Gri 2021 30672

© Christiaan Kappes 2017
Christiaan W. Kappes
The Theology of the Divine Essence and Energies in George-Gennadios

Scholarios
(Ἡ τοῦ Γεωργίου Γενναδίου τοῦ Σχολαρίου θεολογία περὶ τῆς θείας οὐσίας
καὶ ἐνεργειῶν)
Διδακτορικὴ Διατριβή, ὑποβληθείσα στὸ Τμῆμα Ποιμαντικῆς καὶ Κοινωνικῆς

Θεολογίας τῆς Θεολογικῆς Σχολῆς τοῦ Ἀριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης
Θεσσαλονίκη 2018
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Δεῦτε ἀγαλιασώμεθα τῷ Κυρίῳ [...] σήμερον [...] εὐφημήσωμεν[...] χαίροις,
Ἐλπιδοφόρε!
In grateful acknowledgement of the support and guidance of His Eminence,

Elpidophoros, Archbishop of America, in the direction and the completion of
this work.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sigla and Abbreviations ............................................................................................ 9
Scholarios ................................................................................................................. 13
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 13
0.2 Chronology of George-Gennadios Scholarios ............................................................... 22
0.3 The Essence-Energies Dogma and the Place of Palamism in Orthodoxy ...................... 25
0.4 Ecclesiastico-Dogmatic Reception of Palamas’s Teaching in the Fourteenth Century . 29
0.6 The Second Stage of the Palamas-Barlaam Debate ....................................................... 32
0.7 The Third Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Akindynos ..................................................... 36
0.8 The Fourth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Gregoras ...................................................... 38
0.9 The Fifth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Kydones.......................................................... 40

Chapter One: The Historical Reception of George-Gennadios Scholarios ....... 49
1. Latin Reception of Scholarios in Western Europe until Modern Times .......................... 49
2. Orthodox Reception of Scholarios within Greek Patriarchates until Modern Times....... 56
3. Conclusions regarding Historical Reception of Scholarios to Modernity. ....................... 63

Chapter Two: The Status Quaestionis of Scholarios’s Palamism in Modern and
Contemporary Theology ......................................................................................... 65
Introduction: The Dogmatic Teaching of George-Gennadios Scholarios ............................ 65
1. Modern Misconceptions of Scholarios and Neo-Palamism ............................................. 66
2. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics by Martin Jugie ........................................... 69
3. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics Sébastian Guichardan.................................. 77
4. Neo-Palamism in Opposition to Jugie and Guichardan ................................................... 79
5. Contemporary Status Quaestionis on the Scholarian Corpus and Doctrine ..................... 86
6. New Horizons toward the Categorization of Scholarios and His Palamism .................... 88
Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 92
5
Chapter Three: Scholarios’s Intellectual Formation prior to the Council of
Ferrara-Florence ..................................................................................................... 95
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 95
1. Manuel-Markos Eugenikos: Tutor of Young Scholarios (c. 1413–c. 1418/1420) ........... 98
2. Scholarios and Francesco Filelfo (1420–1427) .............................................................. 101
3. Georgios Gemistos Pletho: Scholarios’s Tutor (1428–1430)? ....................................... 103
4. Makarios Makres (c. 1383–1431): Logic Professor of Scholarios (Sept. 1430–Dec. 1430)
............................................................................................................................................ 107
5. John-Ignatios Chortasmenos (1370–d. c. 1431/6/7): Scholarios’s Professor of Logic (post

Dec. 1430) .......................................................................................................................... 109
6. Joseph Bryennios (c. 1350–d. c. 1431): Professorship over Scholarios (c. 1431) ......... 111
7. Scholarios in Constantinople until the Council of Florence (1430–1437) ..................... 112
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 134

Chapter Four: Scholarios, Palamism, and the Council of Ferrara-Florence .. 139
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 139
1. Scholarios as Palamite Researcher at Ferrara (1438) ..................................................... 144
2. Scholarios and the Scholarly Environment of Ferrara ................................................... 147
3. Scholarios and Eugenikos: Transition from Ferrara to Florence (1438–1439) .............. 149
4. Scholarios in Florence until His Return to Constantinople (1439–1440) ...................... 159
5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 177

Chapter Five: Scholarios’s Post-Florentine Palamism and the Genesis of a
Greek Version of De ente et essentia .................................................................... 181
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 181
1. The Genesis of the Scholarian Translation-Commentary on the De ente et essentia .... 187
2. A Mere Translation of Armandus’s Commentary on the De ente et essentia? .............. 200
3. Scholarios’s Excursus within Armandus’s Commentary on De ente et essentia ........... 213

Chapter Six: Scholarios’s Excursus in Chapter Ninety-Three of Armandus’s
Commentary on De ente et essentia ..................................................................... 219
6
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 219
1. Scholarios and His First Argument against Armandus in His Excursus ........................ 224
2. Scholarios and His Second Argument against Armandus in His Excursus ................... 234
3. Scholarios’s Use of Franciscans in Service of Palamism............................................... 250

Chapter Seven: Scholarios’s Excursus in Chapter Ninety-Four of Armandus’s
Commentary on De ente et essentia ..................................................................... 270
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 270
1. Divine Infinity as Foil to Composition in the Divinity .................................................. 271
2. Non-Separability Criterion as Foil to Composition in God ........................................... 284
3. Corollaries to the Non-Separability Criterion in Relation to Composition in God ........ 293
4. Reminiscences of the Council of Ferrara-Florence ........................................................ 295
5. Retrojecting Meyronnes’ Fourfold Real Distinction into Thomism .............................. 301
6. Scholarios’s Theory of Predication: Univocity or Analogy of the Concept of Being? .. 313
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 326

8.0 Chapter Eight: Assessment of Jugie and Guichardan and Dogmatic
Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 330
1. Assessment of Anti-Palamistic Critiques in the Works of Jugie and Guichardan ......... 330
2. Scholarios’s Mature Position on Dogmatic Palamism ................................................... 344
3. Scholarios’s Final Opusculum Defending Dogmatic Palamism .................................... 356

Final Conclusions .................................................................................................. 364
Bibiliography ......................................................................................................... 373
Manuscripts ........................................................................................................................ 373
Primary Sources ................................................................................................................. 373
Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................. 395
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8
Sigla and Abbreviations
ACO E. Schwartz, J. Straub, et al. (eds.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Series 1–2
(Berlin: Gruyter, 1914–2013).
Acta Graeca J. Gill (ed.), Quae supersunt Actorum Graecorum Concilii Florentini. CFDS
Series B. Vol. 5, books 1–2 (Rome: PIOS, 1953)
Acta Latina Andreas of Santa Croce, Acta Latina Concilii Florentini. CFDS Series B. Vol.
6, ed. George Hofmann (Rome: PIOS, 1955)
Acta Slavica J. Krajcar (ed.), Acta Slavica Concilii Florentini. Narrationes et documenta.
CFDS. Vol. 11 (Rome: PIOS, 1976)
AL Mansion, Auguste (ed.), Physica: Translatio Vaticana, Aristoteles Latinus 7.2 (Bruges:
Decles de Brouwer 1957)
Apparatus G. Hoffman (ed.), Apparatus super decretum Florentinum unionis Graecorum,

by John Torquemada, CFDS, Series B. Vol. 2, bk. (Rome: Pontificium Istitutum
Orientalium Studiorum, 1942)
BAS P. Duffy and F. Harold (eds.), B. Alberti a Sarthiano Ordinis Minorum Regularis
Obseruantiae vita et opera, by Albert Sarteano (Rome: Joannes Baptista Bussottum,
1688)
CD B. Suchla, G. Heil, and A. Ritter (eds.), Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius

Areopagita, 2 vols, Patristisches Texte und Studien 33, 36, by Ps.-Dionysios the
Areopagite (Berlin: Gruyter, 1990–1991)
9
CFDS G. Hoffman, M. Candal, et al. (eds.), Concilium Florentinum Documenta et
Scriptores, series A–B (Rome: PIOS, 1940–1977)
DZ H. Denzinger, P. Hünermann, R. Fastiggi (eds.), Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et

declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and
Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals: Latin-English) (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2012)
Excursus George-Gennadios Scholarios, Excursus, chaps. 94–95 (OCGS 6:281–285), in

Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς
οὐσίας, OCGS. Vol. 6, 154–321, by Armandus of Bellovisu
Εὐρισκόμενα C. Chivu and M. Pilavakis, et al. (eds.), Sfântul Marcu Evghenicul (ὁ ἅγιος
Μάρκος ὁ Εὐγενικός): Opere (Τὰ εὐρισκόμενα), by Markos of Ephesus, 3 vols. (Bucharest:
Pateres, Gândul Aprins, 2009–)
GPS P. K. Chrestou, G. Mantziridis, et al. (eds.), Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ συγγράμματα, 6 vols.
(Thessaloniki: Ethniko Idrima Erevnon, 1962–2015)
HBPM Herders Bibliothek der Philosophie des Mittelalters 29
Mineva, Evelina (ed.), Το υμνογραφικό έργο του Μάρκου Ευγενικού, by Markos Eugenikos
(Athens: Kanaki, 2004)
Memoirs Sylvester Syropoulos, Les “Mémoires” du Grand Ecclésiarque de l’Église de

Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le concile de Florence (1438-1439). CFDS
Series B. Vol. 9, ed. V. Laurent (Rome: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,
1971)
OCGS L. Petit, X. Sidéridès, and M. Jugie (eds.), Oeuvres Complètes de Georges Scholarios,
8 vols., George-Gennadios Scholarios (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1929–1935)
10
Ord.John Duns Scotus, Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani Ioannis Duns Scoti Ordinis Fratrum
Minorum opera omnia. Opus Oxiense, 14 vols., ed. C. Balić, M. Bodewig, et al. (Vatican
City: Polyglott, 1950–2013)
PG J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca: Patrologia Graeca, 160
vols. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1844–1868
PIOS Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum
NE Aristotlis Ethica Nicomachea
Quarrachi Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, 9 vols. Quarrachi: Ad

Claras Aquas, 1882–1901
Rep. I-A John Duns Scotus, The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture: Reportatio I-A, 2 vols.,
eds. A. Wolter and O. Bychkov (St. Bonaventure, NY: Bookmasters, 2004–2008)
SG Summa contra Gentiles
SJD John Damascene, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, 5 vols.
Sent. Peter Lombard, Magistri Petri Lombardi Pariensis espiscopi sententiae in IV libri
distinctae, 2 vols. 3rd edition (Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas,
1971)
ST Summa Theologiae
Tractatus Andrew Escobar. Tractatus polemico–theologicus De graecis errantibus
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
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12
Scholarios
Ἡ τοῦ Γεωργίου-Γενναδίου τοῦ Σχολαρίου θεολογία περὶ τῆς θείας οὐσίας καὶ
ἐνεργειῶν
Introduction
George-Gennadios Kourteses Scholarios (c. 1400-c.1472), handpicked successor of

Markos of Ephesus, titular head of the Holy Synaxis that opposed the Council of Florence, 1
and patriarch of Constantinople after its fall, 2 was perhaps the greatest polymath in the history
of Byzantine theology. 3 As an imperial καθολικὸς κριτής 4 and a καθολικὸς διδάσκαλος of his
own school in Constantinople, 5 Scholarios impressively mastered Greek and Latin, along with
the respective philosophical and theological heritage proper to each idiom. His theological
adroitness best qualified him to follow Markos of Ephesus as a worthy successor to the “Pillar
of Orthodoxy.” That famous champion and non-signatory of the Council of Ferrara-Florence
(1438–1439) commended Scholarios to all his Orthodox brethren in his last discourse on earth:
Now, I speak about Sir Scholarios, whom I know in everything even from his youth, and I hold
both a testament and abundant love for him, even as if for my own son and stock. I also [hold
for him] every moving sentiment, of which anyone should be mindful in regard to a relation
and to love. Also, until present, do I impart to him [my thought] and I converse with him, being
as I am accustomed to have an exact grasp of his person; whose character is of prudence and
wisdom and power in speech. From these facts do I also believe that he alone – among people
of the present age – is able to extend a hand of aid to the right faith after it has been tossed by
1
Tsirpanlis 1979, 21, 57, 97.
2
Blanchet 2001, 60–72.
3
Despite voguish editorial policies that exclude Orthodox divines – who dared to use Latin sources – from
collected studies of Byzantine theologians, the gravitational pull of Scholarios proves inescapable. The
inalienable Byzantine pedigree of Scholarios is evidenced in Tinnefeld 2002, 477–542. For a scholarly
challenge to the aforesaid editorial presuppositions by which “Byzantine Theology” is defined, see
Demetracopoulos 2010b, 70–71.
4
For questions of dating this position as less feasibly to a time prior to Florence, see Blanchet 2008, 316–318.
The office of “universal judge” was instituted by Andronicus III (1328–1341). Famously, universal judges had
decided the case between Gregorios Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian. Scholarios was appointed one of four
judges who constituted this last court of appeal in Byzantium. When all four judges signed a decision, then
such a sentence ipso facto constituted the imperial decision on the matter. See Morolli 2016, 126–129.
5
Cacouros 2006, 44–46.
13
waves of violence from those who have lost dogmatic exactitude (ἀκρίβειαν). 6
Faced with challenges from neopaganism, Islam, and Latinism, Scholarios penned apologetic
discourses of such quality that these treatises have long attracted admiration and interest among
his coreligionists, interesting even those outside the confines of Orthodoxy.
As the first anti-unionist Patriarch of Constantinople after its fall (ἅλωσις) in 1453,
Scholarios wrestled to secure the survival of the Orthodox Church after the humiliating defeat
of the empire of the Romans. 7 He also struggled to reform and renew his clergy to preserve the
Orthodox faith and to secure divine favor and the salvation of souls. 8 Ultimately, Gennadios
ended his prestigious lay, monastic, and clerical careers through a traditional act of Orthodox
piety, whereby he retired in his twilight years to perform monastic penance and prepare for
eternity. It is little wonder that his image was sometimes depicted with the classical saintly
aureole, as if he were a canonized saint of the Orthodox Church. 9
6
M. Eugenikos 1977c (CFDS A.10.2:178–179).
7
On the question of the canonical legitimacy of the Orthodox patriarchate after the fall of Constantinople, see
Blanchet 2007, 195–211.
8
Turner 1999, 25–36.
9
Scholarios’s cult has been permitted by the ecumenical patriarch to the nuns of Serres Monastery where his
remains are interred. Formerly, according to traditional Orthodox piety, his holiness was attested in at least one
MS, whereby Scholarios is depicted with an aureole. See Oxoniensis Baroccianus gr. 145, folio 233v. His
recent “canonization” has resulted in prints with an icon commissioned in his name on the cover of Ὀρθόδοξος
Κῆρυξ: Ἐπίσημον ὄργανων ἱερᾶς ἀρχιεπισκοπῆς Θυατείρων καὶ Μεγάλης Βρετανίας (2008): 148–149.
14
Gennadios’s intellectual output was impressive. He produced more than eight volumes
of writings that are extant. These range from correspondences and grammar to politics and
philosophy. 10 Arguably, his crowning intellectual achievement is to be found in a series of
relatively brief theological treatises wherein he ably defended and promoted Gregorios
Palamas’s Orthodox theology on the divine essence and its energies. 11 Nevertheless, over the
centuries, his contribution to the panoply of Orthodoxy went sometimes unnoticed among
Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars until the publication in modern times of Jugie’s edition
of Scholarios’s ἅπαντα or opera omnia.
Several possible reasons might account for modern and contemporary Orthodoxy’s
neglect of Scholarios’s thought. First, modern trends in publishing and discussion betray a
sustained enthusiasm for patristic and mystical theology. Against this grain, Scholarios’s
youthful writings were devoid of a proper patristic thrust and almost entirely absorbed in
12
abstractions proper to philosophy. Additionally, Renaissance misattribution of
pseudepigraphous works to Scholarios served to obfuscate in modern times accurate
10
For the most complete list of his works, see Tinnefeld 2002.
11
Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:204–228) and Scholarios 1930b (OCGS 3:228–239).
12
The thrust of his writing, prior to Ferrara-Florence, was in rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. See Blanchet 2008,
482–483.
15
evaluations of his theological proclivities. 13 What is more, some writings relying heavily upon
Latino-Scholastic sources have been associated with Scholarios’s name, as, for example, an
instruction on the seven sacraments formerly attributed to Scholarios. 14 Thus, a somewhat
exaggerated summation of Scholarios’s latinization and Scholastic bent have become
commonplace at least partly because of falsely attributed works. It is nonetheless true that
Scholarios enthusiastically asserted the utility and pleasantry of reading works of particular
Schoolmen. Scholarian proto-Sobornicity has not led to him being recommended and imitated
by Orthodox scholars who oppose non-Orthodox literary influences of any sort in the modern
and contemporary periods. 15 To illustrate this, I make recourse to a celebrated ex professo
Orthodox philosopher, who reflects what has become a common opinion: “[Σχολάριος] Ζεῖ
στὴν καρδιὰ τοῦ ἑλληνισμοῦ, στὴν Κωνσταντινούπολη, ἀναλαμβάνει τὶς εὐθύνες κεφαλῆς καὶ
ποιμένα τῶν ὑπόδουλων Ἑλλήνων, καὶ εἶναι ὁ ἴδιος ριζικὰ ἀφελληνισμένος, ἀνυποψίαστος γιὰ
τὰ καίρια καὶ θεμελιώδη τῆς ἐλληνικῆς πνευματικῆς παράδοσης ([Scholarios] lives in the heart
of Hellenism, in Constantinople, shouldering the responsibility of the head and of shepherd of
the enslaved Hellenes, and he himself is radically dehellenized, being clueless about the
essentials and foundations of the Hellenic spiritual tradition).” 16 Scholarios’s opera omnia
were published in the early twentieth century and, thereafter, brought immediately into the
service of Roman Catholic apologists. 17 This was a time when papal institutions and agencies
sought to exercise total intellectual hegemony over politics and religion by reducing all
legitimate philosophy and theology to a limited number of principles as purportedly held by
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Scholarios caused a wave of enthusiasm among Roman Catholic
scholars upon glancing at the Scholarian corpus, for an entire block of celebrated Orthodox
literature was found to be immediately useful to neo-Scholastics. Scholarios gave neo-
Thomists the initial impression he might grant many, if not all, of the (allegedly) perennially
valid twenty-four theses required of philosophers and theologians alike by the most influential
13
This is the source of bitter complaint in Zezes 1988, 417–418.
14
Darrouzès 1979, 37–38.
14
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:15–16.
15
For criticisms launched against him as a λατινόφρων in his own time, see Blanchet 2008, 282, 358–362. For
modern scholarly criticism of the same, see Meyendorff 1979, 112; Yiannaras 2006, 89; and Livanos 2006, 9.
16
Yiannaras 2006, 89. The English translation is mine. Yiannaras evaluated Scholarios’s knowledge,
enthusiasm, and employment of “Western learning” as equivalent to “unwittingly rejecting the Hellenico-
Byzantine tradition.” For multiple criticisms, see Yiannaras 2006, 87–89.
17
For example, see Salaville 1924, 129–136; Slipji 1968, 204; Jugie 1930, 423–440.
16
Thomists en vogue. 18 The publication of the entire Scholarian corpus occurred during a coeval,
if separate, campaign of editorial supremacy and papal supervision compelling lower and
higher institutions of Catholic learning to adopt a neo-Scholastic version of Thomas Aquinas’s
thought. 19 Oftentimes condensing Aquinas’s purportedly homogenous doctrine into what
amounts to essentially one work (viz., the ST), such allegedly self-consistent tenets were
filtered through a sieve made up of papal organs of the Roman Magisterium. To all
appearances, not only did an exclusive and putatively safe method of theology arise from papal
oversight, but also a promising road to Christian unity appeared on the horizon because
Scholarios – who was falsely styled a standard-bearer of neo-Thomism – had long enjoyed the
preeminent status of a hero in Orthodox Christianity. 20
To the eyes of the enthralled Roman Catholic reader of the early twentieth century,
Scholarios had invented the recipe of a theological mortar proven strong enough to bind
together bricks of a Latin and of a Greek variety, albeit molded out of diverse elements.
Thereafter, neo-Scholastics rather consistently betrayed a tendency to interpret Scholarios
according to their own neo-Thomism. The polymath Scholarios was presented as someone who
gathered philosophical and theological ideas from multiple Byzantines (whether of the
Orthodox or Roman Catholic variety) and as one who synthesized their partial, or substantial,
borrowings from Aquinas into a cohesive Byzantine school of thought. If fourteenth-century
Byzantine interaction with Aquinas had been sometimes haphazard, sometimes superficial, and
many times only partial, then Scholarios proffered Roman Catholics a paradigm of an Eastern
18
Sacra Studiorum Congregatio 1914, 383–386.
19
Leo XIII 1880, 56–59.
20
For the history of the sidelining of other saintly doctors in favor of Aquinas and the ST, see McGinn 2014,
181–184. Pius X had attempted universal imposition in 1914 of twenty-four Thomistic theses, which was
effectively rescinded in 1917. The unobtainable goal of reducing the Catholic religion to Thomism was
incrementally realized among succeeding pontiffs. Pius XII further distanced the Roman Church from extreme
language and commitments to Aquinas’s every tenet by widening the scope of Scholasticism to include other
schools and by vaguely and metaphorically speaking of Aquinas’s doctrine as a compositional “harmony”
syncopating to the tune of the Magisterium. See Pius XII 1950, 572–575. Nonetheless, Aquinas still enjoyed
the highest rank of theological reference for Catholic theology at Vatican II (1962–1965). See McGinn 2014,
207. For example, Aquinas’s obligatory nature in education was explicitly required, in Vatican II and Paul VI
1966, 723–724 (no. 16). Nonetheless, moral obligation for Roman Catholics to adopt his philosophy and/or
theology wholesale was mitigated in post-Vatican II canonical legislation and encyclicals. For example, see the
Codex iuris canonici in John Paul II 1983, can. 251, 252§3. Recently, a papal declaration has signaled the end
of the neo-Scholastic narrative about Aquinas’s categorical convertibility with official Catholicism, in John
Paul II 1999, 63–64: “A second stance adopted by philosophy is often designated as Christian philosophy. In
itself, the term is valid, but it should not be misunderstood: it in no way intends to suggest that there is an
official philosophy of the Church, since the faith as such is not a philosophy” (Fides et ratio, no. 76).
17
Thomist for Orthodox theologians to imitate wholesale, with the presumption that Scholarios
could best speak to the Byzantine psyche. Neo-Thomists rapidly attempted to construct a
sacred edifice of “Greek Thomism” in full adornment. Nowadays, Byzantinists must, indeed,
affirm that Aquinas made a much deeper impact on Byzantium and her scholarship than prior
histories had ever indicated. In the same vein, Roman Catholic scholars of the last century
unsurprisingly deemed Scholarios’s often friendly engagement with the history and person of
Aquinas as an irresistible opportunity. One would not be off base to generalize that Catholic
writers familiar with Scholarios unanimously showed a tendency to manipulate and regulate
Eastern Orthodox theology according to their read of Scholarios. Their invention of a mongrel
that might be called “Byzantino-Thomistic Orthodoxy” was merely a mirror image of neo-
Scholasticism à la mode along with its recently reinvented Aquinas. 21 Naturally, this neo-
Scholastic Scholarios might be dubbed Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus. He was evaluated as
key to realize rapidly developing ecclesiastical union anticipated between East and West. Jugie
provides a summary of this mentality:
We know a Byzantine theologian of the fifteenth century equally learned in oriental and
occidental theology, who at his time did not find more than two serious divergences in the
dogmatic order between the two Churches; namely, the question of the procession of the Holy
Ghost and that of the real distinction between the divine essence and its operation (a question
of Palamism). The name of the theologian is George Scholarios. [...] Among the Greeks of our
days, there are none who would take it upon themselves to doubt his Orthodoxy and to
catalogue him among the heterodox. 22
Opportunely, even after the fall of Constantinople, a Thomist-friendly culture had continued
to blossom in various Orthodox parts of the world, which betokened success for the project of
ecclesiastical union based upon Thomism. 23 Less propitiously, by the time that substantial
materials of the Byzantino-Thomistic variety began to appear in printed editions, a
psychologically anti-Thomistic environment was ironically burgeoning amid Roman Catholic
theologians of the 1950s. 24 Officially constrained as they were by Pope Pius XII and his curia
21
On the subject of Aquinas’s development and change in his positions or “contradictions,” see
incommensurate Christologies, cataloged in Cross 2005, 51–71. For other items, see Pini 2011, 491–510.
22
Jugie 1949, 14.
23
This is well illustrated in Plested 2012, 137–214.
24
Mettepinengen 2010, 33–35.
18
to maintain a Thomistically-centered Scholasticism on the whole, 25 theologians rallied behind
the Fathers of the Church, as if their legitimate alternative to neo-Scholasticism, under the
banner of ressourcement. 26 This phenomenon was paralleled among Orthodox authors, who
had also grown weary of one-dimensional neo-Scholastic theology. 27 With the advent of
critical editions of Scholastic and patristic texts, Schoolmen often appeared only distantly
connected to theologians of antiquity, their methods, and the spirituality of the first Christian
millennium. Neo-Thomism itself began to suffer accusations for divorcing divus Thomas of
the Renaissance from the more historical frater Thomas of the thirteenth century. “Thomasian”
became a byword, which designated overly simplistic summations of select opinions or narrow
interpretations based on the works of Aquinas. The neo-Scholastics gradually suffered
portrayals as little more than single-minded isogetes who imposed their ahistorical
interpretation of a select number of principles on a looser system of genuine Thomism. 28 In
effect, Scholarios had become so psychologically associated with neo-Thomism and its
pretense to universal superiority over all other forms of theology, that Scholarios’s person
suffered inestimable loss of esteem among Orthodox intelligentsia.
Oppositely, upon successful publication of Scholarios’s works in the 1920s and 1930s,
greater ressourcement finally allowed an accurate reconstruction of the Hesychastic
controversy within fourteenth-century Byzantium. Even if that debate had been largely settled
within the confines of the Orthodox Church by the beginning of the fifteenth century – via
synods and emigration of dissenters – Palamism continued to encounter opposition in certain
locales of the Near East (e.g., in Byzantine territories overrun by Latins and Muslims). 29
Though a paramount question in the Byzantine East that eventually pitted Byzantine Thomism
squarely against Palamism, the Palamite controversy was less historically known in its details
and far less significant in the West. By the 1360s, the formerly intra-Orthodox debate about
the proper relation between essence and operation in the godhead – having had begun in the
1340s – became a topic of theological discussion among some Roman Catholic theologians.30
Eventually, some Greek theologians converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism of a Thomistic
25
Cf. Pius XII 1950, 561–578 (especially nos. 30–31).
26
This has been recently proposed as a fully developed narrative in Mettepinengen 2010, 37–38, 68–69.
27
For example, see Gavrilyuk 2013, 120–121.
28
For the history of these conflicts, see Sullivan 2012, 58–70.
29
Russell 2003, 171–172.
30
For an early Roman Catholic inquest, see Lévy 2012, 434–441.
19
variety. These tended to repeat substantially the very same accusations against Palamas as had
Barlaam Kalabros, Nikephoros Gregoras (1260–1358/61), and Gregory Akindynos (1300–
1348) of former times. Yet, these fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Greek discussions among
so-called λατινόφρων theologians did not result in any official declarations on the subject by
the Church of Rome. Nonetheless, Palamism did rouse pre-conciliar debates among Latins
during their intramural discussions in preparation for the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1437–
1439). Therein, several Latin and one Byzantine theologian, under the aegis of Thomism,
forcefully condemned Palamas as heretical. 31 Both Latin and Byzantine Thomists employed
dialectics, having recourse to Aquinas’s Aristotelico-philosophical tenets, in order to impugn
Palamite tenets. By the second quarter of the fifteenth century, even if the original conflict had
not really begun as a Thomist-versus-Palamite controversy, many theologically influential
anti-Palamites were in fact Thomists. This naturally resulted in suspicion of Thomism as
susceptible to foment per se heresy against Orthodox doctrine. Thereupon, Scholarios served
as an Orthodox peritus at Florence, where he was first exposed to the full fury of lively
Dominican polemics against Palamas. This will be shown to be the point of departure for
Scholarios’s post-Florentine treatises that attempt to overcome the tensions between Thomism
and Palamism.
Despite Orthodox misgivings about Thomism after Florence, requiring Scholarios to
undertake a profound study thereof, saintly and celebrated Palamite writers had not been afraid
to cite Aquinas’s writings (whether positively or negatively) for their own purposes in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All the same, though numerous Orthodox Palamites had
recourse to Greek translations of Aquinas’s opera, only one theologian was consistently
awarded the appellation “Thomist,” namely, Scholarios. Indeed, Roman Catholic theologians
were historically quick to emphasize the Thomism of Scholarios for their own purposes.
Nevertheless, this historical romance is not made entirely of whole cloth, but rather bespeaks
a Thomistico-intellectual environment that ironically forgot to define first its term (viz.,
Thomism) before applying the epithet of “Thomist” – without further qualification – to
Scholarios. In order to mitigate this appellation, to a reasonable degree, the seminal influence
of Scholarios’s teachers and a survey of his literary sources will prove indispensable.
Scholarios proved himself a very subtle thinker, albeit a self-styled Thomist philosopher and
31
Kappes 2014, 181–184.
20
theologian. Due to the real and significant divergences in philosophy and theology between
Aquinas and Scholarios, I require more accurate categorization of Scholarios in light of the
factual evidence. The present thesis is planned in a way to brush aside Thomistic caricatures
of past neo-Thomists and to collocate Scholarios into his proper theological genus.
In order to accomplish this task, a sort of oblique “antirrhetic” naturally arises contra
the classic anti-Palamistic and neo-Thomistic thesis of Martin Jugie, especially as mirrored in
his confrere, Sébastien Guichardan. I refer to Guichardan’s Le Problème de la simplicité divine
en Orient et en Occident aux XIVe et XVe siècles. This doctoral dissertation was published in
league with Jugie, Guichardan’s fellow-Assumptionist brother in religion, and was written at
a time when Jugie was in the midst of publishing Scholarios’s opera omnia. Within the pages
of Guichardan’s thesis, Scholarios was evaluated as having occasionally ventured outside of
Thomism to mix the brine of Scotism with the soured wine of Palamism. This Scotistico-
Palamite synthesis was summarily adjudged to provide Orthodoxy with what can be described
as a barely potable concoction of theology. Scholarios was categorized as an intellectual
Thomist, who recognizing the fundamental absurdity of Palamas’s doctrine, consequently
employed an ad hoc Scotism to reformulate Palamism into a rational system that was purified
of metaphysical naiveté. In line with the overall narrative of Jugie, Guichardan sought to
divorce Palamas entirely from the Byzantine patristic tradition and, likewise, to divorce
Scholarios from Palamas. Furthermore, Guichardan sought to press both Scholastic and
Byzantine theology into the schema of neo-Thomistic logical and metaphysical distinctions
(supposing that these philosophical distinctions enjoyed dogmatic status) in order to justify
total condemnation of Palamas’s account of God. In the next sections of this monograph, after
briefly introducing a summary of the important events in the life and times of Scholarios, I will
first present the dogmatic standing of Palamism in the Orthodox Church as it was defined in
the fourteenth century and as it is has been reaffirmed in the present day. Next, I will succinctly
present Scholarios’s fundamental progress toward embracing these dogmatic commitments
and assertions until the Council of Ferrara-Florence. This will provide a point of departure for
the analysis and critique of Roman Catholic narratives that misrepresent Scholarios. In order
to understand the creation of meta-narratives that have warped the identity of Scholarios, I will
conveniently summarize Orthodox and Catholic reception of Scholarios (along with his
association to Palamism) until the time of Guichardan. Thereafter, I will present the status
21
quaestionis on Scholarios’s Palamism in the scholarly community since the publication of
Guichardan’s thesis.
0.2 Chronology of George-Gennadios Scholarios
The updated prosopographic details of Scholarios are available in Prosopographisches

Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit. 32 However, the more recent dissertation of Marie-Hélène
Blanchet, Georges-Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400-vers 1472): Un intellectuel orthodoxe
face à la disparition de l’empire byzantine and her subsequent articles cited in this dissertation
provide the fullest chronology to date of his life and works.
While part of my contribution will consist of supplementing these works with a fuller
chronology surrounding Scholarios’s pubescent and young-adult years by further cataloging
the historical sources, the following timeline – arranged for the convenience of the reader –
follows closely the aforementioned studies on the life and times of Scholarios:
Year/s Events
c. 1400–c. 1405 George(-Gennadios) Kourteses Scholarios born at Constantinople
c. 1413–c. 1418/1420 George attends the school of George Eugenikos and is educated by
his son Manuel(-Markos) Eugenikos
c. 1420 Scholarios exits the school of Eugenikos to study at the capital
1420 Scholarios befriends Bessarion of Nicaea at the capital
c. 1420–1422 Scholarios engages privately in studies of logic and naturalia in the
capital/or less likely he and Bessarion study logic under
Chortasmenos
1422 At the capital, Scholarios befriends Francesco Filelfo, who is a
student of Manuel Chrysokokkes
1422 Manuel Eugenikos moves to Mangana monastery in the capital and
takes the monastic name Markos. He likely connects Scholarios to
an elite circle of imperial scholars, including Makarios Makres and
Joseph Bryennios, at the capital
32
Trapp, Walther, et al. 1976–1996, no. 27304.
22
1425 Scholarios visits Thessalonica and hears Symeon of Thessalonica
preach
1420s Scholarios befriends Lodizios of Tabriz, OP, at the Capital
1427 Scholarios’s friend Filelfo returns to Italy
1428 Scholarios goes to the Peloponnese with the entourage of Emperor
John VIII
1428?–1430? Scholarios attends lectures?/or becomes the pupil of Pletho?
September 1430– After returning from Italy, Scholarios begins formal studies of logic
December 1430 and theology under Makarios Makres, but Makres becomes ill and
shortly after dies in January of 1431
Post-December 1430– John-Ignatios Chortasmenos is professor of logic for Bessarion and
1431 Scholarios until he leaves the city
c. 1431–c. 1433 Bessarion leaves for the Pelopponese to study under Pletho
1430–c. 1431 Scholarios begins studies with Joseph Bryennios who may have died
before they were able to finish their work together
c. 1431–1432 Scholarios begins his school of rhetoric and logic in the capital,
perhaps to fill the void left after Chortasmenos’s departure
1434 Scholarios is dissatisfied with only minor posts in the imperial
chancery and writes to Rome looking for a better post but does not
accept an offer to work in the papal curia
1436 Scholarios finally obtains a dignity as πρωτονοτάριος or
γραμματικός of Emperor John VIII. He is appointed to a two-man
commission with Markos Eugenikos to prepare arguments on behalf
of Orthodoxy for Ferrara, and he becomes “general judge of the
Romans”
27 November 1437 Scholarios leaves Constantinople for Ferrara
17 December 1437–17 Scholarios is in Corfu with the imperial entourage
January 1438
4 February 1438 Scholarios reaches Venice
07 March 1438 Scholarios reaches Ferrara with the patriarchal entourage
23
March 1438 Scholarios participates in the pre-debates
30 January 1439 Scholarios transfers with the imperial entourage to Florence
Spring 1439 Scholarios likely delivers his orations on behalf of union before the
Greek delegation at Florence
10 June 1439 Scholarios disappears from the Council of Florence, perhaps
sequestering himself in Santa Maria degli Angeli
25 June 1439 Scholarios departs for the capital without waiting for the end of the
Council or signing its definition
1440? Scholarios is appointed preacher to the imperial court
1441–1444 Scholarios opposes the post-Florentine writings of Bessarion
Before 10 November Scholarios is sequestering himself for study of dogma in order to
1444 (defeat of give Markos a definitive answer on his theological positions
crusaders at Varna)
Autumn 1444–1445 Scholarios composes anti-filioque treatises against the Latins in
Constantinople
1445 Markos of Ephesus dies appointing Scholarios his scion
1447 Scholarios is deprived of his dignities by the emperor since he
persists in the moral leadership of the Holy Synaxis
1449 Scholarios announces his taking up the monastic habit
1453/1454 Scholarios survives the destruction and is selected by Mehmet II
Patriarch of the Polis
1455 Scholarios is no longer patriarch
29 June 1456 Scholarios is a monk in residence at Vatopedi
1457/1458 Scholarios is a monk in residence at Prodromos
15 August 1464 Scholarios is a monk in residence at Pammakaristos
1466/1467 Scholarios is a monk in residence at Prodromos
1472 Last evidence of Scholarios to be alive
Before any discussion can begin, concerning Scholarios’s defense of Palamism after the
Council of Ferrara-Florence, it will be necessary to give an exact account of the Orthodox faith
and its dogmatic commitments that Scholarios embraced from his youth and maintained until
24
his death. As will become clear, Scholarios was not merely knowledgeable of Palamism due
to his spiritual father (Manuel-Markos Eugenikos), but also made a profound study of
Palamism as the result of the debates against Palamistic tenets at the Council of Ferrara-
Florence.
0.3 The Essence-Energies Dogma and the Place of Palamism in Orthodoxy
The present study is not primarily concerned with the historical progress of the doctrine
of the essence and energies from the Old and New Testaments until the time of Scholarios, but
rather with refuting neo-Thomistic narratives that attempted to divorce Scholarios from fidelity
to Palamite Orthodoxy. 33 Still, in order to contextualize properly Scholarios’s thought, it has
been deemed useful to provide a summary of the more recent scientific and dogmatic literature
on Palamism. This will be especially useful for comparing Scholarios to Scholasticism, since
Scholarios’s primary motivation for engaging Latins in polemics on this issue arose from their
rehashing Barlaamitico-Akindynism at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. By then, Palamism
was not only the official ecclesiastical doctrine of the Orthodox Church of the Romano-
Byzantine empire but only became so because it was canonized by a series of synods. What is
more, the celebration of the liturgical feast in honor of Palamas and the addition of his precise
formulation of doctrine, along with the condemnation of his opponents, was added to the
Triodion. 34 In this respect, I highlight the famous description of Alexander Schmemann:
One speaks, for example, of liturgical theology, or a liturgical “ressourcement” of theology.
For some, this implies an almost radical rethinking of the very concept of theology, a complete
change in its structure. The leitourgia – being the unique expression of the Church, of its faith
and of its life – must become the basic source [viz., τόπος/locus] of theological thinking, a kind
of locus theologicus par excellence. 35
Taken together these sources secure the dogmatic status of Palamas’s formulation of the Greek
patristic tradition. Lastly, granted the ancient theory of receptionism, the Orthodox Church
today has universally embraced these synods as manifested by Pan-Orthodox reception and
33
For the most detailed treatment of pre-Christian and New Testament usage of divine essence-energies thought
in Greek-speaking Christianity, see Bradshaw 2004, 1–152.
34
For the relevant anathematisms and memorials of the Orthodox in question, see Kabasilas and Kokkinos
2003, 340–345.
35
Schmemann 2001, 3:53.
25
celebration on the first Sunday of Great Lent of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. 36 Such Pan-
Orthodox liturgical reception of the Synodikon manifests the subjective reception on the part
of each autocephalous and autonomous Orthodox Church of the dogmatic inheritance of these
aforementioned Councils. 37 It is for this reason that The Holy and Great Council of Crete
effortlessly declared most recently in 2016:
Διὰ τῶν Οἰκουμενικῶν καὶ τῶν Τοπικῶν συνόδων, ἡ Ἐκκλησία εὐηγγελίσατο καὶ
εὐαγγελίζεται τὸ μυστήριον τῆς Ἁγίας Τριάδος, τὸ ὁποῖον ἐφανερώθη διὰ τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως
τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ Λόγου τοῦ Θεοῦ. Τὸ συνοδικὸν ἔργον συνεχίζεται ἐν τῇ ἱστορίᾳ ἀδιακόπως διὰ
τῶν μεταγενεστέρων, καθολικοῦ κύρους, συνόδων ὡς λ.χ. τῆς ἐπὶ Μεγάλου Φωτίου,
Πατριάρχου Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, Μεγάλης συνόδου (879–880) καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ ἁγίου Γρηγορίου
τοῦ Παλαμᾶ συγκληθεισῶν Μεγάλων συνόδων (1341, 1351, 1368), διὰ τῶν ὁποίων ἐβεβαιώθη
ἡ αὐτὴ ἀλήθεια τῆς πίστεως, ἐξαιρέτως δὲ περὶ τῆς ἐκπορεύσεως τοῦ Ἁγίου Πνεύματος καὶ
περὶ τῆς μεθέξεως τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εἰς τὰς ἀκτίστους θείας ἐνεργείας. 38
Similarly, the issues explored in three topical synods, namely, those of 1341, 1351, and 1368,
are essential reading in order to understand Scholarios’s own dogmatic commitments.
Consequently, in the next section (0.3), I will exposit the progress of Palamas’s dogmatic
teaching in its proper thematic and chronological order. This will greatly aid the reader to
understand the nature of Scholarios’s theological projects meant to defend faithfully and
36
Receptionism was a doctrine common to the undivided Church of the first millennium. Pope Gregory I, for
example, was still cited in a Latin canon on this question until the CIC 1917 eliminated it, as contained in
Gratian, Decretum Gratiani, ed. J. Boehmeri and J.-P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1861), cols. 72b–73a (D. 15, c. 2):
“Gregorius, ita dicens, lib. 1 Regesti, Epistula 24: ‘Sicut sancti evangelii quatuor libros, sic quatuor concilia
suscipere et venerari me fateor. Nicaenum [. . .] Constantinopolitanum quoque [. . .] Ephesinum etiam [. . .]
Chalcedonense vero [. . .] tota devotione complector [. . .] Quintum quoque concilium pariter veneror [. . .]
amplector: qui dum universali sunt consensus constituta, se et non illa destuit, quisquis praesumit aut solvere
quos religant, aut ligare quoad solvant.’” By the eleventh century, however, Latin canonical collections
combined this ancient doctrine of the Church with ps.-canons known as the Isidorian forgeries. These began to
propagate an innovative ecclesiology, where the pope alone had the right to convoke and sanction councils and
was not bound by prior canons and decrees, while yet empowered to make new canons. See Tierney 1972, 45–
53.
37
For a Greek Orthodox summary of the notion of reception, see Patriarch Bartholomew I and Clément 1997,
29:
Each local church [. . .] is a Eucharistic community in communion with all other local churches. This
communion, as we have said, is organized around “centers of agreement.” This permanent conciliarity
of Churches is expressed in the phenomenon of “reception.” Certain churches have greater moral
authority, and hence a more prestigious capacity of “reception.” These include either sees of apostolic
foundation, or cities whose political, cultural, or even symbolic role is, or has been, more significant.
In the ancient Church, these “centers of agreement” formed a living and complex hierarchy, spreading
from the local level to that of the universal Church.
38
Orthodox Church 2016, 4.3:1122.
26
accurately the legacy of Palamas. While many disquisitions within modern studies have been
dedicated to exploring these synods in isolation, it should be briefly noted that a flourishing
amount of literature is being increasingly published on the question of Palamistic
ressourcement or scholarly movement “ἐπὶ τὰς πηγάς.” In this vein I should like to highlight
the most recent contributions to showing the patristic basis for Palamistic theology of the
aforementioned synods that strengthens scholarly claims on behalf of Palamas’s legitimate
development and exposition of his foregoing patristic inheritance. Recent biblical studies are
noting late Jewish and early Christian exegesis of the Old Testament as already preoccupied
with the language of seeing God, whether this be said of his being, his metaphorical face, or
other metaphorical parts. The literature is certainly helpful to justify Palamas’s own
preoccupations about what is seen in a theoptic vision of divinity, in line with the most ancient
preoccupations of exegetes dealing with translation of the Hebrew idiom into Greek. 39
This biblical focus on the vision of God partly accedes to the desideratum of an award-
winning Orthodox writer, David Bradshaw, to give an accurate estimate of Palamas’s
significance in a number of disciplines, such as biblical studies and historico-philosophical
secondary literature. On the increase, today, are biblicists who address topics that obliquely or
overtly stem from Orthodox dogmatic interest in Palamas. 40 There is, furthermore, a
burgeoning interest among biblicists in authenticating aspects of Palamas’s exegesis, since it
is in some places reflective of early Christian reception of the Bible. What is more, other
scholars have drawn attention to Palamas’s integration of the patristic presentations of the
essence-energies distinction in their patristic, historico-theological, and philosophical
studies. 41 As a result of such studies, Bradshaw wisely cautions his fellow Orthodox not to
distance Palamas from the philosophical tradition that was absorbed and transformed by
Byzantine Christians in the fourth century and beyond. 42 However, this in no way means that
Christians adopted wholesale pagan philosophy uncritically, but rather tends to show that
Christians found precision in making distinctions and for describing the attributes of being to
39
See, for example, Joosten 2009, 287–299; Bucur 2014, 310–317; Matusova 2017, 63–86; and Constas
2017/2018, 27–44.
40
For discussion of this desideratum, see Bradshaw 2006a, 94.
41
Bradshaw 2006a, 107–115; Torrance 2009, 51–70.
42
Bradshaw 2006a, 93–94.
27
be very useful in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy, as something useful for justifying
Christian revelation in a variety of contexts.
In this regard, before turning directly to the dogmatic synods that have been reaffirmed
recently at the The Holy and Great Council of Crete, I should like to note that recent
publications have attempted to compare Palamas’s methodology and the dogmas stemming
from Palamism to Latin and more generally Western theologies (which can be usually thought
of as Roman Catholic dogma, Thomism, and the varieties of Protestantism). In general, even
the more sanguine of these studies are unable to locate real parallels or dependence of Palamas
or dogmatic Palamism on developments common to the medieval and Reformation traditions
of the Latin West. 43
With this in mind, I will first exposit chronologically and thematically the doctrinal
reception of Palamas’s writings in the aforesaid councils. Following this summary, I will turn
to comparing the summary positions of Scholarios on each point. The harmonious agreement
between Palamas and Scholarios naturally will introduce a fairly important question into the
midst of this discussion: “How is it that Scholarios’s dogmatic expositions have been reported
by Latin theologians to be an adulterated or ‘mitigated Palamism’?” This will require an
historical and a philological explanation, whereby Latin authors were partly the victims of their
own historical context, but they were also partially limited by their over-concentration on
philological evidence partially uncovering some resources of Scholarios, as if these somehow
were sufficient to justify their hypothesis that Scholarios at least partially rejected Palamism.
On the one hand, no known parallels or dependencies of Palamas using Medieval Latin
literature of the Scholastic variety exist; nor do any reasons to suggest that he had ever read
Medieval Latin literature in translation. On the other hand, the case is very diverse with
Scholarios. He knew well both of the aforementioned literary sources. Due to the state of
Roman Catholic scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century, Scholarios’s adept use of
Latin sources was lost on Roman Catholic scholars and theologians. They distorted his
teachings by recourse to merely lexical and thematic similarities shared between Aquinas and
43
See Flogaus 1997, 285–380; Demetracopoulos 1996, 36–38; Spiteris 1996, 114–122; Fyrigos 2004, 28–33.
I note a general lack of reception of the conciliatory thesis of Williams among both Latin and Orthodox scholars
and theologians. She claims parallels between Aquinas and Palamas in their theologies of grace. See Williams
1999. See especially C. Athanasopoulos and Schneider 2013. I have thoroughly reviewed and critiqued this
collection in Kappes, Goff, and Giltner 2014. Most recently, see C. Athanasopoulos 2015.
28
Scholarios. While this temptation was understandable, Medieval Studies at the beginning of
the twentieth century were non-existent. As such, Latins themselves often had only a foggy
idea in their neo-Scholastic world view of the patristic and pseudepigraphal sources behind the
works of Schoolmen. Neo-Scholastics have also become famous for overdetermining the
genius, originality, and centrality of Aquinas in almost every discussion of medieval theology.
This psychological tendency of neo-Scholastics to ignore the panorama of Scholarios’s literary
sources and his substantially non-Thomistic world view is easily detected in my disquisition
below. When Scholarios’s works are compared with his real sources, the neo-Scholastic
narratives will be shown to be lexically and philologically sterile to support their dominant
hypotheses that were truisms by the 1990s. However, until the opening of this century, this
mostly superficially connected and apologetically inspired lexical and philological work led a
number of devout Orthodox theologians to assume the truth of the Roman-Catholic
apologetical narrative of Scholarios as someone substantially divorced from theological
Palamism. This monograph plans to remedy this false reading of Scholarios by a meticulous
cataloging of the stages of distortion of his thought.
0.4 Ecclesiastico-Dogmatic Reception of Palamas’s Teaching in the Fourteenth Century
Major dogmatic analyses of Palamas’s primary writings on the essence and energies
continue to be published in order to familiarize readers with the ipsissima verba of Palamas. 44
This section of the study intends to concentrate on Orthodox Church’s official reception of this
teaching in synodical acts. The major episode of the thematico-dogmatic conflict begins within
the confines of Byzantium, even if we shall see that the Latin Church takes moderate interest
in various aspects of the debate during different pontificates leading up to the Council of
Ferrara-Florence.
A reliable account of this Orthodox-monk-become-Roman-Catholic can only fully
come to light in historiography and theology after the complete publication in the last two
decades of his works. Given the important selection and number of works already published in
critical editions, hypotheses priorly based upon inaccurate chronologies tend to misattribute
44
I have consulted the following monographs dedicated to the ad intra theology of Palamas with profit: Spiteris
1996, 98–107, 114–122; Mantsaridou 1998, 77–93, 151–155, 234–254, 261–264; Lison 2009, 101–132, 173–
220; Radović 2012, 239–288.
29
initial influences on the Calabrian’s theological and cultural Weltanschauung. 45 These critical
works will inevitably require the updating of passé prosopographies and historiographies. 46
Barlaam’s ἅπαντα in critical editions are cataloged in the order of publication as follows:
Solutions, Λογιστική, anti-Latin works, and Epistole. 47 Until now, some matters remain open
to debate (viz., the degree to which Barlaam was initially influenced by Latin theology). Yet,
I will conclude that the details of the first stage of the Palamite debate are all but certain. 48
0.5 The First Stage of the Palamas-Barlaam Debate
In favor of Palamas’s accusation – namely, that Barlaam was “latinophrôn” – Barlaam

hypothetically admitted that “if the Father and the Son had been considered not two distinct
principles between themselves, as opposed, but as one principle derived from the other, then
one would be able to protect the unicity of the principle of the divinity.” 49 In fact, this
distinction is typical of Latin apologists of the period and is contained in Aquinas’s ST. 50
Propitiously, Barlaam cites Aquinas elsewhere in his works. 51 What is more, the main
secondary literature has shown without a doubt that the phrase “principium ex principio,”
which the Latins say refers to the Son as a principle of the Spirit, is central to Barlaam’s
hypothetical reasoning when considering the Latin position. While Sinkewicz opined that the
well-known phrase might be known to Barlaam because of Aquinas’s use of something similar
in Aquinas’s 1265 Contra errores graecorum, Fyrigos suggests that Palamas’s accusation of
“Latin-thinking” on this score is specious. 52 While remaining cautious, even suspicious, of
Palamas, Fyrigos notes an oddity in Barlaam’s text. Unlike Sinkewicz, who alleged Barlaam’s
citations to be from Gregory Nazianzen – “principium ex principio” (possibly attributed to two
45
For the full catalog of his attributed and authentic works, see Sinkewicz 1981, 185–194; Fyrigos 2005, 169–
182.
46
Sinkewicz already signaled the inaccuracies in prior chronology and, instrinsically, historiographies that rely
on these narratives, in Sinkewicz 1980, 489–491. I echo Kolbaba, who acknowledges the problems surrounding
Barlaam’s chronology and other facets of his intellectual production until a fully-edited edition of his works
are available. See Kolbaba 1995, 60–61.
47
Barlaam the Calabrian 1981, 200–217; Barlaam the Calabrian 1995, 75–115; Barlaam the Calabrian 1996;
Barlaam the Calabrian 1998; Fyrigos 2005.
48
Fyrigos 2005, 69–70.
49
Palamas 2010a, sec. 2 (GPS 1:203–204).
50
ST I.36.4, ad 7: “licet sint unum principium spiritus sancti, sunt tamen duo spiratores [. . .]”
51
Sinkewicz 1982, 195. Cf. Aquinas’s ST, I–I.36. 2; SG IV.24.
52
Fyrigos 2005, 70–73.
30
separate works according to Sinkewicz) – Fyrigos argues that the citation is so distorted that it
is not clear that he is citing from Gregory Nazianzen. I concur and underline that just such a
distorted, oblique, and unattributed citation of Nazianzen is contained in SG IV.24. I therefore
would newly propose that the answer likely lies in Barlaam’s main source (SG IV.24), whom
Sinkewicz has already demonstrated Barlaam to cite SG IV.24 at least three times. 53 In the
same chapter Aquinas also wrote: “alia est processio spiritus sancti et filii; non est autem
54
repugnans id quod est a principio secundum unam processionem, esse principium
processionis alterius. Relinquitur igitur quod non sit impossibile filium esse principium
spiritus sancti. [...] Oportet igitur patrem referri et ad filium et ad spiritum sanctum ut
principium ad id quod est a principio.” In light of this passage, compare Barlaam’s “εἴποι
μηδὲν ἄτοπον εἶναι, εἴ τις δύο μὲν ἀρχὰς λέγει, τὸν πατέρα δηλονότι καὶ τὸν υἱόν, μὴ μέντοι
γε ἀντιδιῃρημένας μηδὲ ἀντιθέτους ἀλλήλαις, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἑτέραν ὑπὸ τὴν ἑτέραν ἢ ἐκ τῆς
ἑτέρας.” 55 Hence, I would reject Fyrigos’s statement that “the accusation of latinophronia, that
Palamas unfolds against Barlaam in his Epistle 01 to Akindynos finds no echo in the doctrinal
content of the vast anti-Latin production of Barlaam, nor in the reality of the facts, for
[Barlaam] entirely conforms to the Greek dogma.” 56 Now that I have strongly provided
evidence to the contrary that Barlaam was indeed inspired by Latin theology on his filioque
speculation, making Barlaam to latinize his position to an extent, his incipient conflict with
Palamas was also focused on Barlaam’s anti-Latin debates (February 1334) and his
imprecations against the use of the syllogism within theology (in these matters – in agreement
with Fyrigos – Barlaam was entirely non-Latin). 57 Sometime after May 15, 1334, Palamas
wrote a letter to his then friend, Gregory Akindynos, criticizing Barlaam. Palamas asserted that
Scriptural propositions and inspired sayings of the Fathers can lead to the kinds of knowledge
that admit of scientific certainty and demonstration. 58 Barlaam, who was skeptical of
Palamas’s counterclaims about knowledge of either natural or supernatural beings, refused to
53
Sinkewicz 1982, 195.
54
See the accusation first in Palamas 2010a, sec. 2 (GPS 1:204). Barlaam, Epistle 01 to Palamas, 136 (sec. 13):
“ἴσως οὕτω γε ουδὲν κωλύει,” admits his use of the phrase but attributes it to unknown “other reasons.” I
propose that his hidden reasons were to obliquely adopt an initially cautious acceptance of the hypothesis of
Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine in SG IV.24.
55
Palamas 2010a, sec. 2 (GPS 1:204).
56
Fyrigos 2005, 75.
57
For dating, see Fyrigos 2005, 67.
58
Fyrigos 2005, 67.
31
concede this point. However, this concern was shortlived and was peculiarly debated
exclusively between Palamas and Barlaam. Even Scholarios, perhaps the most accomplished
logician in Greek after Aristotle, cannot be found mentioning the terms of this debate. The
question was not taken up, nor canonized, at the synods of 1341, 1351, or 1368.
0.6 The Second Stage of the Palamas-Barlaam Debate
This development of the debate abandoned the former issues only to focus attention on
Palamas’s defense of the τὸ ἄκτιστον φῶς experienced by Athonite monks in prayer, of which
Barlaam knew from reports and from Athonite monks themselves. 59 Barlaam opposed
Palamas’s core teaching that such light is uncreated and furthermore denied Palamas’s
distinction whereby the light, as a divine attribute, cannot be identified with the substance or
οὐσία of the divinity but only with its ἐνέργεια. In fact, the nature of this light was of primary
concern in Orthodox dogmatic theology in the synods of 1341 and 1351, though hardly
neglected in 1368.
Because the debate on syllogistics had resulted in both interlocutors disagreeing on the
capacities of natural reason, or “φῶς νοερόν,” and on the very existence of a λαμπρότης, or
clear light of divine illumination, the issues shifted to the intellectual principles by which
Palamas claimed that a science of vision of divine energies was possible for Christians in this
life. Such vision allowed saints to have certain and immediate experience of God’s activity
without ratiocination and suchwise an experience of God without such operation of human
reasoning. 60 For his part, Barlaam vociferously attacked Palamas in his epistolary rhetoric, as
if it were dogmatically heresy. This serious matter was much more dogmatically focused on
divine-human communication of knowledge and of divinization, or theosis, than on the more
syntactical questions surrounding Barlaam’s concessions to Latins on dialectics and the
apodictic syllogism in theology, as argued against Palamas in the prior debate. 61 The exchange
of these epistles took place in the fall of 1334 according to the Latin calendar.
This second stage of argument, upon Palamas learning about Barlaam’s writings
against Hesychasts – denominating them Messalians – resulted in the magnum opus called
59
Fyrigos 2005, 99.
60
Fyrigos 2005, 89–92, 94–95.
61
Fyrigos 2005, 95–97.
32
collectively The Triads. Fyrigos has expertly dated the work as follows: Triad I dates to
1334/35–1337, Triad II to 1338 in reply to Barlaam’s 1337 opuscula specifically directed
against the Hesychasts, and Triad III to 1340. 62
During the penultimate period of writing the Triads, polemics were at their height so
that Barlaam traveled to Constantinople (1338) and formally denounced Palamas to the sitting
synod. However, Barlaam was rebuffed and warned by the Patriarch John Kalekas to cease
and desist. 63 Ignoring his advice, Barlaam continued fomenting controversy upon his return to
Thessalonica. At this time, Meyendorff notes, this stage of the conflict encompassed both
Barlaam and Akindynos (who acted to ameliorate the quarrel). As Meyendorff remarks of
Barlaam, his sympathizers, and allies: “around 1340 none of them was a latinophron, still less
a Byzantine Thomist.” 64 While this thesis still enjoys high historical probability, it should be
remembered that the equally vociferous anti-Palamite George Lapithes (who explicitly
translated and mimicked Latino-Scholastic treatises) 65 had been since at least 1333 in contact
with Barlaam, to whom the latter addressed his Solutions in that year. 66 It is also significant
that Cyprus was a hotbed of unionism by Latin missionaries that culminated in the arrival of a
controversialist on the matter of the beatific vision, magister Raymond Bequini, who was a
resident bishop on the island of Cyprus (1326–1328) until he died. 67 Bequini’s extant works
are concentrated on two very relevant topics, for the present discussion, also discussed by both
Barlaam and Palamas: namely, syllogisms, per Aquinas, as used in theology making it an
allegedly subalternate science (neither the view of Palamas, nor that of Barlaam); and the
beatific vision, particulary as hypostasized in the experience of St. Paul the Apostle (2 Cor
12:2). Obviously, these are the very concerns of Barlaam and Palamas immediately following
Latin debates with the former in 1334. Circumstantially, the pro-Orthodox but latinizing (à la
scholastique) and anti-Palamite Lapithes would have been in perfect position to intimate the
substance of his Cypriot debates with the Latins (plausibly including the question of
syllogistics and the beatific vision) in either Latin or Greek to his correspondent and ally
62
Fyrigos 2005, 159.
63
Meyendorff 1974b, 46–47.
64
Meyendorff 1974b, 48.
65
Darrouzès 1979, 40–45.
66
Sinkewicz 1981, 151–153. For a correction a correction of the dating of their communications to 1333, see
Fyrigos 2005, 67.
67
Duba 2000, 179–183.
33
Barlaam. 68 Although the aim of the present investigation is not primarily concerned with
Scholarios’s reception of Palamism, there are very good circumstantial and chronological facts
that beckon scholars to compare Bequini’s positions with Lapithes’s works, and with those of
Barlaam. The complexity and knowledge of Aristotle’s syllogistics, particularly of Posterior
Analytics, was unusual for Byzantines of the age. It is entirely conceivable that the Cypriot
Lapithes may prove to be the origin of Barlaam’s arguments against Palamas on syllogistics
and on the beatific vision, not to mention the heterogeneous Scholastic works in Lapithes’s
possession. What is more, at this time, the ruling archbishop of Cyprus, Elias of Nabinaux,
gathered Jacobites, Armenians, Maronites, Nestorians, and unionist-Greeks to sign solemnly a
profession of faith that included providing them a copy of Benedict XII’s Benedictus deus,
which effectively rejected a number of doctrines dear to Palamites: (1.) the possession of the
beatific vision on earth, (2.) the qualitative difference between the soul resting in peace before
the resurrection and the full possession of the beatific vision after the resurrection, and (3.) the
assertion opposite to Palamas that the divine essence can be seen. 69 So many coincidental
events are only with difficulty disassociated from one another considering that both Barlaam’s
visit to the papal court of Avignon in 1339 and the public controversies raging in
Constantinople were over similar issues.
Finally, Palaiologos has recently shown that the origin of several of Barlaam’s citations
from Augustine (and others) actually derive from florilegia that were produced in the standard
Latin handbook of theology, Peter Lombard’s Sentences. 70 These facts accord well with
Torrance’s recent, if provisional, designation of coeval Cyprus (where Barlaam held
friendships) as “a haven for anti-Palamism.” 71
While Barlaam’s latinizing, even if limited to exceptional examples, as above (thus
excluding the bulk of his opera omnia), would have been under the influence of Latin literature
(viz., Lombard’s Sentences) and correspondences with Lapithes (in addition to his dialogue
68
Given Pope John XXII’s initiation of the controversy by rehashing ancient authorities who agreed with
aspects of the Palamite position, the controversy raged, starting in 1331–1332. Given the international celebrity
of the question of seeing God’s essence (or not), it is likely that Cyprus was included in the controversy among
Latin clergy among whom Lapithes conversed and debated. For the Greco-Latin interplay of ideas at this time
on this controversy, see Duba 2006, 351–360.
69
Duba 2006, 351–352.
70
Palaiologos 2013, 60–62.
71
Torrance 2017, 122.
34
with the Latin missionaries in 1334), 72 the former beginning upon his arrival in Thessalonica
as early as 1325 and the latter sometime in the 1330s, I note that I have recently demonstrated
that a Greek translation of Lombard’s Sentences was known to Barlaam, Nicholas Kabasilas,
and Symeon of Thessalonica, which might possibly have been available since the beginning of
the fourteenth century. 73
At any rate, after having written his Against the Messalians, Barlaam left for his
recondite mission to the papal court at Avignon in 1339 at the behest of Emperor Andronicus
III. Upon his return he found that Palamas obtained permission from the hegumens of Athos
to dictate, via the pen of Philotheos Kokkinos, what is entitled the ῾Αγιορειτικὸς τόμος ὑπὲρ
τῶν ἡσυχαζόντων (1341). 74 While Patriarch John Kalekas had rejected Barlaam’s second
attempt to denounce and have Palamas condemned, Barlaam did manage to force action on the
part of the sitting synod at Constantinople due to underlining the fact that the monastic tome
was attempting to teach theology, as if official, which by law (since Photios’s Eisagogue, III.4–
5) 75 was the prerogative of the Ecumenical Patriarch. 76
This led to the first dogmatic synod against Barlaam on June 10, 1341. While the
synodical decree seems to combine the deliberations of a second, August 1341, synod into its
redacted text, there is no doubt that the decree – as it stands – is a reliable doctrinal witness to
the substance of the Fathers’ decisions in both June and August 1341. 77 The main dogmatic
themes can be summarized as follows:
(1.) Barlaam is solely and formally the cause for the synodical gathering, accusing Palamas and
others of
a. participation in the divine essence, and
b. claiming that grace is uncreated
72
Meyendorff (1974b, 84–85) notes the anti-Latin works of Lapithes and especially his correspondences with
each major anti-Palamite in the present study. So far, little has been done to explore the possibility of Lapithes
as the root of an anti-Latin but nonetheless pro-Scholastic methodology of Eastern Orthodoxy that he was
practicing in both Latin and Greek on Cyprus. Lapithes cannot be discounted as a mediator of ideas (if not
texts) to fellow anti-Palamites in the Polis.
73
For the date of his arrival, see Fyrigos 2005, 162, and for evidence of the Sentences in the above-mentioned
Orthodox writers, see Kappes 2017, 479–501. I thank Christopher Schabel (Cyprus) for alerting me to an error
in my article, above, where the so-called Synod of Cyprus (1260) should be prefixed with “pseudo-” and more
probably dates to 1278–1283. See Schabel 2000/2001, 217–234.
74
Palamas 1865 (PG 150:1225–1236).
75
Photios 2007, 291–292.
76
77
Lauritzen 2016a, 4.1:134.
35
thus becoming ditheists; while Palamas is clear that only the divine light is participable and
that grace is not the essence but of the essence; 78
(2.) The synod affirms there to be a superior light, which is of God and was seen at Tabor, but
which is not naturally sensible; 79
(3.) The Tabor light is attested by a multitude of Scriptural passages and Fathers and is participable
by the clean of heart, who are Hesychasts, since this is the foundation of true prayer; 80
(4.) This participation in the divine light effects theosis, and the light is not God, but his uncreated
grace; 81
(5.) Barlaam is to repent, as well as all others, of any denial of the aforesaid after proclamation of
the faith by the Orthodox synod. 82
Barlaam accepted the official correction and formally reconciled with Palamas after receiving
advice to do so. Thereafter, in consequence of losing Emperor Andronikos III as his patron,
first at the synod and then shortly after by his death, Barlaam returned to Italy where he
converted to the Latin dogmas and was awarded the bishopric of Gerace in Southern Italy in
1342. 83
0.7 The Third Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Akindynos
The decree of the extraordinary synods of 1341 may have defeated Barlaam, but due to
the waffling and lack of decisiveness on the part of Patriarch John Kalekas, some Byzantines
– like Akindynos – interpreted the synod’s language as an exoneration of Hesychastic prayer
and practice, but not necessarily a canonization of every jot and tittle of Palamas’s theology. 84
The doctrine of the essence-energies was not very explicit in the 1341 synods, nor – in its brief
mention – was it commented upon by the synod, nor had it been central to the Barlaam affair. 85
Still, the distinction had been mentioned in passing in the synodical decree, but without
78
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016a, 4.1:139–141.
79
80
81
82
83
84
Meyendorff 1974b, 56–57; Cañellas 2006, 184.
85
However, as Cañellas (2006, 152–153) discovers, the first (quasi-)official pronouncement on behalf of the
essence-energies doctrine was already published in the Ἁγιορητικὸς τόμος of 1340.
36
comment and only when citing a Father: “Φησί δε καὶ ὁ Μέγας Βασίλειος, ἀλλά κατὰ τὴν
ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως διαιροῦν τὴν ἐνέργειαν, ἁπλοῦν τῇ οὐσίᾳ [...]” (De Spiritu Sancto
IX.22). 86
For Akindynos, the synod was more worrisome for another reason, causing him to
pressure Palamas to abandon what Akindynos saw then as uncommon theological modes of
expression, the most famous of which concerned the notion of uncreated grace. Because a civil
war shortly followed upon the heels of Emperor Andronikos III’s death, it opened up doors for
the anti-Palamite party to gain ascendancy in the capital. After a series of reversals in 1342,
when Palamas was subjected to arrest in a highly convoluted accusation on the part of Patriarch
Kalekas and afterwards, Palamas was excommunicated in 1344. However, shortly thereafter,
a weakening of the anti-Palamite faction led to a reversion of Palamite predominance. 87 After
this period Akindynos wrote seven treatises against Palamas (c. 1343–1344), which were
countered by the sitting synod’s Synodical Tome of 1347 (which is a conjoint confirmation of
Empress Anna of Savoy’s convoked council early in the same year). This led to another two
sets of synodical confirmations of the condemnations, all in 1347. 88 The culmination of
Palamite victory was signaled by the newly elected patriarch, Isidore Boukharis, elevating
Palamas to the rank of archbishop. 89 The salient dogmatic features of the synod include:
(1.) A positive and negative set of descriptions concerning divine simplicity expressed thus in
summary: The Barlaamitico-Akindynists not only assert the normal doctrines that God is one
nature in three persons, having one will, power, [tripersonal] energeia, kingdom, wisdom,
goodness, infinity, simplicity, and all other attributes, but they say that all these are one in the
sense that they are only the essence and are opposed to anything save essence as something
merely created; 90
(2.) The heretics also deny the ὑπερκειμένη οὐσία and refuse to distinguish uncreated will,
power, and energy from the essence that acts as its foundation or source, but there truly is a
real distinction between divine essence and divine energy; 91
86
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016a, 4.1:146.
87
Lauritzen 2016b, 155.
88
89
Cañellas 2006, 283.
90
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016b, 4.1:159–160.
91
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016b, 4.1:160, 167.
37
(3.) They mistake the Palamites for claiming that the apostles at Tabor saw the essence of God,
something impossible, but rather they deny that Tabor light is of the uncreated essence of God
and was seen as one of the divine energies; 92
(4.) The light given to these saints is divine grace that is uncreated. 93
Following Akindynos’s condemnation he died shortly afterwards, but the controversy
continued to rage even after ecclesiastical and political unanimity reigned in official quarters
of the Patriarchal Church and imperial government.
0.8 The Fourth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Gregoras
The profession of faith that Palamas composed on the occasion of his elevation to the
episcopate summarizes the dogmatic centrality of certain issues in 1347 that would serve as
the point of contrast with Nikephoros Gregoras. Palamas confessed:
I believe [...] in the Holy Spirit. [...] The Spirit has his own hypostasis, proceeding from the
Father and sent by the Son; that is, he is revealed to be also a cause of all things that have come
into being, since in him they are brought to perfection. The same is also equal in honor to the
Father and the Son, except that he is not unbegotten or begotten. He was sent from the Son to
his disciples – that is, he was revealed, for how otherwise would he be sent from him without
being separated from him? How otherwise would he come to me, since he is everywhere?
Therefore, he is sent not only from the Son but also from the Father and from the Son. [...] He
is revealed not according to his essence, for no one has ever seen or spoken the nature of God,
but according to the grace and power and energy which is common to the Father and the Son
and the Spirit. [...] Not only the superessential essence is common, which is nameless to all
and unrevealed and unparticipated, since it is above every name and appearance and
participation, but also the grace and power and energy and radiance and royalty and
incorruptibility, and simply everything by which God has fellowship and is united by grace
with the holy angels and men. God does not lose his simplicity either because of the division
and distinction of the hypostases, or because of the division and diversity of the powers and
energies. [...] For neither would God be composite from perfect hypostases, nor would that
92
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016b, 4.1:160, 166–167.
93
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016b, 4.1:167.
38
which is able, inasmuch as it has power or powers, ever truly be called composite just because
of its ability. 94
We shall see that this Palamite scholion on the Spirit and its gifts will resurface in the
discussions between Dominican Thomists and Markos of Ephesos and George-Gennadios
Scholarios during the Council of Florence and culminate in Markos’s rejection of the Latin
interpretation of this doctrine in his apologetic works after Ferrara-Florence in 1439–1440. For
now, it is important to underline that a thematic connection exists between the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit and its internal procession in the Trinity (which does not include the hypostasis of
the Son as “cause”) as contrasted to the mission or sending of the Spirit into creation. On this
point the Spirit is energetically participated to varying degrees among humans according to
their response to the mysteries of Christian intitiation, Hesychastic asceticism, prayer, and
divine light or grace. I should also mention that scholars too have noted that Palamas had made
the connection between the Palamistic theology of grace and the debate on the filioque so as
to notice Palamas’s association of Latins with a confusion between ad extra energies and the
mission of the Spirit with the ad intra production of the hypostasis of the Son and causality of
the Spirit by the Father alone, as early as his apodictic treatises on the Holy Spirit. 95 From the
beginning, Palamas argued that a certain aspect of the Latin doctrine of the filioque proved to
be a misapplication of their theology of the mission of the Holy Spirit and of its grace. Such
an error occurred by assuming that what is true of the Son sending the Spirit in the created
order must necessarily be paralleled in the Spirit’s production before creation. This criticism
directly applies to Thomas Aquinas’s argumentation and, as such, represents Palamas
responding to Dominican Thomist missionary prosyletization around fourteenth-century
Thessalonica, or perhaps stories on the same subject and argumentation related him by brethren
exposed to Dominicans in Constantinople.
Whatever the case, Gregoras took up the Barlaamitico-Akindynist position and carried
on its resistance in the capital as the third in succession of archetypes of anti-Palamism.
Gregoras had only begun officially to adhere to the anti-Palamite party in 1346 due to the
promptings of Empress Anna of Savoy, before her political warming to Palamas as her
94
Gregorios Palamas, Confession of the Orthodox Faith, in Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian
Tradition, 2 vols., Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian
Tradition, ed. J. Pelikan and V. Hotchkiss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 2.4:376 (sec. 3).
95
Palamas 2010b, 11–13 (GPS 1:87–90).
39
mediator between her son and John Katakuzenos in 1347. While Anna of Savoy lessened and
then practically ceased her politically motivated opposition toward Palamas in 1347, Gregoras
maintained his principled and theological opposition. 96 As a result of Gregoras’s opposition to
Patriarch Isidore’s liturgical reform and his anti-Palamism, Palamas engaged in formal debates
against him in the capital in 1348. As the positions and the acrimony of the loosely organized
group of anti-Palamites (who were conjoined for a number of political and religious reasons)
hardened, John Katakuzenos convoked what can be termed a synod (in the sense that there was
both an open and closed gathering, the first allowing freedom of discussion of opponents, while
the second was restricted to the Orthodox). 97 This session or conciliar convocations took place
on May 28, May 30, June 8, and June 9, 1351. The dogmatically-formulated decree proposed
the following complementary teachings – reaffirming the doctrines of the Synodical Tome of
1347 – as follows:
(1.) A distinction (διάκρισις) exists between God’s essence and his energies; 98
(2.) This energy is, in each instance, uncreated; 99
(3.) No composite (σύνθετον) being results from this bifurcated reality of the one undivided
godhead; 100
(4.) The notion of essence is somehow overlying (ὑπερκεῖσθαι) the underlying energy; 101
(5.) Humans can participate in the energy, but not in the essence of God. 102
While Gregoras’s condemnation quickly led to the incorporation of the decrees of the
aforementioned synod into the Byzantine liturgy in the Synodikon, recited on the first Sunday
of Great Lent, political vicissitudes allowed Gregoras to remain an influential person at the
court of Emperor John V Palaiologos. However, he did not long survive Palamas, dying within
about a year of Palamas’s demise (c. 1358).
0.9 The Fifth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Kydones
96
97
98
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople 2016c, 4.1:191–199.
99
100
101
102
40
Demetrios Kydones is well known in Byzantine circles as the learned humanist-turned-
Thomist who – after publishing his editio princeps of Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles on
Christmas Eve of 1354 – likely recruited his younger hieromonk brother, Prochoros Kydones
(1333–c. 1369/71), into the ranks of Byzantine Thomists along with himself. These anti-
Palamistic theologians date from the period of the doctrinal controversies over Hesychasm,
taking their cue from the pet cause of Gregory Palamas. At first glance it seems strange that
Thomism could have imposed itself very forcefully on Byzantium when it was still a fledgling
school in the Latin West. Frater Thomas, or more accurately, some of his propositions were
condemned by authorities within the Latin Church twice in 1277. Subsequently, he was
canonized only in 1323 after fierce controversies in the Latin Church over his doctrines. 103
Even following his apotheosis, a full vindication of divus Thomas had to wait until 1334, when
upon the death of his most powerful critic, fellow Dominican Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, the
master general of the order insisted on the friars holding the “solid doctrines” of Thomas. 104
Significantly, during these controversial years, a number of notable Dominican divines refused
to accept “Brother Thomas” as their luminary either in whole or in part. 105 Nonetheless,
following the death of (Blessed) Raymond of Capua (†1399), Thomism secured its place
within the whole of the order. It was Raymond’s forceful imposition of Thomas Aquinas within
the numerous houses he zealously reformed that assured that Thomas became truly the
Common Doctor of the order. In light of these controversies it is no surprise that there was
only a gradual adoption of Thomism by both the Dominicans and the wider Latin Church. 106
These historical facts make it all the more surprising that Thomas’s fame and his teaching
swept Byzantium in the 1350s: 107
103
Torrell 1996, 321–324.
104
Even if Thomas’s defense was officially taken up in the general chapter of the order in 1286, a cohesive
“Thomist school” only supervenes the “cafeteria Thomism” of many theologians of the time (both within and
without the Dominican Order) around 1350. See Lowe 2003, 52–53, 56, 81. It was in 1346 that Pope Clement
VI publicly recognized that Thomas’s teaching was beginning to transcend the confines of the Dominican
Order, which phenomenon also encouraged Clement’s proclamation to the Dominican general chapter. In the
same year, he declared that no friar was to dare to depart from Thomas’s teaching. See Wallace, Weisheipl, and
Johnson 2003, 14:23.
105
Torrell 1996, 310–316.
106
For an in-depth understanding of the variations and “cafeteria” Thomism that was often encountered during
the first generation of Thomism, see Roensch 1964. The author is able to find a general agreement of some
basic tenets of physics and metaphysics that most early Thomists defended.
107
For a list of the various authors and their Thomistic works in Byzantium, see Benakis 2002, 527–537.
41
Πάντως δε ἤδη τὸν Θωμᾶν οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖ, καὶ τῷ πλήθει τῶν συνγγραμμάτων καὶ τῷ τῶν
ἐννοιῶν μετεώρῳ καὶ τῇ τῶν συλλογισμῶν ἀνάγκῃ, μεθ᾽ἧς πάντα ἔπεισι, καὶ τοῖς ἔξω Στηλῶν
οἰκοῦσι γνώριμον ὄντα (There is almost nobody who by now does not know of Thomas. Both
by the quantity of his writings and by the lofty nature of his thought, as well as by the logical
necessity of his syllogisms with which he treats of everything, his fame is even to the dwellers
outside the Pillars [of Hercules]) 108
The efforts of the Dominicans in Constantinople, as well as their most famous convert
Demetrios Kydones, were able to inspire a first period of Scholasticism in the Greek East that
endured until it was derailed by Orthodox religious and secular authorities toward the end of
the fourteenth century. 109
The Dominicans had already established a convent in Constantinople early on in the
thirteenth century (c. 1226). 110 Their early work in Constantinople waxed and waned.
Sometimes expelled by anti-unionists, while at other times welcomed by unionists, the
Dominicans eventually took up their abode in Pera outside Constantinople (1299). 111 In Pera
the Dominican Order was able to establish an impressive studium generale soon to produce
multiple apologetic works in its efforts to win over the high society of Constantinople. The
studium’s intensive activity was directed toward an eventual reunion of the Greek and Roman
Churches following the aftermath of the ineffectual Second General Council of Lyons (1274).
Curiously, the term studium (generale) can be traced back to papal legislation to designate an
officially organized school of higher learning only late (c. 1245) vis-à-vis the term
“university.” 112 Despite the eventually strict sense in which the term was taken, studium
generale was a term generically employed to designate a school of higher learning (trivium,
quadrivium, theology, and law) that had explicit papal (or imperial) sanction. 113 This privilege
108
See Kydones 1931a, 362.
109
Barbour (1993, 38), when referring generally to Thomism in the East, gratuitously asserts that “Byzantine
Thomism is not, as in the West, a school or intellectual movement.” This seems unsustainable. Cf., for example,
Plested 2012. Barbour bases this opinion on another gratuitous assertion: “Historically, Thomism arrived so
late in Byzantine intellectual history that there was little chance of its penetration to the point of becoming a
school of thought with its own development and creative production.” This too will be shown to be untenable
in light of the extensive literary production during this period under study.
110
Loenertz 1935, 332–349.
111
Delacroix-Besnier 1997, 5, 10.
112
Mulchahey 1998, 352–353.
113
It should be noted that the Dominican studium differed from the studia generalia, in that it did not have the
power to grant a student the power to teach ubique. Furthermore, these studia were restricted to teaching only
42
bestowed on it a universal recognition and academic privileges that were coveted by all
Western educators involved in higher learning during the medieval period. 114 By 1290 the
Dominicans had only established six of these studia generalia throughout their provinces. 115
The obvious expense and demands of anything from food to property made the founding and
maintaining of a school a hefty undertaking. It was, therefore, no surprise that the Dominicans
in the missionary province of Greece were exempted from the general law to erect a studium. 116
Shortly after such an exemption, a studium generale was nevertheless erected in Pera near the
order’s two convents, one for men and the other for women. 117 Additionally, in 1333, the
Dominican chapter of Dijon ordered the erection of a studium linguarum at Pera. 118 This dual
combination of studia meant that a complex repertoire of courses and learned friars was
undoubtedly located at the Pera convent. It is this very school that channeled the influx of
Thomistic thought into Byzantine theology, deeply affecting every aspect of religious life in
the mid-fourteenth century until its forceful uprooting around the opening of the fifteenth
century. 119 As a result of intense Thomistic study, and not a few conversions to Latin
Christianity, two generations of Greek Thomists were about to find themselves embroiled in a
then current doctrinal controversy.
For his part, Prochoros was a vociferous and pugnacious theologian, especially true as
regards his opposition to the most recent trends in the monastic movement around the environs
of Mt. Athos and Constantinople, that is, Hesychasm. 120 Demetrios only took up his polemical
pen against Palamites after Prochoros began having ecclesiastical troubles for his theological
positions. 121 Prochoros’s lack of moderation in theological discussion was to win him special
mention of condemnation in synodical proceedings of the endêmousa synod of the Orthodox
Church. 122 His pertinacious opposition to Palamas was to assure him an immemorial place in
theology. For the differences between the “normal” studium and that of the Dominicans, see Mulchahey 1998,
352–384.
114
Mulchahey 1998, 356–358.
115
Mulchahey 1998, 362–363.
116
Mulchahey 1998, 362.
117
Delacroix-Besnier 1997, 10–11.
118
Loenertz 1937, 1:76-77.
119
Russell 2003, 171–172.
120
For a thesis propounding that the Hesychasts had innovated in the theology of grace and had an imperfect
understanding of the distinction between create and increate grace, see Candal 1946, 65–103.
121
Russell 2002, 75–103. An exception to this rule is his defense of his beloved Thomas against Neilus
Cabasilas, mentioned further below.
122
Russell 2003, 153.
43
the list of heresiarchs cursed every year during the Sunday of Orthodoxy. 123 Prochoros sealed
his fate not only with respect to his monastic and canonical status within the Byzantine
Church, 124 but even with respect to the fate of Thomists for the rest of the century in
Byzantium. 125 Prochoros’s fortunes, and those of Thomas, went hand in hand during the rise
and fall of the first school of Thomism in Byzantium. 126 Especially important was the fact that
Prochoros made the explicit point of citing both Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas in
support of his positions contra Orthodoxy. 127
As with Prochoros and Demetrios Kydones, a century after the Palamite controversies
had ensued (1340s), Markos of Ephesus and Scholarios both bore witness to the fact that, still
in their day, principally two doctrines separated the Eastern Churches from the Western: first
was the filioque and second was the Latin error of not making a real distinction between the
attributes and the essence of God. 128 Prochoros Kydones certainly fomented the Byzantine
internecine struggle against his fellow Orthodox who were Hesychasts. 129 In this he spoke for
quite a few humanists and apophaticists and the lion’s share of the Thomists. 130 As a simple
Athonite hieromonk, he even had managed to cultivate a devoted group of disciples on Mt.
Athos, 131 all the while gaining fame as a translator of Latin texts. However, once Prochoros
was denounced to the patriarch of Constantinople, the baton of leadership quickly passed from
Prochoros to his elder brother and defender, Demetrios. 132 Prochoros had caused a great stir
on Mt. Athos by continuing to support a sectarian group of so-called Akindynists (floruit c.
1360) on the Holy Mountain and virulent opposition to all things Palamite. 133 Demetrios’s
erudite reputation, his nearly unassailable position among three successive emperors, as well
123
Russell 2003, 162.
124
Russell 2002, 70–92.
125
Tyn 1974, 846.
126
Russell 2003, 171–173.
127
For citations from Augustine, see Endêmousa Synod, Testi I. Il Tomo sinodale del 1368, in Gregorio
Palamas e oltre: Studi e documenti sulle controversie teologiche del xiv secolo bizantino, Orientalia Venetiana
16, ed. Antonio Rigo (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2004), 87-89 (e.g., Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate 1.13.28).
For Prochoros’s citations from Aquinas’s ST see Triantafyllopoulos 2012, 415–417.
128
Scholarios and Aquinas 1931a, 1–2.
129
Russell 2003, 161.
130
For an extensive list of those (philosophers, theologians, ecclesiastics and persons of high society) in
communication with the brothers Kydones, and their intellectual influence on Byzantine men and women of
letters, see Delacroix-Besnier 1997, 715–761.
131
Russell 2002, 76–77.
132
Russell 2002, 76.
133
For the documentation recording the presence of Akindynists on Athos, see Rigo 2004, 3–5. For a history
of the rather unedifying series of events leading to Prochoros’s condemnation, see Russell 2002, 75–92.
44
as his personal virtue, secured for him the natural leadership of the anti-Palamite party. Yet all
this he took upon himself quite reluctantly. Prior to this, by 1365, Prochoros was causing a
scandal at the Lavra of Jacob Trikanas (bis regnavit January 1351–c. 1353 & c. 1361–1 April
1368). 134 After Prochoros’s ordination in 1363 (in fact most of them between 1366–1368), he
likely produced many of his translations of Augustinian, as well as of Scholastic, works.
Because of Prochoros’s choice of texts that were useful for opposing Palamas’s doctrine of the
divine light, he unsurprisingly came under suspicion by James Trikanas, and Patriarch
Philotheos Kokkinos was formally involved with the problem by October 8, 1364. 135 The
records show a long and detailed investigation and an attempt to restrain the diffusion of
Prochoros’s doctrines by reciting aloud the Synodikon, as supplemented with the anathemas
drawn from the Synod of 1351, during Lent of 1366. What is more, the documents sent by
Philotheos with respect to Palamism also supported the notion of liturgically commemorating
Palamas. 136 Initially, Prochoros bent to the will of his superior and Orthodox monks who had
not been expelled and signed onto the anathemas of 1351 but he reneged almost immediately
afterwards. Thereupon, what were likely writings of Barlaam and Akindynos were found in
his cell, whereupon these were confiscated and sent to the patriarch. For his part, Prochoros
wrote to the patriarch and promised to deliver him his own writings, which he did only after
137
his arrival in Constantinople in June of 1367. Prochoros not only provoked his
condemnation by continuing to write polemical and derisive statements about his superior and
fellow monks, but also vehemently opposed any liturgical celebration in honor of Palamas, all
the while refusing to retract or submit to the Synodical Tome of 1351. 138 Ultimately,
Prochoros’s letter-writing campaign resulted in a joint anathema issued by the hegumens of
the Holy Mountain (c. April–June 1367) in union with their local bishop David of Hierissos. 139
Quite clearly, the first and central point of the hegumens, against the Byzantine Thomist
Prochoros, concerns the distinction between essence and energy in the divinity. 140 Perhaps, in
this quasi-official work (subsequently, if partially, incorporated into the Synodal Tome of
134
Rigo 2004, 6–7.
135
Rigo 2004, 22–23.
136
Rigo 2004, 28–30.
137
Rigo 2004, 31–32.
138
Rigo 2004, 35–37.
139
See the critical edition of this text and its introduction in Hegumens of Athos 2004, 135–147.
140
Hegumens of Athos 2004, 145.
45
1368), the most striking statement for the purposes of anticipating George-Gennadios
Scholarios’s doctrine is in the following: “ταὐτόν τε καὶ ἀδιάφορον παντελῶς οἰομένοις τήν τε
θείαν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν θείαν ἐνέργειαν [...] ἀναθέμα.” Finally, as the evidence proliferated,
Patriarch Kokkinos focused in on three dogmatic areas of condemnation: (1.) Prochoros’s
doctrine of Tabor-light, (2.) his doctrine on the internal essence-energies of God, and (3.) his
use of syllogisms in theology. 141 With respect to the central doctrine at stake in Scholarios’s
time, this will return to the first point (though not entirely neglecting the second), so that
Scholarios composed two treatises to continue and promote the real distinction between
essence and energy in God. For its part, the Synodical Tome of 1368 developed the doctrine of
Damascene:
Τοῦ γὰρ θεοφόρου πατρὸς Ἰωάννου τοῦ Δαμασκηνοῦ λέγοντος οὑτωσὶ διαῤῥήδην· Ἱστέον ὡς
ἄλλο ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια, καὶ ἄλλο ἐνεργητικόν, καὶ ἄλλο ἐνέργημα, καὶ ἐνεργοῦν, ἐκεῖνός φησι
ὅτι· ἐπεὶ μὲν τῶν ὄντων ἀληθὲς τὸ ἄλλο, καὶ ἄλλο πράγματα διακρίνειν, οὐ διὰ τὸ ἄλλο καὶ
ἄλλο απλῶς, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο ταῦτα πρᾶγμα τυγχάνειν· οὐδὲ γὰρ εἴ τι ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο
κατὰ τὸν λόγον, καὶ κατὰ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο, ὥσπερ οὐκ εἰ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἐπιστητὸν
ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο κατὰ τὸν λόγον, ἂν τύχοι τὸ αὐτὸ ὂν καὶ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἐπιστητόν, ἤδη τὸ αὐτὸ
καὶ κατὰ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο […] οὐκ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει πρόεισιν ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ,
ἵνα ἄλλο ᾖ τὸ ἐνεργητικὸν κατὰ το πρᾶγμα, καὶ ἄλλο τὸ ἐνεργοῦν. Μεταβάλλει γὰρ καὶ
πρόεισιν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀτελοῦς ἐπὶ τὸ τέλειον. Καὶ πάλιν ἐν ἑτέρῳ δεῖξαι βουλόμενος ὅτι οὐκ ἔχει
ὁ Θεὸς ἐνέργειαν φυσικὴν καὶ οὐσιώδη, ἀλλ᾽ οὐσία μόνον ἐστί, μετὰ πολλὰ λέγει καὶ τοῦτο,
ὅτι· ὥσπερ ἡ μὴ ἀπέχρη ἡ οὐσία τοῦ πνεύματος πρὸς πάντα ἀλλ᾽ ἔδει ταύτῃ τινῶν ἐνεργειῶν
ὑποδεεστέρων πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὄντων γένεσιν. Καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ, μηδαμῶς μετέχειν τοῦ Θεοῦ τοὺς
ἀνθρώπους κατασκευάζουν, τοιάδε φησίν. 142
Most importantly, we notice the emphasis on the divine essence-energies distinction as
doctrine that the Thomist Prochoros Kydones absolutely denies. Secondly, such a doctrine
logically leads to the denial of participation in any aspect of God’s inner life, since Prochoros
envisions God as a monadic, impenetrable, and an inaccessible essence, such that the Spirit
does not put humans in contact with his energetic processions, but only with a created habit
141
Endêmousa Synod, Testi I. Il Tomo sinodale del 1368, 106–107, 117–121, 129.
142
Endêmousa Synod, Testi I. Il Tomo sinodale del 1368, 106.
46
(ἕξις). 143 Finally, I note that – though there are many senses of the word “power” or δύναμις –
Prochoros is condemned for framing Palamite theology in the terms of act/potency,
actus/potentia, or ἐνέργεια/δύναμις, where δύναμις signifies principally material or what is
able to be made something other than the thing or state in which it is now. Obviously, when
Orthodox such as Damascene speak of God’s “power” this is not the crude material sense (viz.,
a subjective potency) in which they speak, nor do Orthodox predicate or categorize God’s
energies as being modification of a being who is a form-matter, act-potency, combination. We
shall see Scholarios directly addressing these concerns in his works on Palamistic theology of
God. In fact, we shall see that Scholarios’s preoccupation about the essence-energies doctrine
is almost exclusively concerned with this act-potency discussion, since this is the doctrine that
Dominicans and Thomists of the fifteenth century were principally interested in at the Council
of Florence, where they sought from Pope Eugene IV a formal condemnation of alleged errors
of Palamite theology of God. Before introducing the reader to the historical Scholarios and his
writings, I should like to conclude by drawing attention to the fact that the essence-energies
doctrine was discussed by Gregory Palamas and the Synodical Tome of 1368 within the context
of not only Trinitarian theology, but of pneumatology. Hence, an application of Palamism to
the debate on the filioque did exist, but mainly had to do with emphasizing the fact that the
divine distinctions – or divisions of the godhead into Father, Son, and Spirit – were not the
only possible properties in the divinity, but that something more than “relations of opposition”
were present, provided that these were distinctions not of a personal but of an essential
character belonging to the divine essence.
143
Endêmousa Synod, Testi I. Il Tomo sinodale del 1368, 106.
47
48
Chapter One: The Historical Reception of George-Gennadios Scholarios
1. Latin Reception of Scholarios in Western Europe until Modern Times
To grasp the status quaestionis with respect to modern Scholarian studies in theology
and on the particular question of the essence-energies debate, the present disquisition shall
provide the reader with an overview of Roman Catholic historical views of Scholarios until the
well-known period of Jugie’s and Guichardan’s publications on Palamas’s doctrine of the
essence and energies along with its Scholarian reception. My theological chronicle will help
unearth the presuppositions behind Jugie’s approach to the totum of the Scholarian corpus, as
well as those of his junior co-religionist, Guichardan. The present investigation will also serve
to explain how Orthodox reception of Scholarios underwent its own radically negative shift in
a very short period of time. As we shall see, historical discoveries of scholars led to the fusion
of the formerly separate identities of the pre-monastic “George Scholarios” (c. 1400–1449/50)
with the post-monastic “Gennadios Scholarios” (1449/50–c. 1472). Formerly, scholars had
presupposed the existence of two persons: a pro-unionist and an anti-unionst Scholarios, each
of whom was assumed to exist as separate hypostases. This incorrect thesis was equally held
among both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox writers well before some modern Orthodox
apologists were tempted to erase Scholarios from the heroic annals of Orthodoxy.
I begin our journey into the history of chronicling Scholarios by referring to the
testimony of one of his most celebrated admirers. Before Scholarios disappeared from the
historical scene c. 1472, the renowned poet Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) immortalized his
Constantinopolitan colleague of youth in poetic verse:
To Gennadios Scholarios who is also the Metropolitan τῶν Φαιρῶν:
Hail, old man, you whom the Epic Muse in the land of Vyzas touched for my sake while I
myself was young! I am he who was guest long ago, arrived at welcoming home[...]. Behold
thou in the way that I am now, Father. For at what do you marvel, having taken a look? Hence,
Francesco Filelfo, whom, therefore, do you see, for time is also always fleeting. Give your
hand, o sweet hand, to us! Yet, lead [...] show, in what manner our water doth have the
49
character of a youthful Muse. How are the springs of the Muses? How are thine? Tell me, thy
friend, all precisely, for I am friend of commonly shared things. Is there room for the Muses
before you? [...] While I am silent, do thou consider all these things, o Gennadios, for the
herald, soon to come, this one shall speak it too. Yet, send thou too quickly your bemused
letter, which shows your friend thy worthy musings about all matters. 144
Above, Filelfo went on to note not only that he had reestablished contact with his beloved
friend after the fall of the Polis in 1453, but also that he had spoken of his yearnings for a return
to beloved Constantinople in order to dwell thereabouts with his friend, now counselor and
advisor to the Sultan Mehmet II.
In a like vein, public curiosity about Scholarios’s person and work in the next century
auspiciously coincided with several themes in Filelfo’s poem, where Filelfo spoke to his old
friend about the Sultan’s need to consult sages (i.e., Scholarios) for their knowledge and
advice. Western publishers of printed books took up, among other things, Scholarios’s
confession of faith before Sultan Mehmet II, fascinated as they were by what Renaissance
readers surmised to be Scholarios’s heroic evangelization of the infidel. 145 Given the variety
of works attributed to the famed Scholarios, it did not take long for his real literary production
to become confused with pseudepigraphy by Renaissance publishers.
Hence, it is worthwhile for us to touch upon the checkered history of printeries and
apologists who published parts of what they thought was the Scholarian corpus in these years.
One of Ps.-Scholarios’s earliest works sent to press was a pseudepigraphous collection of five
discourses in defense of Latin doctrines defined at the Council of Florence. 146 On this score,
sixteenth-century editors afterward published Scholarios’s rhetorical exercise (in defense of
the filioque), which reflected a spirited, if friendly, forensic contest between Markos of
Ephesus and himself, in anticipation of the Council of Florence. 147 Taken together, these
homogenous strands of real and pseudepigraphous philolatin treatises within Scholarios’s
overall heterogenous corpus successfully convinced Roman Catholics to see Scholarios as
144
Francesco Filelfo, Γενναδίῳ Γεωργίῳ τῷ Σχολαρίῳ τῷ καὶ μητροπολίτῃ τῶν Φαιρῶν, in Filelfo 1892, 214–
215.
145
These editions were multiple in the early fifteenth century. For example, see Scholarios 1530. For the
background and repute of this work, see Jugie 1931a, 295–314.
146
More than one edition of his pseudepigraphous works was printed in the sixteenth century. The earliest
appears to be Ps.-Scholarios 1539.
147
Scholarios 1583.
50
some sort of a crypto-Catholic. About this time, Scholarios’s hyperbolized pro-Florentine
pedigree gained permanent traction upon printing Scholarian pro-union sermons, along with
coeval Acta of the Council of Florence. 148 Scholarios’s reputation as defender of what was
essentially Thomistic theology at the Council of Florence enhanced Latins’ esteem for him in
sixteenth-century apologetics as a Counterreformation ally. For example, Scholarios’s
Thomistically-inspired work on predestination was disseminated widely. 149
In this atmosphere, it comes as no surprise that Scholarios generally avoided
ecclesiastical censure. His works, whether authentic or misattributed, enjoyed considerable
popularity. Contrariwise, Scholarios’s hero Gregorios Palamas (1296–1357/9) was the subject
of derision in Latindom. 150 Whereas Scholarios’s Palamism had escaped the notice of
Counterreformation Roman-Catholic theologians, Palamas himself was all the while gaining
infamy for his synodical condemnation (1444) published in the second quarter of the
seventeenth century. 151 A native Greek of Chios, Leo Allatius (c. 1586–1669) was responsible
for introducing the latinophone world to original texts and translations of Palamas. 152
Palamas’s opposition to the filioque predictably subjected him to denigration within Latin
annals. This common anti-Latin stance naturally encouraged Latin theologians to scour
Palamas for other errors so as to lessen a reader’s esteem for yet another anti-filioquist. This
common hermeneutic of suspicion easily led theologians to proffer a second alleged dogmatic
error concerning Palamas’s doctrine of the godhead. Curiously, though Allatius accurately
drew his reader’s attention to Palamas’s triumph in 1368 under the patronage of the former
hagiorite, Philotheos Kokkinos, Leo managed only to mythologize Scholarios:
148
Scholarios and Roman Catholic Church 1577.
149
George-Gennadios Scholarios, De praedestinatione, ed. David Hoeschel (Augustae Vindelicorum: n.p.,
1594).
150
Rigo 1993, 155–202; Sinkewicz 2002, 133–181, expresses the satisfaction of specialists and Byzantinists
who redate Palamas’s death to 1357. However, I provide the traditionally accepted date of his death familiar to
scholars for decades in order to draw attention to the disparity and the acceptation among historians and
Byzantinists of the new dating.
151
Allatius 1648, 820–824.
152
Allatius 1648, 820–824 (see also Runciman 1968, 143):
Although [Barlaam and Akindynos] were bitterly pursuing the infamous Palamas, they were not
getting along among themselves. [. . .] The books of more recent Greeks are full of these matters.
However, I myself shall add what items are not obvious to all. [Here he reproduces Akindynos’s
passages.] We have cited many items about Palamas’s errors and heresies, but – lest we seem totally
wanting in elegance on this most ill-reported man – let the reader possess for himself the tome of
condemnation of the same. [Thereafter follows the condemnation of 1344 and a published sermon
against Palamas in Greek].
51
However, some among the Greeks have also placed this man [Palamas] of the poorest quality
right among the saints – as if he is also one distinguished from among the saints and doctors –
and, having edited hymns and songs, they began to celebrate him in the Church. Even now
they also celebrate him. There are references to these items in the famous Triodion, to which
Philotheos, Patriarch of Constantinople, has badly arranged [...] ] Inattentiveness on the part of
the editor or compiler of the title of two orations – of which Palamas had been author in Tome
nine of the Bibliotheca Patrum [1624] – calls him: “most saintly.” On this score, Patriarch [Ps.-
]Gennadios maximally disapproved, when addressing Greeks on behalf of the Council of
Florence: “O most disgraceful and stupid Greeks, you adjudge saints all people, if only they
speak against Latins; among many others, indeed, a certain one who is called Palamas, even
Markos of Ephesus, who is not a man even possessed of sanity, but a swollen showboat of
wisdom [...]” 153
Allatius had simply accepted the pro-Latin identity of Scholarios, even pitting him directly
against his beloved abecedary, Markos of Ephesus! Afterward, citing Ps.-Scholarios, Allatius
noted that only Thessalonica and Mount Athos maintained constant veneration of Palamas
among the Greeks (inter paucos alios). Along these lines, a famous contemporary of Allatius
wrote: “Concerning the opinion of more recent Greeks, and also the aforementioned Gregorios
Palamas of this sect, they think that the substance (substantia) of God really differentiates
(reipsa differre) his operations (operationes).” 154 The erudite Dionysius Petavius (d. 1652), SJ,
scrutinized Palamites after the manner of the Byzantine Thomist, Demetrios Kydones (1324–
1398), whose putative works Petavius approvingly cited. Firstly, Palamites were described as
crudely separating the godhead from its co-essential attributes. For Petavius, this coincided
with the alleged Scholastic error of John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308). Both Scotus and Palamas
were thought to breathe the same infected air of the olden-condemned Gilbertus Porretanus
155
(1085/90–1154), who had held for a distinction between godhead, or divinity
(deitas/θεότης), and God (Deus/ὁ Θεός). 156 Once again, Scholarios was spared any association
with the putative heresiarch Palamas. Instead, Petavius approvingly cited Scholarios on
153
Allatius 1648, 824.
154
Petavius 1745, 77a–b.
155
Petavius 1745, 63–64, 112–116.
156
In reality, Gilbert of Poitiers particularized all items that composed an essence into discrete individuals. The
particularization of all essences, including God, naturally led to commitments of subsistence implied for each
attribute. Hence, God becomes a collection of particulars. See Marenbon 2002, 264–265.
52
providence, though he did not attempt any comparison between Scholarios’s and Palamas’s
presumably irreconcilable doctrines concerning predestining energies (προορισμοί) in the
mind of God. 157 Otherwise, Petavius only penned an obiter dictum about Scholarios’s
promotion of union at the Council of Florence. By the end of the seventeenth century, Noël
Alexander (1639–1724) expertly compiled extant materials on Scholarios and was finally able
to sift through not a few errors concerning his prosopography. 158 At last, a truer picture of a
committed anti-unionist and anti-filioquist emerged from Alexander’s pages. The Dominican
Alexander – albeit a Gallican anti-papalist – followed his forebears in condemning Palamism
outright. 159 As yet, the ardently Thomistic Alexander had found no reason to implicate
Scholarios in Palamas’s teaching, which Alexander exposited and condemned. Alexander, too,
believed that Scholarios was the author of anti-Orthodox pseudepigraphy, wherein Ps.-
Scholarios was read condemning both Palamas and Markos of Ephesus! 160 Hereafter, on the
authority of Allatius, Petavius, and Alexander, Palamism was naturally catalogued as heresy
among influential theologians of the eighteenth century: “Gregorios Palamas, a Greek monk,
afterwards bishop of Thessalonica, commented upon a certain increate and coeternal light
(lumen) with God, which is certainly able to be contemplated directly with our eyes. Besides,
he was accustomed to say that the very powers of God (in Greek: energeiai) are really distinct
from the essence of God (ab essentia Dei revera distinctas). Likewise, the monk Barlaam and,
thereafter, Akindynos attributed to him the error.” 161 All these aforementioned summaries of
Palamite conflict essentially coincided with another, if long-forgotten, appraisal of one John
157
Petavius 1745, 348.
158
Socius Academiarum Ecclesiasticarum Lucensis et Auximanae, Alexander, et al. 1762, 308, 317, 339–347.
159
Alexander 1684, 396–405.
160
Along with Demetrios Kydones and the Synodal Tome of 1368 and a host of new sources, Alexander cited
Manuel Kalekas in Alexander 1684, 396–405. Palamas’s errors are listed as follows: (1) There is an increate
glory of God, (2) that is seen with the human eye, (3) i.e., the Tabor-light is this light, (4) which is an operatio
in God as a distinct res from the substance of God, (5) which essentially causes this presumably inferior res,
(6) for the substance cannot be communicated to creatures but its operation, (7) which actions (actiones)
Schoolmen call “virtually transitive” (virtualiter transeuntes), as creation and conservation, and (8) even
wisdom and goodness that are distinct from the substance, whose items are called Deitates. For the citation of
Ps.-Scholarios, see Alexander 1684, 404–405. Kalekas’s famous description of Palamism, similarly and
independently cited at the Council of Florence, names the attributes thus in John Torquemada’s Apparatus, 86
(sec. 102): “There is a certain light (lumen), which is divine and increate, and the saints call it Godhead (Deitas),
but it is not the substance of God, but an operation (operatio), and grace (gratia), and glory (gloria), and
splendor (splendor) from the divine substance sent into the saints.”
161
For the entire discussion, see Duplessis D’Argentre 1727, 323a-b: “The judicial sentences of the Greeks
concerning Gregorios Palamas have been written out in a Greek Orthodox tome in Allatius, Ecclesiae . . .,
(tome 01) 756 and (tome 02) 828. [Dionysios] Petavius even differs on this account in Opus De theologicis
dogmatibus, tome 1, chap. 12 and in N. Alexander, Historia Ecclesiae . . .”
53
of Torquemada, OP, who had written on the matter shortly after the Greeks signed onto
ecclesiastical union with the papal bull Laetentur caeli (July 6, 1439). By 1440, Torquemada
had compiled the, by now, traditional Dominican view of Palamism in the form of a
condemnation:
Here follows a declaration and definition of article six on the Greco-Latin controversy about
the beatific vision, which concerns the souls of the saints (once they are dissolved from their
bodies) that they have from God before the day of judgment. [...] After the matter was maturely
and diligently debated concerning this controversy [...] thus is the definition in summary,
comprising two parts: [a.] namely, (immediately after those saints are dissolved from their
bodies) that the souls of the just, about whom the preceding article treated, see clearly and [see]
the true God, three and one, just as he is; [b.] that the saints see more perfectly than others on
account of the diversity of their merits [...] Concerning “God three and one”: This is written
against those saying that beatitude (beatitudo), glory (gloria), or final happiness (felicitas
ultima) of men does not consist in the vision of God himself. Rather [they say it consists] of
some other entity (entitas), which is thought to be really distinct from the very divine essence
(essentia), or as the Greeks call it, “energy” (energia), or “act” (actus), or “illumination”
(fulgor). 162
Though Thomasian authors of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries had universally overlooked
the Palamite conflict at the Council of Florence, as well as available Dominican and Thomistic
calls for condemnation of Palamas at the same, Thomasian theologians of later centuries
unknowingly overlapped with Florentine Thomists in their assessments of Palamas. The only
new addition to Thomasian manuals of theology happened to be the stringent association of
the putative errors of John Duns Scotus with those of Gregorios Palamas. 163
The die had been cast so that Palamas’s legacy was listed – though unofficially vis-à-vis the
papal magisterium and curia – as heretical in episcopally-approved Roman Catholic
theological texts. These works canonically required ecclesiastical imprimatur for printing and
consequently carried a certain moral weight, which became cumulatively graver as the
centuries advanced. All the same, the seventeenth century marked a time for revision of the
story of Scholarios, wherein a dissertation was printed that definitively chronicled George-
162
John Torquemada, Apparatus, 86 (sec. 101, lines 3–5; 102.30–34).
163
Duplessis D’Argentre 1727, 286a, 323a–b.
54
Gennadios Scholarios as having first been a unionist at Florence and, thereafter, the self-same
Scholarios rejected the Florentine union upon his return to Constantinople. 164
Because it took time for scholars to come to grips with Scholarios’s ever-widening
corpus, Gennadios entered into the nineteenth century accompanied only by an entourage of
praise sung by more than three centuries of Roman Catholic authors. The question, by the
second half of the nineteenth century, became one of reconciliation between the age-old
Thomistic George and nouveau Palamite Gennadios. No longer was any recourse made to two
different men using the name of Scholarios since a new series of texts was soon to enjoy
general acclaim among the scholars of the day. Upon the arrival of Migne’s immortal
Patrologia Graeca, its relative accuracy dispelled competing historical narratives in the favor
of Renaudot’s thesis. Consequently, multiple personality “Scholarii” were eliminated,
reducing up to three mythical creatures into but one man, meanwhile calling the main
pseudepigraphies under Scholarios’s name into serious doubt. Simultaneously, Scholarios’s
fame was given new luster by modern philosophers in an age when Scholarios became a
celebratory figure as if a liability to Roman Catholic apologetics to modernity. Secularist
scholars stoked public interest in Renaissance humanism and, consequently, the debate
between George-Gennadios Scholarios and George Gemistos Pletho on the resurrected
question of Aristotle versus Plato. 165 Interest in Scholarios’s humanistic, philosophical
pedigree burgeoned subsequently with erudite studies. 166 By now, Migne’s judicious editing,
selecting out formerly and falsely attributed works, clearly revealed Scholarios as someone
committed as an ally of Markos of Ephesus and the Palamite tradition. Consequently, more
sagacious grecophiles, at the end of the nineteenth century, needed to revise their narratives
for the upcoming century. Whereas Allatius had proposed the narrative of two “Scholarii” (one
pro- and another contra-Florence), Roman Catholics psychologically and apologetically
desired to press the newly discovered unified Scholarios into service to bear a fully Greek and
a fully Latin soul for the sake of returning the “dissident” Greeks to Roman obedience. One of
the more able Roman Catholic Byzantinists wrote:
164
Renaudot 1709.
165
Gass 1844.
166
Alexandre 1858; and Tozer 1886, 353–380.
55
[Scholarios] was the best of the old school of polemical writers and one of the greatest. Unlike
most of his fellows he had an intimate acquaintance with Latin controversial literature,
especially with St. Thomas Aquinas and the Schoolmen. He was as skillful an opponent of
Catholic theology as Markos Eugenikos, and a more learned one. His writings show him to be
a student [...] of the great Hesychast question (he attacked Barlaam and defended the monk;
naturally, the Barlaamites were λατινόφρονες [sic]) [and] of all the questions that were
important in his time. 167
The English divine, Fortescue, had not only accurately portrayed the whole of Scholarios’s
illustrious career, but also drew attention to the existence of his works on Hesyschasm, which
were numbered among those in serious need of a printed edition. Fortescue presented his
encyclopedic reader with an enigma of how to reconcile oriental theovision with Thomistic
rationalism. Subsequently, this became the task that the Assumptionist Fathers (i.e., Jugie and
Guichardan) undertook with vigor in succeeding decades.
2. Orthodox Reception of Scholarios within Greek Patriarchates until Modern Times
On the Greek Orthodox side of the equation, Scholarios’s authentic history also proved
to be elusive. After his death in the 1470s, Scholarios’s circle of literati seemed successfully
to hand on the wisdom flowing from the irreplaceable cathedra of Scholarios. 168 The virtual
presence of Scholarios’s thought, not to mention his Thomistic sources, is detectable even in
his less illustrious disciple Matthew Kamariotês (d. c. 1490). 169 Notably, the legacy of
Palamism was handed on via an admirer of Scholarios, Manuel the Rhetor (d. c. 1551), disciple
of Kamariotês in the patriarchal school. He recognized Palamism’s importance and tenets. 170
167
Fortescue 1913, 416–417. Fortescue’s objectivity in 1909, lacking stereotypical polemics, was not to be
imitated in Jugie and Guichardan in the 1920s–1930s. Fortescue reported that the controversy of the “two
Scholarii” was still raging as late as 1850.
168
For his quasi-school and its membership, see Reinsch 2003, 298–301.
169
Kamariotês 1721. For the relevant works and an edited extract completing the aforementioned work, see
Astruc 1955, 246–264.
170
Manuel the Rhetor 1977, 6–7 (CFDS A.10.2:188–189).
56
Recent evidence shows, too, that Maximos the Greek (d. 1556) had also been well acquainted
with Scholarios’s theological works, which might simply reflect his high quality of education
under the Dominicans in Florence in combination with his residency at Mount Athos before
his definitive mission to Russia. 171 Still, celebrated Orthodox cited Scholarios in succession as
an authority, suggesting his status as spiritual and intellectual διδάσκαλος of polymaths, or at
least of polyglots. His reputation among Greek Orthodox was robust enough, during the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth century, not only to demand that he be published in Orthodox
presses, but also merited him a place alongside Gregorios Palamas. There was absolutely no
reason to divorce the memories of Palamas, Markos of Ephesus, and Scholarios from each
other in Orthodox literature of the age.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the memory of Palamas had been
secured in the Orthodox world via the Triodion in its Synodikon of Orthodoxy, as even Allatius
had attested. Plested has cataloged the formal adherence to essence-energies Palamism that
was briefly confessed in Orthodox-Lutheran exchanges as attested in Patriarch Jeremiah II
Tanos (d. 1596). 172 Jeremiah was ostensibly counseled in Palamism by his theological peritus,
Gabriel Severos (1540–d. 1616), who showed many of the same theological propensities as
Scholarios had held before him. 173 Orthodox theological culture of this time warmly embraced
Scholarios, as Plested has already shown with Jeremiah’s and Severos’s contemporary,
Meletios Pegas (1549–1601). 174 This admixture of the Scholarian corpus with some sort of
Palamism continued to ferment in post-Byzantine Greek Orthodox culture. As we will see,
below, Dositheos of Jerusalem was first to imbibe fully this wine of Scholarian-Palamism,
inspiring him to express his views in his Τόμος καταλλαγῆς (1692) as someone explicitly
familiar with Severos’s and Meletios’s theological works. 175 A generation after Pegas,
Palamas’s homilies and anti-filioquist discourses must have enjoyed some notoriety, as attested
171
Zajc 2014, 67–78.
172
Plested 2012, 142.
173
Jugie 1926–1935, 2:168–169; Plested 2012, 145–146.
174
Plested 2012, 147–149.
175
Dositheos of Jerusalem, Τόμος καταλλαγῆς ἐν ᾧ περιέχονται συγγραφαὶ ἀνωνήμων τινῶν, καὶ Ἰωάννου τοῦ
νομοφύλακος, καὶ Γεωργίου τοῦ κορεσίου, καὶ Μακαρίου ἱερομονάχου τοῦ μακρῆ . . . (Jassy: Demetriou
Padourai, 1692). As the title suggests, Makarios Makres forms part of the collection. He was both a Palamite
and a teacher of Scholarios.
57
by the famous Orthodox divine Metrophanês Kritoboulos. He gave Palamas more than
honorable mention in his profession of faith in 1625, writing: 176
Presently, it is exceedingly marvelous and surprising at the fulfillment of prophecy of our
Father among the Saints, Gregorios Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was called Palamas[...].
He was a divine man having sent many admonitions to the Romans [viz., Roman Catholics].
Afterwards he saw that they were unable to be corrected. He said this through the Spirit: “My
son, it shall pass that the Roman Church shall be divided in many parts” [viz., the Reformation],
and that is what prophetically follows, at whose fulfillment we marvel. 177
Metrophanês knew of Palamas’s fame on the question of prophetic grace and the debate on the
filioque with Rome. The source-text appears doubtful, however, as it is a citation from a
presently unknown passage. Shortly before writing this profession of faith, Metrophanês had
befriended the monk, Nikodemos Metaxas, helping him purchase a printing press in 1623. 178
It was hardly coincidental that Metaxas printed a sampling of Palamas’s discourses two years
later in London. 179 Unsurprisingly, Scholarios’s works were also printed along with his co-
religionist. 180 However, after the death of Metrophanês, one finds precious little with respect
to ex professo Orthodox interest in Palamas. All the same, for his part, Scholarios was
continuously held up as the great champion defending Orthodoxy from Latin theological
hegemony.
The Palamas-Scholarios twinning in printed literature continued to make its appearance
in an impressive number of apologetic and anti-Latin works that were edited by Dositheos of
Jerusalem, especially his Τόμος ἀγάπης. 181 Dositheos had in fact learned with precision about
the heresy of “the Akindynists” by directly relying upon one of Scholarios’s essence-energies
treatises. Furthermore, Dositheos was convinced of Palamas’s Orthodoxy based especially
176
Patterson 2000, 213.
177
Kritopoulos, 1843, 51.
178
Patterson 2000, 211–212.
179
Palamas 1625.
180
Metaxas printed Palamas, Scholarios, and Gabriel Severos (1540–1616) in his first years. Severos used MSS
that he obtained from Scholarios’s library. For these reasons, he seems to have had access to debates on the
beatific vision between Orthodox and Catholics at Florence. See Plested 2012, 145–146.
181
Dositheos of Jerusalem 1698. There are actually three publications in which Dositheos promoted Palamism.
See Plested 2015, 298.
58
upon the exposition of two Scholarian treatises defending the essence-energies doctrine. 182
Dositheos remarked: “[There is a work of Scholarios] also on the discourse of saintly Theodore
Graptos. This is small. Yet, it proves [...] it divides (διαιρεῖ), and makes plain also, in the most
fittingly natural mode, the difference (διαφορὰν) of divine essence and energies.” 183 Dositheos
prefaced his collection of authoritative Orthodox writings by asserting that he was not going
to remain silent and refrain from fighting heresies against the ancestral dogma of “St.”
Gregorios Palamas: 184 “i.e., that the divine energy doesn’t differ from the divine essence
185
according to concept, but only according to reasoning.” Just as originally, so in
contemporary debate, Dositheos refers initially to Basil’s antirrhetic against Eunomius to
justify his meaning surrounding the term “ἐπίνοια.” 186 I will discuss the meaning of this term
in the Palamite debates in a later chapter. For his part, Dositheos drew on a more complicated
tradition, when he referred to the Thomistically-influenced “St.” Theophanes of Nicaea and to
the Thomistically-inclined John Katakuzenos.
Still, Dositheos is very well informed in comparison to anyone else who will be
surveyed until the modern period. He was even privy to the assertion among Latin apologists
that “George” Scholarios was the very same writer as “Gennadios.” Correctly, for his time,
Dositheos rejected the claim of identity between the two Scholarii, insofar as “George” was
correctly identified with not only the authentically pro-union sermons of Scholarios at
Florence, but he was wrongly identified with the falsely attributed writings in defense of the
dogmatic teachings of Florence (containing insults lobbed at Markos of Ephesus to boot!). For
this reason, Dositheos cautiously rejected the conflation of two irreconcilable Scholarii and
their works. Dositheos refers to Prochoros Kydones’s condemnation (Dositheos of Jerusalem
1698, 1, line 31) and even read Markos of Ephesus’s Κεφάλαια συλλογιστικὰ against Manuel
Kalekas, whom he nearly correctly identifies as “the student” of Demetrios Kydones (ibid., 1,
lines 31–33). 187 Dositheos even came across an antirrhetikos logos of “St.” Philotheos
182
Dositheos’s vsersion of Scholarios’s text is reproduced as Scholarios, Γενναδίου ἤτοι Γεωργίου τοῦ
Σχολαρίου πρὸς τινὰ τῶν φίλων ἐρωτήσαντα περὶ τῆς τοῦ μαρκαρίου Θεοδώρου τοῦ Γράπτου ῥήσεως ἀφ᾽ ἧς οἱ
Ἀκινδυνιασταὶ θορυβοῦσιν (PG 160:149–150).
183
Dositheos of Jerusalem 1698, I (= first printed page [in reverse order because of the Arabic printing press
(!)]).
184
Dositheos of Jerusalem 1698, i. line 30.
185
Dositheos of Jerusalem 1698, 1, lines 11–12: “Δὲν διαφέρει τῆς θείας οὐσίας ἡ θεία ἐνέργεια κατὰ τὸν
λόγον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ μόνον ἐπίνοιαν.”
186
Dositheos of Jerusalem 1698, 1, lines 12–13.
187
In fact, Kalekas can only be called an intellectual disciple of Demetrios Kydones.
59
Kokkinos, citing it with approval (ibid., 1, lines 38–41). Dositheos ranked Palamas among the
great saints (like unto Cyril of Alexandria) of the past (ibid., 2, lines 1–7). When Dositheos
returned to his narrative of Palamism, he showed a reasonably well-informed knowledge about
the multiplicity of Palamas’s writings, not excluding his discourses against the Latins (ibid., 8,
lines 1–42). 188
The impressive amount of original material (viz., confessions, creeds, etc.), which
Dositheos published and sent to Constantinople, explains why the Polis upheld Palamism in
response to Roman Catholic apologetics at the Council of Jerusalem (1727). 189 In this
atmosphere, it is no longer difficult to know why Vikentios Damados (1700–1754), an
important Orthodox forerunner of the so-called Modern Greek Enlightenment, felt constrained
to work Palamism into his philosophical and theological works. Even if he made a point to
emphasize his reverence for Palamas in his tome on metaphysics, his real sources have been
uncovered in less impressive detail. Unfortunately, Damados merely plagiarized a majority of
material from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Thomasian Cartesians. 190 His mixture of
Thomism and Cartesianism brought him to refrain from elucidating the nature of the Palamite
distinction. 191 Demetracopoulos’s detailed investigation of Damados’s sources has uncovered
no trace of Scholarios, who would have been the natural expert to consult on the subtleties of
metaphysics with respect to the Palamite distinction. In effect, what little Damados actually
wrote about Palamas can be traced to Petavius, whose tomes Damados may have brought with
him to the Greek islands. Whoever was responsible for modern Greeks’ introduction to
Petavius, nineteenth-century Orthodox curiosity was likely awakened to Palamas among Greek
scholars in a way that Dositheos’s compilation of texts is unattested to have done. Moving
ahead, another of Demetracopoulos’s groundbreaking studies lays the foundation for better
understanding Eugenios Bulgaris’s (1726–1806) intellectual formation, as a likely student of
Damados. 192 Yet, it would be unfair to show prejudice toward Bulgaris for being the pupil of
the more straightforward plagiarist Damados. Nonetheless, attentiveness ought to be exercised
188
Jugie (1926–1935, 2:165–166) did not have access to Dositheos’s works at this time. He left it an open
question as to whether Dositheos was a Palamite since his early writings seemed to affirm a Latin doctrine of
the beatific vision. However, Dositheos (1698, 13–17) quite clearly endorses Tabor light and Palamas’s
exegesis thereof.
189
Dositheos 1692, 3 (page unmarked). Cf. Plested 2015, 298.
190
Demetracopoulos 2014, 5–63.
191
Demetracopoulos 2014, 5–63.
192
Stiernon 2002, 725.
60
in supposing that Bulgaris’s philosophical ideas reflect “his teacher,” when in fact they may
reflect a potpourri of Scholastic and Enlightenment sources from centuries prior. 193 Be that as
it may, Bulgaris managed to embrace Palamism in a less superficial way, as occasioned by his
editing (1767) of the opera omnia of the willy-nilly, Thomistically-influenced-Palamite Joseph
Bryennios (one of Scholarios’s teachers). 194 Furthermore, Bulgaris’s authentic interest in
Palamas was well known among contemporary intelligentsia. One of his correspondents, from
his visits to the academies in Moscow, albeit Prussian, prepared an edition of homilies that he
dedicated and dispatched to Bulgaris. 195 Finally, Bulgaris edited works of both Markos of
Ephesus and Scholarios. 196
Bulgaris’s eclectic, albeit pro-Palamite, heritage has been cataloged in Stiernon and
Plested. 197 In the year of Bulgaris’s passing, the ecumenical patriarchate published a selection
and condensation of Scholarios’s works meant to spur the reader on to authentic Orthodoxy. 198
The branding of Scholarios as someone close to the heart of Orthodoxy was reaffirmed by
Bulgaris’s intellectual heritage. His most famous disciples were Athanasios Parios (d. 1813)
and Nikodemos the Hagiorite (d. 1809). While each sustained an Orthodox commitment to the
essence-energies doctrine of Palamas, Nikodemos quite clearly combined his Palamism with
an admiration for Scholarios. 199 In fact, the editor of Nikodemos’s Scholarian publishing
attributes to Nikodemos himself the condensing of Scholarios’s teaching into forty pithy
chapters. 200 Both disciples of Bulgaris were aware of the original writings of Markos of
193
In fact, Bulgaris seems to have created a hodgepodge, not excluding a positive use of ideas and text of
Aquinas, as shown in Demetracopoulos 2005b, 163–170, 177–183.
194
See Demetracopoulos (2011a, 287–292) for Bryennios’s shifts away from Thomism to a more authentic
Palamism. In Demetracopoulos 2011b, 1–8, he shows where Bulgaris likely incorporated Scholarios’s
translations of medieval Latin logic into his otherwise Latino-Enlightenment translations.
195
The Atticizing Greek used in the dedicatory preface betrays Christian Frederik Matthaei’s employment in
Moscow was likely for teaching philology. See Matthaei 1776, i-iv (unmarked). Bulgaris himself engaged in
philological activities in St. Petersburg, immediately after auditory study of mathematics in Leipzig. Matthaei’s
preface appeals to Bulgaris’s intellectual interests by speaking explicitly about the love of philology and
Hellenism.
196
Stiernon 2002, 750, 755.
197
Stiernon 2002, 721–848; Plested 2015, 298–299.
198
Scholarios 1806.
199
For example, see Parios 1785, 63, 144–147, wherein he extols the person and thought of Scholarios. See
also the impressive preface to the collected works of Palamas (thereafter lost in a fire in Venice) in Nikodemos
the Hagiorite 1883. I thank Tikhon Pino (Marquette) for generously supplying me with this text.
200
See Nikodemos’s Κῆπος χαρίτων ἤτοι ἑρμηνεία γλαφυρὰ εἰς τὰς Θ´ ᾨδὰς τῆς στιχολογίας ἐκ διαφόρων
συνερανισθεῖσα παρὰ τοῦ ἀειμνήστου διδασκάλου Νικοδήμου Ἁγιορείτου ᾑ παρ´αὐτοῦ προσετέθησαν, by George-
Gennadios Scholarios (London: Nicolaus Glykes, 1859).
61
Ephesus and Scholarios, whom especially Nikodemos considered as foundational sources of
the essence-energies doctrine. 201
Thereabout, there was also issued a publication of a somewhat defective version of
Palamas’s sermons in 1857, while another Orthodox press undertook an anthology of texts in
1859. 202 This edition placed side-by-side the texts of Palamas and Scholarios (the latter of
whom is explicitly introduced as the handpicked disciple of Markos of Ephesus). Though the
edition is to be commended for its research into the extant editions of Palamas’s and
Scholarios’s works then available, the introductions also betray the fact that Orthodox writers
were quite unaware of Palamism as something rejected by traditional theological manuals in
the West. Furthermore, though Orthodox on Mount Athos and grecophone regions had
accurately and independently retained the memory of Scholarios’s anti-unionism and of his
unadulterated Orthodoxy, they did not appear explicitly aware of his contributions to Palamite
theology. In fact, in spite of nineteenth-century editions, with their citations of Latin authors
already referred to in the sections above, Greek Orthodox editors – not without anti-Latin
rhetoric – absolutely failed to discover Latin opposition to Palamas and Palamism within the
Roman Catholic literature to which they had access. This suggests that editors had only
familiarity with the substance of the Greek texts they were publishing, but a deficient
understanding of Latin anti-Palamite narratives.
Be that as it may, there was clearly a resurgence of late nineteenth-century interest in
both Palamas and Scholarios among Greek Orthodox writers. This led to some initial Greek
studies on both subjects. Unsurprisingly, Greek Orthodox scholars relied upon their limited,
though accurate, knowledge of the relationship between Scholarios and Markos of Ephesus, as
well as upon Scholarios’s legacy in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, before the
incipient movement of neo-Palamism was able to establish itself in Orthodox quarters, the
forceful apologetics of the Assumptionist Fathers was about to serve as the main catalyst to
resurrect not only an apologetic version of Palamism but also the very same acrid debates that
had originally accompanied its ascendancy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was
to usher in an era of anti-Roman neo-Palamism.
201
Nikodemos the Hagiorite 2010.
202
Scholarios 1859. There was a separate publication of Palamas’s homilies in 1861. See Palamas 1861.
62
3. Conclusions regarding Historical Reception of Scholarios to Modernity.
The scope of the present chapter has been to prepare the reader to understand the
historical background to contemporary approaches to interpreting the philosophical
underpinnings and theological commitments of Scholarios. Understanding the history of his
reception more easily permits us to have an accurate evaluation of the traditions of
interpretation of Scholarios and his doctrine. These traditions will be shown to be in stark
contrast to new avenues undertaken in the twentieth century. The overall status quaestionis of
Scholarios and his Palamism, as already apparent, proves inadequate. In the next chapter
Guichardan’s classic thesis on Scholarios will not prove to be much better. Guichardan openly
strove to pit Scholarios’s understanding of the divine essence and energies against the prisca
theologia of Gregorios Palamas. However, Guichardan did not arrive at this foregone
conclusion by operating in a historical vacuum. For this reason, I draw before the reader’s mind
the confused history surrounding the prosopography of Scholarios. To a considerable extent,
both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox were conditioned by sources that supposed
Scholarios to belong stringently to one or another camp. Against this trend, both Jugie and
Guichardan are commendable, insofar as they both allow the evidence to testify to the fact that
Scholarios was much more complicated than the traditional two-party reduction of politics,
religion, and worldview to an either-or archetypical personality. Still, a reader of Jugie and
Guichardan will be thoroughly saturated with the culturally normative apologetics that were
part and parcel of the standard for scholarship of their times. Furthermore, one easily observes
that Scholarios was too often treated as an important means to the practical end of union
between the two churches and, to that extent, his opera and personality are sometimes
abandoned as being the proper object of study. This back and forth motion highlights au
courant dogmatic concerns and pressing ecclesiastical politics that sometimes play a greater
role in Assumptionist secondary literature than the historical authors and their corpus. This
means that, whatever objectivity was sought in the study of Scholarios in the past, it was
inevitably obscured, if not lost, by a priority of intention that sought to return “dissidents” of
the Eastern Orthodox Churches to obedience under jurisdiction of the Roman Church.
63
64
Chapter Two: The Status Quaestionis of Scholarios’s Palamism in Modern
and Contemporary Theology
Introduction: The Dogmatic Teaching of George-Gennadios Scholarios
In the previous chapter it was deemed useful to list the reception history of Scholarios
until the twentieth century in order to contextualize Jugie and Guichardan within the field of
research preceding them and to justify a major premise; namely, Scholarios enjoys an
authentically Orthodox pedigree and has only recently been exhumed to be tried for alleged
infidelity to Orthodoxy’s official commitment to Palamas’s and Palamistic world view.
As we shall see, anti-Scholarian judgments made by twentieth-century authors are
summary and poorly informed. Few, if any, experts or specialists on Palamite theologians
existed before the last half of the twentieth century. Fewer still are those scholars who made
Scholarios’s theology a specific object of their research, especially after Jugie’s effectively
magisterial analysis of Scholarios at the midpoint of the twentieth century. Afterward,
Scholarios was summarily, if only theologically, exhumed from his Greek sarcophagus for
posthumous trial without the semblance of either gathering evidence or of undergoing a full
hearing. The mock court (a cabal of non-specialist theologians) summarily defrocked him of
his Orthodox habit in order to promote a historical narrative that bears little resemblance to the
verifiable facts. After Scholarios’s self-appointed judges subjected him to harangues,
Scholarios’s desecrated remains were encased in a Latin sepulcher, obviously not of
Scholarios’s own making.
On this account, my subsequent investigation into the status quaestionis of the
Scholarian corpus and its relevance to the essence-and-energies question shall chronicle the
scholarly changes of fortune in the Scholarian legacy. Abruptly and impulsively, particular
Orthodox reactionaries to scholarly literature, emanating from the early twentieth century,
determined a new axiology employed for assessing the Palamite and Scholarian heritage. This
litmus test of putative Orthodoxy still acts as a controlling idea for many coreligionists on how
65
Scholarios and other allegedly latinophrôn Palamites are measured, weighed, and found
wanting today.
1. Modern Misconceptions of Scholarios and Neo-Palamism
In what follows, I intentionally omit evaluations on Scholarios from a purely historical

