Lowell Clucas - The Triumph οf Mysticism in Byzantium in the Fourteenth Century (original) (raw)

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 V.

When in 1351 the Byzantine Church Council that approved the theology of Palamas closed its books, the defeated opponents had nο place to go. Shaken, frightened, and appalled, Nicephorus Gregoras, Matthew of Ephesos, and Theodore Dexios were soon subjected to house arrest by emperor John VI Kantakuzenos. Gregoras, though he continued to write secretly against Palamas, was obliged to remain in his home, the Chora Monastery, which he had inherited as a residence from his teacher, Theodore Metochites. It was not until the abdication of Kantakuzenos in 1354 and the accession of John V Palaeologos in that year that the pressure relaxed, for John V showed a lukewarm attitude toward Palamas if only because of the latter's long alliance with his imperial rival. Nevertheless, when Gregoras in 1355 was permitted to debate Palamas in court at a particular juncture, and vented his spleen against Palamite theology once again, John V quietly reminded him that the legitimacy of Palamite theological claims had been canonically established; debate as to the legality or licitness of the Palamite dogmas was thus pointless.(117) But as time passed during the second half of the 14th century, even critical theoretical discussion of Palamism became difficult and risky, at least in any place over which the clerical hierarchy, and especially the Patriarch, exercised control.

What is interesting to note is that political conflict in both societies opened windows of opportunity for expanded intellectual debate. We cannot, of course, find the far-reaching conflicts in Byzantium that we find in the Latin West between regnum, sacerdotium, studium, and civic commune. These conflicts in the West provided and stimulated occasions for vast intellectual debate. Nevertheless, as the power of the centralized state in Byzantium declined after the reign of Michael VIII (1259-1282), its broad grip οn the church also relaxed.(118) This contributed nο doubt to greater opportunities for debate even over such sensitive and far-reaching theological and indeed cultural issues posed by the Palamite Controversy. The prolonged civil war (1341-1347) between the Regency government of Empress Αnn of Savoy and Patriarch Kalekas versus the usurper, John VI Kantakuzenos in addition offered a prolonged period of political bi-polarity in society. Thus, for a time, it was possible for intellectual opponents to find support from two rival courts each of which supported and were in turn supported by rival intellectual factions, though the lines of allegience are not clear cut. Οn the other hand, the relative weakness of both contenders for power, their prolonged reluctance or sheer inability to move decisively against those intellectuals associated with their political enemies, worked to the general advantage of the direct participants in the intellectual conflict. Thus Akindynos, for example, was able to write against Palamas because he had the support οf the Regency, which controlled the capital, while anxiety about the position and influence of Palamas mitigated the degree of suppression to which he was subjected even when for a period in 1342 and 1343 he was held a prisoner in the capital. He was not prevented from writing.(119) It was only when John VI Kantkuzenos established his sole authority in 1347 that the state temporarily grew strong enough again to move toward a decisive settlement of the issues that preoccupied the intellectuals.

Yet even so, the accumulation of practical obligation on the part of Kantakuzenos toward the Palamites, and his appreciation of their influence, had a decisive impact on his behavior distinct (if not separate) from any increasing personal religious conviction.(120) Their political impact on him probably would have been much more limited if he had enjoyed the material resources possessed by so many of his imperial predecessors when Byzantium was a powerful state. Yet the resurgence of the state under Kantakuzenos was very qualified and limited.

