Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Learning, literature, science, and art

Page 10

The Hesychast movement also produced a number of writers on both sides, beginning with its founder, Gregorius of Sinai. The leading spirit of the Hesychasts, Gregorius Palamas, was also the author of some dogmatic essays and many orations, sixty-six of which were found in one of the Meteora monasteries in Thessaly. The literary activity of Nicephorus Gregoras, a violent opponent of the Hesychasts, has already been discussed. Another opponent of Palamas, John Cyparissiotes, who lived in the second half of the fourteenth century, may be mentioned as the author of Ἔκθεσις στοιχειώδης ρήσεων θεολογικῶν, or Expostio materiaria eorum quae de Deo a theologis dicuntur, the first attempt at dogmatics according to the pattern of western Scholasticism.

One of the great theologians, one of the best Byzantine writers of the fourteenth century, and one of the very talented mystics of the eastern church, Nicholas Cabasilas, also belongs to the fourteenth century. The basts of Cabasilas ideas was, as in western European mysticism, the works of the so-called Dionysius Pseudo-Areopagite, who wrote probably at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century. Byzantine mysticism passed through an important evolution in the seventh century, thanks to Maximus Confessor, who freed the mysticism of the Pseudo-Areopagite from its neo-Platonic elements and reconciled it with the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox church. Maximus influence was still felt by the mystic writers of the fourteenth century, with Nicholas Cabasilas at their head.

Nicholas Cabasilas belongs to the writers who are very little known and unsatisfactorily studied, for many of his writings are unpublished. Quite a number of these, especially orations and letters, are preserved in several manuscripts of the National Library of Paris, one of which has been used by the Roumanian historian Tafrali in his monograph on Thessalonica. In a study of Cabasilas' doctrine two essays are important: Seven words on the Life in Christ (De vita in Christo), and The Interpretation of the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrae liturgiae interpretatio). A discussion of Cabasilas' doctrine with its thesis "To live in Christ is the very union with Christ" would go far afield; but one may certainly say that Cabasilas' literary work in Byzantine mysticism, on its own merits as well as in connection with the Hesychast movement and the western European mystic movements, deserves an honorable place in the cultural history of Byzantium in the fourteenth century, and should attract the attention of scholars, who have hitherto quite wrongly neglected this interesting writer. Scholars vary in their definition of Cabasilas' mysticism, and some of them even declare that he cannot be recognized as a mystic at all. Cabasilas correspondence deserves publication. According to the French scholar Guilland his letters are written in an easy and elegant, though sometimes over-refined, style, and contain new and interesting data.

Philosophy is represented in the Palaeologian epoch by the famous George Gemistus Plethon. Filled with enthusiasm for ancient Hellenism, an admirer of Plato, whom he knew thoroughly through neo-Platonism, a dreamer who thought to create a new religion by means of the gods of ancient mythology, Plethon was a real humanist and intimately connected with Italy. Interest in ancient philosophy, especially in Aristotle and, beginning with the eleventh century, in Plato, had never been discontinued in Byzantium. In the eleventh century Michael Psellus, in the twelfth John Italus, in the thirteenth Nicephorus Blemmydes had devoted a considerable part of their time to philosophy, Psellus particularly to Plato, the others to Aristotle. The struggle between the two philosophical movements, Aristotelian and Platonic, which is so characteristic of the Middle Ages in general, was strongly felt in Byzantium during the Hesychast quarrel. Therefore the way was well prepared for the extremely interesting personality of Gemistus Plethon.

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