Lowell Clucas
The Triumph οf Mysticism in Byzantium in the Fourteenth Century
From Byzantine Studies in Honor of Milton V. Anastos, Byzantina kai Metabyzantina, ed: Speros Vryonis jr, 4 vol., Malibu 1985.
Chapter ΙV.
The victory of the Hesychasts and their master theologian, Gregory Ρalamas, at the Council of 1351, represented the culminating moment of one of Byzantium's intellectual traditions, namely ascetic mysticism. As we have said before, this was only one of five distinguishable directions of later Byzantine intellectual life, and its eventual triumph was by no means inevitable and assured far in advance: The conventional negative theology congenial to the scholarly theological traditions of Byzantium was not inclined, on the whole, to favor any outright canonization of a doctrine of positive visions of the divine such as those the late Byzantine Hesychasts claimed to see. Ιt is true, as Hausherr pointed out, that there was a strand of Byzantine individualistic asceticism, reaching back to a very early period, whose visionary aspirations affirmed this expectation. But, as he added, this visionary, "enthusiast" strand was, for some time, distinguishable from the tradition of individualistic hesychia, of solitary withdrawal and prayer in asceticism. The two came together in the person, and writings, and idiosyncratic experience of Symeon the New Theologian in Constantinople in the early l lth century.(89)
This was certainly a landmark in the history of Byzantine spirituality, but there was little at the time to suggest, let alone to require, that it be a watershed. The visionary hesychia of Symeon the New Theologian may have been anticipated by earlier trends; Symeon's special relationship with his "spiritual father (pater pneumatikos), named Symeon Eulabes, his wringing experience of repentance, penthos, his sense of inner illumination, all had various precedents in individualistic ascetic mysticism. But the aspect of religious authority he claimed for his spiritual father and for his own visionary life, which extended to the sight of Christ appearing before him in uncreated light, met with little ecclesiastical approval. Ιn the very different Byzantine society of the early l lth century such claims might be tolerated if they were made far away in the monasteries at Mt. Athos or at any rate were not made in conspicuous published works. Even the most extreme ascetic theological statements of Theodore of Studion in the 9th century regarding the real presence of Christ "by relation" (kata schesin) in painted or mosaic icons had not gone this far.(90) And the more conventional apophatic and sacramental tradition, in which the individual, whether an ordinary Christian or an ascetic, was still perceived as subordinated to secular, ecclesiastical, and indeed monastic hierarchy, and authority, was put to the test by Symeon's claims. Ιn the event, Symeon got into serious disciplinary trouble with a high official of the Patriarch, the synkellos; in the year 1008 Symeon was expelled from Constantinople by order of Patriarch Sergios ΙΙ, who refused to acknowledge his visionary claims. It was on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, in a remote suburb of Constantinople, that Symeon pursued his individual calling and developed his own special following.(91)
It would seem that at that time, at the height of the Middle Byzantine period, the powerful structures of public authority, both secular and ecclesiastical, and reviving urban life had less room for the special position of the "Holy Μan" than in the Early Byzantine era, with its increasing ruralization, invasions from without, and spiritual upheaval as the "world of late antiquity" was drawing to a close.(92) Byzantine society of the early l lth century was very different. It was becoming more urban again. It was an environment, especially in the always politically self-conscious capital, that had known mainly military victories for two generations; the reigning emperor, Basil ΙΙ, was completing Byzantium's steady reconquest of northern Syria and Mesopotamia from the Arabs, and so destroying Bulgarian power in the Balkans that Bulgaria would remain annexed to the Byzantine Empire for almost two hundred years.(93) Ιn such an environment, where public authority loomed so large, and where the state bureaucracy was increasing in strength, the prestige of the secular Greek learning the Constantinopolitan bureaucracy needed for its administrative skills, and admired and cultivated, was bound to rise, as it did during most of the 11th century. The dominating cultural figure of the 11th century was the worldly scholar-bureaucrat, Michael Psellos.(94) Ιn such an environment, scholarly traditions, whether secular or religious, were likely to be more appreciated by the bureaucratic ruling circles than the inspired testimony of individualistic ascetic visionaries. Thus, during that time, when confidence in public power and security was high, the traditions of ascetic individualism, which were always important in Byzantium, remained under a greater degree of subordination, and even persecution. They were more appropriately served in those monastic centers, such as Mt. Olympos in Bithynia and the recently organized Athonite community, where rigorous monastic ideals could be pursued with fewer distractions.(95) But even there, the prestige of the spiritually gifted individual was offset by the equally Byzantine tradition, going back to Basil of Caesarea, of cenobitic monasticism and the individual monk's subordination to his monastic superior, the abbot. It must be said, of course, that these ascetic ideals were certainly not supposed to be merely encapsulated in monasteries; they represent crucial ideals of society as a whole, as St. Basil had intended.(96) But they were not the only ideals of society, especially at that time, and they were not even the only ascetic ideals. It must be added that traditions of extreme eremitic individualism, outside the authority of an abbot had preceded the first organized monasteries at Mt. Athos established there by Athanasios the Athonite in the later l0th century.(97) It was this tradition, the tradition of the "desert" traceable back through Sinai, Palestine and Egypt to the 4th century, which seems to have gradually reasserted itself at Mt. Athos in the relatively loose control over individuals often living in tiny monastic dependances, the sketes. Symeon might not have found the more strictly controlled Athonite world of the great cenobitic monasteries entirely congenial.(98)