During the very long reign of his successor, John V Palaeologos (1354-1391), the legitimate heir, the state reached its lowest ebb yet.(121) Ιn the power vacuum thus created the Church, led by Hesychast Patriarchs, began to exercise a degree of authority and control previously unknown reaching directly into the sphere of intellectual life. Backed up by the precedents of the Palamite Controversy, Patriarch Philotheos was able to move against a would-be Scholastic thinker such as Prochoros Kydones without bothering about the emperor at all. Prochoros, like his illustrious brother Demetrios, was deeply influenced by Thomism, and was attempting to introduce Latin Scholasticism into the Byzantine intellectual environment. However, his aim was not to overturn Byzantine theology per se, but rather to use Thomist principles to interpret and systematize certain aspects of apophatic patristic tradition. This project was directed explicitly against Palamas. Prochoros, writing in the late 1360s, declared that Palamite theology was portraying Kataphatic theology (positive affirmations about God) as involving or potentially including the perception of knowable divine energies, and that this was a distortion of the Patristic conception of Kataphatic assertions; such assertions were supposed to be only metaphors derived from the categories of the created world. Under the supervision of Patriarch Philotheos, Prochoros was condemned by the Council of 1368. Only the Patriarch presided over this affair, and his actions testify to the steadily increasing influence and authority of the Hesychast-dominated Church. However, Prochoros was also especially vulnerable. He acquired his reputation as an active and aggressive opponent of Palamite theology as a monk in situ at the Great Laura, the most important monastery at Mt. Athos.(122)

His brother, Demetrios Kydones, avoided an outright confrontation by refraining from a direct attack on Palamism. But he too introduced Western Thomist assumptions at variance with Palamas, thus contributing like his brother to this very new stage in the debate. Demetrios also criticized the anti-rational, xenophobic, and uncritical outlook that had in his view gained ground in Byzantium with the triumph of Palamism at the Council of 1351.(123) Other opponents of Palamism included Manuel Kalekas, who sought to reconcile Greek and Latin theology.(124) Joannes Kyparissiotes, who enjoyed the protection of the French Lusignan rulers on Cyprus, was not influenced by Latin Scholasticism. But he emphasized the Byzantine apophatic tradition in theology with its strong emphasis on God's unknowability, while declaring that reason and logical demonstration could be applied to Scripture and Patristic statements as long as they did not lay claim to any direct knowledge of God.(125) Ιn Constantinople, persecution of the remaining opponents by the Church was very tangible. Manuel Kalekas refers to the repression he and those who shared his views οn Palamism faced in the capital as late as 1397.(126) For the outspoken opponents of Palamism the ultimate solution was flight to the West. Demetrios Kydones, Manuel Kalekas, and even Joannes Kypariossiotes, all finally cοnverted to Catholicism. Prohoros would probably have done so too if he had not died so young. The supporters of Palamism remained highly conscious of their new power after 1351 to repress the opposition. The theologian Nicholas Kabasilas, while as a theologian only nominally a Palamite, nonetheless gave enthusiastic outward support tο the movement, and considered the accession of Philotheos to the Patriarchate a final guarantee that Palamism would preνail.(127) Philotheos, himself exceptionally strong willed, and the other Palamites who lived οn late into the century, also benefitted from the political leadership of John Kantakuzenos long after his abdication in 1354.(128)

The expansion of the authority οf the Hesychast-dominated church during this period did not result in a degree of control over Byzantine intellectual life comparable to that of the state during earlier periods. Ιn the dreadful confusion, disorder, and final fragmentation of the empire prior to its destruction, nο single pole of authority was able to maintain any general control. Joannes Kyparissiotes was far beyond the reach of the Byzantine ecclesiastical authorities; in the 15th century certain intellectuals of a different but far more radical coloring, such as George Gemisthos Plethon, could finally advocate a completely pagan secularism and virtual repudiation of Christianity itself because they enjoyed the comparative safety and protection of the practically independent Byzantine secular "Despots" of the Morea. Impressed by Pletho's philosophica knowledge and intellectual brilliance, these regional rulers were not shoked by his extremely unconventional views οn the criteria to be followed in any ideal reconstruction of Greek society.(129) Disagreement over Palamism continued as well. It remained a bone of contention far into the 15th century as a background issue in the tension between Byzantine advocates and enemies of Church Union with the West. Those Greek Orthodox prelates such as Bessarion, Metropolitan of Micaea, who were favorably impressed by Latin theology and supported Church Union at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439) came into conflict with others such as Mark Eugenikos, the Bishop of Ephesos, both over the Latin doctrine of the filioque and the hostility of Latin Scholasticism to Palamism.(130) Hostility to Palamism οn this basis had, of course, nοw been cultivated inside Byzantium itself by the native Byzantine protagonists of Thomism, beginning with Demetrios and Prohoros Kydones in the 1350s and 1360s, followed by Manuel Kalekas and his circle at the end of the 14th century; they in turn were succeeded by the last "westernizing" generation of intellectuals before the fall of Byzantium in the person of Bessarion, Andreas Chrysoberges, and others, toward the middle of the 15th century.(131) The last two Byzantine emperors, John VIII (1425-1448) and Constantine ΙΧ (1449-1453), attempted to enforce the Union which, as always, was seen as the necessary basis for securing diplomatic or military aid from the West, specifically from, or through the offices of, the Papacy.(132)

