The Orthodox struggle to assimilate Palamite thinking

Abstract

The Palamite controversy originated in Barlaam’s formal complaint that Palamas’ teaching was a cover for the dualist heresy of Bogomilism, or ‘Messalianism’. A series of Constantinopolitan councils upheld Palamas’ orthodoxy, but many of its opponents subsequently abandoned Orthodoxy and joined the Latin Church. Thus the ‘Palamite heresy’ became a weapon, in the confessionally competitive climate of the early modern age, with which Catholic missionaries could attack confidence in the Orthodox Church as a reliable vehicle of salvation. The attempts of Dositheos II of Jerusalem and Nikodemus the Hagiorite to publish the complete works of Palamas came to nothing. The Philokalia in its Slavonic version introduced hesychast theology to Russia but omitted Palamas himself. Palamite thought was appropriated in Russia chiefly by the controversial ‘glorifiers of the Name’, the imiaslavtsy. It was against the background of imiaslavie that the early work on Palamas by the Russian émigrés in Paris was undertaken.