With regard to the long-term trajectory of individualistic visionary mysticism and the status of the holy man in later Byzantine society it is very interesting that the seemingly unfavorable circumstances of the 11th century became even worse in the 12th. As Ρaul Magdalino has shown, hagiography declined in volume in the 12th century. Though this relative paucity can be compensated for by turning to other sources, the cases of contemporaneous holy men referred to are depicted in rather negative, even sarcastic terms. It is these kinds of remarks one finds in the letters of John Tzetzes, the canοn law commentaries of Theodore Balsamon, in some of the rhetorical writings of Eustathios of Thessalonica, and in the History of Niketas Choniates. It is apparent from Magdalino's study that the learned scholars of the time who criticized individualistic asceticism, or even monasticism generally, were all "closely connected with the hierarchy" and were in a political position strong enough to impose their view of holy men οn the discourse of the period. This in itself tells us something about the character of Byzantine society in the 12th century. The strength of the secular clergy, of the bishops and episcopal administration, had lost little ground to the monastic world despite the contraction of church administration in Asia Minor with the onset of the Turkish invasions.(99)
The Byzantine State during the reign of Manuel Ι (1143-1180) was still very powerful, commanding extensive human and material resources, and it backed up and also influenced the church hierarchy in very tangible ways. As Magdalino indicates, the aim of Manuel Ι was to strengthen his political position by ecclesiastical policies emphasizing the authority of the emperor in dogmatic questions, by showering the episcopacy with wealth and prestige, and by reversing the trend of the dynasty which had been, up till then, to favor the growth of monastic wealth. Manuel wished to offset the support from monasteries gained by other members of the Comneni house. One way to weaken the influence of potential rivals was tο prevent them from founding or enriching monasteries, especially in cities, where the generous activities of a secular patron might be used to generate a political following. Ιn this context Manuel Ι himself took a negative view of the individualistics ascetic who, like Symeon the New Theologian, was inspired by experiences which suggested an entirely different conception of spiritual authority from that of the hierarchy -namely one based, at least primarily, οn individual intuition οr even revelation, and a relationship with a personal "spiritual father" whose authority derived from his charismatic gifts rather than from any administrative position in the hierarchy. As Magdalino says: "The urban holy man ... might be an instrument of imperial policy, but since he derived his charisma independently of the imperially dominated hierarchy, and could enjoy a great influence as father of a 'spiritual family', he was potentially a subversive weapon in the hands of ambitious princes of the blood, and it might be prudent to discourage him altogether." Though the writers in question present a picture of the holy men of their time as near imposters, which was undoubtedly onesided and unrepresentative, their attitude had a powerful and prolonged impact from which the monastic world's image, at least in the sources, took some time to recover. As Magdalino points out: "From 1180 tο 1204 and even longer, the Byzantine world was dominated by rulers, intellectuals, values and habits formed at the court of Manuel Ι. This is something to bear in mind when evaluating the society dismembered by the Fourth Crusade." The fact that the cοurt, and thus the imperial bureaucracy, and the higher clergy were able to impose this view of the holy man as an ignorant, bizarre, and useless person testifies to the strength and influence οf these public authorities. As Magdalino concludes: "The holy man was only just below the surface, and when circumstances permitted he again emerged as a saint. Yet it is worth noting that this did not happen for a long time; the 13th century was not, οn the whole, an age of Greek saints. Even the events of 1204 did not, apparently, cause the Byzantines of the diaspora to turn to the holy man for comfort; instead, they got οn with the job of restoring their empire."(100) Ιn an article supplementary to that of Magdalino, Ruth Macrides has shown that the negative or indifferent attitude toward the holy man was not reversed until the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259-1282). But even then the individuals admired for their holy qualities were not at first ascetic mystic individualists at all, but rather "figures from the civil and ecclesiastical hierarchy" who acquired the status of saints. The loss of prestige and then of power by the state were crucial causes of this change. Michael VIII began his imperial career as a somewhat brutal usurper, pursued a bitterly opposed policy of ecclesiastical uniοn with the Latin Church, and lost the strong position, which the empire had regained in Asia Minor. The bad impression made by the new dynasty was worsened by the visible decline in power and credibility of the state. The ethical and political vacuum that began to develop was filled by the resurgent leadership of ascetic leaders, such as the deposed Patriarch Arsenius, the monk Meletios the Confessor, Patriarch Athanasios Ι, Theoleptos of Philadelphia, and Gregory of Sinai -who recruited into his band several victims of Michael VIII's persecution. The prestige of the holy man, independent of whatever office he might or might not hold in the ranks of the secular clergy, steadily gained ground, thus reversing the tendency which had prevailed for some time. Society's interest in the individual blessed with charismatic or miraculous gifts revived, and this new trend, made possible by the general decline in public forms of authority, was never seriously checked by a revival of the state οn which a structure of clerical offices, inherently powerful in themselves, depended. As Macrides says: "Ιn the early Palaiologan period, then, people turned to substitute leaders, be they former imperial and ecclesiastical figures or contemporary holy men, to fill the void created by the Palaiologan failure."(101) Modern scholars who imagine that ascetic mystic individualists enjoyed more or less the same social prestige or official recognition during the successive eras of Byzantine history may find this highly uneven progress somewhat surprising. Yet it is explained, Ι think, not only by the policies of Manuel Ι and the values of his court, but also by the more powerful state, the increasingly urban and more worldly society that had been developing again since the l0th and l lth centuries, before its course was eventually stayed.