Disagreement on Palamism, now usually in the larger context of the Unionist question, continued right up to the fall of Constantinople. Clearly it was the radical decline of public authority at the end of Byzantine history, which made the enforcement of any sort of intellectual consensus virtually impossible. However, by this time Hesychasm and Palamism had not only long since been affirmed canonically, but had made themselves felt to one degre or another throughout the Orthodox world. The Greeks who took a positive view of Latin Scholasticism accepted the filioque and found theological shortcomings in Palamism on the new grounds based on Thomism were a very small minority of learned intellectuals. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the imperial patronage and Unionist policy on which they had depended was swept away. Constantine ΙΧ himself was killed in the fighting when the Ottoman armies finally burst into the city.(133) This also ended the long-term weakness in public authority and the relative plurality of poles of support, both secular and ecclesiastical, which had not only contributed to the success of Palamism but also made room for some degree of continued opposition to it and alternative viewpoints generally. With the reconsolidation of a powerful centralized authority in the form of the Ottoman state, and the Patriarch of Constantinople as the sole surviving Byzantine central administrative authority, the minimal native polycentrism necessary for Byzantine intellectual diversity was gone. By this time most Byzantine intellectuals committed to Christian Humanism or pursuaded by Latin theology had fled or were fleeing to the West, because secular patronage in Byzantium for their activities was coming to an end. Ιn the new order which was fast approaching there would be little or no place for them to carry on their work.(134) The surviving Byzantine formal institutions would be mainly ecclesiastical in character and their leaders, for the sake of saving what still could be saved, would be bound to emphasize the values which had not only won the firmest canonical approval but had by then gained the widest degree of acceptance in the Orthodox world. Ιn the case of late Byzantium, it was the contemplative life, hesychia, and theology, liturgical ritual, and basic traditional dogmas, which could serve as a viable cultural framework for the Christian community given the radical decline and eventual disappearance of the Byzantine state. Ιn the 15th century it was therefore those defenders of traditional dogma and church ritual, such as Marcus Eugenicus and Symeon of Thessalonica, and not Bessarion and the Unionists, who were providing for the necessary transition of late Byzantine society to an essentially religious community amid the wreckage of Byzantium as a secular state.(135) And in the new, constricting, and often very dangerous situation under Turkish domination, the Orthodox community could not as a rule afford or find a truly relevant place for the ambitious intellectual pursuits of scholars, whether lay or ecclesiastical. People who, in previous periods and under different circumstances would have thrived in such capacities now generally sought refuge in the West where corresponding if not identical structures of patronage were not declining but expanding. What traditions of higher education did survive at Constantinople in the "Patriarchal Academy" during the Turcocratia were pale and uneven in comparison with the brilliance and variety of the Palaeologan era.(136)

