Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, was born in 1296 in Asia Minor. During the Turkish invasion, the family fled to Constantinople and found shelter at the court of Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282-1328). The father of Saint Gregory became a major dignitary under the emperor, but soon died, and Andronicus himself took part in the upbringing and education of the orphaned boy. Possessing excellent abilities and great diligence, Gregory easily mastered all the subjects that made up the full course of medieval higher education. The emperor wanted the young man to devote himself to state activities, but Gregory, having barely reached the age of 20, retired to Holy Mount Athos in 1316 (according to other sources, in 1318) and entered the Vatopedi monastery as a novice, where, under the leadership of the elder, the Monk Nicodemus of Vatopedi (July 11), he took monastic vows and began the path of asceticism. A year later, the holy evangelist John the Theologian appeared to him in a vision and promised his spiritual protection.
Gregory's mother, along with his sisters, also became a monk. After the repose of Elder Nicodemus, the monk Gregory went through his feat of prayer for 8 years under the leadership of Elder Nicephorus, and after the death of the latter he moved to the Lavra of St. Athanasius. Here he served at meals and then became a church singer. But three years later (1321), striving for higher levels of spiritual perfection, he settled in the small hermitage of Glossia. The abbot of this monastery began to teach the young man concentrated spiritual prayer - mental work, which was gradually developed and assimilated by the monks, starting with the great hermits of the 4th century, Evagrius of Pontus and the Monk Macarius of Egypt (January 19). After the external prayer techniques of mental work received detailed coverage in the works of Simeon the New Theologian (March 12) in the 11th century, it was adopted by the Athonite ascetics. The experimental use of mental doing, requiring solitude and silence, is called hesychasm (from the Greek.
- peace, silence), and those who practice it themselves began to be called hesychasts. During his stay in Glossia, the future saint was completely imbued with the spirit of hesychasm and accepted it for himself as the basis of life. In 1326, due to the threat of an attack by the Turks, he and his brethren moved to Thessaloniki, where he was ordained a priest.
Saint Gregory combined his duties as a presbyter with the life of a hermit: he spent five days of the week in silence and prayer, and only on Saturday and Sunday did the shepherd go out to the people - perform divine services and deliver sermons. His teachings often brought tenderness and tears to those present in the church. However, complete detachment from public life was unusual for the saint. Sometimes he attended theological meetings of the city's educated youth, led by the future Patriarch Isidore. Returning one day from Constantinople, he discovered a place near Thessaloniki called Veria, convenient for a solitary life. Soon he gathered a small community of hermit monks here and led it for 5 years. In 1331, the saint retired to Athos and retired to the monastery of St. Sava, near the Lavra of St. Athanasius. In 1333 he was appointed abbot of the Esphigmen monastery in the northern part of the Holy Mountain. In 1336, the saint returned to the monastery of St. Sava, where he began theological works, which he did not abandon until the end of his life.
Meanwhile, in the 30s of the 14th century, events were brewing in the life of the Eastern Church that placed Saint Gregory among the most significant ecumenical apologists of Orthodoxy and brought him fame as a teacher of hesychasm. Around 1330, the learned monk Varlaam came to Constantinople from Calabria. The author of treatises on logic and astronomy, a skillful and witty speaker, he received a chair at the capital's university and began to interpret the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (October 3), whose apophatic theology was recognized equally by the Eastern and Western Churches. Soon Varlaam went to Athos, became acquainted there with the way of spiritual life of the hesychasts and, based on the dogma of the incomprehensibility of the being of God, declared smart work to be a heretical delusion. Traveling from Athos to Thessaloniki, from there to Constantinople and then again to Thessaloniki, Varlaam entered into disputes with the monks and tried to prove the creatureliness of the Tabor light; At the same time, he did not hesitate to ridicule the monks’ stories about prayer techniques and spiritual insights.
Saint Gregory, at the request of the Athonite monks, first addressed verbal exhortations. But, seeing the futility of such attempts, he set out his theological arguments in writing. This is how the “Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts” appeared (1338). By 1340, the Athonite ascetics, with the participation of the saint, drew up a common response to Varlaam’s attacks - the so-called “Svyatogorsk Tomos”. At the Council of Constantinople in 1341, in the Church of Hagia Sophia, a dispute between St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam took place, centered on the nature of the Tabor light. On May 27, 1341, the Council adopted the provisions of St. Gregory Palamas that God, inaccessible in His Essence, reveals Himself in energies that are addressed to the world and accessible to perception, like the Light of Tabor, but are not sensory and not created. Varlaam's teaching was condemned as heresy, and he himself, anathematized, retired to Calabria.
But the disputes between the Palamites and the Barlaamites were far from over. The second group included Varlaam’s disciple, the Bulgarian monk Akindinus and Patriarch John XIV Kalek (1341-1347); Andronikos III Palaiologos (1328-1341) also leaned towards them. Akindinus came out with a number of treatises in which he declared St. Gregory and the Athonite monks to be the perpetrators of church unrest. The saint wrote a detailed refutation of Akindinus's speculations. Then the Patriarch excommunicated the saint from the Church (1344) and subjected him to prison, which lasted three years. In 1347, when John XIV was replaced on the patriarchal throne by Isidore (1347-1349), Saint Gregory Palamas was released and elevated to the rank of Archbishop of Thessalonica. In 1351, the Council of Blachernae solemnly attested to the Orthodoxy of his teachings. But the Thessalonians did not immediately accept Saint Gregory; he was forced to live in different places. On one of his trips to Constantinople, a Byzantine galley fell into the hands of the Turks. Saint Gregory was sold as a captive in various cities for a year, but even then he tirelessly continued preaching the Christian faith.
Only three years before his death he returned to Thessaloniki. On the eve of his repose, Saint John Chrysostom appeared to him in a vision. With the words “To the mountain! To the top! Saint Gregory Palamas reposed peacefully before God on November 14, 1359. In 1368, he was canonized at the Council of Constantinople under Patriarch Philotheus (1354-1355, 1362-1376), who wrote the life and service of the saint.
Mch. Constantine of Rhodes († 1800, commemorated November 14)
Constantine was born in 1770 on the island of Hydra into a Christian family. His father's name was Michalak, and his mother's name was Marina. Having reached the age of eighteen, Constantine moved to live in Rhodes and entered the service of the Rhodian ruler Hassan there. Finding a convenient time, Hassan, calling on Constantine, first with affection, and then with various gifts, convinced him to renounce Christ and accept Islam. As soon as Constantine renounced Christ, they immediately gave him the Mohammedan name Hassan, and his life in the house of the ruler of Rhodes took a different turn: he was given another highest position, money, and all the employees in Hassan’s house began to honor and respect him.