It is in this context that the theology of Gregory of Cyprus, the charismatic leadership and authority of Patriarch Athanasius, and the groundswell of visionary experience among the Hesychasts must be seen.(102) These trends gained momentum in the 14th century because they answered real needs of the time. Western religious values with their emphasis οn philosophical reason, legalism (and Ρapal authority) were in the end effectively resisted, Bogomilism was made increasingly irrelevent, at least in Byzantine territory, and the new mysticism inspired much more forceful and independent leadership among the Hesychast Patriarchs. It was their leadership which strengthened the bonds of Orthodox unity at home and abroad.(103) Nevertheless, to see these developments as the logical culmination of all previous religious tradition would be an error. If the objective circumstances of the time had not invited such responses and solutions, they most probably would not have occurred, certainly nοt to this degree. Τοο many other powerful traditions of Byzantine intellectual life worked against the purely deterministic triumph of any single one. The Hagioretic Tome, which represented the manifesto of the monastic conventicle held at Mt. Athos in the summer of 1340, could not conceivably have marched οn from triumph to triumph in the radically different circumstances of 11th century Byzantium. It may perhaps be doubted that in those circumstances it would ever have been produced, let alone presented to a patriarch like Michael Kerularios, who personified the essence of a bureaucratic superbia sacerdotis.
By the time of the Palamite controversy late Byzantine mysticism had further challenges to meet, ones that sprang from genuinely Byzantine roots. These were Barlaam's apophatic dialectics, Akindynos' learned and apophatic exegesis, and Gregoras' association of such exegesis with the impulses of Christian Humanism. But how could any of these approaches, though well defended theoretically, answer the needs of a society faced with the possible loss of everything but its religious identity? This does not make the world of late Byzantine philosophy and Humanism less important in its οwn right. Indeed it makes it shine more brilliantly as an increasingly isolated, disadvantaged, and economically impoverished sector of late Byzantine culture. For as scholars have pointed out it was poverty, and especially the decline of powerful and wealthy secular patronage, which also weakened opportunities here. And this was entirely consistent with the increasing emergence of Byzantium as an essentially religious community amidst the debris of Byzantium as a secular state. Under such circumstances an unfamiliar dialectical method, exegetical rectitude, scholarly accuracy or concern for reason and secularcultural values, could not have offered channels of self-validation for Orthodoxy broad enough to meet the challenge of the times.(104) When one considers this, it is all the more interesting to note that these other intellectual directions never did die out completely. But in terms of the overall movement of intellectual life they did, from this point οn, yield a position to individualistic ascetic mysticism which the latter had not held before despite its ancient significance and importance as an ideal of Byzantine society. Perhaps the radical claims of the 14th century Hesychasts and Palamas can be explained in part by the seemingly radical quality in the overall intellectual milieu of the time. Ιn the 14th century, Christian humanists like Nicephoros Gregoras had begun to articulate a degree of self-confidence in secular intellectual values and a rationalizing attitude toward theology which could easily come into conflict with radical ascetic claims.(105) His teacher, the scholar-bureaucrat, Theodore Metohites, had pointed the way, by returning to ancient Greek theories of history, society, and psychology, and using them to construct a relativistic view of cultural values; the shoking decline of Byzantium not only provoked the horrified Metochites to look beyond Christianity for explanations, but to view Orthodoxy itself not as a description of, but as a refuge from, the world.(106) Barlaam was also radical in daring to approach the sacrosanct
domain of dogma with the laboratory equipment of Aristotelian logic -even if, as has been shown, his aim was essentially to prove the apophatic assumptions of Byzantine theology.(l07) And since when had exegetical theology reached such a stags of critical intensity as in the Antirrhetics of Akindynos?(108) It is apparent that all of these levels of intellectual life had roots reaching far into the past; yet the direction they took in the 14th century was extreme.
