Definitions

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  • noun ecclesiastical history A member of a school of quietist monks in fourteenth-century Greece and Byzantium.

Etymologies

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From Mediaeval Latin hesychasta, from ecclesiastical Greek ἡσυχαστής (hēsukhastēs), from ἡσυχάζειν (hēsukhazein, "to be quiet"), from ἥσυχος (hēsukhos, "quiet").

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Examples

  • Barlaam and Gregoras were both on the losing side in the Hesychast strife, which raged between c. 1337 and 1351 and revolved around the question of theological method.

    Byzantine Philosophy Ierodiakonou, Katerina 2008

  • Hesychast controversy he took the side of the monks of Athos, but refused to agree to the theory of the uncreated light.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" Various

  • On 2 February, 1347, the fourth Hesychast synod was held.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • Gregory Palamas, the defender of the Hesychast theories and the bitter enemy of the Catholics in the fourteenth century, who is still regarded as one of the greatest doctors of the Schismatic Church;

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 14: Simony-Tournon 1840-1916 1913

  • For a time the patriarch refused to take the matter so seriously; eventually, since the quarrel became more and more bitter, in 1341 the first synod of the Hesychast question was summoned at Constantinople.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • In this synod six questions about God's essence and attributes were answered, all in the Hesychast sense, while

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • In the fourteenth century a pseudo-spiritualism akin to that of the ancient Euchites or Messalians, culminating in the famous Hesychast controversies (see HESYCHASM; PALAMAS), greatly disturbed the mutual harmony of Greek monasteries, especially those of Mount Athos, one of whose monks, Callistus, had become Patriarch of Constantinople

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Assizes-Browne 1840-1916 1913

  • This opposition was made manifest whenever there was any question of union with Rome from political motives, and it explains the attitude of the different factions in the last religious controversy of importance that convulsed the Byzantine world: the Hesychast movement.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

  • The monks are chiefly devoted to the splendor of their religious services; the solitaries still cherish Hesychast ideas and an apocalyptic mysticism, and the whole monastic republic represents just such an intellectual decay as must follow on a total exclusion of all outside intercourse and a complete neglect of all intellectual effort (Kaulen).

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Assizes-Browne 1840-1916 1913

  • As a theologian he wrote works against Catholics, and collected evidences from former writers about the various questions that were being discussed in his time -- the eternal questions of the papacy and the procession of the Holy Ghost, the Hesychast controversy, etc., and then, most of all, the new questions raised by

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913

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