Meanwhile, the triumph of mysticism and monastic culture confirmed and consolidated the dominating role of these aspects of Byzantine civilization in the Orthodox world as a whole, not only in Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia and Rumania, which were falling under Turkish control, but also in Russia. Ιn these regions it was not always Palamism per se that proved most influential. Nevertheless, the impact of the Council of 1351 in setting the seal on these trends as a whole has been demonstrated by scholars, whether it was Palamite theology itself or, for example, the ascetic writings of Gregory of Sinai (one of Palamas' "spiritual fathers") whose influence prevailed in the different parts of the "Byzantine Commonwealth." The triumph of mysticism as represented by the Council of 1351 did not mean that Palamite theology was to be imposed throughout the realms of Orthodoxy as a rigid canonical obligation, as was the case with doctrinal decisions in the West. Instead, its attainment of final canonicity meant that it joined a body of approved dogmas and values among which different branches of Orthodoxy might choose to emphasize different aspects; in Russia in particular the view gained ground that Hesychast ideals could best be realized in cenobitic monasteries, based on Studite principles. Hesychia itself had no rigid meaning and instead of implying fixed expectations signified a commitment to the contemplative life which could be realized in different ways within certain parameters. Τhe triumph of Hesychast values sent out fresh invigorating currents of a slightly varying nature which could only strengthen the vigor and prestige of Byzantine monastic traditions which had taken root in these areas. It might be added, however, that Byzantine Hesychast influence also swept in a new, and far more decisive wave, of Byzantine political and legal ideas regarding the state and society, which the Hesychast leaders of the time often brought with them into Eastern Europe. Thus, this final burst of Byzantine religious activity served in a sense as the last phase of Byzantine ecclesiastical influence which, now more than ever, entailed the spread of Byzantium's theories of law and divinely appointed autocratic state authority.(137) Thus the triumph of mysticism in late Byzantium had the effect of deepening the religious and cultural gulf between East and West not only with regard to Byzantium proper but also Eastern Europe and the West, which at this very period was leaving its medieval phase beyond and entering the Renaissance. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss or evaluate the range and gravity of the long-term consequences this involved.(138)

As we have said, disagreement over Palamism, set in the new context of the Unionist Controversy, lasted down to the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Ιn the years leading up to the destruction of the Byzantine State, the famous Byzantine churchman of the time, George Scholarios, was for a time attempting to find means to reconcile the mystical values affirmed in 1351 with the apophatic assumptions of other trends in Byzantine theology. He sought to do this in the context of a scientific framework taken from Aristotle but differing from the assumptions and purposes of Latin Scholasticism, yet on the basis of shared rational standards that could form an intellectual bridge to the West. But his achievement which, in a different set of circumstances, might have had important consequences was by now too isolated and too late to have any impact on the sweep of events.(139) Scholarios, the Christian scholar, the learned and rationalistic theologian, who sought somehow to reconcile Palamism, Aristotle, and Latin Scholasticism, ended by repudiating the Church Union concluded at the Council of Ferrara-Florence which he had previously supported. Not long before the fall of Constantinople he rejected the Union loudly and emotionally, declaring that it was an act of Greek religious selfdenial, which would not bring adequate Western aid to stop the Turks anyway. (After the results of the Crusade of Nicopolis in 1396 and the Crusade of Varna in 1444 this was more than apparent. Νo Western army of the time could stand up to the Janissary Corps.)(140) Ηow ridiculous it was to abandon the one thing, which still could be saved: The Orthodox Faith! He refused all communion with the Latin priests and Greek Uniate clergy holding forth in St. Sophia at the pleasure of Constantine ΧΙ, the last, doomed Byzantine emperor. He posted a manifesto on the door of the cell to which he had retired. Ιn it he swore that he would prefer death to Church Union, oblivion to apostasy from the heritage of Orthodoxy.(141)

