Some people tend to appear in the history books only in the shadow of others. Gregory Akindynos is such a person. He is usually mentioned as the successor to the famous Barlaam of Calabria in the Palamite controversy, but on the whole he appears less important and less effective than Nikephoros Gregoras. The contributions collected here aim to shed a little more light on Akindynos by examining the role he played in the 14th-century Hesychast Controversy from different perspectives: philology, history, philosophy, and theology.
We know little about Gregory Akindynos’ life in general and even less about his early life.1 His date of birth is unknown, but generally assumed to be around 1300. Originating from a peasant family in the surroundings of the city of Prilapon (today Prilep in Northern Macedonia), he moved to Thessalonica while still young – we do not know exactly when – where he received a solid rhetorical, philosophical, and theological education, studying with no less a teacher than the famous rhetorician Thomas Magistros, among others. He also became acquainted with the Calabrian philosopher and theologian Barlaam in Thessalonica. After his studies, Akindynos worked as a teacher for the sons of notable families in Berroia (today Veria in Greek Macedonia). It was there where he met the hesychast Athonite hieromonk Gregory Palamas (1296–14.11.1359), who was probably only a few years older than he. Akindynos and Palamas became intimate friends. It may be that Akindynos’ plan to become an Athonite monk originated in this friendship. However, and in spite of Palamas’ support, the doors of several monasteries on the Holy Mountain remained closed to Akindynos. The reason for his rejection might have been his education in and enthusiasm for Hellenic studies, a subject not appreciated by the Athonite monks. In 1332, after an approximately one-year stay on the Holy Mountain, Akindynos went back to Thessalonica. In the following years he relocated to Constantinople and became a monk there.
This was the time when Barlaam, on behalf of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III, was negotiating with two legates of pope John XXII over the procession of the Holy Spirit and the famous formula filioque, crucial problem in the attempt to find ways of reuniting the Latin and Byzantine Churches. At the same time, Palamas started to criticize Barlaam in front of Akindynos for the former’s anti-Latin writings, composed after failed negotiations with the papal legates and attacking not so much Barlaam’s anti-Latin stance as his mode of argumentation, which Palamas considered to be wrong. Whereas Akindynos, who was on good terms with both Barlaam and Palamas, at first acted as a mediator between them, they then started to send polemical letters directly to each other. While their discussion became more and more aggressive and shifted topic to hesychast prayer practices, the divine light of Transfiguration, and theosis, all of which was most disconcerting to Barlaam, Akindynos remained anxious to calm both sides down.2 The controversy, which is not explained in every detail here, ran its course to the point that in 1340 Barlaam presented before Patriarch John XIV Kalekas and the Holy Synod in Constantinople a treatise entitled Against the Messalians (today lost), in which he accused the hesychast monks of the same heresy as the Christian sect of the Messalians had been accused of in the fourth century due to their particular practice of prayer.
In the winter of 1340/1341, Palamas was finally summoned to Constantinople by Patriarch Kalekas, and on 10 June a first council of the controversy took place in the Church of St Sophia in the presence of the Emperor and his entourage, the Patriarch and his synod, and the two protagonists Barlaam and Palamas. Akindynos very probably did not participate. The council had a bitter end for Barlaam: his charges against Palamas were finally refuted and he himself was condemned. After this defeat, the Calabrian monk immediately left Constantinople and returned to the West of Europe.
At this point, Akindynos assumed Barlaam’s role in the controversy. While at first defending Palamas against Barlaam’s attacks, which he considered paltry and unnecessarily quarrelsome, Akindynos later began to wonder at certain doctrinal statements uttered by Palamas leading up to the June council. When Palamas, despite his promises to Akindynos, after the council refused to revoke and excise certain passages from his writings, the two monks fell out for good. Their dispute escalated to such an extent that Palamas and his followers urged a second council. It took place in July 1341. Since Emperor Andronikos III had unexpectedly passed away on 15 June, his Grand Domestic John Kantakouzenos, who was on good terms with Palamas, presided over this synod. Apparently in the course of this council a sudden turmoil arose, and Palamites even tried to murder Akindynos, but did not succeed. As it seems, this second synod did not come to concrete results. Combat and calumnies between Akindynites and Palamites continued. The constellations of political and ecclesiastical power led, in October 1341, to a civil war that would last seven years, with the Patriarch Kalekas, the Empress Anna and her minor son, John V, successor to Andronikos III, on one side, and Kantakouzenos, striving for the throne, on the other.
