to the present: 201–208.
  31. Back to citation occurrence 31.0 Back to citation occurrence 31.1 Dawood, Bishoy (8 December 2013). "Stand, Bow, Prostrate: The Prayerful Body of Coptic Christianity: Clarion Review". Clarion Review. Archived from the original on 13 August 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
  32. Back to citation Bishoy, Metropolitan (2016). "Deifying energy and grace". Metropolitan-Bishoy.org. Retrieved 1 April 2026. “The sayings of the fathers clearly distinguish between the simple and unapproachable divine essence, and the numerous apprehended energies, created grace granted by God... Energies or attributes can never be God's essence.”
  33. Back to citation Palamas, Saint Gregory; Palamas, Gregorius (1983). John Meyendorff (editor),Gregory Palamas –The Triads. Paulist Press. p. xi. ISBN 9780809124473. Retrieved 2014-02-06.
  34. Back to citation In the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909, Simon Vailhé rejected Palamas's teachings that humans could achieve a corporal perception of the divinity, and his distinction between God's essence and his energies, as "monstrous errors" and "perilous theological theories". He further characterized the Eastern canonization of Palamas's teachings as a "resurrection of polytheism". Vailhe: "Palamas taught that by asceticism one could attain a corporal, i.e., a sense view, or perception, of the Divinity. He also held that in God there was a real distinction between the Divine Essence and Its attributes, and he identified grace as one of the Divine propria, making it something uncreated and infinite. These monstrous errors were denounced by the Calabrian Barlaam, by Nicephorus Gregoras, and by Acthyndinus. The conflict began in 1338 and ended only in 1368, with the solemn canonization of Palamas and the official recognition of his heresies. He was declared the 'holy doctor' and 'one of the greatest among the Fathers of the Church', and his writings were proclaimed 'the infallible guide of the Christian Faith'. Thirty years of incessant controversy and discordant councils ended with a resurrection of polytheism". Simon Vailhé, "Greek Church" Archived 2011-07-25 at the Wayback Machine in Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909)]
  35. Back to citation occurrence 35.0 Back to citation occurrence 35.1 "Adrian Fortescue, "Hesychasm" in Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VII (Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1910)". Oce.catholic.com. 2013-08-12. Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2014-02-06.
  36. Back to citation Wakefield, Gordon S. (1983). The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-22170-6; Ware, Kallistos (2000). The inner kingdom. St Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-88141-209-3; Cutsinger, James S. (2002). Paths to the heart: Sufism and the Christian East. World Wisdom, Inc. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-941532-43-3.
  37. Back to citation "DOMINGO V DE PASCUA". Archived from the original on 2014-04-22. Retrieved 2014-05-21.
  38. Back to citation Palamas, Saint Gregory; Palamas, Gregorius (1983). John Meyendorff (editor),Gregory Palamas –The Triads. Paulist Press. p. xi. ISBN 9780809124473. Retrieved 2014-02-06; Saint Gregory Palamas (1983). Gregory Palamas. Paulist Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-8091-2447-3; Andreopoulos, Andreas (2005). Andreas Andreopoulos,Metamorphosis: The Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2005, ISBN 0-88141-295-3), pp. 215–216. St Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 9780881412956. Retrieved 2014-02-06.
  39. Back to citation "Several Western scholars contend that the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas himself is compatible with Roman Catholic thought on the matter" (Michael J. Christensen, Jeffery A. Wittung (editors), Partakers of the Divine Nature (Associated University Presses 2007 ISBN 0-8386-4111-3), p. 243).
  40. Back to citation Kallistos Ware in Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford University Press 2000 ISBN 0-19-860024-0), p. 186.
  41. Back to citation For example, G. Philips asserts that the essence-energies distinction as presented by Palamas is "a typical example of a perfectly admissible theological pluralism" that is compatible with the Roman Catholic magisterium. Christensen, Michael J; Wittung, Jeffery A. (2007). Michael J. Christensen, Jeffery A. Wittung (editors), Partakers of the Divine Nature (Associated University Presses 2007 ISBN 0-8386-4111-3), p. 243. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. ISBN 9780838641118. Retrieved 2014-02-06. Pope John Paul II repeatedly emphasized his respect for Eastern theology as an enrichment for the whole Church, declaring that, even after the painful division between the Christian East and the See of Rome, that theology has opened up profound thought-provoking perspectives of interest to the entire Catholic Church. He spoke in particular of the hesychast controversy. The term "hesychasm", he said, refers to a practice of prayer marked by deep tranquillity of the spirit intent on contemplating God unceasingly by invoking the name of Jesus. While from a Catholic viewpoint there have been tensions concerning some developments of the practice, the pope said, there is no denying the goodness of the intention that inspired its defence, which was to stress that man is offered the concrete possibility of uniting himself in his inner heart with God in that profound union of grace known as theosis, divinization. "Pope John Paul II and the East Pope John Paul II. "Eastern Theology Has Enriched the Whole Church" (11 August 1996). English translation". Rumkatkilise.org. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 2014-02-06. "Original text (in Italian)". Vatican.va. Archived from the original on 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2014-02-06. Pope John Paul II (11 August 1996). "Eastern Theology Has Enriched the Whole Church". CatholicCulture.org. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 8 May 2022.

Bibliography

Web-sources

Further reading

Early monasticism
19th–20th century
  • The Way of the Pilgrim
  • St. Silouan the Athonite. (Contains an introduction by Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), immediate disciple of St. Silouan, together with the meditations of St. Silouan (1866–1938).)
  • Works of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993).
  • Elder Joseph the Hesychast. (Life of a very influential Hesychast on Mt Athos who died in 1959.)
  • Monastic Wisdom. The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast.
  • Wounded by Love. The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios. (Reminiscences and reflections of Elder Porphyrios (1906–1991) of Mt Athos.)
  • Works by Elder Paisios (1924–1994) of Mount Athos. (A very well known Athonite Elder and Hesychast.)
  • Elder Ephraim of Katounakia. Translated by Tessy Vassiliadou-Christodoulou. (Life and teachings of Elder Ephraim (1912–1998) of Katounakia, Mt Athos, a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast.)
  • Hieromonachos Charalampos Dionusiates, O didaskalos tes noeras proseuches (Hieromonk Charalambos of the Monastery of Dionysiou, The Teacher of Mental Prayer). (Life and teachings of Elder Charalambos (1910–2001), sometime Abbot of the Monastery of Dionysiou, Mt Athos, and a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast. In Greek, available in English.)
  • Works of Archimandrite Aimilianos (1934–2019) of the Monastery of Simonos Petra, Mt Athos, especially Volumes I and II.
  • Counsels from the Holy Mountain. Selected from the Lessons and Homilies of Elder Ephraim. (Archimandrite Ephraim of the Monastery of St. Anthony, Florence, Arizona. Formerly Abbot of the Monastery of Philotheou on Mt Athos, and a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Not to be confused with Elder Ephraim of Katounakia.)
Secondary
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