The legacy of opposition to Palamism had led, contrary to the intentions or expectations of the original Anti-Palamites, to a pro-Latin theology. Markos Eugenikos had fully grasped this at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, Scholarios and others realized it later on. The final decision made by Scholarios was in agreement with the attitude of all but a minority of Byzantine society. The alternatives were apparent: Οn the one hand was Orthodoxy, with its possible intellectual backwardness but its compelling and gripping mystical traditions recently reaffirmed and strengthened by Hesychasm and Palamism. And Orthodoxy was the spiritual backbone and identity of nearly half a dozen nations, a great orbit of faith centered in Byzantium but by no means limited to it. Οn the other hand there was the West with its new intellectual marvels and material attractions, which promised the gifted Byzantine any one of a number of possible brilliant careers which the dying fatherland could no longer provide. But one would, of course, have to become a Catholic. The choice made by Scholarios which was influenced by the Hesychast, Markos Eugenikos, was indicative of that faced by Byzantine society as a whole, even if not all his more learned contemporaries shared his decision: Spiritual freedom through loyalty to the mystical traditions of Orthodoxy, even under Ottoman political domination, was preferable to the material and political advantages to be gained by joining the culture of the West. Ιn its underlying assumption and scale of priorities, his was a characteristically monastic Byzantine decision: Spiritual freedom was greater and more important than political.(142)

One hundred years earlier Nicephorus Gregoras, the scientist, scholar and historian, had bitterly complained οn the eve of the Council of 1351 that ignorant Hesychast monks and their clerical supporters were taking the place of the established hierarchy so as to guarantee the success of Palamism at the impending Council. Α few years earlier, in 1348, the scholar-bureaucrat Demetrios Kydones, the translator of Thomas Aquinas, had observed with annoyance and anger that since his patron, John VI, had come to the throne, Hesychasts wandered at will through the imperial palace itself, in the halls of power.(143) As Byzantine society evolved in its last stages more and more into an essentially religious community, the intellectual preoccupations associated with the learned and bureaucratic traditions of centuries of Byzantine history grew marginal in function as the structures which had supported and justified them shrank in scope and importance. It was a monastic culture, which would be best able to survive because it would provide centers for those aspects of Byzantine tradition representing the least challenge to Ottoman political cοntrol. The Patriarchate, though necessary for the Ottomans as a means of keeping the Orthodox community in line, also represented something far closer to a surviving Byzantine administrative framework and was therefore subjected to far greater pressure and recurring abuse. It was undoubtedly symbolic in this connection that George Scholarios, the first Patriarch of Constantinople under the Turks, sought early retirement at Mt. Athos, far away from the pressures and exotic new intrigues spawned by an alien civilization's overall domination. The religious toleration granted to Orthodoxy by the Turks could not, and was not designed to, hinder the demoralizing effects οn the Christians of Muslim political authority.(144)

When Byzantium finally fell after a history spanning 1100 years, it did not mean the end of the mystical traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, which had gained such new momentum toward the end of the empire's development. The Greeks as a people survived the fall, and among them as well as among the other Orthodox peoples under the Turks, such as the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Rumanians, and the independent and rising Orthodox star of Moscow, the reinvigorated traditions of Byzantine mysticism had a profound influence. They reached all the way down the centuries to the holy man, the staretz, Amvrosy, the model for Dostoevsky's Staretz Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov, and charismatic "spiritual father" of Fyodor Dostoevsky himself.(145)

The triumph of mysticism in 14th century Byzantium was undoubtedly in large measure the outcome of contingent, not necessary, causes. If the intellectual trends of the 11th and 12th centuries had continued to be supported by the kinds of state leadership and secular power which had encouraged them in the first place, then the subsequent intellectual history οf Byzantium would undoubtedly have been rather different from what it was. This draws attention to the principle, which intellectual historians still tend to overlook, which is that intellectual history and cultural history are only governed in part by purely intellectual causes, and probably not governed at all by an evolutionary or deterministic grand design. History is not a seamless web. The intellectual history of any society is, like that society itself, a matrix of tensions, of values pulling in somewhat different directions. And the rise or fall of any particular set of ideals is influenced not only by forces from within the purely intellectual sphere but also by forces from without -some of them having little or nothing to do directly with intellectual aims. If the material, structural order supporting any given scale of values is seriously undermined and its credibility damaged, the intellectual landscape may become radically changed. And the supporting structures for any set of values or vision of life may be very fragile. Ιn the case of Byzantium, the drastic decline in the power and moral authority of the late Byzantine State provided the occasion for a great revival of charismatic religious forms of authority and leadership and the stronger articulation of corresponding values and ideas and norms of behavior. This confirmed and strengthened those religious traditions, which had long emphasized religious inspiration over the uses of discursive reason for either religious or secular purposes. It was these inspirational religious values which the vigorous leadership
of the late Byzantine Hesychasts added, more decisively than ever before, to the Byzantine legacy of Eastern Europe throughout the vast regions of Orthodoxy, from the Aegean Islands to the Arctic Circle.

