The Councils, 1341–1351

The conciliar sequence that resolved the hesychast controversy in Palamas’s favor and made his teaching Orthodox dogma. This file narrates the councils of June 1341 (Barlaam condemned), the Akindynos phase entangled with the Byzantine civil war (Palamas imprisoned and excommunicated under Patriarch John Calecas), the vindication of 1347 (Calecas deposed, Palamas consecrated Archbishop of Thessaloniki), the Gregoras phase, and the Blachernae council of 1351 with its Tome — together with the question of its standing as a “Ninth Ecumenical Council” and its inscription in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

The repository anchors the three decisive moments of the controversy at 1341, 1347, and 1351 (see The Jesus Prayer). Within those years the sources record several distinct sessions, and the exact day-dates vary across scholarship; where they do, this is noted rather than smoothed over.

June 1341: Barlaam Condemned

The first council met in the great hall of Hagia Sophia on 10 June 1341, presided over by Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 45, 47; “1. The Two Councils of 1341,” Jugie, The Palamite Controversy). Palamas and Barlaam confronted one another over the knowledge of God and the light of Tabor. The council found against Barlaam, who recanted and shortly afterward left Constantinople and Byzantium altogether, returning to Italy and the Latin Church. The emperor died only days later, on 15 June 1341, removing Palamas’s chief protector and opening the political vacuum that would shadow the rest of the controversy.

A second session in August 1341 condemned Gregory Akindynos, who had emerged as Barlaam’s successor in the anti-hesychast cause, and reaffirmed the June findings (Meyendorff, Study, p. 47; Jugie, “1. The Two Councils of 1341”).

The Akindynos Phase and the Civil War

Gregory Akindynos, formerly a friend of Palamas, took up the critique on more cautious ground: not the crude charge of materialism but the objection that Palamas’s distinction between essence and energies introduced a multiplicity into God and amounted to “two Gods.” The theological quarrel now fused with the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347 between the regency for the child-emperor John V Palaiologos and the claimant John VI Kantakouzenos, Palamas’s friend and patron. Because Palamas was identified with the Kantakouzenos party, his theological fortunes rose and fell with the political tide (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 47–52; Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism, ch. 1).

Imprisonment and Excommunication under Patriarch John Calecas

During the regency, Patriarch John XIV Calecas (Kalekas) turned decisively against Palamas. Palamas was arrested (autumn 1342), and in 1343 confined in the palace prison; a synod of November 1344 under Calecas excommunicated him and his associates while gradually rehabilitating Akindynos, who was even ordained by the patriarch (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 49–52; WebFetch of the events records the 1344 excommunication and the long detention). Palamas remained imprisoned, in effect, until the political reversal of 1347 — the lowest point of his career, and the period the tradition narrates honestly as one in which Orthodox dogma was held hostage to court politics, not adjudicated on its merits.

1347: Calecas Deposed and Palamas Vindicated

The civil war turned with the entry of John VI Kantakouzenos into Constantinople in early 1347. A synod of February 1347 deposed Patriarch John XIV Calecas (his deposition decreed, by some accounts, on the very eve of Kantakouzenos’s triumph), condemned Akindynos, and fully vindicated Palamas (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 52–55). Isidore Buchiras, a Palamite, was raised to the patriarchal throne.

In the wake of this vindication Palamas was elected and consecrated Archbishop (Metropolitan) of Thessaloniki in 1347. Political turbulence in Thessaloniki — then held by the anti-aristocratic Zealot faction — kept him from actually entering his see until about 1350 (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 55, 103–104; OCA, Life of St. Gregory Palamas). The contemplative monk had become a bishop, and the defender of hesachia now bore the public burden of a great see.

The Gregoras Phase

A final wave of opposition came from the distinguished humanist historian and polymath Nikephoros Gregoras, who took up the anti-Palamite cause on philosophical grounds after Akindynos’s death, charging that the essence/energies distinction compromised the divine simplicity. Gregoras became the chief intellectual antagonist of Palamas’s later years and the occasion for the last and most solemn of the councils (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 55, 76–78; Russell, ch. 1).

