Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The Hesychast movement

Page 5

Church troubles continued, debatable questions were discussed at other councils, and the representatives of the church were entangled in the political complications of the strife between John Palaeologus and John Cantacuzene. Palamas lived an agitated life; for a time he was even confined in prison by the patriarch for his religious ideas. At this time he met with an active opponent in Nicephorus Gregoras, who had formerly acted with such energy against Barlaam and then gone over to the side of the reconciliation with Rome. Finally Palamas cause triumphed, and his doctrine was recognized by the council as the true doctrine of the whole Orthodox church. The decree of the council listing Barlaam's blasphemies proclaimed that he has been cut off from intercourse with Christians as much for his numerous faults as for the fact that he called the light of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which appeared to His blessed disciples, who ascended the mountain with Him created and describable and differing in nothing from the light perceived by the sense. But the struggle and many misfortunes of Palamas had undermined his strength, and after a severe illness he died in 1360. On a beautiful miniature in a manuscript containing John Cantacuzene's works in the National Library of Paris, John Cantacuzene is portrayed seated upon the throne at the council solving the problem of the nature of the light of Thabor.

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