Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of a body of monks who lived on Mount Athos during the fourteenth century, and aimed to attain, by the practice of contemplation and asceticism, entire tranquillity and serenity of mind, and hence supernatural insight and divine light, with knowledge of the Deity. Also Omphalopsychos and Massalian.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One of a mystical sect of the Greek Church in the fourteenth century; a quietist.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • They seem to believe that EED must be construed in a sense incompatible with Catholic dogma, and that sense of EED is taken to be that of St. Gregory Palamas, which he developed out of the Cappadocian—specifically, St. Basil's—in the heat of the hesychast controversy.

    Not talking about God Mike L 2007

  • They seem to believe that EED must be construed in a sense incompatible with Catholic dogma, and that sense of EED is taken to be that of St. Gregory Palamas, which he developed out of the Cappadocian—specifically, St. Basil's—in the heat of the hesychast controversy.

    Archive 2007-05-01 Mike L 2007

  • Centering prayer, though widely practice, and as it is practiced, has some elements of quietism, links to hesychast prayer, with an influence of the oriental.

    St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, MA Terry Nelson 2006

  • And those religious traditions that lay special emphasis on material disciplines would say that the planned engagement with the processes of your own body that constitute Sufi or Zen or hesychast contemplation is a training for a free engagement with an entire material and historical environment - for a liberated life.

    Romanes Lecture, Oxford - 'Religious Lives' 2004

  • The counteractions against Cyril ultimately led to his dethronement, despite the reactions of the populace which remained loyal to the hesychast Patriarch.

    orrologion 2009

  • A great hesychast-ascetic and a highly accomplished author of patristic caliber, he left behind a multitude of writings in which the whole patristic tradition is recast.

    orrologion 2009

  • Now in his second year at St. Vladimir's he takes great interest in the life and works of St. Symeon the New Theologian, the twelfth-century poet who embodied the mystical hesychast tradition.

    News from SVOTS.Edu 2009

  • After that I will have to take a break, since I return to work on Monday and have not yet finished the remainder of the book, which looks at the hesychast controversy and the transition to modern times.

    orrologion 2009

  • Now in his second year at St. Vladimir's he takes great interest in the life and works of St. Symeon the New Theologian, the twelfth-century poet who embodied the mystical hesychast tradition.

    News from SVOTS.Edu 2009

  • It is important to note the importance of St Maximus the Confessor in the hesychast tradition, for his exploration on the question of Jesus 'human and divine energies is the dogmatic ground by which hesychasm was able to establish itself as an authentic witness of the Christian faith.

    Vox Nova 2008

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