The Councils of 1341, 1347, and 1351 in the Synodikon

The hesychast councils of the fourteenth century were inscribed in the Synodikon, and with that inscription the text became the Church’s dogmatic charter of hesychasm. This file treats the councils only as far as the Synodikon requires — the detail belongs to the St. Gregory Palamas collection — and concentrates on how and when their decisions entered the text, and what the Church claimed by putting them there.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Deferral Stated at the Outset

The hesychast controversy is carried in depth elsewhere in this repository, and this section will not duplicate it. For the controversy itself — Barlaam of Calabria’s attack on the psychosomatic method of prayer and on the hesychasts’ claim to see the uncreated light, Akindynos’ subtler objection that the essence–energies distinction introduces multiplicity into God, Nikephoros Gregoras’ final philosophical assault, and the whole entanglement with the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347 — see The Barlaam Dispute and, for the conciliar sequence in full, The Councils, 1341–1351. For the doctrine, see The Distinction and the wave sibling Theosis. What follows is the Synodikon’s part of the story and no more.

The Conciliar Sequence, in Brief

The repository anchors the three decisive moments at 1341, 1347, and 1351.

June 1341. A council in the great hall of Hagia Sophia, presided over by the Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, found against Barlaam, who recanted and left Byzantium for Italy. The emperor died days later. A second session in August 1341 condemned Gregory Akindynos (John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence [London: Faith Press, 1964], 45, 47).

February 1347. After the entry of John VI Kantakouzenos into Constantinople, a synod deposed the anti-Palamite Patriarch John XIV Kalekas, condemned Akindynos, and vindicated Palamas, who had been imprisoned and excommunicated in the intervening years; he was shortly afterwards elected Archbishop of Thessaloniki (Meyendorff, Study, 52–55).

1351. The decisive dogmatic council met at the palace of Blachernae, convened by Kantakouzenos with Patriarch Kallistos I. It affirmed the distinction between the unknowable divine essence and the truly divine, uncreated, participable energies, and the uncreated character of the light of Tabor; it anathematized Barlaam, Akindynos, and their followers; and Nikephoros Gregoras, refusing to submit, was condemned. Its conclusions were drawn up as the Tomos of 1351, compiled from the acts by Philotheos Kokkinos, then metropolitan of Herakleia and later patriarch (Meyendorff, Study, 55, 90–94; Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019], ch. 1).

On the disputed question whether 1351 ranks as a “Ninth Ecumenical Council,” this collection follows the repository’s cautious form, stated in The Councils, 1341–1351: the Tomos is dogmatically binding in Orthodox reception; its formal number among the councils is not settled, and the question is a live intra-Orthodox one (METHODOLOGY §4.2; see also The Palamite Councils and the Conciliar Future).

The Inscription in the Synodikon

The hesychast doctrine entered the Synodikon for the first time around 1352, in the immediate wake of the 1351 council; after Palamas’ repose in 1359, and especially after his canonization by Philotheos Kokkinos in 1368, an acclamation of Palamas himself was added (see The Councils, 1341–1351, which anchors both dates, and Canonization 1368).

The received text of the Triodion carries the material in three parts.

A bare naming. Before the chapters proper, a single clause: “To Barlaam and Acindynus and to their followers and successors, Anathema” (Synodikon of Orthodoxy, received Greek text of the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston).

“The Chapters against Barlaam and Akindynus.” A block of chapters condemning the anti-Palamite positions, treated in detail in The Confession of the Uncreated Energies.

Acclamations. A block of “Eternal Memory” clauses — for the emperor Andronikos, for Palamas himself, for those who fought with them, and for the positive confession of the uncreated energies.

The Acclamations

The Synodikon’s acclamation of Andronikos III commemorates the emperor “who convoked the first council against Barlaam, and who vigorously championed the Church of Christ and that sacred council both by deeds and by words and by marvelous orations to the people with his own mouth,” who “made steadfast the evangelical and apostolic dogmas,” and who “was blessedly translated from this life… during these, his sacred endeavors” — an accurate liturgical memory of the fact that he died days after the council of June 1341 (received text).