viewpoint, that is, those stemming from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
historians. 203 Again, I wish to trace various theological assessments of Scholarios by Greek
and Latin theologians that have resulted in Scholarios’s fashionable reputation with which he
is currently saddled, that is, latinophrôn. 204 It is worthwhile mentioning that Jugie was not the
first scholar to begin cataloging authentic works and theological interests of Scholarios. 205 Nor
was Jugie first to mention Scholarios’s apparent penchant for Latin literature and his use of a
theological method akin to that of the Schoolmen, such as Duns Scotus. 206
Nonetheless, inchoate disquisitions into Scholarios’s inexplicable familiarity with
Scholasticism aroused interest in young Jugie. 207 Still, Jugie found himself first concentrating
on Gregorios Palamas before ever publishing a systematic study on Scholarios. 208 Ultimately,
the irony of this period turned out to be very unfortunate for Scholarios. At the beginning of
Jugie’s investigation, one would have been hypothetically safe in predicting Scholarios’s
inevitable apotheosis, for upcoming editions of his works were sure to secure him accolades
for his genius. Instead, the very embrace of Scholarios by the Roman Catholic establishment
seemed to seal his fate among not a few Orthodox faithful and scholars alike. Diversely,
Palamas’s notoriety, even his putative infamy, became a catalyst for partisan scholarly
apotheosis of Palamas in coming decades. As Palamas began reaching his zenith among
203
The best Eastern Orthodox historians of the nineteenth century thought of Scholarios as exercising odium
theologicum toward both Thomas Aquinas and Demetrios Kydones (d. 1398). See Demetrakopoulos 1867, 172:
“Scholarios was unceasing in every way in teaching and writing syllogisms against both unionistic and
negotiated business and against the Latin Thomas Aquinas and the Latin-thinking Demetrios Kydones, who
translated Thomas into the Greek language. He demonstrated these people to be heretical persons.” For Slavic
anti-Palamite historical narrative before Papamichael, see Demetracopoulos 1999a, 180–183.
204
Jugie (1914–1915, 527) never totally abandoned his early opinion: “I also imagine that the Greeks of our
day do not try to place him [Scholarios] among latinophrones of the fifteenth century. If Scholarios agrees with
Latins on a point of theology, this is certainly not out of sympathy for them, but because the tradition of his
church constrained him.”
205
Lampros 1912, 136–138. Cf. Jugie 1914, 156; Jugie 1914–1915, 529.
206
Dräseke 1895, 561–580.
207
Jugie 1914–1915, 527–530.
208
Jugie 1908, 42–50; Jugie 1910, 145–161.
66
Orthodox believers and scholars alike, Scholarios managed only to wane in almost perfect
proportion to his ancient predecessor’s celebratory waxing.
Be that as it may, some contemporary Orthodox authors sometimes emphasize that
modern Orthodoxy’s engagement with Palamism did not originate in the Latindom, but on Mt.
Athos. It is becoming fashionable to attribute the rise of interest in Palamas to the
onomatolatreic controversy or the “name-worshipers” of the early 1900s. 209 On this score,
some Orthodox authors emphasize modern Orthodoxy’s awareness of Palamas and his
theology because he was explicitly invoked by the name-worshipers in 1908 – supposedly
signaling an Orthodox return to, or cognizance of, the essence-energies theology of Palamas
before the advent of Jugie’s studies. This is quite beside the point, since Jugie was only
continuing an earlier, if slightly less acrid, critique of Palamism by Bois at the beginning of
the twentieth century. 210 While the onomatolatreic monks invoked Palamism relatively early,
pro-Palamite authors nonetheless admit that this historical oddity of a quasi-heretical sect
invoking Palamas on Mt. Athos proffers little literary tradition beyond the apparent fact of
Athonite monks appealing to Palamas’s works. Neither in writings of present scholars, nor in
those of early neo-Palamites, is there put forward some series of authors or works to attest to
a continuous Palamite tradition on Athos from the fall of Constantinople until modern times
(even though such a list might be possible to compile [e.g., Nikodemos Hagiorites]). 211
Furthermore, perusal of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s intervention into the largely Russian
name-controversy indicates that – following the intra-Russian controversy spilling into the
international community after 1908 – notable Greek interest was only aroused in 1912–
1913. 212
Actually, Russian monks invoking Palamas’s theological principles of the essence and
the energies and divine light do not predate Greek and Latin studies on Palamas in scholarship.
For the Greeks, interest in the name-controversy has only been documented from about 1912.
For his part, Jugie had already edited numerous and polemical articles on Palamism for Échos
209
Tanev 2015, 194–195.
210
Bois 1901–1902, 1–11, and Bois 1903, 50–60. The opening pages of the new century’s edition (1901) of
Échos d’Orient was dedicated to critiquing Orthodox Hesychasm of the fourteenth century, suggesting the
entire Catholic periodical as geared toward discrediting post-Palamite trends in spirituality. Bois, antedating
Orthodox scholarly interests, described the controversy in detail, while sympathizing with Barlaamites over
Palamas’s ostensible “ditheism.”
211
Smith 2012, xxviii.
212
Matureli 2014, 53–67.
67
d’Orient (1902–1914) and published (1908) some fruits of his own scholarly labors on
Palamism in line with earlier Catholic scholarship on the same. 213 Circumstances and evidence
point only to the name-worshiping controversy as a sideshow, exercising no literary influence
on modern studies of Palamism in either Latin or Greek scholarly realms. Documentation from
the ecumenical patriarchate and official Russian inquiries also appear to take no interest in
arguing over some authentic interpretation of Palamas in order to refute the asserted kinship
between Palamism and onomatolatreic ontology surrounding the name Jesus. Consequently,
future efforts to situate Russian and Greek Orthodox rediscovery of the essence-and-energies
doctrine, or that of the divine light, within an allegedly Palamite culture of onomatolatreity on
Mt. Athos do not appear promising.
Again, more recent Greek cataloging of the name-worshiping controversy proves
inauspicious as the point of departure for Orthodox interest in Palamism. 214 First of all, the
name worshipers exercised a literary influence that was exclusively in Russian environs, which
were largely Scholastic, showing themselves bereft of dogmatic sympathy for Palamas’s
formulation concerning ad intra metaphysics on the godhead. 215 Secondly, and more
importantly, the original controversy surrounded the “name of Jesus.” The central question
was about the eternity and ontological status of the God-man’s name and its referent. 216 Sensu
stricto, historical Palamism never underwent scrutiny because of discussions in Byzantium on
the ontological status of the name Jesus. Proof of any narrative whereby an intra-Athonite
debate led to neo-Palamism needs only provide published literature outside the environs of the
onomatolatreic Athonite monastery. Such a presumed interest ought to exposit Palamas’s
essence-energy theology or ipsissima verba of Palamas in response to the name worshipers.
Recent studies, however, fail to uncover any such incipient Palamism among the Orthodox
opponents to the onomatolatres.
Actually, prior to the Athonite-wide and subsequently international outbreak of the
name-controversy, Palamism had already been under scientific study in Orthodox scholarship.
Specifically, a seminal study on the theology and history of the Palamite conflict first appeared
213
For a list Jugie’s early publications, see Laurent 1953b, 8.
214
Matureli 2014, 18–29.
215
For a catalog of Russian dogmatic works in print and official texts of the Russian church on God’s nature
and attributes, see Jugie 1926–1935, 2:175–194.
216
Matureli 2014, 24.
68
in Alexandria, Egypt. Papamichael managed to put together a substantial contribution toward
understanding the theological concepts and history behind the controversy even before
Palamas attracted much attention among neo-Thomists and Roman Catholic apologists. 217
Nonetheless, though Papamichael’s earliest scholarship can rightfully be considered
Orthodoxy’s modern point de depart for popularizing Palamite studies, Papamichael was
roused to protect the Palamite heritage as a result of Bois’s earlier critical studies of
Hesychasm. 218 One need make no recourse to posterior conflicts on Mt. Athos surrounding
name-worshipers. On the other hand, the fact that Greeks rediscovered sources in order to
understand the theology behind their own liturgical tradition (viz., the office of St. Gregorios
Palamas and Synodikon) perhaps implies that Palamite theology on the essence and energies
of God had lain dormant for some time, insofar as dogmatic and systematic theology are
concerned. Because of this implied “dormition” of Palamism in pan-Orthodoxy, apologetic
scholars may prove resistant to rally to Papamichael as signaling a reactionary starting point
for neo-Palamism. An apologetically empowering narrative would naturally anticipate neo-
Palamism being traceable back to an unbroken chain of sages within living Orthodoxy, most
desiderously to some succession of monastic writers on Mt. Athos. Yet, current lack of
evidence for a continuous, living school of Palamism on Mt. Athos beckons scholars treating
neo-Palamism to produce a list of authors and sources for supporting the existence of an intra-
Orthodox narrative of theological continuity in support of apologetically asserted hegemony
of intra-Orthodox continuity over rival histories.
2. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics by Martin Jugie
Martin Jugie, upon entering seminary, was sent to Jerusalem to study at the famous
Assumptionist seminary of Notre Dame in Jerusalem. This youthful seminarian was
unfortunate to be among the young divinity students caught up in the international controversy
surrounding the allegedly modernist biblicist, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, OP. 219 During the years
of Jugie’s Dominican training in Jerusalem, historically critical methods of Scriptural exegesis
217
Papamichael 1908, 297–330. Jugie himself relied on Papamichael’s later work (1910) on Palamism, as in
Jugie 1926–1935, 2:57.
218
Papamichael 1908, 301.
219
Montagnes 2004.
69
were being taught in joint classes consisting of Assumptionist and Dominican seminarians,
leading to a reaction on the part of the Assumptionist superior Valhove (1895–1900). 220 As a
remedy to the allure of the new biblical theology at the Dominican École Biblique – bypassing
post-Vatican I Suarezian theology of the sort of the Jesuit Franzelin – Valhove initiated his
Assumptionist divinity students into recently inaugurated Thomism as sanctioned by Leo
XIII. 221 Consequently, Jugie graduated with a fully neo-Thomist pedigree in 1901. 222 Yet, if
we were to judge him from his scholarly production, Jugie’s personal interest in Scholarios
was not initially in the Thomistic positions of Byzantines, but rather in non-Thomistic
Mariological doctrine. Jugie’s piety interested him in the opinions of Byzantines on the
Immaculate Conception. 223 Jugie’s first study on Scholarios dates to 1914. 224 As with the bulk
of Jugie’s studies from 1910 onward, Scholarios became a subject of interest, but initially
because of his arguments on behalf of the Scholarian immaculatist thesis that was reconcilable
to recent Catholic dogma. Jugie followed up this study with a critical Greek edition, Latin
translation, and scholarly comments on Scholarios’s Homélie sur la Dormition de la Sainte
Vierge, which contains numerous passages favorable to the immaculatist cause. 225 Jugie’s next
engagement with Scholarios was occasioned by a second critically edited Homélie pour la fête
de la Présentation de la Sainte Vierge au Temple. 226 Shortly thereafter, Jugie had occasion to
take up the task of editing the opera omnia of Scholarios, following the death of their original
editor Petit. As Jugie explained, most of volume one of the projected Scholarian opera omnia
had been edited by the time he took over the project in 1927. 227 This was in fact propitious, for
Jugie was already engaged in writing his magnum opus; namely, his comprehensive five-
volume manual of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox dogmatics, based upon manuscripts,
patrology, historians, and published works of ancient and modern dogmaticians of all
confessions concerned. 228
220
Montagnes 2004, 300–301.
221
Montagnes 2004, 309.
222
Failler 1995, 8.
223
Jugie 1908, 42–50; Jugie 1910, 145–161.
224
Jugie 1914–1915, 527–530.
225
Jugie 1922, 567–587.
226
Jugie 1926, 511–512.
227
Jugie 1928–1936, 1:i; Laurent 1953b, 15.
228
Jugie 1926–1935.
70
It was during this period of teaching at the Institut Catholique in Lyons, 229 of writing
his dogmatic opus, and of preparing the critical edition of Scholarios’s hapanta that
Guichardan had the fortune of studying under Jugie at Lyons and of writing his dissertation on
the cutting-edge research of his confrere, who was fast becoming the most knowledgeable
theologian of Orthodox and Byzantine theology of the period. Guichardan was fortunate,
indeed, for his confrere and patron had just completed the last Eastern Orthodox volume of
Theologia dogmatica that went to press in 1931. This habilitated Jugie to aid Guichardan with
expert advice and newly edited materials in research and writing. 230 Guichardan, for his part,
was working to publish his thesis at this time, which he accomplished by 1933. As mentioned,
Jugie had already been trained well in the basics of neo-Thomism in the wake of official neo-
Scholasticism under the auspices of Leo XIII. Unsurprisingly, much of what Jugie wrote was
colored by neo-Thomism and its flare for apologetics. As we explore Aquinas and his doctrine,
I will have occasion to concentrate more on the intellectual culture of this period that so
affected Roman Catholic scholars and their approach to their Greek sources.
Jugie’s first volume of his Theologia dogmatica marks an attempt to provide grounding
for systematic study of Scholarios. To accomplish his task, Jugie brought to bear his vast
erudition derived from his editorship of Échos d’Orient, along with inspiration from an article
of a fellow-seminary graduate, Salaville, of Notre Dame in Jerusalem. Salaville had published
on Scholarios’s enthusiasm for Thomism. 231 At this point, Jugie’s only contribution to
Scholarian studies was to provide a fairly replete bibliography of Scholarios’s works then
available in print. 232 However, following the death of Petit, who had been the first editor of
Scholarios’s opera omnia, Jugie’s editorial role over the Scholarian corpus augured future
studies on all aspects of Scholarios’s person and thought. Soon after, Jugie was able to make a
report of Scholarian use of the Greek translations by Demetrios Kydones of Thomas
Aquinas. 233 Naturally, Salaville’s notes about Scholarios’s commitments to Palamism and
Jugie’s own transcription of Scholarios’s apologetic, polemical, sermoncinal, and speculative
229
Getcha and Kontouma-Conticello 2009, 185.
230
Laurent 1953b, 12; Guichardan 1933, 10: “It will happen that we cite manuscripts. We will do it with notes
Fr. Jugie kindly communicated to us. May he please receive the homage of our profound gratitude from that
and also his good wishes with which he encouraged and patronized this work.”
231
Salaville 1924, 129–134. Cf. Jugie 1926–1935, 1:460. Salaville was of the 1907 Assumptionist seminary
class. See Failler 1995, 19.
232
Jugie 1926–1935, 1:459–469.
233
Jugie 1928, 397–398.
71
works in volume one of the Scholarian ἅπαντα, led him to explore Hesychasm in his next stage
of understanding Scholarios. For perspective, Jugie turned to the anti-Palamite scholars Bois
and Hausherr. 234 In Jugie’s conclusions to his short study on Hesychastic prayer, he summarily
found himself agreeing with Bois and Hausherr that this Orthodox tradition of prayer was a
case of “false mysticism,” which had been somehow a natural development from the
corollaries of schism from Rome since Photios and Michael Kerularios. Of course, Barlaam
the Calabrian – as inimical to the Athonite spirituality – was styled as the prophetic voice that
managed to signal alarm, if only to be rejected for his efforts to return Byzantium to a
supposedly righteous spiritual path. 235 Jugie symbolically focused his next Palamite-related
study on the Palamite conflicts beginning with the year 1341. 236 This was not coincidence, for
Bois enjoyed, once again, the honor of being the direct source of Jugie’s anti-Palamite article
of 1901, culminating in the Barlaamitico-Palamite conflict of 1341! As one would expect,
Jugie’s tour de force on the Palamite synods was meant to act as Bois’s continuator, hardly his
corrector. Jugie clearly aligned himself with Barlaam in his detailed reconstruction of the
events by calling Palamas’s teachings, among other things, “heretical formulas.” 237 Jugie
expressed his praise for Prochoros Kydones (the last synodical opponent of Palamism before
its ultimate synodical triumph in 1368), whom Jugie recorded as expertly refuting Palamism
by, among other things, his knowledge of Thomism.
In the meantime, Jugie had successfully edited several volumes of Scholarios’s works.
In the first volume (1928), Jugie was able to discern the great number of literary sources used
by Scholarios, especially Thomistic sources in the treatises on predestination. 238 In the second
volume (1929), Jugie had come to understand the depth of Scholarios’s patristic and Scholastic
sources in his arguments for the traditional Greek position on the filioque. Jugie helpfully
prefaced each volume with a valuable introduction explaining chronologies, doctrines, and
sources. Most important, for the purposes of this investigation, are the volumes in which Jugie
encountered Scholarios’s development of Palamite theology.
234
Jugie 1931c, 179. Cf. Bois 1901–1902, 71–72; Hausherr 1927, 101–209.
235
Jugie 1931c, 185.
236
Jugie 1931b, 397. Cf. Bois 1901–1902, 1–11.
237
Jugie 1931b, 409. Jugie had the benefit of reconstructing the conflict via the impressive study in Mercati
1931.
238
Jugie 1928–1936, 1:lvi-lxi.
72
Starting with the third volume of the ἅπαντα, Jugie’s theological assessment of
Scholarios’s two post-1444 treatises on the essence-energies conflict and doctrine is, firstly,
that Scholarios used a Scotistic “distinction formelle a parte rei.” 239 Secondly, Jugie
simultaneously explores Palamas’s thesis that the experience of the apostles on Mt. Tabor was
declared to be a temporary taste of the beatific vision. 240 Jugie confidently claimed that
Scholarios taught a Palamism that was actually “fort mitigé” with respect to the reality of the
essence-energies distinction. According to Jugie, Scholarios’s second essence-energies treatise
is notable for its silence on the controversy surrounding the nature of the beatific vision. Jugie
especially noted that Scholarios’s most mature treatise of the question remained unknown and
unpublished until his critical edition. Jugie’s French introduction to the Scholarian treatises
under discussion coincided (1930) with his production of the second volume of his Theologia
dogmatica. In the relevant section, Jugie entitled his discussion on the essence-energies
doctrine in Scholarios as: “De palamismo mitigato Georgii Scholarii.” 241 Therein, Jugie
slightly expanded his theory on the nature of the first full treatise on the question: Contre les
partisans d’Acindyne. Jugie reasonably suspected that, because Scotus and Scotists are
mentioned in Scholarios’s autographic hand on the folio of a MS, his treatise might have
omitted the mention of the light of Tabor because of Latino-Scholastic sources’ lack of interest
on the question. 242 Jugie also noted that, in Scholarios’s appeal to Ps.-Theodore Graptos
(Nikephoros of Constantinople), he sourced the “inseparability criterion” of the Palamite
distinction of essence and energy to a patristic saint of the first millennium. Jugie correctly
summarized Scholarios’s position as distinguishing the divine being (esse) to be formally (or
conceptually) infinite (and, as such, only intellectually accessible to God’s mind). Secondly,
Jugie noted that the attributes of God, according to Scholarios, are taken as mentally
conceivable notions (e.g., wisdom), but do not in se connote something infinite, but rather
something that can be infinitely possessed without formal-mental or logical-conceptual
239
See Jugie 1941, col. 1549, where the author somewhat vacillates as to whether Scholarios held for the formal
distinction, or a Thomistic virtual distinction, when allegedly accommodating Palamism. Even Jugie’s
classification of Scholarios’s overt preference for Scotus, in reconciliation with Palamas, is somewhat
ambiguously stated in Jugie 1941, col. 1552. In his mature assessment, Jugie clearly presents his reader with a
Scholarios who is almost a Thomist on the essence-energies distinction.
240
Jugie 1928–1936, 3:18.
241
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:125. Jugie also interprets Scholarios’s logical parsing and nuances on Palamism to be
an effort to save au courant Byzantines from their “infantile theology” that developed from Palamas’s
distinction. See Jugie 1931d, 11: col. 1809.
242
Years later he refers to this as Scholarios’s “discreet Palamism.” See Jugie 1941, col. 1529.
73
contradiction. Thus, Scholarios distinguished the energies as “non-infinite” in the sense that
non-infinite intellects (e.g., humans) access their conceptual content. Yet, it is absolutely
impossible for a human mind to grasp the per se infinite concept in its infinite mode. This is
true especially of the naked concept of God, for only his divine intellect sees his own being
(esse). 243 Jugie was also reasonable in guessing Scotus to be the likely source for this kind of
distinction. He also correctly asserted that the closest Thomistic category to the Scotistic
distinction is something a distinctione virtuali cum fundamento in re. 244 Jugie was very
emphatic about the fact that Scholarios failed to mention the light of Tabor in the second
essence-energies treatise. Yet, as I will show, in early and late rearrangements of Aquinas’s
works, Scholarios deleted mention of the Thomistic lumen gloriae with respect to the beatific
vision. 245 Thus, given Scholarios’s mature editing of these passages, it was incorrect to
suppose that Scholarios maturely changed his position on Tabor light. Jugie equally observes
that Scholarios failed to speak about “uncreated grace” and “uncreated gifts of the Holy
Spirit.” 246 In his conclusions, Jugie does nonetheless accurately describe the fact that
Scholarios’s Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι
καὶ τῆς οὐσίας or commentary-translation on Aquinas’s De ente et essentia rejects the
Thomistic notion of a “real distinction” between the essence and attributes in God. It,
furthermore, rejects nominalism on the nature of the divine attributes. Finally, in Jugie’s
opinion Scholarios’s overall doctrine can be reduced to Scotism (not Thomism). 247 When
asserting Scholarian Scotism, Jugie noted:
We see above that George Scholarios had tempered and mitigated Palamism, on whose behalf
he was fighting, to such a point as to fall into the result of Scotus’s and his disciples’ formal
distinction a parte rei. However, this interpretation stands far apart enough from genuine
Palamism.
However, as a neo-Thomist, Jugie underlined the fact that Scholarios’s Scotism did not excuse
him from the error of departing from Thomas Aquinas:
243
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:126–127.
244
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:128.
245
Scholarios and Aquinas 1931b, III.58 (OCGS 5:150, lines 35–38); Scholarios and Aquinas 1931a, I.12.1–
13 (OCGS 5:346–348).
246
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:129.
247
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:130. Cf. OCGS 5:281–285.
74
Of course, it isn’t at all even easy to say exactly of what the formal distinction a parte rei
consists. Scotus speaks about it. He doesn’t want this distinction to be truly real when
discoursing on God. Indeed, he affirms in God that there is some distinction between the
essence of God and his attributes before any operation of our human mind. He says however
of the attributes: “They are not properly principiated from the divine essence, although the
divine essence is withdrawn from, by some mode, to possess the notion of a radical and
fundamental perfection with respect to these attributes” (Ord., I, d. 1, q. 13 [no. 17]). 248
Jugie proved to be an attentive, if misguided, reader of Scotus’s commentary on the Sentences.
He largely neglected secondary literature on Scotism. Still, he correctly surmised that Scotus’s
work was positively asserting quasi-real essential activities in the godhead. In Jugie’s correctly
formulated estimation, Scotus’s thoughts on the formal distinction developed over his lifetime.
However, Jugie desired to bypass more robust readings of the formal distinction within
Scotism, as he did not wish Scholarios’s actual Palamism to be putatively heretical. As Jugie
observes, Scotus spoke more often in the language of “This x-attribute is not formally the same
item [as essence],” rather than the rarer “This such and such [attribute] is a distinct item [from
the essence].” Be that as it may, Jugie did not hide his dislike for Scotism on grounds similar
to Palamism: “We believe such a concept about God is to some extent ‘anthropomorphic.’” 249
However, elsewhere, Jugie admits that Scotus adopted the minimum necessary for some kind
of real distinction by means of his formal distinction. However, Jugie adds, Scotus never uses
Palamas’s phraseology about the essence and energies: aliud et aliud, or ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο. While
demeaning Scotism as dangerous, Jugie wanted to drive a wedge between Scotus and Palamas,
since Scotus had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. Naturally,
the more Palamism might philosophically be shown to approach Scotism, the less Palamism
would be susceptible to being designated formal heresy for neo-Thomists of the Assumptionist
congregation. This tension will also play a part in the commentaries of Guichardan, who all
but admits that Scotus is just shy of being a heretic on the essence-energies question. Startled
by the plain reading of Scotistic texts, Guichardan judges them to smack of philosophical
heterodoxy vis-à-vis the then reigning Thomistic philosophy of anti-modernist Catholicism. 250
248
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:146–147.
249
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:147, n. 2.
250
Representative of his age and context, Guichardan 1933 was ex professo preoccupied with modernism and
immanentism.
75
As a last magisterial testimony to his assessment of Scotism, Jugie finished his disquisition of
the Palamas-Scotus comparison, asserting:
Scotus [...] approximates to the distinction of the Palamites. Scotism in this question is as if
palamismus in fieri, whose radical defect in this, as it seems to us, is that it wants to put in God
something primary, which allegedly is the essence of God and this is supposedly distinguished
from certain secondary items, which are so-called attributes. Now, in God nothing is really
primary or secondary, but he is one thing, which is most simply infinite by perfection. We have
set up this comparison between Palamas and Scotus only inasmuch as a distinction between
the essence of God and his attributes, not as far as other Palamistic theses, which are absolutely
outside the mind of Scotus. 251
In Jugie’s next ex professo study of Palamite authors, he became more interested in locating
as much Thomism as possible in the works of Scholarios and his writings on the Eucharist. 252
Bernatsky’s most recent study of Scholarios’s doctrine of the Eucharist has confirmed
Scholarios’s wholesale rearrangement of parts of Aquinas’s opusculum on the Eucharist. 253 On
the other hand, I signal Jugie’s enthusiasm “to Catholicize” Scholarios, as if he were a neo-
Thomist, likely causes him to ignore the fact that Scholarios did not really hold a truly
Thomistic position on Eucharist in respect to some major points. One such theme with which
I most recently concerned myself has to do with Scholarios’s argument that the prayer of the
anaphora to the Holy Spirit (i.e., the epiclesis), in concert with the dominical words of
consecration, together consecrates the bread and wine into transubstantiation at the Divine
Liturgy. Scholarios not only argued exactly Markos of Ephesus’s position, but his sources also
include Latin commentaries on the Sentences of Lombard that hold opposite positions to that
of Aquinas on Eucharistic consecration. 254 In this case, which I have already thoroughly
analyzed, Jugie makes a very rudimentary mistake by supposing that Scholarios was faithfully
imitating Aquinas on the question, whereas Scholarios clearly argued the epiclesis to be one
of the four causes of Eucharistic consecration (viz., the final or intentional cause). Scholarios
may have adapted Scholastic, even Thomistic, jargon to his project, but he categorically
contradicted the common position of Schoolmen of the last quarter of the fourteenth century.
251
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:147–148.
252
Jugie 1934, 289–297.
253
Bernatsky 2009, 169–182.
254
Kappes 2019.
76
My detailed investigation into this misread of Jugie underlines another instance of why it is
important to reexamine Jugie’s thesis (and that of his imitator, Guichardan) on the essence-
energies question. Jugie might prove guilty of directing Guichardan to similar inaccuracies by
oversimplifying Scholarios’s positions in order to read them as more favorable to neo-
Thomists, whose apologetic end was to reunite East and West by the Trojan horse of neo-
Thomism.
3. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics Sébastian Guichardan
I have not yet arrived at Jugie’s mature synthesis of philosophy and theology and his
last magisterial sentence on Palamas, before his death, in 1953. Still, it is convenient and
opportune at this point to transition to a summary of Guichardan’s thesis. Interestingly, Jugie’s
last writings on Palamism date to 1941. As I will mention in the next section, Jugie’s reticence
to publish further attacks on Palamism may represent his recoil from apologetics after
unwittingly provoking the sleeping Russian bear of Orthodoxy in the person of Lossky (scripsit
1944). Following Lossky’s rebuttal of Jugie and Guichardan, each inexplicably refrained from
intensifying the debate by means of a response. They remained ever after silent in spite of
Lossky’s Palamistic challenge to their critiques.
For his part, Guichardan was a seminarist at the Assumptionist school in Lyons. There
he took advantage of Jugie’s presence in the early 1930s in order to write his doctoral thesis,
comparing Palamism to both Scotism and to the Scholarian corpus on the essence-energies
question. The two ecclesiastical patrons (viz., Leo XIII and Pius X) of institutional neo-
Thomism were long dead by the time that Guichardan began his studies. However, Pius XI, in
no uncertain terms, proved to be even more officious in his Thomism, adopting both Aquinas’s
philosophy and theology, as if they were the church’s own officially promulgated doctrine. 255
If one were to happen upon the foreword to Guichardan’s thesis, it would consequently be
unsurprising to see that Guichardan simply assumed the existence of one officially infallibly
true and objectively correct physics, metaphysics, and systematic theology for defining “divine
255
Pius XI 1923, 309–326.
77
simplicity.” 256 It is this controlling idea that guides the whole of his anti-Palamistic thesis. I
summarize Guichardan’s opening premises and conclusion as follows: “There is an objectively
true definition of divine simplicity, but whoever cannot satisfy this definition is a heretic.
Palamas cannot satisfy this definition. Therefore he is a heretic.” Guichardan’s brief manifesto
reads thus: “Only the analogical notion is common to God and to the world. We reject the
science [a priori], where we have any univocal concept of [being and of] God. For given that
the unequivocal notion of being is perfectly abstracted, we can then say that we understand
[God]. Rather, God is the incomprehensible (transcendence). We may have this knowledge of
the supreme cause (we are building with analogy): Its characters [viz., of analogy] are
imperfectly abstract, imperfectly one, a relative notion, making it a flexible instrument to
perfection.” 257 In short, Guichardan’s doctrine of the concept of being by which humans know
what they know holds for an imperfect notion in the human mind. For his part, Guichardan
only explores one preferential theory of analogy (viz., Cajetan’s famous analogy of proportion)
as key to interpreting the Greek Fathers and to opposing Scotus and Palamas, and even
Scholarios. Next, Guichardan only declared (but did not need to prove such a proposition in
his quasi-official Thomistic environment) that “the analogical concept of being” ought to be
the criterion of truth in judging doctrinal orthodoxy. This doctrinaire assertion was neither
historically justified, as if a datum common to pan-Christian patristics, nor did Guichardan
philosophically argue that such a logical theory of predication must somehow be dogmatically
believed for Christians, let alone Roman Catholics. Instead, Guichardan’s historical context
clearly and consistently assumed such a tenet as an a priori point of departure, for neo-Thomists
had enforced their ideological monopoly upon nearly all Catholic institutions of higher
learning, save Jesuit schools and Franciscan studia.
Next, because I plan to confront Guichardan’s overall thesis, I now briefly summarize
his salient accusations against his declared antagonists, that is, those contra neo-Thomism.
Non-Thomists are treated as ipso facto enemies of orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine. After
admittedly providing but a sampling from select writings within Palamas’s corpus, Guichardan
concludes in his thesis the following with regard to Palamas:
256
Guichardan 1933, 28: “That nobody accuse us of prejudging, rather than going from the ground up, on the
solution to the problem [of the definition and description proper to simplicity], we treat such in the second part
of our work.”
257
Guichardan 1933, 31.
78
(1.) Palamas places divine physical (vs. logical) essence in opposition to operation. He does so,
partly, because he is a Neoplatonist. Importantly, he asserts that “good” is prior to “being.” 258
(2.) Palamas places God in a genus with angels and souls, thus anticipating the traditional
Scholastic reduction of Palamism into the error of placing God under the genus of being
(ens). 259
(3.) Palamas holds that God is not entirely the divine essence. There is another item, or other items,
that are not essence. This is the point capital for judging Palamism’s orthodoxy. 260
(4.) Palamas holds for “the light of glory” to be uncreated, while it is objectively correct to say that
lumen gloriae must be created and in the human soul. 261
(5.) As perhaps with Scotus, 262 Palamas is guilty of the errors condemned and associated with
Gilbert de la Porrée. 263
(6.) Palamas’s simplicity criterion absolutely asserts that two items impossible to separate, though
not constituting a composite (σύνθεσις) when together, are not a complexity. This reparability
criterion is supposedly unknown in Scholasticism. 264
(7.) Scotus, as implicitly contrasted to Palamas, affirmed divine simplicity “in all its theological
rigor.” 265
4. Neo-Palamism in Opposition to Jugie and Guichardan
258
Guichardan 1933, 97, emphasized this allegedly suspicious premise, which he contrasted to patristic
tradition. Whether for apologetic and rhetorical effect, or due to unfamiliarity with Ps.-Dionysios (or due to
some tertium quid), Guichardan appears totally unaware that Ps.-Dionysios prioritized goodness over being in
the divinity, which was never overtly contradicted by Aquinas, but only attenuated to fit into his theological
program. See SG I.13; ST I.5.1.
259
260
261
Cf. SG III.58; ST I.12.1–13. Guichardan’s critical exposition explicitly cites Jugie and (wrongly) supposes
that Aquinas’s interpretation of lumen gloriae in patria is a Roman Catholic dogma.
262
To avoid dividing Schoolmen against each other, Guichardan refused to explore traditionally heretical
accusations against Scotus. See also Guichardan 1933, 130: “Not needing to judge Scotism from the Thomist
perspective, we will be satisfied, while accepting the solution of the Angelic Doctor, to exhibit, as closely as
possible, the thought of the great Franciscan master. It is already something not so easy!”
263
Guichardan 1933, 108–109.
264
265
See Guichardan 1933, 129n3, where an allegedly objective source for dogmatic rigor is footnoted as being
Lombard’s Sentences!
79
Some contemporary theological writers in Orthodox circles have recently begun
investing themselves in a narrative history of neo-Palamism that utilizes the aforementioned
intra-Orthodox heresy of name-worship, rather than Jugie’s accusations of heresy against
Palamas, to speak about neo-Palamite origins. Such a strategy bespeaks an apologetic
narrative: Only a self-stimulated Orthodoxy, along with its self-interested ressourcement into
an already understood Palamas, can account for present neo-Palamism. This etiological
preoccupation might strike any specialist on Palamas or Scholarios as odd, for a goodly amount
of non-specialist, though putatively scholarly, literature chronicles the Byzantine origins of
Palamism with an opposite apologetic narrative. One (perhaps dominant) narrative about the
origins of Palamism claims that the Palamas-Barlaam conflict is reducible to heterodox Roman
Catholicism influencing Barlaam the Calabrian. Some influential theologians simply presume
this typically unsubstantiated narrative; namely, Barlaam the Calabrian created the original
conflict leading to Palamas’s anti-Barlaamite theology; but responsibility for Barlaam’s
essence-energies theology is (gratuitiously) placed squarely at the feet of the Latin Church and
its polemical Thomism, as if it were the remote cause of the heresy. 266 While even Orthodox
authors such as Meyendorff and Ware reject this kind of narrative, one should note additionally
that the more recent critical editions of Barlaam’s anti-Latin works demonstrate that Barlaam
had little to no access to Latin works and authors before 1334. Given the entirely Greek sources
for Barlaam’s thought other than the influence of Thomas Aquinas on Barlaam’s filioquism, it
is not clear that Barlaam was a latinophrôn by viewing the mere quantity of sources in
Barlaam’s actual writings. This does not mean that Barlaam did not convert to Latinism after
losing the conflict with Gregorios Palamas in the 1340s, only that Barlaam’s initial motivations
were either idiosyncratic or perhaps reflective of Southern Italian Greeks.
Of course, all extant sources speak unanimously against such an evaluation. 267 What
seems to be at stake in popular and apologetic (if scholarly) literature is an axiological
preoccupation: Orthodox identity and the value of its present-day apologetic derives its
266
Romanides 1960–1961, 186–205; Romanides 193–196, 225–270, which theory was substantially rejected
in Meyendorff 1974b, 48; Ware 1973, 26–27.
267
My upcoming narrative simply represents a greater precision of the mature thought in Meyendorff 1979, 26:
“At the beginning of this century, the works of French theologians, S. Guichardan and particularly, M. Jugie,
denounced Palamism βased upon a strictly Thomistic critique. Before their work, the very name of Palamas
was largely ignored in the West among the Orthodox. However, a common revival of interest in the Fathers
was taking place, which inevitably involved Byzantine theology including Palamas; this revival included Greek,
Russian, and Romanian theologians.”
80
maximum force by connecting itself to an unbroken chain of Palamites, from Byzantium to
modern times. The sustainability of this narrative naturally depends on locating intra muros
continuous theological links in a chain of authors, or their approved works, that verifies neo-
Palamism’s roots in the ancient past. Instead, as I cataloged in chapter one, Palamas’s legacy
in the East can only be continuously verified in the realm of the filioquist controversy and in
Orthodox liturgical worship (even if not universal). Before recent Latin criticism of the
historical Palamas, on the question of the essence and energies, I could find no expert on
Palamas in the nineteenth century who insisted on Palamism as dogmatic for the Orthodox
Church. 268 This does not mean that Renaissance Orthodox before the ἅλωσις, nor celebrated
Orthodox writers until the nineteenth century, denied the dogmatic status of Palamism. It might
only point to the fact that the dogmatic aspect of Palamism was no longer a preoccupation of
nineteenth-century Orthodox theologians who were publishing on other controversies at this
time. The contemporary quest for a perennial Palamistic school, reaching back to the time of
Palamas, seems to stem from troubling concerns roused by Jugie:
We know a Byzantine theologian of the fifteenth century equally learned in oriental and
occidental theology, who at his time did not find more than two serious divergences in the
dogmatic order between the two Churches: namely, the question of the procession of the
essence and its operation (a question of Palamism). The name of this theologian is George
Scholarios. It is he [...] under the name of Gennadios II. [...] Among the Greeks of our days,
there are none who would take it upon themselves to doubt his orthodoxy and to catalogue him
among the heterodox. Yet, George teaches explicitly the Catholic doctrine on Primacy of the
Pope, on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, on particular judgment and
retribution immediately after death, on Purgatory, on the form of the Eucharist, which is
constituted by the words of Institution alone, making abstraction of the formula called the
epiclesis of the Holy Ghost. As for the two points, which presented difficulty for him and
impeded union with the Latins, they do not exist, so to speak, in our day. This is evidently the
268
As a paradigmatic example, before Assumptionists reignited the controversy, St. Gregorios Palamas’s
namesake, the well-known Archimandrite Gregorios Palamas was interviewed by an Anglican about the
theologico-cultural reception of his ancestor St. Gregorios’s teaching. The archimandrite replied that his
ancestor taught “a true and orthodox belief, but not dogma.” Contemporaneously, investigation ascertained that
Palamas’s office was not permitted space to be in Constantinople at that time. See Riley 1896, 195–198.
Unfortunately, the English author was unable to expand on what such a distinction by Archimandrite Gregorios
was supposed to convey. Nonetheless, it is significant that the archimandrite shows no tendency to maximize
the importance of the familial contribution of Palamas to current Orthodox dogma.
81
case for the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost according to what we have said above.
As for the Palamistic question, it is a long time now since it has ceased to arouse interest. The
Russians practically renounced it in the eighteenth century when they entirely modified the
office of the Sunday of Orthodoxy (first Sunday of Lent) and eradicated all mention of the
Palamistic doctrines. Moreover, the Greek and Russian theological manuals in use in the
seminaries and universities take the contrary view of these doctrines and are in accord with
Catholic theology. If George returned to earth there would be no more reason for separation
from the Catholics since authentic Orthodox are likewise in agreement with them on the two
points mentioned. 269
Above, Jugie provided a late summation of all his earlier investigations and naturally provoked
a reaction from Orthodox in the West, specifically from fellow francophones and particularly
from Lossky (1903–1958). The summary of Jugie’s Scholarian evaluation and overall
assessment of defunct Palamism (more substantially expressed in his five-volume Theologia
dogmatica and Dictionnaire de théologie catholique) 270 was in fact dated, for in 1944 Lossky
had recently published a partial rebuttal of what he considered to be oversimplistic “orthodox
Thomism”; 271 namely, Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Église d’Orient. 272
Instead, the volte-face against Scholarios began shortly after Jugie’s and Guichardan’s
generic assessment on Scholarios’s overall theology (i.e., its Thomistic tenor), as well as their
specific evaluation of Scholarios’s Palamism (i.e., it is a “mitigated” Palamism). 273 For his
part, Lossky did impugn Scholarios, but only reacted contra the Assumptionists:
There is nothing more exasperating than a simpliste notion of the divine simplicity. Fr.
Guichardan’s book, Le problème de la simplicité divine en Orient et en Occident aux XIVe et
269
Jugie 1949, 14–15.
270
Lossky also singled out the Jesuit Hausherr 1927, 97–209.
271
Both Jugie and Guichardan did not overtly reply to Lossky. Yet, the depth of the controversy was recognized
and chronicled rather quickly, as per Wenger 1949, 241. Lossky placed the problem in “orthodox Thomism”
(which can be defined in relation to the twenty-four theses of Pope Pius X, above), while Wegner similarly
asserted that the East was a victim of “rigid Thomism,” probably of the same type. See Laurent 1953a, 30–32.
Given Assumptionist zeal for reunion with Orthodoxy in the immediate future, Jugie’s ensuing publications
(1944–1952), unsurprisingly, were going to avoid provoking further growth of embryonic (and Western [!])
neo-Palamism. Jugie and Guichardan had not taken into account the new literary culture of Russian-émigré
scholarship at St. Serge. By denouncing a theological corpse, they accidentally resurrected a monster – with a
life of its own – that Assumptionists were unable to control. By remaining silent perhaps they hoped it would
return gradually to the earth whence the Assumptionists had exhumed it?
272
Duresse 1945, 151–155.
273
Jugie and Guichardan mark a point of departure for scholarly enthusiasm, thereafter, surrounding this
conflict. See Beck 1935, 1–22; Beck 1959; Beck 1963, 63–82; Beck 1968, 588–624.
82
XVe siècle: Grégoire Palamas, Duns Scot, Georges Scholarios [...] is a striking example of his
theological insensibility before the fundamental mysteries of the faith. 274
Nor was Lossky ignorant of Scholasticism, as his mature opus posthumum on Meister Eckhart
and slightly earlier investigations into Gabriel Vasquez (d. 1604) and Francisco Suarez (d.
1617) demonstrate. 275 Despite his dissertation on Eckhart (scripsit 1957), which occasioned
Lossky to compare Palamas with the former, nowhere did Lossky engage the works (or even
the name) of Scholarios on any number of apropos topics (e.g., the distinction between esse
and essentia). 276 On a related topic, the Thomist Gilson led Lossky away from considering the
merits of Scotism. 277 Gilson functioned as Lossky’s first and last word on the Franciscan
doctor. 278 Furthermore, the study of Suarezianism (often a mixture of Scotism and Thomism)
would have given Lossky a hopelessly muddled sampling of both Scotism and Thomism
meshed into a single chimera, unlikely to lead Lossky to investigate eagerly Scotism in the
years prior. Be that as it may, Lossky never appears anti-Scholarian, but only obliquely
criticizes the naiveté of Guichardan’s thesis on divine simplicity in the Scholastic and Palamite
tradition. 279 Jugie’s last word on Palamas and his theology was published the year before his
death:
Regarding a vulgar monastic debate, he [Palamas] aroused a loud quarrel, which shook the
Byzantine Church for more than half a century. It even managed formally to accept his doctrine
at the Council of Constantinople in 1351. The crux of this doctrine was to affirm a real
distinction between the divine essence and operations. To defend this untenable thesis, Palamas
274
Lossky 2005, 77–78. For a later critique of both Assumptionists, see (an opus posthumum) Lossky 1973, 46:
“Even in purely historical studies (such as the works of Jugie and Guichardan) the authors seem to see in the
man whose thought they are studying only an adversary. Whence arise the numerous misconceptions which are
a great obstacle to an understanding of the true value of what in the West is called ‘Palamism.’” Lossky’s
footnote on this remark, above, about the Guichardan 1933 thesis reads: “This work, rather simplistic in the
manner in which it interprets a doctrine profoundly alien to the mentality of the critic, has earned a number of
justifiable reproaches in the review by V. Grumel [1935, 84–96].”
275
Lossky 1957, 512–537; Lossky 1973. Although these works appeared in print post mortem, Lossky was
already lecturing on Palamism (likely in reaction to Jugie) early. See Lossky 1944a, 82.
276
Lossky 1973, 102, 344.
277
Lossky 1973, 102, 344. Lossky maintained an admirable aloofness from adjudicated Scotistic claims
according to the interpretation of Gilson. Instead, Lossky concerned himself only with the historical reaction
of Thomists to Scotus.
278
Lossky 1973, 142, 151, 212, 230, 311–312.
279
The Lossky-Assumptionist conflict seems to have come to nothing lacking any apologetic exchange between
interested parties. In effect, there are early Jugie-Guichardan insinuations of Messalian tendencies in Palamite
spirituality, along with incriminations about Palamas’s alleged innovation surrounding the distinction in the
Godhead. Lossky’s unrequited argument contra is summed up in Lialine 1969, 269–270.
83
devoted all the resources of his talent and science. Talent and science Palamas had and he must
be considered as one of the great figures of expiring Byzantinism. [...] Besides ascetic writings
and polemical treatises against Hesychastic opponents and Latins, he left quite a number of
great homilies, which are certainly his best claim to fame unto posterity. [...] There are many
admirable things about life and Christian virtues and especially beautiful praise of the holiness
of the Mother of God, which seem to hardly be noticed so far by Catholic theologians. 280
In Jugie’s last book, covering Byzantine authors from early patristic times to modern Orthodox
authors, Jugie did not think it necessary to associate Scholarios with Palamas in his
introduction. It seems that Jugie’s last word on Scholarios had already been expressed so that
Scholarios ranks only as a “mitigated Palamite.” Considering these judgments, even if Jugie
and Guichardan failed to provoke Lossky toward any rejection of Scholarios as a putatively
unfaithful disciple of Palamas, to whom do we turn for the degradation of Scholarian
Orthodoxy?
Oddly, a renowned modern champion of Palamas first felt the need to drive a wedge
between Scholarios and his spiritual hero Palamas. 281 Meyendorff ostensibly turned against
Scholarios due to anti-Augustinianism, especially in respect of its assumed relationship to the
282
modern doctrinal formulation of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. However,
Meyendorff was not simply judging Scholarios on the basis of this issue. He likely felt
immense pressure and certitude in making such a sweeping judgment, though providing little
citation and proof of personal study on said question. After all, a mountain of literature had,
by then, solidly established Scholarios’s Scholastic and Thomistic pedigree, not only via
Roman Catholic scholarship, but even through philosophical and philological studies. 283
Meyendorff referred to Scholarios depreciatively as “an isolated and nostalgic intellectual.” 284
Meyendorff supposed, as a case in point, that Scholarios had been distracted with the
Immaculate Conception because he had accepted the distasteful theologoumenon of “original
guilt” in relation to “original sin.” These phrases were interpreted to assert that each embryo
280
Jugie 1952, 225–226.
281
Compare Meyendorff 1998 to Meyendorff 1959, 17, 279. The English edition and translation rightly
expunge Meyendorff’s reference to a mere obiter dictum against Guichardan, which neither proffered any
specific error, nor specified in what Guichardan differed from Jugie 1926–1935.
282
Meyendorff 1974a, 148; Meyendorff 1983, 45–46.
283
Jugie 1914–1915, 527–530; Mercati 1920, 108–146; Salaville 1924, 129–136; Jugie 1934, 289–297; Jugie
1937, 65–86; Brambillasca 1966, 242–255; Turner 1969, 420–455.
284
Meyendorff 1983, 46.
84
in human reproduction, ever since the primordial fall of Adam and Eve, was victim to
individual and personal guilt in utero. Meyendorff concluded that Scholarios’s doctrine of
original sin was foreign to historical Orthodoxy. 285
Finally, Meyendorff agreed with Jugie’s thesis that Scholarios had abandoned
Thomism in an isolated instance when speaking of Mary’s conception and, consequently, that
he had embraced a different Scholastic (i.e., Scotistic) opinion. In Meyendorff’s view,
however, Scholarios always upheld a Thomistic doctrine of “original guilt.” 286 In an influential
comment that became a source of inspiration for a future generation of Orthodox scholars,
Meyendorff puzzled over Scholarios, declaring: “A lifelong admirer of Thomism and a
Thomist theologian in his own right, George Scholarios is an intellectual enigma awaiting
modern scholarly investigation.” 287
Meyendorff’s assertions against Scholarios are all but gratuitous, even if Meyendorff
managed to reconcile himself to some degree with Scholarios’s most notorious theological
opinion; namely, Meyendorff admitted that the Immaculate Conception was close enough to
288
Orthodoxy to enjoy a certain approximation to Orthodox doctrine. Meanwhile,
Meyendorff’s distancing of Orthodoxy from Scholarios seemed propitious, as well as
opportune, for the neo-Palamite movement labeled with disfavor any author who was found to
cite Schoolmen favorably. 289 Following additional discoveries of Scholarios’s dependence on
numerous Latin sources in decades following, there was virtual consensus that Scholarios – to
some large degree – was Scholastic and undeniably pro-Latin with respect to his proclivities
toward Latin literature. 290 Because of the increasing unpopularity of Scholasticism among
Orthodox intelligentsia during the neo-patristic and neo-Palamite revival, Scholarios suffered
a fairly swift fall from grace in some quarters, being dispossessed of his traditional epithets in
many quarters, no longer a hero of Orthodoxy.
285
Meyendorff 1974a, 148.
286
287
288
289
Neo-Palamism was spurred on by a new generation of Roman Catholics who were unabashedly anti-
Palamite. Jugie’s and Guichardan’s reserve was completely abandoned, serving only to invite Orthodox to
revive long-defunct attitudes on the Thomist-Palamite polemic. See Candal 1938, 338–343; Candal 1946, 65–
103; Candal 1954, 247–297; Candal 1957, 237–266; Candal 1962, 73–120.
290
During this period, in Greece, influence of Aquinas and other Schoolmen on Scholarios was occasionally
acknowledged but substantially ignored. This is the case for Pharantou 1966; Pharantou 1968, 5–31; and
Pharantou 1969. Critique is forcefully levied for errors, in Demetracopoulos 2007a, 313–314.
85
On the other hand, focusing on the Greek-speaking world, Greek nationalism and
religious culture had proudly imbibed Scholarios’s historical, cultural, and religious grandeur.
Meyendorff’s devaluation of Scholarios at the western printery managed to evoke only
effrontery from the Greek typographia in traditional Greek Orthodox quarters. This resistance
is hypostasized in the vociferously anti-Latin and pro-Scholarian thesis of Zezes. 291 Clearly,
the collective Greek memory of Scholarios squared not at all with Meyendorff’s summary
diagnosis of a manic latinophrôn trapped inside a depressive Greek’s body. 292 All the same,
Scholarian scholarship continues to present Zezes with an aporia that might be summarized
thus: “If true Orthodoxy is intrinsically anti-Latin in its theological terms and their significata,
then what are we to do with the plethora of literature authenticating Scholarios’s ‘Scholastic’
pedigree?” We shall refer to Zezes ἔτι καὶ ἔτι below.
5. Contemporary Status Quaestionis on the Scholarian Corpus and Doctrine
Greek reaction to an ostensibly latinophrôn Scholarios proved to be of little

consequence in the West. 293 A series of philological and philosophical studies outside of
partisan camps underlined a number of discoveries that not only reinforced Scholarios’s
pedigree as a Latino-Scholastic in mindset, but even tempted scholars to see Scholarios as a
sometime plagiarist, calling into question his very genius. 294 During this period, Meyendorff’s
earlier rejection of Scholarios must have proved prophetic to not a few neo-Palamites. Every
few years seemingly marked yet another discovery of some Thomistic, dialectical, or
Scholastic work, revealing another Latin brick in the foundation of the Scholarian edifice.295
Of course, Byzantinist and medievalist enthusiasm about the inroads through which Byzantine
Thomism had penetrated into Orthodox societies managed in no way to enhance esteem for
Scholarios in conservative religious and apologetico-scholarly contexts, whose hopes now lay
firmly in Gregorios Palamas, as if he were a perfect counter-example of completely
291
For the problems with his thesis, see Cunningham 1981; Darrouzès 1981, 350–351; Gill 1982, 240; Balfour
83, 80–84.
292
Bonis 1953, 815–854; Bonis 1960/1961, 83–108; Papadakis 1972, 88–106; Sergi 1996.
293
Enthusiastic reception of Zezes by Orthodox was attested in Balfour 1983, 83.
294
See Ierodiakonou 2011, 373–384. Cf. Cacouros 2000a, 424–432.
295
Tavardon 1976; Tavardon 1977; Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 263–319; Tavardon 1983, 57–74; Azkoul
1991, 167–173; Eszer 1992, 185–196; Barbour 1993.
86
unadulterated Orthodoxy, free of Latin contagion. 296 In this theological culture, Scholarios was
only farther marginalized from Orthodoxy for his putative lack of fidelity to his own tradition.
Besides Zezes’s ultimately unsuccessful thesis, no other studies at the beginning of the
contemporary period until the end of the millennium attempted to give a global view of
Scholarios’s personality in play with his theology and philosophy. Even Barbour’s thesis on
Scholarios was more of an attempt to extrapolate from a few Scholarian works some general
judgments about Scholarios’s theological propensities. Barbour was summary, not systematic,
in rejecting Zezes’ thesis. He simply underlined discrediting book reviews that ultimately
counseled him to ignore Zeses’ questionable scholarship. 297 Consequently, the real personality
and intellectual commitments of Scholarios, on the surface of it, appeared almost certainly
Thomistic. Yet, no scholar was able to explain the manner by which mutually exclusive logical
and philosophical schools (e.g., pro-univocity Modistae vs. Thomistic analogists of being)
coexisted in a purportedly Thomistic theologian’s works. Meanwhile, questions regarding the
extent to which Scholarios deserved the epithet of plagiarist, rather than “commentator,” were
pressing by the end of the century. 298 In effect, the complexity of Scholarios as a man and as
an academic increased, while yet new discoveries seemed only to call further into question
both traditionally Orthodox and traditionally Catholic categories for classifying Scholarios as
a theologian and churchman.
The situation did not markedly improve with the thesis and publications of Livanos. 299
The author simply took his ex professo point of departure from Meyendorff. Livanos failed to
consult primary or secondary Scholastic literature and did not compare original Latin texts to
Scholarios’s Greek translations. Furthermore, the presentation of some few Greek Fathers of
the Church to Scholarios is neither genetic nor systematic. Livanos also avoided any attempt
to fill in the biographical gaps in Scholarios’s life or chronology and tended to theologize
against Scholarios and assume him to be under the spell of “Latinism” without confronting
Scholarian sources, influences, or theological development within Scholarios’s opera. In
296
Scholarios obfuscated apologetic projects in other ways, as with his prediction of the end of the world, per
Turner 1968, 40–46; Rigo 1992, 162–183.
297
Barbour 1993, 10.
298
Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 264–266; Barbour 1993, 66–67.
299
Livanos 2003, 23–40; and Livanos 2006.
87
effect, Livanos’s bibliography and methodology cast serious doubts on the capacity of his
thesis to add any insight into, or understanding of, Scholarios. 300
At the beginning of the century, signs of hope manifested themselves in more
enlightening historical studies, as in Demetracopoulos’s discovery of Scholarian florilegia,
clearly compiled for his Thomistic writings on providence and predestination. 301 Especially
important for understanding his prosopography and the Scholarian context are the works of
302
Blanchet, beginning to surface at this period. Taken together, Blanchet and
Demetracopoulos finally allowed for a real advancement in making intellectual assessments of
Scholarios. 303
6. New Horizons toward the Categorization of Scholarios and His Palamism
The watermark coloring all scholarship on Scholarios in contemporary discussions