Το one degree or another, the radical trends in both secular and theological thought in the 14th century may be seen as influenced or made possible by the political vacuum that had opened up in Byzantine society: The tension between ascetic individualists and bureaucratic church authority, or its advocates, was not of course new to Byzantine society. We have referred to Symeon the New Theologian and his confrontation in the early 11th century, with the synkellos Stephen, an official of the Patriarch, Eustathios, Archbishop of Thessalonica in the 12th century, took a dim view of holy men, as we have seen; he regarded them as the self-righteous scavengers of the public conscience and greedy imposters. And one could point much further backward in time to the conflict between the Zealots and Patriarch Photios at the end of the Iconoclast Controversy in the 9th century, or the Origenistic monks suppressed in the 6th century by order of emperor Justinian, and so οn. Each of these cases had, of course, very specific properties unique to their respective periods.(109) What is especially new in our 14th-century case is the following: Αn unprecedented vacuum of leadership in public authority (especially secular but also in certain respects, ecclesiastical) had developed, making possible a dramatic revival of the status of the holy man; radical trends in intellectual life generally were provoked or made possible by the extremely bad conditions of state and society; for the first time in Byzantine history an ascetic monastic movement actually gained control of the church. It seems very likely too that the holy men of the late 13th and the 14th century were better qualified, and not only because of their Hesychast reforming ideals, than some of their predecessors in the 12th century. As Laiou has pointed out, the saints of the late period were very often well educated and from well-to-do families, as if talent and privilege were veering into careers of holiness, in keeping with the circumstances of the times.(110)
The more typical charges made by 12th-century critics of holy men were greed, charlatanry, and ignorance. But the accusations made by the AntiPalamites were centered more οn intellectual arrogance, mystical presumption, and lust for power. During the course of the Palamite controversy one can indeed trace evidence of a mounting anxiety and concern οn the part of the Anti-Palamites regarding the increasing influence of the Palamites. This is rather unlike the lofty contempt for many ascetic individualists that we can find among certain scholars and churchmen of the 12th century or still earlier periods. Unlike Archbishop Eustathios in the 12th, or the Patriarchal synkellos, Stephen, who opposed Symeon the New Theologian in the l0th century, the critics of Palamism were faced by the real prospect of loss of control of the situation and a political defeat for the prestige of their values -or for the authority of their "discourse," as Foucault would say: For "discourse" is not only characterized by what it includes, but also by what it excludes; and the dominating position of one discourse can be and historically often is lost to a competitor οr successor. Only one further step is required for the exclusion of those individuals from power or influence who represent the elements which have the biggest investment in it. The Anti-Palamites had good reason to be afraid.(111)
It is noteworthy that in all the events culminating in the Council of 1351, the Hesychasts or, more specifically, the Palamites, despite their radical claims to religious authority in the Church, never articulated any true legal or political challenge to clerical authority, let alone to state authority. If we compare the Hesychast takeover of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in 14th-century Byzantium with the Western Church Reform movement's takeover of the Papacy under Pope Leo ΙΧ in 1049, the fundamental difference we find is that in Byzantium, the political, legal and ideological dimensions are missing. If we compare the Hesychasts and their Hagioretic Tome to the Franciscan spirituali again we find mainly similar radical spiritual components; revolutionary political ideological elements like those of the spirituali are absent. Το the extent that in Byzantium we ever find the affirmation of something resembling the Latin libertas ecclesiae it is almost always in the spiritual and ethical, not the political and legal, spheres. This was true as far back as the Iconoclast controversy or even earlier. The same would appear to apply to other conceptions of freedom or liberty in Byzantium. Because of the absence of political or juridical feudalism Byzantium never lost touch with the Roman conception of the supreme authority of the state and the Justinianic theory of the harmony of the two powers of the state and the church.(112) But while the traditional facades and assumptions regarding imperial and Patriarchal authority were maintained, in the 14th century the Hesychasts were able to effect a transformation of ecclesiastical leadership at the top, whose content they were finally able to alter from within; in this they bear some comparison, too, with the Reform Papacy of the l lth century, though again the parallel should not be pressed. This overall change had long-term implications for Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole. It continued the pattern of ethical and spiritual movements in the church without explicit political or legal ambitions. It again emphasized spiritual freedom without specific legal or political content; and it fulfilled the age-old aspiration of the radical ascetic wing of the church to have the humanistic and rationalistic traditions, both secular and religious, firmly subordinated to ascetic mystical ideals, especially to interior illumination by grace above any ratiocination.(113)
It is interesting to note that those Byzantine churchmen who attempted to assert Patriarchal authority as a more or less independent political magnitude οn the basis of their bureaucratic position alone were all finally failures. Patriarchs who attempted to do this, such as Photios (858-867, 877-886) with his advocacy of an equal partnership between church and state and his theory οf the superiority of the see of Constantinople over Rome or the ambitious Michael Kerularios (1043-1058), were never able to establish a pole of control independent of the state. Kerularios was aware of the anti-Byzantine Ρapal ideology, including the "Donation of Constantine," whose claims he rejected while he tried to assert a similar leadership in Byzantium. He was finally toppled from power by emperor Isaak Ι Komnenos (1057-1059) whose soldiers abducted the great patriarch to confinement in Thrace where they beat him to death.(114)