The acclamation of St. Gregory Palamas is the longest personal clause in the whole document. It commemorates “Gregory, the most holy Metropolitan of Thessalonica, who in the Great Church synodically put down both Barlaam and Akindynus, the leaders and inventors of new heresies,” men “who dared to aver that the natural and inseparable energy and power of God, and in short, all the natural properties of the Holy Trinity, are created,” and who called the light of the Godhead on the mountain “created divinity,” striving “once again to wickedly introduce into the Church of Christ the Platonic ideas and those other Greek myths.” It praises him for having “proclaimed one Divinity and one almighty God of Three Hypostases, possessing both energy and will, and uncreated in all His properties,” in accordance with Scripture “and its interpreters the theologians, that is, Athanasios, Basil, Gregory, and John of Golden speech, and Cyril, and together with them, the wise Maximus, and the divinely eloquent Damascene” (received text).

Two features of this acclamation deserve comment. The charge that the anti-Palamites were reintroducing “the Platonic ideas and those other Greek myths” deliberately echoes the Italos chapters of 1082 — the Synodikon reading the fourteenth-century dispute as a recurrence of the eleventh-century one (see John Italos and the Eleven Chapters). And the roll of authorities named — Athanasius, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Chrysostom, Cyril, Maximus, John of Damascus — is the Synodikon’s own claim about the patristic pedigree of the essence–energies distinction, a claim examined in Patristic Pedigree.

Further acclamations follow: to all who with Andronikos “contended for the defense of Orthodoxy in discourse and debates, in writings and teachings,” who “were repudiated by the impious, and were defamed and disparaged along with the sacred theologians”; and, among the imperial commemorations, to the empress Anna, “renamed Anastasia, nun,” who “by deeds and words with her whole soul struggled throughout her life for the establishment of the Apostolic and Patristic Dogmas of the Church and the overthrow of the evil and atheist heresy of Barlaam and Akindynus” — a striking rehabilitation, since Anna of Savoy had headed the regency during which Palamas was imprisoned (received text).

Also acclaimed among the patriarchs is Philotheos, “who unwaveringly struggled for the Church of Christ and her right dogmas with words and actions, discourses, teachings, and writings” — the compiler of the 1351 Tomos and the author of Palamas’ Life (received text).

One Further Anathema

The received text carries a personal condemnation absent from the earlier strata: “To Isaac, surnamed Argyros, who suffered throughout his life with the malady of Barlaam and Akindynus, and though at the end of his life the Church asked, as formerly She had often done, for his return and repentance, he nevertheless remained obdurate in his impiety and in the profession of his heresy, and wretchedly vomited forth his soul” (received text).

This clause repays attention precisely because of its severity. Notice what it says the Church did: she “asked, as formerly She had often done, for his return and repentance.” The anathema is presented as the terminus of a repeatedly offered reconciliation, refused. That is the pattern the Synodikon consistently claims for itself, and it is the pattern examined in What an Anathema Is and Is Not.

What the Inscription Claimed

The decision to put the hesychast settlement into the Synodikon rather than merely into the archives was an argument in itself, and it is worth stating what it claimed.

That this is dogma, not school opinion. By placing the essence–energies distinction in the same service that proclaims the icon and the seven councils, the Church declared hesychast theology to be part of the rule of faith and not a monastic speciality (see The Councils, 1341–1351).

That the fourteenth century belongs to the same Church as the ninth. A congregation hearing the Synodikon hears the rejection of iconoclasm and the confession of the uncreated energies in one continuous act. The Synodikon is the instrument by which Byzantium asserted the continuity of its conciliar life.

That the ordinary faithful are parties to it. The doctrine of the uncreated energies is the dogmatic statement of what happens in prayer — that God Himself, and not a created gift, is given to the one who prays. Putting it in the Synodikon puts it before everyone in the church, not only before those who practise the Jesus Prayer (see The Jesus Prayer; Theosis).

The liturgical seal of all this is that Palamas is commemorated on the Second Sunday of Great Lent, immediately after the Sunday of Orthodoxy — a “second Sunday of Orthodoxy,” as the tradition has understood it (see Great Lent).

See Also

References

  • Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text as printed in the Triodion, the clause on Barlaam and Akindynos, “The Chapters against Barlaam and Akindynus,” the clause on Isaac Argyros, and the acclamations of Andronikos III, St. Gregory Palamas, the empress Anna, and Patriarch Philotheos; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston.
  • Meyendorff, John. A Study of Gregory Palamas. Trans. George Lawrence. London: Faith Press, 1964. Pp. 45, 47, 52–55, 90–94, 100. (The conciliar sequence; the Tomos of 1351 and Philotheos Kokkinos.)
  • Russell, Norman. Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Ch. 1. (The controversy and its modern reception.)
  • Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316. (The critical edition of the Palamite chapters; not consulted directly for this collection.)
  • METHODOLOGY.md of this repository, §4.2 (the open question of the ecumenical numbering of 1351).