must be Blanchet’s celebrated thesis on Scholarios’s life, works, and thought: Georges-
Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400-vers 1472): Un intellectuel orthodoxe face à la disparition
de l’empire byzantine. 304 All future studies on Scholarios need make reference to this
authoritative monograph before advancing any discussion on Scholarios. Be that as it may,
Blanchet’s studies are intentionally and primarily historical and cultural, not specifically
philosophical or theological. To fill in some of the gaps, studies on Scholarios’s theological
and philosophical sources and method have advanced only in a series of investigations
concentrating on Scholarios’s Aristotelianism and Thomism. 305 Additionally, some recent
300
For a specialist critique of Livanos, see Blanchet 2006a, 395–397.
301
For such studies, see Matschke 2000, 227–236; Woodhouse 2000; and Demetracopoulos 2002, 117–171.
302
Blanchet 2001, 60–72; Blanchet 2003, 5–48; Blanchet 2004, 17–39; Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 70–103;
Kapriev 2005, 329–345.
303
I do not mention ever-burgeoning scholarship on the Plato-Aristotle debate between Pletho and Scholarios.
This literature has constantly increased and has naturally resulted in a more profound understanding of the
dispute. See Alexandre 1858; Tozer 1886, 353–380; Jugie 1935, 517–530; Astruc 1955, 246–262; Masai 1956;
Lagarde 1973, 312–343; Turner 1976, 56–63; Maltese 1988; Lagarde 1989, 368–507; Tambrun-Krasker 1992,
168–179; Woodhouse 2000; Livanos 2003, 23–40; Hatzimichael 2005; Karamanolis 2006, 252–282;
Sinnosioglou 2011; C. Athanasopoulos 2015, 401–427.
304
Blanchet 2008.
305
Demetracopoulos 2007a, 301–376; Kappes 2013a, 71–114; Kappes 2013b, 193–197; Bernatsky 2009, 169–
182; Demetracopoulos 2011a, 264, 367–369, 370–372; Kapriev 2015, 233–266; Briel 2015; Demetracopoulos
2019a.
88
studies have added newly discovered works to the Scholarian corpus, while others add to our
information about Scholarios’s life. 306
The only contemporary studies (besides Kappes 2013a) to provide a detailed discussion
of Scholarios’s Palamism from a theological or philosophical point of view are those of
Demetracopoulos and Kapriev. Importantly, in harmony with initial indication of Tambrun-
Krasker, 307 Demetracopoulos located passages within the Scholarian corpus that were meant
to oppose the neopagan Georgios Gemistos Pletho. Demetracopoulos states:
[Scholarios] accuses “Hellenic theology” (including Pletho) of absolutely identifying God’s
“essence” and “energies” and thus failing to bridge the gap between God and the derivative
beings; for God would produce things by means of his essence, his productions would have
been of the same nature as him, i.e., God’s, which has proved absurd. Some sort of distinction
should, therefore, be drawn between God’s “essence” and “energies.” Doing so does not clash
with God’s simplicity; for, in fact, a difference between “essence” and “energies” is met within
every being. 308
Pletho’s radical division of energies, whereby any one energy is attributed to a separately
subsisting being, placed Scholarios’s position as a medium between Aquinas and Pletho. 309
Importantly, however, Demetracopoulos has expertly proven the variety of Byzantine
approaches to reconciling Palamas’s mystical insights (in their dogmatic and theological
expositions) to Thomism via the texts of a series of celebrated and saintly authors, whom
Demetracopoulos exegetes in great detail. 310 Demetracopoulos, when comparing Scholarios to
his “Byzantine Thomist” predecessors (in time and affinity), remarks, “Scholarios plainly
integrated this doctrine into the framework of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of ‘analogia entis,’
the ‘mode of existence’ of these ‘intentiones’ being for him partly objective and partly
subjective.” 311 If “objective,” above, is taken not in the medieval logical, but metaphysical
306
Ganchou 2007, 117–194; Blanchet 2009, 181–192; Dorandi 2010b, 121–141; Paizi-Apostolopoulou 2012,
95–116.
307
Tambrun-Krasker 1992, 168–179.
308
Demetracopoulos 2019b. Cf. Scholarios 1935e (OCGS 4:126.22–127.30).
309
For Aquinas’s use of Plato and “the Platonici,” especially his rejection of their metaphysics of being, see
Henle 1956.
310
Demetracopoulos 2011a, 272–369; Demetracopoulos 2019b.
311
Demetracopoulos 2019b. Cf. Scholarios 1935f (OCGS 4:165.19–29).
89
sense, then Scholarios advocated for a distinction that was far more “real” than his
predecessors,’ save his own teachers: Joseph Bryennios and Markos of Ephesus. 312
Demetracopoulos’s most important contributions have been to expose the fact that
Scholarios, within his essence-energies treatises, translated the highly technical vocabulary of
fourteenth-century Modistae into Greek in order to justify Palamite metaphysics. This
obviously bespeaks a much more sophisticated theory of logic and metaphysics than was
formerly available to Byzantines prior to the translations of Latin works in the fourteenth
century. Demetracopoulos has also given a valuable assessment of the kinds of distinctions
that Scholarios meticulously proposed along the line of Thomists; namely, “a real distinction”
and “distinctions of reason.” Again, Demetracopoulos convincingly assessed that Scholarios’s
distinction lay outside of these aforesaid distinctions and, thus, he affirms that some Scotistico-
based source is the likely culprit for Scholarios’s deviation from Thomistic thought. More
controversially, Demetracopoulos emphasizes the gap between the distinctions made by
Palamas and Scholarios, while noting that Scholarios’s own system cannot at all be said to be
put in the same terms, nor in the same metaphysical categories, as Palamas. For
Demetracopoulos, Palamas’s distinction would have most likely been reducible, among
Schoolmen, to something close to a Thomistic “real distinction” (distinctio maior), whereas
Scholarios is clearly using more sophisticated apparatus that results in a relatively “soft”
distinction between the essence and energies in the overall Scholarian system. Accurately and
– for contemporaries – confusingly, Demetracopoulos also records the various instances where
Scholarios upholds the Thomistic tradition of “the analogy of being.” While these two
philosophical systems of analogy and Scotistic univocity are classically and logically
incompatible, it remains to be seen how Scholarios – a perfectly capable logician – attempted
to adopt Scotistico-modistic metaphysical logic along with analogical predication. Ultimately,
these questions surround the mystery of Scholarios’s metaphysical justification of Palamism.
Finally, unlike Guichardan and Jugie, Demetracopoulos notices that Scholarios pushed a
philosophical agenda that was reformulating the Thomistic system to accommodate an ulterior
and subtler Scotistic distinction in order to do better metaphysics. 313
312
Demetracopoulos 2011a, 287–292, 342–368.
313
Demetracopoulos 2019b. Cf. Scholarios, Excursus, chaps. 93–94 (OCGS 6:281.25–285.18).
90
On another score, Kapriev does not admit that Palamas’s system would have been
reduced to a distinctio realis, but rather that Scholarian metaphysics (similar to my own
published opinions) are a more sophisticated way of explaining accurately Palamas’s
fundamental insight. 314 However, despite his overall agreement with me, Kapriev criticized
my willingness to classify Palamas’s distinction as in any way “real.” 315 Yet, this may signal
a fundamental petitio principii plaguing almost all Renaissance, modern, and contemporary
discussions of Palamas: “What are the objective criteria for any one distinction to fall into the
class of ‘real distinctions’ or major distinctions such that metaphysical composition is
introduced into the godhead contrary to the express prohibition of all historical interlocutors?”
Demetracopoulos and Kapriev are both philosophically oriented in their analyses,
which differ from the theological focus of the present monograph. While both
Demetracopoulos and Kapriev make reference to the theologians Jugie and Guichardan,
neither does so with express intention to critique or analyze these philosophically-oriented
predecessors. 316 Instead, by and large, Demetracopoulos finds that Jugie and Guichardan had
a fundamentally accurate, if somewhat simplistic, grasp of the overall nature of distinctions
adopted by Palamas, Palamites, and Scholarios. Kapriev, for his part, fundamentally differs on
the key point of categorizing Palamas’s distinction as “real” vis-à-vis reducibly Aristotelian
criteria of metaphysical composition. Kapriev adroitly observes that Scholarios represents the
apex of an East-West systematization that conserves the fundamental theological conclusions
of Byzantine theology, while offering a potentially global approach to theology capable of
attracting Latin and Byzantine interlocutors of our own day:
Gennadios preferred to place the Palamistic distinction of essence and energy within the
distinctio formalis, as formulated by Duns Scotus. [...] Scholarios consciously attempts to
synthesize [metaphysical] developments within the framework of the Latin speculative
tradition with the Romaic [Orthodox] tradition, as developed in Palamite doctrine. It has the
power to hold together the common foci within [what is otherwise] incommensurability.
Scholarios has the potential to become the engine for an even broader and more radical
314
Kappes 2013a, 105–113.
315
Kapriev 2015, 248–249.
316
Demetracopoulos 2011a, 263, 269, 370; Kapriev 2015, 233, 261.
91
synthesis, which would nowadays be able to exert an influence on the whole of the Western
culture. This synthesis was never realized. 317
In fundamental agreement with Kapriev’s evaluation of the Scholarian synthesis, my own
published opinions, as majorly endorsed by both authors, proposes that a definitive answer to
the question lies in uncovering Scholarios’s source-texts for his essence-energies distinction. 318
Conclusions
From the aforementioned, I see a pressing need to establish certain criteria for defining
divine simplicity from a dogmatic point of view for evaluation of the authors in question by
the standards of both Renaissance and contemporary Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
theology and from a philosophical point of view for comparing Scholarios to Palamas on the
level of abstraction. I am fundamentally interested in classifying Palamas’s distinction
according to a dogmatic or a theological optic, but only so as to clarify Palamas’s position on
the essence-energies vis-à-vis Scholarios as “Orthodox” contra Guichardan. In order to revise
the narrative of Guichardan and to harmonize better his valid findings with current evidence
and, if necessary, to correct his prejudices and errors, a progression of themes will be treated
in the chapters that follow.
First, it will be of value to contextualize Scholarios in his Byzantine setting by
exploring the early intellectual influences that led to or occasioned his mature synthesis.
Secondly, it will be necessary to provide an accurate assessment of the fundamental simplicity
criterion or kinds of distinctions in Aquinas, Scotus, and Palamas in order to advance toward
an intelligent reading of Scholarios’s initial work and sources that professedly deal with the
components of the essence-energies doctrine of Gregorios Palamas. Thirdly, space and time
limitations lead me to focus on Scholarios’s foundational text in his commentary-translation
of Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. I will uncover his philosophical commitments, along with his
Greek and Latin sources, in order to exposit Scholarios’s underlying principles for interpreting
his subsequent teaching on the essence-energies distinction. My conclusions will evaluate the
Jugie-Guichardan thesis and their presentation of Scholarian doctrine. Lastly, after
317
Kapriev 2005, 344.
318
My initial and sometimes provisional findings may be consulted in Kappes 2013a, 74–114.
92
successfully annotating Scholarios’s foundational doctrine, I plan to capacitate the reader of
Scholarios to interpret the entirety of Scholarios’s remarkable synthesis of the essence-energies
doctrine in light of my discoveries. I anticipate that my disquisition will prove to exonerate
Scholarios from all accusation of mitigating the Palamistic essence-energies distinction out of
a preference for Thomistic metaphysics.
Because of the sheer number of primary and secondary sources involved in my
disquisition, I will need to delimit the investigation. As we shall see, Scholarios himself divided
the essence-energies question into (1.) God ad intra, or the essence-energies, (2.) God ad extra,
or creation in relation to the energies, and (3.) the lumen gloriae, or the divine light that is the
effulgence from the godhead and seen by the saints. The main thrust of Scholarios’s doctrine
(and my own investigation) is clearly aimed at the ad intra doctrine of Palamas. Albeit, this
aspect of Palamism represents Palamas’s most mature reflection on Hesychasm (viz., his
metaphysics to justify his historically prior theoptics or mystical insight), I have prudently
decided to focus my investigation into the metaphysical foundations of Scholarios’s system;
namely, the godhead, Trinity, and its internal energies. Naturally, my disquisition will include
and reference the manner in which this doctrine is related to numbers two and three, above.
Still, only indications and impressions will be offered on the aforesaid separate matters since
the vastness of the total matter at hand will inevitably lead to the production of an excessively
large tome on the single subject of the ad intra Trinitarian life.
The conclusions of the present investigation will lead to a definitive assessment of the
sources, of the doctrine, and of the fidelity of Scholarios to Palamas’s initial theological
project, not to mention the Palamite tradition in both his method and in his conclusions. All
the same, Scholarios accomplished his task by means of a certain ecumenical, idiosyncratic,
and even eclectic approach to resolving the metaphysical impasse between anti-Palamistic
Thomists and Palamas. This will be clearly discerned after successful completion of my
investigation into Scholarios’s earliest work on the essence-energies question.
93
94
Chapter Three: Scholarios’s Intellectual Formation prior to the Council of
Ferrara-Florence
Introduction
To contextualize and, thus, judiciously interpret both the νοῦς and λέξις of Scholarios,
I have deemed essential to investigate the literary and formative influences during the early
life of Scholarios, antedating his mature treatises on the question of the essence and energies
in the godhead. The first modern attempt at a biography and an account of intellectual and
literary influences on Scholarios must surely be accredited to Jugie, 319 whose early work on
Scholarios maintains a goodly amount of its original value. Jugie possessed a rare erudition,
whereby he was able to seamlessly navigate between various cultures and languages of the late
Roman Empire and put their values and intellectual commitments into dialogue with both Latin
and Byzantine theologians of the second millennium. Furthermore, Jugie’s knowledge of the
abstractions involved in metaphysics, physics, and ethics, served him well in his ability to
understand both Latin and Byzantine intellectual formation according to Platonic, Aristotelian,
and Neoplatonic viewpoints (inter alia). Naturally, one major factor limiting Jugie’s outlook
was his rather ahistorical vision through the prism of neo-Thomism that dominated his
intellectual formation and Roman Catholic intellectual culture following Leo XIII’s official
imposition of the then burgeoning neo-Thomistic movement upon the worldwide Roman
Catholic Church. There will be occasion to draw the reader’s attention to his biases and
apologetic interests below. 320
319
In addition to his prefaces to all eight volumes of OCGS, see Jugie 1931d, 11.2:1777–1817.
320
Jugie began publishing just at the beginning of the twentieth century, posterior to the onset of a new-
fashioned Roman Catholic milieu whereby higher education demanded all Catholic universities and high
schools zealously embrace the philosophical and theological principles of Aquinas’s (putatively consistent and
evident) philosophy and theology (cf. infra, Aeterni Patris, par. 28 and 31) per Leo XIII 1879, 97–115. By the
time Jugie was a student, the neo-Thomistic reform was well in place. With a de facto alliance between the
pontiff and the Dominican Order, Leo XIII’s patronage ensured the proliferation of numerous Thomistic
periodicals (e.g., Divus Thomas, fl. 1880). Another catalyst for Leo’s educational reform occurred only a year
post-Aeterni Patris, with the publication of a motu proprio, within which Thomas Aquinas was declared the
unique and official patron of all Roman Catholic schools and “prince and Magister of all Scholastic doctors.”
See Leo XIII 1880, 56–59. Subsequently, the pope installed his sibling, Giuseppe Pecci, SJ, as prefect for the
Congregation of Seminaries and Studies (1884). See Schelkens, Dick, and Mettepinengen 2013, 71–72. For the
seminary reforms enacted by the pope’s brother, Pecci, see Boyle 1981, 7–22.
95
Still, Jugie’s interdisciplinary approach to Scholarios and his opera omnia served as a
solid basis for Turner’s ulterior biographical sketch of Scholarios in the second half of the
twentieth century. 321 Turner approached Scholarios from the perspective of a Byzantinist and
an historian. This fact was propitious, for Turner tended to avoid making very many value
judgments about the admissibility of Scholarios’s metaphysics and theological commitments.
All the same, Turner betrayed sparse interest in the philosophical side of the debates. He failed
to manifest any particular aptitude for interpreting implications of opposing schools of
philosophy and theology from either the perspective of logic, or of metaphysics à la byzantine.
Thus, his contribution is altogether historical. Blanchet has notably surpassed previous
historical investigations of her forebears by publishing a volume that has already pronounced
the definitive word on the major portion of Scholarios’s life and times, intellectual production,
and historical context, especially from c. 1430–1472. 322 Additionally, she exhausts the
question of Scholarios’s date of birth and the origin of his personal and familial appellations.
It is unlikely that her work will need to be historically reevaluated for some time.
All the same, the scope of Blanchet’s opus magnum deliberately bypassed the crucial
years of intellectual formation of the young Scholarios in order to provide the reader a portrait
of “Gennadios” Scholarios. Indeed, if “Gennadios” embodied the most erudite Byzantine of
the second millennium, the story of his youthful intellectual formation still begs to be explored.
Hence, the present introduction to the life and times of Scholarios attempts neither to supplant,
nor to challenge, Blanchet’s recent account of “Gennadios II Scholarios.” Instead, the present
disquisition will seek to concentrate itself on the budding, juvenile, and scholastic development
of the personality otherwise known as “George Scholarios.” The illustrious “Gennadios II
Scholarios,” monk and eventual patriarch of Constantinople, will play the role of a mature
actor when carrying out his role as Orthodox theologian par excellence on the matter of the
essence-energies doctrine. Nonetheless, without a thorough knowledge of the juvenile
“George,” the mature “Gennadios” may still contain enough earmarks of mystery to risk
misinterpretation of his developed mens, if not his very verbum.
In order to understand the theological development and ever-increasing subtlety of
George-Gennadios Scholarios’s intellectual output, space must be ceded to an investigation
321
Turner 1969, 420–451.
322
Blanchet 2008.
96
into the numerous theologians, whose influence on Scholarios’s psyche and intellectual
approach to theology manifested itself only later. Scholarios only finished his philosophico-
theological studies in the period following Scholarios’s disenfranchisment with the Council of
Ferrara-Florence (1438–1439). He rather quickly abandoned the unionist party of Byzantines
who remained loyal to the politico-religious program of Emperor John VIII Palaeologus
(1392–1448).
Among other headings, Scholarios has been described as the professor of philosophy
and theology (1430/31–1444), 323 not excluding the patriarchal school. 324 He has been
considered a patrologist, 325 Aristotelian, 326 Scholastic, 327 Thomist, 328 Scotist, 329 and Palamite.
The number of significant thinkers (passim et partim) and philosophies that are woven into
Scholarios’s mature thought challenge conventional ideas about his Thomism. It has been
recently demonstrated that Scholarios cannot be identified with what Lossky called “orthodox
Thomism” (terminus post quem 1432), for he had already launched out on his own as an
eclectic commentator and selective translator quite early on. 330 As indicated in a previous
study, George-Gennadios Scholarios betrayed himself as an eclectic philosopher in the 1430s
when translating and affirming doctrines of the Latino-Scholastic Radulphus Brito. 331 This
mainly fourteenth-century metaphysical logician, or modista, may have sometimes shared
some common values with Thomas Aquinas but no more or less than many other eclectic
Scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 332 Following his return from the Council
323
Zezes 1988, 363; Cacouros 2006, 40–49.
324
He was καθολικὸς διδάσκαλος of his private διδασκαλεῖον. Jugie (1939, 382–394) judged his first
professorship to begin in 1428. Blanchet (2008, 318–320) opts for either 1430 or 1431. Scholarios had founded
a school as its σχολάρχης. He claimed never to encounter a school worthy of “the name of philosophy” in
Byzantium. Wherefore, he opened his own school, as he attested in OCGS 4:407, where he taught together both
“Italians” and Greeks (OCGS 1:189).
325
Scholarios’s patristic interpretations (though not irreproachable) are often justified. Fisher 2008, 55–61.
326
In addition to his renowned defense and promotion of Aristotle, see Scholarios 1936b (OCGS 7:2–3). Herein,
he mentions his enthusiasm for Theophrastes of Alexandria, Porphyry, Syrianus, Simplicius, Alexander of
Aphrodisias, Ammonios, Themistios, as well as Arabs (e.g., Avicenna) and Persians. He claims to have read
their Latin translations and to hold special admiration for the commentary and in-depth study of Averroës. For
a more probable dating of this epistle to 1430, see Blanchet 2008, 482.
327
For a thorough study of Scholarios’s scholastic preferences, vocabulary, and commentaries, see Ebbesen
and Pinborg 1981–1982, 263–319. More recently, other important Scholastic terminology resulting in Greek
calques and inventive terms may be profitably consulted in Demetracopoulos 2019a.
328
Barbour 1993.
329
330
Kappes 2013a, 84–88, 105.
331
Kappes 2013a, 86–91.
332
Surveys of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Latin theologians may be consulted in Gracia and Noone 2002.
97
of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1439), Scholarios interpolated his own thoughts into his translation
(scripsit 1445) of Armandus of Bellovisu’s commentary on the De ente et essentia. 333 In some
instances, he even did so in prejudice to Aquinas. 334 Though this fact does not necessarily
bespeak a wholesale rejection or depreciation of Aquinas as his principal διδάσκαλος, it does
rob Scholarios of his traditional orthodox Thomistic pedigree. History will show that, as
Scholarios increased his literary production, he persevered in his eclecticism all the same. 335
Are the environmental and historical factors surrounding Scholarios’s intellectual
formation sufficient to explain his philosophical and theological eclecticism in the realm of
metaphysical theology? Hereafter, I will argue that such considerations do indeed explain
much of Scholarios’s literary output. In fact, upon stringing together the facts of his life, a
probable narrative can be told in a manner that makes Scholarios’s academically creative
synthesis less surprising in the realms of philosophy and theology. Accordingly, my present
inquiry aptly begins with an analysis of the pertinent facts known about Scholarios’s formators.
They serve as harbingers of Scholarios’s future spiritual and intellectual trajectory and, early
on, they provided him with visible horizons for his theological synthesis within the confines
of Byzantium.
1. Manuel-Markos Eugenikos: Tutor of Young Scholarios (c. 1413–c. 1418/1420) 336
Scholarios’s beloved formators were naturally responsible for putting him on his path
of development leading to the full expression of his genius in future years. To begin with, we
must turn to the life of Manuel-Markos Eugenikos, who eventually became a renowned “pillar
of Orthodoxy” in his conciliar role of Metropolitan Archbishop of Ephesus at Ferrara-
333
This date has been confirmed in Blanchet 2008, 318, since the watermark on the MS Laur. 86.26 confirms
this, as being c. 1446, per Fryde 1996, 626.
334
Scholarios begrudgingly admits that Aquinas may be interpreted as noxious to Orthodox tenets, with respect
to the essence-energies distinction. Therefore, he introduces the Scotistic transcendental disjuncts (every
attribute of being is “either ‘a’ or not ‘a,’ i.e., eternal or temporal, infinite or finite, etc.”) into what is otherwise
a translation of Aquinas to square the text with the theological requirements of Orthodoxy. See OCGS 6:283–
285.
335
My initial assessment (Kappes 2013a) has been definitively proven by Balcoyiannopoulou 2018a–b, who
has exhaustively listed the diverse Scholastics (including non-Thomists) synthesized by Scholarios to create
his commentary on Aristotle’s Organon.
336
The Ephesine’s tutelage of Scholarios has been confirmed for some time. See Turner 1969, 421. Scholarios
personally attests to Eugenikos as his master in OCGS 1:16; OCGS 4:406; OCGS 4:447.
98
Florence. 337 Some salient points from Manuel-Markos’s life will greatly contribute to our
understanding of Scholarios. 338
Manuel-Markos was born in Constantinople in 1392. His formation was in a family of
genuine piety, as he assures in later years. 339 His father’s religiosity expressed itself through
pious hymnography. 340 Significantly, following the untimely death of his father in 1405,
Manuel was first sent to study under John Chortasmenos (c. 1407–1431). 341 Chortasmenos was
a logician and patriarchal notary. 342 Following studies with Chortasmenos, Manuel-Markos
afterwards studied under Georgios Gemistos Pletho until the young Eugenikos took back the
reigns of his father’s school in 1410. 343 It is presumably from Pletho that Manuel-Markos
received his exceptional knowledge of Homer, Plato, and other texts from antiquity. 344 Lastly,
during some later point in Manuel-Markos’s formation, he may have also been trained in
theology under the “champion of Orthodoxy,” Makarios Makres. 345 If this was accomplished
before his return to his father’s school, it means that Manuel may have been briefly exposed to
Aquinas’s ST via Pletho and/or Makres before he became the σχολάρχης of Scholarios, in loco
parentis, c. 1410/1411. 346 Within a few years, Manuel-Markos was to become personally
responsible for the education and formation of young George(-Gennadios) Scholarios, among
other notable men of the age. 347 Though it is possible that Manuel-Markos had been briefly
exposed to Aquinas’s works under Pletho, it is difficult to imagine any reason for Pletho to
337
For the most important studies on Markos’s life and times, see Trapp, Walther, et al. 1976–1996, no. 6193;
Mamoni 1954; Tsirpanlis 1979.
338
An updated biography of Markos boasts of previously unknown manuscripts of Eugenikos’s works and
scrupulously uncovers otherwise ignored aspects of Manuel-Markos’s life and times, in Pilavakis 1987, 22–58.
339
Pilavakis 1987, 24.
340
His father exhibits his devout character in G. Eugenikos 1984. Markos’s father was a distinguished
ecclesiastic. A list of his offices includes deacon, protekdikos, pronotary, and gran chartophylax of the Great
Church. See Tsirpanlis 1979, 38–39.
341
Hunger 1969, 17.
342
Hunger, 1969, 14.
343
Pilavakis 1987, 24.
344
For evidence of his mastery of Homeric vocabulary and style, see M. Eugenikos 1997.
345
Grumel 1926, 425. Grumel includes Manuel Chrysokokkes as an instructor. Pilavakis is silent but notes that
he has found no secure evidence to indicate a teacher-student relationship between Eugenikos and Makres.
Pilavakis has outlined the personal relationship between the two, leading to Eugenikos’s encomium of Makres
as “champion of orthodoxy.” See Pilavakis 1987, 30.
346
Demetracopoulos provides basic reasons to assume Pletho’s early knowledge of the two Summae and that
this knowledge came from Demetrios’s own autographs held in Pletho’s library in Mistra. Evidence from
Pletho’s activity at Florence allows us to date his possession of this book to 1437, before leaving with imperial
delegation. Demetracopoulos 2004b, 31–33.
347
Pilavakis 1987, 23.
99
have used Aquinas’s Summae in his role as schoolmaster. 348 If Pletho had failed to acquaint
Manuel-Markos with Aquinas graecus, Eugenikos still had two more occasions to know the
Doctor Communis via Makarios Makres and Joseph Bryennios. 349 During Markos’s first years
as headmaster it would have been impossible for him to be instructed by Bryennios, who was
in Cyprus during the first years of Manuel’s professorship (1402–1412). 350 Still, sometime
after 1412, Bryennios collaborated with Manuel in theology, 351 though precision is still
wanting in the exact dates. 352 Makres’s and Bryennios’s employment of Thomistic texts would
not have been lost on Manuel’s sharp intellect, especially with his eye for classical vocabulary
and syntax. 353
All the same, Manuel-Markos was a schoolteacher and exercised both a paternal and
religious role for the young impressionable Scholarios, 354 who remained in continual contact
with his master until Eugenikos’s death in 1445. Can it really be coincidence that George-
Gennadios, following his preliminary studies with Eugenikos, sought out the very same four
professors who had taught his master? In answer, it seems likely that Manuel-Markos took a
personal interest in his pupil’s formation and recommended him to each of his own former
masters according to their own diverse and peculiar talents. Like Manuel-Markos, George
348
Nonetheless, Markos may have had occasion to dabble in Latin. Scholarios came to know Markos’s Latin
study, as witnessed in OCGS 2:401.12–14.
349
Demetracopoulos demonstrated Bryennios’s knowledge and use of Thomas Aquinas (graecus). Bryennios
was probably quite familiar with the Doctor Angelicus by 1399/1401. This suggests that Markos’s teacher had
plenty of things to say against Aquinas by the time he began dialoguing with Eugenikos on theology in the
second decade of the fifteenth century. Was Bryennios the source of Markos’s rudimentary Latin learning? See
Demetracopoulos 2011a, 289.
350
Pilavakis 1987, 24.
351
Schmemann 1957, 16.
352
Katsarou 2000, 29.
353
Manuel’s humanistic capabilities would have easily alerted him to some awkward aspects of Demetrios
Kydones’ translations. Demetrios may have even taught Eugenikos, albeit a hypothetical possibility. Manuel’s
acumen in recognizing the vocabulary of Kydones has been ably discussed by Demetracopoulos 2011a, 337–
338. Eugenikos possibly learned the rudiments of Latin from Joseph Bryennios, who had discussed Latin
terminology in his works. He was also exposed to Latin rule (both ecclesiastical and civil) during his sojourn
on Cyprus (1402–1412). Turner (1969, 424) proposed at least one good reason for thinking that Scholarios may
have been instructed in the rudiments of the Latin language by Bryennios, viz., his letter congratulating
Kydones on a well-done Latin translation. That Bryennios’s associate (Manuel-Markos Eugenikos) had also
some basic knowledge of Latin makes this hypothesis somewhat more tenable.
354
Eugenikos was renowned for living as if he were already a monk, even while headmaster of his father’s
school, as explored in Pilavakis 1987, 24.
100
passed under the tutelage of (perhaps) Pletho, 355 Bryennios, 356 Makres, and Chortasmenos. 357
As we shall see, this chronology tells the story of a man who was always under the the moral
and intellectual influence of Eugenikos. 358 Even if Scholarios’s temporary exuberance for
humanism had tempted him to leave the orbit of the “Star of Ephesus,” the attraction of
Eugenikos’s personality – not to mention the effect of his paternal ire – eventually led
Scholarios back to uncompromising Orthodoxy following the Council of Florence. 359
2. Scholarios and Francesco Filelfo (1420–1427)
Scholarios’s training under Markos prepared him to return to the capital in hopes of a
career in the imperial service. 360 Meanwhile, another young man of twenty-two years of age
had already arrived in Constantinople in 1420. 361 The youthful Francesco Filelfo (b. 1398) was
to become one of the greatest humanists of the age. 362 Part of his training was accomplished,
however, in conjunction with his close relationship with George-Gennadios Scholarios in
Constantinople. 363 Doubtlessly, due in part to his colleague, Filelfo became quite versatile in
364
Greek. Scholarios and Filelfo began their intimate friendship from at least 1423 (if not
365
before), which lasted well after “Gennadios II” Scholarios became Patriarch of
Constantinople. 366 George-Gennadios’s sanguine Italian friend would have made him hungry
355
I will explore this below, but was supported by Tozer 1886, 359. In Alexandre 1858, the author claimed that
this tutelage took place in 1427, whereas Tozer assumes 1428. It turns out that the real date would have been
fall of 1428. Cf. Sphrantzes 1990, 32, 34–36 (XV.8–XVI.2).
356
This would have been after 1416, when he was in Constantinople. See Constas 2002, 412.
357
Blanchet 2008, 12.
358
Even before initiating his more polemical writings against Pletho, Scholarios submitted the writings to
Pletho’s old student, Eugenikos. See Jugie 1935, 520.
359
See Markos Eugenikos, Marci Ephesii ad Georgium Scholarium epistola (CFDS A.10.2:152–156), and
George-Gennadios Scholarios, A Marc d’Ephèse (OCGS 4:445–449).
360
He associated with diplomatic personnel from 1423–1427, as per Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 92.
361
Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 92. Filelfo was born on July 25, 1398. See Robin 2009, ix.
362
Filelfo was not only a professor of Greek and studia humanitatis, he was also a lecturer in Florence on Dante.
Davies 1998, 64–84. This fact explains how Scholarios might have learned Italian. The great expositor of Dante
must have encouraged Scholarios to be familiar with him. We lack any reference to Dante in Scholarios’s
works. For Scholarios’s Italian learning, see Turner 1969, 424.
363
Jugie 1939, 385. It seems more than coincidence that Scholarios began to shift from Byzantine logic and
natural philosophy to Latin Scholastic texts upon his acquaintance with Filelfo, as attested in OCGS 3:7.26–
27. These years of private study in Latinity have been delineated in Turner 1969, 424.
364
This relationship may date from 1420 to 1427 in Constantinople. These dates were recorded in Jugie 1939,
385. His travels have been subsequently confirmed and enlarged upon by Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 92.
365
Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 92.
366
Filelfo, 1892, 214–215.
101
for Latin learning. 367 However, the religious company that Scholarios kept would not have
been much to Markos’s liking, who took up residency in the capital in 1422. 368 After all, Filelfo
proved to be a zealous filioquist. 369 It should also be mentioned that Filelfo stood in line as one
of two possible men who were available and capable to teach Scholarios Latin. It would be no
surprise if Scholarios had learned Latin while helping Filelfo with his Greek studies. Filelfo,
too, once addressed his confrere as “γέρον” and “πάτερ,” but this was only due to the fact that
Gennadios was by then patriarch of Constantinople. 370 If Filelfo were, in turn, a Latin teacher
of Scholarios, it would also harmonize with Scholarios’s own imperfect Latin in his early
career, for Filelfo was young and incontestably lacked mastery of Latin at this time. 371 On the
other hand, Blanchet and Ganchou’s recent study on Lodizios of Tabriz, OP, demonstrates that
this multilingual Dominican was in fairly regular contact with Scholarios and could have
equally taught him Latin and provided access to many Latin works of Aquinas within the walls
of the Dominican studium at Pera. 372 I propose Filelfo as one of Scholarios’s de facto teachers
367
Filelfo dedicated an ode to his friend “Gennadios” Scholarios, referencing their friendship quite early on in
his youth (νεαρός) when he came to Constantinople. Francesco and Scholarios were only about two years apart
in age, Francesco being the older. See Filelfo 1892, 214.
368
If Grumel’s assertion is true, Eugenikos could have known all about Filelfo through his old teacher Manuel
Chrysokokkes; for Filelfo married the the daughter of his σχολάρχης. See Ševeĉenko 1955, 292. As such, it
may be that both Eugenikos and Filelfo had the same Greek instructor. See Grumel 1926, 425; Schmemann
1957, 13. Markos was in residence in Constantinople from 1422 on and must have immersed himself in
Palamism between 1422 and 1426, thereupon composing a liturgical work in Palamas’s honor before his
ordination. Scholarios would have visited his spiritual father and undoubtedly learned about Palamism from
Markos. See M. Eugenikos 2004, 4.1–50 (Mineva, 276–277). For dating, see Pilavakis 1987, 75.
369
Robin 2009, xiii. After the failure of Florence, while Scholarios headed the rebellious Synaxis, Filelfo
composed the following “against schismatics” (post-1448), in Filelfo 2009, 42: “Trinus atque unus. Sator ac is
idem fit satus iactu revirente nullo et simul purus fluit ex utroque spiritus ortu. Sic deus verax” (Apollo I.3,
lines 45-48). Filelfo was also on intimate terms with Markos’s archenemy, Andrew Chrysoberges, after
Filelfo’s return to Italy in 1427. See Francesco Filelfo, Franciscus Philelfus Andreae Constantinopolitano
theologo, ordinis predicatorum ac Rhodoriorum Archiepiscopo (December of 1428), in Filelfo 1502, fol. 7v.
Filelfo wrote Andrew for letters of safe passage as he prepared to take up his teaching position at the University
of Bologna: “[Your letters] were also the richest witnesses of your singular love toward me.”
370
Filelfo 1892, 214.
371
Stinger (1977, 38–39) notes that, as late as 1429, Filelfo felt compelled to lower himself and to consult with
his better (in both fame and humanitas) in Florence, namely, with Ambrogio Traversari. Filelfo sought help
with corrections on his Latin translations from Greek.
372
Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 70–103. Although Scholarios’s first translations were of Radulphus Brito’s
more recent and advanced commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon, Lodizios might best explain this access.
Firstly, Radulphus was sometimes mistaken as a “Thomist” in the Renaissance. See Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–
1982, 269–270. Secondly, Scholarios would not have been able to learn the meaning of Scholastic vocabulary
and the nuances and discrepancies between Aquinas, Natalis, and Brito as a young Latin student. Lodizios, as
a Dominican-trained theologian, would have perfectly been able to clarify the mesmerizing world of Scholastic
terminology. For his part, Filelfo was bereft of training and interest in Scholastic theology, as typical of
humanists.
102
since he was in Constantinople for purposes of learning Greek from 1422 to 1427. 373 Filelfo’s
peer group consisted of the rhetor-student Bessarion (1403–1472) and the equally rhetorically-
inclined Scholarios during the aforestated period. It stands to reason that Filelfo would have
been enthusiastically disposed to provide Latin tutelage to Scholarios in exchange for help in
conversational Greek and studies in rhetoric. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle:
Lodizios best accounts for Scholarios’s grasp of Scholastic terminology and works of Aquinas,
while Filelfo conveniently explains Scholarios’s convenient access to Augustinian works. 374
During these years of private study in Constantinople, evidence nonetheless exists that
Scholarios was likely a cooperator with Makres and Bryennios in a scholarly circle in
Constantinople. Parsimony suggests that Markos constituted the likely mediator through whom
introductions of Scholarios would have been made to this scholarly circle and cooperative
scriptorium in the capital during the reign of Emperor Manuel II. 375 Despite his autodidactic
studies in this period, Scholarios nonetheless managed to find an opportunity to visit
Thessalonica in 1425, where he heard Symeon of Thessalonica (c. 1381–1429) preach. Later
in life, Scholarios endeavored to read and incorporate Symeon’s thought into his own
theological synthesis. 376 In the end, after several years of friendship with Scholarios in
Constantinople, Filelfo returned to Italy and eventually took up his abode in Florence as
professor of Greek studies from 1429 to 1434. 377
3. Georgios Gemistos Pletho: Scholarios’s Tutor (1428–1430)?
Might Scholarios have first encountered Aquinas’s Aristotelianization of Christian

Neoplatonism from his engagement with Pletho and his writings? 378 While still a young and
373
374
Filelfo was a zealous procurer of manuscripts on both sides of the Adriatic. See Stinger 1977, 142–143.
375
Dendrinos 2007, 8–11. Cf. Fonkič and Poljakov 1991–1992, 22–23.
376
Blanchet 2008, 121, 448.
377
Davies (1998, 64) and Turner (1969, 428) have supplied reasons for dating a correspondence between Filelfo
and Scholarios to 1430. Scholarios inquired about the state of studies at Filelfo’s locale. This will come into
play for several reasons further below.
378
Demetracopoulos (2004b, 34) astutely suggests that Pletho learned from the Kydones brothers Aristotelico-
Thomism as a via Christiana. Following this line of argument, it is only one more step to suggest that Scholarios
(if he speaks honestly that he knew well Pletho’s paganism in the 1420s – whether as student, or as visitor to
Mistra in c. 1428) naturally would have heard Pletho attacking Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis. This explains well
Scholarios’s gravitation toward several fields of study: humanism (via Pletho), Palamism (via Markos), and
Aristotelico-Thomism (contra Pletho).
103
burgeoning scholar (under Pletho’s tutelage [?], c.1428–1430), it is certainly possible that he
379
happened upon Aquinas’s thought in the Pelopponese. Filelfo had departed from
Constantinople in 1427. This event certainly freed Scholarios from any hypothetical studies
with Filelfo, so as to be free to accompany Emperor John VIII to the Peloponnese in 1428. 380
Granted the plausibility of Scholarios’s journey, he would have surely taken advantage of
hearing lectures given by the erudite Pletho. 381 Gemistos had studied under the tutelage of the
humanist scholar and intellectual giant, Demetrios Kydones (c. 1323–1398), 382 who had been
ever eager to promote Aquinas. Demetrios’s zeal had boldly recommended Thomism, even to
an Orthodox emperor, despite the inherent risk of openly promoting Latin theology at court. 383
Pletho, as Kydones’ student (c. 1392 [?]), would have been no exception. 384 Pletho would have
been trained by his schoolmaster to read Platonic dialogues, but Kydones’s greatest love was
undoubtedly Aquinas. The Doctor Angelicus would have necessarily entered into many a
379
In support of this hypothesis is the fact that the extracta thomistica (containing Pletho’s own thematic
interests) are datable to a terminus ante quem of 1433. Pletho or his associates worked on these texts possibly
alerting Scholarios to Aquinas graecus. See Demetracopoulos 2004b, 50–51, 60–61. Recently, the theory about
Scholarios’s education in Mistra has been rehashed, in Sinnosioglou 2011, 130–131.
380
Woodhouse thinks it likely that Scholarios was part of the imperial retinue (1426/1428). However, without
directly refuting previous claims, he assumes that Scholarios never studied under Pletho, in Woodhouse 2000,
39.
381
Turner 1969, 424. Scholarios makes reference to his studies before 1428. It seems that during these years he
compiled manuscripts of logic and natural philosophy for private study (as there were no decent schools in
Constantinople in his judgment). For this reason we might interpret Scholarios’s claim that “he had no teacher”
and that he was a self-made man as genuine. If he spent these first years studying Latin with Filelfo, and logic
and naturalia on his own, this would also harmonize with his burgeoning humanism. This trajectory would
have potentially led Scholarios to Mistra (whether as associate or student of Pletho). Such interest had already
led to humanist friendship(s) in Constantinople, albeit there is also the matter of Scholarios’s un-humanistic
study of (Aristotelian) logic and physics (but evidently neglecting Aristotelian metaphysics and ethics at this
time).
382
Loenertz 1970, 48.
383
The Emperor John Katakuzenos admired Thomas Aquinas and his erudition. Because of Demetrios
Kydones’ initial translations, the emperor John even financed the entire translation of the SG. See Russell 2003,
155. However, Demetrios went so far as to even recommend Thomas to the Emperor Manuel II, known as an
anti-unionist (NB, the identity of the recipient of the letter below is not known with absolute certainty, other
than being one of the three emperors whom Demetrios served). Demetrios recommends to the emperor the
“Master” of the Dominicans who he claims is the apex of theologians and that Thomas has taught only what is
best and greatest in the realm of the things of God. See Demetrios Kydones, Epistula 399: Imperatori,
Constantinopolim, in Kydones 1960, 2:354: “Ἀλλ᾽ὅτι τοῦ μακαρίου μεμνημένος Θωμᾶ, ὅν ὁ τούτων χορὸς
κορυφαῖον ἐδέξατο καὶ ὅν οὐκ ἂν αἰσχυνοίμην καὶ μεγίστοις διδάσκαλον ἐμαυτοῦ προσειπών, οὐκ εἶχον μὴ
τοὺς ἐκείνου χορευτὰς καὶ φιλεῖν καὶ αίδεῖσθαι καὶ πᾶν ὑπὲρ τούτων λέγειν ὅ κἂν ἐκεῖνον εἰπεῖν ἐνόμισα
λαβόντα φωνήν” (Epistle 399.10–14).
384
For Pletho’s works, which affirm Demetrios Kydones’ tutelage over him in his youth, see Demetracopoulos
2004b, 30–31. Pletho’s tutelage under Kydones still presents a chronological problem according to Masai 1956,
48–54. This has been reasserted most recently in Tinnefeld 1981, 1.2:46.
104
lesson. To some extent, Pletho must have endured a Thomistically-flavored education. 385
Though Pletho professedly rejected Aristotelianism, Demetracopoulos has recently shown
exactly where Thomistic philosophical theology affected Pletho’s literary production. For
example, Pletho commented on the cardinal virtues ad mentem Thomae. 386 Though Platonic in
origin, the cardinal virtues were – ad Plethonis sententiam – best exposited through an
interpretation colored by an Aristotelico-Latin Christian. If Scholarios had in fact been exposed
to Aquinas under Pletho’s tutelage (whether directly or obliquely), Aquinas may have proven
himself an attractive source of Christian thought and more in accord with Scholarios’s
sensibilities. The discovery and approval of Aquinas’s works at Mistra might itself be thinkable
as a motif for Scholarios’s relocation to Constantinople in order to begin a formal education in
the study of logic. 387 However, this weak hypothesis of Pletho playing such a role in
Scholarios’s introduction to Aquinas graecus is dependent on only a slightly more robust
hypothesis that Scholarios attended briefly lectures of Pletho (let alone the idea that Scholarios
was Pletho’s understudy). For his part, the wealthy Pletho had already gathered a large library
by 1430, 388 which had probably included Aquinas’s works via Kydones. Scholarios would
have had easy access to the Doctor Communis at the library of Mistra.
Even if an academic exchange never existed between Pletho and Scholarios at this time,
Scholarios can safely have been assumed to accompany Emperor John VIII to Mistra in
1428. 389 This is reason enough to take Scholarios seriously when he intimated that he had
known about Gemistos’s paganism long before the Council of Florence. If Scholarios never
elaborated on his visit to the Peloponnese, by the 1440s Pletho’s works were already raising
serious questions about Plethonian Orthodoxy. There was little advantage for Scholarios to
385
See Demetracopoulos 2004b, 41–43.
386
Demetracopoulos 2004b, 60. This theme is discussed variously, but it begins to show itself early in Pletho’s
known literary production (c. 1433 [?]).
387
I adopt this possibility, though Loenertz (1944, 134–135) mentions nothing of a journey of Scholarios to the
Peloponnese before 1437. Turner (1976, 56) does not allude to this possible facet of Scholarios’s life either,
but explicitly discusses aspects of Alexandre’s work on Scholarios and Pletho, neither confirming, nor denying
Scholarios’s 1428 journey to the Peloponnese. It is also absent from his thorough treatment of Scholarios
chronology, in Turner 1969, 422–428. There is no judgment in Tinnefeld 2002, 477–542.
388
Runciman (1980, 110–111) records Pletho receiving land grants, holding membership in Mistra’s senate,
and maintaining a professorship.
389
Alexandre (1858, xiv–xv) highlighted Scholarios’s claim to know Pletho: “ἐκ παίδων” and “ἐκ νεóτητος.”
Nicol (2002, 8–10) confirms both John VIII’s presence in Mistra in 1428, as well as the large retinue that
accompanied the royal family. Woodhouse (2000, 39) thinks it likely that Scholarios was part of the imperial
retinue (1426/1428).
105
reveal himself as an intimate of Pletho during his educational years, unless Scholarios had
heard explicitly heretical ideas during his presumptive visitation to the Peloponnese (c. 1428–
1430). When writing decades later, Scholarios was already in a very difficult situation, where
he was being accused of lacking an Orthodox pedigree. 390 His own detractors were accusing
him of latinophrôn tendencies and of compromise as a pro-unionist at Florence. 391 One can
wonder if educational associations with Pletho would have only further opened him to
criticisms from Orthodox detractors.
Though it is possible that Scholarios took advantage of the lectures in Mistra, he
subsequently sought men more distinguished for their Orthodoxy. 392 Below, both Makarios
Makres and John Chortasmenos were able men to teach the precocious humanist-leaning
Scholarios. All the same, Scholarios was involved in preparing his logical and philosophical
commentaries on Aristotle for teaching purposes beginning in 1430/2. It was about this time
that he is recorded as seeking the assistance of a monk, Gregory by name, to copy him the ST
in Greek. 393 Already, by about 1430, Scholarios had obtained copies of Thomas Aquinas’s and
Radulphus Brito’s commentaries on logic and other parts of the Corpus Aristotelicum. No
doubt his friend, the famous humanist Francesco Filelfo, could have supplied him with such
works, though the Italian humanist would have lacked any enthusiasm for searching out
Scholastic works. Filelfo had a history of collecting and sharing manuscripts with fellow
humanists during the fifteenth century, even those treating the subject of theology. During
these professorial years, Scholarios had the chance to perfect his knowledge of Aquinas in
philosophical and theological matters through his use of Latin copies of various Scholastic
works; all the while Thomas’s Summa Theologiae served as a theological textbook for his own
learning. Even if Scholarios had not spent much time auditing his Orthodox tutors’ lectures,
390
These accusations may have followed him since the 1430s. After all, his master and friend Makarios Makres
had suffered these very same dogged accusations from the time when they first began their studies together.
See Argyriou 1996, 23–24.
391
Scholarios had been accused of Latinism after the Council (and probably before). He defended himself in
Scholarios 1928a (OCGS 1:376–389) (scripsit 1440/1441). See Blanchet 2008, 16. Ironically, Patriarch Joseph
II may have been first responsible for accusing Makarios (and his associates [?]) of Latinism c. 1430–1431. See
Sphrantzes 1990, 72–73 (Chronicon XXI.8).
392
Unfortunately, an encomium of St. Leontios of Monembasia – attributed to Scholarios – proves almost
certainly spurious. Were Scholarios its author, it would firmly place him in the Peloponnese during his younger
years. For the strong arguments against the authenticity of the attribution, see Angelomati-Tsougaraki, Politi,
et al. 1983, 84–85.
393
106
these prolific professors still exercised a decisive influence on his theological trajectory, as
signaled by Scholarios’s explicit attestations to and citations from their works.
4. Makarios Makres (c. 1383–1431): 394 Logic Professor of Scholarios (Sept. 1430–Dec.
1430)
Scholarios referred to himself as an autodidact. This, of course, forces us either to

accuse him of exaggeration, or to nuance his relations with his known professors. Obviously,
his basic education with Markos Eugenikos would have included the fundamentals of grammar
and rhetoric. It has already been shown, as well, that Scholarios vigorously sought out works
in logic and naturalia in the 1420s in Constantinople. This testifies to his sincerity in his
autobiographical notes – at least in the initial stages of his higher education – that he was reliant
upon his own genius. Yet, this also raises the question of the duration and kind of tutelage that
he had under Makres and others. 395 Each of his teachers possessed a different forte, but Makres
was a theologian who made use of Aquinas – albeit faithful to the dogmas of his Church – in
his polemics against Islam. 396 Given Makres’ chronology, it is impossible to suggest any
instruction until after his advent in Constantinople in 1422. Given his charge to reform and
repopulate monasteries (inter alia), Makres was presumably hard at work until at least 1427.
Pastoral duties at the Russian Church in the capital, as well as intense diplomatic service and
a trip to Rome (c. 1429), make it almost impossible to imagine how Makres instructed
Scholarios at all. 397 In student-master relationships, already mentioned above, advanced
students (e.g., Pletho-Kydones, Eugenikos-Pletho, Bessarion-Pletho) 398 found that a couple
years of study with their master was sufficient to merit for themselves the appellation of student
or disciple. In Scholarios’s case, he may have had the veritable misfortune of having three
professors all die or leave within about a year of tutelage. 399 Still, in all the studies that I have
394
See Argyriou 1996, 3. He died on January 7, 1431, per Argyriou 1996, 17.
395
Makarios was known for teaching of poetry, rhetoric, and logic, the latter of which Scholarios sought at this
time. Makres also successfully taught geometry, mathematics, and astronomy. See Argyriou 1996, 19.
396
See the analysis of Fyrigos (2004, 52), showing how Makres used seven orderly arguments of Aquinas to
critique Islam.
397
Argyriou 1996, 18, 21–22.
398
See Woodhouse 2000, 38. Woodhouse is critical of dubbing either Isidore of Kiev or Scholarios a “student”
of Pletho, mainly due to mere circumstantial evidence thereof, especially because Syropoulos fails to name
either as such, despite having done so for Eugenikos and Bessarion.
399
Blanchet (2008, 297) importantly draws attention to this point: “Il justifie ailleurs cet apprentissage
autodidacte par le fait que les maîtres avec lesquels il étudiait sont morts prématurément, et cite Ignace, Joeseph
107
investigated, a gaping lacuna exists. There is a failure to account for Scholarios’s whereabouts
between 1428 and 1430. This hiatus permits the possibility of Scholarios being present at
Mistra and returning with (or just ahead of) Makres from the Peloponnese in 1430. 400
This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that Argyriou places Makres in the
Peloponnese during his return from his Roman adventure. 401 He must have arrived in the
capital either in August or September 1430. 402 Had Scholarios returned with him (or because
of him) that same year, he would have had a few short months to benefit from Makarios’s
instruction and would have found himself in a cautiously pro-unionist context. He would have
also been in the company of men who could have secured for him a post within the diplomatic
service of the emperor, which service Scholarios in fact eventually undertook. 403 Upon both
men returning to Constantinople, it finally would have been at last possible for Scholarios to
make serious logical studies that he had so yearned for in the 1420s. 404 However, death
overtook his master, following a prolonged fever, on January 8, 1431.
With this scenario in mind, Scholarios joined with his new master at an auspicious time,
for Makarios had just finished writing his apologetic work on virginity, defending it from
Islam. 405 More importantly for Scholarios, Makarios had employed entire sections of
Aquinas’s SG in order to make his arguments for the naturality of virginity. 406 No doubt,
et Macaire de l’Athos: ces personages ont pu être identifiés es respectivement avec Jean Chortasménos, Joseph
Bryennios et Macaire Makrès or on sat en effet que le premier et le troisième sont décédés en 1431, tandi que
le deuxième a disparu dans les années 1430.”
400
Argyriou’s chronology allows us to date Scholarios’s letter to Makarios to the winter of 1430. See Argyriou
1986, 8, 46.
401
See also Argyriou 1996, 22–23.
402
This month is recorded in Sphrantzes 1990, 71 (Chronicon XXI.5). See also Argyriou 1996, 22–23.
403
Argyriou also concurs with this assessment that Scholarios officially represented the emperor’s interests
with Rome in 1435. See Argyriou 1986, 8, 46.
404
In 1430 Scholarios wrote an adoring letter to his master, encouraging him to take advantage of time for
prayer and holy discussion while convalescing. He then piously invoked God’s blessing on his master and
reminded him that Scholarios and his fellow students were eagerly awaiting Makarios’s return (OCGS 2:424–
425). This had to be after September, since there are exact indications of the time and nature of Makarios’s
kidney problems mentioned in the sources (i.e., Synaxarion). See Argyriou 1986, 8, 46.
405
This can be safely dated 1426–1429 (Argyriou 1996, 93). However, it is difficult to know from which
monastery he took his SG. At the beginning of 1422 he lived and worked in Μονὴ Χαρσιανίτου where he
technically resided until 1429. Then, he lived in Μονὴ Στουδίου (c. Oct. 1422) and Μονὴ Παντοκράτορος
(Nov. 1422). He remained in the last monastery until his return from Rome. He likely wrote this treatise at the
Pantokratôr (while directing the writing of another monk), but the provenance of his MS of Aquinas might well
be from a former monastery. For his sojourn and roles in these monasteries, see Argyriou 1996, 22–23.
406
See Argyriou 1986, 92–93. Argyrios has uncovered his citations and summaries of SG III.136–137 (from
Kydones’ translation), as well as chapter 138, which is attributable to Kydones’ translation of Aquinas’s De
rationibus fidei.
108
Makarios took an interest in Aquinas for reasons of ecclesiastical discussions of union as
well. 407 Whether or not Scholarios had initially been exposed to Aquinas via Markos or Pletho,
he certainly would have been convinced to take up the Latin doctor and to read him after
discovering Aquinas in the Byzantine theology of such an eminent professor of the capital.
Furthermore, Makarios presents us with a possible literary paradigm for Scholarios. As
Argyriou outlines, Makarios attempted to combine Scripture, authoritative Greek Fathers, and
Aquinas into an apologetic weave. Though some sections are verbatim citations from Kydones’
edition of the SG, Makarios actually develops the Thomist theology into a new mixed genre
of East-West literature. 408 Thus, when Scholarios found himself doing the same (e.g., his
treatises on the essence-energies question), he was hardly an innovator in this respect. His
predecessors (of blessed memory) had already shown him the way. Adopting orthodox ideas
from heretics (e.g., Origen and Evagrios Pontikos) was an olden Orthodox custom. 409 This was
merely the same principle, but only applied to new heretics for new times. For Scholarios’s
predecessors, it was only necessary to avoid attributing honorific titles to such Latins by
naming them, or citing them as explicit doctrinal authorities, lest they should risk association
with Latin heresies.
5. John-Ignatios Chortasmenos (1370–d. c. 1431/6/7): 410 Scholarios’s Professor of Logic

(post Dec. 1430)
Following the death of his beloved spiritual father, Makres, Scholarios found himself
once again without a teacher. As such, he sought out the best logician in the capital, John
Chortasmenos “Prodromos.” The Prodromos monastery in Constantinople has recently been
confirmed as a locus of logical learning going back to at least the fourteenth century. 411 Both
the Organon and the quadrivium were represented by the inventory of manuscripts within its
407
Argyriou 1996, 227–234; Balfour 1979, 219–228.
408
Argyriou 1986, 90–92. In this section the author also notices that Joseph Bryennios (an anti-Scholastic par
excellence) himself adopts Thomistically-inspired themes based off the Kydones’ edition, but Bryennios is
more radical in transforming the argumentation to the mindset and style of his cultural and religious heritage.
409
This analogy is appropriately applied to Aquinas’s role in Byzantium (even if Aquinas lacks the ignominy
of formal condemnation within a formal Byzantine synod), as proposed by Zeses 1988, 410–411.
410
Constas 2002, 2:412.
411
Cacouros (1998b, 199–200) records the generous portion of Proclus addended to otherwise classical
commentaries, which conveniently accounts for Scholarios’s knowledge of Proclus in his polemics against
Pletho.
109
walls. 412 In fact, Chortasmenos carried on a veritable tradition of the school in teaching logic
within the monastery walls. 413 Furthermore, the presence of both Chortasmenos’s and
Scholarios’s disciple Matthew Kamariotês – who left his handwriting on some aforesaid
manuscripts – suggests that Scholarios, as Chortasmenos’s student, mediated his school’s
tradition of logical commentary to his beloved disciple Matthew. 414
Yet, what evidence exists that Scholarios himself was a student of Chortasmenos?
Fortunately, Cacouros’s investigations have rendered happy results to respond to this query.
Between the years 1405 and 1410 Chortasmenos became the καθολικὸς διδάσκαλος of the
patriarchal school of the Prodromos at Petra (Constantinople). 415 In subsequent years he
continued teaching logic. However, Chortasmenos took on the task of re-editing and
reorganizing the corpus of Byzantine logical commentaries (post-1415). This was apparently
due to the special needs of two students, Bessarion and Scholarios. 416 Both Scholarios and
Bessarion were friends and companions of Filelfo in Constantinople. Scholarios’s and
Bessarion’s dilettante studies of logic had apparently habilitated them, so as to surpass the
logical training available to other neophytes at the Prodromos. 417 Chortasmenos needed to
rearrange his courses to meet the needs of two advanced students. This places their education
with Chortasmenos after their private studies in the 1420s. 418 After his master left the
patriarchal school of the Prodromos (1431), 419 Bessarion arrived in the Peloponnese with
Pletho by 1433. 420 Consequently, the two can be assumed to be studying with Chortasmenos
around 1430–1431. 421 Fortunately, my chronology harmonizes very well with Scholarios’s
412
For the history of the trivium and quadrivium in late Byzantium, see Cacouros 2006, 1–52.
413
Cacouros 1999, 76–77.
414
Cacouros 1998b, 212.
415
Hunger 1969, 14.
416
Analysis of notations to manuscripts by the hands of Chortasmenos’s students, Scholarios, or one Gregorios
(a secretary to Scholarios), secures these conclusions, in Cacouros 2000b, 69; Benakis 2002, 255.
417
The state of logic had long neglected both the Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics. While the former
on rare occasions was commented, the latter for stretches of centuries was neglected in Byzantium. See Benakis
2002, 249–258.
418
Tinnefeld (2002, 478) places Scholarios’s self-study at 1420.
419
Cacouros (2006, 43) establishes (via autographs) Chortasmenos at the school through 1430. Consequently,
Scholarios was able to leave the tutelage of his sick master (Makres) in the winter of 1430 and to attach himself
to Chortasmenos, requiring us to place Scholarios’s studies under Bryennios last.
420
Could Scholarios have suggested to his friend Bessarion that a last ornament to his education might be in
humanistic studies with Pletho? These circumstances encourage thinking that Scholarios had studied, or at least
attended some lectures of, Pletho, in Mistra.
421
Hunger 1969, 19.
110
enthusiastic interest in and incipient translation of the Latin logician, Radulphus Brito, at about
this time. 422
6. Joseph Bryennios (c. 1350–d. c. 1431): 423 Professorship over Scholarios (c. 1431)
Joseph Bryennios, remembered as διδάσκαλος διδασκάλων, 424 was the preeminent

anti-Latin of his age. His Dominican opponent, Manuel Kalekas (c. 1350–1410), claimed that
Bryennios was an autodidact. 425 It has been suggested that Bryennios studied Latin as a result
of his own efforts. Evidence for Bryennios’s supposedly “limited” knowledge of Latin is
sparse. Bryennios’s influence on Scholarios’s formation further implicates him in continuing
his contact with Markos Eugenikos and in Markos’s influence over Scholarios’s choices of
associates in the capital. Bryennios and Eugenikos certainly knew each other in the 1420s and
worked together on theological projects. 426 Furthermore, Chortasmenos and Bryennios were
themselves in friendly communication with each other. For Scholarios, Markos’s esteem for
Bryennios could have been only enhanced by the additional respect shown him by
Chortasmenos, who characteristically addressed Bryennios in an epistolary correspondence as
“the most esteemed philosopher among monks, Joseph.” 427 George-Gennadios’s hunger for
logic and philosophy at the Prodromos would have attracted him to search out the celebrated
and pious Bryennios, who enjoyed the reputation as a philosopher. Bryennios’s residence was
located conveniently in the capital where Scholarios opened his own school as a καθολικὸς
διδάσκαλος. Bryennios had taken up his residence in the proximity of the Emperor after 1425.
In fact, he was a dispenser of study burses within the school of the Sacred Palace, patronized
422
Blanchet 2008, 281, 297.
423
For the dating of Bryennios’s birth and death, see Ioannidi 1999, 71, 88–89. Although Ioannidi’s dating is
still normative for the death of Bryennios (1431–1438), Ioannidi favors the approximate date of 1431. I have
decided to favor this dating for two reasons. First, Scholarios’s testimony retains its value, that is, that he was
deprived of all his teachers before he could complete his courses with them. Secondly, given Bryennios’s
celebratory status in Constantinople, and due to the lack of subsequent testimonial to his life and activity in the
city, one can construct a reasonable argumentum ex silentio to support the fact that he had died.
424
Zeses 1988, 87.
425
Manuel Kalekas’s testimony cannot be dismissed, since Andrew’s older brother (Maximos Chrysoberges)
debated and corresponded in writing with Bryennios. This allows us to suppose that Maximos was an accurate
source of information for his younger brother on Bryennios’s intellectual formation. For Maximos’s and
Joseph’s encounters on the island of Crete, see Ioannidi 1999, 75–77.
426
This supposition is put forward in Ioannidi 1999, 73, and strengthened by Katsarou 2000, 29.
427
Hunger 1969, 161–162.
111
by the Emperor Manuel II. 428 Afterwards, it may be that Bryennios’s presumed sickness and
likely passing c. 1431 urged Scholarios – as he reports to Emperor Konstantinos Palaiologos –
to fill the void with his own school for the purposes of maintaining some philosophy training
in the Polis. 429
7. Scholarios in Constantinople until the Council of Florence (1430–1437)
Blanchet’s authoritative study on the life and times of Scholarios has already filled in
the chronology of Scholarios’s rise through the imperial ranks during this time. It is not the
purpose of my study to add historical notes to Scholarios’s biography, as much as to
contextualize Scholarios by means of highlighting the proclivities of his instructors and his
own trajectory, as divined from his preferred sources. 430 Suffice it to say that Scholarios’s
career, during this period, can be summed up by a series of projects and positions that he
undertook in Constantinople. Firstly, he may have begun his own school to teach logic and
philosophy as early as 1430. Ultimately this school was unsuccessful and closed before, or due
to, Scholarios’s preparation and departure for Ferrara and the Ecumencial Council thereat.
However, Blanchet has also noted that Scholarios appeared to struggle with the obscurity of
his minor curial position in the imperial chancery in the early 1430s. 431 During this period there
is reason to think that he was torn between advancement in a secular career (perhaps due to
parental pressure) and his desire to be a monk. Whatever the case, Scholarios’s dissatisfaction
with the minor posts that had been offered to him led him to at least one refusal of a minor
curial office. Exploratory letters written (scripsit 1434) to the papal household and inquiries
into the court at the Peloponnese point to a lack of opportunity for advancement in
Constantinople. Though Scholarios could have accepted a post in Rome, he ultimately decided
to persevere in seeking out a dignity worthy of his talents in Constantinople. His patience paid
dividends by 1436, when, as Blanchet indicates, Scholarios must have finally obtained an
office of distinction and influence as πρωτονοτάριος or γραμματικός of Emperor John VIII.
Scholarios’s influence on the emperor can be gleaned, too, from the emperor subsequently
428
Ioannidi 1999, 83–84.
429
OCGS 7:2–3.
430
Blanchet 2008, 296–314.
431
See Loenertz 1944, 135, where Scholarios, finished with studies by 1433, complained to Bessarion about
his work for the imperial household requiring more work than Bessarion could claim.
112
appointing Scholarios’s youthful companion, Bessarion of Nicaea, to a number of dignities
beginning in that very same year (1436). 432
The real importance of this period, for our purposes, lies in the trajectory of
Scholarios’s studies, after leaving his tutors (or rather after his tutors abandoned him for the
afterlife!). I list the works that betray Scholarios’s interests and formative influences, serving
to prepare him for later discussions on Palamism by the 1440s. 433 We should remember that
Scholarios recalled with nostalgia his youthful education in piety and faith by Markos
Eugenikos. As his principal instructor, Markos imbued his pupil with the genuinely religious
sentiments of his devout family. 434 Georgios Eugenikos, Markos’s father, was himself an
accomplished religious poet and deacon, who had passed his talents onto his sons, Markos and
his brother, deacon John Eugenikos. 435 Markos immersed himself in Palamism 1422–1426,
whereupon he composed a liturgical work in Palamas’s honor before his priestly ordination. 436
Thereafter, Markos entirely mastered Palamism by the 1430s. 437 During this time, Eugenikos
was completely absorbed in patristic research to justify Palamism contra Dominican attacks
until 1437. 438 As we shall see, Eugenikos and Scholarios were explicitly paired together in
1437 as study partners in preparation for the Council of Ferrara-Florence. This association
explains the presence of Scholarios within the scholarly and eccleciastical circle of Makres and
Bryennios. As such, it implies, too, that Scholarios would have been familiarized with the
basics of Palamism per conversations with his old schoolmaster and his associates. 439 Let us
432
Candal 1938, 336.
433
The major part of the list is copied from Demetracopoulos 2019b.
434
See Scholarios 1935g (OCGS 4:117): “Οἶμαι δὲ τοῦς ἐμοῦς γονέας, οἵ μοι πάνεα συνῄδεσαν, διδαχθῆναι ἂν
αὐτήν ποτε παρὰ σοῦ, Ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τῆς φύσεως, οὔτως αὐτά μοι λόγων τε καὶ ἠβῶν τὰ σπέρματα κατεβάλου.
Κάκεῖνοι μὲν ἅπαξ, σὺ δὲ πολὺν ἡμᾶς ἐγεώργεις τὸν χρόνον ὥστ᾽ἐπιγινώσκοις ἂν τὰ σαυτοῦ, τὰς ἐν ἡμῖν
εἰκόνας τούτων γινώσκων.”
435
See G. Eugenikos 1984.
436
M. Eugenikos 2004, 4.1–50 (Mineva, 276–277). For dating, see Pilavakis 1987, 75.
437
See Markos’s antirrhetics against anti-Palamites in Εὑρισκόμενα, 2:53–491.
438
Markos may have been inspired to engage Aquinas’s works at this time. Fyrigos (2004, 53) argues the
presence of Thomistic works in these years within the Monastery of Mangana in Constantinople.
439
One modern argument for Scholarios as a possible former disciple of Pletho can be found in Zeses 1988, 84.
Zeses argues the possibility from Scholarios’s own words: “Yea, with respect to myself, I myself do not deem
it unworthy to admit him to the post of teacher” (translation mine). See George-Gennadios Scholarios, Γεωργίου
τοῦ Σχολαρίου κατὰ τῶν Πλῆθωνος ἀποριῶν ἐπ᾽Ἀριστοτέλει (OCGS 4 :115.7–11). Still, the meaning of this
sentence can safely be derived only in view of its context; Scholarios says that, if rumors of Pletho’s desire not
to be a Christian were ever falsified by Pletho himself, Scholarios would be prepared to reconcile with Pletho
and recognize his wisdom – as if he were his teacher – at least in the context of the Plato-Aristotle affair.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with the issue of Scholarios’s mentors in his youth.
113
take a look at a detailed chronology of the verifiable influences on Scholarios’s intellectual
formation:
Work Author/Year/Read Translation Translator Editions/Dating