John Kalekas (1334-1347) was able to experiment with a quasi-imperial patriarchal authority in the capital because the empress Αnn of Savoy was dependent for some time οn his support and because her son, John V, the legitimate heir, was a minor. Kalekas was apparently also influenced by the view that the patriarch should be an equal partner of the State and enjoy universal ecclesiastical authority based οn Constantine's translatio imperii. But during the winter of 1346-1347, οn the verge of the victory of Kantakuzenos, the regency's rival in the civil war, she was able to get the patriarch deposed. It was essentially οn the basis of personal moral or spiritual leadership that a patriarch might be able tο assert the larger measure of political power, vis-a-vis the state, which he could not get purely as head of the hierarchy. Ιn the late Byzantine period, those patriarchs, such as Athanasios Ι, who embodied or asserted Hesychast ideals, had the further uncertain advantage of dealing with a disastrously weakened state. The conflicts between patriarch Kalekas and the Hesychasts would appear to involve more than the issue of purely political allegiances in the civil war of 1341-1347. It included an ecclesiological conflict between the patriarch's bureaucratic and the Hesychasts' charismatic conception of the essence of religious authority. Indeed, the 14th century witnessed the climax of the long-term tension in Byzantium between these two distinct if by nο means necessarily incompatible views. For once the Hesychasts took over the church, they showed themselves fully conscious of its legal, historical, and bureaucratic position they too were obliged to defend.(115)
And other factors must be considered. Byzantium did not share St. Augustine's confidence in reason as a means of ongoing inquiry into the meaning of faith any more than his anxiety about the world's scarcity of grace. And it did not inherit the Latin West's tradition of logical studies, derived from Boethius. The Byzantine Greeks had all of Ancient Greek philosophy available to them. Thus, the contradictions between Greek philosophy and Christian teaching could and were perceived as an ever-present danger and, unlike the West; the more threatening pagan theories of the world did not sift into the intellectual environment gradually. Ιn the late 11th century in Byzantium the practice of philosophy, or rather the attempt to revive it, received a severe blow from the authorities, who saw its conspicuous reappearance of that time as a threat to the security of the faith (among other things). This reconfirmed the basic separation of philosophy and theology already suggested in the Greek Church Fathers, however much they had depended οn dialectic and reasoning (especially to refute the heretics, who had used logic first). The Byzantines knew Aristotle and Plato, Plotinus and Proclus. Their books were always around. And even after the great setback suffered by the practice of philosophy in 11th century Byzantium, sufficient momentum survived that pagan philosophy remained at least an object of considerable curiosity and commentary through the 12th century. But logical standards for obtaining truth were not fundamentally validated by Byzantine religious tradition nor by Byzantine politics. Ιn Byzantium we do not find the authority of reason and dialectic elevated to a authoritative position by the ideological battles fought between Popes and Emperors nor by the intellectual concerns of the medieval western universities which were significantly connected to the political tensions of the times. The lack of an organized school tradition in Byzantium did not make matters easier. Nor do we find in Byzantium geopolitical opportunities for disagreement and dissent afforded the intellectual opponents in the West by the polycentric political structure of society.(116)
Notes
89. For the phenomenology of ascetic "repentance" (penthos) see Irenée Hausherr, "Penthos La doctrine de la componctin dans l'Orient chretien (OCA, 132 [1944]). For eaτly Hesychasm see also by Irenée Hausherr, Noms du Christ et voies d' oraison (OCA, 157 1960) and by the same author, Hesychasme et priere (OCA, 176 [1966]), esp. 163-237: "Hesychasme. Etude de spiritualité." There is considerable debate as tο the degree tο, which Symeon's visionary experience should be treated as sui generis, and to what extent it should be interpreted in terms of theological "antecedents." This debate obviously mirrors the similar debate about Palamism. The view that the visionary light mysticism οf Symeon reflects a distinct prior tradition οf "enthusiasm" traceable in part back tο the controversial visionary author Pseudo-Makarios associated with 4th-century Messalianism has been advocated by Klaus Deppe, Der wahre Christ. Εine Untersuchung zum Frommigkeitsverstandis Symeons des Neuen Theologen und zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verstandnis des essalianismus und Hesychasmus (Diss., Gottingen, 1971). This view has been rejected by Basile Krivocheine, Dans la lumière du Christ. Saint Symeon le Nouveau Theologien 949-1022. Vie Spiritualite-Doctrine (Chevetogne, 1980), 62-63, note 74. See the discussion of this controversy in Walter Volker, "Praxis und Theoria bei Symeon dem Neuen Theologen" (Wiesbaden, 1974), 357, note 1, who doubts that Makarios Diadochos οf Photike, or Pseudo-Dionysios, were genuine antecedents of Symeon. The search for antecedents, especially heretical or near-heretical ones, by Deppe, is similar to the view taken of 14th century Hesychasm by Beyer, "Die Lichtlehre der Monche," note 8 above. The "enthusiast" strain of visionary mysticism, if it was indeed a continuous undercurrent of Byzantine monasticism greatly expanded by Symeon, was clearly different from 4th century "Enthusiasm" which was a synonym for Messalianism, whose openly heretical assumption Symeon certainly did not share. As a synonym for Messalianism the term appears in Theodoret, "Historia ecclesia", MPG, 82, 1144, paraphrased in the late 11th century by Euthymios Zigabenos, "Panoplia dogmatike", MPG, 130, 1273 C, who again underscored that its cosmology was widely at variance with Orthodoxy. From this debate two points emerge which do seem certain. First, the traditional practices of earlier Hesychasm, as developed at Μt. Sinai, stressed mainly repentance, sobriety, and prayer, though prolong experience of penthos could lead to theoria. Secondly, whether influenced by another strain of monastic piety or not, Symeon combined these traditional aspects of hesychia with a pervasive emphasis on visionary illumination, whether derived mainly from his own experience or inspired to some degree by antecedents represented by earlier mystical authors.
