Barlaam the Calabrian

Barlaam , known as Barlaam " Calabrais" was a scientist monk of the Ordre of Saint-Basile, born in the later Calabria about the year 1300, died towards 1350. It is mainly known for the active share which it took at the time of the controversies on the hésychasme.

Biography

To become " grec"

Born in Seminara, in Calabria, orthodoxe Greek parents, it leaves Italy and uniting what one called then the Greek schism " by love towards true the piété" , it arrives about 1330 at Constantinople where it rather quickly acquires a reputation of scientist and philosopher. Its writings of astronomy and logic are spread with Byzance and Jean Cantacuzène, entrusts a pulpit to him to the imperial University, where Barlaam comments on in front of its disciples the writings of the Pseudo-Denys Aréopagite.
In 1333-1334, Barlaam is the spokesperson of the Greek Church opposite two Dominican theologists that the pope had sent in the East to prepare the Union of the Churches. Vis-a-vis the papal legates, it defends the Greek positions on the procession of the Holy Spirit and the Roman primacy. For this purpose, it composes twenty and one opuscules on the points of divergence between the two Churches
In 1339, finally, it is still with him that one entrusts a confidential mission at Benoît XII, in Avignon to ask for helps against the Turkish S and the Bulgare S and to work with the meeting of the two Churches.
Influenced by the first steps of the rebirth, he is strongly opposed to certain aspects of the Latin theology of his time, and in particular to the approach thomist which claims " connaître" God and of " démontrer" the procession of the Holy Spirit starting from the Son. In this direction, the apophatism of the Greeks, at least such as it includes/understands it, allures it.
In its discussion with Latin, it makes the point that, God being " inconnaissable" , it is not necessary to still discuss on the " procession of St Esprit". According to him, it is on this basis of nominalist agnosticism that the Union between Rome and Constantinople can be carried out. It is from there that the controversy changes place.

The controversy hésychaste
Gregoire Palamas, then in its hermitage of St Sabas, to the Mont Athos sent letter on letter to Constantinople and Thessalonique, by sometimes addressing to the one its former disciples, Akindynos, sometimes Barlaam itself.
God, affirms Palamas, is quite unknowable but appear doesn't? Didn't Christ, while incarnating herself, grant to the men a supernatural knowledge, distinct from comprehension intellectual, but eminently real, much more real than any philosophical knowledge?
Barlaam which had fled, in Occident, the intellectual realism of the Scholastic thomist ran up thus in the East against the mystical realism of the monks.
Barlaam then sought to know its new adversaries. In Thessalonique, in Constantinople, it shared some time the life of the hermitages hésychastes and discovered there monks preaching of the respiratory techniques and the postures of prayer which, observed correctly, were supposed to support the vision of the divine light. This popular form of the method " psychophysique" of speech deeply ran up against its practices of humanistic and its convictions of philosopher imbu of Platonic spiritualism.
What he saw, heard and included/understood (or believed to understand) the convainquit that these monks were illuminated, of tendency heretic.
He then wrote several polemical treaties against these monks who supported that the light of the Mont Thabor was the incrée glory of God, and who claimed to have physical experience of divine nature; not hesitating to ridicule them by treating them of " people who have the heart in the navel (omphalopsyques) and to fade them of the name of " messaliens" In its treaties, after having denounced the practices of these monks (contradicted besides by Palamas), it develops his doctrines of the knowledge of God, his design of the prayer and the mystic resting mainly on Denys Aréopagite and Évagre Pontique.
Gregoire Palamas, of his hermitage of Saint-Sabbas, then with Thessalonique, wrote his famous Triades for the defense of the saints hésychastes .
These essential texts give for the first time a theological synthesis of the spirituality of the Eastern monks. The attacks of Barlaam thus provided to the orthodoxe Church the occasion to specify, by the mouth of a spokesperson in whom she recognized herself, the place of the hésychasme compared to its central dogmas. Consequently, it made a sorting necessary in the former tradition, by eliminating the definitely heterogeneous elements with its own spirituality and by integrating the practices and the doctrines which could find place in a biblical and Christian design of God and the man.

Fall of the Philosopher
The first official document - or semi-official - which was published against Barlaam is the Tôme hagioretic composed by Palamas itself and signed in 1340-1341 by the higoumenes and the monks of the Holy Mountain of Athos.
The monachism entire athonite thus took party against the nominalist humanism of Barlaam and stated to recognize in the person of Gregoire Palamas an authorized spokesperson.
Two councils joined together successively in June and August 1341 in Constantinople pronounced the judgment of the Calabrian philosopher.

Return in Italy
Its hopes to discover in the East the fatherland of ancient Hellénisme had not been carried out. Its talents of humanistic and its Platonic convictions found an audience broader in Occident: turned over to Italy at the end of 1341, it entered the center of the Catholic church and, after having reversed in new treaties its positions on Filioque and the primacy, was named bishop of Gerace by Clément VI in 1342.
It is one of the first which had made reappear in Greek Italy the study of the language of the Philosophie and gave lessons of Greek to Pétrarque

Works

In addition to its writings of anti-hésychastes polemics, it left a great number of writings, among which one distinguishes:

Countered primatum Papae , in Greek,

six books of algebraic Arithmétique

two books of a Ethique according to the Stoïcien S .

a Method to determine the date of Easter

a study on chapters apocryphal books of the Harmonics of Ptolémée

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