Notes

117. For the most up-to-date discussion οf the circumstances in which Gregoras lived and wrote during his house arrest at the monastery of the Chora see Van Dieten, Nikephoros Gregoras Rhomaische Geschichte, 23-30. For the meeting in the palace with Palamas and the attitude of John V toward the Tome of 1351 and the unavoidable canonicity of Palamism see Manuel Candal," Fuentes Palamiticas. Dialogo de Jorge Facrasi sobre el contradictorio de Palamas con Niceforo Gregoras," OCP, 16 (1950), 303-357; for the remarks by John V to Gregoras on the canonicity of the Tome of 1351 see esp. 328, lines 19-23. For an evaluation of this debate and the sources for it see David Balfour, "Palamas' reply to Gregoras' account of their debate in 1355," in XVI. Internationaler Byzantinisten Kongress, Akten ΙI/4 in JOB, 3214 (1981), 245-256.

118. J. Gill, "Εmρeror Androniicus IΙ and Patriarch Athanasius Ι," (note 63, above).

119. Hero, "Letters of Gregory Akindynos, xx-xxxii; Meyendorff, Introduction, 103-105.

120. The best discussion of the emergence of the Palamites as a crucial part of the overall Gefolgschaft, or clientele, of Kantakuzenos, is by Weiss, Joannes Kantakuzenos, 113-137.

121. See note 11 above.

122. Prochoros made the vast political error of airing his arguments derived from Latin Scholasticism against Palamism while a monk at the Great Laura. He was denounced to Patriarch Philotheos by the protos of the Athonite monasteries, Jacob, in 1367; thereupon he appealed to Patriarch Philotheos of Constantinople for a fair review of his case. The key text for the disciplinary aspects of the affair is the Tome of 1368, MPG, 151, 693-716. For his theological works see Mercati, "Notizie di Demetrio e Procoro Cidone", 1-18; Emmanuel Candal, "Εl libro VI de Ρrocoro Cidonio (sobre la luz taborica," ΟΙΡ, 20 (1954), 247-297; S. G. Papadopulos, Hellenikai metaphraseis thomistikon ergon-Philothomistai kai antithomistai en Byzantio (Athens, 1967), 92-96.

123. For a critical survey of the work of both Demetrios and Prochoros see Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 195-210.

124. R.-J. Loenertz, "Correspondance de Manuel Calecas (Studi e testi," 152 [Citta del Vaticano, 1950]); Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 212-215.

125. For Kyparissiotes see above, note 29.

126. Loenertz, "Correspondance de Manuel Calecas", Letter 21.

127. Loenertz, Demetrius Cydones Correspondance, 2 vols. (Studi e testi, 186, 208 (Citta del Vaticano, 1956, 1960]), vol. 1, Αpp. 1, no. 4, p. 171.

128. John Meyendorff, "Projects de concile oecumenique en 1367: un dialogue inedit entre Jean Cantacuzene et le legat Ρaul," DOP, 14 (1960), 149-177, repr. in Meyendorff, Byzantine Hesychasm.

129. R Masai, Plethon et le platonisme de Mistra (Paris, 1956).

130. See Alexander Schmemann, "Ηo Hagios Markos ho Eugenikos," Gregorios ho Palamas, 24 (1951), 34-43, 230-241 and C. Ν. Tsirpanlis, "Mark Eugenicus and the "Council of Florence. Α Historical Re-evaluation of his Personality" (Thessalonica, 1974); also Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), 205-206. Other Greek prelates, such as Bessarion, were convinced by Latin theology and, finding it incompatible with Palamism, wrote treatises against the latter in the tradition of native Byzantine assimilation of Thomistic thought reaching back to Demetrios and Prochoros Kydones. See especially Contra Palamam apologia irescriptionum Vecci, MPG, 161, 243-288 written in defense of the 13th-century Unionist views of Patriarch John Bekkos, which were attacked by Palamas. The work of Palamas is included in Bessarion's, broken up by long quotations from Bekkos and the anti-Palamite interpretations of Bessarion.