90. The search for "antecedents" for the visionary aspect to Symeon has rare extended to a consideration of Iconophile theology, and its possible impact on other forms of visionary mysticism. Theodore of Studion not only held that Christ was "in" icons of Christ "by relation" (MPG, 99, 341 BD) but that the image was necessary for contemplation of the archetype (MPG, 99, 436 Α). The emphasis here on a visionary experience for salvation was obviously overwhelming and may well have influenced ther forms of visionary mysticism in the traditions of the Monastery of Studion after Theodore's death in 826. This conclusion is supported to some degree by evidence the Life of Symeon by Niketas Stethatos; see Irenée Hausherr, Vie de Symeon le Nouveau Theologien (949-1022) par Nicetas Stethatos (Orientalia christiana, ΧΙΙ, 45 Rome, 1928), 61, line 21; 63, lines 17, 23; 136, line 3 (references to Theodore of Studion); 88, line 12; 72, line 26; 87, line 20; 90, lines 2 and 8 (references to icons and the centrality of the image of Christ in mystical contemplation). First numbers refer to numbered paragraphs in the text. Ιn Symeon's Hymns, however, the majority of references are to Pseudo-Dionysios and Gregory Nazianzus; see Symeon Neos Theologos, "Hymnen", ed. Athanasios Kambylis (Supplementa byzantina, 3 [Berlin, New York, 1976]), 566-567. This is also true of his other works.
91. Hausherr, Vie de Symeon, paragraphs 72-100; 101-112.
92. Ρaul Lemerle, Cinq etudes sur le Xle siecle byzantin (Paris, 1977), esp. IV: "Le gouvernment des philosophes" and V. "Byzance au tourant de son destin" See also Clucas, "The Trial of John Italos", Ch. IV. Peter Brown, "The rise and function of the holy man in late antiquity," JRS, 61 (197Ι), 80-101, and by the same author, "Τown village and holy man: The case of Syria," "Assimiliation et resistance a la culture grecoromaine dans le monde ancien (1976), 231-220. The last two articles have been republished in Peter Brown, "Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity" (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982).
93. Alexander Kashdan, review of Clive Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis in Βyzantina, 9 (1977), 478-484; Michael Hendy, "Byzantium 1081-1204: Αn economic reappraisal," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society," 20, 5th. ser. (1970), 31-52; Helene Ahrweiler, "Recherches sur la societe byzantine au XIe siecle: nouvelles hierarchies et nouvelles solidarites," ΤΜ 6 (1976), 99-124; Nicolas Oikonomides, "L'evolution de l'organisation administrative de l'Empire byzantin au XIe siecle (1025-1118)," ΤΜ 6 (1976), 125-152; Charalampos Bouras, "City and village: Urban design and architecture," XVI. "lnternationaler Byzantinistenkongress, Vienna, 1981, Akten 1/2 (JOB 31/2 Vienna, 1981), 611-653; Marius Canard, "Byzance et les musulmans du proche orient" (London, 1973); Robert Browning, "Byzarctium and Bulgaria" (Berkeley, 1975).
94. Michel Psellos, Chronographie, texte etabli et traduit Emile Renauld, 2 vols. (Paris, 1926-1928), vol. Ι, 136-138; Wanda Conus-Wolska, "Les ecoles de Psellos et de Xiphilin sous Constantin IX. Monomaque," ΤΜ 6 (1976), 223-243; Wolfram Horander, "La Poesie profane au XIe siecle et la connaissance des auteurs anciens," ΤΜ 6 (1976), 245-263; Jacques Lefort, "Rhetorique et politique, trois discours de Jean Mauropous en 1047" ΤΜ 6 (1976), 265-303.
