Section 05: Controversy and Exile

The last two decades of St. Symeon’s life were shaped by a protracted conflict with Stephen of Nicomedia, a former metropolitan and senior patriarchal official. At its surface lay a duel over how God may be known — by syllogism or by experience — and beneath it lay Symeon’s public veneration of his uncanonized spiritual father, Symeon Eulabes (the Studite). The dispute ended in Symeon’s exile of 1009 and, decades after his death, in his quiet vindication.

Contents

File Topic
Stephen of Nicomedia The trigger (the Trinity question and Hymn 21’s answer), the deeper issue (the cult of Symeon Eulabes), the years of synodal pressure (1003–1009), and the destruction of the elder’s icons
Exile and Vindication The 1009 exile to Paloukiton (St. Marina), the refused archbishopric, the small community and its disciples, Symeon’s repose (1022), and the posthumous translation of his relics (1052) and cult

Overview

The conflict with Stephen is the best-documented episode of St. Symeon’s life, because Niketas Stethatos — Symeon’s disciple and biographer — devotes a long, partisan section of his Life of Symeon to it (ed. and trans. Greenfield, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 20). Niketas writes as an advocate; nevertheless the broad sequence is accepted by modern scholarship (Krivochéine, In the Light of Christ; Alfeyev, St. Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition).

Two threads run through the affair. The first is epistemological: against Stephen’s confidence that the inner life of the Trinity could be parsed by reason, Symeon held that one may speak of God only out of the conscious experience of God. The second is canonical: Symeon’s veneration of his departed elder as a saint — icon, Life, annual feast — pressed against the Church’s prerogative to regulate who is honored and how.

Key Themes

  1. Charisma versus office — the Byzantine tension between the authority of the holy man and that of the hierarchy.
  2. Experience as the ground of theology — Symeon’s claim that the theologian must first be a seer of the divine light.
  3. The making of a saint — how local cults arose before formal canonization procedures existed.
  4. Vindication deferred — Symeon lost the immediate battle but was received, within a generation, as a saint himself.

See Also