July 1351: The Council of Blachernae and Its Tome

The decisive dogmatic council met in the imperial palace of Blachernae in 1351, convened by Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos and presided over with Patriarch Kallistos I (some sources date the principal sessions to late May, others to July 1351; the repository anchor is 1351). The council:

affirmed the Palamite distinction between the unknowable divine essence and the truly divine, uncreated, and participable energies, and the uncreated character of the light of Tabor;
anathematized Barlaam, Akindynos, and their followers; Nikephoros Gregoras, refusing to submit, was condemned and held under restraint (Meyendorff, Study, pp. 55, 90–94; Jugie / Bekkos materials on the 1351 council).

The conclusions were drawn up as the Tomos of 1351, the formal dogmatic charter of Palamism. The synodical Tome was compiled from the records by Philotheos Kokkinos, then Metropolitan of Herakleia and later Patriarch — the same disciple who would write Palamas’s Life — assisted by others, and was signed by the patriarch and the assembled hierarchs (OOdeGr, The Synodicon of Orthodoxy; Meyendorff, Study, p. 93).

Reception: The “Ninth Ecumenical Council” Question

The standing of the 1351 council in Orthodox reception is attributed both ways, and the methodology requires this be stated as a genuinely open matter rather than resolved by assertion. The council was a great patriarchal synod of the Church of Constantinople, and its Tome is universally received as binding dogma. Whether it ranks as the “Ninth Ecumenical Council” is disputed: a current of modern Orthodox theology (notably Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and others) argues that the councils under Palamas (especially 1351, sometimes with 1341 and 1368) possess ecumenical authority and should be numbered among the Ecumenical Councils; the more traditional reckoning closes the list of Ecumenical Councils at seven and treats 1351 as a local-but-universally-received synod of the highest doctrinal weight (Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism, on the modern reception; John Sanidopoulos / Metr. Hierotheos, “The Ninth Ecumenical Synod”). The repository follows the cautious form: the 1351 Tome is dogmatically binding in Orthodox reception; its formal number among the councils is not settled.

The Synodikon of Orthodoxy

The lasting liturgical inscription of the victory came through the Synodikon of Orthodoxy — the text proclaimed each year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (the First Sunday of Great Lent), which anathematizes heresies and acclaims the defenders of the faith. The chapters drawn from the Palamite councils — anathemas against Barlaam and Akindynos and acclamations of the Orthodox teaching on the uncreated energies — were added to the Synodikon, the hesychast doctrine entering it for the first time around 1352; after Palamas’s death (1359), and especially following his canonization by Philotheos Kokkinos in 1368, an acclamation of Palamas himself was added (OOdeGr, The Synodicon of Orthodoxy; Meyendorff, Study, pp. 93, 100). The placement is itself an argument: by inscribing the essence/energies distinction in the very service that celebrates the triumph of icons and the Ecumenical Councils, the Church declared hesychast theology not a peripheral opinion but part of the rule of faith — which is why Palamas is commemorated on the Second Sunday of Great Lent, a “second Sunday of Orthodoxy.”

References

Meyendorff, John. A Study of Gregory Palamas. Translated by George Lawrence. London: Faith Press, 1964.
Russell, Norman. Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Jugie, Martin. The Palamite Controversy (excerpts in English, “1. The Two Councils of 1341”; “3. Kalekas and Akindynos against Palamas, 1341–1347”), at De unione ecclesiarum (used to locate session dates; cross-checked against Meyendorff).
“The Synodicon of Orthodoxy.” OOdeGr (oodegr.com) (used to locate the Synodikon additions and the role of Philotheos Kokkinos; followed to the underlying texts).
Orthodox Church in America. “Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica.” Lives of the Saints, November 14.
Sanidopoulos, John, trans. Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, “Homilies on the Ecumenical Synods: The Ninth Ecumenical Synod” (on the disputed ecumenical numbering of 1351).