Organon & Aristotle, Neophytes, Not/Applicable N/A Cacouros 1998a, 68–
scholiastic Chortasmenos, & 70/Ierodiakonou 2011,
excerpta 440 scholiasts: Philoponos, 373–383/ Cacouros
Plotinos, Themestios, 1998b, 193–212
Psellos, Leo Magnetios
[& read by Scholarios by
1430]
Manual of Logic John Chortasmenos 441 [& N/A N/A Cacouros 1996, 99–106
(from Topics– studied by Scholarios] (excerpts)/ibid. 67–68/
Analytics) 1430–1431 Cacouros 2006, 44
Simplikios’s Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
2018b, 16
John Philoponos’s Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
commentary on 2018b, 16–17
Aristotle’s
Categories
Ammonios’s Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
commentary on 2018b, 16–17
Porphyry’s
Eisagogue and
Aristotle’s
Categories
440
Scholarios claimed that he had read Arab commentators on Aristotle before translating Latin works into
Greek, which Georgios Steiris 2019, has recently lectured upon as a groundless claim upon checking
Scholarios’s extant works against Latin and Arabic commentaries. There is Prodromos tradition (up to
Kamariotês) of reading the Organon, its scholia, and esp. Plotinus. Scholarios’s accusation against Pletho as
Plotinus redivivus may rely on his Plotinian readings from this period. Cf. Karamanolis 2006, 252–282, for the
details of the debate. Scholarios’s access to the Byzantine scholiasts Theophrastos, Ammonios, and Syrianos
may partially be accounted for by access to the logical commentaries and scholia compiled by Neophytes
Prodromos in the fourteenth century and utilized by John Chortasmenos.
441
NB, this combines scholia of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistios, John Philoponos, Michael Psellos, and
Leo Magentinos.
114
Psellos’s Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
commentary on De 2018b, 16
Interpretatione
Leo Magnetos’s Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
commentary on: 2018b, 16–17
Topica, De
interpretatione,
Analytica Priora et
Posteriora, and De
sophisticis elenchis
Excerpta from Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
Proclus and Ps.- 2018b, 17
Okellos Loukanos
Photios’s comments Under Chortasmenos N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
on Porphyry’s 2018b, 17
Eisagogue
Poem: Εἰς τὸ Scholarios/terminus ante N/A N/A Jugie (OCGS 4:382–
σωτήριον τοῦ quem 1431 383)/Dendrinos 2006, 8–9
Χριστοῦ πάθος
Grammar Scholarios N/A N/A Jugie (OCGS 8:351–398)
1430
Prolegomenon to Scholarios N/A N/A Dorandi 2010a, 302–303
Epictetus’s 1430/1431–1437
Entretiens
Entretiens Epictetus & Arrianus [& N/A N/A MS Parisinus gr. 1417,
copied by fols. 8v–71v
Scholarios/idem 1430]
Prolegomenon to Scholarios N/A N/A Dorandi 2010a, 303–305
Nicomachean Ethics 1430/1431–1437
(NE)
Excerpts from Eustratius, Michael of N/A N/A MS Parisinus gr. 1417,
Eustratii et Ephesus, et al. [& copied fol. 72r
Michaelis et by Scholarios/1430/1431–
Anonyma in NE 1437]
Commentaria
115
NE Aristotle [& copied by N/A N/A MS Parisinus gr. 1417,
Scholarios/idem 1430] fols. 73r–164v
Magna Moralia Aristotle [& copied by N/A N/A MS Parisinus gr. 1417,
Scholarios/idem 1430] fols. 168v–186v
Vita Platonis from Diogenes Laertius [& N/A N/A Dorandi 2010b, 128–140
Lives of the paraphrased by
Philosophers, bk. 3 Scholarios/1430/1431–
1438]
Physics Aristotle [& copied by N/A N/A Autograph MS
Scholarios] Laurentianus Plut. 86,
c. 1431 cod. 19/Jugie (OCGS
7:vi) 442
Commentary on Simplikios [c. 1431] N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
Aristotle’s Physica 2018b, 18
Commentary on Theodoros Metochitês [c. N/A N/A Balcoyiannopoulou
Aristotle’s Physica 1430/1431] 2018b, 18
Paraphrase of Auctor ignotus; c. 1431 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:1–133)
Aristotle’s Physica, Sine anno
Bks. I-V
Prolegomenon to Auctor ignotus; c. 1431 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:134–162)
Aristotle’s Physica Sine anno
Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas c. 1431/2 Demetrios Jugie (OCGS 6:1–
I II
a ae
1268–1274 Kydones & 153)/Demetracopoulos
Scholarios 2018b, 298–299
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas c. 1432 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS
Aristotle’s Posterior c. 1268 7:2)/Balcoyiannopoulou
Analytics 2018, 19
Summa contra Thomas Aquinas [& cited November of Demetrios Jugie (OCGS 1:123–136)
Gentiles, 4.61 [as in by Scholarios] 1432 Kydones /Demetracopoulos 2018b,
a homily] c. 1256 298–299
Quaestiones super Radulphus Brito c. 1433/5 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 7:7–348)/
Artem veterem c. 1300 Jugie (OCGS 8:ii)
442
These notes, which Scholarios took as a young scholarch in Constantinople, are of a personal nature.
116
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas c. 1433/5 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 7:238–348)/
Aristotle’s De 1269/72 Balcoyiannopoulou 2018a
interpretatione
Continuation to Thomas Aquinas c.1433/5 Scholarios Jugie/
Aquinas’s 1269/72 Balcoyiannopoulou 2018a
Commentary on De
interpretatione
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas c. 1435 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 6:327–
Aristotle’s De anima c. 1268 581)/ Demetracopoulos
2018b, 298–299
De fallaciis Thomas Aquinas c. 1435/6 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:255–282)/
(dubium); 1244/5 Demetracopoulos 2018b,
298–299
Summulae logicales Peter of Spain c. 1435/6 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:283–337)
c. 1230
De sex principiis [Ps.-]Gilbert 1435/6 Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:338–350)/
Porretanus(?) Demetracopoulos 2018b,
298–299
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas (c. 1435[?]) Scholarios Jugie (OCGS 8:163–254)/
Aristotle’s 1268–1271 term. ante quem Demetracopoulos 2018b,
Physica 1438 298–299
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas 1436/7(?) Scholarios Lost/Demetracopoulos
Aristotle’s 1270–1272 2019b, 167
Metaphysica
De sacramento Ps.-Thomas Aquinas 1436/40/47 Scholarios Demetracopoulos 2018b,
Eucharistiae… 298–299
3 Antirrhetics Markos Eugenikos [& N/A Excerpta from Chivu, Pilavakis, and
against Akindynists read by Augustine’s De Gass 2012 (Εὐρισκόμενα,
and Manuel Kalekas Scholarios(?)/1437] trinitate, and 2:53–491)/Pilavakis 1987
c. 1435–1437 Aquinas’s ST &
SG
Traité sur le Saint- Neilos Kabasilas [& read N/A Excerpta from Kislas 1998/Syropoulos
Ésprit by Scholarios/ 1437] Demetrios (CFDS B.9:621)
1358–1361 Kydones’ ST
117
Regula theologica Neilos Kabasilas 1359 [& N/A N/A Candal 1957, 237–
contra Acyndinum read by 266/Syropoulos (CFDS
Scholarios/1437(?) 443] B.9:170, 604)
De primatu Papae Neilos Kabasilas term. N/A N/A Syropoulos (CFDS
ante quem 1359 [& read B.9:604)/Kislas 1998, 71–
by Scholarios 1437] 72
Adversus Manuel Kalekas c. 1410 1424 [into Latin Marginal notes Jugie (OCGS 8:502–503)
Graecorum errores [& read glossed by by Ambrogio and citations on
Scholarios 1437 after Traversari] MS from Neilos
reading Neilos, but before and Basil
composing Marci Ephesii
Capita syllogistica infra]
Ordinatio Duns Scotus c. 1300 [& 1437 oblique Jugie (OCGS 3:476–
read by Scholarios 1437] citations and ad 538)/Monfasani 2011b,
hoc translation 165–168/Athanasopoulos
for Markos by 2018, 77–92
Scholarios
In quatuor Libros Hervaeus Natalis c. 1304– c. 1368 Prochoros Vat. gr. 1102, fols. 265–
sententiarum 1307/09 [& read by Kydones 270.
commentaria Scholarios(?) c. 1437]
Marci Ephesii Markos & Scholarios N/A Excerpta from Jugie (OCGS 3:476–538);
Capita syllogistica 1437 Aquinas and Monfasani 2011b, 164–
Scotus 166.
Monologion Ps.-Augustine & Terminus ante read only after Petit (CFDS
Demetrios Kydones [& quem 1398 composing A.8.2:110)/Tinnefeld
read by Scholarios with Marci Ephesii 1981, 68.
Markos/c. 1437–1438] Capita
Syllogistica
Scholarios’s formal study of Palamism was the result of the unionist emperor, John
VIII, summoning Markos to be the main member of a two-man study group in preparation for
the council in 1437. The emperor had been duly impressed by the display of philosophical
443
NB, I assume this is the case, based upon the upcoming annotation in Scholarios’s Excursus on the De ente
et essentia, within chapters ninety-three and ninety-four, where Scholarios cites this work that he likely read
before the council when studying with the Ephesine.
118
acumen of Eugenikos when debating in a public theological exercise before the imperial court
the year prior. 444 The emperor was intensely interested in Markos’s work and made himself
physically present for the study sessions. Naturally, Markos would have recommended his
prized pupil and burgeoning Latinist, Scholarios, to assist him in studying Latin documents in
order to defend the dogmas of the Byzantine Church. 445 Consequently, John VIII appointed
George Scholarios as the second known member of a preconciliar commission. 446 At best, this
indicated Eugenikos and Scholarios were among those most open to ecclesiastical union (with
the proviso that Orthodoxy be in no way compromised). 447 John VIII proved to be a
perspicacious judge of Markos’s and Scholarios’s talents and character.
Syropoulos, who was a personal secretary of Scholarios, testified that Emperor John
VIII sometimes joined Markos and George-Gennadios in their studies. 448 Scholarios apprised
his onetime schoolmaster about Latin sources that made the union more promising; namely,
the works of the Franciscan, John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308), which tended toward a more
Cappadocian, rather than Thomistic, understanding of the distinction among divine persons (as
a Scholarian citation from Scotus demonstrates). 449 Both Markos and George-Gennadios
studied and employed excerpts from Scotus’s Ordinatio and Reportatio Pariensis I-A in 1437
in order to critique Dominicans by their very own Latin opponents (Franciscans). 450 Similarly,
Markos (who ordinarily preferred purely patristic phraseology in his works) used Scotus’s
notion of the formal distinction between the persons and divine essence to speak with his Latin
444
Markos enjoyed a reputation as a theologian during the reign of Manuel II. John VIII was impressed too
with his treatise on divine prescience and predestination, which was read aloud in his presence before Markos
was chosen to be metropolitan of Ephesus. See OCGS 1:428.
445
Memoirs, 30.9–10. À propos John VIII, Eugenikos and Scholarios were all studying the texts of Neilos
Kabasilas. John VIII must himself have been familiar with Scholarios’s and Eugenikos’s theologies.
Furthermore, the emperor’s joint study familiarized him with salient points of Franciscan theology, as per
Monfasani 2011b, 165–168.
446
For Markos’s formal tutoring of Scholarios, see Turner 1969, 421. Scholarios declared Eugenikos his
schoolmaster in OCGS 1:16, 4:406, 4:447.
447
In Memoirs, 3.9, Scholarios emphasized the Greek mission to the Latins as principally to instruct them in
precision on the faith (ἀκρίβεια). Scholarios only adds that – taken by itself – economy (οἰκονομία) is not a
sufficient motive for all the risk and sacrifice involved in the emperor’s venture.
448
Memoirs, 30.9-10, lines 1-24.
449
See Monfasani 2011b, 165–168. The author convincingly argues that Eugenikos’s Marci Ephesii Capita
syllogistica adversus latinos de spiritus sancti ex solo patre processione (1437) and Scholarios’s response
thereto (1437) predate the Council. This establishes Franciscan theology’s direct influence on Scholarios (and
indirect on Markos Eugenikos) before any arrival at Ferrara. Cf. Scotus, Ord. I, d. 11, q. 1, nos. 1–23.
450
For convincing arguments redating these relevant works (which multiply cite Latin Scholastico-Franciscan
positions [inter alia] on the filioque) to 1437, see Monfasani 2011b, 165–168. For the works in question, see
M. Eugenikos 1977b, 50–107; Scholarios, Réponse aux Syllogismes de Marc (OCGS 3:476–538).
119
interlocutors. Markos, at this point, hoped to explain the Greek doctrine in terms that he hoped
Latins could understand:
Markos’s Debate (1439) with John Montenero, OP (Session 2.18, lines Scholarios’s 1437 notes to
20-28): Markos: 451
On the subject of divine items, essence and hypostasis differ from one Also, if Latins are led to
another, however it is not the appropriate moment to speak [on this matter]; distinguish hypostasis and essence
for it is probable that we [Greeks and Latins] also do not differ surrounding (τὴν οὐσίαν) simpliciter (ἁπλῶς),
this argument. For, on another score, essence and hypostasis differ it is as a universal from a personal
simpliciter (ἁπλῶς); namely, according to the manner through which property (τὸ κοινὸν τοῦ ἰδίου)
property (τὸ ἴδιον) differs from universal (τοῦ κοινοῦ), just as Basil the [...]”
Great writes to his brother Gregory: “And by the mode that one predicates
an essence of a man to differ from the universal concept, thus a person
(πρόσωπον) and (ὑπόστασις) differ [from the divine essence].” 452
I draw attention to the fact that although Markos is clearly interpreting the thought of Basil (or
Gregory Nyssa depending on the contested attribution of the epistle under discussion), Markos
restated Basil’s doctrine by citing Scholarios nearly exactly. This same reformulation by
Scholarios is only found in Scotus’s works, but not in Greek patristic works that are contained
in the TLG. While Markos was interested in arguing from patristic theology, he took up the
language and interpretation of distinction that Scholarios had identified as that which “some
Latins say” or as Franciscans interpreted Trinitarian distinctions in a Greek patristic mode,
unlike the conciliar Thomists. Similarly, Panagiotis Athanasopoulos has recently proven that
Markos employed selections of Scotus’s Ordinatio in Greek c. 1436/37 to criticize Aquinas’s
principium individuationis. 453 Scholarios likely convinced Markos that Palamism and Latin
theology esentially promoted the very same doctrine as contained in the Scotistic “formal
distinction” (distinctio formalis a parte rei) of Duns Scotus. 454 This is not to say that Duns
Scotus was either aware of the spirituality of Hesychasm or of the specifically Hesychastic
approach to contemplating the uncreated light. Naturally, since Scotus died in 1308 he was
451
Mark’s source for his Scotist phraseology was Scholarios, Réponse aux Syllogismes de Marc (OCGS 3:504).
452
Kappes 2014, 174–77, 213–14, n. 132.
453
P. Athanasopoulos 2018, 77–92.
454
Celebrated authors have often independently opined that the Scotistic formal distinction might constitute the
bridge between Palamite and Scholastic metaphysics. See Runciman 1970, 82; Phillips 1972, 37–50; De
Halleux 1973, 409–442; Coffey 1988, 335.
120
equally unacquainted with the terms of debate between Barlaam and Palamas and later Latin
quarrels in the same regard. However, Scotus was notable in the Latin West for his absolute
rejection of Aquinas’s exposition of the distinctions within the godhead. Scotus became a
subject of controversy in his appeals to John Damascene and Ps.-Dionysios the Areopagite
against the more strictly Aristotelian notion of the prime mover that was embraced by the
followers of Thomas Aquinas. In fact, Scotus was considered the most powerful critique of
Aquinas in the Middle Ages. Scholarios’s and Markos’s familiarity with Scotus’s anti-
Thomistic arguments will be confirmed shortly upon investigation of Scholarios’s essence-
energies writings. Scholarios clearly informed Markos that the “Subtle Doctor” (viz.,
“Franciscans”) too conceded an essentially Byzantine position on the filioque (viz., there exists
no philosophical necessity to explain the production of the Holy Spirit with reference to the
Son). 455 The imperial commission’s study of Scotism uniquely explains the emperor’s success
in persuading Markos to refrain from directly addressing the issue of Palamism at the
upcoming council. 456 Eugenikos would have already been informed about Franciscan
opposition to Thomistic theology in the 1420s by emperor Manuel II. 457 The emperor had
spoken openly of his knowledge of the irreconcilability of Franciscan and Dominican
theological tenets years prior (c. 1400). 458 Even after Markos began his apologetic studies
against Latin theology, he was nonetheless gracious to his Latin interlocutors, exemplified by
aiding a future conciliar colleague, Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), to obtain Greek manuscripts in
455
Scotus also rejected Thomistic metaphysics on the filioque, relying on his (Byzantine-influenced) Oxford
predecessor (Robert Grosseteste). Still, Duns subsequently gave this ecumenical approach metaphysical
support. Scotus condemned an ad litteram reading of Augustine’s “mutual love” between Father and Son as
the “cause” of the Holy Spirit (calling Richard of St. Victor a heretic for this claim). Still, Scotus attempted to
justify a way in which the Father and Son can meaningfully be spoken of as “one principle” of the Spirit. See
Cross 2007, 203–222.
456
Markos had written no less than two ex professo works against Kalekas and Aquinas in the years just prior
to his arrival in Ferrara (1438). Markos’s greatest theological enemy, Chrysoberges, had already alerted the
imperial theological commission to the theological irreconcilability of Thomism to Palamas as early as 1436
via his letter to Bessarion of Nicea. Bessarion’s appointment to a bishopric was a reward for his mediation skills
between the emperor John and despot Theodore. Bessarion was also appointed as the second most important
speaker for the Greeks at Ferrara-Florence. For this reason, it is no coincidence that he was elevated about the
same time as Eugenikos. See Gill 1959, 45–46.
457
Eugenikos was among Manuel II’s intimates and theological advisors, as per Tsirpanlis 1979, 48.
458
Dendrinos 2011, 404.
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Constantinople. 459 Besides the mollifying factor of Scotism, 460 there was every reason to
expect an acrid contest between Palamites and Thomists at the upcoming Council.
Markedly, during the Latin preparations for Ferrara-Florence (November 8, 1437),
Pope Eugenius IV (then residing in Florence) entrusted exclusively Franciscan periti with
research into the question of the distinction between the divine energies and divine essence of
the godhead. 461 Pope Eugenius’s decision to ignore Dominican outcries for posthumous
condemnation of Gregorios Palamas likely betrays his familiarity with the exclusively
Dominican-Palamite nature of this theological controversy, treating it as if it were more of a
sectarian issue common to two competing schools, not unlike the Latin universitarian culture
of the period. 462 Henceforward, some adherents to the official Byzantine school accustomed
themselves to argue for the equivalent of the formal distinction (distinctio formalis a parte rei)
463
among God’s essential attributes, whether these energies are distinguished among
themselves or in comparison to the divine essence. 464 According to Dominican Schoolmen,
such metaphysical ad intra distinctions demanded a preemptive condemnation prior to the
arrival of Greek Orthodox churchmen from Constantinople in 1438. 465 For his part, Pope
Eugenius had recently made a dramatic intervention into Dominican-Franciscan sectarian
disputes, whereby he delivered the Florentine conciliar peritus, (St.) Bernardine of Siena,
OFM, from the pyre of the Inquisition, despite Dominican efforts to secure the saint’s
condemnation. 466 Though Pope Eugenius showed himself benevolent toward both Dominicans
459
Constas 2002, 2:416.
460
Palamism provoked no reaction from the Franciscans at the council. They were responsible for preparing
the official study on the distinction between the attributes/operations (energies) and essence in God. See
Wadding 1734, 2; Piana 1977, 224.
461
See Eugenius IV 1940c (CFDS A.1.1:104). Pope Eugenius invited twelve Franciscans to be periti, on
September 23, 1437.
462
For Palamas’s cultus, as now sanctioned by the Vatican, see Kokkinos 1974.
463
This has been demonstrated in Kappes 2013a, 71–114.
464
The definitive canonical tenets (including the attribute-essence distinction) derive from a series of
professions of faith and Constantinopolitan synods. E.g., see the Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople,
Kabasilas, and Kokkinos 2004, 55–134.
465
For various accommodations of Palamism to Thomism, see Demetracopoulos 2011a, 282–372, and Lévy
2012, 431–471. The Orthodox conciliar Father, Bessarion, made Dominicans aware of this impending issue for
debate at Ferrara-Florence in his letter to Andrew of Rhodes, OP, perhaps written as early as 1436/7. See De
Halleux 1989, 307–332.
466
Pope Eugenius IV felt beholden to the Dominicans in Florence, for they alone gave him refuge at Santa
Maria Novella (1432), after the Roman populace forced him to flee Rome. See Watanabe 2008, 180–181.
Despite his debt, Eugenius tired of witch-hunts against the likes of Bernardino. Subsequently, John
Torquemada, OP, sought the condemnation of Franciscans as heretics at the Council of Basel because of the
Immaculate Conception. See Pusey 1869, xvii-xviii. Torquemada’s intolerance was typical of orthodox
122
and Franciscans, the Domini canes were in the initial stages of gaining notoriety among their
fellow Schoolmen for fostering an exaggeratedly sectarian spirit (at least in Italy) beyond the
common ruckus of the Schoolmen of the age. 467 This allegedly rigid system of Thomism that
was culturally espoused in many Italian and some other reformed studia did not augur a
dispassionate probe into the Byzantine distinction between the essence and energies according
to Palamas and his intellectual successors. Although it would be anachronistic to classify
Renaissance Thomists as “orthodox Thomists” in the sense of the twenty-four theses of Pope
Pius X, I intend to use the epithet “orthodox Thomist” to signify any pre- or post-modern trend
in Thomism to espouse a rigid adherence to what it claimed to be the ipsissima verba of
Aquinas. Of course, given the fact that ex professo neo-Thomists fervently disagreed and
fought with each other, my designation of any Renaissance or modern author as “orthodox” is
meant to speak about the ex professo intention of said author to follow every jot and tittle of
Aquinas’s supposedly homogenous doctrine, even if other ex professo Thomists of strict
observance reject the Thomistic pedigree of their fellow self-styled Thomists.
With respect to the Dominican odium for Palamites in the Orient, even if the Palamite
conflict had begun intra muros among Byzantine scholars and churchmen (1335–1351) or
Orthodox parties who spoke the Greek tongue, the controversy eventually spilt over into Italy
in the months prior to a grandiose effort to reunite the Greek and Latin churches. Gregorios
Palamas, who died in 1357/9 as reigning archbishop of Thessalonica, currently enjoys
Thomists, whose persecutions were reduplicated against (St.) James of Marches, OFM, another peritus at
Florence, who suffered a Dominican inquisitor trying him on a theologoumenon opposed to that of Aquinas.
See Lasič 1976, 25–27.
467
Kristeller 1967, 84–90. Italian Dominicans often offended other religious and humanists through their
insistence on the absolute necessity of defending Aquinas’s positions without distinction. For example,
orthodox Thomists exasperated a Carmelite beatus, such that he undertook the composition of a screed against
the fanaticism of the Thomistic culture of the day. See (Bl.) Baptist of Mantua 1967, 137–184, especially:
Yet these [Thomists] are unmindful of both Apostle and reason and want to compel all [sacred doctors]
ad sensum Thomae and in such manner that they prefer their own [Thomas] for nearly all groups of
religious orders, even those by far more ancient, just as for our [Carmelites] and the Hermits of St.
Augustine. In such a way they strive to prefer Thomas over howsoever many are the body of doctors
who flourished from the beginning of the Church, the fact of which manifests a lack of probity and
prudence. First they bring Thomas forward as they please, but only allowing that [other doctors] speak
according to their own mind. They don’t permit a peep from other doctors, for they impose silence,
they make judgments disdainfully [on other doctors] from their judicial benches and will only hear the
testimony of Thomas and they regard all other witnesses to be insignificant perjurers. They regard
Thomas to have arrived at the absolute culmination of all doctrines in every genus of dogma. They
place him in the supreme rank of nature, and call him the very means of knowledge among men. Why
do they spit with cocked eyebrow upon the other doctors as if they were bereft of both nature and
grace? (Opus auream, 139.4-18)
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international celebrity due to his historic defense of Eastern Orthodox monastic practices of
prayer and spirituality on Mt. Athos. While Palamas successfully managed to overcome his
rivals via a series of Byzantine synods, leading to his theological school’s monopoly on
spirituality and theology within Byzantine environs under imperial control, the legacy of
Palamas continued to be contested after his death by other Greek writers, some of whom were
under the influence of the writings of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). 468 As chronicled many times
and in many languages, the Byzantine humanist, Demetrios Kydones (1324/5–97/8) and his
younger brother, Prochoros (d. c. 1369), elongated this struggle against Palamite theologians
after Prochoros had reintroduced onto Mt. Athos the theological debate, which came to a head
in the early 1360s. However, new terms were added to the old debate under the aegis of
Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. 469
For our purposes, the importance of this quarrel over theological terms, as well as their
objective points of reference in the godhead and its operations, lies in the fact that Demetrios
Kydones under the clear influence of Thomism exercised great intellectual influence over
young Byzantines who eventually entered the Dominican Order within the confines of
Byzantium or Romania, as it was sometimes called. Because monastic educators in
Constantinople and other Palamitico-friendly monasteries continued to heighten their Palamite
profile, Greek exportation of Palamism to the future council in Ferrara was seemingly
inevitable. This ended up causing quite a stir and not a little friction between Latins and Greeks
nearly a century after Palamas’s death. In fact, the main Greek theologians responsible for
dialoguing with the Latins to convoke an ecumenical council and, thereafter, to debate
theological matters were convinced Palamites. This held true for the principal Greek theologian
representing the Byzantines in negotiations for the upcoming council, namely, Makres. 470 It
was equally the case for the principal rhetors at Ferrara-Florence, namely, Bessarion and
Markos.
468
Russell 2003, 171–172.
469
It is sufficient to refer the reader to the historical summary, drawn from mainly secondary sources, in Plested
2012, 63–84.
470
Two recognizable references to Palamite metaphysics were mentioned to Latins during preconciliar
negotiations; namely, God’s attributes and human participation therein, in an essential mode, via operation of
the Holy Spirit. See Argyriou 1996, 240 (para. 6.13).
124
Meanwhile, Greek Dominicans kept alive the pious memory of Demetrios Kydones in
their Dominican studia of the Greek East. 471 Of course, a certain antipathy toward the
Palamites went hand in hand with reverence for and devotion to Kydones. After all, Palamites
had been effectively responsible for Demetrios’s loss of political office, his persecution, and
his exile from his homeland until his death. 472 Greek Dominicans kept the memory of the
Palamite conflict alive by disseminating Demetrios’s writings and by penning new treatises
against Palamism in traditionally Byzantine lands. 473 Due to these circumstances, Palamas’s
infamy spread among Thomists and Dominicans with the result that a conciliar peritus,
Andreas Escobar (1356/7–c. 1455), OSB, officially called for the condemnation of Palamas’s
theology on December 15, 1437. This date follows upon the heels of an official papal decree
(against a rebellious Latin Council held in Basel) transferring the Council of Basel to the city
of Ferrara (September 18, 1437). 474 Escobar pleaded with Pope Eugenius IV, as follows, before
the onset of the relocated council: “O most blessed Father Eugenius [...] false, therefore, is the
conclusion of some Greeks, and [their] errors, which claim that the attributes (attributa) differ
essentially (essentialiter) from the divine essence (ab essentia divina) among [ad intra] divine
items (in divinis).” 475 A Benedictine and curial official for many decades, Escobar had
Thomistic sympathies that likely attracted him to Dominican circles, where he had first gotten
wind of the Thomist-Palamite controversy from none other than a Dominican and the former
master of the sacred palace in Rome, Andrew Chrysoberges (c. 1375–1457), OP. 476 Escobar,
as a penitentiarius of the Roman curia, would have regularly had occasion to converse with
the dean of the pope’s studium in Rome. 477 Andrew himself had only received official word of
471
Andrew Chrysoberges as head of the papal studiu brought this Greco-Dominican tradition to Rome. He
relied upon literature mediated him through an intellectual disciple of Demetrios Kydones; namely, Manuel
Kalekas, OP. See Candal 1938, 329–30, 334–35.
472
Those anti-Palamites and Thomists who would not formally subscribe to the synodal decrees on Palamism
(post-1368) against Prochoros Kydones were threatened with beatings and imprisonment. See Russell 2003,
171–172.
473
For one such Greek Dominican devoted to the Thomistic thought of Kydones, see Kalekas 1866 (PG
152:284B–295A). Kalekas was long known to be under the literary influence of Demetrios, as shown in
Gouillard 1938, 46–52. Kalekas’s anti-Palamite treatise can be dated to 1396–97. Given the abundant use of
Latin sources, it is likely that the Dominican studiu of Pera afforded him the opportunity to write this treatise
rejecting Palamism. Kalekas actually composed it before leaving Orthodoxy, becoming Latin Catholic, and
entering the Dominican order. See Loenertz 1950, 23–24, 30.
474
CFDS B.4.1 :xxv, lxxvii; Gill 1959, 91.
475
Escobar 1952, no. 94 (CFDS B.4.1:83).
476
See Tractatus, xcix, where the index patristicus reveals Escobar relying heavily on Aquinas for arguments,
while neglecting Bonaventure, Scotus, and Franciscans at large.
477
CFDS B.4.1:83 xix, xxix–xxx.
125
his invitation to the Council of Ferrara in April of 1437. He was invited as both a voting Father
and as a principal orator on behalf of Pope Eugenius. Perhaps aware of Andrew’s position at
the nearing council, Bessarion of Nicaea wrote Chrysoberges, probably later in the same year,
to inquire about Latin thinking on the theology of Palamas. Consequently, the Greek
Dominican ascertained that Palamite sympathizers were going to be present at the upcoming
ecumenical council on Italian soil. 478 Thereafter, Andrew undoubtedly alerted his former
understudies and influential confreres in Italy about the danger of “Greek errors” being brought
by Palamites to the shores of Latium. As we will see below, Dominicans and Thomists
opposed, en bloc, Bessarion of Nicaea and Markos of Ephesus on Palamite articles of faith:
the constitution of the godhead, the nature of the light springing from the divinity, and the
human intellect’s incapacity to see nakedly the divine essence. 479
The pope about to preside at Ferrara-Florence, Eugenius IV (regnavit 1431–47), had
initially inherited Chrysoberges as part of his household upon his election to the papacy in
1431. This meant that Andrew functioned as his palace theologian (master of the sacred palace)
upon confirmation of the earlier appointment by his predecessor, Pope Martin V (1417–1431).
After Chrysoberges’ June 9, 1426, appointment to the office of dean, Andrew was naturally
able to exercise immense influence over the theologians who were teaching in the papal
studium. He also enjoyed unfettered access to the pope. 480 Eugenius only brought Andrew’s
tenure to an end in 1434, so as to promote him to the Latin bishopric of Rhodes in order to
further papal aims in Greek-speaking territories under Latin political and ecclesiastical
hegemony. Chrysoberges’s absence from the papal court had effectively diminished his control
over the future handling of the question of Palamism as the preparatory period of study
(November of 1437) intensified before the opening of the Council in Ferrara. 481
All the same, given the fact that Dominicans supplied Eugenius with refuge in Florence,
after his flight from unruly Rome in 1432, one might think that the pope would have felt
beholden to the Dominicans, so as to cede them the task of preparing the officially-sanctioned
478
De Halleux 1989, 307–332.
479
These items had become points of disagreement by the fall of 1438. The topics were occasioned by their
relation to themes brought up in the semi-public debates on purgatory. In addition to De Halleux’s treatment,
the Palamite bent in the purgatory discussions is noticed in Bathrellos 2014, 355–374.
480
De Halleux 1935, 418.
481
See Eugenius IV 1940c (A.1.1:104).
126
papal study on the attributes and essence of God. 482 After all, the Dominicans relocated their
Studium Romanae Curiae, or pontifical-attaché stadium, to Florence in 1434, within the very
walls of the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria Novella where Eugenius lived and his curia
operated. 483 This was coupled with the fact that John Torquemada, dean or master of the papal
studium, was technically in charge of any faculty of the papal studium who had also relocated
to Santa Maria Novella. Additionally, Eugenius had only recently written to the Dominican
Master-General on October 7, 1437, inviting him to send twelve experts, or periti, to undertake
official study of issues pertinent to the looming council. 484 All these facts would normally
portend future Dominican hegemony over a camp of scholars investigating the Dominican and
Thomist hot topic, that is, Palamism. Instead, the pope entrusted the Palamite question of the
essence and attributes of God to Bonaventurian and Scotistic theologians of the Franciscan
order. 485 Escobar’s open plea for Palamism’s condemnation shortly thereafter likely betrays
Thomistic dissatisfaction with the results of the Franciscan study on the essence and energies
of God. Pope Eugenius, presumably after reading this no longer extant Franciscan disquisition
into the matter, decided that Palamism did not constitute a serious enough issue to demand
resolution at Ferrara. 486
About this time, the Spanish Dominican, John Torquemada, won Eugenius IV’s favor
for his staunch papalism and cooperation with Pope Martin V in opposition to anti-papal
conciliarists. Rivals to papal power in Christendom had been gathered together for some time
in Basel (present-day Switzerland) in what was proving to be an increasingly rebellious council
since its papally sanctioned convocation in 1431. Pope Eugenius took advantage of the vacancy
left by Andrew Chrysoberges (now at Rhodes) to appoint John Torquemada to the Dominican
office of papal theologian, or master of the sacred palace, in 1434. 487 This change of
appointment was propitious for the Greeks and Dominicans to maintain some semblance of
peace and order at Ferrara-Florence, for just prior to Ferrara the main rhetor of the Greek
482
Watanabe 2008, 180–181.
483
Boschetto 2012, 370–373. NB, the studium romanae curiae denotes the Dominican school that operated in
tandem with the pope, providing him with specialists to perform curial and academic services. By the first
quarter of the fifteenth century, the peripatetic school of itinerant popes became designated Studium Sacri
Palatii.
484
Eugenius IV 1940d (CFDS A.1.1:105).
485
Wadding 1734, 2; Piana, 1977, 224.
486
Kappes 2014, 166–168, 182.
487
Izbicki 1981, 6.
127
contingent, Markos of Ephesus, had written two fiery treatises defending Palamism against
Andrew Chrysoberges’ celebrated (quasi) predecessor and confrere, a Greek Dominican and
Thomist, Manuel Kalekas. 488 Had Chrysoberges controlled the tenor and subject of the
conciliar discussions, Markos would have been put on a collision course with the pugnacious
Andrew, given their shared fixation on the metaphysics of Gregorios Palamas. Fortunately for
everyone, Pope Eugenius and the Byzantine emperor, John VIII, had already formally agreed
to forbid arbitrarily introducing debates on Palamism into the public discussions until more
major matters were first resolved. 489
All the same, the new dean of papal theologians, Torquemada, quickly came to agree
with his fellow (Greek) Dominicans that Markos and Bessarion held unacceptable opinions
stemming from their Palamism. These Palamistic tenets seemed at odds with Dominican, if not
Roman Catholic, theology as evidenced during the initial debates with the Greeks in November
of 1438 on Purgatory and the beatific vision. First, John Lei (d. c. 1463), OP, who probably
acted as Torquemada’s secretary and peritus at Ferrara, renewed Dominican pleas for a
conciliar condemnation of Palamism, but to no avail. 490 Secondly, Torquemada reproduced his
own list of alleged Palamite errors in perfect agreement with that of Lei. Clearly Torquemada,
too, took note of these Palamistic oddities, which he had divined out of the Purgatory
discussions, as Torquemada’s apologetic treatise, or Apparatus, records:
Here follows a declaration and definition of article six on the Greco-Latin controversy about
the beatific vision, which concerns the souls of the saints (once they are loosed from their
bodies); what they have from God before the day of judgment [...] After the matter was
maturely and diligently debated concerning this controversy [...] thus is the definition in
summary, comprising two parts: [i.] namely, (immediately after their saints are loosed from
their bodies) that the souls of the just, about whom the preceding article treated, see clearly
488
Kappes 2014, 167–168.
489
Kappes 2014, 178–179, 183. The plot proved to be rather complex. In its main outline, Pope Eugenius must
have independently concluded in 1437 that the Franciscan study of Palamism resulted in the assessment that
essence-attributes doctrine did not constitute a necessary condition for union. Simultaneously, in the same year,
John VIII, Eugenikos, and Scholarios had studied Scotism, which was argued by Scholarios – as witnessed
shortly after Florence – to be equivalent to the doctrine of Palamas on the essence and energies of God. For his
part, Markos appeared to employ Scotism against the Dominicans on Trinitarian debates in Florence. There
were Dominican attempts to make the Palamite debate in public, but both Pope Eugenius and Emperor John
agreed to table the discussion until proper time could be allotted for a full debate (which never in fact came
about because of the death of Patriarch Joseph II). See also Kappes 2013a, 71–114.
490
For Palamite and Dominican actors and features of this debate, see Kappes 2013b, 193–195.
128
and [see] the true God, three and one, just as he is; [b.] that the saints see more perfectly than
others on account of the diversity of their merits. [...] Concerning “God three and one,” this is
written against those saying that beatitude (beatitudo), glory (gloria), or final happiness
(felicitas ultima) of people does not consist in the vision of God himself. Contrariwise
[Palamites say it consists] of some other entity (entitas), which is thought to be really distinct
from the very divine essence (essentia), or as the Greeks call it, “energy” (energia), or “act”
(actus), or “illumination” (fulgor). 491
Above, Torquemada only managed to publish (scripsit 1441) his condemnation of Palamism
after Greek participation in the council had officially ended. By this time, Torquemada’s attack
on Palamism served an ulterior purpose of refuting anti-Florentine and anti-papal Latin Fathers
still present at Basel. They were accusing the Latins at Florence of having committed heresy
on any number of theological questions. This section of Torquemada’s Apparatus was written,
therefore, to refute accusations that papalists had fallen away from the right faith by caving
into the proclivities of Greek theologians. For their part, the Greeks had already been home
many months and remained totally unaware of Torquemada’s literary debut wherewith he
entered into the Dominican-Palamite fray.
Torquemada’s role at Florence ideally should have been to act as Pope Eugenius’s
handpicked theologian and principal orator to engage the Greeks on disagreements needing to
be publicly discussed and resolved at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. In reality, Torquemada
was never afforded the opportunity to debate Markos publicly on central issues at Florence,
most especially on the focus of this study, that is, the essence and energies. Because of
Torquemada’s valuable skills in negotiating with Western princes and churchmen of the Holy
Roman Empire, Pope Eugenius assigned him to travel north of the Alps while a significant
portion of the debates were occurring in Florence. As a result, Torquemada failed to arrive at
Florence in 1439 in time to debate Markos on the filioque. By the time Torquemada was
491
Torquemada, Apparatus, 101–102 (CFDS B.2.1:86):
Hic sequitur declaratio et diffinitio sexti articuli controversiae Grecorum et Latinorum circa visionem,
quam sanctorum anime, a corporibus absolute, habent de deo ante diem iudicii [. . .] Super qua
controversia, matura et diligenti habita discussione, tandem operante deo, est talis diffinitio in summa,
duas complectens partes: primo, quod anime iustorum de quibus in precedenti articulo habitum est,
statim cum a corporibus absolvuntur, vident clare et sicuti est deum verum trinum et unum. Secundo,
quod quidam perfectius aliis vident pro suorum meritorum diversitate [. . .] ‘Ipsum Deum trinum et
unum.’ Contra errorem dicentium beatitudinem, gloriam, sive felicitatem ultimam hominum non
consistere in visione ipsius dei, sed alicuius alteriu entitatis, que ab ipsa divinitatis essentia realiter sit
distincta, quam Greci energiam, sive actum, sive fulgorem vocant.
129
prepared to take up formal discussions, Markos had already absented himself from disputations
on the papacy, Eucharist, and epiclesis by the summer of 1439. By then, Markos’s physical
health, as well as his psychological attitude toward the Latins, altogether constrained him from
participating in the discussions on the Eucharist.
Most major realms of factual contention (i.e., the beatific vision, the filioque, and the
question of the divine essence and attributes of God) owed some of their acrimonious handling
to the Dominican-Palamite antipathy that had, by now, become traditional in the Greek East. 492
Can we likewise surmise that the epiclesis disputation, as the last major question to be debated
before the close of the Council of Florence in 1439, took on a Palamite tenor? Is there a
“Palamite liturgiology” or a Palamite view on liturgical questions? It must frankly be answered
that there was no peculiarly Palamite (nor Hesychastic for that matter) development of
Byzantine liturgiology on the nature and function of the epiclesis by recourse to texts and to
the spirituality of Gregorios Palamas. Nonetheless, it is significant that the more recent Greek
writers, serving as primary sources for the Byzantines during the epiclesis debate at Florence,
were either friends of Palamas, or they theologized in a Palamite manner. Writers such as
Nicholas Kabasilas (c. 1322–c. 1397/8) had certainly been against the “heretical” Gregoras and
for Palamas, whereas Makres and Symeon of Thessalonica had adopted wholesale Palamism
in their theological method. Dominicans naturally exercised zeal in defending their Scholastic
tradition of theology (though diverse from that of Franciscans et al.). Consequently, this
theologically Dominican facet of the debates served only to intensify hostility between
Thomists and Palamites, narrowing conciliar Fathers’ purview to consider only two theological
foci. In this regard, certain moments of exclusively Dominican-Palamite disagreement are
reducible to sectarian squabbles, having essentially little to do with official dogmas of the Latin
Church in opposition to official Palamism of the Greek Orthodox Church. Whenever these two
customary opponents concentrated on matters of historical rivalry, they effectively sidelined
competing Latin theologies and sometimes bypassed official Roman Catholic doctrine. In fact,
492
This does not negate a second strand of Latin anti-Palamism originating from Barlaam’s contact (1339) with
the papal court in Avignon. This form of anti-Palamism was not principally concerned with Palamas by name,
nor with the ad intra distinctions between God’s essence and energies, but with Palamas’s doctrine of the
beatific vision being only the “claritas” of God or even some kind of “unclear” vision of the essence. The 1339–
1352 history of this anti-Greek and anti-Armenian controversy culminated in the East with a Cypriot synod
condemning the Greek position in 1430, while Clement VI (d. 1352) continued to pursue the controversy. While
this subject, as the debates at Ferrara-Florence demonstrate, resurrected at Florence, it was joined to the essence-
energies debate and the name of Palamas. For the Avignon and Cypriot events, see Duba 2006, 351–360.
130
a series of precipating events immediately before Ferrara-Florence had portended Dominican-
Palamite conflict for the future:
(1.) Manuel Kalekas (d. 1410) completed his work Adversus Graecorum errores, making him a
celebrity; 493
(2.) Its apologetic importance led to a Latin translation from the Greek original by the future
council peritus, Ambrogio Traversari, in 1424; 494
(3.) The Dominican, Andrew Chrysoberges (c. 1436), bishop of Rhodes, 495 used Kalekas’s
Palamite views to augment traditional Dominican attacks on Palamas in the East;
(4.) Markos counterattacked this anti-Palamite Greek convert and orthodox Thomist. Two ex
professo treatises opposed Kalekas by name, while they implicitly condemned Aquinas’s view
of the divine essence as an indistinct principle and the gifts of the Holy Spirit as analogous to
496
natural “habits” inhering in the human soul. Aristotelico-Thomistic physics and
metaphysics offended Palamite sensibilities;
(5.) In response, four major Thomist theologians sought a papal and dogmatic condemnation of
Palamism at Ferrara-Florence. 497
It was presumably before his 1437 episcopal appointment that Markos was in the midst of
writing his Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρῶτος and Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς β´. Scholarios would have
presumably perused both treatises in his study sessions with Markos before departing for
Florence. Since young Scholarios had encountered Aquinas’s exposition of the essence and
energies of God in Kydones’ version of the SG and ST, he must have felt a challenge to his
enthusiasm for Latin logic and metaphysics due to Markos’s declamations of ostensibly
Aristotelian principles, as applied to the Thomistic theology of God. For example, Markos
493
Delacroix-Besnier 2001, 158.
494
Stinger 1977, 112.
495
Andrew owed Kalekas an intellectual debt in his mini-treatise, as discovered in Candal 1938, 329–343.
496
Markos intentionally omitted referring to Aquinas by name, as first noticed in Pilavakis 1987, 149.
Circumstantially, this implies that the terminus post quem of Markos’s first antirrhetic against Kalekas is c.
1436, for Markos would have been more irenic in anticipation of corporate Church reunion. In M. Eugenikos
2014c, fol. 76v (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:378), he implicitly jabbed at Thomistic ad intra metaphysics of the “distinctio
rationis” in the godhead, saying: “τίς οὖν ἡ τοσαύτη πρὸς τὴν διάκρισιν μάχη καὶ ὁ πρὸς ἡμᾶς αὐτῆς ἕνεκεν [.
. .] ἀκήρυκτος πόλεμος; τἰς ἡ διαβολικὴ ἔνστασις καὶ ἡ Ἰουδαϊκὴ καὶ μονμερὴς τῆς ἁπλὀτητος σὐστασις.” NB,
in his first antirrhetic (M. Eugenikos 1849, 217–225), Markos called Aquinas by name, but in sarcastic
agreement with a metaphysical premise of the ST.
497
See also Lei 1963, 83–84, 193. In 1439, see Montenero’s debates with Markos, in Acta Graeca, 2:346–350.
Andreas of Santa Croce supported Montenero’s anti-Palamism at that debate. See Acta Latina, 177.
131
addressed Latin usage of Aristotelian notions of the divine essence mockingly, writing: “Nor
do I revere thy Aristotle. [...]” 498 In another place he wrote similarly: “And neither do I also
believe that Aristotle, the very originator of the heresy [of the Barlaamites and Thomists],
would have denied this [philosophical principle].” 499 More poignantly, Markos had impugned
the Thomistic theory of grace akin to a purely human modification of the soul, known as a
habitus (ἕξις) in the fashion of Aristotle’s NE:
And in this manner his [divine] charisms are essentially joined by the same Spirit. Yet, these
men have not understood even this [...], namely that they contradict themselves and that they
go against the Latins, to whom they have deserted. For, if so, then it results that what was given
by the Lord after the resurrection “through an inflation” [of breath] will not be the hypostasis
of the Spirit; rather it is some kind of creature; for this was the charism of the remission of
sins. And the Spirit about Whom Paul speaks, “in which he used to declare mysteries”, will be
a creature, and even Christ himself, Who was speaking in Him, was a creature. I also marvel
how they do not themselves flee after they bring up such sorts of impieties. 500
Of course, there were other areas of disagreements between Latins and Greeks as well. One of
these to be formally debated at Ferrara was on the capacity of the human intellect to see the
divine essence. 501
What is more, Bessarion of Nicea had also received a recent episcopal appointment that
was equally linked to the the upcoming synod with the Latins. 502 More cautiously, Bessarion
began his own doctrinal inquiry into the essence-energies question, but did so by addressing a
letter to Andrew Chrysoberges in order to understand the terms of the debate from the Latin
498
Markos Eugenikos, Μαρκοῦ τοῦ μαρκιωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Ἐφέσου τοῦ Εὐγενικοῦ, πρὸς τὰ πρῶτα τῶν
εἰρημένων Μανουὴλ τῷ Καλέκᾳ κατὰ τοῦ Συνοδικοῦ Τόμου, Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρῶτος ἢ Περὶ διακρίσεως
θείας οὐσίας καὶ ἐνεργείας, fol. 76v (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:116), fol. 22v: “οὐδὲ τὸν σὸν Ἀριστοτέλην αἰδούμενος.”
499
M. Eugenikos, Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς β´, 27 (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:30): “καὶ τοῦτο οὐδ᾽αὐτὸν ἂν οἶμαι τὸν τῆς
αἱρέσεως ἀρχηγὸν Ἀριστοτέλην ἀρνήσασθαι [. . .]”
500
M. Eugenikos, Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρῶτος, fol. 22v (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:114): “οὕτως αὐτῷ Πνεύματι τὰ αὐτοῦ
χαρίσματα συνουσίωται, οἵ δε οὐδ᾽αὐτὸ τοῦτο συνίασιν, ὅτι καὶ ἑαυτοῖς περιπίπτουσι καὶ τοῖς πρὸς οὓς
ηὐτομόλησαν Λατίνοις ἐναντιοῦνται. καὶ γὰρ δὴ τὸ μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν/ δι᾽ἐμφυσήματος παρὰ τοῦ Κυρίου
δοθὲν οὐκ ἔτι ἡ ὑπόστασις ἔσται τοῦ Πνεύματος. ἀλλά τι κτίσμα· καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἀφέσεως ἀμαρτιῶν χάρισμα· καὶ
τὸ ἐν τῷ Παύλῳ Πνεῦμα. ἐν ᾧ ἐλάλει μυστήρια, κτίσμα καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Χριστὸς ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ λαλῶν κτίσμα καὶ
θαυμάζω πῶς οὐ φεύγουσιν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπὶ τοιαύτας ἀσεβείας ὑποφερόμενοι.”
501
M. Eugenikos, Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρῶτος, 27v (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:138, 140): “[Citing Cyril of Alexandria:]
Οὐδὲν ἐπίκτητον τῶν θείων ἰδιωμάτων, ἐκ μέντοι τῶν ἀποτελεσμάτων, dηλαδὴ τῶν κτισμάτων, κατὰ τὰς
ἐνεργείας ταύτας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ κατ᾽ οὐσίαν ὁ Θεὸς ὁρᾶται.”
502
Gill 1975, 377–378. Bessarion’s role in John VIII’s theological investigation before the council has been
argued in Martin 2000, 88–89.
132
perspective. 503 Candal places Bessarion’s query between mid-1436 (the year prior to
Bessarion’s episcopal consecration) and March 7, 1438. 504 Bessarion’s correspondence with
Chrysoberges likely represented an official facet of John VIII’s fact-finding commission before
the council. 505 Bessarion had been connected to Markos (indirectly) through their shared
teacher Pletho and, more recently, via his disciple Scholarios. 506
Given Markos’s strident defense of Palamas and his intractable will, only Scotism can
currently explain the abatement of Eugenikos’s suspicions of Latin theology as a whole (i.e.,
that it is not entirely Thomist/Barlaamite). 507 Otherwise, I am at a loss to explain Markos’s
refusal to engage in debate about Palamism at the council, save recourse to his knowledge of
Scotus, 508 which will be further demonstrated below. Eugenikos had many reasons to ready
himself for a debate on Palamism at the Council. For instance, the anti-Palamite Chrysoberges
potentially reflected the theological positions of the Roman Pontiff and curia. 509 Incidentally,
John VIII’s commission began its own work the very month of Chrysoberges’ invitation to the
503
De Halleux 1989, 307–332.
504
Cf. Monfasani 2011a, 66–68.
505
Candal’s misread of the MS supposed Bessarion’s letter to express personal doubts and eventual rejection
of Palamism. De Halleux (1989, 307–332) points out various mistakes. Monfasani (2011a, 2, 30) accepts
Bessarion as a Palamite at the beginning of the council.
506
He was plausibly under the influence of Pletho 1431–33, per Loenertz (1944, 133), and his friendship with
Pletho was perhaps another facet that recommended him to the emperor. See Mineva 2011, 132, 134.
507
The experience at Florence with the Thomists tempted Markos to associate Aquinas with all Latins qua
theology. Consequently, Markos’s post-Florentine polemics explicitly conflated Aquinas with Latin theology
in Eugenikos, Epistula Encyclica, 6.42–51 (CFDS A.10.2:149): “[The Latin-minded Greeks] say – with the
Latins and Thomas [Aquinas] – that ‘will’ is identical with essence (τῇ οὐσίᾳ), but they say divine energy
(ἐνέργειαν) is created.”
508
The emperor did not restrict discussions to the filioque only, as Memoirs, 3.8, noted that (1) the filioque was
the principal reason for schism, but (2) there were additional issues of lesser import to resolve. Eugenikos also
was willing to debate on Palamism during the sessions. After all, Markos warned (c. 1436–37) readers of his
antirrhetic against Kalekas that anti-Palamite books could legally be burned within the Byzantine realm and
that anti-Palamites could be denounced as heretics and the secular arm might punish them with death. See
Markos Eugenikos, Προθεωρία to the Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρῶτος (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:55–56). Markos would have
only bypassed Palamism at Ferrara-Florence were there to have been a powerfully mitigating factor (viz.,
Scotism). Ultimately, nearly all the interlocutors for the public debates on the Trinitarian metaphysics were
Thomists. Accordingly, Markos left Florence with the strong impression that Thomism was the official
theology of the papacy.
509
Andrew was headmost among Latins, commissioned for the reductio of the Greeks to the Roman Church
(May 21, 1432). See Eugenius IV 1940a (CFDS A.1.1:26–27). Andrew was the most distinguished and official
person to supply a response from the Roman Church. See Eugenius IV 1940b (CFDS A.1.1:64). He was invited
to be a father at the upcoming council (April 20, 1437) as a theology master of Padua (1418), a former member
of Martin V’s papal household (1426), papal theologian of the sacred palace (1426), and Martin V’s
representative to John VIII and Patriarch Joseph II (1426), appointed theological examiner for awarding master
degrees, and vicar-general for the Dominicans in Byzantine territories (1431). For the edition of the relevant
primary documents, see De Halleux 1935, 423–448.
133
Council of Ferrara (April 1437). 510 Chrysoberges borrowed some of his material and sources
directly from Kalekas. Markos knew Kalekas by heart, as evidenced in his Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς
πρῶτος and Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς β´. Chrysoberges must have appeared to Markos as little more
than Kalekas redivivus. 511 Perhaps, Markos’s ἀντιῤῥητικὸς β´ dates to c. 1437 (after learning
about Chrysoberges’ invitation to the Council[?]). Chrysoberges’ official appointment, as a
conciliar Father, provided Eugenikos good grounds for suspecting an upcoming internecine
conflict. As such, it is perfectly logical that the emperor had, indeed, entrusted his commission
to study Neilos Kabasilas in the three areas recorded by Manuel Rhetor: 512 (1.) On the primacy
of the Pope, 513 (2.) On the filioque, 514 and (3.) On the essence-energies distinction ad intra.515
Conclusions
Upon viewing Scholarios’s tutors and his studies thereafter, one might imagine his
education prior to the Council of Ferrara-Florence as a sort of hyperbaton. On the first end of
the extreme (1410–1431) stands Scholarios’s youthful education by Palamites, coinciding with
the trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric). Oddly, young Scholarios in Constantinople had
nonetheless acquired a certain liberality of thought (likely under the influence of Filelfo and,
then, Lodizios), for his Grammar had early on taken up a conciliatory position with respect to
the Latins on grammatical and semantic aspects of “ex Filio,” or “ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ,” in 1430. 516
Once Scholarios had gone to Italy, he thereafter rejected the Florentine terms of union.
510
Gill 1959, 76.
511
Kalekas’s work is a Thomistic response to Palamism. The first pages use both the Palamite synods’ texts as
well as Palamas’s dialogues (etc.) to sum up the Palamite position. Kalekas’s overall presentation of Palamism’s
history appears to be coherent. See Kalekas 1866 (PG 152:284B–295A).
512
Monfasani has convincingly argued that Eugenikos and Scholarios produced their own treatises, viz., Marci
Ephesii Capita syllogistica and Scholarios’s refutation thereof, by 1437. These represent the fruits of their
labors under John VIII. Therefore, sources for these treatises give the reader a sense of Eugenikos’s and
Scholarios’s study materials. Scholarios’s mention of Neilos’s De processione de Spiritu Sancto within his
reply to Eugenikos can be taken as an indication of their mutual study of the text in 1437. See Monfasani 2011b,
167–168.
513
Pilavakis 1987, 33.
514
Bessarion testified to the supreme authority of Neilos Kabasilas on theological questions at Florence-Ferrara,
particularly the question of the προσθήκη (filioque) and dual spiration. Kabasilas enjoyed roughly the same
interpretative authority as Aquinas among Latins, per Gill 1975, 387–388.
515
This is based upon the testimony of Manuel of Corinth (Rhetor and Chartophylax of the Great Church, 1482-
1530/31). See Schmemann 1957, 17. Markos studied the ST, citing Kydones’ translation, in M. Eugenikos
1849, 220.
516
OCGS 8:418–421.
134
Subsequently, the second edition of this Grammar revised the section of his work on the
filioque, making an about-face, to arrive at the opposite conclusion on the controverted “ex
Filio.” Scholarios’s somewhat libertine attitude in theology – somehow nourished within his
otherwise Palamite and anti-filioquist context (per his educators) – has no obvious bearing,
insofar as proclivities are concerned, on his choice to study Aristotelian and Stoic ethics.
Afterward, Scholarios moved his interest to the Aristotelian Physica, for which texts
Scholarios utilized a Latin commentator to aid his interpretation. 517 By this time, Scholarios
must have learned Latin sufficiently to translate this same Latin commentator. Either as a result
of the impressions that Latin learning made upon him, or due perhaps to an opportune moment,
Scholarios shortly thereafter, c. 1432, managed to obtain Kydones’ version of Aquinas’s ST
for himself.
To all appearances, Scholarios was led to anything from enthusiasm to perplexity upon
encountering the bewildering syllogisms within Aquinas’s logic-laden theology. If Scholarios
were, perchance, mesmerized by Aquinas’s syllogisms and the meticulous organization of his
opera, this would explain the Scholarian obsession, thereafter, with Latin commentaries on the
Logica vetus and, eventually, on Aristotle’s entire Organon by the commentator Brito
(sometimes mistaken for a Thomist). One can wonder if Scholarios was initially misled into
thinking (per Latins of his day) that Brito was, indeed, a Thomistic commentator. Conversely,
perhaps Aquinas’s logic was not advanced enough for Scholarios’s fashionable interlocutors.
Subsequently, likely in connection with the Dominican Lodizios, Scholarios could have
accessed authentically Thomistic works on logic at the Dominican studium in Pera
(Constantinople). Scholarios’s relation with Lodizios and his access to authentically Thomistic
works auspiciously coincided with his imperial advancement, which certainly provided
Scholarios with greater financial and political benefits, such that he could either buy MSS, or
enjoy Dominican confidence in his official dignity, so as to be lent various MSS of Aquinas.
Thereupon, by 1435, Scholarios began his original compositions (e.g., his sermon on the
Eucharist) in Greek, but by recourse to Kydones’ Greek version of Aquinas (e.g., SG IV.61).
NB, I have found Scholarios’s earliest mention of Augustine of Hippo in this translation. However, nothing
517
whatsoever in all of his pre-Florentine studies suggests to me – so far – that Scholarios read a Greek or Latin
Augustinian work. Instead, Scholarios looked to be familiar only with Augustinian citations within Scholastic
commentaries and theological treatises.
135
One might imagine that either enthusiasm for Aquinas, or puzzlement over Aquinas’s
heavy use of the Physica and Metaphysica of Aristotle within SG and ST initially led
Scholarios to seek out Aquinas’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Physica and Metaphysica. It
would be completely unsurprising if numerous subtleties of Aquinas in the ST remained
opaque, since he was technically so much more advanced than Byzantine commentators had
been on the corpus Aristotelicum. So, Scholarios found himself delving into Aquinas’s
commentaries on the more central texts of the corpus Aristotelicum, insofar as they aided him
to understand the SG and ST. This finally resulted in a comfortably accurate understanding of
the SG and ST, as Aristotelian texts. Prior to his traveling to Ferrara, Scholarios’s Aristotelian
and Thomistic investigations occurred 1431–1437, but they abruptly ended due to his return to
Byzantine and Hesychastic theological studies with Markos.
Now, we arrive at the other extreme (c. 1437) of our metaphorical hyperbaton, where
Scholarios returned to the Palamite texts and masters of his youth, whether in person or in their
writings; namely, Eugenikos, Makres, and Bryennios (not to mention Neilos). If Chortasmenos
had marked the youthful Scholarian transition from grammar and rhetoric to what might be
deemed secular learning or humanistic studies in Aristotelian logic, Scholarios went beyond
the modest logic of the Prodromos monastery and emptied the dregs of wisdom of Aristotle
and of the Latins (Aquinas and Brito). Yet, in preparation for the Council of Ferrara-Florence,
not a few Greeks and Latins were anticipating debates on Palamism. Consequently, Palamite
apologetics were, thus, begun under the auspices of Emperor John VIII.
During this period of imperially patronized study Scholarios would have undoubtedly
been exposed to Markos’s antirrhetics against Aristotelian metaphysics and Neilos Kabasilas’s
opusculum in defense of Palamism (as well as his opera on the filioque and papacy). How
committed was “the Scholastic” Scholarios to official Palamism at this time? Because both
Markos and Bessarion of Nicaea can be safely said to uphold the state doctrine, Scholarios was
certainly a Palamite. 518 What is more, Palamism or Orthodoxy was, in accord with the civil
518
Bessarion sought an academic reply to queries. De Halleux 1989, 310–314. Andrew Chrysoberges was
naturally the person to whom it was logical to address these concerns because of his position vis-à-vis the
Roman curia and pope. Andrew was given an official commission for the reductio of the Greeks to the Roman
Church (May 21, 1432). See Eugenius IV 1940a (CFDS A.1.1:26–27). Mistakes have been pointed out in more
recent times about past denials of Bessarion’s early Palamism. See De Halleux 1989, 307–332. Monfasani
(2011a, 2, 30) even accepts Bessarion as a Palamite in Italy, although one looks in vain within Bessarion’s
library for Palamite works.
136
law of the empire, a requirement by this time for Byzantines at court. One could not expect
promotion to official offices if not a member of the state religion. Hence, Scholarios would not
have been able to advance through the cursus honorum (viz., secretary to Emperor John VIII)
without fidelity to the official Palamism of the empire. 519 In addition to the univocity of the
concept of being, as espoused by Brito, Scholarios’s propitious encounter with Scotism in 1437
would have further equipped him with the logical subtleties necessary for his psyche to exist
in two universes; namely, that of Palamas and the other of Aquinas. In fact, just this kind of
hybrid Thomist-Scotism had already been endorsed by one of the most authoritative
Dominicans of the century prior; namely, Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323). Prochoros Kydones had
already made this meld of Scotus and Aquinas available in Greek translation (terminus ante
quem 1369). We will be able to better understand Scholarios’s use of Hervaeus shortly.
As already mentioned, Brito’s commentaries on logic, espousing a version of
“univocity of the concept of being,” would have equipped Scholarios to defend Palamism from
the Latins by using their own dialectical weapons against them. Nevertheless, Scholarios
possessed such a keen intellect that I could not imagine him unaware of the historical and
logical incommensurability that obtains between Thomistic metaphysics of God and that of
Palamas. This thorny theological problem of irreconcilability must have been known to
Scholarios already in c. 1435–1437, for his old schoolmaster, Eugenikos, who likely secured
his appointment to the pre-conciliar preparatory commission of Emperor John VIII, had
published profuse arguments in his antirrhetics against Aristotelian metaphysics, as employed
by the Thomist and anti-Palamite Manuel Kalekas. One can wonder if Brito’s references to
Scotism (noting its incommensurate doctrines vis-à-vis Thomism) in the 1430s caused
Scholarios to seek out a MS of Scotus from the Franciscan convent in Constantinople c. 1436/7.
Because Emperor John VIII had issued an order to scour the monasteries for texts that would
prepare the Greeks to debate the Latins at Florence, one can wonder if the origial Latin
manuscripts and Greek translations thereof by the Kydones’ brothers were discovered, since
some of these were clearly carried to Italy in order to be employed in the debates. This was
519
Although Demetrios Kydones managed to maintain his post under two emperors, he was originally
appointed mesazon as an Orthodox, but later converted (c. 1358) and only gradually became discovered. This
case, however, is of someone who was only gradually removed from office due to his opposition to Palamism
versus someone elevated to a government position, especially after the tomes of 1351 and 1368 came into force
in the empire, with the general judges present and presiding over the proceedings.
137
exemplified by Metropolitan Markos of Ephesus arguing to the Latins by making recourse to
extant Greek translations of Augustine, in November of 1438. 520 Among the Kydones’
translations, Scholarios might have come upon a solution to the Palamistic question in Greek
via Hervaeus graecus, as to how one might reconcile enthusiasm for Aquinas’s ingenious
expositions of Aristotle, as a proto-Christian, with devotion to Palamas. The late 1430s was an
important time for such reflections, since Scholarios was indubitably forced by his
environment to consider the antithetical statements made against Aristotelian metaphysics by
his professors Bryennios and Eugenikos.
520
See, for example, M. Eugenikos 1969, sec. 3 (CFDS A.8.2:110).
138
Chapter Four: Scholarios, Palamism, and the Council of Ferrara-Florence
Introduction
The papal negotiations leading to the Council of Ferrara-Florence have been recorded
in a variety of sources. 521 It is not my intent to retell the fairly replete histories of Ferrara-
Florence from a chronological perspective. My interest in Florence will be limited to those
events that included Scholarios, or to those that presumably left a deep impression on him. The
purpose of this chapter is to prepare the reader to understand the immediate background and
intellectual pursuits that led Scholarios to comment upon Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. It will
be my purpose to show that Palamism and its important role at Ferrara-Florence led Scholarios
to deep reflections about his Orthodox commitments, leading him to write a series of
commentaries on the essence and energies of God in defense of the official Orthodox position.
I hope to show how important was the tension between Thomism and Palamism in Scholarios’s
scholarly pursuits, such that his first major theological contribution to his Church, post-
Florence, concerned the question of the essence and energies of God.
Without going into the adventures of the Greek expedition to Italy, which began on
November 27, 1437, it is noteworthy that the Orthodox contingent arrived first in Venice on
February 4, 1438. 522 It is difficult to imagine that any significant study and writing could have
been accomplished during the arduous journey with inclement weather and numerous setbacks
during a winter voyage in the Mediterranean. 523 From his arrival at Venice, Scholarios only
transferred to Ferrara with Patriarch Joseph II on March 7, 1438. 524 As one might imagine,
exhaustion overtook many of the Orthodox travelers so that they were given a month’s leisure
until just before Holy Week, or April 3, 1438. Technically, everyone at Ferrara was allowed
four months furlough. Nonetheless, official activities began following Holy Week and Easter;
namely, the rules of procedure and etiquette were arranged between the various masters of
521
Cecconi 1869; Geanakopolos 1955, 324–346; Ševeĉenko 1955, 291–323; Gill 1959; Gill 1964; Turner 1967,
83–103; Décarreaux 1969; Benvenuti 2005, 256–264; Blanchet 2008.
522
Gill 1959, 88–90.
523
Décarreaux 1969, 6–12.
524
Décarreaux 1969, 19.
139
ceremonies of the papal, patriarchal, and imperial households. The formality of an opening
session of the Ecumenical Council (despite the remaining three months of vacation) functioned
as a point of departure for sending envoys to civil rulers and churchmen who, as yet, had sent
no representatives. The period of inactivity was meant to allow for travel of representatives
from various nations, so as to ensure a plenary representation of Latindom at Ferrara. 525
Besides the pageantry of the first session of the council, there was little official business
to occupy the daily life and work of Scholarios. Hence, we can imagine that – during his four-
month furlough – Scholarios was, indeed, afforded opportunities to visit the Dominican and
Franciscan studia in Ferrara. Scholarios’s self-reference to such frequent visits to the
Franciscan studia first date from March of 1438. 526 It was likely during this period that
Scholarios would have acted as an interpreter for dinner parties that Latin noblemen and
prelates were customarily holding in honor of their foreign guests. Given Ambrogio
Traversari’s absence from the scene at this time, Scholarios perhaps served as the interpreter
for Markos and his brother, John Eugenikos, at a dinner party held in their honor by Cardinal
Giuliano Cesarini. 527 Thereafter, Latins and Greek Fathers agreed to meet about four times,
beginning sometime prior to May 12, 1438. In the sessions, following an imperial placet, it
was agreed to begin quasi-formal discussions by opening with a disputation on purgatory.528
Scholarios may have functioned as sort of a lesser delegate for a smaller official commission
of Fathers and theologians who gathered to discuss preliminary theological matters. 529
Scholarios was indubitably engaged in academic research during these discussions, even if not
525
Gill 1959, 107–112.
526
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:180; OCGS 5:2).
527
Scholarios was unoccupied at this time and still on excellent terms with his recent study partner Markos.
Secondly, Francisco Filelfo was absent from the council (who could have translated adequately). See
Syropoulos, Memoirs, 5.3. Syropoulos did not name Scholarios but notes that he was absent from that dinner
(and was, perhaps, not privy to the guest list). Deacon John Eugenikos is mentioned because he held the dignity
of νομοφύλαξ, or patriarchal librarian. Τhe Memoirs attest to the parties being occasions of politesse, engaging
in philosophical discussions as a pastime. This would have required a translator (unlike Traversari), who was
familiar with Scholastic treatises on the Aristotelian corpus and classical philosophy. Scholarios was the only
person among the known Latin and Greek translators qualified for such a task. Lastly, Scholarios had already
been invited to join the papal household in 1434. Consequently, he was the obvious choice to represent the
interests of the papal household for cultivating a positive impression on Orthodox per the politesse and acumen
of his translations. If Scholarios was not the translator, the honor almost assuredly fell to Nicholas Sagundino.
Cf. Gill 1959, 115.
528
Gill 1959, 117–118.
529
There is a question as to whether the commission contained ten or sixteen members on each side. See Gill
1959, 114–115. I allow for sixteen, for confusion might occur by enumerating secretaries along with
spokesmen. This very confusion arises, for example, with the role of John Lei, OP, during the purgatory
discussions in the fall of 1438.
140
physically present for the talks. 530 These initial four meetings were mainly questions of
organization and the order of subject matter to be discussed, for which material Scholarios
served as a peritus, or expert. 531
As a result, by late May, a date was established for discussions so that the first
exposition of the Latin doctrine of purgatory started on June 4, 1438. From here, Scholarios
was undoubtedly occupied with aiding Markos in locating Latin authorities (unavailable in
Greek) in order to support Markos’s Palamite position on the beatific vision contra the Latins.
As it so happened, the purgatory debates occasioned the discovery of Greeks continuing to
hold a former, now passé, and ostensibly heretical doctrine dear only to Latins of a prior age;
namely, the theological opinion – equally held by the Greeks at Ferrara – that divine judgment
and the quality of the vision of the just after death was quite distinct from what awaited
embodied persons at the resurrection. For example, we read:
So they [the Orthodox] established on this point, namely, [that the saints] are accustomed to
enjoy and not to enjoy [eternal goods]. First, souls, as souls, were used to enjoy [these]
perfectly, but that they will enjoy [these] even more perfectly in the resurrection with their
proper bodies. Also, at that time, they will radiate like the sun (λάμψουσιν ὡς ὁ ἥλιος) or even
like the light (ἢ καὶ ὡς τὸ φῶς), which the Lord Jesus Christ shined upon us on the mount of
Tabor. 532
Obviously – among Greeks of any age – Scholarios alone was capable of locating Latin
authorities on such a subtle and Scholastic question, especially given the fact that the texts in
question were unavailable in Greek translation.
Thereafter, Markos must have brought these Latin sources of interest to Ambrogio
Traversari for translation into Greek. Only then could Markos have employed selections of
treatises, which had never before been translated into Greek, from (Augustine and) 533 Bernard
on the fate of disembodied souls. 534 One is immediately struck by the fact that Markos, who
530
His constant participation in all consultations is gleaned from the fact that he functioned at imperial court in
exactly the same kind of commission before the Greeks’ departure for Italy and in the late sessions, as in
Syropoulos, Memoirs, 3.8, and 8.34.
531
Syropoulos, Memoirs, 3.17.
532
Acta Graeca, 1:25–26.
533
For block quotes in Greek from Augustine, Confessiones, De mendacio, De civitate dei, and De fidei et
operibus, see Torquemada et al. 1969, 12 (CFDS A.8.2:42–43, 46).
534
Ambrogio Traversari: “Negocia ista Graencorum omnia ferme ipsi conficimus, vel ex graeco in latinum, vel
ex latino in graecum convertendo, quae dicuntur, ac scribuntur omnia” (Ep. XIII, 34 [10 July 1438]). See Gill
1959, 114–118, for the relevant citation.
141
knew not Latin, somehow learned about the ostensibly scandalous (St.) Bernard of Clairvaux,
who had held a doctrine of the beatific vision and fate of the souls of the deceased in a manner
that coincided with Palamism. 535 In effect, Markos rehashed a century-old Latin theological
debate that had occurred principally between Dominicans and Pope John XXII, the latter of
whom had taught the beatific vision in substantially Palamite terms. 536 How did Markos know
that the pope had held this effectively Palamite position a century earlier, causing so much
scandal among Dominicans of the past? 537 Indeed, the physical availability of Bernard’s opera
at Ferrara partly explains this discovery. Yet, the Greeks would have needed to know the
peculiar value of Bernard, for such arguments lay hidden among hundreds of Latin texts of
every sort that were available from private and institutional libraries. 538 Their happy find is
best explained by recourse to the Dominican, Armandus of Bellovisu (scripsit 1333), who had
composed the tract, Responsiones ad 19 articulos extractos ex scriptis Durandi de Sancto
Porciano, and an epistolary response, Quaestio de visione beatifica, concerning these very
same Dominican polemics (against the position of John XXII and the papal theologian
i535 Eugenikos explicitly appealed to Bernard for the Palamite position, as included in Lei 1963, 83–84, 193.
Lei’s testimony is to these semi-public debates. The only allowable Greek orators were Eugenikos and
Bessarion (contra Torquemada). See Candal’s introduction to Torquemada’s Apparatus (CFDS B.2.1:xix). On
July 16, 1438, Markos must have declared the nature of the beatific vision akin to seeing the light from Christ
on Mt. Tabor. The Acta Graeca exclude Scholarios from this conversation before the person of the emperor,
for John VIII explicitly wished to hear “prelates’” opinions on the matter. Bessarion could have never
cooperated in these studies for several other reasons, especially given his lack of references to Bernard in the
Mohler edition of his opera omnia. Before the Latins could respond, a delay occurred via tardiness of
representatives from Basel, followed by a plague in Ferrara. Some of Markos’s Greek resembles his
predecessor’s John Katakuzenos (1987, 202–203). Markos was first a proponent of this doctrine in the mid-
1430s, per Markos Eugenikos, Κεφάλαια συλλογιστικὰ κατὰ τῆς αἱρέσεως τῶν Ἀκινδυνιστῶν (Εὑρισκόμενα
2:227–228). Markos led the Greeks in the De novissimis debates, as reported in Candal’s introduction to the
Tractatus of John Lei, 4, 24 (supra). There is no evidence that Lei was named a select theologian at the closed
debates. Instead, Lei’s information likely comes from private sessions with Torquemada as his
secretary/collaborator. For Torquemada’s membership among the group of six theologians on De novissimis,
see Candal’s introduction to Torquemada’s Apparatus (B.2.1:xvii).
536
See Gereby 2011, 186–200, where Pope John XXII’s own theological authorities include Bernard.
537
Gereby 2011, 195. No Scholarian works in his opera omnia name Bernard. Consequently, the translations
might have been the property of Traversari and, therefore, never left Florence upon the Greeks’ departure. At
the onset of the discussions, an agreement was reached whereby each party would have a right to enter the
sacristy of the Franciscan church of St. Francis and consult the others’ texts daily (Acta Graeca, 1:90).
Bessarion records the rapidity with which a Renaissance amanuensis was able to copy two notebooks
(tetradia/quaderni), or about thirty-two pages of vellum, in the course of a day. See Bessarion of Nicaea 1967,
484.
538
The Abbot of Citeaux – present at the sessions – brought Bernard’s works, which he cited multiply at the
public debates. For the Abbot of Citeaux’s reliance on Bernard as an authority coram Graecis at Ferrara in
November of 1438, see the abbatial speech in Acta Latina, 91.
142
Durandus of Porçain) in the fourteenth century. 539 Propitiously, not only were these works
plausibly available in the Dominican studium of Ferrara, but six years later Scholarios
translated a Latin work of Armandus of Bellovisu into Greek, as the basis of his own
commentary on Aquinas’s opusculum on the being and essence of creatures and God. 540
As already mentioned, Torquemada, John Lei, and other Dominicans individually
sought a papal condemnation of this Palamistic tenet. During these initial debates, like the
Latins themselves, Scholarios was forced into time constraints, so as to rely on already existent
disputations and florilegia in order to provide Markos with ammunition against Latin
objections. In addition to debate about the lot of disembodied souls and their degree of
happiness, there was the equally pressing question of interpreting various scriptural passages
and what these meant when they both affirmed and denied that one could, in one way see God,
but that – in another way – no one had ever seen God and lived. What is more, there was
another disputed question on Palamas’s contention that the beatific vision can be possessed in
this life (as the apostles were said to experience in the light on Mt. Tabor). The Byzantine
Thomist, Prochoros Kydones, during the 1360s, had strenuously objected to the possession of
the vision of God (or rather his energy) in the vision of Tabor. Curiously, this specialized
question of former controversy had not been a central issue in Scholastic debates of the past.
Because Scholarios was, as yet, unfamiliar with Bonaventure’s commentary on Lombard’s
Sentences, and was apparently unmindful of every jot and tittle of Aquinas’s ST, he must have
been unable to present Markos with the evidence that would have surely exonerated Palamas
vis-à-vis Thomists, by means of the Latins’ very own authorities. For example, Bonaventure
of Bagnoregio, OFM, who served as an explicit theological authority of Torquemada
(employed at the Council of Basel 1431–1437), held the common opinion that St. Paul had
possession of the beatific vision in statu isto. 541 Furthermore, Aquinas had agreed with this
aspect of Palamas’s position, though Schoolmen at Ferrara were apparently unaware of the fact
539
For the text and/or editions of these works, see Thomas 1927, 274; Van Liere 1992, 7–134; Schönberger,
Sánchez, et al. 2011, 608.
540
For Pope John XXII’s use of Bernard and the debates about interpreting him that ensued, thereafter, see
Trottmann 1993, 327–379; Trottmann 1995.
541
See Bonaventure 1891b, Collatio 3, p. 1, nos. 24–30 (Quarrachi 5:347a–348a), for an example of Paul
having the beatific vision and handing on the information to (Ps.) Dionysios the Areopagite in order to organize
the apostolic church according to Paul’s vision. Franciscan Meyronnes embraced this Bonaventurian thesis and
developed it in his study of Ps.-Dionysios, some aspects of which are investigated in Barbet 1954, 183–190.
143
from the following: 542 “It is necessary to be said that the human mind is divinely raised up to
the divine truth that needs to be contemplated [...] so that it should contemplate such truth in
its essence. And the rapture of Paul and even of Moses were such cases. These are also
sufficiently proportioned, for Moses was the first teacher of the Jews, in the way that Paul was
the first teacher of the Gentiles.” 543 While it is true that Aquinas conflated the essence of God
with each and every one of his ad intra activities, so that the beatific vision signified for him
the capacity to see God’s naked essence, it is equally true that Aquinas admitted at least two
historical cases in the history of the world where living persons experienced the beatific vision
on earth. 544 However, this illustrates a common problem with sectarian schools within
Latindom. It was not unusual in the least for a strongly held opinion of one religious order,
who were replete with scholars and even saints opining on a subject, to accuse their fellow
Latins of being heretical for departing from the common opinion of the self-same school.
Ferrara occasioned at times just such cases of sectarian rivalry that inhibited discussion on
objective dogma.
1. Scholarios as Palamite Researcher at Ferrara (1438)
The bulk of the information that has been presented in the introduction to this chapter
already presents a surprisingly new narrative with its underreported evidence that Palamism
was central to the debates at Florence from the outset. Importantly, for the purposes of this
study, Scholarios played the principal role of supporting Palamite-friendly research, bolstering
Markos, so as to augment his arguments with Palamite-friendly Latin authorities. This is an
entirely new find. Scholarios knew that each piece of evidence that he presented to his spiritual
father Markos was to be used in order to defend the Orthodox view on the impossibility of the
542
After the outbreak of a sort of anti-Palamism on the question of the beatific vision at papal court during the
reigns of John XXII and Benedict XII, as explained in Duba (2006, 351–360), Latins who were familiar with
the Greek position began denying the concessions to the possibility of the beatific vision in this life, as in the
opinions of earlier Latin Schoolmen (Bonaventure, Aquinas, et al.). See also Duba 2000, 182–193, where
Latins, motivated by opposition to Greek Orthodoxy, developed innovative positions to interpret Paul’s vision
other than the Scholastic tradition had done prior.
543
ST IIa–IIae.175.3, ad 1: “dicendum quod mens humana divinitus rapitur ad contemplandam veritatem
divinam [. . .] ut contempletur eam in sua essentia. Et talis fuit raptus Pauli, et etiam Moysi. Et satis congruenter,
nam sicut Moyses fuit primus doctor Iudaeorum, ita Paulus fuit primus doctor gentium.”
544
Aquinas repeatedly endorsed this doctrine in other works that Scholarios is not known to have read; namely,
Aquinas 2018b, q. 13, a. 2 (sed contra & corpus); Aquinas 2018g, XII.1.
144
human intellect, qua limited creature, to see an impartible and infinite object, namely, the
divine essence. In this regard, Scholarios functioned very much as he had in his Réponse aux
Syllogismes de Marc in response to Markos’s Κεφάλαια συλλογιστικὰ in 1437, for Scholarios
provided Markos with information on Latin theology and principles by consulting recondite
sources never before seen in the Greek language.
In addition to verifying Scholarios’s embrace of officially obligatory Palamism,
Scholarios’s research on behalf of Markos placed him in circumstances where he was unable
to ignore real differences between doctrines of Aquinas (not to mention additional doctrines of
his Dominican followers) and of his own Palamite teachers. The issues of disagreement in
1438 can be reduced to the following: (1.) The saints do not see the essence of God, contrary
to the Thomists and most other Latins, for Orthodox profess them to see only a divine energy,
or light; (2.) The beatific vision can be had temporarily on this earth, while the Dominicans
and several Latin bodies at Ferrara opposed this doctrine; (3.) Orthodox profess some sort of
metaphysical difference of perfections among each other and between the former and the
essence of God, while the Dominicans and other followers of Aquinas claim that any
proposition about essential or intra-essential distinctions in God (other than the three divine
persons) constitutes a heretical proposition.
Scholarios never hinted at betraying Orthodox doctrine with respect to any of the points
above. In fact, regarding the “uncreated light,” or “τὸ τῆς δόξης φῶς,” seen by the saints,
Scholarios felt strongly enough about this doctrine throughout his life that he even
accommodated Aquinas to his Palamite tradition by intentionally mangling a lengthy section
of translation of Aquinas’s ST (terminus post quem 1458/59) 545 in order to attenuate Thomas
and his doctrine to Palamite sensibilities. For his part, Aquinas was adamantly convinced and
quite vocal that the human intellect can be capacitated to see God’s essence via the supernatural
additive or created accident of the lumen gloriae. 546 After the translation of Aquinas’s Summae
into Greek, Palamites made this a point of contention with Thomists. 547 Ferrara marked a
545
Demetracopoulos 2019b.
546
See Wippel 2000, 1:541. Cf. ST I.12.6; Aquinas 2018b, 10.12; Aquinas 2018c, VII.1. Numerous other places
give a clear exposition of the divine essence as the ultimate and direct object of the human intellect.
547
Scholarios omitted references to the lumen gloriae in his translation-summaries of the SG and ST.
Effectively, Scholarios rejected any “habitus” or created grace implanted in the human intellect that might
capacitate it “to see God’s essence.” See George-Gennadios Scholarios and Aquinas, Résumé de la Somme
contre Gentils de saint Thomas d’Aquin (troisiéme partie), III.58 (OCGS 5:150); Scholarios and Aquinas
1931b, I.12.1–13 (OCGS 5:346–348).
145
crescendo in the conflict of the Thomistic school, along with its assertion that man can see
God’s essence, with Orthodox Palamism. 548 The Palamites refused to concede this point at the
council. 549 Therefore, a compromise formula had to be adopted to please the Greek contingent
present at Florence. 550 Followers of the Angelic Doctor never wavered on this point,
withstanding even Franciscans and Scotists who attacked the doctrine of the lumen gloriae. 551
These Scotists thought it absurd for an accidental quality (i.e., something created), allegedly
added to the soul, to capacitate the human intellect to see an infinite essence. Thomists, unlike
Scotists, claimed that the only adequate objects of the intellect are created essences via
abstraction and so the mind required a super-additive in order to see the non-material essence
of God. 552
In this context, we can imagine Scholarios uncovering seminal reasons to put on hold
his burgeoning enthusiasm for the works of Aquinas. Still, because there are no original works
of Scholarios that incontestably date to 1438–1439, it is difficult to know how Scholarios
processed psychologically this clear and open conflict between Thomism and Palamism. All
the same, Scholarios was involved in providing both Markos and Bessarion with the fruits of
his expert research. Any doubts on this matter are entirely allayed by the testimony of
Syropoulos, who paints a consistent picture in harmony with the aforementioned evidence.
Scholarios factually played a most essential role in research for these two principal Greek
interlocutors with the Latins at Ferrrara. 553 Scholarios’s scholarly research into sources would
have lasted (with respect to the purgatory debates) until sometime after July 17, 1438. 554 By
this time the plague had already arrived in Ferrara and abruptly cut short the discussions on
purgatory and Palamite efforts with respect to their positions on the vision of God and the
essence-energies question involved therein. By August the plague had taken its first (Slav)
Orthodox victims in Ferrara. Naturally, many Latins and not a few Greeks sought the relative
548
Another source cited notes the controversy on divine vision (et cetera) between the Thomists and Palamites.
See Gill 1959, 120, 206, 225, 285.
549
Gill 1959, 285–286.
550
De Halleux 1989, 307–332.
551
See Duba 2009, 355–356, where the Franciscan-Dominican controversy on lumen gloriae coincides with
the topic of the nature of the beatific vision, as fought between John XXII and the Dominicans (along with anti-
papal Franciscans). Conversely, though by and large allied against John XXII, the Franciscans nonetheless
rejected the Dominican doctrine of the lumen gloriae beginning with disputes in Paris 1319–1320.
552
Cross 1999, 149–152.
553
Memoirs, 6.38.
554
Gill 1959, 119.
146
safety of the countryside until the relative abeyance of the plague in the fall of the same year.
Around inauguration day (September 14, 1438) of the academic year within Ferrara’s studia,
a Greco-Latin agreement was reached to take up the debates again. 555 This time the subject of
controversy was to be the canonicity of the filioque, inasmuch as it was an addition to the
official Creed shared between both churches.
2. Scholarios and the Scholarly Environment of Ferrara
As I mentioned earlier, Scholarios entered Ferrara in March of 1438. He likely felt