Meanwhile Akindynos and Palamas began to compose polemic treatises against each other, and Akindynos managed again to gain the trust of Patriarch Kalekas, who before had unsuccessfully tried to win Palamas over. Across several councils in 1342 and 1343, in which Akindynos bore witness against Palamas’ doctrines, Palamas was finally condemned and brought to prison. Nonetheless, during his imprisonment, Palamas was able to write and publish treatises constantly, propagating his doctrines and disparaging his opponents, particularly Akindynos.
Sometime during the years of Palamas’ imprisonment (April/May 1343 – February 1347), but definitely after his excommunication on 4 November 1344, Kalekas forced Akindynos’ ordination into the episcopate, in order to legitimize Akindynos’ discussion of dogmatic questions, since any dogmatic discussions had been forbidden to anyone beyond the rank of bishop in the Tomos, which had been compiled after the synod in June 1341. But Akindynos’ ordination was not approved by many. When opponents of the Patriarch succeeded in convincing Empress Anna that this ordination would abrogate the decisions made at the council of June 1341, over which her late husband had presided, she herself abrogated Akindynos’ ordination. From this moment on, Akindynos suffered persecution and was forced to hide and to cease his lobbying against Palamism.
Things in Constantinople changed considerably around the end of 1345 and the beginning of 1346 when it became apparent that Kantakouzenos would win the civil war, and when Empress Anna blatantly sought to get rid of Patriarch Kalekas and asked Akindynos and Palamas for a confession of faith. On 21 May 1346, Kantakouzenos, winner of the civil war, was crowned Emperor in Adrianople (today Edirne in Turkey). With the end of the civil war after the arrival of Kantakouzenos in the capital at the beginning of February 1347 and the release of a synodal Tomos later in this month deposing Patriarch Kalekas, giving right to Palamism and condemning Akindynos, the game for the latter was over. Akindynos stayed in Constantinople after his condemnation, living a hidden life and continuing his fight against Palamas and his followers. At the beginning of 1348 he went into exile. He must have died before May or June of the same year.
The condemnation of Akindynos was accompanied by a ban on the dissemination of his writings. This of course had an impact on the transmission of his works, so that every surviving manuscript is of special value for research. Therefore, the contributions collected here start with Renate Burri’s article on “New Evidence on Gregory Akindynos’ Writings and Their Manuscripts”. She provides a list of the 13 manuscripts known today that contain works of Akindynos, among them two poems dedicated to Gregoras and three new works in addition to the list provided by Juan Nadal Cañellas,3 as well as two titles of lost works. The most important and precious surviving textual witness for Akindynos’ works is the 14th-century Monac. gr. 223, presumably produced during Akindynos’ lifetime in Constantinople.4 Burri suggests that this manuscript was planned and produced as a collection of works of Akindynos by his followers, maybe even as a sort of theological and doctrinal legacy. Akindynos is called
Marie-Hélène Blanchet discusses “Gregory Akindynos in the Service of Patriarch John XIV Kalekas? Ecclesiological Issues at Stake in the Controversy between Gregory Akindynos and Gregory Palamas”. She traces Akindynos’ path from being a hesychast monk without any responsibility within the ecclesiastical institution, the only authority qualified to judge doctrinal matters, to a confidant and ally of the Patriarch John XIV Kalekas and, perhaps, the spiritual father of the princess Irene-Eulogia at the court of Constantinople, a milieu very different from his earlier hesychast asceticism. Based on the analysis of his letters,6 Blanchet comes to the conclusion that Akindynos “seemed to consider himself a shepherd, responsible for the Church almost as much as the Patriarch” (p. 34). But the project of Kalekas to promote Akindynos to the episcopate was hampered by the joint opposition of the Palamites and the Empress.
Blanchet argues that Akindynos’ individual development is paralleled by two opposite ecclesiologies that competed in the 1330s and 1340s. One very important issue was the question of the monks’ influence within the Church. The Athonite monks around Palamas had pronounced a condemnation in the Hagioretic Tomos without the legitimization of the synod. In doing so they had claimed an influence to which they were not entitled according to canon law. From the prosopographical evidence, Blanchet concludes that after his ordination in 1344, Akindynos more and more identified with the official church and defended the Patriarch. While he himself was a monk, Akindynos opposed the new ecclesiology, perhaps inspired by Gregory of Sinai, which granted the monastic world superiority over the clergy – not only a spiritual ascendancy, but also a functional one – resulting in a reversal of power between the monks and the clerics. Akindynos recalled the norm that governed the life of the Church, based on conciliar decisions and a visible organization, not on an invisible hierarchy claimed by the Palamites. In this perspective, the conflict between Palamas and Akindynos was also a renewed outbreak of the age-old conflict in the Church between the institutional and the charismatic approaches to ministry, between monks and bishops, and between their competing ecclesiologies.
