Theophanes of Nicaea

Abstract

A Byzantine theologian of the fourteenth century (?–1380/1381) is a leading figure of the Palamite party in the last phase of the Hesychast controversy and bishop of Nicaea. As an influential official of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Theophanes was involved in important ecclesiastic affairs, and he undertook multiple tasks: (a) to refute anti-Palamite assumptions expressed by Prochorus Kydones; (b) to vindicate the Hesychast views of Gregory Palamas and Theophilos Kokkinos, i.e., for the distinction and yet inseparability between God’s essence and energies and deification; and (c) to defend Eastern Orthodoxy against pro-Latin views of certain Byzantines (as Demetrius Kydones), especially on the issue of Filioque. He is considered as the first Orthodox thinker influenced by Thomas Aquinas. In his writings he adapts certain ideas of the great Latin theologian whose major summae had been translated into Byzantine Greek.