himself fortunate to have arrived in time to hear academic lectures before the onset of
discussions in early May of 1438. This would have given him only a couple of months to attend
quaestiones disputatae or open lectures within the Dominican and Franciscan studia operating
within Ferrara at this time. Scholarios could not have availed himself of university lectures on
theology in the city, insofar as records clearly indicate that no real university theologate was
functional at this time in Ferrara. From 1391, there were present law professors, but no
evidence suggests an arts faculty whatsoever. 556 Scholarios would have had the possibility of
meeting and conversing with humanists (who acted as tutors), but he had to content himself
with two religious houses in Ferrara to satiate his theological interests. Post-1435, theology
professors might have been hired as tutors in Ferrara, but no proof of a university exists.557
Only in 1442 was there an inauguration of a university proper, and only in 1449–1450 of a
proper arts faculty. Any connections that Scholarios made during his short stay in Ferrara
would have been with resident tutors, not with university faculty. 558
Nonetheless, Franciscan and Dominican houses were present, but we have no mention
of public disputations. By Scholarios’s arrival, the university schedule was nearly finished (29
June) and did not reboot until September, after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Therefore, even if Scholarios had been allowed to be present at quaestiones diputatae during
Advent of 1438, he would have been forced to leave Ferrara with the rest of the conciliar
Fathers by December 1438. In essence, Scholarios arrived at a moderate-sized university town
555
Gill 1959, 130.
556
Grendler 2002, chap. 3.
557
Grendler 2002, chap. 3, nn. 107–108.
558
Grendler 2002, chap. 3, nn. 109–110.
147
with around twenty or so chairs of different combined faculties. 559 University life was on the
wane, for faculty membership remained at twenty-seven professors until the mid-1430s, but
subsequently dwindled to about twenty professors by 1440. 560 Total enrollment of students in
the university was around 150 during this time. 561 Also, Germans, French, Spanish and
Portuguese were all present within the city as students. Yet, the vast majority of students
consisted of Tuscans and Florentines. 562 Scholarios certainly had access to the Dominican
studium in Ferrara, where he must have found the works of Armandus of Bellovisu for his
spring–summer disputations with the Latins on purgatory and for his future 1445 translation
of Armandus’s commentary on Aquinas’s De ente et essentia, or Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ
διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας. It is nonetheless
true that intellectual life was not so robust in Ferrara at this time.
With respect to Scholarios following lectures at the Franciscan studium in Ferrara, not
only did Scholarios unambiguously refer to frequenting Franciscan studia, but he would have
also likely taken advantage of some or another lecture from the celebrated Augustine of
Ferrara, OFM. John Capistran, OFM, who was also a peritus at the council, as well as a civilly-
trained lawyer, depended on Augustine for his own libellus on papal power that probably
reflected or even inspired the official pre-conciliar study on the subject (scripsit November
1437). This was delivered to Pope Eugenius to serve for Greco-Latin discussions. 563
Additionally, another Franciscan peritus, James of Marches, cited Augustine’s theses
concerning the plenitudo potestatis of the pontiff. 564 Scholarios must have known from various
periti about Augustine’s position as theologiae magister or magister sacrae paginae. Granted
that Scholarios had received permission to attend lectures at the Franciscan studium of Ferrara,
surely one of them was a lecture from Augustine. 565 Augustine had, by then, gained fame
within the city precincts of Ferrara for lecturing on the plenitude of power of the pope. 566 A
comparison of Augustine’s writings on the papacy with those of Scholarios could well lead to
cementing this circumstantial evidence into a hard fact. Lastly, it is significant that the
559
Grendler 2002, Appendix (for size of chairs and faculties).
560
Grendler 2002, chap. 3, nn. 36–40.
561
562
563
Piana 1977, 224.
564
Piana 1948, 244–245, 254–255.
565
Piana 1948, 275–276.
566
Piana 1968, 153–154, 160–162.
148
Franciscan studium taught Greek literature at the time of the Council of Ferrara. 567 Scholarios
would have been the perfect guest to deliver lectures or dialogues before the Greek students at
the Franciscan house that he must have frequented. As he says, “[…] Some in Italy, especially
those of the habit of Francis, many of whom I have frequented, associate themselves so firmly
with later teachers that they go as far as to accuse him [Thomas] because of favoring them
[…].” 568
3. Scholarios and Eugenikos: Transition from Ferrara to Florence (1438–1439)
Scholarios was physically present for the entire series of debates in Ferrara.
Importantly, he understood better than many of his countrymen that the debates ought – per
his understanding of theory as prior to praxis – to have first proposed hypothetically Orthodox
definitions of the filioque before ever discussing the permissibility of the addition or προσθήκη
into the Creed. 569 However, whereas Scholarios was most comfortable with the abstractions of
metaphysics, most Greeks were not at all equipped with the philosophical and abstract
theological apparatus to do battle on this front. Be that as it may, Scholarios could not have
failed to notice the constant Dominican provocations of Palamites that had penetrated even
into the formal discussions.
Toward the end of year (October 20, 1438), the virulently anti-Palamite Andrew
Chrysoberges, being then Archbishop of Rhodes, made an intervention that must have had the
rhetorical effect of putting the Greeks on notice about their controversial Palamism. Andrew
mentioned Gregorios Palamas and his controversial synod of 1351. This must have left a deep
impression on Scholarios, indeed, for we shall see that Scholarios’s future Excursus
commenting on Aquinas’s De ente et essentia took its point of departure from Palamas’s
defense of the 1351 Council (against criticisms of Akindynos). Attempting to dismiss
Orthodox appeals to prior ecumenical councils forbidding additions (viz., filioque) to the
common creed of Christendom, Andrew added a gratuitous rhetoric to get the attention of
Orthodox:
567
Piana 1968, 115.
568
OCGS 6:179, 38-41.
569
Syropoulos, Memoirs, 6.21.
149
[Minutes of the Speech by the Amanuensis [Andrew:] “Further, you own teacher, that new
theologian, whom you estimate so high, says this very same point.” [Amanuensis:] He referred
to a citation of Gregorios Palamas. [Andrew continues by citing the Synod of 1351] “We pay
little attention to terms: for ‘piety does not consist in words, but in things’”, according to
Gregory the Theologian. What I pay attention to are dogmas and things; and, if someone be of
one mind with regard to the things, I contest not about terms.’ Wherefore, most revered Fathers,
since that famous teacher does not pay attention to terms, you, too, ought not to give much
account to words. Now, if you say that the Fathers did so by forbidding this kind of thing
[addition to the creed] in their synods – I will address this argument in due time.” 570
I have recently produced a long study that enters into some aspects of the personality,
education, temperament, and rhetorical strategies of Andrew Chrysoberges. 571 It is plainly
obvious, from the beginning of the council until its bitter end, that Andrew freely indulged his
pugnacious temperament. Given his principled odium theologicum, or theological hatred, for
Palamas, it was entirely out of character that Andrew should have introduced the name of
Palamas into the discussion for some noble purpose. Ostensibly, Andrew simply asserted that
Gregory the Theologian’s theological principle of substance being preferred to symbolism was
later embraced by Gregorios Palamas. Yet, Andrew’s comments also seemed to serve only as
a foray into the Greek camp in order to test their reactions at the mention of acrimonious synods
and personages of recent Byzantine history. In fact, this reconnaissance mission to uncover
Orthodox reactions to the mention of Palamism likely emboldened John Montenero, OP, to
make a fully frontal assault against Markos months later in Florence. 572
However, it is sufficient to note that the closing debates on the filioque in Ferrara were
not bereft of references to Palamas. Scholarios was himself active behind the scenes so that
Bessarion’s patristic and rational argumentation against the canonical allowance of the addition
570
Acta Graeca, 1:102:
Καὶ ὁ ὑμέτερος διδάσκαλος, ὁ νέος θεολόγος, ὃν ὑμεῖς περὶ πλείονος ἔχετε, τὸ αὐτὸ λέγει, – καὶ ἤνεγκε
τοῦ ἁγίου Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ χρῆσιν – Λέξεων ἡμῖν λόγος ὀλίγος· οὐ γὰρ ἐν ῥήμασι ἡμῖν ἀλλ᾽ ἐν
πράγμασιν ἡ εὐσέβεια κατὰ τὸν θεολόγον Γρηγόριον· περὶ δὲ δογμάτων καὶ πραγμάτων ποιοῦμαι, κἄν
τις ἐν πράγμασι ὁμοφωνῇ, πρὸς τὰς λέξεις οὗ διαφέρομαι. Ἐπειδή, αἰδεσιμώτατοι πατέρες, ὁ
διδάσκαλος ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ποιεῖται φροντίδα λέξεων, οὐδ᾽ ὑμεῖς ὀφείλετε περὶ λέξεων ποιεῖσθαι
λόγον. Εἰ δὲ λέγετε ὅτι οἱ πατέρες ἐποίησαν τοῦτο οἱ ἐν ταῖς συνόδοις τοῦτο κολύσαντες, ἐν ἰδίῳ
καιρῷ ἀπολογήσομαι.
571
Kappes 2014 (passim).
572
Kappes 2014.
150
owed a substantial debt to Scholarios’s research. 573 From the reports of Syropoulos, it appears
that Scholarios was actually one of the few who continued to associate with Markos during
these months in which Latin and a number of Greek Fathers started to tire of him by mid-
November of 1438. 574 Even so, Eugenikos and Scholarios began to evidence their diverging
attitudes on the legitimacy of the Council of Ferrara. 575 Scholarios (by early summer of 1439)
eventually came to change his view – possibly (if only privately) more in line with Markos –
on the validity of the synodical negotiations, opening sessions, and synodical representatives.
Still, in November of 1438, Scholarios adjudged the gathering sufficiently canonical to
constitute an ecumenical council. Markos’s doubts continued to increase, but in an oath to the
emperor, prior to arriving in Italy, he had solemnly promised to defend his Church’s dogma to
the end. 576
For his part, Markos had edited the Acta of the ecumenical council of Chalcedon (451)
and the second Photian synod (879–880). 577 Similar to their prohibitions against invalidating
abuses to ecumenicity, Latin restrictions – for example, preventing public reading of prior
canons and decrees – would have violated commonly accepted canons requiring public forum
and freedom as conditions for presumptive ecumenicity. 578 One of the more prestigious of the
Latin Fathers, Nicholas of Cusa, had priorly agreed entirely with Eugenikos on the necessary
conditions for a valid universal council, entitling a chapter of his own The Catholic
Concordance thus: 579 “The full universal council is made of the five patriarchs. It is essential
573
Memoirs, 6.38; OCGS 2:58.
574
Memoirs, 6.42; Blanchet 2008, 325–326.
575
Scholarios lamented not explicitly defending Markos’s views at this time at Ferrara, in Scholarios 1928b,
249.24–25, 250.10–12 (OCGS 1:249–250).
576
Kappes 2019, 176–179.
577
See Gregory Mammas, Against the Ephesine (PG 160:88C–90A), who attested that Markos knew perfectly
“The Eighth Synod” and its Acta (879–880) from the book in Prodromos (Petra) monastery: (1) the acts were
united with those of the sixth and the seventh, (2) Ignatios was restored and Photios anathematized and driven
out, (3) Ignatios was canonized, (4) the tome included items written against Photios usually unknown to the
public, (5) he knew every papal comment per his publishing (PG 160:93C). Gregory Protosyncellus knew
another collection of documents from the eighth synod (PG 160:232C), which he calls a florilegium
(βιβλιοπάνσυλλεκτος ἀνθολογία). The products of Markos’s cooperative scriptorium with his brother (inter
alios) is investigated in Fonkič and Poljakov 1991–1992, 22–23.
578
Gill 1960, 156–157; Nicholas of Cusa, a Father at Ferrara-Florence, had already written of the canonical
necessity of public and free discussions as an absolute condition for ecumenicity (citing Photius’s nemesis,
Pope Nicholas I [!]). Impressions of freedom of discussion (contra Dioscoros of Alexandria’s Latrocinium 449)
were essential for Acta in validating ecumenicity since Chalcedon. Hence, Latin apologists felt impelled to
counter accusations of bribery, extortion, and undue pressure at Ferrara-Florence.
579
Markos held Cusa’s understanding of the canonical questions surrounding the Photian synod in high regard,
as they had met and discussed the Photian question, in Acta Graeca, 1:91.
151
for a council to be celebrated in public and not in secret, in complete freedom without fear, and
in an orderly and canonical fashion without disturbance. Otherwise, if it is not celebrated in
proper form it can be in error, and one can appeal from it to another council.” 580 However, at
Ferrara, the youthful Scholarios was a philosopher – an expert in philosophical theology – not
a theologian in the traditional sense, where such term implies mastery of patristic authors and
thoroughgoing knowledge of conciliar canons and acts in one’s theological repertoire.
Consequently, while Markos drew attention to canonical irregularities that began multiplying
at Ferrara, such things made little noticeable impression on young Scholarios. Later, following
his return to Constantinople from Florence, his patristic study, legal position of “judge,” and
apologetic research supplied him (inter alia) with the canon and civil law to come to the same
conclusion as Markos on technical and canonical violations that presumably disqualified the
Council of Ferrara-Florence as ecumenical. 581 Be that as it may, well into the spring of 1439,
Scholarios remained rather sanguine toward the prospects of reaching a mutually agreeable
compromise.
At the beginning of the formal debates on purgatory in Ferrara, Markos had been of an
entirely amicable disposition. He opened the first session claiming, “As much as you [Latins]
have said, as well as the witnesses of the saints you have read, we Greeks are willing to receive
and to read them also. On this subject matter, there is little difference [between us].” 582 What
caused Mark’s opinion to shift, with respect to the legitimacy of the Council? After the first
general session at Ferrara, Markos genuinely attempted to address his interlocutors politely
and respectfully (e.g., “Reverend Father”). He managed to show politesse even with those who
had attempted to get him chastised for his opening speech to Pope Eugenius, for it had openly
requested the elimination of the filioque and the removal of azymes from Latin Eucharistic
bread. In his initial address, Markos humbly excused himself in advance of the debates for any
ensuing phraseology that might be offensive, even referring to the bipartisan quest for Christian
unity as “the divine work of peace and unity of the Churches” (τὸ θεῖον ἔργον τῆς εἰρήνης καὶ
ἐνώσεως τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν). Markos developed this theme, stating: “This love ought legitimately
and purely to be held also in the discussions – from beginning to end – throughout all the
580
Nicholas of Cusa 1995, 54.
581
Gill 1959, 166.
582
Acta Graeca, 1:20.
152
questions. And, perchance, should it happen that a somewhat coarse word is brought forward
or should something seem somewhat harsh, let this be accounted either to a difference in the
modes of rhetoric or to expressions of our respective dogmas. Yet, let one be unmoved to guard
love toward individual persons.” 583 Markos’s Greek opponent, pugnacious Andrew, seconded
this speech, but only as a formality to justify his interruption of Markos in medias res. 584
Andrew immediately rushed the Ephesine, bereft of any rhetorical formality, demanding that
Markos inform the Latins about the Greek problem with the filioque. Markos politely
responded and Andrew settled down and finally allowed Markos to speak. 585 Yet, Markos
appealed time and again to love. He spoke with gentleness about the love shared between the
Greek and Roman Churches. Markos’s argument concerned the destruction of fraternal love
through a unilateral προσθήκη. Markos even acknowledged the Roman Church’s love in
calling the assembly. Markos only requested one thing, that a loving sister Church of Rome
should take away the filioque out of love for her fellow sister Church of the Eastern Romans.
Then, each sister Church might practice divine love and cooperation with one another. If the
filioque is the scandal, let all quickly revert to the formula of the common Seven Ecumenical
Councils and “we shall embrace.” 586
Chrysoberges responded, by displaying his annoyance with Markos, for the Ephesine
had failed to mention sufficiently the positive attributes of the Roman Church and its charity.
Andrew gradually worked himself into a fit of anger, reminding Markos that the Greeks were
historically responsible for all sorts of heresies that have never affected the Roman Church.
Andrew finished by noting in summary, “I had to listen to you, now what do you have to say
having listened to me?” 587 Andrew’s interruption is devoid of rhetorical courtesy toward
Markos. 588 Perhaps, as an insult to Markos, Andrew turned only to the assembly at large, after
the main part of Markos’s opening speech, to address them “O most reverend Fathers.” 589 One
will look in vain for respectful, kind words like these to Markos during the entire opening
583
Acta Graeca, 1:49. Cf. Acta Latina, 40: “Cum intentionis nostre motus caritas sit ac ut in ecclesiis dei unio
consistat, eadem caritate procedendum est. Quare si quid asperum prolatu verbum emitti contingat, non
voluntati, sed rei accommodetur.”
584
Memoirs, 6.27, 6.29.
585
Acta Graeca, 1:50.
586
Acta Graeca, 1:52.
587
Acta Graeca, 1:54.
588
Gill 1959, 145.
589
Acta Graeca, 1:53.
153
session. Andrew’s disgust for Palamism at the sessions was focused in a personal manner on
his anti-Kalekan and anti-Dominican enemy Markos of Ephesus. Dominicans may have been
in bad humor because the Franciscans had dropped the issue of Palamite metaphysics from the
discussions of essential matters that supposedly separate the two Churches. 590 For this reason
the only avenue open to Dominicans was to taunt the Palamites during the sessions. 591
In spite of all this, Markos replied kindly to Andrew, so as not to offend, saying, “Your
previous reply, which your Reverence gave to us [...], is true and I consent to them.” 592 Markos
affirmed that the Roman Church had customarily shown great care for the Greeks, who have
had numerous troubles. Though Andrew’s off-topic history lesson is important, Markos
acknowledged, it has little to do with Markos’s claim per se. Markos’s assertion is that
unilateral additions to the common creed threaten ecclesiastical love. Let it be removed and no
love shall be lost. Yet, for Markos, Andrew had also demurred on a second point (i.e., the
common sources of the first seven councils). These should be read aloud for all to hear about
the contents of the essentials of a common faith. Andrew summarily rejected Markos’s
response, saying: “Your arguments aren’t worth refuting.” Andrew absolutely rejected any
idea of reading out the decrees of the ecumenical councils allowed. 593 It was this Latin attempt
to suppress completely any reading of the decrees of the ecumenical canons and Acta from
common authorities (i.e., the Seven Ecumenical Councils) that overwhelmingly vexed the
Ephesine and led to his rejection of the canonicity of the decrees of Ferrara-Florence. As
Scholarios recounted years later:
But they managed the vote and they assert [...] that the addition to the Symbol of faith was
added lawfully and well. Where was this proved? In Ferrara was not just the opposite proved
about the addition? Did not the Latins beg persistently that the provisions about it not being
permitted to add [to the creed], and the penalties attached to this should not be read in public
session? And we, what ought we then to have done? [...] Ought we not have read them there at
the crossroads and in the markets? [...] Yet, we conceded to them that they should not be
produced in the open and, with the public excluded, they were read to the few who were
590
Gill 1959, 141.
591
Acta Graeca, 1:102.
592
Acta Graeca, 1:56: “Τὰ μὲν πρῶτα, ἅπερ ἀπελογήσατο ἡ σὴ αἰδεσιμότης [. . .] ἀληθῆ τέ εἰσιν καὶ
ὁμολογούμενα παρ᾽ ἡμῖν.”
593
Acta Slavica, 57.
154
responsible for this terrible pass, mutteringly, uselessly. [...] How then do they aver that the
addition was made well and lawfully?
When Markos was finally allowed, under these conditions, to read aloud the decrees of the past
ecumenical councils, Andrew heckled the Ephesine with constant interruptions, wherein
Chrysoberges kept emphasizing syllogisms to prove his position. Finally, Markos calmly and
stoically turned to address Pope Eugenius and the Council Fathers at large: 594
O Latins, you philosophize madly; will you keep acting proudly, for you rail against The Seven
Councils, repudiating seven of their popes? Indeed the decrees of the holy Fathers also ordered
us Orthodox Christians to guard and observe the Seven Councils. [...]: [Then he lists the
conciliar popes] “Neither be there added or taken away anything [from the creed].” If someone,
too, adds or subtracts, let him be anathema. Now, however, Pope Eugenius, not only have you
added nothing of any merit, but you even repudiate The Seven Councils, and you assert that
this is The Eighth [Council]? You commemorate yourself at the beginning and omit the holy
Fathers and call this, your own, “The Eighth Synod.” Accordingly, you are going to find
yourself afflicted with [this very] anathema. 595
Markos naturally pressed his rights to read out the declarations of the ecumenical councils.
Montenero intervened and tried to remind Andrew to be charitable. 596 The emperor was
himself perturbed by the negative atmosphere. The Slavic Acta confirm the universal
impression of haughtiness and pride that the “philosophers” (likely including the Dominican
Montenero) bore toward Markos in their responses. It is not hard to imagine that these
university-educated brilliant men were somewhat dismissive of a mere monk of the Palamite
ilk. Clearly, this was no antiseptic forensic exercise, but an “acrid debate.” 597 The Latins were
clearly nervous, for a public session, at least with some of the throng of Ferrara still present,
was going to expose the Italian people and many Latin theologians to the strict language
forbidding additions to the creed under pain of anathema for the first time in their lives. This
was about to be a potential public relations nightmare. Therefore, the Latins demanded a
“private” reading of the decrees of the ecumenical councils (to avoid scandal). 598
594
Cf. Gill 1959, 144–146, for the English translation of this Scholarian excerpt.
595
OCGS 3:87–88. For the English translation, see Gill 1959, 166.
596
Acta Slavica, 56.
597
Acta Graeca, 1:65.
598
Memoirs, 6.31–33; Acta Graeca, 1:65–66.
155
When Markos was given begrudging permission to read publicly the conciliar decrees
(though the Latins ushered out as much of the public as they could), he nevertheless continued
politely addressing the Latins with customary politesse: “your reverence” (ἡ ὑμετέρα
αἰδεσιμότης). What is more, Markos kindly abbreviated his reading to accommodate Cesarini’s
request for Andrew to have time to respond before the day’s session ended. 599 The Ruthenians
noted that Markos was placid and self-controlled in his reading, yet “solemn.” Markos’s
deliberately grave attitude possessed an air of majesty and drew the admiration of an
eyewitness partially responsible for the Acta Slavica. The historian Gill unfavorably noted that
Markos needed to add his own commentary to “build up his arguments.” 600 This criticism is
unfairly disingenuous, since Markos’s formal complaint, from the very beginning of the
debate, accused Latins of inhibiting the official Greek response to Andrew’s rhetorical demand
for Greek objections to the filioque. Besides Markos’s initial appeal to remove the filioque for
charity’s sake, the Ephesine had, as yet, proposed no theologico-canonical arguments against
the addition. How was it that Markos, by developing his arguments in league with past conciliar
decrees, warranted such diffidence toward his procedure?
In such circumstances, Markos nonetheless expressly declared his esteem for all the
Latin Fathers and their theological definitions. 601 He also continued to esteem the pope and
Latins during later sessions. 602 Markos did see the deletion of the filioque from the creed as a
non-negotiable, though he might have been more open-minded about the nature of the filioque
in authentic writings of Latin Fathers, if the main Latin speakers at the council had only not
combined these with numerous questionable texts unknown in Greek. 603 Principally it was
Andrew Chrysoberges who destroyed Markos’s human faith in the sincerity of the Latin cause
and in their scholarship. To a considerable extent many of the conflicts at the council were due
neither to Scholasticism nor to the filioque (under the notion of per filium). 604 Rather, a spirit
599
Acta Slavica, 56.
600
Gill 1959, 149.
601
Acta Graeca, 1:216–217: “ἐπιγνῶμεν ἀλλήλους ἀδελφικῶς, αἰδεσθῶμεν τοὺς κοινοὺς πατέρας ἡμῶν,
τιμήσωμεν αὐτῶν τοὺς ὅρους, φοβηθῶμεν τὰς ἀπειλάς.”
602
Acta Graeca, 1:28. Cf. Gill 1959, 157, who admits that Markos was usually urbane.
603
Acta Slavica, 58–60.
604
Gill (1959, 234–235) shows that Markos accepted the theology of the filioque under the notion of “per
filium” procession of the Holy Spirit. He was convinced that the Latins at Ferrara–Florence held for the Son as
a co-cause of the Spirit. Markos did allow for the formula of St. Maximos the Confessor as admissible to justify
per filium. This still did not absolve Latins of the necessity of returning to the “final” formulation of the creed
at Constantinople I (as cited at Chalcedon). Markos believed that the omission of the filioque from the Latin
156
of distrust was cultivated by Latins’ (mostly) innocent use of spurious and interpolated texts. 605
Andrew directly caused this atmosphere of distrust by claiming that the authentic acts of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council contained the filioque in its credo! Upon viewing the evidence
(which was in fact a Latin MS), the Greeks greeted his assertion with laughter. Subsequently,
Andrew’s authority evaporated in future sessions. Though there was no way to produce critical
editions at the time, these conflicts served to entrench Markos in his theological interpretation
of the filioque and ultimately led to a general suspicion of all the Latin patristic authorities
unavailable in Greek. 606
These factors explain Markos’s reversal of attitude toward the union. 607 In fact, the
second leading orator, Bessarion, was only won over to the Latin side through the citation of a
spurious text attributed to the authority of a fourth-century pope (Ps.-Liberius). Markos’s
suspicions of Latin scholarship were especially justified by arguments from Cardinal Cesarini.
He claimed the addition of the filioque to be permissible on the authority of an early pope, for
an apocryphal Letter to Athanasius had claimed that the ecumenical Council of Nicaea I (325)
had also forbidden any addition to the creed, the inference being that Constantinople I (381)
was guilty of adding to the creed in the very same manner as the Latin filioque. Alas, it was
Ps.-Liberius’s letter that proved to be sufficient evidence for converting most of the Greeks
608
during the council. Gill treated this point as a red herring. 609 In an oft-ignored episode
between Eugenikos and Chrysoberges, the Ephesine must have experienced his opponent’s
arguments as a horrid last straw. Andrew employed an interpolated text of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council in Latin. Having already displayed his anti-Palamism, the Thomist
Chrysoberges brazenly presented the Greek contingent this MS of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council, wherein the filioque was contained:
When the definition of the Seventh Synod was read aloud, the Latins carried forward a book
in Greek, allegedly having the Acta of the Seventh Synod, whose phrase “ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ
τοῦ Υἱοῦ ἐκπορευόμενον” was inserted in the symbol [Creed] and [Cesarini] presented it as
credo was sufficiently symbolic to remove obstacles to union, since this action would imply that the Son is not
a partial or univocal “cause” of the Spirit.
605
Acta Graeca, 1:85–88; Alexakis 2000, 164–165.
606
Acta Latina, 226.
607
Memoirs, 10.9; Tsirpanlis 1979, 49.
608
Gill 1959, 168–169, 280.
609
Gill 1959, 168. Markos was not entirely correct on his evaluation of the original text of Basil’s Adversus
Eunomium. Both sides suffered from defects. See Alexakis 2000, 149–165.
157
both ancient and as a parchment, since it is to parchment that these [Latins] afford
trustworthiness. They were also making an effort toward harmony with respect to our beliefs
due to certain signatures and other items and pressed [us] hard that – exactly in such a wise –
was the symbol read out at the Seventh Synod. Then, Julian [Cesarini] said, “The book is most
ancient and it is impossible to suspect some tampering (τινὰ ἐναλλαγὴν) in its respect. Again,
we have also a wise old historian [Martinus Oppaviensis d. c. 1278], having written about
many other matters.” Then, he [reading Martinus] also recounted something on the matter at
hand; namely, that the symbol was exposited in this way at the Seventh Synod, and [Cesarini
asserted that] “we support this claim and do so according to his terms.” 610
Apparently, Chrysoberges had urged Cesarini to announce this passage before the assembly,
which had contained an “ancient text” with the filioque. Scholarios testified to additional facts
(omitted in the latinophile Acta). Andrew and the Latins (per their spokesman Cardinal
Cesarini) 611 were poising themselves to argue that the Greeks had omitted the filioque from
the last ecumenical council of the undivided Church. 612 Instead of having the desired effect
(viz., confusion among the Greeks), there ensued a bipartisan, ulterior investigation of the
passage (and the discovery that the “ancient” codex was Latin!). From Scholarios’s post-
Florentine testimony we learn: 613 (1.) Cesarini announced information about a codex, to which
he only alluded, in such a way that it was thought to be Greek; (2.) afterwards, in private
session, Andrew presented the codex and it was found to be Latin; and (3.) Cesarini dismissed
Andrew (temporarily) for this embarrassing faux pas. Scholarios recorded Andrew making his
case in private session, whereat he read aloud (from a Latin codex) and proposed arguments.
Scholarios recorded, in the (emergency) private session, following the public announcement
of this spurious filioque, that the Greeks laughed Andrew to scorn because his claim was based
upon a single Latin codex. Thereupon, Pletho convincingly argued that during hundreds of
years of Greco-Latin debate neither Aquinas, nor any other famed Latin, ever hinted at such a
610
Memoirs, 6.31. Laurent incorrectly believes Syropoulos to err when recalling a “Greek” book brought
forward. Laurent is correct to trust both Scholarios and Traversari, who noted that the codex was Latin.
611
Acta Graeca, 1:87–88; Acta Latina, 45. Gill (1959, 148) errs, accusing Scholarios of blundering the tale and
Gill misquotes the passage of concern (as stated in OCGS 3:352).
612
Acta Latina, 45. Chrysoberges also had reasons to dislike Emperor John VIII for dismissing him in front of
the papal entourage during negotiations for a council between the papacy and empire under Pope Martin V.
Andrew, rejected as a papal representative by the emperor, had a number of motives to treat the Greeks badly.
See Gill 1959, 41. Cf. Memoirs, 2.14–15.
613
OCGS 3:52.
158
passage. This caused the entire Greek contingent to dismiss the already despised Andrew as
entirely dishonest. Additionally his own Latin brethren were forced to reject his verbal
arguments and writings. Andrew was made by Cesarini to retire in utter humiliation.
Following Scholarios’s participation in these dramatic episodes of Ferrara-Florence,
young George dutifully transferred with the rest of the Orthodox contingent from Ferrara (after
the last public session on December 14) to Florence on January 16, 1439. 614 Arriving on
Saturday January 29, 1439, the imperial entourage was already in the midst of the fast with
tyrophagia. It would have been about this time that Scholarios entered the city with the imperial
entourage. However, it was up to the Greeks to negotiate their lodging. As such, Scholarios
had actually applied to stay with Abbot Ambrogio Traversari and frequent the services in a
monastic habit, in order not to disrupt the strict life of Traversari’s Camaldolese Benedictine
monastery. 615 Yet another reason clearly attracted Scholarios to stay with Traversari, for he
guarded the largest library in Florence at his residence. The Greek craze to obtain Latin MSS
in Florence was recorded by witnesses. 616 Besides Markos hunting for MSS of Augustine,
Scholarios surely did the same as he was able to translate immediately every text that he was
to purchase.
4. Scholarios in Florence until His Return to Constantinople (1439–1440)
The formal discussion on the filioque ensued in the new venue of Florence on March
2, 1439. 617 Any history of Markos of Ephesus and the Council of Ferrara-Florence cannot be
told without significant time focused on analyzing the discussions concerning the filioque.
With regard to Scholarios, however, this doctrine is less important for the present study. What
is more, Blanchet has already cataloged Scholarios’s conciliar thoughts and interventions and
shown that the young (and less well read) Scholarios had taken relatively little interest in the
historical innovation of the filioque, its canonical standing, and the conciliar history of its
existence. 618 Young George did take some interest in the philosophico-theological aspects of
the filioque doctrine early on in his philosophical career. He was in fact called upon to use his
614
Gill 1959, 170–179.
615
Gill 1959, 242.
616
Gill 1949, 242; cf. Barbour 1993, 78.
617
Gill 1959, 194.
618
Blanchet 2009, 181–192.
159
technical expertise to make interventions on the matter of the filioque within intra-Orthodox
meetings at Florence. 619 Blanchet’s painstaking study on Scholarios’s participation in the
filioque discussions among Greeks at Florence has led to as many questions as it has supplied
answers regarding Scholarios’s overall position and motives at Ferrara-Florence. Scholarios’s
springtime participation in filioque discussions among fellow Greeks, at the emperor’s request,
led Scholarios to affirm a compromise formula differing from his earlier writings in his
Grammar and Réponse aux Syllogismes de Marc correcting errors in Markos’s Κεφαλαῖα
συλλογιστικά. Instead, Scholarios committed to a highly contested passage that had long been
employed since the time of the anti-Latin hieromonk Hierotheos (scripsit 1281–1282) who had
written against the unionist patriarch John Bekkos. 620 Hierotheos had been willing to make a
concession that the Spirit proceeded “essentially” from what was possessed by both Father and
Son, that is, by virtue of their divine essence. Scholarios ostensibly professed this same
meaning when he explained his acceptance of the “Spirit proceeding from (ἐκ) the Father and
from (ἐκ) the Son.” His confession conceded “one principle” as possessed by both Father and
Son, but not qua hypostases or personal properties, but rather in virtue of some unnamed
principle by which the Father and Son were together the source of the Spirit. 621 Later,
Scholarios was to make the meaning of this olden Orthodox phraseology more poignantly refer
to the common essence (not to the divine persons) of the Father and Son. Still, Scholarios’s
formula of compromise was flatly rejected as vague and somewhat avoidant of the central
issue. It should be emphasized that Greek accusations of dual causality among Latins are
historically verifiable. In fact, this double-cause theory was employed both before and after
Ferrara-Florence. The history of this extreme (and highly suspect) version of the filioque
doctrine has been expertly traced in recent studies of Schabel. 622
At a period when Thomists and Scotists were still warring with each other over their
intramural and yet mutually irreconcilable positions on how to understand and justify the
filioque, they nonetheless espoused a mutually held theory that the Son was not properly a
separate “cause,” or principium, of the Spirit. Diverse from traditional Dominican and
Franciscan parties at Florence, Montenero – principal orator in the filioque debate – did not
619
Blanchet 2008, 326–333; Blanchet 2009, 181–192.
620
Hierotheos 2003, 154. Cf. John Bekkos, De unione ecclesiarum (PG 141:41–152).
621
Acta Graeca, 25 (B.5.2:430–431).
622
Schabel 2015a, 15–74; Schabel 2015b, 190–213.
160
actually reflect the historical position of Aquinas. Instead, he argued another common, if
suspect, Latin position that the Father and the Son cause together the Spirit in virtue of their
personhood, not in virtue of their equal possession of the divine essence. 623 With all this in
mind, scholarly analyses are still remarkably unclear as to the exact theological position
Scholarios held with respect to the Dominican peritus and his position at Ferrara-Florence as
publicly argued with Markos. Latins were predictably inconsistent among themselves, with –
at one extreme – Scotists totally rejecting any allegedly metaphysical necessity for the filioque
to justify the existence of a Son at all, and – on the other extreme – diverse Latins (albeit not
of the orthodox Thomist camp) baldly asserting that the Spirit ranked, indeed, third in dignity
(dignitas) because it was a product of persons of superior dignity, qua persons [!]; namely the
causal Father and the causal Son together produced an effect (i.e., the product of the Holy
Spirit). Markos, Scotus, and Scholarios clearly rejected this latter extreme, while Montenero
explicitly embraced it. As already mentioned above, Scholarios had alerted Markos in 1437 to
the fact that Franciscans vehemently disagreed on this middle position of the orthodox
Thomists, let alone the extremist position of Montenero. In fact, Scotists went so far as to assert
that the Greek Fathers and Latin Fathers had meant and intended the exact same pneumatology.
Therefore, according to Scotists, whatever the filioque meant, it must not contradict the clear
teaching of the celebrated Greek Fathers of the East. 624
Because of Scholarios’s response to Markos’s Κεφαλαῖα συλλογιστικά, Eugenikos was
entirely familiar with the Franciscan and Dominican internecine conflict that would have
normally played out at a council with free discussions. However, without a Scotist orator for
the theological discussion at Florence, a superficial unanimity reigned among the Latins. Still,
Markos was not shy to draw Latin attention to intra muros theological disunity by openly
mentioning the fact in session at the council. 625 In a similar vein, Markos adroitly pressed into
service a Thomist archenemy (i.e., Duns Scotus) in Orthodox arguments contra Aquinas’s
theory of divine persons and of Thomistic conceptualization of the divine essence. Conciliar
recourse to Scotus contra Aquinas first observably occurred during Markos’s Trinitarian
debates with Montenero on March 2, 1439:
623
624
Cross 2007, 203–222.
625
Markos noted that more recent Latin innovations in theology have caused discord with their Latin Fathers
and among themselves. See M. Eugenikos 1977d (Acta Graeca, 1:33).
161
Markos Eugenikos: 626 John Duns Scotus: 627
On the subject of divine items, essence and hypostasis Along the same lines, the second opinion [of
differ from one another. However, it is not the Bonaventure] asserts that the relation expresses some
appropriate moment to speak [on this matter], for it is modality over and above the essence, which modality
also probable that we [Greeks and Latins] do not is not simply (simpliciter) a real thing (res) but a
differ regarding this argument. Now, on another score, certain mode of a real thing. However, this is not my
essence and hypostasis differ simpliciter (ἁπλῶς); way of thinking about the “[real] distinction between
namely, according to the mode by which property (τὸ the essence and [divine personal] relation where ‘real’
ἴδιον) differs from universal (τοῦ κοινοῦ), just as is qualified,” because then the sense would be that the
Basil the Great writes to his brother Gregory, “And distinction of the essence and the relation is a
just as the substance of man differs, taken as a distinction of qualified realities, which is
universal, from person (πρόσωπον) and hypostasis inappropriate, because the essence is an unqualified
(ὑπόστασις)”. 628
real thing, since it is formally infinite [...]
Following Markos’s study of Gregory Nyssa and Duns Scotus with Scholarios, in 1437,
Markos obliquely cited Scholarios’s summarization of Scotists: “Οἱ Λατῖνοι τὴν ὑπόστασιν
καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν εἰ καὶ ἁπλῶς διαφέρειν ἡγοῦνται, ὡς τὸ κοινὸν τοῦ ἰδίου [...]” 629 Eugenikos
obviously found a metaphysical insight from Scholarios’s comparison of Ps.-Gregorios Nyssa
(a.k.a. Basil) with Duns Scotus in order to justify Palamas’s distinction between the divine
626
Acta Graeca, 2:267. This citation, attributed to Nyssa by John Bekkos (ubiquitously citing it in florilegia),
was subsequently employed by Palamas, Eugenikos, and Scholarios, but it cannot be authenticated.
627
Scotus, Rep. I-A, d. 33, q. 2 [nos. 58–59] (Rep. I-A 2:328–329). Cf. the corresponding discussion elsewhere
in Scotus, Ord., I. d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4 [nos. 398–402]:
Concluditur aliqua differentia vel distinctio essentiae in qua supposita conveniunt ab illis rationibus
quibus supposita distinguuntur. [. . .] Ex differentia obiectorum formalium quorum neutrum continetur
in aliquo eminenter, et hoc in intellectu intuitive considerante, concluditur aliqua differentia ante
actum intellectus eorum quae cognoscuntur intuitive. Sed nuquid haec distinctio dicetur realis?
Respondeo: non est realis actualis, intelligendo sicut [. . .] illa quae est differentia rerum et in actu, qui
in una persona non est aliqua differentia rerum, propter simplicitatem divinam; et sicut non est realis
actualis, ita non est realis potentialis, quia nihil est ibi in potentia quod non est in actu.
Scotus wished to avoid the potency-act distinction normally implied by “real.” Nonetheless, the distinction is
real qua object versus a distinction that takes its point of departure from the intellect.
628
Acta Graeca, 2.18: “[. . .] δῆλον, ὃν τρόπον διαφέρει τοῦ κοινοῦ τὸ ἴδιον, καθὼς καὶ ὁ Μέγας Βασίλειος
πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν Γρηγόριον γράφει· ‘καὶ ὃν τρόπον οὐσίαν διαφέρειν ἀνθρώπου τῷ κοινῷ λόγῳ’ εἰπεῖν, καὶ
πρόσωπον καὶ ὑπόστασις.” Markos referred to “Basil’s” Epistle 38 “to his brother Gregory,” which may be by
Gregory Nyssa. Markos’s interpretation of “Gregory of Nyssa” and his Trinitarian predication is concentric
with Scotus’s read of Damascene who had coincidently relied upon the same text. See Cross 2002a, 372.
629
Scholarios, Réponse aux Syllogismes de Marc, VIII.2 (OCGS 3:504).
162
properties and essence of God. 630
Markos, as had Scotus before him, predicated the divine essence as belonging to the
person of the Father, Son, and Spirit, as if each were equal possessor of one infinite and
inexhaustible universal. Markos and Scotus paralleled each other in using the example that the
hypostases Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle may equally have predicated of them the universal
man. The Ephesine never referred explicitly to Scotus’s arguments during his debate with
Montenero. Nonetheless, in 1437, Markos cited Scotus verbatim (per Scholarios’s ad hoc
translation) against Aquinas’s theories of individuation. Apparently, once Scholarios and
Eugenikos had studied the assertions of Scotus (who, though Latin, had invoked Damascene
as his authority), Eugenikos was habilitated to use Scotism to interpret the Cappadocians
accordingly, so as to refute his Thomistic interlocutors. Markos’s reference to a τρόπος
ὑπάρξεως repeats Damascene verbatim (in league with Scotus’s interpretation of the nature of
this mode) 631 regarding the irreducibility of intra-Trinitarian distinctions between attributes
and persons, as if parallel to differences between an immanent universal and its
exemplifications. 632 Such a distinction is the necessary root of Scotus’s very doctrine of the
Trinitarian distinctions. 633
630
Cf. Siecienski 2010, 155. Markos’s introductory metaphysical explanation to Basil’s epistle is not otherwise
attested. As such, Markos may be relying on a Scotistic source. Markos’s all but unique argument is concentric
with Scotus’s and Scholarios’s. This interpretation of the Cappadocians does not appear in Greek until
Scholarios (1437) and Eugenikos (1439).
631
Markos did not spend much time on the subject of divine infinity leaving the distinctio formalis
underdeveloped. Nevertheless, Scholarios emphasized the doctrine of divine infinity as the ulterior justification
of the possibility of the formal distinction, in OCGS 3:210, lines 20–24; 211, lines 5–15. Scholarios, citing the
authority of Markos’s antirrhetics for his own work, condemned Barlaamites and Akindynists for
misunderstanding divine infinity with respect to the Palamite distinction. Markos, for his part, waffled in pre-
conciliar grappling between a Thomistic distinction (realis minor) and what appears to be a quasi-Scotist
distinction, as first noticed in Demetracopoulos 2011a, 342–368.
632
Scholastic theology was able to grasp patristic theology’s conceptual content in direct translation. This is
proven completely via Scotism in the next chapter. For the contrary position, see Lur’e 1989, 318–319.
Typically, contemporary scholars (with the partial exception of John Milbank) neglect the via Scoti in the
discussions of Florence and in Latin or Byzantine theology. I have covered the influence of Scotus in Byzantine
theology in Kappes 2013a, 71–114. The neglect of Scotus and his influence in Byzantium (since terminus ante
quem 1370) has been noted in Plested 2012, 74.
633
Gregory Nazianzen potentially parallels Gregory Nyssa/Basil, especially when considering Nazianzen’s
Oration 31, nn. 12–20, which lies at the root of Duns’s and Markos’s Trinitarian predication. Nazianzen is also
the main source-text for Damascene’s Trinitarian predication. Cf. Nazianzen 1978, 300–314. Cross notes
Scotus and Nyssa (i.e., Markos’s “Basil”) essentially agree in their understanding of the essence and persons
distinction. The index fontium of Kotter’s edition of Damascene affirms that the notion of an immanent
universal with three exemplifications stems from Nazianzen, who – like Scotus – referred to divine infinity as
an interminable “sea of being” for speaking about the divine essence. See Nazianzen 1858, 7.9 (PG 36:317B):
“Ὅλον γὰρ ἐν ἑαυτῷ συλλαβὼν ἔχει τὸ εἶναι, μήτε ἀρξάμενον, μήτε παυσόμενον, οἷόν τι πέλαγος οὐσίας
ἄπειρον καὶ ἀόριστον, πᾶσαν ὑπερεκπίπτον ἔννοιαν, καὶ χρόνου, καὶ φύσεως.” Scotus’s own point of departure
163
The Dominican Montenero allegedly relied upon Aquinas’s metaphysics to discuss
divine simplicity, which presumes Aristotle’s simplicity criteria in its hermeneutic of
Augustine. 634 Yet, Montenero had clearly been unprepared for Markos’s attack by recourse to
Scotism, for he showed utter confusion at the Ephesine’s description of the divine essence.
Montenero had wrongly supposed universal agreement between the parties on the rejection of
formalities (ἐνέργειαι/τελειότητες) as somehow really co-present in the divine essence.
Naturally, Montenero equally supposed an a priori rejection of the univocity of the concept of
being (ens), as predicated of God and creatures. Montenero essentially exposited the
Dominican party line as recently established against Scotism, as exemplified with the
Dominican, John Capreolus (c. 1380–1444). 635
Already aware of Scotus as the metaphysical critic par excellence of Aquinas, Markos
had made earlier use of Scotus in a preparatory argument against the Dominican and
Aristotelico-Thomistic doctrine of division or individuation of created beings per materiam in
composites and against division per oppositionem in God. 636 Markos did not name Aquinas in
his refutation of a putatively Latin position, but this constitutes his main target, as noticed long
ago by Bessarion of Nicaea. 637 Markos actually appealed to ST I.36.2, corpus, 638 and SG
(explicitly, John Damascene) and his entire doctrine of divine infinity may ultimately be reduced to Nazianzen.
Cf. Scotus, Ord., I. d. 8, p. 1, q. 4 [nos. 8–14]. See Cross 2002a, 372–410; Cross 2002c, 274–294; Cross 2003,
181–201. With respect to Scotus’s sources, the critical indices fontium in vols. 1–6 show no influence of
Rufinus, even if this translation of Nazianzen was available in the West since c. 400, per Rufinus 1910, 92 (sec.
7): “[E]sse enim ipsius totum est et semper est, quod neque coepit umquam neque aliquando cessabit <velut>
insuperabile quoddam ac sine fine substantiae pelagus nullis terminis limitibusque circumdatum, omnem
supergrediens sensum, omne tempus atque omnem naturam.”
634
Montenero’s Thomistic metaphysics have already been discussed in Lur’e 1989, 318.
635
Capreolus 1967, 371–394.
636
P. Athanasopoulos 2018. The following three paragraphs Panagiotis Athanasopoulos and I co-wrote. I am
responsible for the discovery of the Scholastic source-texts used by Markos and for minor additions and edits
of this forthcoming text. Panagiotis is the main author of the narrative and content and is responsible for a
majority of the footnotes in the paragraphs that follow.
637
Bessarion of Nicaea 1866, 7 (PG 161:193C–196A).
638
ST I.36.2, corpus:
solum relationibus divinae personae ab invicem distinguantur. Relationes autem personas distinguere
non possunt, nisi secundum quod sunt oppositae. [. . .] Oportet ergo quod Filius et Spiritus sanctus ad
invicem referantur oppositis relationibus. Non autem possunt esse in divinis aliae relationes oppositae
nisi relationes originis, ut supra probatum est. Oppositae autem relationes originis accipiuntur
secundum principium, et secundum quod est a principio. [. . .] Unde et secundum hoc manifestum est
quod Spiritus sanctus procedit a Filio. Ipse etiam ordo rerum hoc docet. Nusquam enim hoc invenimus,
quod ab uno procedant plura absque ordine, nisi in illis solum quae materialiter differunt; sicut unus
faber producit multos cultellos materialiter ab invicem distinctos, nullum ordinem habentes ad
invicem. Sed in rebus in quibus non est sola materialis distinctio, semper invenitur in multitudine
productorum aliquis ordo. Unde etiam in ordine creaturarum productarum, decor divinae sapientiae
manifestatur. Si ergo ab una persona Patris procedunt duae personae, scilicet Filius et Spiritus sanctus,
164
IV.24.8, 639 both of which passages Eugenikos had already addressed in 1437 within his
Κεφαλαῖα συλλογιστικά. 640 Markos’s references are not unexpected, since his predecessors –
namely, the anti-Thomists Barlaam and Neilos Kabasilas – had also discussed these
passages. 641 Scholarios first discovered the fact that Markos had relied on Neilos for his
knowledge about Thomistic principles of individuation. 642 Be that as it may, Markos’s critique
was not available in Latin and functioned more as a practice study with Scholarios playing the
foil to Markos’s arguments in the name of the Latins.
Nonetheless, Markos intended to prove that such Thomistic distinctions are neither
absolutely necessary, nor universally valid premises or principles in created beings, for two
reasons: (1.) They are not, in practice, actually and universally applicable in Thomas’s own
writings, even if they are initially treated as such; 643 and (2.) neither matter, nor relative
opposition, is the cause of distinction in beings, but an accident (παρακολούθημα) or natural
product arising out of already actual and distinguished beings. This structural corollary or
accident can individuate only in a secondary structural moment. 644 Markos unfolded his
argumentation against the Aristotelico-Thomistic individuating principle of matter as follows:
Matter per se is indivisible and indistinctive, since it lacks quality and quantity. What is
indivisible and indistinctive cannot individuate. Hence, since prime matter is indifferent in
itself, it cannot establish a difference among material things. 645
This twofold reduction of Thomas’s material principle derives from Scotus. 646 On the
one hand, Markos reduced quantitative matter to materia prima alone as the Thomistic
oportet esse aliquem ordinem eorum ad invicem. Nec potest aliquis ordo alius assignari, nisi ordo
naturae, quo alius est ex alio. Non est igitur possibile dicere quod Filius et Spiritus sanctus sic
procedant a Patre, quod neuter eorum procedat ab alio, nisi quis poneret in eis materialem
distinctionem, quod est impossibile.
639
SG IV.24.8: “In rebus enim, remota materiali distinctione, quae in divinis personis locum habere non potest,
non inveniuntur aliqua distingui nisi per aliquam oppositionem.”
640
M. Eugenikos 1977b, 13 (CFDS A.10.2:76).
641
Barlaam the Calabrian 1998, 570 (IV.21.186–204). For the Thomistic references in this passage, see
Fyrigos’s apparatus criticus ad locum. Cf. Kabasilas 1945, 250–252.
642
Scholarios, Réponse aux Syllogismes de Marc, VI.67–73 (OCGS 3:499).
643
Such a statement is congruent with Barlaam. Given that Markos held for universal hylomorphism (Kappes
2016, 137), he may also recall that Thomas exempted angels from this rule (cf. SG 4.24.8).
644
M. Eugenikos 1977b, 25, (CFDS A.10.2:85). Such a statement is congruent with Markos’s patristic view on
the “looser unity” of soul to body (that is, form to matter) after the fashion of Neoplatonists and through citations
of Basil of Caesarea and John Damascene. Kappes 2016, 136–137.
645
M. Eugenikos 1977b, 25 (CFDS A.10.2:86).
646
For Scotus’s critique on Thomas’s principium individuationis and the formation of the Scotistic haecceitas,
see Minges 1930, 64–67. Cf. Cross 1999, 74–75. In this aspect, matter is the unqualified principle, whereas
165
principium individuationis in the vein of Scotus’s Ord. II, d. 3, q. 4. 647 On the other hand,
Markos reduced quantitative matter (as a remote cause) to the proximate cause of
individuation, a mere accident (παρακολούθημα), arising from its distinct principles (that is,
648
this form and this matter) in line with the relevant passage of Scotus: “Inter omnia autem
accidentia primum est quantitas. [...]” 649 Yet Markos stated that quantity, as an accident, can
individuate secondarily. This is exactly what Scotus once argued: “Sed quomodo ad istam
intentionem est verum, quod varietas accidentium facit differentiam numeralem? Dico, quod
facit aliquam differentiam, sed non primam, et necessario concomitatur omnem primam, et ita
650
habet intelligi, quod facit differentiam numeralem.” Moreover, Markos drew his
argumentation almost verbatim from Scotus’s Ord., II. d. 3, q. 5 as regards the lack of quantity
in prime matter: 651
Markos Eugenikos: 652 Duns Scotus:
Ἡ ὕλη καθ’ αὑτήν ἐστιν ἀδιαίρετος· ὥσπερ γὰρ …quod non est secundum se distinctum, nec
ἄποιος, οὕτω καὶ ἄποσος· τὸ ἄποσον δὲ ἀδιαίρετον τὸ diversum, non potest esse prima ratio distinctionis, vel
ἀδιαίρετον δὲ ἀδιάκριτον· ὃ δὲ καθ’ αὑτὸ μὴ diversitatis alterius. Sed materia est fundamentum
διαιρεῖται καὶ διακρίνεται, πῶς ἂν ἑτέρῳ τὴν αἰτίαν naturae omnino indistinctum et indeterminatum; ergo
παρέχοι τῆς διακρίσεως; non potest esse prima ratio distinctionis vel
diversitatis alterius.
“signant matter” falls, as a species, under the genus “matter” and merely describes its modality (quantitative
dimension).
647
Scotus, Ord., II. d. 3, q. 4: “[. . .] ita quod sicut materia non est habens partes per naturam quantitatis, quia
pars materiae est materia, sic substantia signata non est nisi substantia.”
648
Cf. ST 1.29.2, ad 3:
essentia proprie est id quod significatur per definitionem. Definitio autem complectitur principia
speciei, non autem principia individualia. Unde in rebus compositis ex materia et forma, essentia
significat non solum formam, nec solum materiam, sed compositum ex materia et forma communi,
prout sunt principia speciei. Sed compositum ex hac materia et ex hac forma, habet rationem
hypostasis et personae, anima enim et caro et os sunt de ratione hominis, sed haec anima [= forma] et
haec caro [= materia] et hoc os [viz., parakolouthema] sunt de ratione huius hominis. Et ideo hypostasis
et persona addunt supra rationem essentiae principia individualia.
649
Scotus, Ord., II. d. 3, q. 4: “Sed singularitas substantiae, sive signatio, est necessaria conditio in substantia
ad causandum quantitatem, quia sicut argutum est, causatum singulare requirit causam singularem; ergo
impossibile est istam signationem esse a causato a substantia, inquantum singularis.”
650
Scotus, Ord., II. d. 3, q. 4. Cf. Scotus, Ord., II. d. 3, q. 3: “Dico, quod omnem distinctionem numeralem
concomitatur distinctio accidentium, et propterea ubi nulla potest esse accidentium varietas, ibi nulla potest
esse distinctio numeralis.”
651
Scotus, Ord., II. d. 3, q. 5.
652
M. Eugenikos 1977b (CFDS A.10.2:86).
166
I wish to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Markos’s metaphysical defense of
Orthodoxy was sometimes concentric with the formidable via Scoti. 653
In addition to Scholarios being responsible for Markos’s ad hoc translations of the
Subtle Doctor in order to refute Thomism on Scholastic grounds, Scholarios had also been of
great importance for debates with Montenero. There, the Ephesine was confronted with a
Thomist who had become an unabashed subordinationist. Scholarios had explicitly critiqued
Markos’s rather insufficient arguments against the Thomistic appeal – of more recent times,
that is, post-Lyons 1274 – to the alleged words of Basil the Great in his Adversus Eunomium
espousing a difference in dignitas, or ἀξίωμα, existing in Father, Son, and Spirit. 654 For his
part, Scholarios provided Markos with anticipatory Latin arguments in 1437. Subsequently, in
1439, Montenero unwittingly walked into a trap upon making recourse to Basil’s Adversus
Eunomium. Markos’s refutation of Montenero was based upon Neilos Kabasilas’s exposition
of Basil’s ad Eunomium, along with ulterior corrections by Scholarios in 1437. 655 Step by step,
Markos led Montenero into an ambush, causing Montenero to justify ad nauseam the
authenticity of his alternative edition of the text of Basil. 656 All the same, no incontestably
critical and authentic edition of this text exists today. 657 Eugenikos’s text is almost certainly
the most correct version, though both alternatives were at that time arguably authentic. 658
It was just after this prolonged argument that Montenero made his monumental
philosophical error of reading Basil to claim that there is a proper difference in the “dignity”
(dignitas/ἀξίωμα) of divine persons. Eugenikos pointed out the novelty of this doctrine,
naturally expecting Montenero to recant his interpretation of the ad Eunomium, since the
Dominican would otherwise have embraced a subordinationist absurdity of supposing the
“dignity” of the Son due to a peculiar attribute meriting him only a second place in the
653
Contemporary investigation seems blissfully unaware of the exact metaphysical overlap between Scotism
and Palamism on this kind of Trinitarian predication (e.g., Kunzler 1989, 347). One exception of note lies in
Milbank 2013, 74–114.
654
This heretical version of Basil was already condemned by 1264, though the excerpt predates the filioque
controversy, being traced to the seventh century, per Alexakis 2000, 160.
655
Kabasilas 1998a, 582–587 (14.0–14.7).
656
Acta Graeca, 2:395–302. Gill does not mention the full textual problem to his modern reader, giving the
impression (wrongly) that Markos’s accusations were out of bounds. See Gill 1959, 223–224.
657
Alexakis 2000, 156–159; Chitarin 2002, 80–94.
658
Markos held Cusa in esteem, regarding the Photian canons, in Acta Graeca, session 4 (CFDS B.5.1:91).
167
Trinitarian order of persons. 659 After all, if the referent (significatum) for, or foundation of, the
difference in dignity among the persons were some aspect of a divine hypostasis (or what alone
is proper to each as distinguished from what is common to all), the result would establish an
ontological difference undergirding the order (ordo/τάξις) with axiological ranking
establishing among the persons of the Godhead! Montenero, a professional debater, refused to
admit his logical and metaphysical aporia and immediately went to the unthinkable. He began
to argue that “Basil” held for an intrinsic distinction of the dignity of the persons in the Trinity
without threat to the equal sharing in the divine essence.
Ironically, making distinctions between prior and posterior ranking items within the
divine essence was the very basis upon which the neo-Thomist chronicler of Palamism, Jugie,
condemned Palamas’s entire theological project, as we saw at the beginning of my study. 660
Still, Montenero’s intransigence was natural in the context of the constant debate atmosphere
of professorial questiones quodlibetales, wherein the professor accustomed himself to argue
his conclusions against all objections by a method of logical distinctions and appeal to
authorities. Part of university forensic formation even required students to adopt erroneous-
heretical positions and argue them against a rhetorical opponent. In this light, Montenero’s
concession to the Ephesine would have been interpreted as a defeat. Montenero’s subsequent
argument is but an appeal to authority (i.e., to Basil) in order to exonerate himself from heresy
based upon the premise, “Basil agrees with Montenero.” Because Basil is not a heretic for
Eugenikos, ergo Montenero is not a heretic (completely ignoring the metaphysical implications
of an absurd doctrine). Using these kinds of forensic techniques, common ground was
impossible to find. A Thomist (officially representing his Church on this score) was willing to
uphold absurd positions (subordinationism) via rhetorical and syllogistic techniques. 661
Scholastic rhetorical skills may have bedazzled the rest of the Greek Fathers at Florence, but
Markos was not at all impressed, able as he was to trip up Latin orators and to trade
metaphysical jabs in kind. Nevertheless, Markos’s patience wore thin, for he had not come to
debate but to study in a fraternal, if critical, spirit to arrive at a common conclusion on the faith
(for Markos sincerely, if naively, believed Latins disposed to accept the Photian canons against
659
For evidence suggesting this Greek work to reflect Basil’s early heteroousian leanings, see Van Sickle 2013,
431–436.
660
Jugie 1926–1935, 2:148.
661
This subordinationism was already noted in Van Dieten 2008, 234–236.
168
the filioque). 662 Markos, shortly after his contest with Montenero, summed up the Latin
strategy as one of pure forensics, adjudging the entire council an immature lover of rhetoric to
overwhelm one’s opponent (viz., φιλονεικία). 663
Scholarios was on scene to watch Montenero’s attempt to save face by baiting Markos
to enter into a premature debate on Palamism. As Dominicans were constantly prodding the
Greeks on the subject of Palamas, Montenero was unable to resist an opportune occasion, albeit
a professional debater, to go off topic to win points in a timeworn Dominican-Palamite conflict.
Among the Ephesine’s obiter dicta, Markos had just mentioned, “We receive nothing from the
Spirit, but the Spirit himself.” 664 Montenero used this as his opening, declaring: “This is
heretical!” 665 He continued, “Do you deny that we receive gifts that are something different
than the Spirit itself?” 666 In the banter back and forth, Montenero indicated that his accusation
of heresy was not based upon any canon or patristic interpretation, but on Montenero’s belief
that the Scriptures clearly testified to the fact that the “gifts of the Spirit” were creatures, not
some aspect of the Spirit itself. 667 The Ephesine, with all politesse, allowed the digression and
answered all of Montenero’s questions, asking, “How is my argument impossible, how does
the doctor [St. Paul] declare this [sentence of yours]?” Instead of answer, Montenero replied
with a question: “I will ask you something: are the charisms of the Spirit other than what the
Spirit gives to us?” The Ephesine attempted to better clarify his metaphysical position: “They
are not diverse items, exactly as the Spirit and the Son, since the former are not per se
subsistents (καθ᾽αὑτὰ ὑφεστῶτα), in the same manner that the Holy Spirit subsists according
to its proper hypostasis.” 668 The distinction, though Aristotelian and Scholastic in form, was
entirely unacceptable to Montenero, for a “non-subsistent” could mean – for a Thomist –
merely something accidental or without its own esse. As a matter of fact, Thomists believed
that the charisms of the Spirit were not subsistents, but that they were created accidents
modifying the human soul, much like wisdom, justice, or some other natural virtue. 669
662
Kappes 2019, 178–179.
663
Kappes 2019, 246.
664
Acta Graeca, 2:344.
665
Acta Latina, 176.
666
Acta Graeca, 2:345.
667
Acta Graeca, 2:344–345; Acta Latina, 5.18.
668
This Scholastic phraseology is peculiar to the Greek translations of Aquinas’s works in the brothers Kydones
and Scholarios. Acta Latina, 176: “non sunt per se consistencia [. . .]”
669
Acta Graeca, 2:345; Acta Latina, 176.
169
Montenero knew that the Ephesine’s conciliatory answer did not yet betray the fundamental
disagreement between Thomists and Palamites on created and uncreated grace. Therefore,
Montenero continued: “I ask you, most reverend Father, is this Spirit, which is granted by the
Son, a creator (κτίστης) or creature (κτίσμα)? Now everything can be divided between these
two [categories], creator and creature. Now, the Holy Spirit is a creator, but his energies are
creatures. Therefore, [per your arguments] is this Holy Spirit a creature, which ‘God is
accustomed to pour out richly on us through Jesus Christ’ (Tit 3:6)?” 670 Markos, at first,
refused to answer and “remained silent.” Montenero took his silence to goad him further:
“Secondly, I ask you, whether the charisms of the same Spirit are given along with the person
and hypostasis of the same, or not? Thirdly, whether the charisms are such things as are exactly
received from operation of the Spirit?” 671 The Ephesine “having nothing to respond was silent
for quite a while.” Because of such provocative comments, the emperor was forced to intervene
twice. First, he declared: “These matters have nothing whatsoever to do with the formal
subject, nor anything to do with the pericope in question. We have come to discuss but one
matter, not some other subject. Now, this latter item will only provoke the desire for debates
(φιλονεικίας).” 672
Nonetheless, after the first intervention, Montenero ventured back to the subject of
Palamism. The emperor had wished to avoid Palamism at this crucial debate on the explicit
subject of the filioque, as he kept alluding to a predetermined schema for a possible later
discussion of Palamism at some predetermined time or in some prior agreed circumstance. 673
As a response to Montenero’s provocations, Markos refused to answer anything, making an
extremely long pause, which became “the silence heard around the world,” judging from the
diverse Acta. 674 Following minutes of quietude, the emperor only broke the deafening silence
to relieve the tension of hundreds of onlookers staring at closemouthed Markos. 675 The
emperor did not interrupt Markos, but rather filled an otherwise interminable void. Apropos,
670
Acta Graeca, 2:345.
671
Acta Graeca, 2:346.
672
Acta Graeca, 2:346.
673
Acta Graeca, 2:346.
674
Acta Graeca, 2:348; Acta Latina, 176; Acta Slavica, 64; Anonymous (b) 1964, 14.
675
Markos’s general reticence to speak was duly noted by the Ruthenians present at the council. The Ephesine
spent three sessions in total silence (albeit in relatively good health). See Acta Slavica, 55. Gill (1959, 118)
claimed that Markos was loquacious, writing with a slightly sardonic tone: “Though Bessarion demurred that
he did not know what to say [. . .] Markos, however, declared that he would have plenty to say.”
170
the emperor had read all of Markos’s treatises prior to dissemination among the Latins. In
earlier discussions at Ferrara on the “uncreated light,” beholden by the saints, Markos had
explicitly threatened silence in exchange for future impiety with respect to demanding an
account of the mechanics involved in seeing Tabor light. 676 Accordingly, at Florence, Markos
finally refused to answer questions about the divine charisms and uncreated light. Markos had
threatened as much in the purgatory discussions the year prior, on March 14, 1439: 677
On these matters you asked us: “What is the processive ray coming from God?” On this, we
say that the saints enjoy it in heaven. [...] For the wise John [...] of the Ladder defined what he
calls “illumination.” He says the following: “Illumination is the ineffable operation (ἐνέργεια),
which has been seen invisibly and apprehended, yet not as an object of knowledge.” Have you
heard the definition? Be not further vainly curious about invisible matters, for neither do we
wish to speak of things that are not objects of knowledge, nor too are we capable [of doing
so]. 678
The Ephesine had given the Latins written notice (fall of 1438) that, were they again to
interrogate him about “the knowledge above all understanding” (i.e., the uncreated light), he
would absolutely refuse to speak, considering it impiety to subject the mystical life to debate. 679
The emperor simply tabled the discussion until a more timely opportunity might be afforded
676
An emperor had the right to open and close ecclesiastical discussions (in his traditional role of convoking
and presiding) at ecumenical councils. Yet this is not a case of the emperor’s mere forensic prerogatives. For
imperial conciliar privilege, see Décarreaux 1969, 40–41. John VIII did not arbitrarily intervene, for each Greek
orator was required to deliver his written material daily to the emperor for his perusal (along with notaries
supplying him with copies of the Latins’ discourses). See Décarreaux 1969, 37.
677
Lur’e 1989, 317.
678
Markos Eugenikos, Marci Ephesii Responsio ad Quaestiones Latinorum, para. 4 (CFDS A.8.2:113–114).
679
Sinnosioglou (2011, 118) claimed that Markos had “undermined any rapprochement between East and
West” due to his Palamism. Markos is accused of writing a “sibylline reply” by employing John Klimakos (c.
580–c. 649) in reply to his Dominican opponents (presumably, Torquemada and Lei). For the cautions on the
scholarly value of his study, see Kappes 2012, 210–243, 252. Klimakos was one of the most important authors
in the Byzantine monastic and medieval tradition. Ware (1982, 1) writes: “With the exception of the Bible and
the service books, there is no work in Eastern Christendom that has been studied, copied and translated more
often than The Ladder of Divine Ascent.” He was of paramount authority for Palamas, who (in his 150 Chapters)
cited Klimakos at least twenty-five times. Klimakos had been available in Latin translation since c. 1300, as
exposited in Riggi 1991, 21–44. Traversari completed a fresh humanistic translation of the work in 1419, per
Stinger 1977, 15. By 1420 Traversari was responding to multiple requests for this translation and he informed
his friends that he had already sent the autograph to Padua to be copied. See Stinger 1977, 172. The Latin
Fathers and periti could have easily consulted Klimakos as a weighty authority supplying them context for
Markos’s definition of the term illumination. The most important translator at Ferrara-Florence (Traversari)
knew the work by heart.
171
to the Fathers. 680 John VIII made it quite clear: “This is outside the matter of debate. I do not
wish that they [i.e., the Orthodox] make a response on our [internal doctrine] to these
[Dominicans]. [...] We declare that this is outside the professed subject matter.” 681 The
emperor was not about to let a Dominican Thomist highjack his council, Christian unity, and
military aid. Latin Humanists, Cistercians, Franciscans, and other groups took no part in these
internecine conflicts according to the Greek, Latin, or Slavonic Acta. Markos actually
attempted to be conciliatory with the Dominicans; perhaps recalling the Franciscan theory as
more akin to that of the Greeks, he continued:
What has been asserted between us is really productive of ambiguity, since it is conceptualized
diversely in respect of ourselves; with respect to you [Dominicans] the matter is conceived in
a diverse manner. From what has been said ambiguously, thus far, nothing necessarily need be
drawn. Consequently, from these ambiguities, you [Thomists] do not necessarily have enough
to demonstrate that which you wish. Consequently, therefore, the matter is unable to be
considered according to the account just given, because we do not receive diverse beings from
the Spirit in the way that the Spirit receives [anything] from the Son. Now, it is quite the
opposite of what you said with respect to your conclusion, and in no way leads to the inference
that the Son is cause (αἴτιον) of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, abandoning what was spoken, let
us pass on to something else.
Montenero felt unable to abandon the discussion, since Markos had claimed that the biblical
passages had not really proved anything and that a certain latitude of interpretation existed
between the two schools of thought. Subsequently, Montenero attempted to reintroduce the
very same subject, declaring:
Blessed Cyril [of Alexandria] in his epistle [no. 17, to Nestorius,] handed this doctrine on to
us, that we should not only look to the citation, but even search out its rational thought.
Therefore, now, on the aforementioned discourse, if we were desirous of bringing up witnesses
680
Acta Graeca, 6.22 (B.5.2:346–350). Cf. Scotus, Ord., I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1-4 [n. 390]: “I understand [that it
exists] thus: ‘really’ (realiter), because in no way [does this entitas exist] through an act of the considering
intellect [viz., a logical second intention]. Nay, such an entity (entity) would be there, if no considering intellect
were present; and thus would be there were there no intellect ever to consider it. I declare that it exists prior to
every act of the intellect.” Thomists at Florence completely rejected this Franciscan explanation of entities
within the divine essence/hypostasis. For Mark, the wayfarer’s mode of access to such formalities (per
Torquemada’s Apparatus, “entitas”) is via an operation of the Spirit in the soul of the divinized, which results
in the non-discursive experience of divine perfections formally distinct from a direct experience of the
hypostasis of the Spirit.
681
Acta Latina, 176–177.
172
and were not to trace out the meaning of the witnesses, we would clearly be contrary to this
rule of Cyril. So, I follow the canon, when I say the following: This citation holds no ambiguity
whatsoever for us, but is clearer than the sun! Yet, to you – who wish to attribute some perverse
exegesis – confessedly you produce an ambiguity.
You have handed on a completely perverse notion (ἔννοιαν), saying: “Just as we
receive the Spirit from the Son; for we do not at all receive something from the Spirit.” This is
a perverse exegesis and replete with contradiction. Indeed, firstly, because – in this very
manner – what we receive is from the Spirit, in the very manner we receive, so too does the
Spirit receive from the Son. Indeed, when we take the Spirit from the Son, we take also the
charisms of the Spirit; when also we take that charism, we take the Spirit along with its
charisms. The apostle [Paul] even says this: “They are poured out through the Holy Spirit
which was given to us in our hearts” (Rom 5:5). So, either we take the Spirit from the Spirit –
taking the charisms along with the Spirit – or we take the charisms, and with them we take the
Spirit. So, now, St. Basil says: “For we did not receive something from the Spirit, as did the
Spirit from the Son.” Therefore, it must be the case that the Spirit is in the nominative case,
and not otherwise. Hence, the exegesis of the Fathers is consequently true and clear: “For we
did not receive something from the Spirit, in the same way as the Spirit from the Son. [...]”
Wherefore, these charisms are confessedly distinct, even according to you, and what the Spirit
receives from the Son is something divine and this is in the Spirit, for this is uncreated
(ἄκτιστον). Yet, these charisms are in us, and are creatures along with ourselves. Indeed, it is
thus necessary to understand that this is the exegesis of this passage in question. 682
Markos was not averse to making another conciliatory response by recourse to a potentially
Franciscan distinction within the divine essence (which Markos may not have thought to merit
the epithet “heretical” since other Latins held the same):
We assert that it is possible that both your exegesis can be secured and the foregoing discourse
that you spoke about the charisms of the Holy Spirit: For we agree with these very items;
namely, that we do not take the Spirit’s charisms without the very same Spirit present, but we
have received each of the charisms, receiving [them] along with the very same Spirit.
Therefore, the whole is present with each of the charisms. So do we assert, after these things
are established, that our exegesis is able to be made secure; for we did not take something from
682
173
the Spirit, after it had become a per se subsistent, as if the Spirit from the Son. Paul too, in this
respect says that we have taken some same thing. 683
The discussion continued for some time. The essence of the debate was finally reduced to
whether or not Basil referred to the Spirit (τὸ Πνεῦμα) of Romans 5:5 in the nominative or in
the accusative case. Markos’s appeal to non-subsistent entities that were accessible within the
person (and essence) of the Spirit did not impress Montenero anymore than Scotism had
impressed John Capreolus. The sectarian spirit among Schoolmen meant that – at best –
Montenero would have been ignorant of Scotus’s essential formalities in the divine essence,
and – at worst – Montenero would have thought the position heretical vis-à-vis Aquinas.
This Palamite discussion, once again, led the emperor to intervene against Montenero:
“Now it is necessary to debate about the subject at hand! Yet, on the other matter [viz.,
Palamism], perhaps this will be spoken of at an opportune time.” 684 Montenero was
unsuccessful in overcoming the meeting of minds between Eugenius IV and John VIII; namely,
that Palamism did not constitute an essential dogmatic barrier between the Latins (following
the 1437 Franciscan study de attributis divinis) and the Greeks (following the 1437 imperial
study of Scotus). 685 As the amanuensis of the Acta Latina, Andreas of Santa Croce, observed
at the time:
The emperor sent one of his own to speak to the pope, who at last returned to the emperor and
spoke in secret. Next, the emperor sought the Cardinal [Cesarini] of San Angelo to come to
him. The cardinal rising, went from his place to the emperor, and then after he spoke with him
a little, he returned to the pope and spoke with him in secret.”
Montenero agreed to the emperor’s intervention because Pope Eugenius, too, had expressed
his mind on the matter:
On this subject [of Palamism], enough has already been said; for the reason that both the
revered emperor and our most blessed Father [Eugenius] would be pleased if we should change
[the subject] to other matters. So we [Dominican rhetors], too, have contented ourselves [to do
thus]. 686
683
Acta Graeca, 2:348.
684
Acta Graeca, 2:350.
685
See Acta Latina, 179.
686
Acta Graeca, 2:350.
174
The effect of the Caesaro-papal alliance forced Montenero to drop his anti-Palamite discussion.
Cesarini enforced their will, as acting president of the assembly. After all these events took
place, one still looks in vain to discover any impressions or change of disposition in the
Palamite Scholarios within the extant Acta or witnesses to Florence. Whatever the
disagreements between Dominican Thomists and Scholarios’s mentor, Markos, on the subject
of Palamism, it does not appear to affect George until the 1440s. His case of conscience about
Thomism, by then, had perhaps caused him to undertake the very study of the De ente et
essentia, at least, in part, to better define his own position in contradistinction to that of Aquinas
on the question of God’s divine constitution ad intra. Given the lack of overt anti-Thomism at
this period, given Scholarios’s testimony to the offense he took at Pletho’s anti-Aristotelianism
at Florence at public lectures, and given Scholarios’s only slightly critical view of Aquinas’s
metaphysics in 1445, we might surmise that, sometime between 1439 and 1445, Scholarios felt
the need to puzzle his way to a solution to the apparent contradiction between Palamism and
Thomism.
Finally, on June 9, 1439 – beginning days of formal debate – did constant Dominican
pressure lead to a halfhearted attempt, on the part of Pope Eugenius, to open up a discussion
on the matter of the divine essence, but to no effect. 687 While the Greeks stonewalled the
discussion of Palamism, per the emperor’s will according to the Acta Latina, this witness may
have misled modern scholars as to the reasons behind the decision: “Then, the emperor
imposed silence on the interpreter. In my opinion, he feared the [theological] conclusion [on
Palamism] and called them back to his own purposes [of union]. After having spoken a bit, at
last he said all this to return them to what needed to be debated.” 688
According to my analysis, Andreas of Santa Croce’s triumphalistic interpretation
should have been more scrutinized by Gill and others before consenting to its alleged
explanatory power. 689 Though Pope Eugenius made only a shallow attempt to introduce
Palamism, it inevitably would have failed because the Greeks were too conscientious about the
canonical effects of the absence of their recently deceased Patriarch Joseph II. Similarly, one
687
Acta Graeca, 2:442; Acta Latina, 181. Pope Eugenius felt beholden to the Dominicans in Florence, for it
was they alone who gave him refuge at Santa Maria Novella (1432), when he was forced to flee Rome and was
opposed by numerous Christian princes. See Watanabe 2008, 180–181.
688
Acta Latina, 177.
689
Acta Latina, 267; Gill 1959, 267. See also Acta Graeca, 2:442.
175
of their two main rhetors and representatives of the Eastern Church, Markos of Ephesus, had
sequestered himself. Naturally, the Greeks adjudged that any debate on Palamism could only
lead to a binding vote by including the presence of “the entire oriental synod.” 690
Despite his burgeoning role in the promotion of union during spring of 1439, 691 by mid-
June Scholarios might have begun to wane in his enthusiasm about the union. If we accept a
late date (June 25, 1439) for his departure from Italy, Scholarios would have left with Pletho.
This could be taken as symbolic – joining a clearly anti-unionist theologian leaving the council
early. Still, I am inclined to accept Syropoulos’s remarks that Scholarios, at the very least,
abandoned all the formal discussions, perhaps even the physical precincts of Florence on an
earlier date. Since Syropoulos and Scholarios continued to work in close collaboration in the
years following Florence, there are good reasons for believing that Syropoulos correctly
approximated Scholarios’s departure from the city of Florence (June 16, 1439). 692 Just prior to
Scholarios’s notable absence from public and private meetings, the epiclesis debate on the
Eucharist only entered into discussions on an official docket after June 10. Thereafter, the
epiclesis became the subject of a somewhat impromptu fact-finding mission on June 12. After
Bessarion and Isidore of Kiev proved to be disastrous in the exposition of the Orthodox
position – in imperial desperation – Markos was then privately besought afterwards to compose
a libellus on the Eucharist on June 16. 693 If we take Syropoulos to heart, Scholarios should
have abandoned all conciliar discussion by June 15. This readily explains the total lack of
influence of Scholarios upon Bessarion, Isidore, and even Markos. Otherwise, Scholarios
should have been heavily consulted on the question of transubstantiation and other Eucharistic
questions, as he had already composed a detailed work on the subject and was already likely
aware of several different Scholastic theories of Eucharistic change. 694 Given Scholarios’s
heightened profile and burgeoning imperial favor in 1439, something serious must have
prevented Scholarios from supplying Bessarion, Isidore, and Markos with information and
fruits of his prior research on such a thorny question. One reasonable hypothesis might suppose
690
Syropoulos confirms this important interpretation through an independent, similar phrase referring to all
four of the ancient oriental patriarchates. See Memoirs, 2.23. Patriarch Joseph II was too ill to be at this meeting.
In fact, he died later the very same day. See Gill 1959, 267.
691
692
Memoirs, 9.25.
693
Memoirs, 10.3.
694
Kappes 2019, 185–206.
176
that Scholarios was suffering from relapses into the same serious illness that had afflicted him
late in 1438, for which he had sought refuge at Ambrogio Traversari’s monastery in
Florence. 695 Santa Maria degli Angeli monastery was of strict observance, such that Scholarios
actually proposed donning the monastic habit and observing the divine offices just to gain
entrance. The religious house would have been sufficiently inaccessible to outsiders for
Scholarios to escape notice of his Orthodox confreres, whether or not he were to remain in the
city June 16–25, 1439. 696
5. Conclusion
I have already mentioned the eyewitness testimony to the Greek craze, at Florence, for
seeking out manuscripts. It is all but certain that Scholarios rediscovered the, until then, lost
work of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio in the Franciscan studium of Santa Croce in Florence. 697
Not only is this the only studium in which a uniquely complete copy exists, but it also is one
of two Franciscan studia to which Scholarios had access in Italy. Not only would it have been
possible for Scholarios to attend Franciscan lectures, because of their chair at the university,
but it also is plausible that the Florentine peritus Albert Sarteano served as Scholarios’s
mediator to access the Franciscan library, as George was officially assigned to accompany
Emperor John VIII to Constantinople as his theological advisor immediately after Florence. 698
As early as February 8, 1438, the Franciscans made official contact with the Greek delegation,
recently arrived in Venice. Albert Sarteano met the Greeks there, 699 and discussed theology
695
Scholarios 1935b (OCGS 4:440–441).
696
For the alternative date of June 25, 1439, see Acta Slavica, 30.
697
Pierre-Jean Olivi (d. 1298) is the last known Latin author to cite Bonaventure’s Quaestiones disputatae de
mysterio trinitatis, whose unique references are explained in Vian 1989, 149.
698
Bughetti 1938, 4–10; Gill 1959, 321–322.
699
Another Franciscan also accompanied Albert Sarteano, viz., Br. Bartholomew, per Dominicus 1689, 334.
Presumably, Albert exposed Scholarios and Eugenikos to more of Franciscan Scholasticism. Albert was fluent
in both Greek and Latin. Manuel Chrysoloras is attested as his instructor of Greek, in Sarteano 1724, col. 755.
Albert was allied to the Franciscan (St.) Bernardino of Siena (cf. ibid., cols. 758, 775). Albert leveled
considerable critiques against Plato (cf. ibid., col. 766: “cum suis stultus Plato discipulis [. . .]”), as well as
Aristotle, and even Stoicism. See also Albert Sarteano, Epistula XXI, in BAS, 207. Albert forcefully argued for
the absolute supremacy of Augustine, whom he considered superior to the Greek doctors, whom he came to
know when living among the Byzantines (cf. supra, Sarteano 1724, col. 770). See also Kristeller (1967, 14) for
information on Albert’s works, including orationes, tractatus, epistolae, Dorotheus, and oratio de humilitate.
A MS containing his biography is extant and there is good reason to believe that Albert worked with Filelfo.
He was responsible for translations, e.g., Omnibonus Leonicenus. A considerable amount of texts of Albert still
need to be investigated.
177
with them in their own language while they were preparing to travel to Ferrara. 700 Like John
Capistran, Albert was a devout follower of Bernardino of Siena. 701 Yet, a perusal of Albert’s
opera omnia betrays his penchant for the studia humanitatis. He exulted Augustine, above all
other theologians, and can often be found citing the writings of Jerome and of Cyprian of
Carthage. 702 The stringent Franciscan-Byzantine links that were formed during the council in
Florence might be thought, circumstantially, to explain the openness of the studium to receive
future students from Byzantium (Romania), and the attraction of future academic interest and
patronage of Cardinal Isidore of Kiev for the Franciscan studium in Florence in later
decades. 703
We can imagine that, in the circumstances of Scholarios accompanying Franciscan
periti back to their convent, he was granted access to their bibliotheca and happened upon the
only presently known complete text of Bonaventure’s Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio
trinitatis, which had been somehow absconded within the convent walls of the Franciscan
studium of Florence. 704 While Pope Eugenius possessed a treatise (De attributis divinis) by
which Franciscans had aided him to investigate Palamism, this pre-conciliar work is now
lost. 705 Alas, we must glean any possible citation of Bonaventure’s lost work through
independent citations that might be located within the writings of Franciscan periti at Ferrara.
Upon surveying the theological authors dear to these Franciscan periti, one finds both
Bonaventure and Scotus do come to the fore. 706 Discouragingly, among the critically edited
700
Eugenius IV sent Albert Sarteano to the Orient in 1435; later he met the Greek contingent in Venice on
February 8, 1438. See Santoni 1975, 176, 181–184. Thereafter, he served as a peritus at the Council of Florence.
See Dominicus 1689, 334.
701
Sarteano, Epistula III, in BAS, 165–166. Herein, Albert confirmed his knowledge of Greek.
702
I make this judgment based upon the published volume of Albert’s (incomplete) opera omnia. Therein lies
a curious absence of mention of either Bonaventure or Scotus. Since these few orations and epistles are
addressed to mainly humanist friends, Albert’s Scotistic proclivities are an open question. Albert was both a
spiritual son and a disciple of Bernardino. Besides his Greek training in letters, plausibly under Chrysoloras or
Laskaris, his only formal theological training was through tutelage of Bernardino. See Harold’s introduction to
BAS, 6.
703
Piana 1977, 60–65.
704
Perhaps these works became lost since only one extant manuscript contains any attribution to Bonaventure
by an original amanuensis. The Florence studium uniquely contains all the qq. of the Quaestiones disputatas
de mysterio trinitatis, the principal manuscript of which dates to the fourteenth century. See the introduction to
Bonaventure 1891e (Quarrachi 5:v–vi).
705
Gill 1959, 141.
706
Franciscan Fathers and periti naturally cite Bonaventure. More importantly, some explicitly recognize
Scotus as a weighty authority in theology. Among conciliar Fathers, see Elias de Bourdeilles 1486, 30, 40.
Aloysius Foroliviensis, OFM, invoked Bonaventure (though not Scotus) in the debate on the filioque at least
three times, in Acta Latina, 58, 60. Among the periti, see Augustine of Ferrara 1948, 240–281; and Augustine
178
works of these very same Franciscan theologians, any citation from the then lost work of
Bonaventure is perplexingly wanting. 707
Be that as it may, these were the circumstances in which the Quaestiones disputate de
mysterio trinitatis enjoyed an opportunity to make a lasting impression on Scholarios. 708 While
Scholarios has already been shown to appreciate Aquinas and the modista Brito, 709 our
Byzantine positively warmed to the classic Franciscan school in the wake of conciliar Latino-
Greek polemics, insofar as it supplied George with additional tools to refute Latinists on the
questions of the filioque and essence-energies distinction. 710 It is currently unknown whether
Scholarios wholly or partly translated Bonaventure, or, more implausibly, lifted an indirect
citation from another Scholastic author. At any rate, Scholarios bequeathed to Byzantium his
own breviloquent sampling of the Seraphic Doctor through a translation of a critical section of
the Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio trinitatis in his 1445 translation-commentary Ἐξήγησις
εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας, 711
wherein Scholarios approvingly cited Bonaventure’s divisions of being contra the putative
nominalism behind the “analogical concept of being.” 712 The Common Doctor had already
gained notoriety in Byzantium for his doctrine of analogy, such that Scholarios must have felt
pressure to present Byzantine theologians with a study aid via a Thomistic commentary of
Armandus of Bellovisu (d. 1334) (viz., Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου
of Ferrara 2000. See also (St.) James of Marches 1975; James of Marches 1978–1982; James of Marches 1911,
303–313. James’s personal library contained Bonaventure’s Breviloquium, Scotus’s entire commentary on the
Sentences and extracts from book four of the same, Francis Meyronnes’ sermons, and sermons of his spiritual
Father, Bernardino of Siena. See Biblioteca Francescana Falconara, “La biblioteca di San Giacomo,”
http://www.sangiacomodellamarca.net/biblioteca_san_giacomo.htm. See too Ariminensis 1954. Perhaps the
greatest example of synthesis between Bonaventure and Scotus is accomplished in Bernardino of Siena 1950–
1965. Still, I have looked in vain for intra-Trinitarian metaphysics or references to the De mysterio Trinitatis.
707
Among the Franciscan conciliar periti, whose works are not yet available in a critical edition, nothing
appears promising. E.g., (St.) John Capistran, OFM, took Aquinas as his principal doctor. See Hofer 1943, 39–
40. Among his opera omnia, the influence of Scotus is limited to select matters, such as logic and his (lost)
treatise on the Immaculate Conception. See Chiappini 1927, 51, 143. His works are very favorable to
Franciscans such as Alexander of Hales alongside of his beloved Aquinas. For brevity, it suffices to note that
other Franciscan periti are eclectic, seemingly neglecting Scotus.
708
For his life and times, see Blanchet 2008.
709
Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 263–319.
710
Scholarios, in his Premier Traité sur la procession du Saint-Esprit (OCGS 2:223), warns Orthodox to ignore
later Schoolmen (viz., sycophants of Richard of Mediavilla and Scotus). He remarks that these self-glorifying
Schoolmen changed terminology and traditional theological method and our savant concludes that Scotus and
Meyronnes are the last theologians to maintain the mens patrum (πατερικὸν φρόνημα).
711
See Bonaventure 1891d (Quarrachi 5:46–47).
712
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS, 6:282).
179
βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας) to resolve the dispute. 713 Precisely because of a
parallel metaphysical approach to God’s essence and attributes, Franciscans could have been
amenable to Palamas and were in fact not inclined to condemn him at the Council of Florence
in 1437–1439.
713
Barbour 1993.
180
Chapter Five: Scholarios’s Post-Florentine Palamism and the Genesis of a
Greek Version of De ente et essentia
Introduction
Following Scholarios’s premature departure from Florence, he kept up his

correspondence with Markos of Ephesus, who returned with the emperor to Constantinople on
February 1, 1440. 714 Following the emperor’s return to the polis, Scholarios must have
immediately received new honors: διδάσκαλος δογμάτων and ambassador. 715 Albeit only a lay
theologian, Scholarios saw his immediate rise to prominence in the imperial court had been
linked in no small part to his willingness to make a public affirmation and oath of loyalty to
the emperor’s program, along with his fellow Orthodox theologians, prior to the impending
union at Florence. 716 By summer of 1440, Markos must have penned a letter (now lost) to
Scholarios, wherein he not only chastised Scholarios’s various and nuanced positions (ranging
[1437–1440] from ἀκρίβεια to οἰκονομία), but also observed the fact that Scholarios allegedly
kept faith with the definition of Florence in exchange for imperial honors and riches. Without
hint of anger or disrespect toward his old master, Scholarios responded to each of Markos’s
charges in kind. 717
At least one aspect of Scholarios’s response to Markos has been generally ignored;
namely, Scholarios’s protestation to have never formally denied any of his prior positions. For
his part, Scholarios was declaring, at this time, his neutrality for the purpose of “rendering
what is Caesar’s to Caesar.” In other words, Scholarios declared himself to fall under the aegis
of a traditional Byzantine position that Markos himself never dared openly violate, that is, that
the emperor was presumptively the Orthodox protector of the sacrum imperium romanum and
that Scholarios was simply not opposing imperial policy. 718 For his part, Markos had explicitly
attested before John VIII at Florence that his specific charge had been to exercise judgment
and to defend each and every Orthodox dogma until the signing ceremony on July 5, 1439.
714
Gill 1959, 304; Blanchet 2008, 353.
715
Scholarios 1935a (OCGS 4:447).
716
Blanchet 2008, 316–333.
717
Scholarios 1935a (OCGS 4:445–449).
718
See Memoirs, 10.9; Gill 1959, 350–353.
181
Agreeing with Markos’s summation of his role at the council, John VIII did not immediately
force Markos to sign the decree. Logically, Markos would not have considered calling the
emperor “heterodox” until he saw him give the unionist churchman, Metrophanes of Cyzicus,
his placet to become patriarch. Markos’s break with the imperial church formally began on
Pentecost, May 15, 1440. Thereafter, Markos nonetheless failed to denounce openly the living
emperor by designating him as personally “heretical.” Furthermore, I have found no literature
to suggest that Eugenikos veered away from this policy of excusing the emperor, even after his
death. What is more, Markos neither pushed for deposition of the emperor, nor for formal
ecclesiastical censures of him. 719
Accordingly, Scholarios might be seen as justifying himself from the perspective of a
mutually Roman and Byzantine custom of treating the sacred Roman emperor, at worst, as
someone who simply needed better ecclesiastical and state advisors, so as not to favor
unwittingly heterodox persons. Scholarios protested to Markos that he was rendering to Caesar
his allegiance in those matters which Caesar could demand, while yet fervently and profoundly
studying the debates “on divine things” (περὶ τῶν θείων), about which things Scholarios
considered himself professedly ignorant from the theological (versus philosophical) point of
view. 720 Both Markos and Scholarios had ubiquitously used the notion of “ἐν τοῖς θείοις” as a
technical phrase within their apologetics as something concerning the production of persons
(πρόσωπα) in the Holy Trinity. For his part, Markos’s extant writings, especially in respect of
his anti-Florentine opera, are devoid of references to what Scholarios called “περὶ τῶν θείων.”
Scholarios used this stereotypically Hellenic and patristic phrase when translating Aquinas’s
works whenever considering the distinction of the divine attributes among themselves and in
his own considerations of the divine attributes. Therefore, I naturally infer from the aforesaid
that Scholarios’s reply to Markos’s accusatory epistle (terminus post quem July 1440) implies
that Scholarios was not only concerned about studying the filioque, but especially about
Palamism, as mentioned in Markos’s Epistula encyclica (c. June 1440):
Yet, these [Latino-Greeks or latinophrones] say – along with Thomas [Aquinas] and the Latins
– that the [two divine] emanations differ, by being direct and indirect [emanations = filioque].
719
For multiple citations from Markos, Scholarios, and Syropoulos, suggesting that John VIII increasingly – if
secretly – supported the anti-unionists, see Blanchet 2008, 374–375.
720
These claims have been checked against the TLG.
182
Also, while we [Orthodox] assert in accord with the Fathers that the will and energy of the
uncreated and divine nature is uncreated, too, they assert with Thomas [Aquinas] and Latins
that this will is identical with the essence, whereas the divine energy is created, in spite of the
fact that it is called ‘divinity’, ‘divine and immaterial light’, and even ‘the Holy Spirit’ or
similar things; and, in so doing, they regard the knavish creatures created divinity, created light
and created Holy Spirit. 721
Given my investigation of Palamism at the council in the previous chapter, Markos’s passage
above clearly refers to discussions with Thomists at Ferrara in fall of 1438 on the De
novissimis. Secondly, Markos hints at his subsequent debate with Montenero on the filioque in
spring of 1439 at Florence. I would like to underscore the fact that Markos linked the filioque
metaphysics of Montenero with Dominican anti-Palamism. Additionally, Markos cleverly and
correctly linked the Dominican-Latin propositions on the filioque and essence-energies
question at Florence with earlier Latin-thinking among Greeks who had also argued for divine
energy as only a creature (viz., the Kydones brothers, et al.). For this very same reason,
Scholarios’s own epistle in reply to Markos logically subsumes the theme of the filioque and
Palamism under one rubric: “περὶ τῶν θείων.”
Scholarios begged Markos not to interpret his deliberate, if admittedly scandalous,
post-Florentine silence on these religious matters as a case of upholding Latin dogmas. Rather,
Scholarios, giving himself the epithet of “the philosopher,” was merely tending to himself, as
yet taking no side on the questions. Instead, Scholarios sought to prioritize study of each
question in detail before proffering a definitive sentence on the questions at hand. Scholarios
assured Markos that, upon completing his disquisition in the midst of his philosophical retreat,
he could eventually decide against Pope Eugenius and any unionist successors thereto,
irrespective of the personal cost to himself. 722 If Scholarios is taken at his word, then this long
period of extensive studies on the filioque and essence-energies questions came to their end
term in 1444/5 with Scholarios’s first anti-Latin treatises against Montenero’s, along with
721
M. Eugenikos 1977a, 6 (CFDS A.10.2:149):
οὗτοι δὲ μετὰ τοῦ Θωμᾶ καὶ τῶν Λατίνων τῷ ἐμμέσῳ καὶ ἀμέσῳ διαφέρειν φασὶ τὰς προόδους. Καὶ
ἡμεῖς μὲν τῆς ἀκτίστου καὶ θείας φύσεως ἄκτιστον καὶ τὴν θέλησιν καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν εἶναί φαμεν
κατὰ τοὺς Πατέρας· οὗτοι δὲ μετὰ τῶν Λατίνων καὶ τοῦ Θωμᾶ τὴν μὲν θέλησιν ταὐτὸν τῇ οὐσίᾳ, τὴν
δὲ θείαν ἐνέργειαν κτιστὴν εἶναι λέγουσι, κἄν τε θεότης ὀνομάζοιτο, κἄν τε θεῖον καὶ ἄυλον φῶς, κἄν
τε Πνεῦμα ἅγιον, κἄν τέ τι τοιοῦτον ἕτερον, καὶ οὕτω κτιστὴν θεότητα καὶ κτιστὸν θεῖον φῶς καὶ
κτιστὸν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον τὰ πονηρὰ πρεσβεύουσι κτίσματα.
722
183
Thomists’, interpretation of the filioque and resulted in his anti-Thomistic Excursus that was
spliced into Scholarios’s commentary-translation of the De ente et essentia of Aquinas. After
all, Pope Eugenius’s Florentine bull of union had been based on formulae that were, at their
root, products of Dominican rhetors and Cardinal Cessarini, who was a sympathizer thereof.
Scholarios’s self-imposed exile after Florence, if a case of self-styled Stoic apathy,
exposed him to accusations of Latinism and Latin-thinking by his fellow countrymen. From
these circumstances and from evidence gleaned from Scholarios’s response to Markos’s (lost)
epistle, good reasons point to dating Scholarios’s self-defense from Latinism to 1440/1. 723
Secondly, Scholarios’s claim to be “a philosopher,” aloofly philosophizing above the fray of
the internecine controversies surrounding Florence, is probably not entirely an exaggeration.
Scholarios had early on been distracted by Pletho’s 1439–1440 work against Aristotle, wherein
Pletho attempted to claim Plato as the champion of truth. 724 Naturally, as Scholarios held
Aristotle’s philosophy to be inherently friendly to Christianity, he began composing an
apologetic treatise against Pletho, whom Scholarios suspected as upholding Plato in a species
of crypto-paganism. Scholarios even alluded to a draft of this anti-Plethonic treatise in his 1440
epistle to Markos. Be that as it may, the final version of his anti-Plethonic treatise was only
published in 1443. 725 Consequently, while professedly studying in-depth theology surrounding
the filioque, along with essence-energies questions, Scholarios was equally given to refuting
Pletho’s subtle and philosophical attacks on Christianity. 726
Tambrun has shown that Pletho had likely rejected Palamism by challenging the
doctrine of “uncreated light” as seen by the Orthodox Hesychast. 727 Almost any mention of
Hellenism, or of stereotypical terms common to the Palamite debate (as signaled by Tambrun)
typically leads Scholarios to reject Pletho’s Platonism on the basis of it opposing Christian
doctrine on the soul, creation, etc. Plethonism is seemingly, per Scholarios’s extant writings,
an occasion to defend Palamism, not merely Christianity in general. I will treat Plethonic anti-
Palamism in chapter seven on the debate between Pletho and Scholarios on the univocal
723
Blanchet 2008, 358–359.
724
See Woodhouse 2000, 48–61, for Pletho’s Chaldaic Oracles. Their anti-Palamistic tenor suggests Pletho’s
opposition to Palamas as early as the council. Woodhouse identifies the content to reflect lecture notes of a
young pre-union Pletho.
725
For a detailed chronology of Scholarios’s early literary efforts against Pletho, see Blanchet 2008, 369–371.
For his personal witness to his pre-1443 draft against Pletho, see Demetracopoulos 2002, 163.
726
Woodhouse 2000, 216.
727
184
concept of being. Perhaps this overriding concern served as the basis for Scholarios to ignore
the anti-Palamite allusions of Pletho and to concentrate exclusively on pro-Aristotelian texts
and arguments in order to defend Christian theology by recourse to Aristotelian metaphysics.
It was during this time (c. 1444) that Scholarios seemed to gather copious amounts of citations
from Aquinas (interpreting Aristotle no less) in order to confute Plethonism. 728 In such
circumstances, it must have been inexpedient for Scholarios to distance himself from
Demetrios Kydones, or at least his translations, with the exception of Kydones’ Thomistic
thrust on the question of the essence-energies and divine light. Pletho, formerly under the
tutelage of Kydones, may have absorbed his master’s anti-Palamism on these issues, but Pletho
729
simultaneously rejected Kydonian Aristotelico-Thomism. In the apologetics against
Scholarios, Pletho could not have benefited in the least by openly criticizing Palamas within
the confines of Byzantium. Why then does it appear, at first glance, that Pletho missed an
opportunity to point out (ad hominem) Scholarios’s main source (viz., Aquinas) for such an
anti-Palamite metaphysics was diametrically and historically opposed to Palamism in
divinis? 730 In answer, such accusations would have carried an inherent risk, for Pletho too was
fond of utilizing passages and insights of Aquinas in his own theological projects. 731
After completing his first major diatribe against Pletho, while maintaining his status as
a philosopher in philosophic retreat, Scholarios felt the need to write (1444) to his spiritual
father, Markos, to seek his approval for his pro-Aristotelian defense of Christianity against
Markos’s old schoolmaster, Pletho. 732 Markos’s response came shortly afterwards (August–
November 1444), wherein he returned to old, unresolved themes, while also encouraging his
former pupil by praising his general erudition. 733 Markos betrayed the dating of this letter by
the fact that Scholarios was clearly hoping for the Varna campaign to be successful against the
Turks. For his part, Markos sardonically chided Scholarios that the progress of the campaign
had not turned back the Turks; nor was Scholarios able, according to Markos, to point to any
728
Demetracopoulos 2002, 152–169; Demetracopoulos 2007a, 301, 335–343.
729
730
For underlining the opportunity of Pletho to conflate, as other Orthodox had done, Latinism (e.g., Aquinas)
with Akindynism, see Demetracopoulos 2002, 165.
731
Demtracopoulos 2002, 163.
732
Scholarios 1935g (OCGS 4:116–118).
733
The terminus post quem of this epistle can likely be set as August 5, 1444. King Ladislas of Hungary declared
his crusade vow against the Turk on the preceding day. Because the crusade failed on November 10, 1444, a
rather precise dating is possible. For all the dates and details surrounding the crusade, see the excellent
monograph and texts in Imber 2013.
185
substantial progress that the compagn made to deliver Constantinople from destruction. 734 If
one reads Markos’s extant letter to Scholarios as a response to his spiritual son’s pleading for
approval, Markos entirely avoided blessing Scholarios’s miniature crusade against Pletho.
While Markos praised Scholarios’s intellect, learning, and his formerly strict adherence to the
Orthodox faith, Eugenikos obliquely rebuffed Scholarios for entering into the position of a
universal judge (1436), as appointed by the emperor. Markos implied that Scholarios’s drift
from Orthodoxy was due to the glamour of imperial honors. 735 Markos then exhorted him to
flee from worldly prestige since they avail nothing in the netherworld. 736 Next, Markos
underlined Scholarios’s activity of turning toward the “compromise” or middle way of
Florence, unworthy of the philosophical way of life that Scholarios claimed to embrace, for
there is no mean between truth and error. 737 Instead, Markos bade George to abandon his
personal vendetta against the rather unimportant and minuscule Plethonian spat and “to flee
the unphilosophical thought of ‘The Philosopher.’” 738 Sarcastically, Markos terminated his
letter by providing a scholion, or gloss, on the Scriptural verse that Scholarios only partially
cited in defense of his pro-imperial loyalty. Whereas Scholarios wrote, “Render unto Caesar
what is Caesar’s,” 739 Markos concludes his letter by exhorting Scholarios – on the divine
matter of dogma – “Leave the state matters of Caesar to Caesar; give back to God your soul,
which was created and beautified by him.” 740 In fact, this may have been a pun against the
Latins, since – in the same paragraph – Markos doubted the capacity of papal forces to save
the polis. By referring to “Caesar” in the dative “Caesari,” he was likely alluding to the titular
head of the papal crusade, Cardinal Cesarini. Markos’s additional link between “Caiaphas”
(Pope Eugenius) as the arm of the state religion and “Caesar” (Cardinal Cesarini) as the secular
military arm of the state made for a ready joke in order to shame Scholarios’s recourse to the
famous biblical passage. Additionally, as we have already seen in the Ephesine’s pre-Ferrara
antirrhetics, Markos never felt ideologically committed to Aristotle and was rather put off by
734
M. Eugenikos 1977f, 4 (CFDS A.10.2:155).
735
736
737
738
M. Eugenikos 1977f, 3 (CFDS A.10.2:155): “Φεῦ τῆς ἀφιλοσόφου διανοίας τοῦ φιλοσόφου.”
739
“Λέγουσιν καίσαρος τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ καίσαρος καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” (Mt
22:21).
740
Eugenikos, Τῷ Σχολαρίῳ ὁ Ἐφέσου, 4 (CFDS A.10.2:155).
186
Schoolmen who were accustomed to apotheosize him. 741 For this reason, it is no wonder that
Markos wished Scholarios to abandon the incipient Plato-Aristotle debate with Pletho. Instead,
Markos besought Scholarios to join him in an all-consuming opposition to the Aristotelico-
Thomistic theology of Ferrara-Florence and to eschew its compromise formulae from the
church of God. 742
1. The Genesis of the Scholarian Translation-Commentary on the De ente et essentia
The failed crusade of Varna on November 10, 1444, coincides with the earliest possible
time for dating Scholarios’s Excursus, or his chapter criticizing Armandus de Bellovisu’s
commentary on Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. 743 This chapter is designed to distance
Scholarios from orthodox Thomism on the key points of Latino-Greek conflict with respect to
the essence-energies debate at Florence. Let us also recall that in public sessions Andrew
Chrysoberges had cited the Palamite synod of 1351. This reference betrays Dominican
polemics that were likely constant during the entirety of the council. I note, too, that the
philosopher Gregoras was the main antagonist to this Palamite synod. This fact will play an
important circumstantial role in uncovering the template for Scholarios’s discussion of the
essence-energies question in his Excursus into Armandus’s commentary in chapters ninety-
three and ninety-four. Whatever hopes Scholarios had held out for the emperor’s policy of
Florentine union to save the capital must have vanished by 1445. At that time, as Markos had
just bidden him, Scholarios then made scholarly efforts to point out items within Aristotelian-
based theology to be flatly opposed by an Orthodox believer. More severe than his master and
teacher, however, Scholarios intensified his personal mission to defeat Pletho’s paganism.
Although the De ente et essentia is clearly an authentic opusculum of Thomas Aquinas,
and even though Armandus of Bellovisu was – on many matters – an orthodox Thomist,
Scholarios – counterintuitively – began his most pronounced metaphysical break from
Thomism on the theology of God at the very moment when he was enthusiastically translating,
interpolating, and commending Armandus’s pro-Thomistic commentary to his disciple
Kamariotês. This apparent contradiction can be explained in terms of the Scholastic culture of
741
Barbour (1993, 42–43) is mistaken on his suppositions that Markos was “Aristotelian.”
742
743
Blanchet 2008, 483.
187
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Scholarios, in reality, practiced a kind of “cafeteria
Thomism,” fairly typical of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century eclectic Thomists. 744
In the twentieth century, Roman Catholic neo-Thomists were accustomed to use the
canon of the famous twenty-four theses, published under Pope Pius X, as an objective litmus
test for awarding someone the badge of Thomist. 745 Even if anachronistic, it is certainly a clear
way to designate someone a Thomist by means of an objective set of criteria. Yet, the historical
record cannot locate these twenty-four points of Thomism among early Thomists. Using the
example of a Scholarian source to illustrate my point, Hervaeus Natalis should be denied the
epithet “Thomist” as any sort of appendage to his title of Doctor rarus. 746 Hervaeus, a self-
described Thomist and champion of first-generation Thomism, hardly qualified as a
Thomasian theologian from the optic of Pope Pius X’s standards. 747 Alternatively, the historian
of philosophy, or of theology for that matter, must demand some consideration of historical
criteria to arrive at a working definition of Thomism. 748
Roensch’s classic monograph admits the existence of numerous doctrinal divergences
among individual Thomist authors, while yet attempting to argue for a general core set of
doctrines that (more or less) constitute early Thomists’ thinking. 749 Yet, even by Roensch’s
less stringent standards, self-described Thomists (e.g., Hervaeus) are still excluded from the
744
Kappes 2013a, 74–114.
745
Sacra Studiorum Congregatio 1914, 384–385:
III. Quapropter in absoluta ipsius esse ratione unus subsistit Deus, unus est simplicissimus, cetera
cuncta quae ipsum esse participant, naturam habent qua esse coarctatur, ac tamquam distinctis realiter
principiis, essentia et esse constant. [. . .]
XI. Quantitate signata materia principium est individuationis, id est, numericae distinctionis, quae in
puris spiritibus esse non potest, unius individui ab alio in eadem natura specifica.
746
Friedman 2007, 432. Hervaeus’s anti-Thomistic doctrines include (1) denial of the essence-esse real
distinction, (2) admission of only two of five proofs from Aquinas for God’s existence, (3) rejection of matter
as the sole principle of individuation, and (4) distinction of “formalities” with respect to the persons of the
Trinity.
747
This is exemplified by his work Defensio doctrinae Thomae, as discussed in Friedman 2007, 432–433.
748
Allen 1960, 2–4, 13–14.
749
Roensch 1964, ix:
Besides the unicity of substantial form, the related controverted theses were the pure potentiality of
primary matter, the spirituality of separated substances, matter as the principle of individuation, and
the real distinction between essence and existence. It is by the acceptance or rejection of these theses
along with their correct understanding that the Thomism of an early defender of St. Thomas must be
judged.
Contradictorily, Roensch 1964, 316, writes in his conclusions:
If an answer to the question “What is a Thomist?” is to be forthcoming, it may well be that the
historian, in studies similar to the one above, will have to determine it within the context of a particular
age and only in terms of the stage of development which Thomism had reached at that time.
188
eponymous company of Thomas. Hervaeus aptly exemplifies the categorical problem of
denying him the title of “Thomist” in the modern sense, though he was historically a devoutly
self-styled follower of Thomas, the principal agent in Thomas’s canonization, and frater
Thomas’s champion against Scotist and so-called Augustinian attacks. Hervaeus also fervently
persecuted dissent from the “common opinion” 750 of frater Thomas within the Dominican
order. Hervaeus obliged Dominican professors – teaching on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
– to follow Thomas’s common opinion. Hervaeus can only be relegated to a generic school of
Thomism, whose imitators opposed those who were openly anti-Thomists. Hervaeus’s mention
of the “common opinion” of Aquinas admitted a wide enough berth for Hervaeus to adopt
Scotistic theses in his Trinitarian theology and alternatives to Thomas’s principle of
individuation, and even to disagree with the standard interpretation of Aquinas on the esse-
essentia distinction. We will see that Scholarios paralleled Hervaeus on the first two of these
controverted doctrines, and perhaps partially on the third (insofar as a Franciscan modal
distinction is something less than formal distinction, qua quidditative, but greater than only a
conceptual distinction). The opinio communis was a turn of phrase adopted by the General
Dominican Chapter at Metz in 1313. However, judging from both Roensch’s and Iribarren’s
treatment of the matter, such a “common opinion” only demands a referential and reverential
reading (expositio reverenter) of the Sentences with reverential respect to Thomas. This phrase
cannot be read – historically – to demand a rigid Thomism that became typical in the
Renaissance Dominican studia or in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Unsurprisingly, upon the accession of orthodox Thomism among Dominican chairs in the
Italian universities, Hervaeus’s fame began to wane in the Renaissance due to a more
monolithic emphasis on the actual doctrines and arguments of Aquinas. 751 Dominicans –
dedicated to defending the life and teaching of Aquinas – nonetheless tend to view Hervaeus
as a true disciple of Aquinas, even if idiosyncratic and un-Thomistic in his actual views. 752 For
our purposes, then, “Thomism” signifies an aggregate of theologians or philosophers who
adopt some of their foundational theological principles from Aquinas to theologize and
750
Iribarren 2005, 4.
751
Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 270; Tavuzzi 1992, 132–152; Conforti 1997, 63–82.
752
Hervaeus’s Thomism was explicitly discussed from a philosophical, theological, and historical point of view
in Trottman 1997, 6–61.
189
philosophize. This is a far cry from what Jugie, Guichardan, and Barbour mean by their Pian
category of Thomism. 753
Similar to Hervaean Thomism, Scholarios showered Aquinas with laudatory
comments, many of which have been usefully collected in Demetracopoulos 2019a. Still,
Scholarios’s reverence for, and constant reference to, Aquinas must be balanced against some
significant doctrinal and philosophical criticisms of the same. Firstly, Scholarios reticently
accepted Orthodox criticism of Aquinas’s typically Latin tenets in metaphysics of the godhead,
all the while praising Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries and purely philosophical works,
especially general metaphysics. 754 Next, Scholarios admitted that Aquinas’s filioque and
essence-energies doctrine (viz., Akindynism) together constitute major obstacles to union
between the Latin and Greek Churches. 755 In one case, Scholarios ostensibly accused Aquinas
of plagiarizing John Philoponos. 756 Furthermore, in his earlier translations of Radulphus Brito,
Scholarios did not bother to correct Brito’s metaphysical criticism against Aquinas on the
question of materia signata. 757 Yet, elsewhere, Scholarios supplied glosses to mitigate other
criticisms against Aquinas. 758 In a famous and, for Scholarios, indefensible passage of the ST
(I.36.2, ad 3), Aquinas became the object of Scholarios’s insult for falsely distorting
Damascene, calling John a Nestorian in order to extort acquiescence of the Greeks to the Latin
doctrine of the filioque. 759 Naturally, after 1444, as an openly-professed anti-unionist,
Scholarios accustomed himself to bid Orthodox to flee from Aquinas’s doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. 760 The initial apologetical works on the Holy Spirit probably date from 1442–1444. The
first is certainly finished by 1446 and the second by 1449/1450. 761 Of course, citations against
Aquinas’s pneumatology could be multiplied. Scholarios has also been identified, albeit
arguably, as the scholiast responsible for a condemnatory gloss of Aquinas’s ad intra
metaphysics of the divine attributes. Among the marginalia in one MS, Scholarios employed
753
Barbour 1993, 11, 54–56.
754
Scholarios 1931 (OCGS 5:1–2).
755
Scholarios 1931 (OCGS 5:2).
756
OCGS 6:x–xi; Charlton 1991, viii–ix; Barbour 1993, 54. While the accusation against Aquinas is likely
specious, Aquinas may have depended on excerpts of Philoponos, as in Hankey 2002, 291–301.
757
Scholarios and Brito 1933, XII (OCGS 7:78).
758
OCGS 6:283.
759
Scholarios 1929b (OCGS 2:18).
760
761
Blanchet 2008, 378–379.
190
the heretical epithets of “Barlaamite” and “Akindynist” against Aquinas. 762 Nowadays,
Scholarios’s authentic works and translations still roughly equate to about eight tomes.
Therefore, it is somewhat surprising that his post-1445 works, which are many, do not reflect
more anti-Thomistic comments. Whenever Scholarios tended to disagree with Aquinas, it was
typically a case of a professional-philosopher Scholarios disagreeing with finer points on
scientific matters, or it was the question of Orthodox dogma that could not be reconciled with
Aquinas’s Latinism. Generally speaking, Scholarios used Aquinas as a constant point of
reference and reverence, though he did not substantially agree with quite a number of
Aquinas’s famed and notable philosophical principles that were foundational to orthodox
Thomistic philosophy and theology.
Aquinas had originally composed the work, commonly but not exclusively known as
De ente et essentia c. 1252–1256, 763 before Thomas became a regent master teaching at the
University of Paris. 764 Though a brief work, it was important for laying down Aquinas’s
fundamentally metaphysical insight that – in creatures – not only is there usually the
combination of matter and form, or a relation of receptivity to activity, but in all creatures
whatsoever there is a distinction between their definitional reality or essence (e.g., humanity)
and their act of existence or esse (viz., the possible ens of Socrates receiving his singular act
of existing into his instance of intelligible human essence). Thomas’s jargon that analogized
the esse-essentia relation to that of forma-materia became axiomatic for Thomists. 765 As if a
proportional and mathematical axiom: esse is to essentia just as forma is to materia. In respect
to a possible or “potential” essence (let us say: “a possible horse”), equinity is potentially
existent only, and is really existent only upon the species or definitional essence of a horse
receiving a singular act of existence and becoming a real horse in the world. This sort of
relation, as proposed between passive essence and the active act of existence (actus essendi),
has a similar feel to the relation between pure act (ἐνέργεια) and pure potentiality or prime
matter (ὕλη).
As far as Scholarios’s impetus to translate the De ente et essentia, we can expect that
it became a centerpiece for Scholarios because of Armandus’s comments about the notion of
762
Salaville 1924, 129–136.
763
Golitsis 2019, 180–186.
764
Torrell 1996, 47–50.
765
Maurer 1968, 21. Cf. Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 4 [nos. 6–8].
191
“received esse.” 766 From the time of John Bekkos until the recent debates between Markos
Eugenikos and John Montenero at Florence, the terms of the debate surrounded the notion of
the Holy Spirit: “receiving its esse from the Father and the Son.” Naturally, for Markos, as for
Bekkos prior, a Greek version of this phrase was used: “λαμβάνω τὸ εἶναι παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς
καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ.” By the time of Ferrara-Florence the originally Basilian phrase was liable to an
Aristotelico-Thomistic interpretation. What is worse, Markos feared that Dominicans were
superimposing Aquinas’s sense of vocabulary onto Basil’s words. Latins at the debate seemed
to hold equally that – in addition to creatures – Basil’s exact phrase, with respect to the Spirit
being from the Son, might be applied to the distinction existing between essentia (οὐσία) and
its esse (τὸ εἶναι). 767 For this reason Markos – understanding Thomistic metaphysical literature
– impugned the Latins for making “the Spirit into a creature.” Notice the Thomistic dialogue
that passed between Montenero and Eugenikos, which I posit to serve as the very inspiration
for Scholarios’s translation of the De ente et essentia, as well as for his desire to correct the
Florentine Dominicans along the lines of more Palamite-friendly theologians like unto
Hervaeus:
My Translation: Acta Graeca

Montenero: Since creatures receive their esse from [Montenero:] [...] τὰ κτίσματα παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ
God, isn’t it right to assert that creatures exist from λέγομεν εἶναι, εἰ τὰ κτίσματα παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ εἶναι
God? λαμβάνει;
The Ephesine: Yes, this is the meaning of this [Eugenikos:] Τοῦτο οὕτω νοοῦμεν· πλὴν ὅτι εἴ τι ἔκ
statement; still, it does hold [in general] that, if τινός ἐστιν, οὐκ ἤδη καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ εἶναι ἔχει.
something exists from something, then it has its esse
from it. [Montenero:] Συγχωρεῖς ὅτι τὰ κτίσματα παρὰ τοῦ
766
Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 4: “esse earum non est absolutum, sed receptum et ideo limitatum et
finitum ad capacitatem naturae recipientis [. . .]”
767
Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 76a 4: “ταῦτα γὰρ λαμβάνουσι τὸ εἶναι καὶ τοδὶ εἶναι [. . .]”; Aristotle, Sophisti
elenchi, 168b 35–36. Cf. See Markos Eugenikos’s speech against Montenero at Florence (CFDS B.5.2:255–
256):
[The Ephesine]: Τοιαύτην νοῶ τὴν πρόοδον, καθ’ ἣν ἐξ αὐτοῦ λαμβάνει τὸ εἶναι καὶ πᾶν ὅπερ ἐστὶ
καὶ ἰδίως λέγεται τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον. [. . .]
[The Ephesine:] Πόθεν τοῦτο λαβόντες ἔχετε, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ λαμβάνειν τὸ εἶναι τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον;
ἡμεῖς τοῦτο οὐ συγχωροῦμεν.
Markos first explains that, if he were to use the non-patristic “receiving esse,” he would do so only conceding
that this meant that the Son or Spirit positively and actively emanates (not passively “receives”). Secondly,
correcting Montenero, Markos asserted that a hypostasis canont actively give to another hypostasis that
“receives” (cf. CFDS B.5.2:258).
192
Montenero: Do you allow that creatures have their θεοῦ τὸ εἶναι ἔχει;
esse from God? [Eugenikos:]. Συγχωρῶ· κατὰ τοῦτο λέγονται τὰ
The Ephesine: I allow it; for, they are called κτίσματα, καθ’ ὃ τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχουσι παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ.
“creatures” inasmuch as they have their cause from
God.
For Aquinas, if something received its esse from something else, then it was impossible
for such a thing to be God. Consequently, for Markos, Thomists forced themselves into
Messalianism when they took up Bekkos’s formula, as taken from Basil the Great (during his
early and aforementioned homoian period): “having and taking the Spirit from the very Son.”
Paradoxically, Markos suspected that Montenero was superimposing Aristotelico-Thomistic
distinctions between esse and essentia onto the citation. 768 On the opposite end, Montenero
was simply trying to exonerate himself from subordinationism by claiming that Basil was an
Orthodox Father and that, by citing Basil, Montenero felt exempt from subordinationism when
referring to a difference in the “dignity” between the three separate hypostases. Actually, this
passage was never exposited in Aquinas’s discussions of the filioque. For his part, Montenero’s
own exposition of the filioque and his comfort with speaking about the Spirit taking his esse
and having esse from the Son suggests that Montenero did not know his own tradition as well
as Markos did through reading Aquinas’s ST. Consequently, for Markos, if either the Son or
the Spirit cannot be equally identified with the primal esse of the Father, and if they “have”
their own proper esse from the Father, then they must consequently be the kinds of things that
have a separate act of existence for their respective essence (τί εἶναι) from the Father.
Montenero’s aforementioned appeal to a hierarchy of persons who enjoy diverse dignitates, or
ἄξιώματα, allows Markos to attack Thomists at the council according to their singularly
Thomistic notion of received esse. 769 Once Thomists (under the banner of Montenero)
committed themselves in public debate to distinguishing the dignitas of the Spirit from that of
Father, qua hypostasis, then they admitted the notion of “received esse” in the Spirit, resulting
768
Bekkos, De unione ecclesiarum (PG 141:133): “Αὐτίκα ὁ μέγας Βασίλειος ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ τῶν πρὸς Εὐνόμιον
Ἀντιῤῥητικῶν, οὗ ἡ ἀρχὴ, ‘Μόλις ποτὲ κορεσθεὶς τῶν εἰς τὸν Μονογενῆ βλασφημιῶν,’ φησί· ‘Τίς γὰρ ἀνάγκη,
εἰ τῷ ἀξιώματι καὶ τῇ τάξει τρίτον ὑπάρχει τὸ Πνεῦμα, τρίτον εἶναι αὐτὸ καὶ τῇ φύσει; Ἀξιώματι μὲν γὰρ
δευτερεύειν τοῦ Υἱοῦ, παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ εἶναι ἔχον, καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαμβάνον καὶ ἀναγγέλλον ἡμῖν, καὶ ὅλως
ἐκείνης τῆς αἰτίας ἐξημμένον, παραδίδωσιν ὁ τῆς εὐσεβείας λόγος [. . .]’”
769
For Aquinas’s uniquely innovative invention of the concept of esse as actus essendi, see Maurer 1968, 14–
16.
193
in the heretical conclusion that the Spirit was a combination of essence (essentia) and existence
(esse) and, thus, only an ens or a person esse habens, who must be something created – not the
eternal Spirit of the Christian faith. 770 Markos’s accusations of pneumatomachianism against
Thomists are to be taken quite literally, with the result that he counseled reconciling Latins to
the Orthodox Church via chrismation in accord with the canons of Constantinople (381) against
pneumatomachians. 771
Scholarios was completely aware of the nature of Markos’s argument at Florence and
followed suit, as he clearly illustrated, for example, in his Second dialogue sur la procession
du Saint’Esprit (1451). 772 Here, Scholarios claimed that the Latins (given their Thomistic
sensibilities at Florence) cornered themselves, admitting that the Holy Spirit receives
subsistence from the Father and the Son, as if from two separate items (hypostases) – versus
from one united essence – and this causes a new esse to be the effect, namely, the new esse of
the Spirit. After all, Montenero himself relied on the passage of Basil, where the Dominican
concluded that the Spirit was someone “habens esse” from the Son! On this very topic, both
Aquinas’s De ente et essentia and Armandus’s commentary go out of their way to address
directly the question of “received esse.” Initially, Scholarios was likely attracted to Aquinas’s
opusculum to do research on the procession of the Holy Spirit and essence-energies question,
just as he had announced four years prior in his 1440 epistle to Markos. Chapter ninety-three
of Scholarios’s Excursus, beginning the section with a translation of Armandus, seems to echo
the very terms of debate, just as they were discussed between Eugenikos and Montenero at
Florence. The original Latin text, as translated by Scholarios in chapter ninety-three reads: “If
someone says that, the essence of God is able to be considered as if the act of an essence that
receives esse, and that its act of existence is, as if indeed something received, just as it is in
creatures, this would also constitute some kind of composition of reason with respect to
God.” 773 Surely, we can now see that Scholarios is following up on his promise to Markos to
770
Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 2: “esse quod habet [. . .] in quantum huiusmodi habeat esse in hoc
singulari [. . .]”
771
M. Eugenikos 1977a, 4 (CFDS A.10.2:144).
772
OCGS 3:23: “Τίσι λέγεις; μῶν τοῖς πιστεύουσι καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ λαμβάνειν τὸ εἶναι τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ
ἅγιον εἴτουν ὑφίστασθαι, ὡς ἐξ ἀρχῆς προσωπικῶς ἐν τῇ τῆς φύσεως ἑνότητι ὑφιστώσης αὐτό, καθάπερ ἄρα
καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός, πλὴν ὅτι ὁ Υἱὸς λαμβάνει τὸ προάγειν οὕτω τὸ Πνεῦμα γεννώμενος.”
773
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 93: “Εἰ δὲ λέγεί τις δύνασθαι τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ θεωρεῖσθαι ὡς τὸ
εἶναι λαμβάνουσαν, καὶ τὸ εἶναι αὐτοῦ ὡς δὴ λαμβανόμενον, καθώς ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς κτίσμασι, κἀντεῦθεν εἶναί
τινα κἀν τῷ Θεῷ σύνθεσιν λόγου [. . .]”
194
study the question of the divine persons and attributes according to the Dominicans and
Thomists in Italy. To do so, Scholarios eventually turned to what must have been one of
Montenero’s authorities. If this were not Montenero’s personal preference, I already
established in chapter four that Armandus of Bellovisu’s treatise on the beatific vision was
almost certainly consulted to lift arguments from Bernard of Clairvaux for disputes on the
beatific vision. Scholarios was likely able to obtain or to copy some of the works of Armandus
as early as 1438.
The basic details surrounding the life and times of Armandus of Bellovisu lead to the
conclusion that Scholarios chose an entirely credible and qualified Dominican to act as his
principle scholiast for understanding the role of esse in Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. A native
of Provence, Armandus was a novice by 1313. The University of Paris elevated him to Master
of Theology in 1326, whereupon he taught in Dominican studia of Montpellier and Avignon
until c. 1333. At the studium of Montpellier, Armandus composed his commentary on the De
ente et essentia. 774 If this opusculum were linked to his theological dictionary of Scholastic
terminology, it would also demonstrate Armandus’s sensitivity to the difficulties that students
of Scholasticism encounter with terminology and distinctions even in Aquinas’s most basic
philosophical text. Both of Armandus’s works were likely destined for the very same
students. 775 Importantly, it should be noted that Armandus actually accommodated his doctrine
of the transcendentals (ens, unum, verum, bonum, res, and aliquid) to Scotus’s insight into the
priority of the concept of ens or “being,” such that it cannot be conceptually reduced to, or be
convertible with, the other transcendentals. Rather, for Armandus, the other five concepts are
resolvable into ens. 776 To this extent, Armandus offered Scholarios another witness of a
Thomist, who sought to bridge the gap between Aquinas’s kinds of distinctions, as conceived
in the mind, and the logical theory of the concept of ens in the mature works of Scotus.
Armandus’s reduction of all concepts to ens as their foundation would have moved Scholarios
intellectually closer to Scotistic univocity in his practice of logical speculation, even if
Armandus did not show allegiance to Scotism in his opinions and idiom. At any rate, Pope
774
Barbour (1993, 60, 64) does not substantiate this claim. Other scholars do note, because Armandus always
refers to Aquinas as “Sanctus,” that we may assume the terminus post quem to be post-canonization (1324).
775
Aertsen 2012, 15–16.
776
Aertsen 2012, 18–19.
195
John XXII elevated Armandus to the magister sacri palatii, or papal theologian, in 1326. He
died sometime after 1334. 777
With respect to Scholarios’s translation of Aquinas’s and Armandus’s original Latin, a
number of observations are in order. First of all, as Jugie points out, Scholarios rendered
Aquinas’s all-important term esse into Greek using two very different, if related, terms: (1.) τὸ
εἶναι and (2.) τὸ ὄν. The term essentia is rendered as: (1.) οὐσία, (2.) τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, and (3.)
ὕπαρξις. 778 Jugie observes, too, that Scholarios’s Greek translation enjoys a more polished
form than Aquinas’s original Latin version. 779 Ebbesen notes that Scholarios’s phrase “τι τοῦ
πράγματος” mirrors perfectly fourteenth-century jargon typical of Modistae, that is, aliquid
rei. The TLG confirms that this phraseology is unusual and never within the realm of Byzantine
logic. Ebbesen and Pinborg give detailed descriptions of Scholarios’s earlier translations of
Brito from 1432/5. 780 Therein, the image of a dilettante and somewhat clumsy translator
emerged. Granted Jugie’s positive evaluation of Scholarios’s graecitas in his version of the De
ente et essentia and its accompanying commentary, Scholarios’s latinitas was apparently
improving. Nonetheless, Scholarios employed his idiosyncratic terminology from his
Britonian period in the De ente et essentia in several instances. For example, modus essendi is
rendered in both translations as τρόπος τῆς ὑπάρξεως. In a similar instance, the adjective
“known” in materia nota, as in De ente et essentia, chapter five, is employed adjectively to
modify ὕλη with φανερὰ, manifesting the same clumsiness that Ebbesen and Pinborg point out
in Scholarios’s attempt to translate Brito’s praecipuis et maximis notis (τοῖς ἐξόχοις καὶ
μάλιστα φανεροῖς). In comparison, Ebbesen and Pinborg note that Scholarios seems unmindful
of Aristotle, Topics, 100b 23: “τοῖς μάλιστα γνωρίμοις καὶ ἐνδόξοις.” 781 Scholarios’s failure
to detect the Aristotelian basis for a significant number of terms and turns of phrase – despite
Scholarios’s extensive reading of the Organon and Byzantine scholiast tradition – suggests
that Scholarios sometimes struggled to express Latin thought adequately in the Greek idiom,
such that even an erudite Greek logician might be able to understand him. For this reason, as I
have already mentioned, Scholarios admitted that his students of logic in the 1430s found Latin
777
Pasnau and Van Dyke 2010, 849.
778
OCGS 6:viii.
779
OCGS 6:viii.
780
781
Cf. Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 271–272.
196
terminology (as translated into Greek) to be opaque and he reported their frustrations in
understanding the texts that Scholarios was using to teach them.
Scholarian stylistic renderings remain fairly predictable from the days of his Britonian
translations as, for example, tending to render ablative absolutes of the Latin language into
genitive absolutes in Greek. Additionally, as Ebbesen and Pinborg explain, various calques are
formed from abstrahere, esse abstractum, and in abstracto, all of which can be reduced to
some form or combination of the term ἀφαίρεσις. 782 Barbour identifies ἡ κατ᾽ἐντελεχείαν
ὕπαρξις (esse actualis existentiae), whereas Armandus’s existentia usually means essentia
(ὕπαρξις). 783 There are also transliterations, as Barbour (1993, 83) points out: κιδίτης
(quidditas), which is defined as Aristotle’s τό τι ἦν εἶναι. However – more importantly – this
notion of quiddity is accommodated to Aquinas’s Thomism that defines quiddity, opposite of
its esse, as δι᾽οὗ τι ἔχει τὸ εἶναί τι. 784 Finally, Demetracopoulos 2019a, identifies numerous
other important terms throughout Scholarios’s treatises on the essence-energies question: κατὰ
τὸν τοῦ σημαίνειν τρόπον (secundum modum significandi), τρόποι/βαθμοί (modus), διάκρισις
πραγματική/ἔργῳ/ἀληθείᾳ/πράγματι (distinctio realis) or ἔμπρακτος (actualis), διάκρισις
μείζων/ἰσχυροτέρα (distinctio maior), διάκρισις συνεσταλμένως/μετριωτέρῳ βαθμῷ/ ἤττων
(distinctio minor), ἐπίνοια πρώτη ἐν τῷ συγκεκριμένῳ (intentio prima in concreto 785), ἐπίνοια
πρώτη ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως (intentio prima in abstracto), ἐπίνοια δευτέρα ἐν τῷ
συγκεριμένῳ/ἐπίνοια δευτέρα ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως/δευτέρα νοητά (intentio secunda), and ὄντα τοῦ
λόγου (entia rationis). 786 I also note that Golitsis (2019) contribution concentrates on the
variety of translations of Latin terms, as used in various drafts of Scholarios’s De ente et
essentia translation.
Lastly, specialists on Scholarios and on medieval logic seem to assume Scholarios’s
phrase απὸ/ἔκ τῆς τοῦ πράγματος φύσεως to be automatically Scotistic. Contrariwise, in
Scholarios’s Paraphrase of Aristotle’s Physics, Bks. I-V, a non-Scotistic sense of this exact
phrase occurs quite often. Furthermore, the phrase occurs in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
782
Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 273.
783
Barbour 1993, 65n74.
784
Barbour (1993, 83) errs in supposing this to be a “Greek’s [viz., Scholarios’s] explanation of the perplexing
syntax of Aristotle’s famous expression.” In fact, if a real essence, per the De ente et essentia, is always
something “esse habens,” then it is through some essentia that some ens esse habens. This is simply retrofitting
Aristotle with Thomism.
785
Aquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 7.
786
Αquinas, De ente et essentia, chap. 7.
197
1094b, and Epictetus’s Entretiens, or Discourses, IV.10, both of which texts Scholarios had
edited in his youth. What is more, the phrase is ubiquitous among Greek scholiasts, albeit in
the realm of ethics. Lastly, the TLG clearly reveals that this Greek rendering of “ex natura rei”
was popularized in juristic works, which was due to its existence as a legal phrase in Roman
jurisprudence. In fine, the phrase itself, either in Latin or in Greek, is not peculiarly Scotistic,
but the sense in which it is employed in Scholarios’s essence-energies treatises is entirely non-
Byzantine, non-Thomistic and, in every way, enjoys a metaphysically Scotistic pedigree at its
root.
Scholarios’s translation-commentary of De ente et essentia, or Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ
διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας, is reportedly a
labor undertaken on behalf of one of his disciples, Matthew Kamariotês. 787 Scholarios
expressed enthusiasm at providing his pupil with a deeper knowledge of philosophy. 788
Notably, Scholarios altered some of Armandus’s chapter headings within the Greek translation
in order to protect Orthodox essence-energies doctrine. 789 Given the date of composition
(1445), it is unsurprising that Scholarios was concerned with promoting Palamism. This theme
goes hand in hand with his burgeoning anti-unionism and anti-Latinism in theological matters.
Markos had likely motivated Scholarios to identify Latin divergences from Palamite theology
in his 1440 epistle and their subsequent private communications, but Scholarios would have
been equally concerned to insert correctives into Armandus’s text for the sake of protecting his
young disciple from Latin errors (or, as a corollary, protecting himself from future accusations
of Latinism). 790 All the same, Scholarios retained a broad-minded approach to philosophy
throughout his lifetime, and his essence-energies Excursus within the Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ
διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας commentary-
translation shows him to be more than a petty polemicist, but rather someone who exactly
understood essential terms of the Latino-Greek debate about the various kinds of distinctions
that can exist within the godhead.
787
Barbour (1993, 81) aptly notes that Scholarios utilized a text of Armandus that he had composed for the
convenience of new students, the very same purpose of Scholarios’s own Greek text.
788
Barbour 1993, 74–75; Scholarios, introduction to Commentaire du “De ente et essentia” (OCGS 6:177).
789
Barbour 1993, 92–95.
790
Cf. Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 94 (OCGS 6:283).
198
While Scholarios was editing Armandus, he evidently suspected that Aquinas
intrinsically lent himself to pro-Akindynist propaganda. 791 Scholarios, in his addendum to
Armandus’s commentary, gave his magisterial sentence on a, by now, traditional accusation
against Barlaam and Akindynos as authors who had themselves used Aquinas’s works for their
ulterior anti-Palamite purposes. 792 Of course, Scholarios came to know many Thomistic and
latinophrôn anti-Palamite writings. It is a tribute to Scholarios’s philosophical acumen that he
was capable of accurately identifying the purely Byzantine logical approaches of fourteenth-
century anti-Palamites and of comparing these with more advanced Latin theories. Comparison
between Armandus’s doctrine of the energies and that of fourteenth-century anti-Palamite
Thomists only confirmed his worst fears; namely, Thomistic physics and metaphysical logic
were liable to be used as intellectual scalpels for picking apart the theology of Palamas. 793
Nonetheless, an explicit conflation of Latinism with Thomism is only evidently stated in
George-Gennadios’s late Résumé of ST I & ST Ia–IIae. 794 Unsurprisingly, Scholarios linked
his condemnation of Latin theology of the filioque and of essence-energies to Aquinas. After
all, Thomas ranked as the Latins’ best and brightest theologian. 795 Blanchet has outlined the
debates in Constantinople and the activities of the pro-unionists in the capital about the time
of Scholarios’s Greek publication of the De ente et essentia along with the Greek version of
Armandus’s commentary thereupon. Scholarios, at the time, was in the midst of writing and
correcting his materials for his debates with Latins and Latinophiles, especially on the subject
of the Holy Spirit. These materials served his apologetic purposes against persons representing
the Roman Catholic position. An example of such is Bartholomew Lapacci, who was in
Constantinople in 1445 for pro-unionist purposes. 796
791
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 94 (OCGS 6:283).
792
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 94.7–14 (OCGS 6:283).
793
Scholarios mitigated any impressionistic evidence that Barlaam and Akindynos were “Thomists.” They were
suspected because of their contemporaries, the Kydones brothers, who held a logical theory reconcilable to
Thomism, per second intentions (intentiones secundae). For arguments that convincingly support Barlaam’s
anti-Thomism and non-Scholastic theology and gnosiology, see Papadopoulos 1974, 287–288; Fyrigos 1983,
185–192; Fyrigos 2004, 27–35; Fyrigos 2005, 69–97. It is rather clear, judging from Barlaam’s sources, that
he was neither a Thomist nor a latinophrôn. See Demetracopoulos 2003, 119–120.
794
For the dating, see Blanchet 2008, 215–216. Scholarios’s association of Latinism with anti-Palamism occurs
in Scholarios 1931 (OCGS 5:1–2).
795
Scholarios 1931 (OCGS 5:2). Cf. Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 94.13 (OCGS 6:283).
796
Blanchet 2008, 255.
199
2. A Mere Translation of Armandus’s Commentary on the De ente et essentia?
Barbour published his doctoral thesis in 1993, arguing that Scholarios had produced
little more than a Greek translation of Armandus of Bellovisu’s Latin commentary on
Aquinas’s “only purely philosophical work.” 797 Since that time, it has become rather apparent
that youthful George was not only heavily reliant upon Aquinas (e.g., translations of his
philosophical commentaries), but also upon other Scholastic and Thomistic authors. These
findings initially serve to strengthen Jugie’s earlier evaluation of Scholarios’s Thomism. As
Jugie and Barbour argue, because Scholarios adopted Thomistic views as virtually his own
(save, for them, Palamism), George embodied a strict and orthodox philosophical Thomism. 798
Such an evaluation would at least be circumstantially strengthened by the fact that orthodox
Thomism was being propagated on the Italian peninsula, where Scholarios had intimate
contacts with numerous Dominicans and was able to visit their Italian and Constantinopolitan
studia. 799 Initially, until the early 1430s, Scholarios was rather humanistic and had been in
contact with Italian humanists until his acquaintance with the Dominican Lodizios of Tabriz.
Although Scholarios’s Italian-humanist contacts were eclectic and – as a rule – anti-Scholastic,
Italian Thomism (mainly a Dominican phenomenon) was fast becoming orthodox in its
mindset. 800 It had become so especially in the last decades of the fourteenth century via the
reforms of Dominican studia by (Bl.) Raymond of Capua. 801
Be that as it may, in his logical translation-commentaries (1430s), Scholarios had fallen
under the influence of Radulphus Brito (c. 1270–d. c. 1320). 802 Brito’s commentary on the
Sentences is dated 1308/9 and roughly coincides with Hervaeus Natalis’s first edition of his
Sentences commentary. Because of the dating of Hervaeus’s first redaction of his commentary,
it is unlikely that Raldulphus was able to review the Hervaean commentary on liber I of the
797
Most of Thomas Aquinas’s thought has been characterized as a theology heavily reliant on Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic philosophy. This work represents, in the opinion of many, the young Thomas’s purely
philosophical interests. Wippel 2000, 404.
798
Barbour (1993, 63–73) spends considerable effort demonstrating a number of philosophical points in both
logic and metaphysics that place Armandus squarely within the tradition of orthodox Thomism.
799
Ebbesen and Pinborg (1981–1982, 269) reveal that Scholarios’s sources and Latin contacts would have made
him aware of the orthodox Thomistic movement in Italy. This same movement became critical of eclectic
Thomists such as Hervaeus Natalis.
800
801
For the reforming activities in Italy and his forceful imposition of Thomism in the houses of reform, see
Cormier 1900.
802
Wilson 2002, 550–551.
200
Sentences. 803 Since Ebbesen’s and Pinborg’s discovery of Scholarios’s virtual plagiarism of
Brito, Scholarios’s early philosophical dependence on Radulphus has been confirmed time and
again. 804 Nevertheless, should we mistakenly assume that Scholarios abandoned Brito to
embrace orthodox Thomism, then how do we explain George sometimes going out of his way
to insert Radulphus’s opinions into the otherwise Thomistic commentary of allegedly orthodox
Thomistic Armandus as late as 1445? To begin with, Scholarios’s earlier (1433/5) opinions,
inserted into his translation of Brito, are entirely antithetical to Aquinas. For example, a certain
surprising degree of non-Thomism exists in his translation-commentary of Brito’s Ars Vetus.
Scholarios wrote:
My translation of the Commentary on Porphyry’s Scholarios, Prolégomènes à la logique et à