Turning to the more philosophical and theological aspects of the controversy, David Bradshaw illuminates the “Background and Sources of the Essence/Energies Distinction” by discussing the precursors of Palamas in the history of theological ideas about divine energy. Given the Pauline spiritual use of energeia and associated terms, the scriptural portrayal of the divine glory, and the Hellenistic and early patristic distinction between divine powers and divine essence, it was “thus a short step for Palamas”, according to Bradshaw, “to see the divine glory that appears in Scripture (and particularly the Transfiguration) as the uncreated light, a visible form of the divine energy” (p. 46). Bradshaw states that Basilios of Caesarea already in his controversy with Eunomios had shifted to an understanding of the term ousia as the active source that produces the energies. From there he draws a line from the Cappadocians through Maximos the Confessor and Dionysios Areopagites all the way up to John of Damascus. Palamas thus reads Dionysios in light of Maximos, and particularly Maximos’ concept of natural energy. Palamas stands at the end of this development, which he brings to its logical conclusion. In view of this development, Bradshaw concludes, the accusation of Palamas’ opponents, including Akindynos, that Palamas was adding a second God to the Divine Godhead was unjustified.
For Marcus Plested, Akindynos was Palamas’ “most formidable theological opponent” (p. 69), a serious and dangerous adversary. Plested focuses on the “Patristic Reception and the Light of the Transfiguration in the Hesychast Controversy” and demonstrates that there is a consistent way of talking about the Light of Tabor from Macarios to Maximos the Confessor that contains only slight adaptations. But for some reason, in the 14th century, the question of the character of the light of the Transfiguration was to become a kind of shorthand allowing for the easy identification of a person’s theological proclivities. To deem that it was created was to stand with Barlaam; to affirm that it was uncreated was to side with Palamas (and, by extension, his teaching on the uncreated energies of God). Barlaam himself had no intention to focus the debate on the Transfiguration in this way, and for Plested it is proof of Palamas’ strategic gifts that he was able to push the debate in this direction. Palamas thus brings the theological conflict to a head on the question of whether the Light of Tabor was created or uncreated, and in “his relentless opposition to novelty of all kinds – Barlaamite and Palamite – Akindynos retreats into a species of patristic formalism that represents Byzantine classicism at its worst” (p. 80). Palamas, in contrast, maintaining strict conformity with the patristic tradition, according to Plested, offered a considerably more expansive and properly creative paradigm of patristic reception.
Akindynos’ opposition to any kind of novelty is also what concerns Katharina Heyden in her examination of “Innovation as a Heresiological Argument and a Theological Topic in Akindynos’ Refutatio of Palamas’ Epistula III”. The need for loyalty to the theological tradition is a part of the Orthodox world in which both Akindynos and Palamas live and argue. Therefore, calling someone “the new theologian”, as Akindynos several times labels Palamas, is an accusation capable of delegitimization. But does Akindynos only use this accusation as a rhetorical weapon against Palamas (and Barlaam as well), or does he rather treat innovation itself as a theologically charged problem, and if so: for what reason? Based on an analysis of Akindynos’ Refutatio of Palamas’ Epistula III, Heyden argues that for Akindynos, anything new in this world can only be a re-newed version of something that already exists, because human beings inventing something really new would constitute a challenge to God as the creator of all. Thus, Akindynos proves to be a profoundly conservative thinker, as much for polemical and epistemological reasons as for theological and anthropological ones. In other words: in his own eyes, Akindynos is the guardian of theological traditions and church institutions, and thus a protector of orderly society.
Given the fact that any kind of novelty was frowned upon in 14th century Byzantium, it is no surprise that Orthodox theologians attempt to prove faulty the accusation of introducing something new leveled at Palamas. This is what Andreas P. Zachariou does in his reconstruction of “Theological Notions in the Controversy between St Gregory Palamas and Gregory Akindynos: Some Observations”. By directly comparing the main theological ideas and works of both thinkers, Zachariou emphasizes Palamas’ perfect harmony with the previous Orthodox theological tradition. According to Zachariou, Akindynos’ theology is merely the result of his confronting Palamas’ theology and is therefore determined by the particular manner in which he perceives Palamas’ ideas. Zachariou therefore indirectly deciphers Akindynos’ theology from theological ideas Akindynos ascribed to Palamas, against which he inveighed, and alongside Palamas’ conceptions and elucidations, which are expressed in parallel to his objections. The two main pillars of Akindynos’ theological thinking that emerge from this reconstruction are a strong emphasis on the divinity being the creator of all by means of a created energy and the similarly strong rejection of any distinction between essence and energy or the existence of multiple uncreated energies.