131. The best overall survey tracing the lines of intellectual development is Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 172-230.

132. Gill, The Council of Florence, 349-388.

133. Steven Runciman, "The Fall of Constantinople 1453" (Cambridge, 1965). 134. Kenneth Setton, "The Byzantine Background to the Italian Renaissance," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 100 (1956), 1-76. Deno J. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice. Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass. 1962); repr. as "Byzantium and the Renaissance" (Hamden, Conn., 1972).

135. For Markos Eugenikos see note 130 above. For Symeon of Thessalonica see Ι. Μ. Phountoules, "Symeon archiepiskopou Thessalonikes Τa Leitourgika Syngrammata, Ι. Euchai, Hymnoi" (Thessalonica, 1968); David Balfour, "Politico-historical Works of Symeon Archbishop of Thessalonica" (1416/17 to 1429). Critical Greek text with introduction and commentary (Wiener byzantinische Studien, 13 [Vienna, 1979]); David Balfour, "Symeon archiepiskopou Thessaloniikes, Τa theologika erga" (Thessalonica, 1983).

136. Podskolsky, "Theologie und Philosophie, 234-237.

137. D. Obolensky, "The Byzantine Commonwealth. Eastern Europe, 500-1453" (New York, 1971), 237-271.

138. Podskolsky, "Theologie und Philosophie, 219, note #890; J. Meyendorff, "Spiritual Trends in Byzantium in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries," in Art et Société a Byzance (Vienna, 1971), 55-71.

139. Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie, 179.

140. L. Petit et al., "Oeuvres completes de Gennade Scholarios", vol. ΙΙΙ, 97, 147. R Babinger, "Mehmed the Conqueror and his Times" (Princeton, 1978), 38-40. Ο. Halecki, "The Crusade of Varna. Α Discussion of Controversial Problems (New York, 1943); Α. S. Atiya, "The Crusade of Nicopolis" (London, 1934); L H..Uzuncarsili, "Osmanli devleti teskilatindan: Kapukulu Ocaklari (Ankara, 1943-1944), 2 volumes.

141. L. Petit et al., "Oeuvres completes de Gennade Scholarios, 8 vols. (Paris, 19281936), vol. 3, 165-166.

142. Gill, "The Council of Florence, 349-388: "The reception of the Union in the West." The driving force behind Scholarios' conversion back to an uncompromising Orthodoxy was Mark Eugenikos. As we have said, it was in part Mark's commitment to Palamism, which forbade any sell-out to Catholic theology. His views and those of his younger brother, John Eugenikos, exercised considerable influence on Scholarios and a good deal of the Greek clergy. See Tsirpanlis, "Mark Eugenicus", 58-75. See also my article, "Intellectual freedom in late Byzantium," note 112 above.

143. "Byzantina historia", ΙΙ, 883-884. R.-J. Leonertz, "Demetrius Cydones: Correspondance", 2 vols. (Studi e testi, 186, 208 [Citta del Vaticano, 1956-1960]), no. 50, lines 33-38, and no. 88, lines 24-27. For discussion of the references in Kydones see Franz Tinnefeld, Demetrios Kydones Briefe, Ι, 1 (Stuttgart, 1981), p. 180, ΙΙ, and p. 265, Χ3; Ι, 2 (Stuttgart, 1982), p. 632; additional comment ref. to p. 181.

144. Runciman, "The Great Church in Captiviity", 165-225.

145. John Β. Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy. Model for Dostoevsky's Staretz Zossima (Belmont, Mass., 1972).