“Isagogue”: “l’Isagoge” de Porphyre, chap. 12.18–23: 805
With respect to this quaestio, diverse opinions have come Πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ ζήτημα διάφοροι δόξαι
about. Firstly, some said that the individual of a given γεγόνασιν. Τινὲς μὲν γὰρ εἶπον, ὅτι τὸ ἄτομον
substance is individual due to matter (materia) or by means τῆς οὐσίας ἐστὶν ἄτομον διὰ τὴν ὕλην, ἢ διὰ
of matter, driven to this by means of the aforesaid argument. τῆς ὕλης, προαχθέντες τῷ προεκτεθειμένῳ
This was the opinion of Thomas Aquinas. But this is not λόγῳ, καὶ αὕτη ἡ δόξα γέγονε τοῦ Θωμᾶ νδὲ
solid, because, if the individual of some substance were Ἀκίνο. Τοῦτο μέντοι οὐκ ἔρρωται, διότι, εἰ τὸ
individual by means of matter, this matter is either the matter ἄτομον τῆς οὐσίας ἦν ἄτομον δι᾽ ὕλης, ἡ ὕλη
which properly belongs to the form or the “signate matter,” ἐκείνη ἢ ἡ ἀνήκουσα τῷ εἴδει ἐστὶν ἢ ἡ
or “individual matter”. σεσημειωμένη ἤγουν ἡ ἀτομική
Scholarios went on to say: “The individual belonging to an essence is individual by means of

an indivisible and signate quantity. Whence, it is the cause, due to which, what is one in
number, exists as that which possesses this quantity, which is itself unable to be found in some
other thing [one in number].” 806 “Indivisible quantity” as the principle of individuation in
creatures is a doctrine in clear opposition to Aquinas’s (and later Armandus’s) materia signata,
which is a principle that arises out of the fusion of immaterial form with Aristotelian materia
prima. The individuating principle in Brito is nothing like other famous principles of
803
De Rijk 1997, 190–193.
804
805
OCGS 7:77.
806
Scholarios and Brito 1933, chap. 12.10–11 (OCGS 7:78): “τὸ ἄτομον τῆς οὐσίας ἐστὶν ἄτομον τῇ ἀδιαιρέτῳ
καὶ σεσημειωμένῃ ποσότητι· ὅθεν ἡ αἰτία δι᾽ ἥν τί ἐστιν ἓν ἀριθμῷ ὑπάρχει τὸ τοιαύτην ἔχειν ποσότητα, ἥτις
οὐ δύναται ἐν ἑτέρῳ εὑρίσκεσθαι.”
201
individuation, as for example, of haecceity in Scotus, or of substance and its individual
accidents in Hervaeus. The passages reproduced above are examples of doctrines that are
inserted into the Greek translation of Armandus’s commentary on Aquinas’s work De ente et
essentia. There, Scholarios claims Brito’s doctrines for his own. Scholarios’s supposedly
orthodox image as a Thomist is clearly at odds with his function as editor of Armandus of
Bellovisu’s text, since George corrects one of Armandus’s philosophical commitments by
means of Brito’s ideas. One would expect a Thomistic Scholarios to maintain all majorly
Thomistic opinions and to reformulate any non-Thomistic opinions of importance in favor of
Aquinas. In reality, Scholarios translated large portions of Brito, as if Brito’s ideas were his
own, and only sporadically corrected and edited Brito’s opinions when desired. What are we
to conclude from Scholarios neglecting to correct Brito on this point of individuation, where
Radulphus clearly departed from Aquinas? Such a question can beneficially be asked with
respect to each of Scholarios’s translations. Less adroitly, previous scholarly literature has
simply assumed Scholarian in toto Thomism to be an established fact.
As in the 1430s with Brito’s works, so too was Scholarios with matters of logic and
philosophy around 1445. Young Scholarios’s translations/commentaries have often been
assumed to reflect his personal preferences or his Scholastic allegiances. Consequently, if
authentically Thomistic tenets are allegedly at the core of Scholarios’s thought, how does such
a categorization of Scholarios prove reconcilable with core philosophoumena of Radulphus
Brito? Scholarios’s use of Brito, on the Ars Vetus, places George-Gennadios within a
Scholastic tradition that is definitively non-Thomistic in its foundational principles:
1.) Radulphus believed genus, species, etc. (viz., second intentions) are not mind-created
intentions. These concepts really correspond to modes of being outside the mind, and are
caused by these extra-mental things. 807 Second intentions are not resultant upon reflexive
activity of the mind. 808
807
According to Ebbesen (2000, 237) this is not true for Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis, Duns Scotus, or Armandus
of Bellovisu.
808
This becomes important for analyzing Gennadios’s explanation of second intentions in his treatises on the
essence-energies. He does not see second intentions via developing a more strict Aristotelian parallelism
between concepts inside and realities outside the mind. Instead, he asserts that second intentions are mind-
created objects of thought. For example, see Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:212). This follows the doctrine of
Armandus in manner of terminology and theory. See also Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:278).
202
2.) Radulphus explicitly adopted indivisible quantity as the principle of individuation. 809
3.) Radulphus asserted that the Thomistic distinction between esse and essentia was something
incomprehensible. 810
4.) Radulphus favored logical univocity of the concept of being in his Porphyrian commentary. 811
Scholarios, as noted by Barbour, later edited and rearranged parts of Armandus’s

commentary on the De ente et essentia based upon Palamite sensitivities. 812 Ebbesen and
Pinborg have also noted that editorial commentary, and not merely translation, takes place in
Scholarios’s translation of Brito. 813 Clearly, within his translation of Armandus’s commentary,
Scholarios was not shy to correct the Dominican Thomist if he deemed it necessary. 814 For his
part, Armandus had been fully committed to materia signata as the principle of individuation,
while Scholarios, in turn, promoted a substantially non-Thomistic, if verbally conciliatory,
view unrepresentative of Armandus and irreconcilable to Aquinas. One would think that
Scholarios, if truly an orthodox Thomist, would rearrange or eliminate all materials in his
editorial version of his commentary of the De ente et essentia that proved contrary to his
presumably overarching commitments to Thomism. 815 With Scholarios, this is not at all the
809
Scholarios and Brito 1933, chap. 12.18-21 (OCGS 7:75).
810
Ebbesen 2001, 457.
811
Ebbesen 2001, 457–458. Ebbesen has edited excerpts from Brito on univocity. Radulphus’s position can be
summed up: “[E]ns est unius rationis secundum se ad substantiam et accidens.” Although failing to identify
the sources, Paul Tavardon has successfully exposed Scholarios’s “doctrine” of univocity that is irreconcilable
to Thomism. See Tavardon 1977, 268–278.
812
Barbour 1993, 86–88.
813
814
Armandus 1482, fol. 15:
Ad hoc est dicendum sicut dicit doctor, quod materia signata est principium individuationis. Et ratio
huius est quia illud per quod individuum habet esse individuum in se et divisum ab alio est principium
individuationis, sed materia signata est huiusmodi, igitur et caetera. Maior patet quia illa quo sunt de
ratione individui. Minor declaratur quia per materiam individuum habet esse individuum in se, quia
secundum philosophum in primo physicorum substantia abstracta a quantitate remanet indivisibilis,
per quantitatem autem habet esse divisibile ab alio, quia divisio et distinctio attribuitur quantitati, igitur
utrumque coniungendo materiam cum quantitate tale coniunctum est principium individuationis. Sed
talis materia est materia signata, igitur et caetera. Ad argumentum in oppositum est dicendum quod
forma eo modo dat esse, etiam unum esse in specie, et si dicatur quod forma tamen haec dat esse
materiale, dicendum est quod verum est, sed illa forma non est haec nisi per signationem, igitur tota
causa individuationis est materia signata et non forma neque aliquid aliud, igitur et caetera.
This is word for word the same as. The arguments start on fol. 11 and are Thomistic.
815
Ebbesen (2001, 459–460) produces an extract from a MS containing Brito’s commentary (Quaestiones
Porphyrii, 19-21): “dico quod individuum substantiae, licet sit individuum per aliquod accidens, sicut iam
apparebit, illud accidens quod addit super speciem non includit in suo significato [. . .] dico quod individuum
substantiae est individuum per quantitatem indivisam et signatam.” This coincides with the doctrine espoused
203
case. While Barbour supposed that the Greek version of Armandus’s commentary on De ente
et essentia simply reflected Armandus ad litteram (save chapters ninety-three and ninety-four
on Palamism), Scholarios was in fact subtly mixing and matching his own scholia with
propositions of Brito and inserting both into Armandus’s Greek text. Scholarios actually
inserted Brito’s summation of individuation into Armandus’s commentary in favor of Brito. 816
Brito spoke of a historical group, whom he called “the ancients,” who had talked about form
as the principle of individuation, but Brito claimed in response: “Socrates has been divided
essentially through his own species from everything else, but he has been divided numerically,
not through an essential species. Now, such a [numerical] difference is not essential, but
through some sort of accident. Whence, it is necessary to distinguish both an essential form
and what is according to accident, and it is necessary that there is both something essential and
something episodic [viz., accidental].” 817 This line of argumentation and presentation is
exactly as that found in Brito’s works on the Ars Vetus. As a case in point of Brito’s anti-
Thomistic tenets (supra, no. 2) within the Scholarian corpus, Scholarios translated Radulphus’s
criticism and essentially rejected Thomas’s principle of individuation. In effect, Scholarios
substantially, though not nominally, rejected Aquinas’s physics. Nonetheless, it should be said
that – while modern scholars clearly pit Radulphus against Aquinas – fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century Schoolmen did not always think of Brito as fundamentally opposed to Aquinas.
Renaissance authors sometimes considered Brito to be a Thomist. Commentaries are even
found invoking Radulphus in defense of Aquinas. 818 However, if anything, this suggests the
popularity of Scotistic univocity, as embraced in Brito, even among Thomists of the age. It
would seem that not all Schoolmen were as subtle and skilled, as their aforementioned masters
by Scholarios in his translation of Radulphus, where he writes, in Scholarios and Brito 1933, chap. 12.1–11
(OCGS 7:78):
Ἕτεροι εἶπον διὰ μὲν τῆς μορφῆς ἀπολελυμένως μὴ εἶναί τι ἄτομον, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς μορφῆς, ὡς ἔστιν
ὅρος τῆς ποιητικῆς ἐνεργείας· οὕτω γάρ ἐστι καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τοῦ ποιεῖν μία τῷ ἀριθμῷ καὶ τόδε τι. Ἀλλ᾽
ἐντεῦθεν ἕπεται τὸ ἄτομον εἶναι ἄτομον κατὰ συμβεβηκός, καὶ συμβεβηκὸς ἀναφορικόν, καὶ ἔτι ὂν
ἀπολελυμένον καὶ ἄτομον καθ᾽ αὑτό, οὐ κατὰ συμβεβηκός. Διὰ τοῦτο ἄλλως φημὶ περὶ τούτου τοῦ
ζητήματος, ὅτι τὸ ἄτομον τῆς οὐσίας ἐστὶν ἄτομον τῇ ἀδιαιρέτῳ καὶ σεσημειωμένῃ ποσότητι· ὅθεν ἡ
αἰτία δι᾽ ἥν τί ἐστιν ἓν ἀριθμῷ ὑπάρχει τὸ τοιαύτην ἔχειν ποσότητα, ἥτις οὐ δύναται ἐν ἑτέρῳ
εὑρίσκεσθαι.
816
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:239).
817
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 53.7–10 (OCGS 6:235): “Ὁ Σωκράτης τῷ εἴδει αὐτοῦ οὐσιωδῶς
παντὸς ἄλλου διῄρηται, ἀλλ᾽ ἀριθμητικῶς διῄρηται, οὐ τῷ οὐσιώδει εἴδει· ἡ γὰρ τοιαύτη διαφορὰ <οὐκ>
οὐσιώδης ἐστίν, ἀλλά τινι συμβεβηκότι. Ὅθεν δεῖ διακρίνειν οὐσιώδη τε μορφὴν καὶ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, καὶ
εἶναι οὐσιῶδές τε καὶ ἐπουσιῶδες.”
818
204
were, so as to understand the fundamentally different metaphysics, metaphysical logic, and
physics that were underlying these various approaches.
Scholarios’s first rejection of this tenet within Thomism, within his translation-
commentary of Radulphus’s Ars vetus (1432/5), is repeated when editing Armandus (1445).
Scholarios introduced Radulphus’s doctrine of individuation into Armandus’s text and
announced an alleged harmony to exist between Britonian “quantitas indivisa” 819 and Thomist
“materia signata,” as if each were the very same principle of individuation. 820 Ebbesen has
recently published a collection of extracts clearly illustrating Radulphus’s ontology. For
Radulphus, Schoolmen (like Aquinas) who claimed that materia signata was the principle of
individuation are considered, in Ebbesen’s description of Brito, “metaphysical wimps.”
Radulphus adjudged such Aristotelian “materialists” as simply unwilling to admit that – once
matter becomes the principle of individuation (along with its first manifestation through
combination with form, viz., accident of quantity) – then logic and honesty force a real
philosopher to reduce everything to form (forma). Form is that out of which matter’s accidents
arise and, by speaking of matter under modification, one necessarily implies that it is
“informed.” Actually, Brito’s criticism was justifiable, even from Aquinas’s own texts, for he
had occasionally deviated from his own more regular appeals to materia signata as the
principle of individuation in creatures. 821 For Brito, only when quantity is taken in isolation
does one behold something not intrinsically divisible among forms, since quantity is a “this”
resulting from combination of matter and form. An accident – in isolation – individuates for
Brito. The disastrous effect of Brito’s thesis, for the Christian believer, is that each human
person is only “accidentally” different from another. The consequences of such a theory require
a good Christian to abandon it (as Radulphus himself did upon becoming a theologian or
magister of theology).
819
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:235–236): “ἀδιαίρετος ποσότης.”
820
Ebbesen 2001, 459.
821
See ST I.29.2, ad 3:
Ad tertium dicendum quod essentia proprie est id quod significatur per definitionem. Definitio autem
complectitur principia speciei, non autem principia individualia. Unde in rebus compositis ex materia
et forma, essentia significat non solum formam, nec solum materiam, sed compositum ex materia et
forma communi, prout sunt principia speciei. Sed compositum ex hac materia et ex hac forma, habet
rationem hypostasis et personae, anima enim et caro et os sunt de ratione hominis, sed haec anima et
haec caro et hoc os sunt de ratione huius hominis. Et ideo hypostasis et persona addunt supra rationem
essentiae principia individualia [. . .]
205
For his part, Scholarios forcibly reconciled these two contrary positions, not due to
naiveté, but due to the Dominican custom of a lectio reverenter of Aquinas, whenever
disagreeing with his official master or doctor. Scholarios created a narrative, wherein some
philosophers had historically argued for matter simpliciter (ὕλη ἁπλῶς) as principle of
individuation. After noting other variants, Scholarios proposed that: “An individual exists by
means of quantity [...]” (ἄτομόν ἐστι διὰ τῆς ποσότητος [...]). 822 Finally, Scholarios alleged
(implausibly) that Thomas had basically agreed with such philosophers, for “Aristotelians”
(i.e., those adopting Aristotle’s Physics) 823 had not explicitly denied that signate matter is the
principle of individuation. Since signate matter and indivisible quantity, taken singularly, each
holds its closest link with the other through matter (materia prima), these items are simply two
sides of the same coin. As such, George concluded, two supposedly contrary positions can be
made to agree with one another. Scholarios merely proposed that “it is better to say” what
Thomas had; namely, ἡ σεσημασμένη ὕλη, or materia signata, is the name of the principle of
individuation. Nonetheless, in the end, the Thomistic phrase takes its real meaning from an
accommodation to Britonian physics!
This case is one where Scholarios agreed with Thomas, insofar as Aquinas was
reconcilable to Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, to which George referred in the same
discussion. This description of Thomas smacks of a loose Thomism like unto Natalis. It does
not represent the Italian Renaissance Thomism then in vogue. Actually, Scholarios’s position
in 1445 was not yet definitive. Eventually, by the 1450s, he abandoned both Aquinas’s and
Brito’s principles of individuation to embrace the unique position of Hervaeus Natalis.
Scholarios’s first major treatise on the essence-energies shifts view:
822
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chap. 53 (OCGS 6:236–237):
ἀκριβολογούμενοι λέγουσιν αὐτοί, ὡς ἄρα τὸ τῆς οὐσίας ἄτομον, ἄτομόν ἐστι διὰ τῆς ποσότητος ὅθεν
τοῦ εἶναί τι ἓν ἀριθμῷ αἴτιόν ἐστι τὸ τοιαύτην ἔχειν ποσότητα ἥτις οὐκ ἂν εὑρεθείῃ ἐν ἄλλῳ [. . .] Οὐ
γὰρ διαφέρουσιν εἴδει ταῦτα ἄρα διῃρημένα εἰσὶν ἀλλήλων ἀριθμῷ διὰ τῆς ποσότητος. Ἀλλὰ δι᾽ οὗ
τι ἔχει τὸ διῃρῆσθαι ἀπ᾽ ἄλλου, διὰ τούτου ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἐστιν ἀδιαίρετον καὶ σεσημασμένον, διότι τὸ
ἀδιαίρετον εἶναι οὐδὲν πραγματικὸν προστίθησι τῷ εἶναι διῃρημένον [. . .] Ταῦτα τὰ τῆς οὐσίας μέρη
ἄτομα εἰσίν τὰ τῆς οὐσίας ἄτομα ἄρα ἐν ἑαυτοῖς εἰσιν ἀδιαίρετα καὶ ἄλλων διακεκριμένα τῇ ποσότητι
[. . .] Τὸ δὲ ἄτομον τῆς οὐσίας ἀδιαίρετον καὶ ἓν ἀριθμῷ φαμεν εἶναι, οὐχ ὡς μὴ δυνάμενον φυσικῶς
διαιρεῖσθαι [. . .], ἀλλ’ ὅτι οὐ δύναται διαιρεῖσθαι εἰς δύο ἄτομα τοῦ αὐτοῦ λόγου.
823
206
My translation (and emphasis): Scholarios, Contre les partisans
d’Acindyne: 824
In an even lesser degree the diverse speciated items are Ἧττον ἔτι τούτων τὰ ὑπὸ τῷ αὐτῷ γένει
distinguished under the same genus; for example, a man and ἑτεροειδῆ διακρίνονται, ὡς ἄνθρωπος, λόγου
a horse, which are under the genus ‘animal’; and even and χάριν, καὶ ἵππος ὑπὸ γένει τῷ ζῴῳ, καὶ
odd numbers under the genus ‘determined quantity’; further περιττόν τε καὶ ἄρτιον, ὑπὸ δὴ ποσῷ τῷ
on, in an even lesser degree the individuals are distinguished διωρισμένῳ· ἧττον αὖ τούτων τὰ ὑπὸ τὸ αὐτὸ
unto the same species; for they are distinguished by εἶδος ἄτομα διακρίνονται· συμβεβηκόσι γὰρ
accidents alone by which they are individuated, whereas διακρίνονται μόνοις, οἷς ἀτομοῦνται, εἴδει δὲ
these very items are they fully coincide as far as their species τὰ αὐτά εἰσι καθάπαξ, καὶ ἀριθμῷ μόνον, οὐχὶ
is concerned, and they are only distinguished items by καὶ οὐσίᾳ διῃρημένα. Ὁδὶ μὲν οὖν ἄνθρωπος
number, not by substance. E.g., “this man” and “that man” καὶ ὁδὶ οὐκ ἄν ποτε ἀλλήλοις συνέλθοιεν εἰς ἓν
would never come together into one individual, nor a man ἄτομον, οὐδὲ ἄνθρωπος ἁπλῶς καὶ ἵππος εἰς ἓν
and a horse into one species; but, on the other hand, the εἶδος· οὐσία δὲ ἡ συνθέτη μετὰ συμβεβηκότος
composite substance has harmoniously come together with πάσαις ἀνάγκαις συνίασιν
accident through necessity [by all means and purposes?].
Scholarios took up Hervaeus’s position that primary substance, along with its individual
accidents, forms the principle of individuation. Scholarios, in his Contre les partisans
d’Acindyne, asserted as did Hervaeus before him: “Mihi videtur differunt de quantitate et de
aliis accidentibus [...]” 825 Any hypothesis of Scholarios gradually burgeoning in his old age
with more Thomistic affinities cannot be justified by this passage. Hence, no ongoing Thomist
conversion during the course of Scholarios’s life is apparent. Scholarios simply changed his
mind continually on philosophical matters during the course of his career. Clearly, the
commentary on the De ente et essentia is much later than Scholarios’s translation of the logic
of Brito. Therefore, we cannot suppose that Scholarios abandoned his old theory of Britonian
individuation due to any burgeoning Thomism. Scholarios’s real solution to the problem in
1445 was to accommodate Aquinas to Radulphus’s doctrine and not vice versa. This case in
point (on individuation) is cause enough to be wary of encapsulating Scholarios within any
perfect species of Thomism, even on purely philosophical matters.
824
Scholarios discusses the question in detail in his first ex professo treatise; namely, Scholarios 1930a (OCGS
3: 204–227), not to mention OCGS 6:234. Cf. OCGS 3:229.
825
Natalis 1486, fol. 223r (III, q. 11).
207
Continuing in this vein, Scholarios has already been noted for his concern to omit
certain modes of expression that could be threatening to Palamite emphasis of a real distinction
obtaining between attributes within the essence of the godhead. 826 In chapter eighty-six of
Scholarios’s translation of Armandus, he faithfully translated the meaning of the text that deals
with the production of accidents from the principles of substance. In this, both Latin and Greek
theologians found it uncontroversial that no real accidents exist in God. 827 Then, from chapters
eighty-seven to ninety-two, Scholarios effortlessly translated Armandus’s commentary about
separated substances, since this has no direct bearing on Palamism. In chapter ninety-three,
another universally Christian value is affirmed by denying any σύνθεσις in the godhead.
Despite Barbour’s analysis of these chapters, he fails to investigate crucial scholia concerning
Palamism within the relevant chapters of Scholarios’s translation-commentary of Armandus.
First of all, Barbour was unaware of the metaphysical mixture of Radulphus Brito with Thomas
828
Aquinas anywhere within Scholarios’s Greek version of Armandus’s commentary.
Rejecting, then, any theory of a progressively Thomistic crescendo developing along the
chronological line of Scholarios’s opera, another substantiantially anti-Thomistic
metaphysical position serves to augment instances of my argument about a radically unfaithful
but nominally Thomistic Scholarios in chapter ninety-four of the commentary on the De ente
et essentia. Scholarios was entirely willing to part ways philosophically with Aquinas yet
again. In chapter ninety-four, or in his Excursus, Scholarios proposed an evaluation of second
intentions completely at odds with Radulphus Brito, though largely standard fare among
Thomists and Scotists.
First of all, Scholarios confronted the metaphysical theory in Latin logic of second
intentions as “creations of the mind.” If concepts such as “Plato is the subject [of a sentence]”
are propositions where the attributes of Plato are predicated only as second intentions, then –
unlike Brito – a second intention (e.g., “being the grammatical subject of a sentence”) is not a
property of Plato that flows directly from things outside the mind, as if these things cause the
826
Gennadios also brings up the subject with Pletho. His discussion of the point is rather brief. See
Demetracopoulos 2019a. For a discussion of Pletho’s anti-Palamism, see Tambrun-Krasker 1992, 168–179.
827
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:270–272).
828
Barbour (1993, 83–84, 110, 122) was aware of Brito’s influence on Scholarios, citing Ebbesen and Pinborg
(1981–1982) in his dissertation. Nonetheless, he failed to notice pro-Radulphus portions of the text, suggesting
more of Radulphus (or Hervaeus) potentially lurking within the pages of Scholarios’s so-called translation.
Nonetheless, Barbour did notice interpolations foreign to the original text that were of a Scholastic character.
208
aforesaid concepts or attributes. For Radulphus, second intentions are always caused by things.
For him, a second intention (especially those of the first order as, e.g., the concept of a species
and of a genus) reflects some real mode in a being extra animam. If Scholarios understood
Brito’s commentary on the Logica Vetus 829 correctly – and I think that he obviously did – then
this discussion should have been the key moment for Scholarios to attack Barlaam and
Akindynos logically and metaphysically according to Britonian fashion, by one of three
methods:
1.) Aristotelian: Scholarios could have attacked Armandus, in a more developed version of the
logical doctrine of Markos, whom Demetracopoulos describes as holding “naive
epistemological realism,” 830 believing that there is always an objective structural basis for
distinctions of thought (e.g., attributes of intellect and will) in the reality of an object. Since
Brito reinforces this Aristotelian gnosiology, why did Scholarios fail to imitate Brito?
2.) Modista Metaphysics: He could have attacked the Barlaamites and Akindynists for being bad
metaphysicians. If, in Britonian fashion, “first, second and third order” second intentions enjoy
real modes of existence outside the mind, then Scholarios could have opportunely asked: 831
a. How does Akindynist theory of second intentions solve the problem of composites in God by
referring all attributes (will, intellect, etc.) to the order of second intentions, which are only
products of the mind? This simply raises the question, for second intentions are, in Britonian
fashion, items caused by realities outside the mind.
b. How does Akindynist theory of second intentions disprove the Palamite position, for every
second intention, in Britonian fashion, corresponds to a reality that causes the concept within
the human mind? 832 Thus, whatever is known to be in the divinity:
i. is some sort of modally distinct real item and
ii. is caused by a res (or aliquid rei) in the real essence and not by the mind alone.
829
See especially Scholarios and Brito 1933, chap. 12.10–11 (OCGS 7:75), and also chaps. 16–17 (OCGS
7:99–106). For the relevant passage, my thanks to J. A. Demetracopoulos for providing me with his article,
Demetracopoulos 2019a.
830
831
Hervaeus, on this question is more reconcilable to Thomas. See Amerini 2009, 244, 247. Hervaeus’s notion
of a second intention is also unique since it includes notionally a relation. A first intention, objectively, does
not at all contain the notion of a relation to real being. See also De Rijk 1997, 352.
832
De Rijk 1997, 349–350. Brito is a strict Aristotelian with a view to a logical-real parallelism from the mind
to the world.
209
3.) Metaphysical Logic: Scholarios could have defended Palamites as the better metaphysical
logicians, because they notice that things cause ideas (as opposed to some figmentum mentis),
no matter how abstract. Since Brito’s philosophy is apt to oppose Akindynist belief that second
intentions are only mental fictions, why did Scholarios neglect it?
In short, why was Scholarios altogether silent, when Brito had provided him with a perfectly
opportune support mechanism for Palamism? After all, Brito’s arguments were advantageous
for apologetic purposes. Nonetheless, Scholarios adopted an ostensibly Thomist or Scotist
theory of second intentions, where δευτέραι επίνοιαι are mind-creations, or reflexive acts of
the mind – not effects of extramental objects acting on the mind: “Now, then, in intentions de
abstracto, which exist by the power of the mind, are also what are called ‘beings of reason’
and ‘second intentions’ [...] a distinction according to reason.” 833 This manner of considering
second intentions, in 1445, was maintained in Scholarios’s two other treatises dedicated to the
essence-energies question, for he promised in 1445 to take up the question in the future more
thoroughly by means of a special treatise. 834 Instead of using the more expedient line of attack
in Brito, Scholarios chose a mysteriously idiosyncratic route. 835
At this point, it may be valuable to introduce the reader to a summary of the variety of
Schoolmen, from whom (outside of Brito) Scholarios was able to adopt his philosophoumenon
concerning second intentions in order to resolve problems created by Aquinas and Armandus
in their essence-energies distinction in the godhead. Scholarios knew the various Thomistic
distinctions, especially the distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re (being more real) and the
“virtual distinction” (as more of a conceptual distinction within human knowledge, as based
on God’s virtual possession of such an attribute within his indistinguishable essence). We will
833
For example, see Scholarios 1930a, chap. 2.34–35 (OCGS 3:230): “Ἐν τοίνυν τοῖς ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως νοητοῖς
τῇ τοῦ νοῦ δυνάμει, ἃ καὶ τῆς ἐπινοίας ὄντα λέγεται καὶ δεύτερα νοητά, ἡ κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν ἐστὶ διάκρισις [. . .]”
834
Barbour (1993, 89) usefully provides Armandus’s definition (from his theological dictionary) of second
intentions as mind creations. Of course, this suggests that Scholarios shifted his theory of second intentions
from a Britonian to a Thomist understanding. However, by the 1450s, we see that Scholarios abandoned the
Thomistic principle of individuation for the exact position of Hervaeus. Both Armandus and Hervaeus equally
held for the mind-dependent (and caused?) second intentions, but only Hervaeus (and Scotists) would have
provided Scholarios with the tools to counter Armandus’s explanation of the purely mental distinction of
essence and energy in God, in such a way that he would be able to maintain allegiance to Thomism while
applying ad hoc Scotism in divinis.
835
Barbour (1993, 73n183) errs in his gratuitous supposition that the doctrine of second intentions in Brito and
Natalis “is practically the same.”
210
outline these distinctions further below. While Aquinas, as the originator of Thomism, held for
a number of distinctions, Iribarren has recently cataloged the trajectory of a young enthusiast
for Aquinas (viz., Hervaeus), who gradually added to the complexity and range of Thomistic
distinctions among ex professo Thomists of his day: “[Youthful Hervaeus had] not yet Scotus’s
formal distinction. At this early stage, Hervaeus still presupposes Aquinas’s notion that the
ratio of a thing is the result of second intentional knowledge, whereas the Scotist formal
distinction presupposes a notion of ‘formality’ as discerned in first intentional knowledge. The
formal distinction is therefore not equivalent to but stronger than the Thomistic distinction of
reason” (Iribarren 2002, 620). With respect to the Palamite debate, Iribarren’s description of
Aquinas, Natalis, and Scotus are apt to explain Scholarios bypassing Brito in order to defend
Palamism. If Scholarios’s project was to find a way to reconcile his enthusiasm for Aquinas to
his need for a more robust distinction in divinis (the divine essence), he needed to make
recourse to metaphysical logic that avoided accusations of Akindynism. Scotism held a
doctrine of the purely mental creation of second intentions that was much closer to Thomism.
Consequently, Scotism might have proved elastic enough both to graft it onto Thomas’s works
and to preserve his Palamism, serving the dual purpose of defending Aquinas from an overly
harsh condemnation and of providing his disciple Kamariotês with a doctrine that was palpable
for an Orthodox believer. While Scholarios, below, will be shown to admit that Aquinas was
factually guilty of Akindynism, it pained him to do so. Natalis, it would seem, provided George
with a convenient way to answer Aquinas’s critics by an honest appeal to a more developed or
advanced Thomism that was in the process of adopting a more nuanced reading of Aquinas,
but was equally retrofitting the Common Doctor with more advanced metaphysical distinctions
which happen to justify Palamism.
For Scholarios, Scotus’s understanding of God’s self-knowledge or theology ad intra
was incredibly convenient to defend Palamas. For Scotus – just as for Palamas – God knows
each of his realities (will, intellect, etc.) as formalities and even knows his will as something
formally (viz., conceptually in the first order) distinct from his intellect. 836 For that reason, it
is not tautological to say “God’s intellect chooses A” and “God’s will knows A.” The will as
a concept and an activity that is simply irreducible, formally or entitatively speaking, to an
intellect, because of some meaningful referent in intellect that is a different kind of item than
836
Scotus, Ord. I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4; I, d. 4, p. 2, q. 1.
211
what exists in what is called “will.” As such, even in the divine intellect, these two concepts
of will and of intellect do not refer to one monadic principle that virtually somehow (or rather
inexplicably) contains in itself these two clearly distinct notions and activities in some
mysteriously indistinct manner. Rather, both what is proper to the formal notion of being
voluntary and what is proper to the formal notion of being intellectual compenetrate the divine
essence, which is an object (res/πρᾶγμα), but these compenetrating energies do not constitute
a case of metaphysical composition due to the intrinsic aptitude (without suffering logical
contradiction) for such attributes to be infinite and, thus, completely in actu, or ἐν ἐνεργείᾳ.
As such these attributes are indifferently apt to exist in both a finite mode (as accidents or
properties) or in an infinite mode (as infinite, but distinct, items within the divine essence).
Propitiously, the self-styled Thomist, Hervaeus, turned his attention to the divine “ratio”
(λόγος) comprehended in each of the three persons as a formally distinct series of rationes and,
then, he applied this very same metaphysics to the attributes of God. Scholarios had finally
found a way to claim Aquinas as his own without risking the adoption of anti-Palamistic
metaphysics.
Scholarios put on display his philosophical genius in his intervention contra Armandum
in chapter ninety-four of Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ
τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας. He began his defensio Sancti Gregorii with the simple propositional
claim that “God is infinite.” 837 From that point de départ Scholarios began a series of
propositions and headings that are better developed at a later time in full treatises on Palamite
metaphysics. 838 Scholarios’s mode of argumentation has been continually evaluated as
reminiscent of Scotism. 839 Given the chronology of the work, Scholarios’s utilization of Scotus
is easily possible. First of all, however, is the question of the direct versus the indirect influence
of Scotism. For example, indirectly, Scotistic influence could have come upon Scholarios via
Prochoros Kydones’ translation of Hervaeus’s commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. There is
837
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:285). When developing a full treatise on the essence-energies
question, he asserts more precisely (ad mentem Scoti) that the essence of God is formally infinite, in Scholarios
1930a, Chap. 11.5–6 (OCGS 3:226).
838
Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:285).
839
In part, this is the case because of dividing being and its attributes into the “disjunctive transcendentals.”
Being is either eternal or temporal, either infinite or finite, either absolute or not absolute, either unparticipated
or participated. See OCGS 6:282.
212
840
even a hypothetical possibility of Prochoros translating Hervaeus’s Quodlibetales.
Scholarios’s contact with Dominican and Franciscan convents in Ferrara and Florence can
easily account for his access to any number of Schoolmen unavailable in Greek translation. 841
3. Scholarios’s Excursus within Armandus’s Commentary on De ente et essentia
While Aquinas’s De ente et essentia had been divided into only six briefly written
chapters, Armandus’s commentary is divided into (1.) eleven lectiones and (2.) one hundred
and thirty-five (a.) notanda and (b.) quaestiones. 842 For his part, Scholarios divided
Armandus’s work into 135 chapters, along with attaching a prolegomenon to his translation of
Armandus. Scholarios perhaps had access to numerous Greek translations of the Kydones
brothers before 1435. 843 Scholarios generically mentioned these Greek translations of Aquinas
in chapter ninety-four of the commentary on the De ente et essentia, or Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ
διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας. 844 One such
translation, to which Scholarios might have referred, could have been that of Prochoros
Kydones, who had provided the Byzantine world with large sections of Hervaeus’s
commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. Scholarios may have initially interested himself in
Hervaeus because of his presumably Thomistic credentials, not to mention the honorable
epithets with which Hervaeus was still saddled in some Dominican quarters, for Natalis had
successfully lobbied for the papal canonization of Aquinas. Whenever Hervaeus opted to
depart from the opinions of Thomas, he refrained from criticizing him overtly. This strategy is
not very different from Scholarios’s philosophical disagreements with Aquinas on select
philosophoumena. In the Scholarian translation of the commentary of Armandus, Scholarios
not only referenced Kydonian translations, as if he knew their content and Thomas’s teaching
on second intentions as contained in them, but he also alluded to a generation of modern
Schoolmen (somehow associated with Aquinas) who did not suffer from “Akindynism.”
840
Mercati 1931, 37–38. I place the terminus ante quem for Prochoros’s translations of the Sentences
commentary and of a hypothetical translation of his Quodlibeta c. 1366. Cf. Demetracopoulos 2010c, 824.
841
Other mendicant libraries in the East are also possible (viz., Candia). A more tantalizing source of
Scholarios’s Scotism lies in the Franciscan contingent of theologians at Ferrara, some of whom (e.g., John
Capistran) traveled to and from with massive libraries in tow.
842
Barbour 1993, 64.
843
Cacouros 2000a, 431; Blanchet 2008, 487. Cf. Scholarios 1931 (OCGS 5:2).
844
Henninger 1994, 311.
213
Among all supposedly pro-Thomistic Schoolmen, who exercised an influence on Scholarios,
none of them qualify as a potential candidate for an allegedly Palamite-friendly metaphysics
(viz., Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Richard of Mediavilla [mistakenly called
“Middleton”], Radulphus Brito, and Armandus of Bellavisu). What is more, Scholarios’s more
advanced vocabulary in discussions of second intentions limits our possible candidates to
either Radulphus or Armandus, the latter of whom is the very object of Scholarios’s Barlaamite
criticisms in his Excursus in chapters ninety-four and ninety five of Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ
διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας. Finally, Brito
cannot be implied due to his explicit rejection of the theory of second intentions as espoused
in Scholarios’s Excursus within Armandus’s commentary. Aquinas’s works were devoid of
much of the fourteenth-century vocabulary surrounding “second intentions” (e.g., de concreto
and de abstracto terms). Scholarios’s logical jargon, by the process of elimination, can be
explained – currently – only by recourse to Hervaeus (and, as we shall see, to the Franciscan
Francis Meyronnes). 845
The only (metaphysically) Scotistic work ever known in Greek translation is that of
Hervaeus. Although I have already shown that Eugenikos had cited verbatim Scotus’s
commentary on the Sentences of Lombard, this might simply be a case of ad hoc translation of
mere excerpts. Officially, Hervaeus acted the part of a fierce, self-styled Thomist and was also
a very outspoken proponent of the “common opinion” of frater Thomas. As Scholarios grafted
Brito onto Aquinas (e.g., the principle of individuation), so had Hervaeus, prior, grafted Scotus
onto the Common Doctor. Hervaeus employed Scotistic metaphysics to describe the
Trinitarian emanations by recourse to the formal distinction (as opposed to a Thomistic rational
845
See Scholarios and Armandus 1933 (OCGS 6:285). Demetracopoulos 2019a, correctly identifies some
shared vocabulary and theories of Radulphus that happen to agree with Hervaeus (viz., intentiones de abstracto
and de concreto). See also Hervaeus Natalis, In quattuor Petri Lombardi Sententiarum volumina scripta
subtilissima nuperrime in lucem castigatissime prodenutia (Venice: s.n., 1505), fol. 17r (I, d. 4, q. 2): “Unde
ista est vera ‘Sortes est homo.’ Alio modo accipit natura et suppositum pro abstracto et concreto sicut est hic
homo et humanitas.” Notably, Brito was still being employed in 1445 for his principle of individuation. For his
part, Hervaeus criticized Brito’s aggregate theory of intentions by resorting to a typical Thomist critique (cf.
Natalis, In quattuor Petri Lombardi, I, d. 4, q. 2; fol. 18v). Later, Scholarios adopted opinions from Hervaean
Quodlibeta regarding individuation. In the Armandus commentary, Scholarios seemed to abandon Brito on the
origin of second intentions (viz., mind creation per Natalis). Hervaeus argued against the indivisa quantitas in
his Quodlibeta, suggesting Scholarios’s access thereto. Hervaeus’s Quodlibet III discussed his logical theory
of second intentions. This Latin quodlibetal manuscript may also have been in the possession of Prochoros, per
Mercati (1931, 37–38), who suspected that Hervaean translations of Prochoros might be contained in Vat. gr.
609 (not to mention Vat. gr. 1102). Mercati’s list of distinctiones from the Sentences misses the bulk of
Hervaeus’s material on the formal distinction.
214
distinction). 846 In his more mature works, Hervaeus even wrote that the formal distinction
obtains between the divine attributes or energies and the divine essence. Hervaeus provided a
unique ready-made theory to justify Scholarios’s claim in his Excursus: “Many of the magistri
[viz., Franciscans and Hervaeus Natalis, OP] among Latins had determined for themselves on
this problem rather harmoniously with sacred Gregory of Thessalonica and the whole of our
Church. It would not be just to despise their number, since they are most wise and cast their
lot on the side of our Church, insofar as, on these matters, these [doctors] magisterially
determined precisely these [particular] matters.” I supply “Franciscans” within the brackets
because of Scholarios’s early marginalia, in his prolegomenon to Armandus’s commentary,
where he wrote:
[…] Some in Italy, especially those of the habit of Francis, many of whom I have frequented,
associate themselves so firmly with later teachers that they go as far as to accuse him [Thomas]
because of favoring the. [...] Neither are we [revere] Francis [Meyronnes], nor his teacher [John
Duns Scotus], as long as we give first place to the one who is first [Thomas Aquinas], all the
while admiring the subtlety of their [Scotist] intelligence, and even siding with them on many
points of inquiry. [...] Yet, according to the designation of most of us, the more recent
[Schoolmen] are rather Orthodox in comparison to Thomas; being that they are closer to us
and to the truth; namely, those who surround the Master John Scotus. 847
These “more recent Schoolmen” are clearly post-Scotian theologians, but not exclusively
Franciscan theologians, lest we simply see Scholarios commending “the habit of Francis” for
a second time. Instead, he first commended Franciscan Orthodoxy on the essence-energies
question, but then associated numerous Schoolmen (of the fourteenth century or perhaps of the
Modistae period). Hervaeus (and Armandus on select matters) seems to be the only author –
as non-Franciscan – who qualifies who would have led Scholarios to create a wider category
of “Latin theologians,” rather than merely mentioning Franciscans.
During this time, Scholarios was not only occupied with the essence-energies debate
and the filioque problem, but was also very worried about Plethonism. 848 He especially
846
Iribarren 2002, 624–627. This is especially the case from Quodlibet IV.
847
George-Gennadios Scholarios, prolegomenon to De ente et essentia (OCGS 6: 179,28-31; 180,21-24; 18,33-
35).
848
Jugie 1935, 517–530. Recently, this controversy has been explored in exhaustive detail by Demetracopoulos
2004b. Pletho’s arguments for the eternity of the world are investigated.
215
opposed Pletho’s pagan notion of fate, or εἱμαρμένη. 849 Prochoros’s Greek translations from
liber II of Hervaeus’s Sentences commentary (scripsit c. 1302) attacks the pagan theme of the
eternity of the world. 850 Prochoros’s Greek titles concern the eternity of the cosmos. 851 Granted
Prochoros’s Hervaean translations were available to Scholarios, Natalis would have provided
him an ingenious answer to the metaphysical enigma of the essence-energies problem as well.
Like Scholarios’s Excursus, Hervaeus had proffered his argument in behalf of his
robust essence-energies distinction by recourse to a positive notion of divine infinity. 852 This
is something altogether lacking in Thomas’s theological preoccupations due to his negative
Aristotelian definition of infinity. 853 Hervaeus became a promoter of divine infinity with the
result that the divine attributes, in their actuality, compenetrate the divine essence. Hervaeus
also discussed the analogical argument that became dear to Palamites; namely, if the distinction
of divine persons is of greater degree than that of the attributes, then any argument permitting
a real distinction among the persons intrinsically permits any less powerful distinction to hold
for the attributes. 854 As far as direct translations and citations of Scotus in Scholarios’s works,
I have been unable to locate any block citation from Scotus graecus before 1452, though
Monfasani has already shown how Scholarios in 1437 made direct use of Scotus’s commentary
on Lombard’s Sentences. 855 Scholarios turned his attention back to the Doctor Subtilis, or Duns
Scotus, in order to articulate more forceful arguments in defense of Orthodoxy. 856 Once again,
in 1445, Scotus was deemed worthy of an Orthodox pedigree, as far as his doctrine of the
Father’s primitas in the Trinity, his opposition to the Thomistic version of the filioque, 857 and
his formal distinction are concerned.
849
Scholarios was not the first Palamite Byzantine to oppose paganistic fate by recourse to Aquinas.
850
For dating, see Friedman 2007, 424.
851
Mercati 1931, 37–38; Iribarren 2002, 627. Prochoros translated Sent. I, d. 1, qq. 1–4 and 7 and Sent. I, d. 9,
q. 3 to Sent. I, d. 17, q. 3. NB, Sent. I, d. 11, q. 1 only is translated, along with the last part: “ad sextum” and q.
2. Also a Greek translation of Sent. II, d. 1 & d. 2, q. 1 (De aeternitate mundi) is known.
852
Allen 1960, 10–13. Cf. Aquinas 2018d, I, d. 43, q. 1, a. 1.
853
Cross 1999, 44–45. The Aristotelian simplicity criteria of Aquinas are aptly described by Cross as a
“controlling idea” that effectively closes the door on any consideration along the lines of Scotism.
854
The argument can actually be found in a rhetorical form already, by 1355, in Palamas, Gregoras, and
Phakrases 1988, 15.10–15 (GPS 4:210a). For a similar argument, cf. Duns Scotus 2015, 109–111, 118–119
(V.7, V.30).
855
Kappes 2017, 409–417.
856
Scholarios 1933 (OCGS 6:179–180).
857
For the doctrines of the Father’s primitas and filioque ad mentem Graecorum, see Cross 2007, 203–222;
Scholarios 1929b (OCGS 2:227); and Scholarios 1929a (OCGS 2:349).
216
217
218
Chapter Six: Scholarios’s Excursus in Chapter Ninety-Three of
Armandus’s Commentary on De ente et essentia
Introduction
Now that prior chapters have contextualized Scholarios and his intellectual propensities
up to his translation of Armandus, we may beneficially exegete his Palamite Excursus (viz.,
chapters ninety-three and ninety-four of Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου
βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας) inserted into his translation. Clearly, the entire
discussion of the essence and energies is located within the context of Aquinas’s attempt to
flesh out the distinction between “being” and “essence” along with other metaphysical terms
within his De ente et essentia. Fortunately, investigation of Ferrara-Florence and the debates
on the filioque explain very well Scholarios’s interest in understanding Aquinas’s position on
the distinction between esse and essentia. For this reason, as we shall clearly see below,
Scholarios begins his critique of Armandus only after many chapters of a fairly faithful
translation, where Scholarios affirmed the validity of a variety of Dominican concerns about
God; namely, the divinity cannot be – like a creature – of any composition from metaphysical
parts, whether categorical (substance-accident), physical (matter-form), or metaphysical
(being-essence). As Barbour notes, chapter ninety-three corresponds to Armandus’s “Utrum
in Deo sit compositio.” 858 Yet, the Greek version of this chapter fulfills Scholarios’s earlier
promise in his translation, in chapter nine, to treat God after discussing “Whether esse and
essentia really differ in creatures” (Πότερον τὸ εἶναι καὶ ἡ οὐσία διαφέρουσι πραγματικῶς ἐν
τοῖς κτίσμασιν). 859 At the end of his arguments, Armandus affirmed that creatures’ esse and
existentia (or essentia) “really differ” (differunt realiter). Yet, Scholarios interpolated into
Armandus’s text the following: “We shall speak of what manner this is with respect to God
after these present discussions, but now we will handle the adjacent question” (Πῶς δέ ἐστιν
ἐπὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, μετὰ ταῦτα ἐροῦμεν· ἀλλὰ νῦν τοῦ προκειμένου ζητήματος ἐχώμεθα). 860 Eighty-
four questions later, Scholarios finally arrived at Armandus’s presumptively Akindynist
858
Barbour 1993, 86.
859
860
219
solution, which Scholarios opposed. Again, it is worth noting that the terms and context of this
naturally represent an outgrowth of the debate in Montenero’s argument with Eugenikos at
Florence. Montenero was interpreted to read Thomism back into Basil’s Contra Eunomium,
saying that the Spirit “had his esse from the Father and the Son,” while Eugenikos denied that
any divine person can “have its esse from another” (habens esse), which is properly Aquinas’s
way of speaking about the esse of a creature. Returning to the commentary on the De ente et
essentia, Barbour correctly points out for his reader that the original title of Armandus’s earlier
chapter read: “Utrum esse et essentia differunt realiter.” 861 As just mentioned, Scholarios
inserted original material into chapter nine because of his post-Florentine context. After all, as
we saw, Andrew Chrysoberges attempted to resurrect a debate on the 1351 Palamite synod that
served as the tipping point for Nikephoros Gregoras to throw in his lot with the opponents of
Gregorios Palamas. Later, at the end of chapter ninety-three, when Scholarios explained the
distinction of the divine essence and energies, he was able to claim: “From the aforesaid
explanation, it is clear as well what is necessary also to opine about the recently rehashed
discussion among us [Latinophrôn Greeks and Orthodox].” 862 This historical note obliquely
refers to Markos’s criticism of the Thomistic position of Kalekas in the 1430s and his Epistola
encyclica in 1440, both of which criticize similar positions before and after Florence. The
center of the debate can be reduced to the assertion of Markos: “the οὐσία and ἐνέργεια of God
are not the same in identity, but they differ.” 863
Next, as Barbour keenly notices, Armandus’s original explanation of chapter nine
reads: “It is necessary to say that esse and essentia differ really in creatures, but they are the
same in God” (Dicendum est quod esse et essentia in creaturis different realiter, in Deo autem
sunt idem). 864 Scholarios’s translation entirely omits any reference to esse and essentia being
the same (in their identity) in God. 865 In chapter ninety-three, Scholarios followed up with a
descriptive definition of divine essentia as referring to a foundation for the collection of divine
perfections (wisdom, will, etc.) taken together, which differ from God’s being (sometimes
referred to, by Scholarios, as pure act or being in act) as their foundation. 866 While Scholarios
861
Barbour 1993, 86.
862
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 93 (OCGS 6:278).
863
Eugenikos 1849, 217 (1.1).
864
865
Barbour 1993, 86.
866
OCGS 6:280.
220
did not hold for a real distinction between esse (οὐσία) and essentia (τὸ εἶναι) in God, Barbour
analyzes Scholarios through the eyes of an ex professo Thomist. Therefore, it is understandable
why Barbour is somewhat disconcerted by the Scholarian “real distinction” in divinis. While
Barbour affirms the presumptively objective truth of orthodox Thomism, he can only surmise
that Scholarios was trying to collapse Scotus’s formal distinction into Thomas’s distinctio
rationis cum fundamento in re. 867 Barbour attempts to maximize a Thomistic reading of
Scholarios to solve the uncomfortable and glaring inconsistency. Barbour only briefly
considers in passing whether Scotus had also held for God’s esse to be formally and really and
entitatively the same as his essentia. 868 Barbour’s monograph, furthermore, gives one the
impression that the author is entirely unfamiliar with medieval and Renaissance Scotists (as
illustrated in his bibliography and laconic descriptions of Scotism) and their respective theories
of first and second intentions. Consequently, the various sources and strategies that Scholarios
employed to interpret Armandus cannot be accurately analyzed without recourse to primary
texts outside of Barbour’s personal canon of bona fide Thomists. The first text that gave
Barbour trouble begins with a literal translation of Armandus at the head of Scholarios’s
Excursus:
Chapter 93: Whether there is a Composition in God Εἰ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ Θεῷ λόγου σύνθεσις 869
However, we are not able to suppose this composition in God. Ἐν τῷ Θεῷ δὲ ταύτην οὐ δυνάμεθα τιθέναι
For, although the essence of God is per se some sort of τὴν σύνθεσιν. Εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἐνέργειά τις ἐστὶ
‘energy’, it is but unable at any rate to take on the notion of καθ’ αὑτὴν ἡ οὐσία τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀλλ’ οὐδαμῶς
potency; for, it does not possess the act of existence and the ὑπελθεῖν δύναται τὸν τῆς δυνάμεως λόγον·
other potencies [as something different from itsself] [i.e., esse οὐ γὰρ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι οὐδὲ τὰς ἄλλας
and essentia are really separate for orthodox Thomists], but δυνάμεις, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ἡ αὐτὴ τούτοις
this essence really coincides with these potencies, because in πραγματικῶς διὰ τὸ ταὐτὸν εἶναι πάντα ἐν τῷ
God all things coincide. If someone says that the essence of Θεῷ. Εἰ δὲ λέγοι τις δύνασθαι τὴν οὐσίαν
God is able to be considered as receiving existence and that its τοῦ Θεοῦ θεωρεῖσθαι ὡς τὸ εἶναι
act of existence is able to be considered as something λαμβάνουσαν, 870 καὶ τὸ εἶναι αὐτοῦ ὡς δὴ
“received,” just like it is in creatures, and that thereby there is λαμβανόμενον, καθώς ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς
867
Barbour 1993, 87–92.
868
For a discussion of this exact point in Scotus and for differences between Scotus and Meyronnes on the
nature of the real distinction between esse and essentia in creatures, see Cross 2013, 174–202.
869
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 93 (OCGS 6:277–278).
870
Aristotle, Analytica priora, 76b 6–10.
221
even in God some sort of composition of reason, one should κτίσμασι, κἀντεῦθεν εἶναί τινα κἀν τῷ Θεῷ
know that the “composition of reason” is true, whenever there σύνθεσιν λόγου, ἀλλ’ εἰδέναι δεῖ, ὅτι ἡ τοῦ
is in re [in the thing itself] something that corresponds [to the λόγου σύνθεσις ἀληθής ἐστιν, ὅταν
composition]. Just as when we assert that the essence of angel ἀποκρίνηταί τι ἐν τῷ πράγματι, ὥσπερ τὴν
is really, i.e. as far as its real being is concerned, a kind of act τοῦ ἀγγέλου οὐσίαν φαμὲν πράγματι, τό γε
and that the angel receives the act of existence as something ἐφ’ ἑαυτῇ, ἐνέργειαν εἶναί τινα, καὶ πράγματι
that is distinct from his essence –in which case this δέχεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ὡς διαφέρον αὐτῆς, καὶ
“composition of reason”, which we suppose in the angel, holds οὕτως ἡ τοῦ λόγου σύνθεσις αὕτη, ἣν ἐν τῷ
for something in re [or the thing itself]. But this is not so for ἀγγέλῳ τίθεμεν, ἔχει τι ἐν τῷ πράγματι, οὐχ
God; for His essence, since it is act, does not receive the act of οὕτω δέ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ· ἡ γὰρ οὐσία
existence as something that differs from its essence. Whence, αὐτοῦ, ἐνέργεια οὖσα, οὐ δέχεται τὸ εἶναι ὡς
there is not a composition of reason in Him truly from these διαφέρον αὐτῆς· ὅθεν οὐδὲ τοῦ λόγου
items [of essence and existence] on this account, for [the σύνθεσίς ἐστιν ἀληθῶς ἐν αὐτῷ διὰ ταῦτα ἐκ
distinction] has no fundamentum in re (foundation in the thing τούτων· οὐ γὰρ ἔχει θεμέλιον ἐν τῷ
itself), but is a composition produced or formed by our soul. πράγματι, ἀλλ’ ἔστι σύνθεσις ὑπὸ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς πεποιημένη ἢ πεπλασμένη.
In chapter nine of his Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ
τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας, Armandus was translated with the equivalent phrase “ἐν τῷ πράγματι”
to describe the foundation or object grounding the distinctio realis (πραγματικὴ διάκρισις) that
obtains between esse and essentia. There, Armandus is correctly translated as someone arguing
for something “really” distinct “in creatures.” The only difference is that Armandus
emphasized the realness of this distinction in the plural, that is, in created things.
However, Scholarios cleverly exploited the inherent ambiguity of the Greek term
πραγματικῶς in order to transition away from Armandus’s developed notion of a Thomistic
esse-essentia distinction, for Scholarios equally used πραγματική as an adjective to refer to the
“formal distinction” (elsewhere, εἰδικὴ διάκρισις) 871 in chapters ninety-three and ninety-four.
In his translation of Armandus, only once did Scholarios change the description of the essence-
871
In Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 12.5–33 (GPS 4:206a–b), his most mature position rejects
specific or specifying differences in the divine essence (e.g., as rationality specifies the genus of animal).
Nevertheless, Palamas simultaneously asserted that the plurality of divine distinctions encompasses items that
are essential, natural/physical, and universal/common energies. The significata are clearly attributes that can
be accurately described by recourse to abstract concepts or universals, but these are really present as non-
categorical attributes. There simply is no specific vocabulary for such a kind of subtle distinction until the
translations of Bonaventure, Scotus, et al., into Greek, beginning in the fourteenth century.
222
energy distinction from “real” to “formal.” 872 Scholarios meticulously applied his knowledge
of Aquinas and of other self-styled Thomists to equivocate the meaning of Armandus’s phrase,
“real distinction.” After all, it is entirely possible that Thomas himself had initially supposed
the esse-essentia distinction to be merely a “distinction of reason,” at least at the time when he
was writing the De ente et essentia in his youth. 873 Only later in life did Thomas incontestably
present his ideas about a “real distinction” obtaining between esse and essentia. With this
ambiguity in mind Scholarios translated Armandus’s presentation of Aquinas’s doctrine as
follows:
Armandus’s interpretation of Aquinas: Εἰ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ Θεῷ λόγου σύνθεσις 874

For [Aquinas] posits such a kind of differentiation, out Ἐν ἡμῖν γὰρ τὴν διαφορότητα τίθησιν τὴν τοιαύτην,
of which a composition would come about, in us [i.e. in ἐξ ἧς ἂν γένοιτο σύνθεσις, οὐκ ἐν τῷ Θεῷ. Ὁρῶντες
our minds], but not in God. For, when we see that this γὰρ τὴν τοιαύτην σύνθεσιν ἐν τοῖς κτίσμασιν, ὡς
kind of synthesis is in creatures, as was said above, and εἴρηται, νοοῦντες δὲ τὸν Θεὸν τῇ τῶν κτισμάτων
we are considering God through the path of creatures we ὁδῷ, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ φαμὲν τὴν τοιαύτην τοῦ λόγου
say that such a composition of reason exists in him σύνθεσιν εἶναι· “ἔστι δὲ ἁπλοῦς παντάπασιν ὁ
[God], too, whereas in fact “God is in every respect Θεός, 875 καὶ ἐν τῷ ἐσχάτῳ τῆς ἁπλότητος
simple, and he is situated in the extreme of simplicity”. ἱδρυμένος,” 876 οὐ μέντοι γε διὰ τοῦτο δεῖ λέγειν
Yet, it is not in the least necessary for us to state, because ἡμᾶς, ὅτι καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι, τοῖς περὶ Θεοῦ
of the above truth, that there nothing at all that really λεγομένοις καὶ οἷς ἀνυμνοῦμεν αὐτόν, οὐδέν τι
corresponds to the many names, by which we send laud ἀποκρίνεται ἐν τῷ πράγματι· συνθέσεως μὲν γάρ τι
up to him [i.e., God]. For, there is nothing [in God] that οὐκ ἀποκρίνεται τῇ τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν νοημάτων συνθέσει,
corresponds to the composition of the concepts that are ἑκάστῳ δὲ ὀνόματι τῶν περὶ Θεοῦ λεγομένων
extant in our minds, and yet there does exist something ἀποκρίνεταί τι ἐν τῷ πράγματι· ἄλλως γὰρ
in re that corresponds to each of the names predicated of ἐψευδόμεθα ἄν, συντιθέντες τὰ τοιαῦτα ὀνόματα καὶ
872
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 94 (OCGS 6:284.2). NB, all references to the Excursus signify the original
composition of Scholarios, in Scholarios and Armandus 1933, chaps. 93–94.
873
Maurer 1968, 22–24.
874
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 93 (OCGS 6:278.5–20).
875
Cf. Scholarios and Aquinas 1931b, III.97.
876
Cf. Kydones 1931b (Mercati 1931, 434), who was perhaps inspired by Thomist thought or who perhaps
inspired Scholarius choice of vocabulary in his translation of Armandus:
εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ κακυνθήσεται, ἡ γὰρ τοῦ ὄντος μείωσις προσθήκη γίνεται τῷ κακῷ, καὶ τούτῳ γένεσις
ἡ τοῦ ὄντος στέρησις. ὡς γὰρ ὄντος καὶ οὐσίας ἕκαστον, οὕτως ἔχει καὶ ἀγαθοῦ. Οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸν
Θεὸν οὐκ ἐν τῷ ἐσχάτῳ πάσης ἁπλότητος ἱδρυμένον ἀλλὰ πολυσύνθετόν τι νοήσομεν καὶ μικτόν,
τοσαῦτα καὶ οὕτως ἀλλήλων διαφέροντα ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχοντα, ὧν ἕκαστον εἰ μὲν θεός, διαφέρον τῶν
ἄλλων, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτῳ τὸν ἕνα καὶ ἀληθῆ Θεὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς μυθολογίας διακρινοῦμεν· εἰ δὲ μὴ
θεός, ἐκ μὴ θεῶν τὸ Θεῖον συμπληρωθήσεται καί τι τέρας κατὰ τοὺς κενταύρους πολυμερὲς καὶ
ἀνώμαλον νοηθήσεται, τοσούτων ἀνομοίων ἀλλήλοις πραγμάτων εἰς αὐτὸ συνδραμόντων.
223
God. For, should this not be so, we would be lying προτάσεσί τισι τοιαύταις ἀποδιδόντες ἔνια τῷ Θεῷ,
[about God] by composing these predicates with God [as τουτέστιν ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς ἀγαθός ἐστιν, ἢ ὅτι ἀληθής, ἤ τι
a subject] and atributing by means of such propositions τοιοῦτον· τοῦτο δὲ ἄτοπόν ἐστι περιφανῶς· εἰς γὰρ
some things to God, namely: “God is good,” or that “He τὴν ἱερὰν Γραφὴν ἀνατρέχει μᾶλλον τὸ τοιοῦτον
is truthful,” et sim.; clearly, this is an absurdity. In fact, αἶσχος καὶ εἰς αὐτὴν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. 877 Ταῦτα τῇ τοῦ
in the last resort, this bad thing blames on the Holy διδασκάλου δόξῃ συμφέροντα εἴρηται, ὡς οἰόμεθα·
Scripture and the very truth. I have said these things in ἵνα δὲ διεξοδικώτερον ἡμῖν ὁ περὶ τούτων γένηται
accordance with the sentential judgment of the doctor. λόγος.
Now, in order to discuss the issue in more details […].
The latent inspiration for the opening discussion of Scholarios’s Excursus is the last will and
spiritual testament of Demetrios Kydones, to whom Scholarios will be seen to refer more
openly in chapter ninety-four of his Excursus. Scholarios’s argument, so far, may be reduced
to confronting problematic anti-Palamism. Although the debates at the Council of Ferrara-
Florence clearly served as the impetus for Scholarios to study the De ente et essentia and to
write the whole of his Excursus, the origins of Chrysoberges’ anti-Palamism at Florence came
from Demetrios Kydones, mediated to Andrew through his access to Kydones’ library and
ulterior treatises of Manuel Kalekas. Hence, the first brothers to use Byzantine Thomism to
oppose Palamas, similar to its use at Florence, first formulated their objections in the second
half of the fourteenth century. Consequently, Scholarios needed to distance himself from this
kind of Thomistic reading of Aquinas’s texts in order to remain convincingly – in the eyes of
his peers and to the chagrin of his naysayers – within the camp of Gregorios Palamas.
1. Scholarios and His First Argument against Armandus in His Excursus
In the text above, the translation is explicitly a case of rendering Latin terms of
Schoolmen into Greek and confronting them on their own merits. Subsequently, Scholarios
moved to present creative arguments in favor of his own Palamistic position:
877
The point of departure for this controversy, as with much of Scholarios’s Excursus, arose out of a late debate
with Nikephoros Gregoras in 1355. Gregoras recorded Palamas’s argument that Scripture supposes real
referents for the attributes that it ascribes to the divinity. See Gregoras 1855, 274.15–19 (XXX.10), 312.142–
145 (XXX.63). NB, Lombard, Sent. I, d. 2.1–5, is interested in the relation between scriptural metaphor and the
divine realities that are thereby signified. Most Latin commentaries attempt a way to bridge the gap between
the names used for God and the immaterial nature thereof.
224
Scholarios, Excursus (Argument 1) Εἰ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ Θεῷ λόγου σύνθεσις 878
[Section 01] Firstly, it is necessary to know that “God is most πρῶτον μὲν εἰδέναι δεῖ, ὅτι “ὁ Θεὸς
simple,” as was just said above. For, in him, there is neither ἁπλούστατός ἐστιν,” 879 ὡς εἴρηται· οὔτε γὰρ
composition that arises from some quantity of parts (since τῶν κατὰ ποσότητα μερῶν ἐστι σύνθεσις ἐν
God is not a body); nor is he composed of matter and form, αὐτῷ· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ Θεὸς σῶμα, οὔτε ἐξ ὕλης
since he is entirely immaterial. Nor, too, is there a καὶ εἴδους σύγκειται, παντάπασιν ἄϋλος ὤν·
composition of nature and substrate in him; [section 02] for οὔτε φύσεως καὶ ὑποκειμένου σύνθεσις ἐστὶν
this very divine form, i.e., the godhead [divinity], is – as ἐν αὐτῷ· αὐτὸ γὰρ τὸ θεῖον εἶδος, τουτέστιν ἡ
something subsistent – a substrate, and per se has the very act θεότης, ὑποκείμενόν ἐστιν ὑφεστώς, καὶ καθ’
of existence and the fact that it is individual. Whence, in no αὑτὴν ἔχει τὸ εἶναι τοδὶ καὶ ἄτομος. Ὅθεν
way is it different for us to believe in one godhead and one οὐδὲν διαφέρει πιστεύειν ἡμᾶς εἰς μίαν
God, but these aforesaid are the same, even if diversified by θεότητα, καὶ ἕνα Θεόν, 880 ἀλλὰ ταὐτόν εἰσι
“the mode of signification.” [section 03] Following from the ταῦτα, εἰ καὶ τῷ τρόπῳ τῆς σημασίας
aforesaid, neither is God composed of [i.] essence, and [ii.] διενηνόχασιν. Οὔτε ἐξ οὐσίας καὶ τοῦ εἶναι
the act of existence, nor from [iii.] a genus and [iv.] difference, σύγκειται διὰ τὰ εἰρημένα, οὔτ’ ἐκ γένους καὶ
due to the fact that some potency in God may not join act, διαφορᾶς διὰ τὸ μήτε ἐν τῷ Θεῷ δύναμίν τινα
which potency would derive from the part of the genus, as in τῇ ἐνεργείᾳ συνάπτεσθαι, ἥτις ἂν δύναμις ἐκ
respect to all these having the character of composed items in τοῦ μέρους τοῦ γένους λαμβάνοιτο, ὡς ἐπὶ
this [aforesaid] manner, as well as due to the fact that God is πάντων ἔχει τῶν οὕτω συγκειμένων, μήθ’ ὅλως
not in a genus at all. Nor is he even so per analysis, thinking εἶναι ἐν γένει τὸν Θεόν· οὐδὲ κατ’ ἀνάλυσιν ὡς
that he is the principle of all beings, according as some were ἀρχὴν ὄντα πάντων, καθά τινες ᾤοντο. Ἀλλ’
wont to think. All the less, there is no composition of subject οὐδὲ πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὑποκειμένου καὶ
and accident in Him; for it is not at all possible that an accident συμβεβηκότος ἐστὶν ἐν αὐτῷ σύνθεσις· οὐδὲν
exists in him “who is simply first” and first cause of all things. γὰρ ἐν αὐτῷ συμβεβηκὸς εἶναι δύναται,
Therefore, granted so many [aforesaid] modes of “ἁπλῶς” ὄντι “πρώτῳ” 881 καὶ πρώτῳ πάντων
composition exist more or less, since it is according to no αἰτίῳ. Τοσούτων οὖν σχεδὸν ὄντων τῶν τῆς
878
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 93 (OCGS 6:278.20–40, 6:279.1–2). NB, Scholarios departs from Armandus
(1482, 31v [Lectio VII, pars 10]) at OCGS 6:281.9.
879
ST III.1.1, arg. 2; cf. Scholarios and Aquinas 1931a, II.85.
880
ST Ι.40.1: “Considerandum tamen est quo, propter divinim simplicitatem, consideratur duplex realis identias
in divinis eorum quae differunt in rebus creatis. Quia enim divina simplicitas excludit compositionem formae
et materiae sequitur quod in divinis idem est abstractum et concretum, ut deitas et Deus.” Cf. ST I.28.2, where
the distinctions in divinis are only limited to being relatives (relationes), but to nothing essential, and DZ 745,
where Gilbertus Porretanus is condemned just after the Council of Rheims (1148) for making a real distinction
between Deus and deitas.
881
Scholarios and Aquinas 1931b, I.3, I–II.109.
225
one of these modes that God is composed, we reasonably συνθέσεως τρόπων, ἐπεὶ κατ’ οὐδένα τούτων
believe God is bereft of all composition: In no way is it οἷόν τέ ἐστι συντεθεῖσθαι τὸν Θεόν, εἰκότως
harmonious that he is in some way composed both with the ἀπηλλάχθαι πάσης συνθέσεως τοῦτον
fact that God is the first being and the first and universal πιστεύομεν· καὶ αὐτῷ δὲ τῷ εἶναι τὸν Θεὸν
cause, since every composed item has a cause which unites πρῶτον ὂν καὶ πρώτην καὶ κοινὴν πάντων
in it its different items (for otherwise they would not have αἰτίαν οὐδαμῶς συμφωνεῖ τὸ συντεθεῖσθαί πως
been possible to be brought together into a unity from αὐτόν, εἴ γε πᾶν σύνθετον αἰτίαν τε ἔχει τὴν
themselves) and is posterior to its components and depends ἑνοῦσαν ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ διαφέροντα, ὡς
on them. ἄλλως ἂν οὐ δυνάμενα ἀφ’ αὑτῶν συνελθεῖν
εἰς ἑνότητα, καὶ ὕστερόν ἐστι τῶν συντιθέντων
αὐτὸ καὶ ἠρτημένον ἐκείνων.
In Argument 1, section 01, the entire discussion is simply a series of affirmations from a
faithful Palamite, who asserted that his heroes and allies had neither been guilty of crude
philosophical errors, nor of anciently condemned heresies. Any “parts,” matter, form, and any
discussions of a subject capable of receiving accidents, with reference to God, are all cases of
gross composition. 882
Next, in Argument 1, section 02, the concern about the relation between “godhead” or
“divine essence” and “God” might at first look suspiciously like accusations within intra-
Byzantine conflicts from the controversial period of first-generation Palamism (from the likes
of Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras), but in fact the theory being rejected is one traditionally
attributed to Gilbertus Porretanus (c. 1148). 883 Porretanus, in summary, has more recently been
cataloged in his Trinitarian speculations as fundamentally Platonic, inasmuch as he supposed
every created thing to be something like “a bad copy” or like a photocopy of its divine
exemplar, because of its imitation of the form in a limited manner; due to a copy being
something immersed in gross matter. 884 Contrarily, Latin Schoolmen avoided claiming that
God was a combination of any two or more of Porphyry’s predicables: genus, species,
difference, property, or accident. Similarly, as Scholarios was preparing to take up Scotism
(itself often described as a Neoplatonic reaction to Aristotelianism), he needed to anticipate
882
Although not quoted from Damascene, this affirmation was a point of contention when dialoguing with
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 12.10–25 (GPS 4:204a).
883
Scholarios would almost certainly have never accessed the chronicles reporting Gilbertus’s condemnation.
Instead, among the sources that I suggest for Scholarios below, Bonaventure would have been most enlightened
to understand what was at stake, in Bonaventure 1883, I, d. 33, a. unicus, q. 1 conclusion (Quarrachi 1b:372b).
884
Ebbesen 2004, 138–139.
226
traditionally Thomistic objections to distinctions within the divine essence; namely, that
Scotism allegedly imitates errors of Gilbertus. This accusation was fairly standard fare among
Thomists. 885 Still, insofar as sources are concerned, we discover in Scholarios’s Excursus
nothing inherently objectionable to Aquinas and his subsequent followers, as of yet.
However, continuing our exegesis of Argument 1, section 02, Scholarios looks to be
partially a Scotist, claiming: “Form (viz., forma) [...] is – as something subsistent – a subject
(viz., subiectum), and a se has ‘this’ (viz., haec) act of existence and is an individual
(individuum).” In fact, this builds upon the explicit doctrine of Scotus (Quodlibeta, IV [no.
20]). As Cross notes: “Scotus believes [...] that this [divine] essence, although not a person or
suppositum, it is a subsistent in itself.” 886 Still, although the foundation for Scholarios’s
description of the divine essence is somewhat Scotistic, he adds a peculiar order of natural
operations of the divine essence (i.e., Palamistic φυσικά that necessarily flow from the divne
φύσις): (1.) form-essence, (2.) subsistence, (3.) haecceity (this-ness), (4.) existence, (5.)
individual. In fact, this order follows the more independent Scotism of Francis Meyronnes’
description of the divine essence: (1.) essence, (2.) infinity, (3.) haecceity, (4.) existence, (5.)
actuality. 887 Francis Meyronnes, OFM (c. 1288–c. 1328), does not enjoy the name recognition
of medieval and Renaissance confreres such as Bonaventure and Bernardino of Siena. 888 Still,
the so-called doctor abstractionum merits the awe that he once garnered among his fellow
Schoolmen. 889 At Francis’s zenith, he was named by numerous honorific epithets. Schoolmen
even spoke about the via Mayronis and about Francis’s followers as Mayronistae. 890
885
Scotus and Palamas were traditionally condemned together for isomorphic doctrine (e.g., errors of Gilbert
Porretanus; viz., making a distinction between “God” and “his divinity”). See Duplessis D’Argentre 1727,
286a, 323a–b; Petavius 1745, 77a–b. Petavius (d. 1652) pairs Scotus with Palamas’s distinction with exact
metaphysical parallels via primary sources. Afterwards, Thomasian theology textbooks correctly note
metaphysical equivalency between Scotus and Palamas as, for example, Sedlmayr, Paruckher, and Selzer 1735,
46–47.
886
Cross 2007, 181; Duba (forthcoming), 178–185. The divine essence is exemplifiable, or “able to be
possessed” but is a per se existent (not a dependent existence). In this sense, per se existence is subsistence in
a primary sense. In a secondary sense, “subsistent” (like Father, Son, and Spirit) means individuality through
singularity.
887
Maurer 1971, 212.
888
See Roth 1936, and Rossmann 1972.
889
See also Lambertini 2002, 256–257; and Duba 2011, 364–366.
890
Francis took up posts reading the Sentences of Peter Lombard in Franciscan provincial studia in France and
Italy until 1318. Afterwards, he returned to Paris (1320–1321) as a Bachelor of Theology, lecturing on
Lombard’s Sentences. He was promoted to magister of theology on May 24, 1323, at the explicit request of
John XXII, per the solicitation of Robert of Anjou, king of Naples. In the same year, Francis was elected the
provincial minister to Aquitaine, in which capacity he served for about five years. During his final years (1324–
28) he was often invited to Avignon to deliver sermons and disputations and even to serve in a diplomatic
227
Scholarios had not yet had the opportunity to introduce a discussion of infinity
(Meyronnes, supra, no. 2). So it is unsurprising that he does not elaborate on something that
has yet to be discussed. Instead, his point of departure is “form” or εἶδος. This is not particularly
Scotistic. Why might this have been his preferred way to begin a discussion that otherwise
appears to be perfectly in line with Meyronnes? In answer, for Modistae generally, a subject
of an accident must be already informed matter so that any subject is already a first substance.
Here, Scholarios did not wish to speak about accidents in the immaterial God, but only about
form, that is, what is act and what is “universal,” as prior to any additive or bare particular
(suppositum) that individuates a generic form to become “this” form. 891 Compare Cross’s
summarization of Scotus (who had himself invoked Damascene) to Scholarios above: “What
is common in creatures is not really one in the way in which what is common is really one in
the divine. For there the common is singular and indivisible because divine nature itself is of
itself a ‘this.’ And it is plain that with creatures no universal is really one in that way.” 892
Scholarios ostensibly made the same inference from Scotus as the paraphrase of Cross, that is,
the divine esse (τὸ εἶναι) is that in virtue of which (καθ᾽αὐτήν [for Scotus, “quo”]) a divine
person possesses being, while the essence/being itself (which he will soon identify as infinite)
is a necessary “this” by virtue of its singular claim to exist since there cannot be logically or
metaphysically many infinitely perfect beings, lest one lack a perfection that the other
possesses. For humans, they cannot see God under his proper and exclusively divine mode of
infinity, as such. Because God exists, as if an infinite “universal” (for Scholarios, an εἶδος),
God exists without the contradiction of potentiality or passivity. 893 Scholarios did not belabor
Scotus’s exposition of Damascene at this point, though he does hint at it in his fuller treatises
capacity to Gascony. At last, while housed in Piacenza, he died c. 1328. Francis confessed his devotion to the
person and theology of Scotus, calling Duns doctor noster and referring to Franciscan enthusiasts of Scotus as
schola nostra. Upon surveying Francis’s literary production, successive Scotists understandably awarded this
intellectual giant with the appellation princeps Scotistarum. Nevertheless, Francis proved a critical reader of
Scotus, albeit always respectful of his magister Duns.
891
Whatever the root of this modistic discussion, its vocabulary and analogy in relation to an informed
substance coincides quite closely to Alexander of Aphrodisias who exploited Aristotle’s (Metaphysica,
1074a35) unique denomination of the prime mover as τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, as described in Fazzo 2016, 187.
892
Cf. Scotus, Ord. I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4, no. 381.
893
Cf. Scotus, Rep. I-A, d. 3, q. 1, a. 3 (no. 196): “Sic Deus cognosci quadrupliciter: uno modo secundum suam
rationem quiditativam ut secundum rationem deitatis, et isto modo non est naturaliter cognoscibilis a nobis quia
licet Deus posset creare in intellectu nostro repraesentativum sui sub ratione deitatis, non tamen potest hoc
aliqua creatura causare repraesentativum tale, quia sicut argutum est prius, impossibile est aliquod obiectum
causare in nobis perfectius repraesentativum suo proprio repraesentativo quo repraesentat se ipsum.”
228
on the same topic. 894 We already saw that Markos Eugenikos argued this very same notion of
the divine essence, that is, divine essence is understood in the human mind to function
something like an immanent universal (human) with many exemplifications (Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle) – against the doctrine of Montenero at Florence. Scholarios’s comments above take
on the function of a summary of the Orthodox position at Florence and serve as the foundation
for a fuller Palamistic treatise sometime in the future. 895
Lastly, I should mention that the kind of description that Scholarios provides is also
similar to that of Modistae in that, for the average modista, “ens in actu” or “being in act” (τὸ
ὂν ἐνεργείᾳ) is treated as a subject, though principally under the notion of form and is a
“particular existing substance.” 896 In Scholarios’s summary statement, he is preparing his
reader to think of God in a similar way, the Palamite way, where God is not merely and
restrictively “actus purus” (which is the descriptive definition of God in Aquinas in both Latin
and Greek); he is pure act only insofar as – as above – what is “pure act” excludes potentiality
or passivity (ὂν ἐν δυνάμει). Here, like the condemnation of Prochoros Kydones in the
Synodical Tome of 1368 mentioned in the introduction, Scholarios rejects this notion, for ἐν
δυνάμει is said of material beings or of a composite (σύνθετον) that is not simple and so must
develop or change. Clearly God contains no matter, nor Thomas’s second and invented notion
– foreign even to ancient philosophy, Hellenistic, and antique philosophy – that a being can be
composed of being and essence, or esse and essentia (τὸ εἶναι καὶ ἡ οὐσία), in a manner that
“essence” is passive to “act” so that “essence” performs the passive and receptive function that
is normally exclusively the function of matter in ancient philosophy. This innovation in
Thomistic philosophy was not accepted tout court by Scholarios in his translation of Armandus
of Bellovisu. Instead, he accepted the esse-essentia, or being-essence, distinction to be
understood in a way amenable to Palamas’s doctrine, thereby neutering the meaning of it as it
had originally been developed by Thomas in his later works. Any other semantic use of the
term δύναμις in Scholarios (viz., divine δύναμις) is said equivocally. “Power” in God
predicates active powers (e.g., creative power) that are always required to be in a state of
actuality, but must never arrive at said state from a prior state of potentiality. Scholarios’s use
894
See Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:210): “Τινὲς ἐξ ὑπερβαλλούσης ἀπειρίας τε καὶ ἁπλότητος ῥᾳδίως ταύταις
ἐτέθησαν· ἃ τε σοφίζονται πρὸς τὰ τοῦ μαρκαρίου Δαμασκηνοῦ ῥῆσις ἕτεροι [. . .]”
895
For similar discussions, cf. Scotus, Ord. I, d. 33, ff.
896
Ebbesen 1988, 116.
229
of various non-Thomist Modistae proves convenient for justifying Palamism against strictly
orthodox Thomism with its opposing metaphysical paradigm. Scholarios, by often calling God
“τὸ εἶναι ἐνεργείᾳ” or “τὸ ὄν ἐνεργείᾳ,” not only nuanced but actually rejected (definitionally)
Aquinas’s restrictive definition of God as “ipsum esse subsistens” or “actus purus,” reducing
the phrase to be only descriptive. Let us see this rejection of “actus purus” in its proper
Thomistic sense with a mature example of Scholarios’s abridgement of the SG: 897
Ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ἡ ἀγαθότης αὐτοῦ. 898 Quod Deus est ipsa bonitas
Ἐντεῦθεν ληφθῆναι δυνατόν, ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ἡ Esse enim actu in unoquoque est bonum ipsius. Sed
ἀγαθότης αὐτοῦ· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ τὸ εἶναι ἐνεργείᾳ ἐστὶ Deus non solum est ens actu, sed est ipsum suum esse,
τὸ ἀγαθὸν αὐτοῦ· ὁ Θεὸς δὲ καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐστὶ καὶ ut supra ostensum est. Est igitur ipsa bonitas, non
ἐνέργεια καὶ αὐτὸς τὸ εἶναι αὑτοῦ· ἔστιν ἄρα αὐτὴ ἡ tantum bonus.
ἀγαθότης, οὐ μόνον ἀγαθός.
Wherefore, it is possible to be understood that God is Esse in actuality, in any given being, is the good of
his own goodness, because in each [being] esse in actu that being. Yet, God is not merely “a being in act,” but
is its own goodness, but God is both in actu and act he is his very own act of being, as was shown earlier.
and he is the act of his own being. Therefore, this Therefore, he is not just goodness, but goodness itself.
goodness is [God], not merely some being who is
good.
In this mature abbreviation of Kydones’ translation (c. 1458/9) of Aquinas’s SG I, Scholarios

eliminated Aquinas’s restrictive point that God is not really and literally ens in actu. In the
passage of the Latin SG closest to Scholarios, Aquinas had drawn a certain analogy between
God and “a being in act” (viz., πρώτη οὐσία), but it is still irreconcilable to Scholarios’s
reformatting of Aquinas. Thomas had declared: “However, God is maximally perfect, as was
shown. [...] Therefore, does it harmonize with himself to create something similar to himself,
viz., ens in actu, in such a way that he is the cause of being.” 899 Scholarios reformulated
Aquinas to say that God is not merely pure energy, or ἐνέργεια, 900 but that God parallels a
897
Fazzo (2016, 185) records the fact that – while scholiasts attempted to conflate the prime mover with pure
and unqualified energy – there was little if anything in Aristotle’s Metaphysica to explain or affirm this possible
reading. Hence, a long scholiast history of avoiding a detailed discussion ensued.
898
Scholarios and Aquinas 1931a, I.38 n. 2.
899
SG II.6, n. 5: “Deus autem est maxime perfectus, ut [. . .] ostensum est. Ipsi igitur competit facere aliquid
sibi simile ens in actu, ut sic sit causa essendi.”
900
Fazzo (2016, 184–185) catalogs the scholiast tradition upholding a Greek reading of the prime mover as
pure energy. Likely for these reasons, Scholarios did not feel threatened in accurately translating statements of
230
perfectly actualized substance that is distinguished by his quasi-substrate as its form and
activity as its natural expression of itself. 901 Markos of Ephesus had earlier made this very
point against the Thomist Kalekas in the mid- to late-1430s:
So, [Kalekas] now speaks about potency and energy; the account [occurred as follows]:
“According to the right-thinking Church, God is by nature (πέφυκεν) able to act (ἐνεργεῖν),
and similarly he is in act (ἐστὶν ἐνεργείᾳ), and he is being (ὂν), and form (εἶδος) and life and
wisdom, and goodness.” But, then, o you Peripatetic, regarding the matter of energy by which
God is in act, in no way has such a discourse occurred from Fathers or from any synod, for
they know this indifferentiated [energy] in relation to essence on the question of God.
Oppositely, [o Kalekas], you take your seat along with the eccentrics, being as you are plainly
an artful fellow. [Rather, the right-thinking Church says:] “God is by nature able to act,” which
energy the theologians call: essential (οὐσιώδη) and natural (φυσικὴν) and characteristic
(χαρακτηριστικὴν) of the essence (οὐσίας). They assert that this differs with respect to the
essence. 902
Scholarios bore witness to reading Markos’s treatises against Kalekas (he almost certainly read
it c. 1437 when studying Palamism before leaving for Ferrara). 903 Markos, along with his
disciple Scholarios, had absorbed the Aristotelian notion of the prime mover as “a being” that,
in some way, preceded its own perfect activity. Markos’s accusation is all the more interesting
since Kalekas’s reduction of “ens in actu” into a stricter formula of “God is energy [only],” or
what is equivalent to “actus purus,” is an occasion to mock Kalekas as a “Peripatetic.” Here,
Markos avoided employing his normal reference to Aristotle or Aristotelian errors. In the
Aquinas where God is called pure act (ἐνέργεια). Nonetheless, Scholarios’s Excursus refuses to conflate divine
energy with ἐντελέχεια, as some scholiasts were wont to do and as Schoolmen frequently discussed but typically
rejected.
901
See Fazzo 2016, 186, where Alexander of Aphrodisias has been cataloged as first to develop the prime
mover (ultra Aristotelem) into εἶδος.
902
Eugenikos, Λόγος ἀντιῤῥητικὸς β´, fol. 59v (Εὑρισκόμενα 2:296). The only theologians whom I’ve located
to use all these descriptions of the divine essence prior to Palamas are Maximos and Damascene. Cf. Palamas
1966c, sec. 23 (GPS 2:113):
Φυσικαὶ μὲν οὖν διαφοραὶ καὶ οὐσιώδεις ἐπὶ ταύτης οὐκ εἰσίν, ἐνέργειαι δὲ φυσικαὶ καὶ οὐσιώδεις καὶ
εἰσὶ καὶ λέγονται. Οὐ γὰρ συστατικαί εἰσιν αὗται, ἀλλὰ χαρακτηριστικαί, δηλονότι δεικτικαί, οὐδὲ τὸ
ὁποῖόν τί ἐστι δεικνύουσι, τουτέστιν ὁποῖον κατ’ οὐσίαν, οὐδ’ ἀνάγκη κατὰ πλειόνων τῷ εἴδει
λέγεσθαι. Μόνος γὰρ ἄνθρωπος γραμματικόν· τὸ αὐτὸ δὲ λέγεται δύναμίς τε καὶ ἐνέργεια. Λέγεται δὲ
ἰδίως ἐνέργεια μόνον καὶ ἡ τῆς ἐμφύτου δυνάμεως χρῆσις, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς χρήσεως
ἀποτέλεσμα. Τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀποτέλεσμα κτιστὸν ἀεί, μᾶλλον δ’ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον. Ἡ δέ γε χρῆσις καὶ ἡ
ἐνέργεια, ἣν καὶ δύναμιν καλοῦμεν, κατὰ τὸ κτιστόν τε καὶ ἄκτιστον ἕπονται ἀεὶ ἀλλήλαις.
903
231
folios just prior to this mention of “Peripatetic” (or the school of reception of Aristotle)
mockery of Kalekas, Markos felt perfectly free to chide Kalekas for embracing his entirely
correct reading of the Stagirite, or Aristotle by name, since Eugenikos felt absolutely no
principled loyalty to Aristotle. Even if, for Aristotle, the prime mover was literally eternal and
always in a state of movement, a legitimate – if minor – reading of Aristotelian MSS, known
to both Eugenikos and Scholarios, allows for an interpretation of a being (ens) whose existence
precedes in some way its perfect operation (τὸ ὂν ἐνεργείᾳ). Effectively, Kalekas interpreted
Aristotle along the lines that a strict Peripatetic would have done, but not necessarily as
Aristotle might have written ad litteram (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica 1071b22, 1072a5–6,
1072a25, 1072b5). 904
Next, in Argument 1, section 02, Scholarios wanted to emphasize two different modes
of signification (modus significandi), according to modistic fashion, wherein both terms can
no less refer to the same object: 905
Term Modus concipiendi Modus significandi Modus essendi