In the concluding article, “Editing Gregory Akindynos: The Example of Scorialensis Graecus 230 (
The contributions collected in this volume go back to a workshop held in Bern in March 2019 in an attempt to bring together Eastern and Western scholars to discuss various aspects of and perspectives on the conflict between Palamas and Akindynos. The papers presented at this workshop, now published in this volume, are not meant to provide a consistent or unanimous picture of Akindynos’ role in the Hesychast Controversy. Rather, they give voice to different, sometimes contradictory perspectives, thus demonstrating that some past debates still impact academic discussions today. Akindynos’ condemnation as a heretic makes it difficult for Orthodox scholars to receive him without reservation. On the other hand, he seems to be of particular interest to Western researchers precisely because of his condemnation. The least that can be said is that Palamas would not have polished and sharpened his theology in the way he did if his former friend and fellow hesychast Akindynos had not confronted him with his objections. In approaching this polemical relationship, what research can do is reconstruct what Orthodoxy owes to its ‘heresies’. Even if this insight does not reverse doctrinal condemnations, it can at least lead to an appreciation of theologies and ways of life that were not recognized by the ecclesiastical institutions of former times. If the present volume, in its polyphony, can shed light on the historical aspects of the Hesychast Controversy and reveal the role played by Akindynos in the dialogical development of Palamas’ theology, it will have achieved its goal.
Our warmest thanks are to Severin Küenzi and particularly to Tabea Irina Stauffer for their help in editing the manuscript as well as to Yael Antolovich and Carson Bay for proofreading.
No one has dedicated their scholarly life to the task of removing Gregory Akindynos from the shadow of his contemporary comrades-in-arms in the Hesychast Controversy as much as the late Mallorcan Jesuite scholar Juan Sergio Nadal Cañellas SJ (07.10.1934–16.01.2016). With his numerous editions, books and chapters, Nadal attempted to contribute to the recognition and rehabilitation of Gregory Akindynos. Even if the editors and authors of this present volume do not advocate for Akindynos in the way Nadal Cañellas did, they all owe much to his work. This volume is therefore dedicated to the memory of this distinguished scholar.
Renate Burri and Katharina Heyden
Vienna and Bern, February 2024
References for this outline of Akindynos’ life: Constantinides Hero, Angela (ed.), Letters of Gregory Akindynos, Washington 1983, ix–xxxiii; Nadal Cañellas, Juan, Gregorio Akíndinos, in: Conticello, C.G. / Conticello-Kontouma, V. (eds.), La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, vol. 2: xiiie–xixe s., Turnhout 2002, 189–314, at 189–223; id., La résistance d’Akindynos à Grégoire Palamas. Enquête historique, avec traduction et commentaire de quatre traités édités récemment, vol. 2: Commentaire historique, Leuven 2006; id., Le rôle de Grégoire Akindynos dans la controverse hesychaste du XIVe siècle à Byzance, in: Montferrer-Sala, J.P. (ed.), Eastern Crossroads. Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, Piscataway 2007, 31–58; Rigo, Antonio, 1347. Isidoro patriarca di Costantinopoli e il breve sogno dell’inizio di una nuova epoca, Vienna 2020; id., Scritti dal carcere. Una nuova opera di Gregorio Palamas, uno scritto di Doroteo Blates sul concilio di 1341 e il manoscritto Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana I 24 sup. (457), in Byzantion 90 (2020), 133–226; id., Le séjour de Grégoire Palamas au monastère de Saint-Michel de Sosthénion (octobre 1341–24 mars 1442), in: Blanchard, M.-H. / Estangüi Gómez, R. (eds.), Le monde byzantin du xiiie au xve siècle: anciennes ou nouvelles formes d’impérialité, Paris 2021, 667–694. On Akindynos’ biography see also Marie-Hélène Blanchet’s contribution in this volume, pp. 21–41.
On this role of Akindynos, see Heyden, Katharina, Gregorios Akindynos: Der verkannte Vermittler im Streit um die göttlichen Energien (nicht nur) im 14. Jahrhundert, in Ostkirchliche Studien 62/2 (2013), 193–218.
Nadal Cañellas, Gregorio Akíndinos (2002) (see above note 1), at 223–228.
See the reproduction of fol. 32r of this codex on the cover of this volume.
See Heyden, Katharina, Introduction. The two Epistulae of Palamas’ Epistula III to Akindynos, in Studia Patristica 96 (2017), 507–510. A digital synoptical edition of the two versions of Palamas’ Epistula III was published online by Renate Burri and Rafael Schwemmer: https://akindynos-and-palamas.ch (last consultation: 26/02/2024).
Constantinides Hero, Letters (1983) (see above note 1).