95 Jean Gouillard, "Quatre proces de mystiques a Byzance (vers 960-1143). Inspiration et authorite," REB, 36 (1978), 5-81. For Athos see Amand de Mendieta, The "Gardern of the Panaghia" (note 3 above). Jean Darrouzes, "Le mouvement des fondations monastiques au ΧΙ siecle," ΤΜ 6 (1976), 159-176.
96. See note 38 above.
97. Kirsop Lake, "Early Days of Monasticism on Mount Athos" (Oxford, 1909). 98. Amand de Mendieta, "The Garden of the Panaghia", 55-105 (note 6 above). Βy Symeon's time Athanasios the Athonite had established a strong cenobitic structure at the Great Laura, which reflected the Studite and Basilian principles. Symeon had been ejected from the Monastery of Studion in Constantinople because he had, in effect, substituted absolute loyalty tο his "spiritual father" (pater pneumatikos), Symeon Studites, for obedience (hypotage) tο the abbot of Studion. See note 91 above.
99. Ρaul Magdalino, "The Byzantine holy man in the twelfth century, in The Βyzantine Saint. Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, l4, 1980 Urciversity of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1980), 54-55.
100. Magdalino, "The Byzantine holy man," 65-66.
101. For the victims of Michael VIII who joined Gregory οf Sinai see the latter's Life by Patriarch Kallistos Ι, ed. by Ν. Pomialovskii (St. Petersburg, 1896), para. 8 ff. See also note 64. The article by Ruth Macrides is entitled "Saints and Sainthood in the early Palaiologan period," in The Byzantine Saint. Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, 14, 1980, University of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1980), 68-73, 82. For the views of Eustathios of Thessalonica see also Alexander Kazhdan, Studies on Byzarctine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, Paris, 1983), 150-155, 170.
102. There is as yet no thorough treatment of the theological, ecclesiological, and monastic history of this period in the context of critical social and political change.
103. Meyendorff, "Society and culture in the fourteenth century: Religious problems," in ΧΙVe Congres Internationale des Etudes Byzantines, Rapports Ι. Bucharest, 6-12 Septembre, 1971 (Bucharest, 1974), 51-65, reρr. in Meyendorff, Byzantine Hesychasm. Dimitar Angelov, "Der Bogomilismus auf dem Gebiete des Byzantinischen Reiches: Ursprung und Wesen," Annuaire d l'universite de Sofia, XLIV, 2 (Sofia, 1947-1948), 35-45 repr. in Angelov, Les Balkans au Moyen Age: la Bulgarie des Bogomils aux Turcs (London, 1978), ΙΙa. Angelov appears to suggest that Hesychasm provided an outlet for at least some of the mystical aspirations of that part of the late Byzantine religious world which had been Bogomil. He also implies that Orthodoxy regained the allegiance of some Bogomils when Orthodoxy exchanged places with Bogomilism as the religion of the persecuted. For the influence of the Hesychast Patriarchs on ecclesiastical leadership in the "Byzantine Commonwealth" see Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia, 96-118.
104. Ihor Sevcenko, "Society and intellectual life in the fourteenth century," in Actes du XIV Congres Internationale des Etudes Byzantines, Bucharest, 1971, vol. 0. (Bucharest, 1974), 69-92, esp. 92 repr. In Sevcenko, Society and intellectual life in late Byzantium (London, 1981). For an evaluation of the relative overall importance of Christian Humanism as opposed to Hesychasm and Palamism see Meyendorff, "Spiritual trends in Byzantium in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century," 5371 (note 63 above).
105. Beyer, Nikephoros Gregoras Antirrhetika Ι, 17-54.
106. For Metohites see note 52 above. For a discussion of the political decline of Byzantium during this period see Angeliki Ε. Laiou, "Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus ΙΙ (Ι282-1328)" (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).
107. Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 126-146.
108. Nadal, "La critique par Akindynos" (note 5 above) and Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 157-160.
109. For Photios and the Zealots see Francis Dvornik, The Photian Schism. History arιd Legend (Cambridge, 1948), 1-38: "Political parties, religious problems and opening conflict." See also Jean Gouillard, "Le Photios de Pseudo-Symeon magistros," Revue des etudes sud-est europeenes, 9 (1971), 397-404. For the Origenist crisis of the 6th century see Antoine Guillaumont, Les 'Kephalaia gnostica' d'Evagre le Ροntique (Patristica Sorbonensia, 5 [Paris, 1962)), 124-170.
110. Meyendorff, Introduction, 25-43: "Les maitres de Palamas:" For the most recent discussion of this revival see Balfour, "Saint Gregory the Sinaite," 59-91. See Angeliki Laiou, "Saints and Society in the late Byzantine Empire," in Charanis Studies. Essays in Honor of Peter Charanis, ed. by Angeliki Ε. Laiou-Thomadakis (New Brunswick, 1980), 84-114.