God (deus) Under concept of ens ut De concreto Infinite (ens)
subiectum (ὑποκείμενον) (significatum)
Godhead (deitas) Under concept of ens ut De abstracto Infinite (ens)
essentia distincta (significatum)
The common doctrines among Modistae, like Brito and Scotus, if unknown to Aquinas, hung
on a number of notions. First, a “common nature” was argued to stand between a particular
nature (e.g., “this cat”) and the universal concept (in anima) of “feline” (viz., “felinity”), as
understood by the intellect. 906 This notion, of course, must be “felinity-in-itself” as understood
in an intellect. If we only admit that “what it is essentially to be feline” is not necessarily
connected with “this cat” (viz., “Felix), nor is it necessarily connected with an abstracting mind
understanding “felinity,” then “cat-ness” or “felinity” is something that is indifferent to being
hypostasized as Felix (viz., “this cat”) and to being cognized as a universal (viz., cat-as-
understood). Since this “common nature” is neither Felix by necessity, nor necessarily the
904
Cf. Fazzo 2016, 188–189.
905
Ebbesen 1988, 120–121.
906
Ebbesen 1988, 115.
232
intelligible universal as understood, then it is a unity that is neither hypostasized nor made into
an existent singularity. As such, Scotus called it a “unity-less-than-one” or an entity that is not
numerical, lest the common nature be mistaken a something subsistent – whereas such an
essence is indifferent to being numbered or abstractly understood as a universal. The
ontological status of a common nature (viz., “felinity-in-itself”) remained debatable throughout
the Middle Ages, but it is easy to see that God’s essence might be the producer of such common
natures that were not really numerical “ideas” nor “entities” but products of his intelligent act
of existing, since such an intelligent being produces from eternity intelligible content. 907 In
such a scenario, a Palamite might feel very comfortable, indeed, with identifying such
“common natures” with Maximian προορισμοί or λόγοι of the divine essence. As Ebbesen
points out, the Latin theory of concreta and abstracta terms can actually be traced back to
Platonic commentators:
abstracta concreta
Τὸ ἀγαθόν ὁ ἀγαθός
Δικαιοσύνη ὁ δίκαιος
The Latin concretio is a fair rendering of the Greek term σύγκρισις, which Scholarios
accurately retroverted back into Greek beginning with his translations of Brito. 908 The new
advance of the Modistae was to solve problems, especially theological issues, by means of
909
appealing to modi significandi, exactly as Scholarios did above. Lurking behind
Scholarios’s point is something of Scotus’s distinction between “humanity” and “this human,”
where humanity stands for an abstraction of the concrete term “human.” In this scenario, Deus
is supposed to refer to God’s suppositum, or ὑπόστασις (i.e., Father), while deitas is supposed
to refer to the notion of the essence independently of any consideration of its suppositum (or
907
See Bos 1997, 211–228, where Meyronnes clearly manifests himself as a bridge between Palamas and
Scotus. Because, for Meyronnes, “ideas” are (theologically) improper terms (only conceded because of
Augustine’s authority in using the term), he will allow for the term. Still, ideas are originally non-causal and
independent entities that are not proper to Christian descriptions of God. Instead, metaphysically, they should
be viewed as products of intelligible content (esse essentiae) that are eternally produced in the divine mind and
have a quidditative or natural existence in the divine essence – as produced therefrom ex necessitate – prior to
the divine mind considering and choosing (some of them) to create therefrom.
908
Ebbesen 1988, 109–110.
909
Ebbesen 1988, 107.
233
anything other than its essential nature). 910 God’s divine τρόπος τοῦ εἶναι, or modus essendi,
is predicated in two ways, but both manners describe the very same singular being without
limitation.
In Argument 1, section 03, Scholarios rejected, in a specific manner, any divine
composition into esse and essentia. Because of the initial Thomistic terms of the question, esse
in Latin refers to an activity or perfection added to a limited essence. Scholarios subsequently
and precisely designated that, what might be called “esse creatum” and “essentia creata,”
cannot be quasi-parts in the divine essence, but rather God is something far subtler than these.
By admitting that “God” is really or essentially the same with his “divinity” or “godhead,”
Scholarios simply affirmed that the polysemous term θεότης, at this point, only draws the
mind’s attention to the human concept of a divine essence, as mentally distinct from any
concrete ὁ Θεός. “This God” is said concretely. Every orthodox Christian denies the existence
of “non-essential” divinities (θεότητες), while the Palamite affirms substantially and
essentially God’s divine essence and persons are one or a unity. Scholarios later explains how
non-subsistent, but nonetheless completely actualized, θεότητες may be “essential” οὐσιώδη
(using Palamas’s vocabulary). Still, each of these perfections (wisdom, goodness, etc.) is not
“godhead” (deitas) in its essential abstraction, but rather signifies, in this sense, an attribute
capable of modally infinite existence within the godhead. Thus, a differentiated energy is a co-
infinite attribute that is really and essentially God, but not “the essence” or deitas taken in the
essentially abstracted sense.
2. Scholarios and His Second Argument against Armandus in His Excursus
Clearly, in Scholarios’s abbreviated discourse designed to defend Orthodoxy, we can

see that a very subtle and clear mind found itself completely at ease in confronting and rejecting
standard Thomism, since Scholarios admitted that a certain kind (Italian Renaissance) of
Thomism was inimical to Palamite commitments. We now turn to Scholarios’s next argument,
where his references again bespeak a facility with both Greek and Latin traditions of reception
of Aristotelian metaphysics:
910
See Ebbesen 1988, 132–135, for a comparison of Scotus to Brito on this matter.
234
Scholarios, Excursus (Argument 2):
Secondly, it is necessary to understand, in the case of things predicated about God, or, better, of those things
attributed to the divine nature, that some things belong to the first entelechy (ἐντελέχειαν), which is opposed
to [section I.] the passive potency (τῇ παθητικῇ δυνάμει) (such an instance being the act of existence), [section
II.] whereas some other things belong to the second energy, which is active (δραστική), and which is opposite
of the active potency (τῇ δραστικῇ δυνάμει), although we do not posit passive potency in God, but only the
[aforementioned] active power (δραστικὴν δύναμιν). [section III.] Now, out of the things which belong to the
active activity (δραστικὴν ἐνέργειαν), some have been ordered to [division A.] theoretical activity (θεωρητικὴν
ἐνέργειαν) (let them be called such), which is perfective (τελειωτική) of the same subject that possesses this
activity. Such is to contemplate, to will, wisdom and science. [division B.] Futher, some other things belong
to the progressive/productive (προακτικήν) power, which is perfective of other things. This energy is further
divided into two; some things belong to the natural activity (τῇ φυσικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ), [i.] which is within (ἔνδον)
God, as for instance begetting (γέννησις) and emanation (προβολή), whereby the divine hypostases are
harmoniously emanated (προάγονται) from the first hypostasis according to God’s very form (εἶδος) of his
nature, whereas some other things belong to the volitional power (θελητικὴν ἐνέργειαν), [ii.] which is an energy
ad extra (τὰ ἔξω), by means of which God’s creatures [a.] subsist (ὑφίστανται), [b.] are perfected (τελειοῦνται)
according to similitude (ὁμοιότητα) of the act of the will (βουλήσεως), but certainly not as a similitude of
nature (φύσεως). This volitional energy, too, is further divided into two; some things of it have to do with that
energy (ἐνέργειαν) by means of which beings came forth from absolute non-existence into existence; namely,
creation. There also are things that properly befit that energy, (ἐνέργειαν) through which beings come from
not-being this (ἐκ τοῦ τι μὴ εἶναι) to being this (εἰς τό τι εἶναι); and such a thing is craft. 911
As just mentioned in my discussions on Argument 1, sections I–II, Peripatetics were tempted

to equate entelechy with form, sometimes discussing (albeit typically without much success)
the possibilities of applying one or the other to God indifferently. As Scholarios just made
clear, in Argument 2, sections I–II, entelechy presupposes a form bringing about perfect
activity in matter. Naturally, for both Byzantine and Scholastic commentators, this term is
entirely unfitting for the divinity, if taken in a sense univocal to what is used within the Corpus
Aristotelicum. Scholarian vocabulary and its context, in Argument 2, sections I–III, are easily
traceable to Byzantine scholiasts (e.g., John Philoponos and Asclepius) and their commentaries
on the Physica and Metaphysica. Still, the actual scholiasts deal with issues entirely foreign to
Scholarian preoccupations in his Excursus (not to mention his coeval treatises on the
Advanced schoolmen use this passage as a discussion of mere mutation, not creation. Cf. Aristotle 1957b,
911
225a16–17 (AL 2:152): “que vero non esse simpliciter in substantiam est generatio simpliciter est.”
235
filioque). 912 Argument 2, section III, division A, above, corresponds in vocabulary and theme
very closely to Gregory Nyssa’s explanation of the production of the divine persons, along
with the Holy Spirit’s perfective power, as the Spirit is from the Father and through the Son,
who together bring about creation. 913 However, in Argument 2, section III, division B,
Scholarios turned to entirely unidentifiable sources, vis-à-vis to Greek authors, in order to
argue that a productive power of will in God is something choosing items within himself but
which are item that can be only contingently realized, albeit these divinely intelligible
productions naturally are a necessary product of divine intelligence. 914
The division between ad intra and ad extra metaphysics of production is clearly a
Scholastic division of terms, where Scholarios almost perfectly mirrored the substance and
vocabulary of Scotus’s objection to a Scholastic opponent’s (Henry of Ghent) arguments for
the mediating role of the Son in the production of the Spirit. For his part, Scotus repeated the
term (similitudo) of his interlocutor in order to refute him:
Scotus, Rep. I-A, d., 13, q. unica [no. Scholarios’s Argument 2, section III, division B:
21] (Wolter/Bychkov 1:443):
utraque emanatio est naturalis1: una Καὶ ταύτης τοίνυν τῆς ἐνεργείας δίχα διαιρουμένης, τὰ μὲν
tamen dicitur per modum naturae, alia ἀνήκουσι τῇ φυσικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ1, ἥτις ἔνδον ἐστὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὥσπερ
per modum voluntatis2, quia γέννησις καὶ προβολή4, αἷς αἱ θεῖαι ὑποστάσεις ἐκ τῆς πρώτης
similitudinem habent istae emanationes προάγονται ὑποστάσεως συνωνύμως κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ τῆς φύσεως
cum illis3, eo quod una praesupponit εἶδος2· τὰ δὲ πρὸς τὴν θελητικὴν ἐνέργειαν ἀνήκουσιν, ἥτις ἐστὶν
aliam, sicut voluntas intellectum. Actio ἐνέργεια εἰς τὰ ἔξω, δι’ ἧς τὰ κτίσματα τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ὑφίστανται
autem dicitur naturalis quae de ratione καὶ τελειοῦνται καθ’ ὁμοιότητα βουλήσεως3, οὔ τοί γε φύσεως. Καὶ
sua non praesupponit aliam; sed ταύτης τοίνυν τῆς θελητικῆς ἐνεργείας δίχα διαιρουμένης, τὰ μὲν
productio intellectus non praesupponit ἀνήκουσιν εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν ἐνέργειαν, δι’ ἧς ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἁπλῶς
actionem voluntatis4, sed e converso. εἰς τὸ εἶναι προῆλθον τὰ ὄντα, οἷον ἡ δημιουργία. [...]
912
See OCGS 2:86, 2:413, 2:468.
913
Cf. Nyssa 1959, 8.2:76–77 (sec. 4–6).
914
Scholarios framed his Excursus as a response to neo-Barlaamites or Greco-Latins at Florence. I am puzzled,
however, by the fact that the discourse on creation parallels Palamas’s most mature (1355) theological
arguments against Gregoras. Scholarios would have seen Palamas’s point that the activity of creating is entirely
different from the act of creating. Predicating of God “this creative power” and “creating this creature” cannot
be reduced to the same real activity in divinis. Scholarios parallels this debate precisely but put it in entirely
Scholastic terms . . . suggesting that his audience consisted of more advanced logicians (whether his logic
students or future Greco-Latins). See, e.g., Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 10–11 (GPS 4:200–203).
236
While orthodox Thomists did not embrace Scotus’s approach to the divine productions,
Hervaeus Natalis did so willy-nilly under the influence of Scotus. Still, even his relevant
treatment of this question does not approximate to Scholarios in comparison to Scotus
above. 915 The Scotistic emphasis, because Thomists considered a Scotistic distinction to be a
real distinction in fact (which Scotus called “formal”), is a focus upon the capacity of the divine
will to choose both freely and eternally, but also to choose items that may exist as contingently
possible beings, as items known to the divine intelligence. 916 These represent contingent
possibilities or unrealized and only possible “creatables.” Scotus developed his theory along
the lines of Bonaventure’s anterior appeal to a plurality of divine ideas or λόγοι in the divine
essence. Perhaps to avoid any notion that these “ideas” enjoy some form of existence per se,
instead of only non-subsistent generation within the divine essence, Scotus complicated the
distinction that he inherited from his Bonaventurian tradition. Bonaventurian language and
theory is ostensibly traceable to John Scotus Eriugena and his translations of Maximos
Confessor’s scholia on Ps.-Dionysios. 917
Whatever the case may be, in his coeval treatise on the Holy Spirit, Scholarios made
the correct connection between Franciscan sources and those of Palamas; namely, Maximos
Confessor’s appeal to the λόγοι τῶν ὄντων or the antecedent exemplars in the divine essence
for existent contingent beings. God’s will chooses to create by selecting such items in the act
of creation. Franciscan theology refined this, at its root, Maximian manner of justifying a
plurality of intelligibles within the divine essence as something altogether different in kind
than the necessary or natural productions of the divine persons. Within his treatises on the Holy
Spirit, Scholarios provided what appears to be a much less truncated paraphrase of this
theology, though also derived from the very same original text of Bonaventure (as the prior
Scholarian text discussed above). Scholarios wrote:
[point 01] So, the divine Logos exists as a simple and as one form with regard to creatures,
too; for he contains the different logoi of beings in himself on account of the infinity of nature
and power with respect to the but one and simplest form, which is of his very divinity,
915
Cf. Natalis 1647, I, d. 13, qq. 1–2.
916
Dumont 2005, 9–15, 32–33, records early-fourteenth- and late-twentieth-century efforts to minimize the
realness of the distinction. However, the authentic texts of Scotus in modern editions make such a position
untenable nowadays.
917
Kappes, Goff, and Giltner 2014, 183–187, 193–197.
237
inasmuch as He is considered with regard to the Father. Also, the Word is only, in itself,
expressive of God the Father, as mind, as if the Word is a connatural image of him according
to nature and form. [point 02] On the other hand, he is productive of all things, through the
Word, that have come to be ad extra, so that they are images of the divine Word, being different
from other things according to a diverse similitude, i.e., what is lesser or greater. Yet, too, all
similitudes are vestiges, as they have been, therefrom; all come about and exist according to a
similitude of [divine] will and nature. Yet, the image most similar of all exists in humans, as
too it is most peculiarly according to a rather exalted likeness and product of the Trinity in God
and [express] mirror image. Now, then, the Logos of God, through whom everything came to
be, the infinite form and simplest and all-wise one, and maker of all beings […] 918
The beginning of the citation (point 01) is an extensive explanation of his more summary
comments on the same subject within his Excursus against Armandus’s logical theory, when
commenting on De ente et essentia. First, Scholarios’s vocabulary and sense reflect exactly
Bonaventure’s mature theory of the Word as an infinite representation of the Father. 919 The
context of the relevant section of the original Bonaventurian homily begins with a discussion
of St. Paul’s claim that the invisible world of God can be known by contemplating creation
(Rom 1:20). The end of the discussion sees the distinctions in the divine essence as justifying
918
Scholarios 1929b, 6 (OCGS 2:224, 2:237):
Εἶδος οὖν ἁπλοῦν τε καὶ ἓν ὁ θεῖος Λόγος ὑπάρχει καὶ τῇ πρὸς τὰ κτίσματα ἀποβλέψει· τοὺς γὰρ
διαφόρους λόγους τῶν ὄντων ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχει δι’ ἀπειρίαν φύσεως καὶ δυνάμεως ὑφ’ ἑνὶ τῷ
ἁπλουστάτῳ τῆς αὐτοῦ θεότητος εἴδει, ὃ πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα νοεῖται σκοπούμενος· καὶ τοῦ μὲν πρώτου
νοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς ἐμφαντικός ἐστι μόνον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ὡς εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ εἶδος
σύμφυτον, τῶν δὲ δι’ αὐτοῦ γενομένων πάντων ἔξω ποιητικός, ὥστ’ εἶναι μᾶλλον αὐτὰ τοῦ θείου
Λόγου εἰκόνας, κατὰ διάφορον ὁμοιότητα ἄλλα ἄλλων ὑψηλοτέραν τε καὶ χαμαλωτέραν, πάσας
μέντοι γε ἴχνους ὁμοιότητας εἶναι, ὡς καθ’ ὁμοιότητα βουλήσεως καὶ φύσεως ἐκεῖθεν πάντων
γινομένων καὶ ὄντων. Ἐξῄρηται δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡ ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις εἰκών, ὡς καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν οὖσα
ὑψηλοτέραν καὶ τῆς ἐν τῷ Θεῷ Τριάδος ἔργον ἰδιαιτάτως οὖσα καὶ ἀπεικόνισμα. Οὗτος τοίνυν ὁ τοῦ
Θεοῦ Λόγος, δι’ οὗ πάντα γέγονε, τὸ ποιητικὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων καὶ ἁπλούστατον καὶ πάνσοφον
καὶ ἄπειρον εἶδος [. . .]
919
Bonaventure 1891b, Collatio 3, p. 1, sec. 4, ratio 1 (Quarrachi 5:343b–344a):
intellectus Verbi increati, qui est radix intelligentiae omnium [. . .] Philosophi autem habent pro
impossibili quae sunt summe vera [. . .] Summum autem spiritum impossibile est non intelligere; et
cum intellectum aequetur intelligenti, intelligit quidquid est et quidquid potest: ergo et ratio
intelligendi aequatur intellectui, quae similitudo eius est. Haec autem similitudo Verbum est, quia,
secundum Augustinum et Anselmum, similitudo mentis convertentis se super se, quae in acie mentis
est, verbum est. Si ergo haec similitudo aequalis est ergo Deus est, et a Deo originata repraesentant
originantem et quidquid Pater potest: ergo repraesentat multa. – Item, cum virtutem Patris repraesentet,
repraesentat virtutem unitissimam; sed “virtus, quanto magis unita, tanto magis infinita” [Liber de
causis, proposition 17]. Ergo illa similitudo infinita repraesentare habet; et ita necesse est, ut ab uno
sint multa. Si igitur intelligis Verbum, intelligis omnia scibilia.
238
scripture. Scholarios’s claims, so far, about the essence-energies doctrine are supposed to
highlight Palamistic reconcilability to scriptural language about God in contrast to Nikephoros
Gregoras’s empty nominalism, as he had espoused in 1355. Scholarios’s context for his
essence-energy Excursus takes advantage of similar argumentation in Bonaventure.
Comparing Scholarios, above, to Greek literature reveals that point 02 of the discussion is
entirely non-Greek in inspiration and vocabulary. Scholarios equates the Bonaventurian
similitudo with ὁμοιότης, imago with εἰκών, vestigium with ἴχνος, and speculum with
ἀπεικόνισμα. 920 The Bonaventurian doctrine forms an attractive application of Augustine’s De
trinitate and Neoplatonic sources to defend Palamism, where the creation in Genesis is
interpreted as indicating a doctrine of participation, to some extent, in divine exemplars in the
divine mind. To the extent that a being imitates God, it is similar to, or a similitude of, his
internal production or energies. While lower beings only have traces of this likeness, higher
forms of life are icons, or images, of the Trinity. Originally, for Bonaventure, humans were
created in a state where their mens, or νοῦς acted as a mirror of the divine light. Clearly, this
exemplarism is useful for upholding a theory of a plurality of attributes in beings that lead
human reflection to arrive at intelligibly distinct exemplars within the divine essence. 921 For
Scholarios, the Bonaventurian notion of “logoi of beings” or “rationes entium” would have
been attractive to Scholarios, as especially complementary to the Maximian logoi or divine
notions of beings that are of things possible to create. Bonaventurian and Scholarian
phraseology and their sense are quite close: “Therefore, infinite rationes of things live in God;
therefore, not merely of beings (entium), nor of future beings, but even of all possible
beings.” 922 This phrase is very close to arriving at Scholarios’s typically Maximian
phraseology (lately resurrected by Palamites). The Bonaventurian pedigree of the last citation
of Scholarios is fairly obvious. Still, even more evidence for Bonaventurian influence is
920
Cf. Bonaventure 1891a, I.8 (Quarrachi 5:216a–b); Bonaventure 1891c, II.1–II.7 (Quarrachi 5:300a–301b);
Bonaventure 1891b, Collatio 12, part 1, sec. 14–16 (Quarrachi 5:386b).
921
Armstrong (1946, 258–266) rightly cites Bonaventure to locate each and every exemplar for creaturely
perfections as something “understood” by God in his own essence, noting even that God makes use of ideation
– when he decides to make a human, he does not think “donkey” but employs the idea proper to the species of
man. However, Armstrong’s explanation for how such divine psychology does not compromise simplicity is
one where he predictably interprets Bonaventure through neo-Scholastic Thomism (cf. ST I.21.4) in order to
reduce God ideae ideatae into an opaque ad intra essence known only approximately by comparing abstractions
in creation to one another, since God seems to be devoid of an objective idea of either horse or human.
922
Bonaventure 1883, I, d. 36, a. 2, q. 1, conclusion (Quarrachi I:623b): “Ergo infinitae rationes rerum vivunt
in Deo, ergo non solum entium vel futurorum, sed etiam omnium possibilium.”
239
manifest in a last citation from a Scholarian epistle (scripsit 1450) to Pletho:
[…] How would an idea be true of God, as a natural similitude, and an image and character,
and connatural radiance [Heb 1:3]? And again [how would it be an idea], as an exemplar
([hypothetically] not subsisting in those things done in order to resemble the volition of the
creator and of himself, as he is God in nature), if there were not a cognizable God, in opposition
to himself being God in nature, but indeed considering in the manner of a relation? And his
image, connatural and equal to himself, would be something lesser than the divine
mind, even if it was also not likened to the one already subsisting. Yet, the idea
and ratio (λόγος) in God would be of much less importance than his intentions/products, while
yet this [the idea] were not subsistent – albeit the idea [Word] lies above what exists infinitely,
multiplied by infinity 923
The prior citations of Scholarios can be dated to c. 1442–1445, when Scholarios was
simultaneously composing his first treatises against the Greek (Dominican and Thomist)
sympathizers with the positions of Barlaam, Akindynos, or Gregoras, along with the Latin
positions of filioquists. This citation, above, shows Scholarios incorporating the same
originally Latin passage of Bonaventurian theology into his work in order to refute Pletho’s
Platonic metaphysics of God. Even with a slightly different emphasis, the Scholarian passage
betrays his source as nothing less than Bonaventure.
Key to uncovering Scholarios’s exact Bonaventurian source in Armandus’s
commentary is this excerpt from Scholarios’s epistle to Pletho. The terms of the discussion are
singular. Only two authors can currently qualify for Scholarios’s sources. The first is
Nikephoros Gregoras, who only remotely relates to the text because he once accused Palamas
of equating a Platonic “idea” with some mere energy in God’s essence. 924 Gregoras rejected,
923
Scholarios 1935e (OCGS 4:129):
[…] πῶς ἂν ἦν ἰδέα μὲν ἀληθὴς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὡς φυσική τις ὁμοιότης αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰκὼν καὶ χαρακτὴρ καὶ
ἀπαύγασμα ἔμφυτον, ἰδέα δ’ αὖ, ὡς παράδειγμά τι ὑπερφυὲς τῶν πρὸς τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῆς τοῦ
γεννῶντος βουλήσεως καὶ ἑαυτοῦ, Θεοῦ τῇ φύσει ὄντος, πεποιημένων, εἰ μὴ ὑφεστήκει Θεὸς νοητὸς
πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν μὲν τῇ φύσει Θεόν, νοοῦντα μέντοι γε σχετικῶς, ἀντιτεταγμένος; Ἦν δ’ ἂν καὶ χεῖρον
μὲν τοῦ θείου νοῦ τὸ σύμφυτον ἐκείνου καὶ ἴσον ὁμοίωμα, μὴ καὶ τῷ ὑφεστάναι ὡμοιωμένον· τῶν δὲ
τοῦ Θεοῦ ἔργων πολὺ ἐλάττων ἡ ἐν τῷ Θεῷ ἰδέα τε καὶ ὁ λόγος, ὑφεστώτων ἐκείνων, αὐτὴ μὴ
ὑφεστηκυῖα, καίτοι πᾶσιν ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως ὑπερκειμένη.
924
Gregoras 1855, 279.19–280.6 (XXX.16): “ἓν ἄκτιστόν ἐστιν ὁ θεός. καὶ βεβαιοῖς διὰ τῆς σῆς τοιαύτης
ἀποκρίσεως δυοῖν θάτερον, ἢ ὅτι πολλὰς καὶ ἀπείρους καὶ ὑφειμένας καὶ διαφόρους δοξάζων θεότητας
ἀκτίστους ὥσπερ ἰδέαν τινὰ τὸ θεὸς εἶναι λέγεις ὄνομα ἄκτιστον καὶ θεότητα πρὸς διαφόρους θεότητας
μεριζόμενον ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως ὑπερκειμένας καὶ ὑφειμένας, ὥσπερ τὸ καθόλου ζῶον εἰς διάφορα τὴν φύσιν
εἴδη, λογικά τε καὶ ἄλογα, ἔνυδρά τε καὶ ἄνυδρα, χερσαῖά τε καὶ αἰθέρια, οὐκ εἰδὼς ὅτι τὸ θεῖον ἁπλοῦν ὂν καὶ
240
in a very relevant citation, Palamas’s appeal to what Gregoras styles to be Platonic ideas in the
divine essence. 925 Scholarios, in what might be thematically inspired by Gregoras’s diatribes,
grafted Bonaventure, his direct source of his metaphysical and Christian insight (especially
into Proclus inter alios), onto Palamas’s idiosyncratic manner of referring to the divinely
infinite essence (ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως ὑπερκειμένη). 926 Remaining faithful to the Greek terms of
the Palamite-Gregoras debate, Scholarios discovered that Bonaventure had dealt with similar
challenges in late-thirteenth century metaphysics. Bonaventure’s solution located the
foundation of a plurality of divine attributes in a radically infinite essence: “The infinite divine
esse is most infinitely infinite” (quod infinitum divinum esse est infinitissime infinitum). 927 In
a like manner, when Scholarios wrote to Pletho, he took up Bonaventure and his discussion of
the Word as an exemplification of the “infinitely infinite,” while the energies that model
creation serve as productions of the divine operation (operatum/ἔργον) that are somehow of
another order. Implicitly, however, Scholarios affirmed the truth-value of the terms (good,
wise, etc.) as applied to divine operations and to participative creatures. 928
Bonaventure, Palamas, and Scholarios (without excluding either Scotus or the other
Palamites) saw the divine infinity as foundational for justifying the essence-energy
distinction. 929 Yet, as Demetracopoulos points out, Palamas developed the Maximian “ἀπειρῶς
ἀπειράκις” beyond its original focus. Historically, it was a phrase employed to refer to the
impassable distance between what is created and what is divine. 930 While Palamas did employ
the phrase in a Maximian mode in some places, he elsewhere developed it beyond a mere
comparison between creatures and noetic objects of the divine will (θέλησις). Granted that
ἀσώματον ἀμερὲς ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐστί [. . .]”

925
See also Gregoras 1976, 211–213 (I.1.10), beginning his diatribe with the ominous references to the Timaeus
and Parmenides, at 211: “Πόθεν ἡμῖν ὁ Σωκρατικὸς οὗτος Τίμαιος ἐξαπίνης ἀναπέφανται καθάπερ οἱ πάλαι
σπαρτοὶ καὶ αὐθήμεροι γίγαντες τὰ τε περὶ τῆς ψυχογονίας καὶ τῆς τῶν ὅλων φύσεως ἐμφιλοσοφηθέντα τῷ
Πλάτωνι, καὶ ὅσα περὶ τῶν ἰδεῶν τῷ Πλατωνικῷ Παρμενίδῃ, τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀσυναρτήτως καὶ συκχυμένως
συρράπτει δόγμασι.”
926
Although it is possible that this may be a simple case of coincidence and, while Scholarios explicitly names
Barlaam and Akindynos in chapter ninety-four, but intentionaly omits mention of Gregoras, it is nonetheless
impressive how neatly all these discussions can be reduced to themes in Aristotle’s Metaphysica (against Plato’s
Phaedros and the ideas) and the Proclean (versus Dionysian) exegesis of Plato’s Parmenides.
927
Bonaventure 1891d, q. 3, a. 1, ad. 13 (Quarrachi 5:73b).
928
Bonaventure 1891d, q. 3, a. 1, ad. 12 (Quarrachi 5:73a–b).
929
In Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 11.5 (GPS 4:206b), he denied that God is like a genus, which is
speciated by a specific difference (διαφορά) and, therefore, God does not fall into categorical being, to which
the five predicables refer. Palamas asserted that it is in virtue of divine infinity (απερία) that God cannot be
contracted.
930
241
creatures differ infinitely from what is divine, Palamas nonetheless applied “ἀπειρῶς
ἀπειράκις” to the distance of the distinction between the divine energies and the divine
essence. 931 Demetracopoulos is certainly correct that this innovative and e limine use of
Maximos, in such a fashion, required of Palamas a new metaphysics to justify his shift. 932 In
this very vein, Bonaventure’s justification for a plurality of operations in the divine essence
was entirely apt to provide logical clarity to Palamism’s analagous distinction between energy
and the radically infinite essence of God. As we shall see, Scholarios’s inspiration to search
out an advanced theology to justify divine infinity also seems to take its point of departure
from Palamas’s last debate against Gregoras: “As if through mirrors, we contemplate the
infinite goodness, and wisdom, and power.” 933 The Maximian metaphor of a mirror must have
proved propitious for Scholarios, since both Palamas and Bonaventure supposed the human
mind to contemplate the divine attributes in the human mind (viz., speculum). Although the
infinite esse of God is unknowable for Palamas, the attributes or modally infinite perfections
– just as also for Bonaventure – are indeed knowable through non-discursive contemplation.
Later, in chapter ninety-four of his Excursus on Armandus’s commentary, Scholarios
definitively allies Bonaventurian or proto-Scotistic logic to the Palamite tradition of discussing
the attributes-energy distinction, in what is known as “a first intention,” or as a concept derived
from a real thing outside the mind of the knower. 934 As such, the object or thing itself really
contains such a distinction intrinsically, not as some sort of purely mental operation, like
dividing a geometrical plane into quadrants:
There are things that properly befit that energy, through which beings came forth from the fact
of non-existence into the act of existing. Now, creation would be this very thing. [...] So, then,
they [Palamites] attribute also modes of distinction, the terms of which would certainly not
have been produced by the soul, so that neither is there a distinction [of reason] produced by
931
932
Still, I must confess that Palamas’s use of ἀπειρῶς ἀπειράκις must function more as a poetic metaphor than
an analogy, as in Maximos Confessor. Given the fact that, as we shall see, Palamas explicitly designates all
divine attributes as real infinites along with divine essence, it is not clear in what way the essence can be “more
infinite” than an energy by some infinity. Scholarios’s genius was to locate the phrase in Bonaventure, see his
metaphysics as an anticipation of Scotus’s distinction between a radically immense and formal infinite of the
essence and a modal infinity of the energy and to utilize this as the key to penetrate into Palamas, as if he were
a divinely inspired bard, who requires expert scholia to divine his meaning.
933
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 25.20–23 (GPS 4:227b). Cf. Maximos Confessor 1963, 86 (I.96).
934
In modern times, this interpretation of Bonaventure has been expertly supported, in Szabó 1951, 379–445.
Recently, this read has been argued to be historically justifiable, in Goff 2015.
242
the soul. This is just as when they distinguish these [attributed items] through something
absolute, or by not being absolute, (ie. by a relation), by being something with respect to itself
and in respect to another, by being from something else or not, by being participated or not,
etc. All these are contradictory. 935
Scholarios explicitly invoked the unnamed author of this text as representative of Orthodox
teachers. 936 Still, instead of employing a Greek and Orthodox author, the identity of the source
becomes manifest upon comparing Bonaventure to Scholarios:
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 93.20–21, chap. 94.22–26:

[...] .] τὰ δὲ εἰς τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἐκείνην, δι’ ἧς ἐκ τοῦ τι μὴ εἶναι εἰς τὸ τὶ εἶναι προΐασιν· αὕτη δ’ ἂν εἴη ἡ
ποίησις 937 [...] ] ἀληθῶς οὖσα πραγμάτων διάκρισις, τουτέστιν ὑφεστώτων ἢ ὑποστάσεων, τῇ κατ’ οὐσίαν
ἁπλότητι τοῦ Θεοῦ μὴ διαμάχεται, ὥστε καὶ πολλαχοῦ διακρίνουσι τὴν θείαν οὐσίαν ἑκάστης ἐνεργείας τῶν
τῷ Θεῷ ἀποδιδομένων, περὶ ἧς ἂν τύχωσιν ἀεὶ τὸν λόγον ποιούμενοι, καὶ τρόπους προστιθέασι διακρίσεως,
ὧν οἱ ὅροι οὐκ ἂν εἶεν ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς δήπου πεποιημένοι, ὥστε οὐδὲ ἡ διάκρισις· ὡς ὅταν αὐτὰ τῷ
ἀπολελυμένῳ καὶ μὴ ἀπολελυμένῳ ἢ ἀναφορικῷ διακρίνωσι, τῷ ἀδιακρίτῳ καὶ διακεκριμένῳ, τῷ
πρὸς ἑαυτὸ καὶ πρὸς ἄλλο, τῷ ἔκ τινος καὶ τῷ οὐκ ἔκ τινος, τῷ μεθεκτῷ καὶ οὐ μεθεκτῷ, καὶ τοῖς
τοιούτοις, ἃ πάντα ἀντιφατικά εἰσι.
Bonaventure, Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio trinitatis q. 1, a. 1 [nos. 10–20] (Quarrachi 5:46b–47a):
Quod autem omnis creatura clamet, Deum esse, ostenditur ex decem conditionibus et suppositionibus per se
notis. Prima est ista: si est ens posterius, est et ens prius [...] ens ab alio, est ens non ab alio [...] ens
possibile, est ens necessarium [...] est ens respectivum, est ens absolutum [...] est ens diminutum sive
secundum quid, est ens simpliciter [...] est ens propter aliud, est ens propter se ipsum [...] est ens per
participationem, est ens per essentiam [...] est ens in potentia, est ens in actu [...] si ergo ens, quod est actus
purus, nihil habens de possibilitate, non est nisi Deus [...] est ens compositum, est ens simplex [...] est ens
mutabile, est ens immutabile [...] de non esse in esse. 938
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, III.3 (Quarrachi 5:304a–b)
Operatio autem virtutis intellectivae est in perceptione intellectus terminorum, propositionum et illationem.
Capit autem intellectus terminorum significata, cum comprehendit, quid est unumquodque per definitionem.
935
Scholarios, Excursus, chaps. 93.20–21, 94.22–26 (OCGS 6:279, 282).
936
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 94 (OCGS 6:282): “Τὰς δὲ ῥήσεις τῶν διδασκάλων ἐκτίθεσθαι μακροτέρας ἐστὶ
πραγματείας [. . .]”
937
Cf. Bonaventure, Commmenta, II, d. 1, p. 1, a. 3, q. 2 (Quarrachi 2:34b): “Creatio enim de nihilo esse, creatio
nihilominus dicitur esse a Deo [. . .] Creari enim non significant esse principaliter, sed exire de non esse in esse,
et hoc ab aliquo.”
938
Schoolmen surveyed (e.g., Brito), unlike Bonaventure, cite this Aristotelian passage to discuss mere
mutation, not creation. Cf. Aristotle 1957b, 225a16–17 (AL 2:152): “que vero non esse simpliciter in
substantiam est generatio simpliciter est.”
243
Sed definitio habet fieri per superiora, et illa per superiora definiri habent, usquequo veniatur ad suprema et
generalissima, quibus ignoratis, non possunt intelligi definitive inferiora. Nisi igitur cognoscatur, quid est ens
per se, non potest plene sciri definitio alicuius specialis substantiae. Nec ens per se cognosci potest, nisi
cognoscatur cum suis conditionibus, quae sunt: unum, verum, bonum. Ens autem, cum possit cogitari ut
diminutum et ut completum, ut imperfectum et ut perfectum, ut ens in potentia et ut ens in actu, ut ens
secundum quid et ut ens simpliciter, ut ens in parte et ut ens totaliter, ut ens transiens et ut ens manens, ut
ens per aliud et ut ens per se, ut ens permixtum non–enti et ut ens purum, ut ens dependens et ut ens
absolutum, ut ens posterius et ut ens prius, ut ens mutabile et ut immutabile, ut ens simplex et ut ens
compositum: “cum privationes et defectus nullatenus possint cognosci nisi per positiones,” non venit
intellectus noster ut plene resolvens intellectum alicuius entium creatorum, nisi iuvetur ab intellectus entis
purissimi, actualissimi, completissimi et absoluti; quod est ens simplicter et aeternum, in quo sunt rationes
omnium in sua puritate. Quomodo autem sciret intellectus, hoc esse ens defectivum et incompletum, si
nullam haberet cognitionem entis absque omni defectu?
Bonaventura graecus latently supplied Byzantium with a panoply of arguments against the
enemies of Palamas. I first draw attention to the singular phrase of Scholarios “from non-being
into being” that is meant to distinguish Christian creation from Aristotelian mutation. When
Bonaventure used the phrase verbatim in his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, he spoke
of transcendental attributes (viz., trans-categorical, qua Aristotle) of being in the Quaestiones
disputatae de mysterio trinitatis. Scholarian citations (sometimes Greek calques of Latin
phraseology) prove that Scholarios’s Excursus in chapters ninety-three and ninety-four of
Armandus’s commentary simply condensed Bonaventurian and Scotistic texts into a compact
defense of the logicality of Byzantine theology in the face of neo-Barlaamite accusations
originating at Ferrara-Florence, especially from the Dominican Thomists Andrew
Chrysoberges and John Montenero. Of course, this implies that Scholarios was struggling over
his studies of Thomism in the face of its open opposition to Palamism among the Florentine
Dominicans and Thomists.
While Scholarios inserted Palamas’s phraseology (ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως ὑπερκειμένη)
into his 1450 epistle to Pletho, Scholarios did not bother to disguise the Latinity behind one of
my earlier selections, as above. After comparing all the texts in Bonaventure and Scholarios
just mentioned, I do not need to suppose that Scholarios referred to Bonaventure’s Itinerarium
mentis in deum (though plausible). Still, their shared context is propitious. Scholarios correctly
understood that the relevant Bonaventurian discussion on mentally dividing all conceivable
244
beings into a series of disjuncts (either/or) was serviceable for Palamite theology. 939 In order
to classify the transcendental disjuncts (finite-infinite being, participated-imparticipable being,
etc.), did Scholarios turn to the cataphatic/apophatic chart that he had copied from Peter of
Spain, where the contradictory (ἀντιφατικά) of (universal) “x” doing “y” is contrary to
(particular) “x” not-doing “y”? After all, Scholarios had translated Peter of Spain as follows:
“Αντιφατικαὶ εἰσὶν ἡ καθόλου καταφατικὴ καὶ ἡ μερικὴ ἀποφατική, οἶον τὶς ἄνθρωπος τρέχει,
καὶ τὶς ἄνθρωπος οὐ τρέχει.” 940 In reply, while Scholarios did assert above that particular
beings exist participatively, while one being (God) does not exist participatively, this does
constitute a true case of contradiction (ἀντίφασις). Scholarios was well aware of the fallacy
that can occur from such propositions, due to earlier translating Ps.-Thomas Aquinas’s De
fallaciis, where the pseudonymous author analyzed four specious “antiphatic” propositions. 941
The disjunctions are key to Scholarios’s aforementioned logical and metaphysical points about
being.
Scholarian interest in this subject supplemented discussions of Palamas on logic and
metaphysics from his debate with Gregoras. Palamas argued: “Now cataphatic, along with
939
See, e.g., Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 7.14–18, 28–30 (GPS 4:199a): “Ἆρ’ οὖν ταῦτα τὰ πολλὰ
κἀνταῦθα λεχθέντα παρὰ τοῦ ἁγίου, ἃ μόνος ὁ Θεὸς ἔχει καὶ ἕτερος οὐδείς, κτιστά ἐστι καὶ οὐκ ἄκτιστα; Ἄπαγε
τῆς ἀσεβείας. Ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὅτι πάντα ταῦτα ἄκτιστά ἐστιν οὐχ ἕν ἐστι τὸ ἄκτιστον, ὁ εἷς Θεός, ὃς ταῦτα πάντα
κατὰ φύσιν ἔχει [. . .] Οὐκοῦν τὰ φυσικῶς προσόντα ταῦτα πάντα τῷ Θεῷ ἓν ἄκτιστόν ἐστι, καὶ οὕτως οὐ πολλὰ
τὰ ἄκτιστά ἐστιν ἀλλ’ ἕν.”
940
Scholarios and Peter of Spain 1936, tractatus 1 (OCGS 8:287). Cf. Peter of Spain 2014, 110–111 (I.12).
941
Cf. Scholarios and Ps.-Thomas Aquinas 1936 (OCGS 8:275), chap. 14:
Causa autem apparentiae in hac fallacia est similitudo apparens contradictionis deficientis ad
contradictionem perfectam; causa vero non existentiae est diversitas eorumdem. Modi huius fallaciae
sunt quatuor. Primus peccat contra hanc particulam ad idem, ut hic: duo sunt duplum ad unum, et non
sunt duplum ad tria: igitur sunt duplum et non duplum. Non sequitur: quia, omisso hoc quod est esse
ad idem, non est contradictio. Secundus autem peccat contra hanc particulam secundum idem, sicut
hic: hoc est duplum ad illud secundum longitudinem, et non est duplum secundum latitudinem. Ergo
idem est duplum et non duplum. Non sequitur: quia omittitur haec particula, secundum idem, quae
requiritur ad contradictionem. Tertius peccat contra hanc particulam similiter, sicut hic: caelum
movetur circulariter, et non movetur sursum et deorsum. Ergo movetur et non movetur. Non sequitur:
quia omissio huius particulae, similiter, tollit contradictionem. Quartus est contra hanc particulam in
eodem tempore, sicut hic: domus est clausa in nocte, non est clausa in die. Ergo est clausa et non est
clausa. Non sequitur: quia diversitas temporis impedit contradictionem. Et est sciendum quod haec
fallacia convenit cum fallacia secundum quid et simpliciter in hoc, quia in utraque proceditur ab eo
quod dicitur cum determinatione ad id quod dicitur simpliciter. Sed haec est differentia, quia in fallacia
secundum quid et simpliciter determinatio diminuit de ratione eius quod est simpliciter esse, quod non
de necessitate accidit in hac fallacia, sed hae determinationes additae diminuunt de ratione
contradictionis; bene enim sequitur: hoc est duplum ad illud secundum latitudinem. Igitur est duplum
ad illud; non tamen sequitur quod sit contradictio, si ad diversa referatur. Patet etiam ex dictis quod
haec fallacia provenit secundum generalem entium contradictionem, quae est oppositio: nam est omnis
contradictionis principium.
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apophatic and hyperbolic, theology exists, but they are not contraries (ἐναντιοῦται), one and
the other opposite sides [on the Aristotelian square].” 942 Palamas had first addressed the topic
of predicating and, then, seemingly of negating the same attribute of one subject at the same
time. In fact, Palamas – as already shown by Demetracopoulos – was very familiar with
Proclean and Stoic logical arguments. 943 In Proclus’s very own objections to Aristotelian
ἀντίφασις (resulting from affirmation and negation of an attribute in two separate propositions
containing the same terms as their subject and predicate), Proclus used the remedy of Stoic
logic, making recourse to the hypothetical syllogism, especially in his commentary on the
Parmenides (where he also discusses infinity and apophaticism as implying an underlying
positive essence). 944 As it turns out, Scholarios, whether knowingly or not, was following in
the footsteps of Palamas’s solution to overcoming apparent Aristotelian opposition to his
division of all beings into one of two disjuncts by recourse to an alternative logic, which
Gregoras depreciatively refers to, time and again, in the fashion of Alexander of Aphrodisias,
as the “unsyllogistic syllogism.”
For his part, Scholarios concentrated on the manner in which propositions of God and
creatures, both taken as beings, can be in contradiction to each other: “God is infinite” and
“Creatures are not infinite.” In the aforementioned propositions, the subjects clearly are
different terms for diverse referents. Still, my propositions in quotations do not suffer from the
contradiction involved with two contrary propositions, as for example: “All beings are infinite”
and “Some beings are not infinite.” When these two propositions are placed into the
Aristotelian square, they are unable to coexist, as something unsayable of the same class of
beings at the same time. Scholarios described propositions – not unlike Palamas – that can be
pitted against each, without violating the Aristotelian square, below:
942
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 26.10–15 (GPS 4:228b). The foundation of this assertion may be
Ps.-Dionysios 1990, IV.20 (CD 1:164.15–17): “Καὶ οὐδὲ τὸ ἔλαττον ἀγαθὸν τῷ μείζονι ἐναντίον, οὔτε γὰρ τὸ
ἧττον θερμὸν ἢ ψυχρὸν τῷ πλείονι ἐναντίον. Ἔστιν οὖν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι καὶ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἀντιτέθειται καὶ ἠναντίωται
τἀγαθῷ τὸ κακόν.”
943
Demetracopoulos 1996, 201–202; Demetracopoulos 2011a, 278–280.
944
Steel 1997, 89–90.
246
In Palamas’s assessment of theology, when discussing “infinite goodness” with Gregoras, he
proposed a cataphatic proposition, as in “A” above: “Every divine person is [infinitely] good.”
Yet, Palamas simultaneously asserted that, apophatically, Dionysian theologians can
simultaneously state “E” above: “No divine person is [categorically] good.” 945 Despite this
negation, there is somehow no absurd contrary, because negative or apophatic theology is,
according to Palamas, professedly a case of hyperbole or positing an attribute par excellence. 946
As with the Scholastic axiom, that behind every negation exists some positive attribute,
Palamas claimed that Dionysian attributes of God (e.g., “beyond-all-good”) are equivalent to
the proposition “God is not good.” 947 While the metaphysical axiom of every negation (e.g.,
“God is not evil”) betraying a prior positive essence or attribute (viz., “God is good”) is
945
Ps.-Dionysios 1991, I.2 (CD 1:143.3–7): “Δέον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ καὶ πάσας τὰς τῶν ὄντων τιθέναι καὶ καταφάσκειν
θέσεις, ὡς πάντων αἰτίᾳ, καὶ πάσας αὐτὰς κυριώτερον ἀποφάσκειν, ὡς ὑπὲρ πάντα ὑπερούσῃ, καὶ μὴ οἴεσθαι
τὰς ἀποφάσεις ἀντικειμένας εἶναι ταῖς καταφάσεσιν, ἀλλὰ πολὺ πρότερον αὐτὴν ὑπὲρ τὰς στερήσεις εἶναι τὴν
ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν καὶ θέσιν.”
946
In this, Palamas likely follows the insight of Proclus in his commentary on the Parmenides, where apophatic
and cataphatic propositions are not in opposition, since apophaticism presumes an underlying positive attribute
that is reducible to something proper to a being. See, for example, Proclus 1864, 639. I thank Jonathan Greig
(Munich) for this insight. This also further strengthens Demetracopoulos (2011a, 277–278), who argues for the
primarily Proclean influence of Neoplatonism on Palamas over and above Ps.-Dionysios on the essence-
energies question, especially with regard to the use of θεότης and ἀπειρῶς ἀπειράκις. Ps.-Dionysios is best read
to oppose this Proclean reading of Plato’s Parmenides according to Proclean formal, exemplary, and final
causality, where the “beginning, middle, and end” of the divine ad intra being is somehow a description of real
operations in God, as lucidly explained in Radde-Gallwitz 2010, 248–250.
947
See Ps.-Dionysios 1990, I.1 (CD 1:107.1–110.2), whence Palamas seems to derive his theory: (1) Scripture
asserts true attributes of God; (2) yet, God is “super-essence” or above categorical substance; (3) the human
mind (νοῦς), practicing ἐποπτική (ἐποτεύεται), can distinguish attributes like goodness and justice from the
divine essence; and (4) it is divine infinity that puts God above all essences.
247
originally the intellectual property of Aristotle (Metaphysica IV.4), Palamas’s Proclean version
of the first mover acts as a first and final cause (not to mention the intelligible or exemplary
cause [ultra Aristotelem]) of the universe. This constitutes a Proclean (versus Dionysian)
approach to resolving the question at hand. 948 In a similar vein, one can reformulate a
theological statement asserting its contrary “God is good” into a proposition outside of A-E
opposition. In the proposition “God is beyond-all-good,” which lies behind “God is not good,”
“A” is only apparently contrary to “E” in categorical opposition (cf. the application of this
categorical logical to this problem in Aristotle’s Metaphysica, IV). If and only if there are two
terms that point to two univocally understood referents can such categorical opposition arise.
Palamas asserted that the term “good” in God does not suppose something in the categories,
as far as its mode of being (what Schoolmen call a modus essendi). 949 In line with the rest of
Dionysios’s Mystical Theology, Palamas wanted to exploit God’s supra-categorical being in
order to justify predicating something of God without contradiction; insofar as God – as cause
– theoretically provides some point of contact between the cause and the caused on the level
of comprehensible attributes that are shared between God (as essential possessor) and creature
(by participation).
Naturally, Scholarios was able to develop a similar discussion of attributes said of God
and creatures, as reconcilable, despite contradictory propositions (A-O or I-E) that might be
feared to occur. God’s energy or attribute is signified by the same term that is used for a
creature, but the referent of the term is a hyperbolic or infinitely existing attribute, not a
categorical one. In effect, the human mind can grasp accurately the concept of “goodness” in
God and in creature as some non-definable simple concept indifferently applied to both, for
the concept “good” is predicated of each substance and accident in all ten of the categories
without logical contradiction and can modally exist in either a finite or infinite manner.
Otherwise, we would be forced to admit that “substance is not good” and “quantity is not
good.” In such propositions, if good is not transcendental to the category of quality, then the
proposition becomes nugatory, for “good” supposes “quality.” It is entirely nonsensical to say
“quantity is quality” as convertibles. However, if one only admits that goodness cannot be
948
See Ps.-Dionysios 1990, V.10 (CD 2:189). For a comparison of Proclus’s clearly cataphatic position to the
ambiguous and even agnostic position of Ps.-Dionysios, see Radde-Gallwitz 2010, 248–250, 253–254.
949
Dumont (2005, 34–45) notes how Scotus accomplished this in his Logica Scoti by inserting adverbial
qualifiers such as essentialiter and formaliter (as did I in brackets above).
248
divorced from really existent accidents and substances alike, then one admits that goodness is
a transcendental property common to both categories.
Beyond the Aristotelian square, comparing simple propositions as contradictories,
Scholarios’s more complex proposition in his Excursus above is summarily: “Being is either
‘this a’ or not [‘this a’].” 950 Scholarios certainly had in mind the Stoic analysis of disjunctive
propositions, where (1.) Only one simple proposition in the either/or complex needs to be true
for a being of either disjunctive to really exist, as a true instance (as in the classic paradigm)
of a fact: “Either it is day or it is night. It is day. Therefore not: It is night,” 951 (2.) It is possible
that both propositions can be true simultaneously; namely: “This being is infinite” and “This
being is not infinite,” provided that a real existent is indicated in each instance of “this
being.” 952 Consequently, Scholarios is asserting the literal and existential truth of both
propositions. 953 Scholarios’s identification of disjunctives (as in Bonaventure) as true
propositions of a Stoic variety is traceable to a revealing discussion of Alexander of
Aphrodisias. In 1432/5, in his preface to his translation of Brito’s commentary on the Logica
Vetus, Scholarios had claimed to know Alexander’s commentaries. While Scholarios has been
shown to cite some other works of Alexander, I am not aware of proof of verbatim Scholarian
citations from Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. 954 Within said
commentary, Alexander reproduced one of Chrysippus’s Stoic analyses of disjunctive
propositions. 955 Chrysippus’s vocabulary and theory of disjunctive propositions agrees very
950
Mueller 1978, 11; Bobzien 2003, 104–105.
951
Bozien 2003, 105. This is the very set of arguments in Proclus to surpass Aristotelian affirmation and
negation, as discussed in Steel 1997, 88–92.
952
Crivelli 1994, 197–198.
953
This is different from the contradictory propositions (that are impossible to be true), where one subject
(ὑποκείμενον) is affirmed and negates a predicate simultaneously in the same manner (cf. OCGS 8:178).
954
For a preliminary investigation into this question, see Ierodiakonou 2011, 374–375.
955
Alexander of Aphrodisias, Alexandri in Aristotelis analyticorum priorum librum i commentarium,
Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 2.1, ed. Maximianus Wallies (Berlin: Reimer, 1883), 18–20 (Analytica
Priora 24b18):
τὸ γὰρ χρειῶδες τοῦ συλλογισμοῦ οὐ παρέχεται τὸ “εἰ ἡμέρα ἐστίν, φῶς ἐστιν· ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡμέρα ἐστίν·
φῶς ἄρα ἐστί” καὶ ὅλως οἱ λεγόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν νεωτέρων ἀδιαφόρως περαίνοντες. Τοιοῦτοι δὲ καὶ οἱ
διφορούμενοι, οἷός ἐστιν “εἰ ἡμέρα ἐστίν, ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ἡμέρα ἄρα ἐστίν.” [. .
.] ὁ γὰρ ἐξ ἀντιφάσεως διαιρετικὸς συλλογισμὸς οὐχ ὡς ταὐτὸν τῷ μεταλαμβανομένῳ ἤ, ὡς οἱ
νεώτεροί φασι, προσλαμβανομένῳ τὸ συμπέρασμα ἐπιφέρει· ὁ γὰρ λέγων “ἤτοι ἡμέρα ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ
ἔστιν ἡμέρα” εἶτα προσλαμβάνων τὸ ἕτερον τῶν ἐν τῷ διαιρετικῷ, ἢ τὸ ἀποφατικὸν τὸ “ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐκ
ἔστιν ἡμέρα” ἢ τὸ καταφατικὸν τὸ “ἡμέρα ἐστίν,” ἔχει μὲν συναγόμενον ἢ τὸ “οὐκ ἄρα ἡμέρα ἐστίν”
ἢ τὸ “ἡμέρα ἄρα ἐστίν,” ὃ δοκεῖ ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ προσειλημμένῳ, ἤτοι τῷ “ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμέρα”
ἢ τῷ “ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡμέρα ἐστίν”· οὐ μὴν ὡς ταὐτὸ ὂν αὐτῷ ἐπιφέρεται, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀντικείμενον τῷ ἑτέρῳ
τῶν ἐν τῷ διαιρετικῷ. Ὃ ἀναγκαῖον καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς λέγειν, εἴ γε ἐν τοῖς διαιρετικοῖς καὶ
249
well with Scholarios’s comments affirming Bonaventurian claims that infinite being really
exists, albeit the contradictory of finite being. Yet, really finite being can possibly exist at the
same time as infinite, even if such finitude adds a negation (οὐ) to the proposition “This infinite
being exists.”
3. Scholarios’s Use of Franciscans in Service of Palamism
As with the Latin citation from Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in deum, Renaissance
Franciscans and Scholarios (not to mention some contemporary scholars) viewed Bonaventure
as initiator and proponent of proto-Scotistic, non-analogical, or quasi-univocal theory of
predication, where the notion of being in the mind was “pure” and “simplex,” or “non-
analyzable,” such that it functioned as the notion under which every attribute of God and
creatures is considered, even if God’s actual mode of being is infinite and that of creatures is
finite. 956 Granted that Scholarios understood the theological and logical context to which the
above Bonaventurian citation is applicable, he aptly divided all being along the lines of
Bonaventure’s disjunctives. I have already investigated and studied the East-West
phenomenon of supposing radical infinity to ground the division of beings into transcendental
disjunctives, as something ostensibly connatural, even co-necessary, to any Christian
metaphysics using a common concept of being to refer both to the divine and to the creature
without committing the sacrilege of pantheism. 957 Similarly, Scholarios was in no way
mismatching sources to propose Bonaventurian-Scotistic metaphysics as applicable to
Palamism, given the fact that he had identified their metaphysical substructures as exactly the
same; 958 namely, the Origenistic tradition of divine infinity, especially as developed in Nyssa
διαζευκτικοῖς συλλογισμοῖς φασι τῇ προσλήψει διαιρετικοῖς καὶ διαζευκτικοῖς συλλογισμοῖς φασι τῇ

προσλήψει θατέρου τῶν ἐν τῷ διεζευγμένῳ τὸ ἀντικείμενον ἕπεσθαι τοῦ λοιποῦ τῆς συλλογιστικῆς
συμπλοκῆς. [. . .] ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ οἱ διφορούμενοι λόγοι λεγόμενοι ὑπ’ αὐτῶν συλλογιστικοί, οἷός
ἐστιν ὁ “εἰ ἡμέρα ἐστίν, ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ἡμέρα ἄρα ἐστίν.” οὔτε γὰρ τὴν χρείαν
τὴν τοῦ συλλογισμοῦ παρέχεται, ἔτι τε, εἰ ἡ τοῦ ἑπομένου πρόσληψις ἐν τοῖς συνεχέσιν ἀσυλλόγιστος,
ἐν δὲ τοῖς τοιούτοις συνεχέσι ταὐτὸν τὸ ἡγούμενον τῷ ἑπομένῳ, ἡ πρόσληψις οὐ μᾶλλον τοῦ
ἡγουμένου ἢ τοῦ ἑπομένου γίνεται.
956
Bettoni 1951, 517–532; Szabó 1951, 379–445; Szabó 1955, 30–31; Goff 2015, 24–25.
957
Kappes, Goff, and Giltner 2014, 175–220.
958
Again, in Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 18.1–20 (GPS 4:217b), he railed against Gregoras’s
metaphysical logic. Similar to Scostistic accusations against Thomism, Palamas claimed that Gregoras only
predicated tautological terms, since the referent for every diverse term is the only one object. Consequently,
“God is wise” effectively means “God is God.” In effect, Palamas defended a sort of proto-univocity and
understood certain attributes as predicable of God and creatures in a way that avoids the criticism of tautology.
250
and exposited by Damascene, along with their division of all being into one of two modes
(created or uncreated, finite or infinite, etc.). 959
Given the existence of an anti-syllogistic subculture present in the writings of notable
Byzantine theologians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this might tempt some
contemporaries to wonder if Scholarios was somehow betraying Palamas by entering into
advanced logical discussions. 960 Despite the fact that numerous theologians took a number of
negative positions throughout the history of Greek-speaking Christianity on logic, syllogisms
in particular, and philosophy in general, Palamas was clearly able to serve as an inspiration for
Scholarios’s discussion of predication, particularly taking into consideration Palamas’s mature
debate with Gregoras in 1355: “[Palamas said to Gregoras:] Yes, θέλησις is a relation of the
one willing to the items that have been willed, and divine providence is a relation of the
predestining with respect to the items that were predestined. Now, therefore, ‘relation’ is τὰ
πρός τι, and these are in every way not the essence, or would you say that ‘relation’ is not the
essence, o Philosopher?” 961 Palamas argued on two levels: (1.) attributes (θέλησις, wisdom,
etc.) and (2.) relations between attributes and the divine mind. 962 The first attribute is what
Scholarios refers to as “first intention” that is concrete (de concreto), while the second example
is a mental relation in God, or second intention (de concreto). Scholarios was not at all guilty
of creating some new problem through his speculations, but seeking definitively to resolve the
key points within Palamas’s debates with Gregoras. To this extent, Scholarios developed
Palamas’s logical and metaphysical arguments against contemporary anti-Palamites, who
In a similar vein, scholars have plausibly proposed Bonaventure’s use of the disjunctive transcendentals as the
point of departure for Scotus’s discussion of the same, leading to an explicit doctrine of univocity of the concept
of being. See, e.g., Wolter 1946.
959
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 5.25 (GPS 4:195a), explicitly invoked Damascene’s De fide
orthodoxa (Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως) against the nominalist metaphysics of Gregoras. Cf.
Kappes, Goff, and Giltner 2014, 175–220.
960
Ware 1973, 19–21; Ierodiakonou 2006, 219–236; Marcacci 2008, 283–289.
961
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 19.24–30 (4:220b). Cf. Gregorios Palamas 1966a, sec. 24 (GPS
2:666):
ἡ θεοποιὸς λαμπρότης τοῦ θεοῦ, καθ’ ἣν καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς ἐπ’ ὄρους ἔλαμψε [. . .] Τὰ τοιαῦτα δὲ πάντα
οὐ μόνον τῇ τῆς θεότητος προσηγορίᾳ καλεῖται παρὰ τῶν ἁγίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς οὐσίας εἶναι καὶ ἐκ τῆς
οὐσίας προϊέναι λέγεται, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οὐσία εἶναι. Πῶς γὰρ ἂν εἶεν καὶ οὐσία τῶν πρός τι ὄντα καὶ οὐκ
ἄφετα; Σχέσις γὰρ καὶ ἐπιστροφὴ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν ἡ πρόνοια πρὸς τὰ προνοούμενα καὶ ἡ θεατικὴ
δύναμις πρὸς τὰ ὁρώμενά τε καὶ προγινωσκόμενα καὶ ἡ θεοποιὸς χάρις πρὸς τὰ θεοποιούμενα. Ταύτας
δὴ τὰς ἐκ τῆς θεότητος προσαγορευομένας δυνάμεις καὶ ἐνεργείας τοῦ θεοῦ, ὡς πολλὰς καὶ μὴ οὐσίας
οὔσας – ἐν γὰρ μιᾷ οὐσίᾳ παντοδύναμόν ἐστι τὸ θεῖον.
962
See verification of Phakrases’ version of this question in Gregoras 1855, 324.16–19 (XXX.82): “ἄλλος οὖν
ὁ θεός, καὶ ἄλλη ἡ σοφία αὐτοῦ δι’ ἧς καὶ ἐν ᾗ τὰ πάντα ἐποίησε, τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ οὐσίας πάντῃ διάφορός τε καὶ
ἄκτιστος· ἄλλος γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ὁ ἔχων, καὶ ἄλλη ἡ σοφία αὐτοῦ ὡς ἑκτὸν καὶ ἀνούσιον.”
251
affirmed that everything in God was in every respect the essence (really and virtually the divine
essence itself). A newer generation of theologians (e.g., Thomists) – like Gregoras – made
similar anti-Palamite arguments with similar interest in distinguishing relations of the divine
essence (viz., divine relations or hypostases) from the essence itself. As it happened, Gregoras
refused even to concede any real distinction between God and his relations to himself (or
hypostases), let alone to objects of his thought.
Finally, with respect to Scholarian use of Bonaventurian metaphysical logic, Palamas
had perhaps inspired – in his mature debates with Gregoras – Scholarian interest in logical
predication of attributes. Palamas had priorly confronted the exact preoccupation of Scholarios,
when engaging in the final debates of his life:
[Palamas:] “Yet, tell me, o philosopher, does God not possess naturally what is immutable,
what is infinite, what is without beginning?”
[Gregoras:] “Yes [...] but not only without beginning, but also without end. Yet, these names
are only in God and nothing else.” [...] 963
[Palamas:] “Great! Yet, since [names] are merely predicated of things predicated, then they do
not exist. Yet, contrarily, they do exist and are predicated. So, what is God’s being without
beginning, and without end, and as simply something eternal [...] are such things predicated
only, but do not exist, or are they predicated and do exist?”
[Gregoras:] The Philosopher gave no response. 964
Clearly, Palamas argued for not only a literal application of an attribute to God in a proposition,
but for its existential truth-value. I mean a proposition where “God is x” is argued to function
as truly as the proposition “Socrates is white,” where “white” actually exists, as a really existent
quality, in an existent person by the name of Socrates. 965 Scholarios tackled this problem, since
963
Gregoras is arguing from Ps.-Dionysios 1990, V.10 (CD 2:189). The debate is exactly that which is fought
between orthodox Thomists and Franciscans; namely, “Are God’s attributes named in comparison with
creatures ad extra only?” or “Are God’s attributes ad intra perfections?” For a summation of the two sets of
scholarly interpretation that still disagree on the case, see Radde-Gallwitz 2010, 243–250.
964
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 20.27–21.1–23 (GPS 4:222a–223a). NB, Jugie (1926–1935, 2:157),
after admitting Palamas knew the Aristotelian corpus well, concedes the fact that Gregoras was too inferior to
Palamas in logic to win his major debate against him in the presence of the emperor in 1355. Instead, Jugie
claims that only the (Thomistic) Schoolmen succeeded in confuting Palamism.
965
This kind of Stoic proposition, according to Crivelli (1994, 190–192), is true only when some particular
(versus an indefinite like “someone”) actually exists that bears the predicate in the present. However, in Sextus
Empericus’s likely reading of the Stoics, even “Someone is eating” can be true if the phrase is subordinated to
“This person is eating.” See Demetracopoulos 1997, 195–197, where Palamas demonstrably incorporated full
citations of Sextus Empericus into his Trinitarian speculations.
252
the attributes of Socrates are generally admitted to fit exclusively into Aristotelian categories
of attributes (quality, quantity, etc.). Like Scholarios, Palamas debated with Gregoras just
above. He argued that the patristic authority of Gregory Nyssa had already shown that
“essence” in God was not categorical but lacked the definable attributes needed to classify
God’s being as either substance or accident. So, whatever is said of God is spoken of in a
transcendental or supra-categorical way. Using Bonaventure to carry on this line of thinking,
Scholarios embraced a Scholastic development of Aristotle (1003b24–25, 1061a15–17), where
the attributes of “one,” “true,” and “good,” are analyzed as pure intentions or mental
abstractions stemming from positive perfections in an object, which same perfections are
reducible neither to substance, nor to accident. 966 These transcendental attributes (along with
the aforementioned transcendental disjunctives) can all be predicated truly of God, but without
threat of encapsulating God into the matter-form or potency-act world of categorical being.
With this in mind, Scholarios’s next section of his Excursus clearly was meant to uphold
Palamas’s metaphysical logic, above, if only with greater rigor and by using more advanced
theories of logic. Scholarios summarized the supposed neo-Barlaamite position, as ulteriorly
embraced (in facto esse), among Schoolmen as follows:
[Excursus, chap. 93, on Supposition:] Accordingly, from all these names and from the name
“God,” which is arranged for signifying (σημαίνειν) the divine nature, our mind composes
(συντίθησιν) many propositions; namely, that “God exists,” or that “God considers,” or that
“God begets,” or “emanates,” or “creates,” or such like. This composition is also invented by
the soul alone and in the soul alone, for a composition is characterized by a subject and by a
predicate, but a [material] “supposition” (ὑπόθεσις) and a predicate of the soul is a
product/intention (ἔργον). Not in the least, because of the aforesaid intention and formed
propositions with these names, do these produce any sort of composition in God.
As I have already mentioned, the Scholastic theory to which Scholarios refers, is one of the
soul creating or inventing a relation, as for example, in some grammatical notion: “Socrates is
the subject [of a sentence].” Scholarios was aware that Aquinas, Armandus, and many others,
had tended to classify attributes of God, as if they were mental relations or mind-inventions
966
Aertsen 1998, 50. Tavardon (1977, 269) records where this passage serves as the point of debate between
Scholarios and Pletho on their conflict surrounding pagan and Christian notions of univocity of the concept of
being.
253
that enjoy no discernible foundation in God himself. In this schema, “God is good” and “God
is the subject of a sentence” are not cases of primary and secondary intentional predication,
respectively. Instead, for Thomists, both propositions are said of God by invention of the
human mind, since neither accidents nor relations actually inhere in the essence of God. He is
only the foundation of each concept or abstracted attribute insofar as he created beings that
indirectly reflect, in some mysterious way, his own attributes.
After years of editing and translating advanced works on logic, Scholarios began his
Excursus by announcing his position on signification, an important question for Modistae on
the signification of terms. Scholarios’s order of progression in his Excursus was
methodologically correct, for a discussion of signification is necessary before any attempt to
work out a theory of “supponere” or suppositing can begin. Generally, advanced fourteenth-
century logicians admitted at least five properties of terms: (1.) supposition, (2.) appellation,
(3.) restriction, (4.) distribution, and (5.) relation. As with his translation of Peter of Spain’s
Summaries of Logic (Summulae logicales), Scholarios meant to apply a theory where the term
“human” (homo) signifies the “second substance” or mentally abstracted essence of a man. 967
Because this concept is taken from an abstraction of a thing (e.g., Socrates), the term may
suppose (supponit) Socrates, Plato, et al. 968 However, this does not mean that homo “signifies”
Socrates, only that Socrates is possibly supposed, indirectly, as the referent of the term.
Applying this to theology, the proposition “God is a name” signifies a first category of
signification. This kind of signification (materialiter) signifies grammatically or in a way that
has no bearing on an object outside of the mind (ens extra animam). Here “God” might be a
term signifying a monosyllabic word or kind of sound. Simple supposition, as cited below,
occurs when the universal (or even a particular thing) is signified. So, “God is good” refers to
some universally understood notion in a thing. Generally, moderate realist Modistae theorized
“simple supposition” to derive from the predication of some species. There was, furthermore,
967
Scholarios and Peter of Spain 1936, tractatus 7 (OCGS 8:332):
Περὶ τῶν ὑποθέσεων. Διαφέρει δὲ ὑπόθεσις καὶ σημασία, ὅτι ἡ μὲν σημασία ἐστὶ δι’ ἐπιθέσεως φωνῆς
πρὸς τὸ σημαινόμενον πρᾶγμα, ὑπόθεσις δέ ἐστι πρόσληψις ὅρου ἤδη σημαίνοντος τὸ πρᾶγμα ἀντὶ
μερικοῦ τινος, ὡς ὅταν λέγηται, ἄνθρωπος τρέχει, οὗτος ὁ ὅρος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὑποτίθησιν ἀντὶ
Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων. Καὶ διατί ἡ σημασία προτέρα ἐστὶ τῆς ὑποθέσεως καὶ οὐ
σημαίνουσι τὸ αὐτό; Διότι τὸ σημαίνειν ἐστὶ τῆς φωνῆς, τὸ δὲ ὑποτιθέναι, ὅρου ἤδη σημαίνοντος,
τουτέστι συνθέτου ἐκ φωνῆς καὶ σημασίας· ἡ ὑπόθεσις ἄρα οὐκ ἔστι σημασία. Συμπλοκή ἐστι
πρόσληψις ὅρου ἐπιθέτου εἴτουν ἐπουσιώδους ἀντὶ τινός.
968
For the priority of signification before turning to supposition, see Scholarios and Peter of Spain 1936,
tractatus 7 (OCGS 8:332). Cf. Peter of Spain 2014, 240–241 (VI.1).
254
a “personal supposition” enjoying a number of theoretical modes. Above, Scholarios’s simple
point describes the theory of theologians sympathetic to Armandus, who treats the referents or
divine significata (or divine energies in this case) as terms spoken of, in order to signify
“materially,” so that no composition (matter-form, genus-species, etc.) occurs in God.
Conversely, Scholarios immediately proposed his own manner of looking at signification and
supposition, as applied to the divine attributes, from what he was soon to identify as a
Franciscan approach:
[Excursus on Real and Intentional Being:] On the other hand, our mind is unable to consider
in a way other than this sort of [subject-predicate] composition; and, by the mode in which it
considers other items, it even considers God himself, although it considers Him as being above
all beings (τὰ ὄντα), Further, in no way is it possible for our mind to grasp of the divine
simplicity in such a way as to conceive the divine nature according to one act of direct
apprehension (ἐπιβολήν), as the divine nature apprenends herself simultaneously in her
entirety. Because of this, the soul composes multitudinous propositions, which are composed
from real things (πραγμάτων), which aforesaid are the things in the soul, i.e., from intelligible
objects (νοημάτων) to which certain beings doubtlessly correspond outside of the soul [viz.,
real entities], in the manner that they exist in themselves, but not as they are considered by the
soul [i.e., beings of reason], as is the case with of second intentions (τῶν δευτέρων ἐπινοιῶν).
I draw attention to Scholarios’s preoccupation over the human capacity to speak about God in
propositions. This conversation is simply a continuation of the De novissimis debate at Ferrara
(1438), which I have already discussed. Scholarios was in agreement with Markos of Ephesus
at Ferrara, with the result that the divine essence cannot be directly seen (by human intellection,
nor by abstraction). Consequently, the human intellect – if hypothetically gazing upon the
divine essence – is conceptually powerless to receive directly any notion of the divine essence,
so as to distinguish it from other attributes (though it can gaze upon each attribute!). In his
commentary on Armandus’s doctrine, Scholarios taught his potentially unwary student of
Byzantium that theological propositions are not meant to analyze the deity directly, as if a
human intellect is mentally dividing a cognized Socrates (viz., first intention) into the
predicables of his proper genus and species. God cannot be accurately divvied up into a subject
and predicate in this manner. Scholarios’s point, above, is that a certain psychological analogy
or proportion can be validly applied to the kinds of distinction that he wants to make in God,
255
since God’s really intelligible distinctions are visible to the divine mind upon God seeing his
own essence and energies in his own single act of comprehension. While the Scholarian
description of these distinctions is completely Scholastic in tenor, he obviously abandoned
Thomism on this score (rejecting one simple divine apprehension of one simple concept of
divine esse).
Likewise, Scholarian assertions above anticipate his future treatise on the essence-
energies question in defense of patristic ἐποπτική or godly self-vision of his distinct attributes
and their intelligible content within his own essence. 969 Kobusch has exhausted this topic with
respect to the writings of the Fathers, beginning with Clement of Alexandria and Origen and
generally terminating with the highly metaphysical doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria. Common
facets of ancient pagan and Christian ἐποπτεία include (1) awareness of investigation into the
immaterial essence from the points of departure of Plato and Aristotle, (2) affirmation of
distinctions in divine being, as considered in the highest species of science, and (3) human
capacity to contemplate distinctions in a way analogous to God’s own intraspection. 970
Both Eugenikos and Scholarios explicitly cited the Palamite-patristic authority, Basil
the Great, on his discussion of God’s vision of himself. Their mutual source for their citation
was Palamas, who had often cited Basil and his Stoic theory: 971
They did not understand even what St. Basil says in his Epistle to Eustathios: “So, it is the
case, an appellation carries indication [versus signifying] of some power, either of an epoptic,
or of energetic kind,” that is of the godhead. “Yet, the divine nature is without significance
among all contrived names; insofar as it exists, it remains without significance as concerns our
own concept. We were taught the differences of energies, having learned ‘good,’ ‘just,’ etc.
[...] Yet, we are not able to discover any more the nature of the one who energizes through
contemplation of the energies. Now, when someone attributes a concept belonging to each of
these names and to this nature, in regard to whom the names belong, such a one will not
attribute the very same concept for two of them, for there is another concept for the other, and
even the nature belonging to these things is different.” 972
969
970
Kobusch 2005, 23–36; Kobusch 2006, 138–151.
971
E.g., Palamas 1966b, sec. 8 (GPS 2:227–230).
972
Cf. Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:215):
256
Scholarios took up Palamas’s Stoic-based logic, but also developed it along the lines of
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Modistae. 973 Similarly, specialists in medieval philosophy
nowadays argue that Schoolmen in the Latin West, such as Scotus and Hervaeus Natalis,
actually rediscovered Neoplatonic and Stoic interest in ἐποπτική when puzzling about ad intra
distinctions in divinis in their metaphysical logic surrounding first and second intentions. 974
Above, Scholarios’s attraction to Basil, having selected only a few of the numerous Fathers
cited by Palamas and Eugenikos, is explained by the fact that Peter of Spain’s theory of
appellation actually approached (if somewhat falling short of) Stoic appellation. 975 For Peter
of Spain, the theory was defined as follows: “Appellation is taking a common term in place of
a thing that exists. [...] A term that signifies a non-being appellates nothing – like ‘Caesar’ or
[...] ‘chimera’ [...] Appellation differs from supposition and signification because there is
appellation only of a thing that exists, while there is signification and supposition [of both].” 976
Scholarios was quick to recognize similarities between appellation and Stoic indication in spite
of diversity of language, among other differences. The Scholarian excerpt from Basil builds
upon his earliest discussions within his Excursus, where appellation is defined as a predicative
term that describes an existent subject by means of an existent attribute. 977 Both Palamas and
Scholarios committed themselves to really existing attributes in the divine essence, whether in
the Stoic or, at least for Scholarios, the Scholastic system. The Basilian passage adopts Stoic
theory, where a common noun “indicates” a really existing part that is not the whole itself. 978
When Scholarios later reproduced this citation, he effortlessly applied it to Scotistic
οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνο γοῦν ἐννοήσαντες τὸ τοῦ ἱεροῦ Βασιλείου ἐν τῇ πρὸς Εὐστάθιον ἐπιστολῇ· “Οὐκοῦν,
φησίν, ἐξουσίας τινὸς εἴτε ἐποπτικῆς εἴτε ἐνεργητικῆς ἔνδειξιν ἡ προσηγορία φέρει, τῆς θεότητος
δηλονότι· ἡ δὲ θεία φύσις ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἐπινοουμένοις ὀνόμασι, καθὸ ἔστι, μένει ἀσήμαντος ὡς ὁ
ἡμέτερος λόγος· [. . .] ἀγαθόν τε καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα μαθόντες, ἐνεργειῶν διαφορὰς
ἐδιδάχθημεν· τοῦ δὲ ἐνεργοῦντος τὴν φύσιν οὐδὲν μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς τῶν ἐνεργειῶν κατανοήσεως
ἐπιγνῶναι δυνάμεθα· ὅταν γὰρ ἀποδιδῷ τις λόγον ἑκάστου τούτων τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ αὐτῆς τῆς
φύσεως περὶ ἣν τὰ ὀνόματα, οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀμφοτέρων ἀποδώσει λόγον· ὧν δὲ ὁ λόγος ἕτερος, τούτων
καὶ ἡ φύσις διάφορος.
973
For Palamas’s doctrine about human incapacity to form a simple concept of the divine essence, see Fyrigos
2005, 78–82.
974
Doyle 2008, 12.
975
Ong 2004, 70–72.
976
Peter of Spain 2014, 447 (X.1).
977
Although Scholarios did not translate into Greek Peter of Spain 2014, 144–145 (III.21), he did translate
elsewhere the term “appellation” in the same synopsis by means of the Stoic term προσηγορία, in Scholarios
and Peter of Spain 1936, tractatus 3 (OCGS 8:300). For the condition for a simple Stoic proposition to be true,
see Crivelli 1994, 190–194.
978
Crivelli 1994, 194.
257
designation of the divine essence or “this God/godhead” (haec essentia), almost as if this were
a term of Stoic indication, where “this” functions as a “deictic” pronoun implying a real
existent. 979
In all this, Scholarios acted in continuation with, not in departure from, Palamas. 980
Given Palamas’s favorable opinion of Aristotelian syllogisms of the apodictic variety,
Scholarios unsurprisingly utilized Latin logic due to his similar judgment on the value of the
syllogism in theology. Though Scholarios did not declare the fact in his 1445 Excursus,
Palamas must have at least tempted him to bypass Franciscan arguments against theology’s
categorization as an Aristotelian science. 981 On this score, Palamas’s strong emphasis on the
certainty of theological propositions, known to the theologian with a certitude adequate for
syllogizing apodictically, laid foundations for conceptualizing theology as a proper science
against the theory of Barlaam. 982 Secured of the verity of religious truths in virtue of
theological propositions being divinely revealed, assertions such as “God is a Trinity” serve as
a syllogistic premises for Palamas. 983 In the next sequential section of Scholarios’s Excursus,
he went on to develop his theory of second intentions that will consistently guide his two fuller
and subsequent treatises on the matter:
979
Crivelli 1994, 195.
980
Ierodiakonou (2006, 225) has already highlighted Palamas’s argument to Barlaam, where he evaluated
Aristotelian logic as an “antidote” that validly heals the wounds inflicted by the serpent-philosopher who bites
the theologians with logic. Additionally, the apodictic syllogism was judged a valid tool for theological
demonstration. Cf. Gregoras 1855, 278.20–279.4 (XXX.15).
981
Fyrigos (2005, 81–82) has already uncovered Palamas’s underlying theory of science in respect to theology,
where the apodictic demonstrability of theological claims rests on the same necessities of Aristotelian science;
namely, the notion is (1) necessary (ἀναγκαῖον), (2) eternal (ἀεὶ ὄν), and (3) an intelligible truth to the intellect
(ἀληθὲς ὄν). Dumont (1992, 415–429) explains how the normal state of the human condition – for Scotus –
excludes the possibility of theology as an Aristotelian science. However, slightly dissimilar from Palamas,
Scotus held that divine vision might infuse the concepts necessary for the propositions to meet Aristotelian
criteria. The difference between Scotus and Palamas was in their estimation of the degree of this vision. For
Scotus it would not be the same as Paul’s third level of the empyrean heaven, or beatific vision. For his part,
given the fact that Palamas held for the beatific vision on earth, it naturally serves as the source of such infallible
theological knowledge.
982
See Gregoras 1855, 277.8–10 (XXX.14), 278.6–15 (XXX.14–15), where the author recorded his anger at
Palamas for avoiding scriptural arguments and instead “having no scriptural witness to bring forward, he then
argued that items that are not syllogizable are to be made into syllogisms.” NB, Gregoras’s context and
vocabulary mirror Alexander of Aphrodisias’s evaluation of Stoic logic (viz., ἀσυλλόγιστοι συλλογισμοί) in
disjunctive propositions.
983
See Fyrigos 2005, 78–82, where he catalogs Palamas’s case for divine predicates (good, just, etc.) as
sufficient to form apodictic syllogisms, but not terms signifying the divine essence, which cannot be mentally
grasped in a concept.
258
[1. Second Intentions:] These very same [first intentions] which are in the soul and
correspond to things (πράγμασι), do not exist in God as things (πράγματα) differing in the way
in which they exist as concepts (λόγοι) of these aforesaid [things] in the soul; i.e., some whole
thing [πρᾶγμα] does not spring up in God under the notion [ὑπὸ τῷ λόγῳ] of goodness as
apposite to God and the divine essence, in the same way as the notion of goodness relates to
the soul, when [these concepts are] predicated of the divine essence.
[2. First Intentions:] Rather, what holds is this. They are ‘things’ (πράγματα) in the sense
that they are “of the thing” and “in the thing”, i.e., in the sense that that peculiarly one and
absolutely simple essence is properly connected to all such perceptions; and this is not so
because it is perceived in this way by us, but because it is [objectively] in this exact way, unlike
the distinctions which are in us, to which nothing at all real [πραγματικόν] corresponds in
extra-mental reality, but rather only a thing that is extant in the soul, i.e., only an intelligible
object [νόημα],
[3. Second Intentions:] as it happens in the notion (λόγῳ) of genus and of species and
happens in general with second intelligibles (intentions).
[4. First Intentions:] Because of the aforementioned, the divine essence, considered in
comparison to all its own perfections –which some [Franciscans / not the Palamites?] are
accustomed indeed to call with the general name ‘energies’, noting also in addition the
distinction just mentioned)– this, I say, divine essence and its perfections (viz., wisdom and
goodness, or paternity and sonship, or begottenness and procession and such), considered thus,
are not many things, but rather “one something,” inasmuch as by ‘thing’ we consider a
springing up and reflecting {i.e. multi-faceted}, so to speak, whole.
[5. Real Distinction:] In this way, we call ‘thing’ this stone and that man, or “Gabriel,”
which are individuals (ἄτομα) separated from one another; or, the soul and the body, both of
which, even if they have not also been actually separated (as long as the parts are still united
together), they are still possible to be separated.
[6. Formal Distinction:] Energies are not ‘things’ (πράγματα) in the former mode. Yet, the
former distinction is not real (πραγματική) in the relative sense, but rather all these [items] are
one thing thus: all these res, which surely are the one God, are res (πράγματα) according to
some other mode (ἕτερόν τινα τρόπον): they do not exist in the soul alone, as if manufactured
or produced by it, but have a certain existence outside of the soul and exist side by side with
259
it, thereby logically resulting that the divine essence is necessarily called a res absolutely
(ἁπλῶς) and properly (κυρίως), as it not only exists outside the soul and is truly subsistent, but
also exists in the manner of an individual and a being of a whole and of something one.
[7. Comparison of the Real and the Formal Distinction:] Such a thing might also become
some term (ὅρος) or foundation (θεμέλιος) of the real distinction (between himself and another
thing [πράγματος]) in a like manner, just as we assert God and some creature (viz., Gabriel) to
be really distinguished from one another, because in this distinction – in place of certain terms
and their foundations – two whole subsistent things are taken into account. (Let us put aside,
in this discussion, that the aforementioned are also distinguished according to their substance
(κατ᾽οὐσίαν) and any other even greater antithesis; it suffices for the needs of the present
inquiry that they are really (πραγματικῶς) [distinct]; for things that differ substantially
(οὐσιωδῶς διαφέροντα) are really much more distinguished.)
[8. Terms and Referents:] To conclude, on one hand, one could call the divine essence a
‘thing’. On the other, all the perfections and energies within itself might be call ‘things’
(πράγματα) not in this way, but inasmuch as they are “of the thing” and “in the thing”, and, in
a nutshell, realia/realities (πραγματικά); and, from this there results that, in God, there is not
at all composition of these items themselves and the essence, whose aforementioned items
(πραγματικά) are real and true perfections.
I reproduce this long quotation because Scholarios only terminated his rhetorical period with
the last sentence above. Scholarian vocabulary and distinctions are notably Scholastic, where
the terminus technicus of “realia” is entirely Scotistic in nature.
Above (cf. supra, 1. Second Intentions), Brito’s theory about things outside the human
mind causing second intentions (e.g., the production of the abstracted idea “genus”) is
absolutely contradicted. For Scholarios, second intentions are inventions of the mind alone.
Still, this does not betray the principal source of his newer doctrine, since Duns, Hervaeus, and
Armandus all agree on this much, as regards vocabulary and accounts of “beings of reason.” 984
984
Amerini (2009, 244, 247) explains that Natalis explicitly critiqued (in his De secundis intentionibus) Brito’s
parallelism. He noted that “man” is a universal by understanding, implying no metaphysical commitments extra
animam. De Rijk (1997, 352) underlines that Hervaeus’s notion of a second intention is unique inasmuch as it
includes notionally a relation to a first intention. Diversely, a first intention does not objectively contain the
notion of a relation to real being.
260
Incidentally, Scholarios maintained this doctrine of intentions in the rest of his essence-
energies treatises (1445–c. 1458).
Above (cf. supra, 2. First Intentions), to uncover Scholarios’s source for his doctrine
of first intentions (e.g., goodness) as they exist in God, I point out Scholarian use of technical
terminology. Scholarios ultimately described a divine energy as “ali/quid rei” or as something
that belongs to an object, but that exists as a quasi-posterior reality to the existent whole object.
Consequently, the object does not presuppose the attribute, but vice versa. This points us
toward the simpliciter simplex or absolutely pure concept of being (as first explored in
Bonaventure above), which serves as the foundation for all other perfections. In this scenario,
where “good” is used as a predicate of God, goodness presupposes some existent being, for
the mind clearly understands that – since “good” is not categorized into the five predicables as
a component of a proper definition – whatever is called good invites the question: “Good
what?” All divine attributes similarly raise the question, “Good, wise, etc., what?” The answer,
of course, rests in “ens is good.” As we shall see shortly, Scholarios is very sensitive to the
term “thing” (res/πρᾶγμα), as referring to both the divine essence and to each of the energies
as individual somethings. This rather unusual shift between two referents for the same term, as
applied to aspects of God, was occasioned by Palamas’s use of πρᾶγμα to designate the essence
and energies alike. 985 To this extent, Palamas’s arguments employ similar language and themes
to those of Scholarios. 986 While such phraseology tended to be a late development (against
Gregoras), Jugie and Guichardan made very limited use of the mature opera of Palamas to note
this similarity between Palamas and Scholarios. 987 Because both authors bypassed the
985
See especially, Palamas 1970d, 21.76–21.78 (GPS 4:443–446). While defending the quasi-accident status
of the energy within the divine essence, Palamas adopted Cyril of Alexandria’s expression (called τι τοῦ
πράγματος by Scholarios) for his own (4:444): “Εἰ τοίνυν νοεῖταί τινα τῶν πραγμάτων ὡς ἐπισυμβεβηκότα τῷ
θεῷ, τί μάτην περὶ τοῦ μηδὲν συμβεβηκέναι λέγειν τῷ θεῷ τὸ ἀγέννητον διατείνεσθε, ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε σχήματι
φαινομένων τινῶν, ὅσαπέρ ἐστι κατ’ οὐσίαν αὐτῷ.” For a good example of Palamas referring to the energies,
as did Scholarios with “ἐν τῷ πράγματι,” existing as differentiated items within God’s | the divine nature, see
Palamas 1966e, sec. 12 (GPS 2:406): “Νῦν οὖν οἱ τὴν μὲν ἐν πράγματι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἡμετέραν τηλικαύτην
διαφορὰν ἢ ἀγνοήσαντες ἢ ἀλογήσαντες, πρὸς δὲ τὴν λέξιν τὸν πόλεμον ἀναῤῥιπίσαντες, μετὰ τοῦ ἀμαθίας
σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἔμπλεως δεικνύναι καὶ σκαιότητος, ἀλογίστου τε φόβου καὶ ἀνευλαβοῦς ὄντως εὐλαβείας καὶ
δειλίας, ἥτις ἔστιν οἷς ἔνδυμα τῆς ἀσεβείας ἐστί.”
986
In his 1355 debate, Gregoras (1855, 276.3–5 [XXX.12]), only conceded the terminology, as in a phrase of
Gregory of Nyssa, in reference to the divine persons: “ἐν τῇ ἀκτίστῳ φύσει νοεῖται τὰ θαυμαστὰ πράγματα καὶ
ὀνόματα, ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ὁ υἱὸς καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον.”
987
Jugie (1926–1935, 2:70) listed two MSS of the debate with Gregoras in 1355. Jugie read the MSS well
enough to evaluate corruptions therein. He also expressed his disappointment with the primitive nature of
Gregoras’s arguments that fail to refute convincingly Palamas, according to Jugie’s estimation.
261
philosophical debates with Gregoras, they evaluated Scholarios’s logical doctrine as beyond
the pale of Palamas’s concerns. 988 Methodologically, Jugie and Guichardan concentrated only
on Gregoras’s Historia Byzantina to the exclusion of the minutes of the debate compiled by
Georgios Phakrases. For his part, Gregoras mostly omitted Palamas’s arguments, which ought
to be read cautiously since Nikephoros is highly inimical to Palamas and quite generous with
his use of hyperbolic epithets, similes, and metaphors against the same. Gregoras also spilt a
fair amount of ink denouncing Palamas as a grammarian and logician. As Palamas honed his
skills as a theologian, apologist, and rhetor, his interest in logical puzzles apparently increased,
justifying Scholarian interest in unresolved logical and metaphysical puzzles that were first
proposed by Palamas in his last years (1355–1357/9).
As Scholarios advanced his discussion, he made sure to emphasize to his Greek reader,
ordinarily unfamiliar with Latin logic, that a second intention is something that is normally
understood of or mentally related to a first intention (cf. supra, 3. Second Intentions), not
something understood of a thing (ens extra animam). This theory, again, is common among
Latin Schoolmen. So, “Socrates is man,” where “man” signifies the abstraction of an essence,
is a first intention; whereas, “Man is species,” where “species” signifies an abstraction of the
human mind from an abstraction based upon a first intention (viz., the universal humanitas or
man), is a second intention.
Now that Scholarios has made it abundantly clear that God’s ad intra distinctions are
not second intentions, then it is simply not possible for Scholarios to be supporting orthodox
Thomists and their approach to the divinity. Brito has already been excluded as well by the
fact that his theory of second intentions is inapplicable to the present discussion. 989 The only
known candidates who might serve Scholarian purposes in the next section of his argument are
Duns Scotus, Hervaeus Natalis, and Francis Meyronnes. Each held a doctrine of second
intentions along Scholarian lines, while admitting the divine essence, along with its divine
energies, to be a res. At the base of Scholarios’s argumentation is a justification of Palamas’s
Jugie 1926–1935, 2:70, 2:107, 2:125–130; Guichardan 1933, 69–70, 117.

