06 — Sources and History

The source-critical core of the collection: the writings of St. Nicholas Cabasilas (c. 1322–c. 1392) survive in a small and secure corpus, but the life of their author is sparse and contested. This section distinguishes the two — the firm body of works, with its modern critical editions and English translations, set beside the thin and disputed biography — so that what is securely known of Cabasilas is held apart from what older tradition assumed and modern criticism has questioned.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (lay theologian; the sacramental life)

The theological stature of Nicholas Cabasilas stands in inverse proportion to the security of his biography. His two great works — The Life in Christ and the Commentary on the Divine Liturgy — are authentic beyond serious dispute and have been given reliable critical texts in the twentieth century; but the man behind them is glimpsed only through his own letters and orations and a handful of external notices, and several long-held assumptions about him, including that he died a monk, rest on inference rather than evidence. This section therefore separates the corpus from the life. The first file surveys the works and their transmission — the two masterworks, the Marian homilies, the letters, the minor treatises and orations, the critical editions of Congourdeau, Salaville, and Jugie, the place of the corpus in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca 150, and the standard English translations. The second sifts the historical Cabasilas, setting out what is securely known and presenting the genuinely open questions of chronology, identity, and ecclesiastical status as structured disputes that cite both sides.

Files in This Section

File	Description
The Works and Their Transmission	The corpus of Cabasilas: The Life in Christ (seven books) and the Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (~53 chapters); the Marian homilies on the Nativity, Annunciation, and Dormition; the letters; the minor treatises and orations, including the discourse against usury, the oration on unlawful magisterial seizures of sacred things, and the Palamite theological works; the critical editions (Congourdeau, SC 355/361; Salaville, SC 4 bis; Jugie, PO 19); the manuscript tradition and the place of the works in PG 150; and the English translations by deCatanzaro (SVS 1974) and Hussey & McNulty (SPCK 1960).
The Historical Cabasilas	The sparse biography and the contested questions: what is securely known — birth in Thessaloniki c. 1319/1322, the Chamaetos family and the maternal Cabasilas name, education at Thessaloniki and Constantinople, nephew of Nilus Cabasilas, the public career in the orbit of John VI Cantacuzene, the 1353 candidacy for the see of Thessaloniki, death c. 1392 — set against the disputed questions of chronology, the identity confusion with Nilus and with a monk of the same name, and whether Cabasilas was ever ordained priest or tonsured monk, each presented as a structured dispute citing both sides.

See Also

• The Sacramental Life — the content of the masterwork whose text and editions this section describes
• The Explanation of the Liturgy — the liturgical commentary whose transmission is treated here
• The Marian Homilies — the homily cycle edited by Jugie in Patrologia Orientalis 19
• The Layman Theologian — the lay identity that the disputed biography frames
• The Modern Rediscovery — how the critical editions and translations carried Cabasilas into the modern world
• The Methodology — the citation and verification standard governing the source-critical distinctions drawn here

References

• Cabasilas, Nicolas. La Vie en Christ. Ed. and trans. Marie-Hélène Congourdeau. Sources Chrétiennes 355 & 361. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1989–1990.
• Cabasilas, Nicolas. Explication de la Divine Liturgie. Ed. and trans. Sévérien Salaville. 2nd ed. Sources Chrétiennes 4 bis. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967.
• Cabasilas, Nicholas. The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974.
• Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960.
• Jugie, Martin, ed. Homélies mariales byzantines. Patrologia Orientalis 19. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1926.
• Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Nicol, Donald M. The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Spiteris, Yannis. Cabasilas: teologo e mistico bizantino. Rome: Lipa, 1996.