Gregory Palamas

Gregory Palamas was born around 1296 in the Byzantine Empire and became a monk on Mount Athos, where hesychast contemplatives pursued inner stillness and mystical vision. Between 1336 and 1341 he sparred with the Italo-Greek scholar Barlaam, who mocked the monks' practices and denied that the light of the Transfiguration was uncreated; Palamas countered that God's essence remains unknowable but His energies - grace, will, that light - are real, uncreated, and accessible. Two more controversies followed, with the monk Gregory Akindynos through 1347 and the philosopher Gregoras until 1355, each sharpening what became known as Palamism: the doctrine that you can participate in God without collapsing the gap between Creator and creature. He was named archbishop of Thessalonica, and after his death on 14 November 1359 he was canonized within a decade. His work entered the Philokalia, and the second Sunday of Great Lent now bears his name across Eastern Orthodoxy.