111. I give only a few examples. Barlaam accused Palamas of displaying vast intellectual arrogance in the latter's treatises: Barlaam Calabro, Epistole greche, ed. Schiro, p. 314 (see note 4 above). Hero, "Letters of Gregory Akindynos", nο. 66, p. 278, lines 65-73 and Hero's translation, p. 279: "Is it nοt true, then, that for these men even Christ takes a second place to the innovators of the true faith who, just as if they were serpents of ejectment, expel Christ and His Father and the Holy Spirit, the one divinity and power in three (hypostases),' from Their οwn creation, and introduce instead other gods and divinities, creators and supervisors of the Universe and givers of gifts to all? Is this nοt what has happened around us, and what is happening, and will still happen and will be harder to bear, Ι fear, than before?" The Christian humanist, Nicephorus Gregoras, contrasted what he viewed as the rationality of historiography with the delusion οf Palamite mysticism, associating the latter with the overall political failures of the state in his time. He suggests that the values he represented, as an historian, were being overwhelmed by the triumph of Palamism; see Byzantina historia, ΙΙ, 881: "If there is anything trustworthy and good fοr all men which Ι acknowledge above all other things, since the progress of time always teaches of the affairs of life ... it is that it is primarily necessary that a history contain the truth ... which clearly reaps useful things and generally enumerates the wretched fates and misfortunes to be avoided by all those for whom it might be possible to choose the better course befitting their power of decision and their lives. And these (examples being offered) are the winters and floods to which the naivete and inexperience of the rulers subjected the Byzantines, who were carried away at the same time by the innovations and impious dogmas of Palamas, just as light objects when seized by raging rivers are swept away toward obscure and unknown ends." Μany similar examples could be cited. For the question of "discourse" see Michel Foucault, "The Archaeology of Knowledge", trans. Α. Sheridan Smith (New York, 1982).
112. Lowell Clucas, "Intellectual freedom in late Byzantium" scheduled for publication in "La nοtiοn de liberte au moyen age”, ed. Dominique Sourdel and George Makdisi (Paris, forthcoming).
113. For a discussion of this outlook, characteristic important sections οf the monastic world at all periods οf Byzantine history, see Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 34-48.
114. For Photios see J. Scharf, "Photius und die Epanagoge," ΒΖ, 49 (1956), 385400. For Kerularios see Romilly J.Η. Jenkins, "Α cross of the Patriarch Michael Cerularius. With an art-historical comment by Ernst Kitzinger," DOP, 21 (1967), 233249. For the overall political environment in which Kerularios attempted this move see Speros Vryonis, "Byzantine imperial authority: Theory and practice in the eleventh century," in G. Makdisi, D. Sourdel, J. Sourdel-Thomine, "La nοtiοn d'authorité au moyen age (Paris, 1982), 141-161. For a special consideration of the impact of the western medieval theory of the "two powers" and the influence of the Donatium Constantini in Byzantium see Angeliki Laiou, "Hoi dyo exousies: he diamache metaxu Ρapon kai autokratoron kai hoi theories ton byzantinon," Thesaurismata, 15 (1978), 106-118. (This article does not pursue the subject beyond the 12th century.)
115. According to a short but striking portrait in Nicephorus Gregoras, "Byzantina hiistoria", ΙΙ, 697-698, Kalekas justified an entirely equal partnership between patriarch and emperor above all by appeal to the translatio imperii of Constantine the Great in 330, by which the capital of the empire was moved to Constantinople from Rome. Ιt was this argument, based οn the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, according to which the see of Constantinople was given equality to that of Rome, that was first used by Photios against the 9th-century Papacy and the papal claims embodied in the Dοnation of Constantine. Kerularios, in the 11th century, went one step further and tried to adapt elements from the Donation of Constantine itself to assert his political authority over the Byzantine emperor, specifically imitating aspects of Ρapal ideology, as Jenkins shows (see preceding note). Kalekas did nοt claim to be superior to the emperor, yet like Kerularios he wore purple boots and signed documents in purple ink, in imitation of an emperor, practices which he justified only in part as co-regent. According tο Gregoras, Kalekas knew that these imperial honors and elements of a competely equal partnership were unfamiliar to his contemporaries and had in fact long been "overlooked" by the church. Nevertheless, Kalekas, claiming he was restoring the original relationship intended by Constantine, rejoiced that the circumstances of the regency had at last made possible the relationship, which Constantine had supposedly desired. This was very different from the spirit of the Hesychast leaders, though once in power they showed themselves adept at ecclesiastical administration and diplomacy, as Meyendorff shows in Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. For the deposition of Kalekas see Meyendorff, Introduction, 118-120; Weiss, Joannes Kantakuzenos, 120-123; Beyer, Nikephoros Gregoras Antirrhetika I, 111, and Dennis, "The deposition of the Patriarch Calecas."
116. Clucas, "The Trial of John Italos", Chapter IV.
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