Gregory Palamas : The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam

Gregory Palamas, a monk of Mount Athos andmetropolitan of Thessalonike from 1347 to 1357, was a leadingfourteenth-century Byzantine intellectual. He was the chief spokesman for thehesychasts in the controversy bearing that name, which began when a charge ofheresy was laid against him in 1340 and ended with his proclamation as a saintin 1368. Although excellent English translations of some of Palamas’theological writings are available, very few texts relating to his historicalrole have yet been translated. This book contains the first English translationof the contemporary Life of Palamasby Philotheos Kokkinos, which is our principal source of biographicalinformation on him. Also translated into English for the first time are theSynodal Tomoi from 1341 to 1368,which chart the progress of the hesychast controversy from the viewpoint of thevictors, together with the corpus of material relating to Palamas’ year ofcaptivity among the Turks, which offers a unique insight into conditions forChristians and Muslims in the early Ottoman emirate. The translations, all ofwhich are based on critical texts, are preceded by introductions which setPalamas in his historical context and propose some changes to the conventionalchronology of his life.