988
Brito, with his strict Aristotelian view of a logical-real parallelism, attempted to argue that first-, second-,
989
and third-order second intentions (obiective [in anima] and subiective [extra animam]) correspond to external
modes of being. Later in life, he hesitated about second- and third-order second intentions. After all, what mode
of existence does a grammatical “subject” enjoy in “A is a subject”? Nonetheless, genus, species, proprium,
accident, and difference are in the world allegedly grounding the “reality” of first-order second intentions. See
De Rijk 1997, 349–350.
262
own citations of the Fathers who sometimes referred to the divine essence, persons, and
attributes as res/πράγματα. However, Scholarios’s logical method is fundamentally Scotistic,
as are that of Meyronnes and of Natalis (on this score). Scotus, in his discussion on this same
matter, countered an alleged opinion of Bonaventure:
Along the same lines, the second opinion [of Bonaventure] asserts that the relation expresses
some modality over and above the essence, which modality is not simply (simpliciter) a real
thing (res) but a certain mode of a real thing. However, this is not my way of thinking about
the “[real] distinction between the essence and [divine personal] relation where ‘real’ is
qualified,” because then the sense would be that the distinction of the essence and the relation
is a distinction of qualified realities, which is inappropriate, because the essence is an
unqualified real thing, since it is formally infinite. [...] The relation and the essence from the
very nature of things are distinguished in a qualified manner. And in this sense this is true,
because the distinction between the essence and the relation is that of one real thing and another
real thing simply (distinctio essentiae et relationis est rei et rei simpliciter). [...] What
completes the perfect distinction is non-identity. This is evident from the Philosopher in bk.
IV of the Metaphysica, where he says that diverse and distinct are non-identical. Hence, things
that are perfectly distinguished are those, which according to their proper, actual, and
determinate being are simply and without qualification not the same. At the same time, things
that do not possess non-identity in a simple or unqualified sense, but only a qualified non-
identity are distinguished only in a qualified sense. 990
As Bonaventure, above, Scotus (like many Schoolmen) admitted that the terms res and aliquid
can refer to numerous supra-categorical attributes (along with ens, bonum, and unum), making
them metaphysical or trans-categorical. 991 As such, there need not be a risk of reifying divine
essence and attributes, if only one speaks carefully about the referents of these terms to non-
material and non-compositional attributes.
As we can see, Scotus had said exactly the same as Scholarios on the divine persons.
However, despite their concentric doctrine, I am not convinced that Scotus served as the
primary inspiration for the Scholarian synthesis of so many distinctions. For his part, Scotus
had more rarely emphasized the nature of the attributes as res and, more often, preferred to
990
Scotus, Rep. I-A, d. 33, q. 2 (nos. 58–59). Cf. Scotus, Ord. I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4 [no. 402].
991
Inghem and Dreyer 2004, 55–56.
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speak about these res more often as (conceptual) formalitates and sometimes (objective) realia
in the divine essence. 992 While this Scholarian teaching is certainly building on the foundation
of Scotism, as when he proclaimed that attributes (e.g., goodness) and persons (e.g., the Father)
are res (cf. supra, 4. First Intentions), Scholarios certainly appealed alone to Meyronnes to
justify calling the attribute-essence distinction “a real distinction” in a qualified sense. 993 In a
previous age, early in his career, when his teaching was taken as novel among Aristotelico-
Thomists, Scotus saw such a classification as potentially threatening in tone to Thomists (inter
alios). 994 Before turning to Meyronnes, however, we should note that even the Dominican
Natalis imitated Scotus, to an extent, on this question. In Natalis’s relevant question, Hervaeus
discussed this case, as if an instance of ancient ἐποπτική, where God sees his own essence and
attributes. 995 In his commentary on the Sentences (being that this is partially extant in Greek),
his solution might have been attractive to Scholarios on some questions, but not likely on the
nature of the attributes-essence distinction in God. The reason for Hervaean inutility on such a
question has more to do with the fact that Hervaeus rejected a real or formal distinction between
esse and essentia in creatures (and, therefore, in God). 996 Of course, this makes Hervaean
reasoning on the matter fairly useless for Scholarios’s purpose of affirming such a distinction
in creatures and, in a subtler mode, even in God. Instead, for Scholarios, the “formal
distinction” denotes a more refined category of “real distinction” that is bereft of the
compositional and categorical labels attached to standard kinds of “real distinction.” In
harmony with Scholarios’s predilections, Meyronnes had previously written:
Meyronnes, Conflatus, fol. 44rb (I, d. 8, q. 2, aa. 1–2) [On a Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 94 (cf. supra,
plurality of distinct items in the divine essence]: 997
4. First Intentions–8. Terms and
992
Iribarren 2005, 79–80.
993
See Duba (forthcoming), 69, where he investigates the Parisian universitarian environment c. 1320–1321,
where Meyronnes reported the raging controversy surrounding the quaestio disputatae as to whether the
persons were realiter or only logice distinct from the divine essence.
994
See Noone (1993, 238–239, 242–243) and Duba ([forthcoming], 178–185) on the controversy over Scotus’s
mature efforts, in contrast to his prior writings, to label the formal distinction as a “real distinction.”
995
Natalis (1647, I, d. 33, qq. 2–3) called this God’s knowledge ad intra of intelligible res and knowledge of
“singulars” in divinis. NB, this question, if it had ever been translated, is no longer extant in Hervaeus graecus,
as cataloged in Mercati 1931, 37–38.
996
For one clear example, used to make an analogical argument of inference, see Natalis 1647, I, d. 33, q. 3,
resp. 1: “Primo, quia si in creaturis esse non differt ab essentia, idem erit de aliis intelligibilibus: sicut de Deo.”
997
It is worth supplying Duba’s ([forthcoming], 195) excerpt from a MS. The passage purports to be a record
of the relatively youthful Meyronnes’ Reportatio (I, d. 33, q. unica):
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Referents):
Nam respectus ille [item a and b] si comparet precise ad ὥστε συμβαίνειν ἐντεῦθεν εὐλόγως τὴν
terminum et ad fundamentum sic distinguitur diversitas: qua μὲν θείαν οὐσίαν δεῖν πρᾶγμα λέγεσθαι
rationale et irrationale que sunt [...] diverse [...] videndum est ἁπλῶς καὶ κυρίως, [cf. Quarta] οὐ μόνον
quot sunt modi distinctionum, quod fuit secundum declarandum. ὡς ἔξω τῆς ψυχῆς ὂν καὶ ἀληθῶς ὑφεστώς,
Ad quod dico quod sunt quatuor gradus distinctionum non [cf. Tertia] ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ τρόπῳ τοῦ ἀτόμου
fabricati ab intellectu sive ab anima. Prima est distinctio καὶ [cf. Secunda] ὅλου [viz., quidditas] καὶ
essentialis, eo modo quo distinguitur deus a creatura et ista ἑνός, καὶ [cf. Prima] ὅπερ ἂν γένοιτο ὅρος
proprie accipiendo: est quando quidditas cum sua existentia est τις ἢ θεμέλιος πραγματικῆς διακρίσεως
distincta ab alia quidditate cum sua existentia. 998
Secunda est μεταξὺ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἄλλου ὁμοίως
realis: eo modo quo est distinctio inter patrem et filium. Unde πράγματος, [cf. ex. in Prima] ὥσπερ φαμὲν
distinctio realis est illa que est inter rem et rem. Tertia est τὸν Θεὸν καὶ κτίσμα τι, ἤτοι τὸν Γαβριήλ,
formalis et ista est inter quidditatem et quidditatem; sic dicimus πραγματικῶς διακεκρίσθαι, ὅτι ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ
quod homo et asinus [in actuali existentia formaliter per suas διακρίσει, ἀντὶ ὅρων τινῶν καὶ θεμελίων
rationes quidditativas et realiter per diversas existentias et αὐτῆς, δύο λαμβάνονται πράγματα ὡς ὅλα
realitates reales (cf. ibid. fol. 44v, col. a, ad quartum)] in potentia ὑφεστῶτα. Ἐατέον δὲ τό γε νῦν ἔχον, ὅτι
obiectiva distinguuntur: et ista distinctio proprie est rationum ταῦτα καὶ κατ’ οὐσίαν διακρίνονται καὶ εἴ
distinctarum. Quarta est distinctio non [est] quidditatis et τις ἐστὶν ἑτέρα ταύτης ἰσχυροτέρα
quidditatis: sed quidditatis et modi intrinseci: sicut est inter ἀντίθεσις, ἀλλ’ ἀρκεῖ πρὸς τὴν παροῦσαν
quidditatem hominis et eius finitatem et quidditatem albedinis et χρείαν ὅτι πραγματικῶς. Τὰ γὰρ
eius remissionem et intensionem. Iste distinctiones sunt οὐσιωδῶς διαφέροντα πολλῷ μᾶλλον
essentialiter ordinate quia maxima est essentialis et ideo que καὶ πραγματικῶς διακρίνονται. Ἡ μὲν
essentialiter distinguuntur omnibus aliis distinctionibus οὖν θεία οὐσία οὕτως ἂν πρᾶγμα λέγοιτο·
distinguuntur. Secunda post essentialem maior est realis. Post αἱ δὲ ἐν αὐτῇ τελειότητες πᾶσαι εἴτουν
[Title: “Utrum in divinis sit distinctio”] Besides the distinction that comes about through the operation
of the created intellect [i.e., distinctio rationis] (which is not relevant at the moment), there are four
ordered distinctions. The first is the essential distinction, which is between essences. The second is the
real distinction, which is between quiddity and quiddity, because [the third,] a formal aspect and a
quiddity are the same. The fourth is the modal distinction, which is between an intrinsic mode and a
formal aspect, such as between a specific nature and its finitude. And these distinctions are related in
order, as an essential distinction is greater than a real one, because whatever are distinguished
essentially are distinguished really (as is clear by induction) in things, and not the other way around,
as is clear in the divine persons. And the real distinction is greater than the formal distinction because
those things that belong to different persons in God are distinguished more than those things that
belong to one person, such as opposite relations are more distinguished than essence and relation,
which are only formally distinguished. And the formal distinction is greater than the distinction of
intrinsic mode, because, unlike a second formal aspect, an intrinsic mode does not leave the formal
aspect. Whence, less distinction is posited between divine wisdom and its infinity than between
wisdom and justice.
998
This is equivalent to Scotus’s “absolute distinction” that he wishes to avoid with respect to God’s essence
and persons, or his operations, according to Dumont 2005, 58–59.
265
illam est tertia, scilicet quidditativa vel formalis. Quarta est ἐνέργειαι πράγματα λέγοιντ’ ἂν οὐχ οὕτως,
minor omnibus, scilicet quidditatis et modi intrinseci. Nam minor ἀλλὰ ὡς τοῦ πράγματος ὄντα καὶ ἐν τῷ
est distinctio ubi statur intra eadem rationem specificam et πράγματι, καὶ τὸ σύμπαν εἰπεῖν, ὡς
formalem quam ubi est exitus. Non est autem exitus a ratione πραγματικά.
formali per modum eius, quia ad rationem formalem et non ad
aliam reducitur quia modus adveniens non variat rationem
formalem.
The goal of Meyronnes and of Scholarios is equally to provide the reader with a list of non-
fabricated or natural distinctions (i.e., a natura rei, φύσει) that obtain in reality, as cases within
ens extra animam, prior to any conceiving intellect. Notice too that the nature of this distinction
is an “antithesis” or a minimum of two items that are contained and contrasted in one unity.
Meyronnes, elsewhere, is credited with a breakthrough for defining this relative opposition to
constitute a unified definition of these sorts of distinctions. As Duba notes, “the unified
definition of distinction [...] [is] a respect of dislikening.” 999 Scholarios must have been pleased
that “dislikening” or disequiparentiae, which obtains between an “a” and a “b” in a non-
material object, distinguished both items from each other, though they are coessential. For
Scholarios, this providentially anticipates the very basis upon which Palamas too argued that
“will” is not “intellect” and vice versa.
Meyronnes’ first distinction qualifies as Scholarios’s fourth: Quidditatively distinct and
separately existing individuals are really distinct from another. 1000 Meyronnes’ second
distinction, which he considers “real,” corresponds to Scholarios’s third: Numerically distinct
existing individuals of the same quiddity are really distinct from that quiddity. Here a “real”
distinction obtains between the Father and Son, as persons, though they are of the same divine
essence. Meyronnes’ third distinction, qualified as really existing outside the mind,
corresponds with Scholarios’s second: Distinct quiddities within one whole, or properties of a
being, differ from one another when they are mentally compared with each other in their own
right. In a definitional man, for example, the genus of animal and the difference of rationality
are necessarily distinct properties. This use of the predicables to refer to the formal-real
999
Duba (forthcoming), 193, 200, 210.
1000
See Duba (forthcoming), 195–208, for Meyronnes’ development of the essential-formal distinction. Not all
his works are consistent. For our purposes, Scholarios selected Meyronnes’ second position (of three), which
is more or less mature.
266
distinction obviously reminds the reader of Palamas’s own explicit appeal to the kind of
distinction between a specific difference and an essence as being the kind of distinction
obtaining between an essence and energy. Insofar as real existents bear these properties, these
existentially are the co-cause of the mental grasping of clearly distinct items. Lastly,
Meyronnes’ fourth distinction, corresponding to Scholarios’s first distinction, detects distinct
and intrinsic modes in identical quiddities. One mode of existence might be finite, while
another might be infinite. Some properties, such as transcendentals (e.g., goodness) are simply
indifferent to either finitude or infinity. Other properties, such as whiteness, are always finite,
falling within Aristotle’s ten categories. Importantly, the modal distinction is one that is the
“least real” so that this distinction does not add or substract something abstractable, qua
quiddity, in the mind and thing, but only indicates the robustness of intensity of existence in
the said quiddity. Distinct modes of a substance admit of degrees of intensity according as they
modify their subject. In effect, Meyronnes listed the distinctions in descending order, while
Scholarios taught this very same doctrine in ascending order of realness.
The most attractive aspect of Meyronnes’ teaching is obviously his explicit and bold
embrace of Scotistic distinctions under the rubric of “real.” Scholarios could not have picked
a better author, or a subtler expositor of Scotism, than Meyronnes in order to plead his case on
behalf of Palamas in the forum of a Latin court. Still, in chapter ninety-four, Scholarios showed
himself equally willing to collocate “real distinctions,” among which is the “formal
distinction,” within the more popular and standard schemata of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century Schoolmen. Meyronnes’ division of real distinctions, if arguably respectable, was
idiosyncratic. For his part, Scholarios was well aware of the standard jargon that was being
taught in the universities and studia of Italy. Before passing onto the last section of the
Excursus, chapter ninety-three, I would like to underline an important fact: “The real
distinction” and “the formal distinction” are interrelated for Meyronnes and Scholarios, where
“real” acts as a genus of distinction under which “formal” is collocated. What we are sorely
lacking, at this point, is any attempt by Scholarios to place Aquinas’s equivocally “real
distinction” between essence and existence in its proper light. Instead, Scholarios ignored
Aquinas’s originally vague distinction between esse-essentia and revamped it, so as to place it
into the class of distinctions of Meyronnes (anything that is not a quiddity/essence is a
267
mode!). 1001 The effect is that Aquinas’s “real distinction” in the De ente et essentia – albeit
ambiguous in itself and within the text – is given a new Scholarian interpretation, such that it
operates as either a formal distinction or, more precisely, a modal distinction. 1002 The major
difference, for our interests, lies in the fact that Aquinas’s tradition of “real distinction”
included what is called “separability criterion.” This means: “If X is distinct from Y, then X is
separable from Y.” 1003 Scholarios ignored this older supposition, retrofitting instead Scotistic
non-separability criterion onto Aquinas’s definition of “real distinction” with regard to esse et
essentia. 1004
Finally, in the last paragraph of chapter ninety-three, Scholarios’s Excursus returns to
what appears to be Scotus’s justification for calling both the divine essence and its attributes
res (cf. supra, 8. Terms and Referents). Scholarios formed a sort of literary hyperbaton, where
he prefaced his discussion of distinctions with Scotus, followed by Meyronnes’ distinctions,
to justify the strong Scholarian sense of a real distinction in divinis. Lastly, Scholarios finished
his teaching by returning to Scotus’s nuancing of the term res, which we saw earlier. If Scotus
was concerned in his intellectual climate about accusations of the “realness” of his distinction,
the positive reception of Scotus in universitarian and, even, Dominican environs in the next
generation must have emboldened Meyronnes to unabashedly call the distinctions in divinis
“real.” With his knowledge of the popularity of Scotism, even in Dominican quarters (partim),
Scholarios started a back-and-forth motion in chapter ninety-four, where he tried to retrofit
Thomistic categories with the via Scoti. In short, we will see that Scholarios will attempt to
integrate the Mayronist modal-real distinction into the older and more primitive Scholastic
division of distinctions that were common to Thomists. Because of Thomist and Dominican
criticism of the Palamite distinction, Scholarios once again was forced to attenuate his term
“real” in order to avoid the negative associations of such a category to an even simpler and
primitive Thomistic schema of distinctions.
1001
Maurer 1971, 208–209.
1002
Cross (2013, 174–202) has shown that Scotus’s own position employed the formal distinction as that
obtaining between esse and essentia.
1003
Noone 1993, 240.
1004
Cross (2013, 178–182) discusses the non-separability criterion as the important advance in distinguishing
Scotus’s doctrine from prior formulations.
268
269
Chapter Seven: Scholarios’s Excursus in Chapter Ninety-Four of
Armandus’s Commentary on De ente et essentia
Introduction
The discoveries noted in the previous chapter of Scholarian source-texts are not entirely
surprising in light of previous research. Still they are of a highly complex nature. Nonetheless,
the discovery of Scholarios’s Greek and Latin inspiration for his synthesis finally allows us to
propose an accurate assessment of his essence-energies doctrine in his Excursus against the
Thomistic doctrine of Armandus in his interpretation of Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. Thus,
we have arrived at a point, where we can unabashedly assert that Scholarios embraced a
fundamentally non-Thomistic metaphysics with respect to the relation between esse and
essentia, the nature of the trans-categorical or primary transcendental attributes (unum, verum,
bonum), the supra-categorical disjunctive transcendental attributes (create-uncreate,
participated-unparticipated, etc.), and trans-categorical disjunctive modes of being (finite-
infinite). I have asserted that all these Scholarian commitments build on Palamas’s mature
theology, as syllogistically and logically argued against the nominalism of Gregoras. Palamas
taught a distinction between infinite attributes (infinite goodness, infinite justice, etc.) and the
radically and formally infinite essence that was unable to be signified and understood by any
human faculty. This doctrine was so very like that of Meyronnes who developed (essentially
correcting) Scotus’s insight into infinity along much the same lines. Particularly, because a
mode is not a quiddity/essence, it cannot effectively be abstracted or understood by reason, let
alone its total inaccessibility to the human intellect (at least in via) due to its real infinity. 1005
Palamas’s supposition that the divine essence transcended the possibility of a positive
description again shows parallels to Meyronnes’ development of the doctrine of infinity. For
Meyronnes, by the path of negation of imperfections of positive attributes and modes (e.g., the
mode of finitude) does one arrive at the best of all possible descriptions of the divine
1005
Maurer 1971, 211–215.
270
essence. 1006 For his part, Scholarios first embraced, in my last chapter, the Bonaventurian
appeals to the simplest concept possible within immaterial intellect, that is, ens, or being. This
doctrine undergirded Scholarios’s embrace of the univocity of the concept of being, as we shall
more thoroughly explore in this chapter. Similarly, we saw Palamas affirming all attributes of
God as really existent predicates, even if the meaning of their terms cannot be reduced to
categorical beings (substance or accidents). He also presumed and portended the Scholarian
theory of univocity. Still, it remains for me to exposit fully Scholarian univocity in this chapter.
As we shall see, Scholarios’s Palamite appeal to divine infinity, in order to justify God’s non-
categorical possession of an indeterminate or infinite number of attributes, also served as the
theological foundation for Scholarios’s adoption of the Bonaventurian and Scotistic notions of
infinity. Whereas for Bonaventure – like Palamas – infinity was denominated as a positive
perfection (for Meyronnes, a perfectio simpliciter and a passio entis), Scotus typically
described infinity as one of two possible intrinsic modes of being without the description of it
1007
as a perfection, such as wisdom. Scholarios felt comfortable referring to either
categorization, insofar as both agreed with the fundamental insight of Palamas that the infinity
of divine essence grounded the existence of infinite attributes in the divine essence.
1. Divine Infinity as Foil to Composition in the Divinity
Armandus’s understanding of mereology, or the relation between parts and wholes,

allows for no approach affirming metaphysical quasi-parts or quiddities inside of individual
forms, save the composition of esse and essentia in creatures. Any other kind of non-material
composition was effectively impossible, since every nameable attribute or whole fell into the
Aristotelian categories of either substance or accident. This explains the heading of
Scholarios’s chapter ninety-four: “On how many items are sought for a composition
(σύνθεσιν).” Armandus’s treatment of the categories, of the predicables, and of God’s esse led
1006
Maurer 1971, 211–226.
1007
The positive content of infinite as a perfection, along with the perfection of unity, is treated in Goff 2015,
229–231, esp. 230n96: “Simplicity as actual possession of infinite perfection in the most perfect mode (i.e.,
infinity) is the first part of Bonaventure’s explanation and serves to frame his discussion of infinity in question
four based upon quantitas virtutis as a perfection of the divine esse.” This forms the real point of departure
(contra those supposing Henry of Ghent’s) for infinity of immensity. Quantitative power (virtus) is taken up by
Scotus, and especially developed in Meyronnes (see Maurer 1971, 201–202) to describe the positive nature of
infinitude.
271
to a Scholarian summarization of Thomistic objections through a series of problematic
propositions, to which George provided heuristic methods for finding solutions. Scholarios
wrote his first quaestio as follows:
[Problem 1:] Now, firstly, it is necessary that each of these [many and different metaphysical]
items have been delimited (πεπερασμένον).
[Solution 1:] The divine essence (οὐσία) is infinite (ἄπειρος).
The fundamental solution to overcoming compositions of metaphysical parts lies in the
intensively and formally positive notion of infinity. 1008 Generally speaking, positive infinity
was approached by Bonaventure as a quantitas virtutis. This idea carried through in Scotus and
Meyronnes. Extensive infinity generally refers to the unlimited perfections that penetrate the
divine essence, while intensive infinity refers to the greatness or grandiosity of being in
proportion to which a being has power (virtus). As I have already cataloged in a previous study
on the question, Hellenic pagans handed on notions of infinity – as ulteriorly adopted by
Thomists – that have long been taken as purely negative. 1009 Like Aristotle, many Schoolmen
thought of infinity as a negative attribute – in addition to it meaning something potentially
without an end term – that signified an actual essence that is not demarcated by per se
discernible limits. By geometrical analogy, it would be like the case of a geometric square that
(per impossible) had its four lines or limits removed. Such an amorphous nature is called
infinite.
In this line of reasoning, Origen originally developed an incipient Christian notion of
infinity by his utilization of one of the Stoic notions of “the infinite.” 1010 Such had to do with
1008
Dumont 2005, 9.
1009
Cross (1999, 44-45) outlines Aquinas’s Aristotelian simplicity criterion as a “controlling idea” that
effectively forestalls any consideration of Scotism.
1010
Origen (1968, 350, 352 [IV.68]) explicitly summarized the technical phrase in his explanation of the deity
who predestines, as someone undistinguished from the cosmos. Understanding well Stoic doctrine, Origen
elsewhere, in Origen 1899, 27.16, explicitly described God as someone who is “from infinity to infinity.” This
quasi-title of the divinity – albeit Origenian authorship is dubious – is developed to mean a kind of immensity,
in Origen 1857 (PG 12:1673):
“Μέγας ὁ Κύριος καὶ αἰνετὸς σφόδρα, καὶ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔστι πέρας, κ. τ. ἑ.” Ἐπείπερ
ἡ μεγαλωσύνη τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ καὶ ἐν τοῖς κτίσμασιν οὖσα θεωρεῖται, καὶ οὐκ ἔστι πέρας τῆς
μεγαλωσύνης αὐτοῦ, μήποτε ἡ ἐξ ἀπείρου ἐπ’ ἄπειρον καὶ ἐντεῦθεν παρίσταται τοῦ Θεοῦ εἰς τὰ ὄντα
ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γενόμενα πρόνοια.
Still, such stoically-inspired theology is substantially repeated in the recently rediscovered Origen 2015, 349
(LXX Ps 76, sec. 5):
“αἱ τρίβοι γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐν ὕδασι πολλοῖς”—, ἀλλὰ ἐπὶ τούτοις πᾶσι “τὰ ἴχνη σου,” φησίν, “οὐ
γνωσθήσεται.” Ἐντεῦθεν οἶμαι τὸν ἀπόστολον εἰληφότα εἰρηκέναι τὸ “ὡς ἀνεξερεύνητα τὰ κρίματα
αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνεξιχνίαστοι αἱ ὁδοὶ αὐτοῦ.” Ὅσα γὰρ ἐὰν βούληται ἄνθρωπος εὑρεῖν ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὰ ἴχνη
272
divine providence (or more accurately “fate”), which was said to be infinitely progressing (or
moving in an eternal circle) so that God is infinitely progressing as the active principle of the
material universe. 1011 Familiar with this Stoic doctrine, Origen added the notion of “ἐξ ἀπείρου
εἰς ἄπειρον” to the biblical notion of the divinity as something immense, whose sense is
opposite to the Stoic notion of an essence, qua “limited” (πεπερασμένη). As Origen moved to
pair innumerable objects of divine knowledge with divine immensity, this incipient, but
positive, notion of infinity proved attractive to the likes of Nyssa and Nazianzen.
In the Latin West, Bonaventure – perhaps adopting his ideas from Nazianzen and
Damascene latinus – bequeathed to Franciscans like Scotus such a notion. 1012 Franciscans
repeated the doctrine in accord with Burgundio of Pisa’s Latin translation of Damascene’s
Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως into his De fide orthodoxa. 1013 As pertains to
Scholarian metaphysics, if we imagine an intelligence (the divine mind) that simultaneously
understands all possible numbers – even if merely intelligible possibilia – then we imagine one
way that a mind might be infinite, inasmuch as it cognizes simultaneously an infinity of
numbers. 1014 In addition to this example about how one can think of formal or mentally
cognizing infinite activity, we can imagine another kind, that is “modal infinity.” This is a
notion developed by the Scotist Meyronnes (sometimes written Mayron). 1015 For example, an
accident (συμβεβηκός), inasmuch as it exists as something one and real, enjoys a relatively
weak intensity of a finite mode of existence in comparison to a more intense mode of finite
existence, that is, the mode of a substance. Intensities of intrinsic modes describe some aspect
of being that is quite different from an abstract essence of real beings. Additionally, a mode
καταλαβεῖν τὰ θεοῦ, οὐ δυνήσεται πάντα ἐξιχνιάσαι· οἷον τί βούλεται ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα ἢ
τί ἐβουλεύσατο ἐκ τοῦ ἀπείρου αἰῶνος.
Finally, the anti-Origenistic fragments attributed to Origen (De principiis, fragment 24), that God somehow
thought of God’s providence as “limited,” have been convincingly rejected for a number of reasons, in
Tzamalikos 2016, 906–907.
1011
Drozdek 2002, 404–415.
1012
Since last century Nyssa was convincingly argued to be the first Christian to hold for an explicit and positive
notion of infinity, which has been recently challenged in Geljon 2005, 152–177. Conversely, Cross (2002a,
372–410) ably argues that Scotus employs Damascene’s term describing immaterial substance as genus
generalissimum (γενικώτατόν ἐστι γένος). See Scotus, Ord. I, d. 8, p. 1. q. 3 [nos. 2–6]. The apparatus criticus
betrays Scotus’s direct knowledge of Damascene through Robert Grosseteste. Cf. Damascene 1969b, chap. 7
(SJD 1:24).
1013
The Bonaventurian and, by extension, Scotian parallels to Nazianzen have also been recently argued in
Pino 2014, 107–128.
1014
Cf. Scotus, Ord., I, d. 1, q. 2 [nos. 111, 120, 125].
1015
Maurer 1971, 200–207.
273
does not make, change, or destroy the concept of “human” or “good,” but it is something that
is proper and necessary to it for such an essence to exist. Thus, for Meyronnes, intrinsic modes
are additives to essences, as a necessary step toward realizing a really existing subsistent extra
animam. In this vein, he argues, an infinite mode of being can possibly exist as well, without
logical contradiction. From his doctrine of modes, a human can approximate the notion of
God’s simple infinity through a rather complex exercise of discursive reasoning. 1016
For Scholarios, created intellects can never abstract a concept from the divine essence,
nor can they intuitively and directly grasp the same, because these created minds suffer from
an intrinsic limitation proper to the nature of the human intellect. It was in this vein that
Scholarios was referring to the formal infinity of God’s essence, above. 1017 I take him (contra
Scotus), then, to adopt infinity as a modal attribute that is not a quidditative or essential notion
in the divine mind, but is an aspect of the divine form that is concomitant to the divine essence
and proper and non-separable therefrom. Yet, why did Scholarios not openly and precisely
describe his sense of infinity from the first, instead of opting for the nondescript (de concreto)
predicate “infinite”? In answer, Scholarian works of an earlier period (1430–1445) are entirely
bereft of the term “formal” (formalis, formale) with a Scotistic connotation. 1018 Scholarios was
able to employ the term “formal,” in the relevant Scotistic sense, only after he had first taught
his grecophone students about the meaning of “formal distinction” – i.e., a species of
distinction falling under the genus of “real distinction” according to Meyronnes’ commentary
on Lombard’s Sentences (though Scholarios cited Meyronnes without attribution). Subsequent
1016
In continuation with his sources in chapter ninety-three, this doctrine corresponds to another section of
Meyronnes 2013, I, d. 8, q .5, sed contra [nos. 1–3] (HBPM 29:364): “Primo sic, nam differentia adveniens
generi non variat rationem formalem eius et tamen non ponitur eius modus intrinsecus. Secundo quia accidens
adveniens substantiae non variat rationem formalem eius et tamen non dicitur esse modus intrinsecus
substantiae. Tertio quia licet finitum et infinitum non variant rationem formalem entitatis cui adveniunt, tamen
variant rationem formalem quantitates virtutis quam per se dividunt.”
1017
Even on this score, Meyronnes might serve to justify Scholarios’s assertion as logically defensible.
Meyronnes 1520 (15vb–16rb [I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, conclusion]) maintained that one can validly argue for the formal
and real difference of items provided that one has the intuitive experience of the object as present, from which
object (if it has a created essence) one abstracts concepts. In the case of created beings, only accidents are
abstracted (in via), whose substance is inferred from the intuition of the object’s presence and the quiddities
abstracted from the various genera of accidents. Likewise, with the intuition of divine presence, Scholarios
might argue that the quasi-accidents or energies are understood (along with the persons), so that one can infer
or reason to the existent essence, while simultaneously defending Palamas’s assertion to have direct knowledge
of the energies. This allows for a Scholastic justification of Palamas’s insight that the energies are experienced
intuitively, or as experientially present to the soul, while yet the essence remains inaccessible, whether in via
or in patria.
1018
This entire discussion of infinity, attributes, and in abstracto versus in concreto terms is found in Scotus,
Rep. I–A, d. 45, q. 2 (no. 9).
274
to his translation-commentary of the De ente et essentia, Scholarios gradually described the
qualification “infinite” in a more substantially Mayronist fashion, stating some years later: “the
essence of God is formally infinite, but its energy is not formally infinite.” 1019 Because a finite
or infinite mode cannot be simultaneously in one and the same being (e.g., the horse
Bucephalus), it is “accidental” for any (quidditative) property to be infinite (e.g., infinite
goodness). This assertion of Scholarios is completely Mayronist in character. 1020 Meyronnes,
again, lies at the root of this advanced metaphysics. Since a mode is not abstractable, as if it
were an essence that is taken from the object, but is rather something less cognizable than a
quiddity or abstractable essence, then it is one property of an essence. For its part, an existence
essence must first possess either a finite or infinite mode in addition to which existence adds
the factual reality of such a mode extra animam. This unity of essences and modes is either
finite or infinite as a whole. So, whatever properties (e.g., divine wisdom) are the character of
the whole are infinite in virtue of the mode of the essence, not in virtue of the mode of the
attribute, as such: “In vain would so many infinities seem to be conjectured [in the divine
essence], for as many divine attributes as there are [in the essence], since the whole can be
preserved by means of the one essence. If, however, these [essence and energy] would be
formally the same [items], after such perfections were multiplied, infinity would be multiplied.
Therefore, I declare that this is not so, but one infinity, just as there is but one deity.” 1021 While
Scholarios’s assertion that the divine essence is formally infinite is found in Scotus, the
contrasting phrase that divine attributes are conceived as formally or mentally (ex obiecto or
ex parte rei) non-infinite is not in line with typical phraseology of Scotus. 1022 Instead,
Meyronnes provided Scholarios with the foundation for his axiom, which teaches that any
addition of “finite” or “infinite” is an additive to the neutral/indifferent formality or quiddity
1019
Scholarios and Armandus 1933, 11.5–6 (OCGS 6:285). Cf. Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:226): “Ἡ οὐσία τοῦ
Θεοῦ ἄπειρός ἐστιν εἰδικῶς· ἀλλ’ ἡ τούτου ἐνέργεια εἰδικῶς μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν ἄπειρος [. . .]”
1020
Maurer 1971, 209.
1021
Meyronnes 2013, I, d. 2, q. 7. NB, it might be supposed that Palamas’s original use of “ἀπειρῶς ἀπειράκις”
is a statement that there are indeed an infinite number of formally infinite items in the divine essence. However,
if one wishes to save the application of Palamas’s phrase, one must justify how the essence and attributes are
infinitely distant, when each is modally infinite. Instead, if – as Scholarios argues – each energy is perfectly
participable in creatures and is, thus, neutral to finitude or infinitude, then Scholarios’s Mayronist read of
Palamas perfectly justifies the “infinite distance” between an unqualified energy (viz., a quiddity without a
superadded mode) and the formally infinite divine essence. Furthermore, even when the quiddity (e.g., wisdom)
is in the essence, its infinity is still in virtue of the foundation of the essence, similar – by analogy – to how the
attribute of “wise” is a participation in the universal of wisdom.
1022
Maurer and Caird 1960, 335.
275
or abstraction of some reality (e.g., “goodness”) within the divine essence, but does not modify
the energy, but only adds to the formal concept a (com)possible or actual existence of infinitude
in virtue of the really infinite essence. In a relevant question, Meyronnes was speaking about
attributes in God and admitted that, in the case of predication, there is no term that a created
mind predicates (modus dicendi) as infinitely understood. Hence, Scholarios rightly hinted at
the fact that – apart from the mode of existence superadded onto the notion of an attribute –
the attribute is finitely conceivable by a finite intellect. 1023
In section two of chapter five, I have already shown that Scholarios adopted the
Hervaean position on the principle of individuation in creatures. As such, Scholarios certainly
had on hand numerous Scholastic texts to mix and match. Scholarios’s use of Hervaeus was
propitious on another score as well, for he served to explain somewhat the non-Scotistic
terminology in Scholarios’s otherwise Scotistic metaphysics. Scholarios, again, often
employed unidiomatic Greek in his descriptions of divine infinity – betraying Scholastic
sources – but at least one source thereof was non-Franciscan in its originally Latin phraseology.
Scholarian idiosyncrasies not to be found in Scotus or Meyronnes, so far as I can tell, are
similar enough to Hervaean terminology to favor the hypothesis that Scholarios mixed some
complementary facets of Natalis’s doctrine with Scotistic and Palamite theology. Reasons for
suspecting Hervaeus’s influence on the essence-energies doctrine include:
1.) Hervaeus uniquely ranked as the only Schoolman with a commentary, which is extant in Greek,
on the Sentences, and which relies on Scotistic terminology and metaphysics. 1024
2.) Hervaeus argued for a compromised formal distinction in divinis a parte rei in his Sentences
commentary, but also for a fully formal distinction in his Quodlibeta (especially Quodlibet
IV). 1025 I suppose that Scholarios imitated the Quodlibeta over the Hervaean Sentences
commentary since the terminology matches sometimes exactly. 1026
1023
Cf. Meyronnes 1520, 16ra (I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 2).
1024
Papadopoulos 1967, 91.
1025
Natalis 1647, I, d. 2, qq. 2–4.
1026
See Natalis 1647, I, d. 2, q. 3, where he admitted that, in God, the comparison of goodness and justice –
said of God – is taken from things ad extra only. His Sentences commentary is “Scotistic,” insofar as it opts for
a distinctio formalis a parte rei intellectae, i.e., mentally distinct concepts in anima (perhaps suggesting second
intentions). This theory is Scotistic to the extent that fourteenth-century Scotists vehemently argued for a Scotus
who maturely objected to a “real” distinction (in the sense of separation between the two distinct items) and
retreated into a distinction of reason via an appeal to a corrupt version of the Logica Scoti and to prima facie
confusing comments made in Scotus Ord., I, d. 33, and the Rep. I-A on the same question. For these details, see
276
3.) Hervaeus argued divine infinity as a sufficient justification for the co-existence of formally
distinct hypostases and actualized attributes within the divine essence. 1027
4.) Hervaeus discussed the aforementioned Scotistic argument (which later became dear to
Palamites) that “if the persons do not threaten the unity of the essence, a fortiori nor do distinct
attributes.” 1028
5.) Hervaeus held a theory of second intentions that distinguishes de concreto and de abstracto
terms (inter alia), while yet presupposing second intentions to be mental creations and
reflexive acts of the mind. 1029
6.) Hervaeus addressed the peculiar question of the essence as formally infinite versus the
attributes as conceptually finite and potentially modally infinite. 1030
Dumont 2005, 7–62. Later, Hervaean Quodlibeta employ the formal distinction between velle and intellegere
to distinguish persons ad intra (ex parte rei seu obiecti), in Natalis 1486, fol. 167rb (I.5): “prima talis est relatio
et fundamentum differunt formaliter ex natura rei [. . .] Differunt formaliter ex natura rei [. . .] albedo et color
differunt formaliter ex natura rei [. . .] Sciendum albedo et color dicunt unam rem simpliciter, ergo in una re
simpliciter sunt aliqua formaliter differentia ex natura.” Natalis (1647, I, d. 3, q. 1) distinguishes these items in
typically Modistae fashion, as between res (foundation) and aliquid rei (relatum), or essence and attributes,
respectively, as did Scholarios (viz., Scholarios’s τι τοῦ πράγματος). Later, the intrinsic basis for these
distinctions is upheld in Natalis 1486, fol. 164r (I.2): “Imo sapientia Dei vel in eo quod est sapientia divina est
omnis perfectio simpliciter dicata formaliter formalitate reali.”
1027
Natalis 1647, I, d. 2, q. 2, response: “Ibi ostensum est in Deo esse plura attributa ex infinitate divinae
essentiae.” See also Natalis 1647, I, d. 3, q. 5: “Unde in Deo bene fundant respectus producentis et producti in
eadem essentia simplici propter infinitatem suam cum cuius unitate fiat distinctio realis plurium suppositorum:
sed in nulli essentia creata hoc potest esse [. . .]”; Natalis 1486, fol. 164v (I.2): “Dico quod non video aliam
rationem nisi infinitatem divine essentie que sicut propter infinitatem suam est sapientia et iusticia et consilia:
quae non possunt esse idem per essentiam in creaturis: ita etiam possunt esse opposite relationes”; Natalis 1486,
fol. 163r (I.2): “Secundum hoc, queritur utrorum attributa (puta sapientia vel iusticia) dicant diversas
formalitates ex natura rei circumscripto omni actu intelligendi distinctas: ita que ista distinctio non sit secundum
rationem intelligendi tantum sed ex natura rei.”
1028
Natalis 1647, I, d. 2, q. 4: “Et ulterius dicunt quae si ista distinctio deberet reduci in aliquam diversitatem
realem magis deberet reduci ad distinctionem personarum et suarum emanationum que realiter differunt
quantum ad distinctionem creaturarum [. . .]”
1029
Natalis 1647, I, d. 2, q. 4): “[C]redo quod recurrendum est ad infinitatem divine perfectionis quae scilicet
infinitas perfectionis divine sicut est ratio quae eadem essentia numero est voluntas et intellectus et iustitia et
sapientia que in creaturis non possunt esse una essentia simpliciter propter earum limitationem: ita eadem
infinitas est ratio quare eadem essentia et idem esse absolutum sint plures opposite relationes et per consequens
opposite res relative.” Hervaeus is the first author to explicitly write a treatise on second intentions. See Doyle
2008. Hervaeus early argued the reflexive nature of the act of the mind with second intentions, which are
products of the intellect (not of things) and result from the intellect comparing one notion to another, throughout
his In quatuor Libros sententiarum commentaria. Hervaeus (like Scotus) thinks of the Father and Son as
exemplifications of the essence (something like an instance of the essence that does not divide it, such that each
exemplar completely possesses it).
1030
Natalis 1486, fol. 166r (I.4):
Secundo quod: sequeret quod non omnis persona divina haberet omnes perfectiones simpliciter: quod
nulla persona hab[et] omnem relationem [. . .] ratio talis est: infinitum formaliter continet omnes
perfectiones simpliciter [. . .] nulla relatio divina continet omnes perfectiones simpliciter et realiter [.
. .] paternitas non erit infinita formaliter [. . .] Dico quod si accipiat infinitum formaliter, si pro ipsa
negatione finis sic, nulla res creata vel increata absoluta videtur respectiva est formaliter infinita que
277
7.) Hervaeus employed the disjunctive transcendentals, e.g., ens is either participatum or
imparticipatum, etc. 1031
8.) Hervaeus held for the principle of individuation to be primary substance taken together with
its accidents. 1032
Given Scholarian dependence on Bonaventure, Scotus, and Meyronnes in chapter ninety-three,
Scholarios designed chapter ninety-four to address Orthodox complaints about the apparent
irreconcilability between Thomism and Palamism. Scholarios was indeed forced by the
demands of Orthodox dogma to attenuate standard readings of Aquinas, just as he had done in
other places with his unnamed sources. However, Scholarios was quite adept in Scholastic
theology and easily able to count on the self-styled Thomist Hervaeus to come to his aid.
Though the Hervaean synthesis of divine attributes and essence gave Scholarios reasonings
and conclusions to better reconcile Aquinas vis-à-vis Palamas, Hervaeus clearly convinced
Scholarios to abandon his youthful commitment to matter (in whatever sense) as the principle
of individuation. Scholarios undoubtedly adjudged Hervaeus’s the best solution among
Schoolmen on at least this question. 1033
Why did Scholarios avoid naming Hervaeus (among others) explicitly? First, I begin
by noting that Scholarios did underline the fact that Aquinas was the original author of his
wholesale translations thereof. 1034 Secondly, I should add that in the extant MS in Greek of
nulla ratio quidditativa alicuius positivi est negatio cuiuscunque entitatis [. . .] dico quod non solum
de relatione divina scil., de quocunque divino accepit per modum substantie vel per modum
cuiuscunque attributi si accipiat cum perfectione aliorum licet possit esse infinitum secundum
quoddam modum.
Cf. Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:226.8–11): “οὔσης ἀπείρου, ἄπειρός ἐστιν, ὥστε ἡ θεία οὐσία καὶ ἡ θεία
ἐνέργεια, ᾖ μὲν αὐτά, τῷ ἀπείρῳ καὶ οὐκ ἀπείρῳ διενηνόχατον⋅ οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐκ τοῦ τῆς ἐνεργείας λόγου τῇ
ἀγαθότητι τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸ ἀπείρῳ εἶναι, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν οὐσίαν.”
1031
Natalis 1486, fol. 166r (I.4): “[O]mne ens finitum vel infinitum quod unitatem habendam de ente
participante vel participato, relatio autem non sic est ens [. . .] ens participans nihil aliud est quod ens diminutum
habens entitatem et quasi participantem entis; ens autem participatum dicitur ens habens plenitudinem entitatis
supereminent cuius participatione alia sunt entia.” For the identification of Richard, see Turner 1969, 427. For
Richard’s close link to Bonaventure on questions of created-uncreated disjunctives, see Cross 2002b, 573–578.
1032
Authors sometimes vaguely mention that Hervaeus argued matter and quantity to produce an individual.
Hervaeus maturely included other accidents to individuate. See his statement in Quodlibeta, VIII.9: “It seems
to me that [individuals] come to differ from quantity and other accidents.” See Hervaeus 1486, fol. 223v.
Hervaeus sees “quantity” in an extended sense (including time and spatial dimensions), as demonstrated in
Pickavé 2007, 73.
1033
Again, Hervaeus waffled between the weaker and more logical interpretation of the formal distinction in
his Sentences commentary, but finally embraced the reality of the distinction in his Quodlibeta. These two
positions were argued among Scotists themselves at the period in question.
1034
Ebbesen and Pinborg 1981–1982, 264–265; Barbour 1993, 96–97. Scholarios did not often inform his
Greek readers of his mostly translating texts of more recent Schoolmen. He entirely left out the names of
278
Prochoros’s translation of Hervaeus’s commentary on the Sentences, it was his brother
Demetrios who added titles to the work. If, as Mercati suggests, numerous translations of
Hervaeus might have been available, it would not be unlikely to find them without attribution
to their Latin author. 1035 While we must be open to the possibilities of Scholarian exaggerations
of his own authorship, possibly making him guilty of straightforward plagiarism, we might
avoid jumping to such a conclusion without warrant by first applying Bonaventure’s definition
of authorship to Scholarios: “Someone who writes by copying one’s own and someone else’s
[arguments], but [such a one writes] as if one’s own are the more principal [arguments], while
others’ [arguments] are annexed as if for strengthening [one’s own arguments], and such a
person should be called ‘an author.’” 1036 What is more, Golitsis’s (2019) article makes an
attentive reading of the MSS of Scholarios’s translation-commentary, exonerating Scholarios
from unjust accusations with respect to his alleged plagiarism of Armandus. First, a diversity
of Greek titles complicate the Greek MSS, but one can see, when viewing the titles of extant
MSS, that Scholarios made no clear claims of sole authorship. Secondly, Scholarios’s Latin
MS of Armandus was one that probably did not attribute the work to its author, a common
enough trait of the MS tradition of Armandus’s commentary.
numerous authors, from whose texts he published translations with prefaces claiming the work as his own. We
see such cases with Scholarios’s translation of an unnamed Scholastic for his Paraphrase of Aristotle’s Physica,
Bks. I-V, discussed in chapter three. What is more, the same occurs in his translation of Radulphus Brito on
Aristotle’s Organon and Armandus’s commentary on the De ente et essentia. A inferiori, block quotes from
Bonaventure, Hervaeus, and Scotus are far less worrisome than potential plagiarisms in toto. Scholarios’s
wholesale and unattributed lifting of texts has occasioned him to be labeled by some as a plagiarizer and,
consequently, some controversy surrounds Scholarios’s authorship of the text that we are exploring.
1035
Mercati 1931, 37–38.
1036
Bonaventure called Peter Lombard “an author.” Yet, the vast majority of Lombard’s composition consists
of glosses and introductions, or briefly argued conclusions among biblical, pagan, and patristic authorities. For
Bonaventure, quantitatively few original comments do not disqualify one from authorship. One only need
propose one’s own solutions to problems as the principal theme. Scholarian interpolations into Brito’s texts
(not to mention Armandus) were likewise meant to reconcile Aristotle, Brito, and Aquinas on the role of matter
in individuation. With Armandus, Scholarios reconciled his approach to Thomism with Scotistic and, at last,
Palamite metaphysics. One may question whether or not Scholarios hid the true identity of the authorship
behind the original texts in his translations for sundry and egotistical purposes, but Scholarian literary
deviations and insertions merit a claim to real authorship according to the influential opinion of Bonaventure.
For the entire discourse, see Bonaventure, Commenta, I, Proemium, q. 4, resp. (1:14b–15a):
Quadruplex est modus faciendi librum. Aliquis enim scribit aliena, nihil addendo vel mutando; et iste
mere dicitur scriptor. Aliquis scribit aliena, addendo, sed non de suo; et iste compilator dicitur. Aliquis
scribit et aliena et sua, sed aliena tamquam principalia, et sua tamquam annexa ad evidentiam; et iste
dicitur commentator, non auctor. Aliquis scribit et sua et aliena, sed sua tanquam principalia, aliena
tamquam annexa ad confirmationem; et talis debet dici autor. Talis fuit Magister [Peter Lombard], qui
sententias suas ponit et Patrum sententiis confirmat. Unde vere debet dici auctor huius libri.
For more authority-based definitions of authorship in Aquinas, see Lowe 2003, 108–110.
279
Whatever the interplay between authoritative sources and original contributions in
chapter ninety-four, Scholarios clearly anticipated his later Scotist-inspired Contre les
partisans d’Acindyne, asserting that “the essence of God is formally infinite, but its energy is
not formally infinite.” While Scotus had agreed to the fact that the simple concept of “good”
may be perceived in a finitely categorical way, making it not per se formally infinite in every
instance, it is nonetheless potentially infinite, formally speaking. If the said concept is taken
from the experience of an operation or energy within the divine essence, it would be
presumably infinitely seen by God inasmuch as infinite is the mode of the essence in which
the energy is contemplated, but such is only finitely apprehended by humans according to its
quidditative or abstract content, even in a hypothetical case where a divine energy were seen
simultaneously by both human and divine intellects. 1037 While Scotus often distinguished the
divine essence as formally infinite, or infinite simpliciter, that is, in an unqualified sense, he
spoke of divine attributes as infinite only in a qualified sense (secundum quid). 1038 Scholarios
avoided this technical jargon at this point, but nonetheless wrote in unidiomatic Greek,
betraying a Scotist-minded source undergirding his overall argumentation:
My translation: Scholarios, Contre les partisans d’Acindyne (OCGS

3:226):
The essence of God is formally infinite, but its energy Ἡ οὐσία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἄπειρός ἐστιν εἰδικῶς· ἀλλ’ ἡ
is not formally infinite, for it is not possible that there τούτου ἐνέργεια εἰδικῶς μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν ἄπειρος· οὐ
are many infinites [simpliciter], but an infinite exists, γὰρ οἷόν τε πλείω εἶναι τὰ ἄπειρα· τῷ δὲ μίαν μετὰ
as infinite, by having one existence along with τῆς οὐσίας ὕπαρξιν ἔχειν, οὔσης ἀπείρου, ἄπειρός
essence, resulting that the divine essence and divine ἐστιν, 1040 ὥστε ἡ θεία οὐσία καὶ ἡ θεία ἐνέργεια, ᾖ
energy – as first taken in themselves – did not differ μὲν αὐτά, τῷ ἀπείρῳ καὶ οὐκ ἀπείρῳ διενηνόχατον⋅
by being infinite and not-infinite, for the existing act οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐκ τοῦ τῆς ἐνεργείας λόγου τῇ ἀγαθότητι
of infinitely does not belong to God’s “goodness” τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸ ἀπείρῳ εἶναι, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν οὐσίαν· τῇ δὲ
taken from the concept of [his] energy, but because of οὐσίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦθ’ ἁρμόττει καθ’ ἑαυτὴν καὶ δι’
the essence. Secondly, this infinity harmonizes with ἑαυτήν· τῷ δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν τῆς ὑπάρξεως τρόπον ἔχειν,
the essence of God corresponding with itself, because τῆς θείας τοῦτ’ ἀναγκαζούσης ἁπλότητος, ἕν τε
of itself, by means of having his own proper mode of ἄπειρόν εἰσιν ἄμφω καὶ εἷς Θεός, τῆς εἰδικῆς
διακρίσεως οὔτε διαίρεσιν ἐκεῖ πραγμάτων οὔτε
1037
Scotus, Ord., I, d. 8, q. 4, ad 3 [no. 215].
1038
Dumont 2005, 25, 34–45.
1040
Scotus, Ord., I, d. 2. p. 1, q. 3 [nos. 176–177]. Cf. Scotus, Ord., I, d. 3, p. 1, q. 1 [nos. 171, 175].
280
existence [modus essendi 1039], as divine simplicity σύνθεσιν δυναμένης ἐργάζεσθαι, ἅτ’ ἐφ’ ἑνὸς
demands, and both are one infinite, both are one God. ὑποκειμένου καὶ ἁπλουστάτου σύνθεσιν δυναμένης
Yet, the formal distinction makes possible neither a ἐργάζεσθαι, ἅτ’ ἐφ’ ἑνὸς ὑποκειμένου καὶ
division of res, nor a composition thereof, seeing that ἁπλουστάτου τῆς θείας φύσεως ἱδρυμένης.
the divine nature has been set upon a one and simplest
subject.
While more complex than anything Palamas had ever uttered – given the state of Byzantine
logic and metaphysics – Scholarios nonetheless reflected a shared Dionysian value; that is,
divine persons and attributes are “finite” notions comprehensible to humans, versus the
humanly unintelligible concept of divine essence. Consequently, “Father” is a “significant”
term (vs. ἀσήμαντος) in comparison to any term pointing toward the divine essence as its
foundation, for the one and only absolutely infinite res is the super-essence. 1041 In this
distinction between the nature of the divine, qua cause, and energies and persons, qua humanly
thinkable and nameable, Ps.-Dionysios had included the concepts of paternity, sonship, and
Spirit among other names that are not super-essence and, thus, thinkable. In this vein, Palamas
may have inspired the Scholarian claim that the persons of the Trinity are “knowable,” while
yet denying the divine essence as knowable to created intellects. 1042 Importantly, Palamas
confessed in his debate with Gregoras that divine non-personal attributes of wisdom, goodness,
and power were each “infinite.” 1043 Since Palamas had denied a priori the existence of wisdom,
qua substantial (as either a categorical substance, or as an accident), we are left with Palamas
predicating the attribute “infinite” of an apparent accident-like item or property (e.g.,
“wisdom”). In God, wisdom does not exist in the mode of substance or accident for any of our
authors under investigation. Hence, Scholarios very logically concluded that Palamas had
attributed a mode of existence to this attribute or energy that is infinite, not in virtue of its per
1039
This development of the divinity into modal infinity is properly a characteristic of Meyronnes. See Maurer
and Caird 1960, 199–201.
1041
See Ps.-Dionysios 1991, V (CD 2:149–150). However, claims that Ps.-Dionysios professed a formally and
radically positive notion of the divinity seem to be reading something too advanced into the original text.
1042
Cf. Palamas 1988, 178 (chap. 81): “οἱ γοῦν Ἀκινδυνιανοὶ μὴ δεχόμενοι, μηδὲ δυνάμενοι γνῶναι, τὴν ἐπὶ
τοῦ θεοῦ ἀδιαίρετον διαίρεσιν, καὶ διῃρημένην ἕνωσιν ἀκούοντες ἡμῶν λεγόντων συμφώνως τοῖς ἁγίοις, ὅτι
τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ μέν ἐστιν ἀκατάληπτον, τὸ δὲ καταληπτόν· εἷς δέ ἐστι θεός, ὁ αὐτὸς ἀκατάληπτος μὲν ὢν κατ’
οὐσίαν, καταληπτὸς δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ποιημάτων κατὰ τὰς αὐτοῦ θείας ἐνεργείας, τὴν προαιώνιον αὐτοῦ δηλαδὴ
περὶ ἡμᾶς θέλησιν, τὴν προαιώνιον περὶ ἡμᾶς αὐτοῦ πρόνοιαν, τὴν προαιώνιον αὐτοῦ περὶ ἡμᾶς σοφίαν.”
1043
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 25 (GPS 4:227a): “διὰ τούτων γὰρ ὡς δι᾽ ἐσόπτρων τὴν ἄπειρον
ἀγαθότητα καὶ σοφίαν καὶ δύναμιν κατανοοῦμεν.”
281
se conceptual content, but due to its real mode of existence within the divine essence. Above,
Scholarios gave a succinct and precise account of his distinction, in parallel with Meyronnes,
whom Scholarios had already cited in chapter ninety-three. 1044
Scholarios’s use of a robust Mayronista Scotism emphatically means that his sense of
the formal distinction is quite “real.” Still, Scholarios – just like Scotus and Meyronnes – saw
the energies as relata, or ἀναφορικά, of the divine essence. As Dumont has already shown,
Scotus can plausibly be taken to assert that divine essence and attributes (or even divine
persons) differ formally (formaliter), inferring (through argument) that a differs from b really,
that is, due to the intrinsic properties existing within the object itself. For Scholarios, this was
exactly Palamas’s point that he too had repeated ad nauseam:
Scotus’s Propositions (deitas [= Palamas’s Propositions Relata/Ἀναφορικά

a], and paternitas [= b])
a non est formaliter b (a non est Τῆς μὲν γὰρ φύσεώς ἐστι τὸ γεννᾶν, Each conceptual notion and its
formaliter idem b). To understand a τῆς δὲ ἐνεργείας τὸ ποιεῖν· καὶ ἄλλο ἡ signified item belong to the
is a perfection and to understand b οὐσία τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἕτερον ἡ οὐσιώδης subject. The essence is absolute
is similarly a perfection, there is τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνέργεια· καὶ ἄλλο μὲν ἡ (simplex) and the attribute is
never one and the same οὐσία τοῦ θεοῦ, ἑτέρα δὲ τῶν περὶ related to the essence (secundum
understanding of a and b, and with αὐτὴν ὀνομάτων ἡ σημασία. quid).
as much distinctness as two
understandings would have, unless
the perfections of the two
understandings are included
eminently in that one
understanding; and thus about three
understandings, and so on about an
infinite number (I.2.2, no. 127).
“An Ethiopian (as if a) is not a Καὶ πάλιν· “τοῖς ἐν οὐσίᾳ καὶ The attributes possessed by
white (as if b) human” [not ὑποστάσει, πρὸς τὰ ἐνούσια καὶ essence and each divine person
necessarily denying an Ethiopian is ἐνυπόστατα ἡ ὁμοιότης, ἀλλ’ οὐ πρὸς are similar to a categorical
human – under another τὰ ἐν ἑτέροις ἔχοντα τὸ εἶναι, ὡς ἡ accident that exists as “being-in”
1044
Meyronnes 2013, I, d. 8, q. 5, conclusion (HBPM 29:350): “Ideo dico quod necessario est ponenda aliqua
distinctio inter rationes formales sive formalitates [ex abstractione intellectus] et realitates [ex natura rei], et
non sicut inter formalitatem et formalitatem, sed sicut inter formalitates et modum intrinsecum.”
282
qualification] σοφία ἐν τῷ σοφῷ καὶ ἡ βουλὴ ἐν τῷ (inesse) a foundation, as wise in
βουλευομένῳ.” Ὁ δὲ τῆς φιλοσοφίας Socrates. “Will” exists in God as
ἐπώνυμος καὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ μάρτυς inesse, because its abstract
Ἰουστῖνος, “εἰ ἄλλο τὸ ὑπάρχειν,” concept is non-concentric with
φησί, “καὶ ἄλλο τὸ ἐνυπάρχειν, καὶ the concept of essence.
ὑπάρχει μὲν τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ οὐσία,
ἐνυπάρχει δὲ τῇ οὐσίᾳ ἡ βουλή, ἄλλη
ἄρα ἡ οὐσία τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἄλλη ἡ
βουλή.” 1045
“ἐν αὐτῷ ὑπάρχει τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ The distinction between “to will”
βούλεσθαι· ὃ γάρ ἐστι, καὶ βούλεται, and “to exist” in God cannot
καὶ ὃ βούλεται, καὶ ἔστι, καὶ οὐδεμία really be separated by division.
τούτων ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ διαίρεσις.” 1046
a et b habent distinctas formalitates εἰποῦσιν ἄλλο τὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι καὶ The nature, qua essence,
(formalitas a et formalitas b sunt ἄλλο τὴν οὐσιώδη τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνέργειαν contains attributes that are
duae, sive distinctae [τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ φυσικὴν ἀγαθότητα καὶ semantically (formaliter) and
formalitates) 1047
ἄλλο τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ ἄλλο τὴν σοφίαν really (realiter) distinct items;
καὶ ἕτερον τὴν ζωήν], ἕτερόν τε τὴν “this” and “that” are signified by
θελητικὴν δύναμιν καὶ ἕτερον τὸ τὴν each name, where “this” is not
θέλησιν ἔχον, ἄλλο τε καὶ ἄλλο ὑφ’ “that.” Essence, however, is
ἑκάστου σημαίνεσθαι τῶν θείων distinguished from each and
ὀνομάτων, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὑπὸ πάντων τὴν every attribute by its kind of
οὐσίαν; 1048
reality and term.
deitas et paternitas sunt formaliter δεῖ ἡμᾶς ὁμολογεῖν ὡς ἄλλο μὲν Essence is one res and person is
distinctae [...] Deitas sub complete οὐσία, ἄλλο δὲ ὑπόστασις ἤτοι another res, albeit God is one
actualitate ex natura rei est. πρόσωπον ἐπὶ θεοῦ, καίτοι εἷς item. If a is compared to b, then
Paternitas in complete actualitate ἐστιν. 1050 let b be entitas and formalitas,
est ibi ex natura rei. Haec est suppositing quid rei, or that b is
actualitas ad se et communicabilis, really and formally distinct from
et illa ad aliud et incommunicabilis, a.
et hoc totum ex natura rei. Sic
videlicet de entitate a et entitate b.
1045
Palamas 1970a, IV.10 (GPS 3:45).
1046
Palamas 1970a, I.7.16 (GPS 3:51).
1047
Scotus, Logica Scoti, B, fol. 41ra (Dumont 2005, 24). Cf. Meyronnes 1520, fol. 47vb (I.8.4).
1048
Palamas 1970c, XII.46 (GPS 3:22).
1050
Gregorios Palamas, Περὶ τῶν θειῶν ἐνεργειῶν καὶ τῆς κατ᾽ αὐτὰς μεθέξεως, sec. 3 (GPS 2:98).
283
1049
This initial comparison between Scotistic and Palamite analyses of terms and propositions at
the very least shows how compatible each author is to the other. 1051 For this reason, Scholarios
was entirely justified in retrofitting Palamism with Scotistic theology. 1052 It seems to me that
the comparison of the Latin and Greek arguments above speaks for itself. The fundamental
insight shared among the authors above concerns predicated terms, whose abstract content
points to really existent items in the object of which they are predicated. These terms point to
items that are the cause of cognizable points of reference in any perceiving human mind. Still,
despite the appeal to the infinite mode of existence proper to each divine attribute, this is not
alone sufficient to justify the reasonability of the Palamistic insight. Therefore, Scholarios
moved to another important criterion in both Scholastic and Palamite distinctions, which I treat
in the next section.
2. Non-Separability Criterion as Foil to Composition in God
Scholarios adeptly prioritized the Palamite doctrine of metaphysical inseparability

between the essence and energies in God. Palamas’s distinction according to thought (λόγου
χώριζοντος [...] τὰ ἀχώριστα) refers to Nazianzen’s “inseparability criterion,” wherein two
mentally distinct items (e.g., Θεός and Πατήρ) can be distinguished by the mind, but these are
really impossible to separate in the existent nature of the thing under investigation. 1053
Guichardan correctly uncovered Palamas’s earliest and principal source in the works
of Nazianzen. 1054 He also meritoriously found that the subsequent tradition had employed a
distinction “in thought alone” between the persons and essence, as well as between the human
1049
Scotus, Logica Scoti, B, fol. 41ra–b (Dumont 2005, 29).
1051
Duba (forthcoming), 198, supplies a number of plausible readings of Scotus according to Meyronnes to
argue for the reality and objective nature of the formal distinction; namely, Ord. I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–2; Ord. I,
d. 8; Ord. I, d. 17.
1052
For a whole range of Scotistic propositions, see Dumont 2005, 44–45.
1053
Nazianzen 1857, X.21–23 (PG 35:1164A–B): “Θεὸν ἕκαστον, ἂν θεωρῆται μόνον, τοῦ νοῦ χωρίζοντος τὰ
ἀχώριστα· Θεὸν τὰ τρία, μετ’ ἀλλήλων νοούμενα τῷ ταυτῷ τῆς κινήσεως καὶ τῆς φύσεως· οὔτε ὑπὲρ ἑαυτήν
τι καταλιποῦσαν, ἢ ὑπερβᾶσαν ἄλλο τι· οὐ γὰρ ἦν· οὔτε μεθ’ ἑαυτήν τι καταλείψουσαν, ἢ ὑπερβησομένην·
οὐκ ἔσται γάρ· οὔτε μεθ’ ἑαυτῆς τι παραδεχομένην ὁμότιμον· οὐ γὰρ ἐφικνεῖταί τι τῶν κτιστῶν, καὶ δούλων,
καὶ μετεχόντων, καὶ περιγραπτῶν τῆς ἀκτίστου, καὶ δεσποτικῆς, καὶ μεταληπτικῆς, καὶ ἀπείρου φύσεως.”
1054
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and divine natures of the composite Christ. Lastly, Guichardan found other Fathers associating
this distinction “in thought alone” with a distinction “κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν.” Be that as it may,
Guichardan naively concluded that all these patristic and Greek authors held for the Thomistic
“distinction réelle mineur” (distinctio rationis). 1055
To the contrary, I affirm the views of the patrologist (and Guichardan’s fellow
Assumptionist) Grumel, who severely criticized Guichardan’s division of patristic distinctions
as something entirely fictitious. 1056 Grumel reported his disappointment that the allegedly
bipartite division of Greco-patristic distinctions according to Guichardan was entirely
unknown in patristic sources; namely, Guichardan’s “πραγματικὴ διάκρισις” and “διαφορά
κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν.” While Grumel’s analysis of Basil, Maximos, and Damascene proved
devastating to Guichardan’s claims about the number and kinds of distinctions in the Greek
tradition, Grumel himself was apparently unaware of the Stoic background behind this
popularly used patristic distinction in divinis. Recently, Demetracopoulos has discussed the
patristic adoption of this Stoic division of thought. 1057 In this we see that Lossky’s dismissal
of Guichardan (and, to an extent, Jugie) was not without merit (if left without demonstration!).
Even so, in its original sense, the distinction κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν is not very elucidating.
Granted Stoic materialism, any distinction in substance, or matter and its qualities, does not
really express adequately the kind of distinction between the godhead and its attributes. Among
the few things that can be confidently stated of this Stoic distinction is that it clearly denotes
real modifications infallibly discernible (at least by the σοφός) by someone perceiving the truth
of a unified thing. Still, as most Christians had left behind Stoic materialism, how was it
possible to graft or retrofit a Stoic analysis “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν” onto the immaterial persons and
essence of the Trinity? For his part, Palamas famously avoided naming the distinction in God
“κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν.” 1058 Likely aware of the materialist presuppositions of such a distinction in
1055
Guichardan 1933, 45, 49.
1056
Grumel 1935, 85–86.
1057
Demetracopoulos 1999b, 10–27; Demetracopoulos 2007b, 395–397.
1058
Demetracopoulos 2011a, 265–268, 279.
285
Methodios of Olympus, 1059 Basil, 1060 Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, 1061 Sophronios of
1062 1063 1064
Jerusalem, Maximos Confessor, Pope Agatho and Constantinople III, and
Damascene, 1065 Palamas opted for the energetic distinction of Methodios.
1059
Methodios of Olympus 1927, 397:
ἐστὶν ἁπάντων ἀδύνατον τῷ προαπόλλυσθαι τὸ εἶδος τῶν σαρκῶν ἐν ταῖς ἀλλοιώσεσι, καθάπερ καὶ
τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ συγχωνευομένου ἀνδριάντος πρὸ τῆς διαλύσεως τοῦ ὅλου, ὅτι μὴ δύναται χωρίζεσθαι
καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης ἡ ποιότης. Χωρίζεται μὲν γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνδριάντος χωνευθέντος ἡ περὶ
τῷ χαλκῷ μορφὴ ἀφανιζομένη, οὐ μὴν ὑφεστῶσα ἔτι κατ’ οὐσίαν. Ἐπεὶ δὲ λέγεται ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ τὸ
εἶδος χωρίζεσθαι ἀπὸ τῆς σαρκός, φέρε τὸ χωριζόμενον ποσαχῶς λέγεται χωρίζεσθαι ἐπισκεψώμεθα.
Λέγεται τοίνυν χωρίζεσθαί τι ἀπό τινος ἢ ἐνεργείᾳ καὶ ὑποστάσει, ἢ ἐπινοίᾳ, ἢ ἐνεργείᾳ μέν, οὐ μὴν
καὶ ὑποστάσει. Ὡς εἰ πυρούς τις καὶ κριθὰς μεμιγμένα χωρίσειεν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων· ᾗ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ κίνησιν
χωρίζεται, ἐνεργείᾳ λέγεται, ᾗ δὲ χωρισθέντα ὑφέστηκεν, ὑποστάσει λέγεται κεχωρίσθαι. Ἐπινοίᾳ δέ,
ὅταν τὴν ὕλην ἀπὸ τῶν ποιοτήτων χωρίζωμεν καὶ τὰς ποιότητας ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης. Ἐνεργείᾳ δέ, οὐ μὴν
καὶ ὑποστάσει, ὅταν χωρισθέν τι ἀπό τινος μηκέτι ὑπάρχοι, ὑπόστασιν οὐσίας οὐκ ἔχον.
1060
Basil, Adversus Eunomium, IV (PG 29:704C):
Ὑπόλοιπον δ’ ἂν εἴη δεικνύναι, πῶς μὲν ἡ συνήθεια, καὶ ἐπὶ ποίων πραγμάτων τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ χρῆται· πῶς
δὲ τὰ θεῖα λόγια τὴν χρῆσιν αὐτῆς παρεδέξατο. Ὁρῶμεν τοίνυν, ὅτι ἐν μὲν τῇ κοινῇ χρήσει τὰ ταῖς
ἀθρόαις ἐπιβολαῖς τοῦ νοῦ ἁπλᾶ δοκοῦντα εἶναι καὶ μοναχά, ταῖς δὲ κατὰ λεπτὸν ἐξετάσεσι ποικίλα
φαινόμενα, καὶ πολλὰ ταῦτα τῷ νῷ διαιρούμενα, ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ διαιρετὰ λέγεται. Οἷον, τὸ σῶμα
ἁπλοῦν μὲν εἶναί φησιν ἡ πρώτη ἔντευξις, ποικίλον δὲ ὁ λόγος ἐπιὼν δείκνυσι, τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ αὐτὸ εἰς τὰ
ἐξ ὧν σύγκειται διαλύων, καὶ χρῶμα, καὶ σχῆμα, καὶ ἀντιτυπίαν, καὶ μέγεθος, καὶ τὰ λοιπά.
1061
I have omitted an earlier oblique reference to Cyril by Justinian I since the Acta of Constantinople II were
generally unavailable in Greek, save one MS known to be in the possession of Markos of Ephesus in 1436.
Otherwise, see the unauthenticated saying attributed to Cyril, in Sergios of Constantinople, Exemplar epistolae
scriptae a Sergio…, in Lateran Synod 1984, Act 3, chap. 6 (ACO 2.1:138):
ἱεροπερπῶς ἐδιδάξατε, καὶ “μίαν φύσιν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένην κατὰ τὸν ἐν ἁγίοις
ὡμολογήσατε Κύριλλον, καὶ μίαν ὑπόστασιν σύνθετον, ἥτις ἐστὶν αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς ὁ
Χριστός ‘ὁ εἷς τῆς ἁγίας καὶ ὁμοουσίου τριάδος’” ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ “ἐν δύο φύσεσιν” ὁμολογεῖν
κηρύξαντες, “οὐχ ‚ἕτερον εἶναι καὶ ἕτερον αὐτὸν διεξήλθετε, ἀλλ’ ‘ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν κατὰ τὸν
πάνσοφον Κύριλλον,” “θεωρίᾳ μόνῃ διακρίνοντες τὰ [cf. ACO 2.1:139: “contemplatione tantum
discernentes ea”] ἐξ ὧν ἡ ἕνωσις γέγονεν, καὶ ταῦτα τῷ νῷ διασκοποῦντες ἄτρεπτά τε καὶ ἀσύγχυτα
μετὰ τὴν αὐτῶν φυσικήν τε καὶ καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν μένοντα,” “πραγματικὴν αὐτῶν τὴν θεωρίαν
ποιούμενοι, ἀλλ’ οὐ φαντασίᾳ ψευδεῖ καὶ διακένοις νοῦ διαπλάσμασιν,” ἀναιρουμένης δηλονότι “τῆς
εἰς δύο διατομῆς διὰ τὴν ἄφραστον καὶ ἀσύγχυτον καὶ ἀπερινόητον ἕνωσιν.”
1062
Sophronios of Jerusalem 2009, 82 (2.2.5): “τέλειος θεὸς ὁ πατήρ, τέλειος θεὸς ὁ υἱός, τέλειος θεὸς τὸ
πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον [. . .] ἕκαστον πρόσωπον [. . .] τελείαν ἔχει θεότητα· καὶ ὡς μὲν θεὸς τὸ αὐτὸ καθέστηκεν
ἕκαστον καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸ θεωρούμενον τοῦ νοῦ χωρίζοντος τὰ ἀχώριστα.” Cf. This Sophronian creed was approved
at Constantinople III (ACO 2.2:426).
1063
For the utility of Maximos on the question, see Demetracopoulos 2011a, 267, 360.
1064
Pope Agatho, Consideranti mihi (DZ 543): “confitemur [. . .] duas naturas [. . .] atque inseparabilem
unitionem subsistit [. . .] inconfuse, inseparabiliter, immutabiliter esse cognoscimus, sola intelligentia, quae
unita sunt, discernente [. . .]”; Omnium Bonorum (DZ 548): “Confitemur [. . .] neque alium in alio, neque alium
et alium, sed eundem ipsum in duabus naturis [. . .] et post subsistentialem adunationem cognoscimus [. . .]
differentiam quippe adunatarum in eo naturarum sola contemplatione discernimus, ex quibus inconfuse,
inseparabiliter [. . .] est compositus.” Constantine IV, Πιστεύω, in Concilium universale Constantinopolitanum
tertium, ed. Rudolf Riedinger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990, part 1, doc. 6; part 1, doc. 10 (ACO 2.2:392):
“Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα θεὸν [. . .] τριάδα ὁμοούσιον, μίαν <θεότητα καὶ> οὐσίαν καὶ δύναμιν <καὶ> μίαν ἐξουσίαν
καὶ κυριότητα, θεὸν ἕκαστον καθ’ ἑαυτὸ θεωρούμενον, τοῦ νοῦ χωρίζοντος τὰ ἀχώριστα, μονάδα ἐν τριάδι καὶ
τριάδα ἐν μονάδι προσκυνουμένην.”
1065
Damascene 1969a, sec. 13 (SJD 1:83): “Ἰδίως δὲ διαφορά ἐστι τὸ ἀχώριστον συμβεβηκός, οἷον ἐστί τις
σιμός· ἀδύνατον χωρισθῆναι αὐτοῦ τὴν σιμότητα, ὁμοίως καὶ τὴν γλαυκότητα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. Κατὰ ταῦτα οὖν
τὰ ἀχώριστα συμβεβηκότα ἄτομον ἀτόμου τουτέστιν ὑπόστασις ὑποστάσεως διαφέρει, αὐτὸς δὲ ἑαυτοῦ
286
A serious review of the texts in question points to Methodios as the key to
understanding Palamite separability criterion. First of all, the fragments from Methodios of
Olympus attest both to hypostatic and energetic ἀχώριστα. Methodios divided distinctions as
follows (τὸ χώριζόμενον ποσαχῶς λέγεται χωρίζεσθαι):
Class of distinction Example The nature of the existents

Χωρίζεσθαι κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν (i.) Εἶδος & σᾶρξ; (i.) Form and matter can separately
(hypostatic distinction) subsist.
(ii.) χωρίζωμεν τὴν ὕλην απὸ (ii.) Matter can subsist, while
ποιοτήτων qualities are naturally dependent
and can potentially hypostasize
when separated from matter.
(iii.) χωρίζωμεν τὰς ποιότητας ἀπὸ (iii.) Ditto: (the difference appears
τῆς ὕλης to be in mental operation).
Χωρίζεσθαί τι ἀπό τινος Wheat & barley Both seeds can be separated, as
ἐνεργείᾳ/κινήσει καὶ ὑποστάσει hypostases, out of some mixture
κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν (χωρισθέντα ὑφέστηκεν).
(hypostatic distinction)
Χωρίζεσθαί τι ἀπό τινος ἐνέργείᾳ Bronze statue of a man: ὄψεται The non-subsistent quasi-form
(οὐ μήν καὶ ὑπόστασει [οὐ ἔμφυτον μωρφήν. Χωρισθέν τι ἀπό cannot be separated in any respect
κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν]) τινος μηκέτι ὑπάρχοι lest the quasi-form cease to exist
(energetic distinction) Both items, really seen, are like and the latter be destroyed in its
unto form and matter, but cannot capacity as something understood
retain their recognizable attributes under the concept of “body.”
after separation nor subsist under
their former concepts after
separation.
Methodios’s text and vocabulary clearly provide the lexical and analogical link, as applied to
both Triadology and Christology in subsequent patristic tradition, whether with respect to the
distinction between persons and divine essence, or between the two natures in one Christ.
The distinction between matter and its properties, like Basil’s later distinction between
a seed and its qualities in his Contra Eunomium, must have proved unhelpful to Palamas. He
οὐδέποτε. Ταῦτα δὲ οὐ συντελοῦσιν εἰς τὸν ὁρισμὸν τῆς φύσεως· ἐνδέχεται γὰρ ἄνθρωπον εἶναι σιμὸν καὶ μὴ
εἶναι. Καὶ ἀπογινομένης τῆς γλαυκότητος οὐδὲν ἧττον ὁ ἄνθρωπος μένει ἄνθρωπος.”
287
completely avoided the term “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν.” 1066 Palamas had ready access to both Nazianzen
and Methodios (through citations therefrom in Photios’s Bibliotheca). I suspect, with his
reticence to use ἐπίνοια, that Palamas opted for Methodios’s energetic distinction that supposes
the existence of two items so intertwined that they are unable to be separated. Additionally,
with his constant appeals to Damascene against Gregoras in 1355, Palamas had the additional
knowledge of Damascene developing this originally Stoic distinction along more Porphyrian
and Neoplatonic lines, where “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν” distinctions refer, as in the case of snub-nosed
Socrates, to a distinguishing accident of a substance. 1067 Yet, if someone were to separate snub-
nosed-ness from Socrates, such a division would not destroy the hypostasis of Socrates. The
reasoning, as noted in Damascene’s Ammonian source-text, is that Socrates is thinkable as a
hypostasis without being snub-nosed. 1068 Conversely, Ammonios’s text had claimed that the
predicable of specific difference (διαφορά) is inseparable from the definition of man, qua
substance. In this second scenario, the division of rationality from man, that is, of Socrates
from his reason, is impossible κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν, for the hypostasis Socrates is absolutely destroyed
if rationality is removed from his definition. 1069 If no hypostasis can continue to exist after the
division, then such a distinction in the mind is not κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν. Below, we shall next witness
Palamas embracing this kind of distinction, though abandoning Methodios’s crude analogy of
a statue to replace it with an original example of a geometric figure. Palamas’s shift reflects
the Ammonian and Damascenian point that a kind of distinction exists, which is perceived by
the faculty of reasoning (λόγος, νοῦς, θεωρία). This distinction is essential (rationality in man),
but cannot in reality be separated from its subject without destroying both itself and the mind’s
capacity to grasp the object’s original conceptual content (since the item is either destroyed or
1066
See Demetracopoulos 2011a, 278–280, where he finds the only instance of Palamas using the term. NB,
reading the text of Palamas, I find him only responding to Akindynos’s putatively erroneous usage of ἐπίνοια,
whereby the anti-Palamite allows it to be applied to God, but is (justly) criticized for denying its implications;
namely that it “adds to” on top of the essence (an existent attribute or hypostasis).
1067
The application of this discussion of this type of accident (e.g., “snub-nosed”) to the essence-energies
debates likely is traceable to Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1030b28–1031a6.
1068
Damascene (1969a, sec. 13 [SJD 1:83]) contrasted the distinction between non-separable accidents and
their subject to a division of one being into two hypostases (or existences). This development, contra
Guichardan, constituted yet another kind of distinction, not directly from Stoics, but through Ammonios (1891,
114): “Τὸ δὲ μέλαν εἶναι ἀχωρίστως τῷ κόρακι καὶ τῷ Αἰθίοπι. Καλῶς εἶπε τῷ κόρακι καὶ τῷ Αἰθίοπι· εἰσὶ γὰρ
πολλὰ μέλανα, ἃ λευκαίνονται. Εἶπον δὲ ὅτι καὶ τὰ ἀχώριστα συμβεβηκότα ἔστι χωρίσαι τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ, τὰς δὲ
ἰδιαίτατα διαφορὰς οὐδὲ τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ· οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκτὸς τοῦ λογικοῦ ἐννοῆσαι δυνατόν, ἐπεὶ οὐδ’
ἂν εἴη ἄνθρωπος, οὔτε τοὺς ἀγγέλους τοῦ ἀθανάτου, ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι ἄγγελοί εἰσι.”
1069
Ammonios (1891, 29) extensively explained the fact that the removal of any accident, no matter how it is
qualified, does not destroy the subject of the accident.
288
altered). If (per impossibile) rationality were separated from man, it would be absurd for a
hypostasized rationality to exist outside of a Socrates, Plato, et al., while it would be equally
absurd for a Socrates to somehow retain his essential definition (human) without actually
possessing the attribute of rationality. Therefore, the specific difference of an essence cannot
be separated hypostatically (viz., in the manner of a bare particular) and so cannot be classed
with a Methodian distinction κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν.
In this vein, Palamas avoided Methodian ἐπίνοια and embraced the non-separability
criterion as in the Methodian statue analogy, but he developed the distinction along the lines
of an essential property (διαφορά) that is real but inseparable from its foundation. The example
of a statue obviously proved too crude to serve as an effective argument against Palamas’s
1070
rather advanced opponents Akindynos and Gregoras. All the same, Methodios’s
fundamental point is very close to Palamas’s theology of the essence-energies distinction,
insofar as abstract ideas of two objective realities are accurately derived from a completely
unified being that exists with just such ad intra distinctions. These distinctions are
conceptualized as such, and these real items corresponding to the conceptual distinction are
indivisible from each other inasmuch as each must coexist with its concomitant item in order
to maintain the very possibility of existence in reality and to continue to cause a cognizing
intellect to maintain each original concept, which it had initially comprehended. The
Methodian example of bronze serves as the foundation of the activity operative within itself to
form a figure or body. For his part, years prior to his debate with Gregoras, Palamas opted for
a more abstract analogy of a geometric figure, replacing the cruder metaphor of Methodios
with something much more persuasive:
They say that on the portals of Plato’s school there was the inscription: “Let no one enter who
is ignorant of geometry.” One who is unable to conceive and speak of inseparable realities as
separate is a man absolutely ignorant of geometry. For a limit without something limited
belongs to the realm of the impossible. In the case of geometry virtually all discussion concerns
1070
Palamas 1970b, sec. 10 (GPS 3:185–186):
Ἡμεῖς δὲ μετὰ τῶν θείων πατέρων τήν τε φύσιν αὐτὴν καὶ τὰ τῆς φύσεως ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ, τὰ τῷ θεῷ
δηλονότι προσόντα φυσικῶς ἄκτιστα φρονοῦντες, ἕνα σέβομεν ἄκτιστον θεὸν καὶ ἐκτὸς αὐτοῦ φαμὲν
ἄκτιστον οὐδέν. Καὶ ἡ τῆς φύσεως γὰρ αὐτοῦ λαμπρότης, δύναμίς τε καὶ ἐνέργεια καὶ θέλησις τῆς
φύσεως ἐκτὸς οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἀνούσιον καὶ ἀνυπόστατόν τι τούτων, οὐχ ὡς οὐσία καὶ ὑπόστασις
ἕκαστον ὑπάρχον, ἀλλ’ ὡς μὴ χωριστὰ τῆς τρισυποστάτου φύσεως ἐκείνης, εἰ καὶ ὁ λόγος περὶ αὐτῶν
τι λέγειν ἐγχειρῶν δοκεῖ χωρίζειν τὰ ἀχώριστα καθάπερ καὶ ὁπηνίκα περὶ ὑποστάσεως διαλαμβάνει.
289
limits, and even apart from actual limited things limits are sometimes defined and proposed
per se because the mind separates inseparables. If a man has never learned to separate in his
mind the body from the properties around it, how can he entertain nature itself? Nature as it
inheres in bodies is not only inseparable from the natural properties, but it can never exist
without them. How can he entertain universals, qua universal, which exist in particulars, but
are distinguished from the mind and reason (λόγῳ) alone and are conceived prior to the many,
though they have not existence at all apart from the many, in true reasoning at least? How can
he entertain intelligibles and conceivable items? How will he understand us when we say that
each mind possesses also thoughts and each of the thoughts is in our mind? 1071
Above, Palamas justified Methodios’s third distinction perfectly, opting to avoid completely
the distinction according to ἐπίνοια. With his constant appeals to Damascene’s Ἔκδοσις
ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως or De fide orthodoxa as his authority against Gregoras, why
did he not follow Damascene’s discussion of ἐπίνοια? In short, he may have followed the
definition of ἐπίνοια as ulteriorly developed in Basil and Nyssa – along the lines of the
aforesaid study of Demetracopoulos. 1072 For this reason, Damascene seems comfortable with
ἐπίνοια to function as a term for the separation of body and soul, as well as for the persons of
the Trinity, as analogized between a universal (e.g, humanity) and its instantiations (e.g.,
Socrates). While the metaphysics is the same, Damascene’s preferred definition was actually
less authentically Stoic than that of Palamas. The nature of a geometric triangle cannot survive
the elimination of one of its sides. If the triangular nature is destroyed, then the line no longer
exists under the concept of “a limit,” for the surface or the shape is destroyed and carries with
its destruction in the mind the corollary destruction of the concept of the aforesaid line
functioning as a “limit” for some figure. The former “side” of the triangle is understood now
1071
Palamas 1988, 177–178:
Φασὶν ἐπιγεγράφθαι τῶν προθύρων τῆς σχολῆς τοῦ Πλάτωνος, μηδεὶς εἰσίτω ἀγεωμέτρητος. Πάντῃ
δέ ἐστιν ἀγεωμέτρητος ὁ μὴ δυνάμενος περὶ τῶν ἀχωρίστων ὡς κεχωρισμένων διανοεῖσθαί τε καὶ
διαλέγεσθαι. Εἶναι γὰρ πέρας χωρὶς τοῦ περατουμένου τῶν ἀδυνάτων. Γεωμετρία δέ, περὶ τῶν
περάτων σχεδὸν ἅπας ὁ λόγος, ἃ καὶ χωρὶς τῶν περατουμένων ἔσθ’ ὅτε καθ’ ἑαυτὰ καὶ ὁρίζεται καὶ
προβάλλεται, τοῦ νοῦ χωρίζοντος τὰ ἀχώριστα. Ὁ δὲ τὸ σῶμα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸ χωρίζειν τῷ νῷ μηδέπω
μαθών, πῶς ἀκούσει περὶ φύσεως καθ’ ἑαυτήν, ἥτις οὐ μόνον ἀχώριστός ἐστι τῶν φυσικῶν
ἐνυπάρχουσα τούτοις, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εἶναί ποτε δύναται χωρὶς αὐτῶν. Πῶς ἀκούσει περὶ τῶν καθόλου ὡς
καθόλου, ἅπερ ἐν τοῖς μερικοῖς εἰσι, νῷ καὶ λόγῳ μόνῳ τούτων διαιρούμενα καὶ πρὸ τῶν πολλῶν
νοούμενα, τὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἄνευ μηδαμῶς ὄντα, τῷ γε ἀληθεῖ λόγῳ; Πῶς ἀκούσει περὶ νοητῶν καὶ
νοερῶν; Πῶς ἀκούσει καὶ νοῦν ἕκαστον ἡμῶν ἔχειν λεγόντων καὶ διανοήματα καὶ τῶν διανοημάτων
ἕκαστον ἡμῶν ὑπάρχειν νοῦν.
1072
Damascene 1973, 8 (SJD 2:28–29),
290
as only a line, as it is no longer a relatum to a triangle no longer existing. Line-as-limit and
triangle are coessential for a geometric figure. I have found Palamas referring to his non-
separability criterion only three times in his polemics. As we have come to expect, he felt
compelled to use his more philosophical arguments in his mature debate with Gregoras. Again
this debate served as the template for Scholarios’s own chapters ninety-three and ninety-four
of his 1445 Excursus. In this debate with Gregoras “the Philosopher,” Palamas had invented
another analogy: “If we would assert that our mind is a bodiless substance, we do not
successively see the very soul and, in turn, the thinking faculty. Yet, when we are demanded
to assert what the mind and thinking faculty are, we assert firstly that the mind is an essence,
but the thinking faculty is an essential operation, although reason separates the inseparables.
For even if the reasoning faculty differs from the mind, yet there is never the reasoning faculty
without mind.” 1073 By placing the terms “mind” and “thinking faculty” in opposition to body,
Palamas was employing a description of soul-body contrast unique to John Philoponos. 1074
More importantly, the internal operation that is essential to a substance is really a more diverse
kind of item than the definition of the substance. While Palamas’s debate with Gregoras
represents his mature thought, arguing from essential powers of the substance of the soul, qua
simple, to diverse items in a simple God, had already been employed early on (c. 1341): “The
soul is not absolutely its own forethinking powers, but has powers, and so does God thus. As
the soul is also one and simple and non-composed, being that it has in no way been put together
or multiplied, God too is just so. He exists not only as all-powerful, but even as many-powered,
as he does not depart from the unitary and simplicity because of the powers within himself.” 1075
The analogy of a spiritual faculty operating in a spiritual substance, as analogously applied to
1073
Palamas, Gregoras, and Phakrases 1988, 26 (GPS 4:229a), col. 1: “Εἰ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἡμέτερον εἴποιμεν νοῦν
ἀσώματον οὐσίαν εἶναι, οὐκ ἀνὰ μέρος μὲν αὐτὸν βλέπομεν τὸν νοῦν, ἀνὰ μέρος δὲ τὴν διάνοιαν· ὅταν δὲ
ἀπαιτώμεθα εἰπεῖν τί νοῦς καὶ τί διάνοια, τὸν μὲν νοῦν οὐσίαν λέγομεν, τὴν δὲ διάνοιαν οὐσιώδη ἐνέργειαν,
τοῦ λόγου χωρίζοντος τὰ ἀχώριστα· εἰ γὰρ καὶ διαφέρει τοῦ νοῦ ἡ διάνοια, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι ποτὲ χωρὶς νοῦ ἡ
διάνοια.”
1074
Philoponos 1897, 523: “ψυχή. Ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἡ φαντασία λέγεται παθητικὸς νοῦς, φησὶν ὅτι οὐ περὶ ταύτης
ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος νῦν, ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ νοῦ καθ’ ὃν διανοούμεθα καὶ ὑπολαμβάνομεν. Νοῦν δὲ ἐνταῦθα κοινότερον
εἶπε· διὰ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ διανοεῖσθαι τὴν διάνοιαν εἰσάγει, διὰ δὲ τοῦ ὑπολαμβάνειν τὴν δόξαν. Φησὶν οὖν ὅτι ὁ
νοῦς οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ πρὶν νοήσῃ, ἀλλὰ δυνάμει, καὶ δυνάμει οὐχ ἡ οὐσία αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἡ ἐνέργεια. Καὶ διὰ
τοῦτο ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἔστι σῶμα [. . .] οὔτε μὴν ὀργάνῳ κέχρηται τῷ σώματι [. . .]”
1075
Palamas 2010c, III.2.22 (GPS 1:673): “ἡ ψυχὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἁπλῶς αἱ προνοητικαὶ δυνάμεις, ἀλλὰ δυνάμεις
ἔχει, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ὁ Θεός, καὶ ὡς ἡ ψυχὴ μία καὶ ἁπλῆ καὶ ἀσύνθετός ἐστι, μηδαμῶς διὰ τὰς ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ ἐξ
αὐτῆς δυνάμεις πολλαπλασιαζομένη ἢ συντιθεμένη, οὕτω καὶ ὁ Θεός, οὐ πολυδύναμος μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ
παντοδύναμος ὑπάρχων, διὰ τὰς ἐν αὐτῷ δυνάμεις τοῦ ἑνιαίου καὶ τῆς ἁπλότητος οὐκ ἐκχωρεῖ.”
291
a divine person or energy in relation to the divine essence, had long been a topos for
analogizing the formal distinction since Scotus: “The persons have the character of relations
of origin, because these two [relations of origin] spring up (pullulant) in the divine essence,
since firstly there is a double divine fecundity in the essence, inasmuch as intellect is infinite
and will infinite.” 1076 While no evidence suggests that Palamas was ever dependent upon
Scotus, their parallel arguments conveniently provide Scholarios with a panoply of reasonings
to bolster the Palamite polemic against anti-Palamites. 1077 Now that we understand the
background to the question, we note Scholarios’s summation of the problem in his Excursus
and his subsequent solution:
[Problem 2:] Secondly, it is necessary that each of these items should be a res (πρᾶγμα).
[Solution 2:] Now, the divine energy, whether ad intra (ἔνδον) or ad extra (ἔξω), is not
principally (κυρίως) a res, exactly as the divine essence, but rather there is a quid rei (τι τοῦ
πράγματος) and a quid in re (ἐν τῷ πράγματι). 1078 Now, “some or other nature” (φύσις) is also
not an individual (ἄτομος) [nature], since the divine energy is something else, posterior to the
divine essence, and is not capable of being separable (χωρίζεσθαι) from the divine essence. 1079
The separation criterion was a shared value between Scotus (in some of his works) and many
of his followers. He once succinctly described it as follows: “That which, if it were distinct
from something, would be naturally posterior to it, is necessarily the same as that something if
it is incompossible for it to be without it.” 1080 This criterion, just as with Palamas, was at least
partially occasioned by his reflection on the nature of an inseparable accident in the tradition
of Damascene. Scotus, having read out Damascene’s example of inseparable accidents of
blackness in the raven species of bird (not to mention Damascene’s second example of “snub-
1076
See Scotus, Ord. I, d. 26, un., n. 28. Cf. E.g., Ord. II, d. 1, qq. 4-5, n. 200; Scotus, Ord. IV, d. 43, q. 2 [no.
6]; Rep. I–A, d. 45, q. 2 (no. 9).
1077
De Halleux (1973, 423, 428) recognized the genius of Palamas to use the transcendental disjuncts in order
to overcome the problem of a metaphysics that presumes some sort of univocity. As a Thomist, De Halleux
was fairly tolerant and even complimentary to Palamas’s quasi-Scotism as a strategy meant to preserve the
foregoing Greek patristic tradition.
1078
Cf. Scotus, Logica Scoti, fol. 42rb (Dumont 2005, 55): “formalitas huiusmodi non est aliud quam quiditas
vel quid rei extra animam, non figmentum vel intentionis secundae.”
1079
Cf. Scotus, Logica Scoti, fol. 42rb (Dumont 2005, 55). Cf. Duns Scotus 1895, 155 (q. 4, n. 47): “Ubicumque
est aliquid non potentialiter sed actualiter, non virtualiter sed formaliter, non confuse, non mixtim sed in proprio
esse, ibi hoc quantum est ex parte actualitatis proprie formalis, habetur illud quod sufficere ad distinctionem,
non tamen habetur complete distinctio, nisi habeatur quod compleat, scilicet non-identitatem simpliciter, sicut
loquimur de identitate rei simplicis. Complet incompossibilitas actualitatis ad actualitatem, incompossibilitas
non sicut est contrariorum [of the Aristotelian square], sed incompossibilitas in eodem indivisibili.”
1080
Scotus, Ord. II, d. 2, p. 1, q. 2 [no. 91] (Duns Scotus 2016, 7:168).
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nosed”), rejected – just like Palamas – this kind of distinction, as something obtaining between
God’s essence and his attributes. 1081 In a mature reflection on this non-separability criterion,
as the determining condition of a non-real distinction (in the Thomistic sense), Scotus’s Ord.
II, d. 1, q. 4 (nos. 205–213), provides a gradual clarification of all the elements in play.
Specifically, at no. 213, Scotus considered the soul and its faculties as the perfect analogy to
show that one cannot, for example, possibly separate will or intellect from soul without
destroying both foundation and its relative in reality, since soul includes in its definition both
faculties and both faculties are logically “dependent” or require a foundation in which they can
exist by the nature of their terms or definitions. 1082 The idea that activities connaturally spring
from a certain kind of essence is entirely consistent within Palamism, as correctly assessed by
Scholarios. From the first, in a similar strain, Palamas argued in his The One Hundred and
Fifty Chapters, chap. 135, that the attributes “spring forth” (πέφυκε) from the divine essence.
The Scotist-originate source for Scholarios’s discussion in his Excursus above is further
assured by his reference to “ad intra (ἔνδον) or ad extra (ἔξω)” energies. Scotus’s Ord. II, dd.
1–5, propitiously dealt with God in relation to creation (viz., angels). Not only did Scotus –
like Palamas – consider the kind of inseparability between a triangle and its lines in such a
discussion, but he had distinguished a variety of distinctions. What is more, we should
especially mention Meyronnes’ Scotistic-based distinction of the “essential real distinction”
that obtains between two real essences like man and horse. For his part, Scholarios could not
help but see the great utility of Scotistic theology to develop each one of Palamas’s insights
(where he argues likewise the distinction between genus and difference in humanity), along a
complementary system capable of answering Thomist objections to the essence and energies
distinction (actually, Scotus’s own context was mainly concerned with Henry of Ghent).
3. Corollaries to the Non-Separability Criterion in Relation to Composition in God
For the most part, I consider the remaining Scholarian problems with their solutions to
be simply reiterating prior discussions from Armandus’s commentary on the De ente et
1081
Scotus, Ord. II, d. 5, q. 1 [no. 259].
1082
Guichardan (1933, 41) correctly delineated this kind of distinction, but failed to see that Scotus, Palamas,
and Scholarios each considered it the best of examples to apply to the distinction between the soul and its
powers.
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essentia. His summary of objections and solutions acts as a sort of index of the traditional
debate and constitutes a genre of literature called ἐντάσεις, which Scholarios’s instructors
Makres and Eugenikos had used in their discussions with Latins in their negotiations for the
council of Ferrara-Florence. As such, these headings are not meant to be profound arguments,
but a sketch of arguments to serve for a forthcoming debate. Of course, full discussions were
subsequently worked out in two Scholarian treatises on the questions below. Scholarios
proposes the following subjects for investigation in order to answer all objections to Palamism,
which he plans to confront in a future treatise. He writes:
[Problem 3:] Thirdly, it is necessary that each of these items should be capable of being a part
of something (μέρος τίνος).
[Solution 3:] What is divine (τὸ Θεῖον) is impartible (ἀμερές).
[Problem 4:] Fourthly, it is necessary that, on one account of these items, these be in potency
(ἐν δυνάμει), which is in relation to a future (whole) through juxtaposition (παραθέσει).
[Solution 4:] Now, God is pure act (εἰλικρινής ἐνέργειά) and there has not at all been mixed
with Himself any bit of potency (ἀναμέμικται), viz., what is called a passive (παθητικῆς)
potency. 1083
[Problem 5:] Fifthly, it is necessary that, on one account of these items, there is activity
(ἐνέργεια) that perfects (τελειοῦσα) the future (whole).
[Solution 5:] However, in God, nothing at all would exactly be in need of perfection
(τελειώσεως) as an incomplete being (ἀτελὲς ὄν), since all the items in God existing by means
of the divine essence, are (εἰσί) [activities] in virtue of a perfect [infinite] mode of existence
(τελείῳ οὔσῃ).
[Problem 6:] It is necessary that pure energies be not also ultimately entelechies (ἐντελέχειαι),
and certainly be not “necessary beings” (ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὄντα). [Solution 6:] Now, God is pure act
and the ipsum esse (τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν) is necessary simpliciter (ἁπλῶς ἀναγκαῖον).
[Problem 7:] Yet, on one account of these items, it is necessary that these are employed in the
future (whole).
[Solution 7:] Now, the divine nature does not at all employ [these] due to that fact that there is
not at all in God prior and posterior [in gradation of being].
1083
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[Problem 8:] Some other things are sought, too, with respect to the fact that some composition
comes about from a greater number of diverse items (διαφερόντων), which same items do not
harmonize with God, whether on account of the essence, or on the part of the activity, or from
both.
[Solution 8:] And because of this very fact, no composite at all comes about in God from the
essence and its [pure] act or from the activities.
Given Scholarios’s entirely Scotistic and Palamistic account of the divinity up to this point, it
has become obvious that some scholars, when investigating the Greek version of Aquinas’s De
ente et essentia, ignored or were entirely unfamiliar with Scotus. For example, Eszer, in a
partisan and religiously motivated judgment against Palamas, as “heretical,” virulently
objected to Zezes’ thesis in defense of Scholarios. 1084 Yet, Eszer managed to propose – in turn
– that Scholarios’s Greek edition of Armandus’s commentary was essentially devoid of
Scotism, for it was imbued with the pure and unalloyed doctrine of Aquinas. 1085 Scholars might
have known better since the distinction between prior and posterior ranking items within the
divine essence represents a hallmark of Scotist theology, not to mention the fact that such
priority and posteriority served as the principal basis upon which the neo-Thomist chronicler
of Palamism, Martin Jugie, had previously condemned Palamas’s entire theological project. 1086
Clearly, however, Palamas and Scotus agreed on what made something a necessary energy or
activity. Such is conditioned upon an essence or foundation, but this does not make such an
item inferior to the essence, if said item is an essentially co-infinite attribute of the essence
itself. Again, since all real infinities are actual, or in actu, inasmuch as it is possible for the
nature of a proposed attribute to be such, there can be no sense in which any divine attribute
or activity can be in potentia.
4. Reminiscences of the Council of Ferrara-Florence
Above, following Scholarios’s ἐνστάσεις, chapter ninety-four confirms the origin of

Scholarios’s concerns about Thomism in reference to Palamism. He wrote:
1084
Eszer 1992, 194.
1085
Eszer 1992, 189–192.
1086
Jugie 1926–1935, 2:148.
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From the aforesaid explanation, it is clear as well what is necessary to opine also about the
recently rehashed discussion among us [Greeks / i.e. the Palamite controversy]. It has now
become clearer that our Church has opined well and justly expelled from her walls those not
opining correctly on this subject. Among us, some happened to suppose only (μόνον) a
distinction of reason (τὴν διάκρισιν λόγῳ) between the divine essence and energy (ἐνεργείας),
i.e. posited a barely conceptual distinction (ἐπινοίᾳ), the leaders of this heresy having been
Barlaam the Calabrian and the multi-dangerous Akindynos, (coming from some small town of
our Thrace, although he should have not be born at all!), whereas they were divided among
themselves. [...]Akindynos was of a much worse sort and was harder to bear, since – after
Barlaam’s shameful flight from the contest – Akindynos also showed himself conquered by
pride. [...] He had taken up the war against the Church, although in the beginning he was an
ally of it, and he attacked Barlaam no less than the orthodox did.
While Scholarios did openly name the Kydones brothers, as we shall see shortly, he referenced
them as the Orthodox who most recently brought about opposition to Palamas. Still, Scholarios
never lost his admiration for Demetrios Kydones, who had really mastered the philosophy of
an orthodox Thomism with respect to the essence-energies question. Perhaps, about this time,
because of his love of those who were wise among his countrymen, Scholarios may have even
been tempted to believe the report about Kydones, in which he had allegedly made an ultimate
retroversion to Orthodoxy before his death. 1087 Whatever the case, we have seen that Manuel
Kalekas and Andrew Chrysoberges handed on the works and mentality of the Kydones
brothers, whom Scholarios implied (being that they were Thomists) to be the source of the
newly resurrected controversy.
Subsequently, Scholarios turned to the issue of what has been described as
metaphysical logic, or the nature and existence of first and second intentions in anima and
extra animam. I will not return to my detailed analysis of chapter six, section two, entitled
“Scholarios and His Second Argument against Armandus in His Excursus.” There, I
thoroughly covered Scholarios’s impressive grasp of Scholastic metaphysical logic and its
similarity to the arguments of Palamas against Gregoras in 1355. In fact, immediately after
expositing the Latin theory of second intentions, Scholarios referred in his Excursus to a
OCGS 8:507. Mercati (1931, 441–450) showed rejecting Gennadios’s marginal note to be either due to
1087
contrivance, or from bad secondhand information.
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florilegium attributed to Palamas: 1088
Exposing the sayings of our teachers would require a discourse longer than the present. Yet,
these dictums were laid down in a compilation [viz., florilegium] by sacred Gregorios
[Palamas] of Thessalonica, 1089 who fought at that time for the Church and its doctrines and
proved, as far as wisdom and virtue and zeal were concerned, inferior to no one of the ancient
teachers. And if one does not have free time to gather their opinion by reading their own works,
one will learn, with lesser work, the common opinion of those teachers from Gregorios’
treatise. 1090
Once again, Scholarios was following step-by-step the very same themes of Palamas, as when
he had debated with Gregoras in 1355. Scholarios, within his Excursus above, referred to this
florilegium as the handwritten effort of Palamas. Scholarian discussions within the Excursus
leave the constant impression that the Gregoras-Palamas debate of 1355 was at the root of
Scholarios’s schema for his Excursus. The thematic and florilegial facets of Scholarios’s
Excursus perfectly align into further circumstantial proof of the Gregoras-Palamas debate
functioning as the point of departure for Scholarios’s theological template. When we view two
extant MSS that attribute authorship of the florilegium explicitly to Palamas, we see they also
contain the Gregoras-Palamas debate. Palamas’s authorship is otherwise not attested in other
MSS. Two MSS that could have informed Scholarios about Palamas’s pseudepigraphal
authorship of the florilegium are bound with the Gregoras-Palamas debate of 1355 into one
codex. 1091 In addition to the impressionistic evidence, now even circumstantial evidence
supports the inspiration for Scholarios’s discussion as the Gregoras-Palamas debate.
Scholarios simply developed Palamas’s already logical and subtle arguments in a more
rigorous fashion by appealing to the Franciscan tradition of a “real” essence-energies
distinction as embraced in the 1320s by Francis Meyronnes. 1092
1088
Markesinis 1994, 469–493. I sincerely thank Tikhon Pino (Marquette) for generously providing me with
this text.
1089
Jugie (OCGS 6:282n1) correctly identified this to be a florilegium. Investigation of the MS might lead him
to conclude that the author was Palamas. In fact, the authorship is almost certainly a joint effort of Philotheos
Kokkinos and Neilos Kabasilas, as summarized in Markesinis 1994, 491–493. NB, this florilegium is not listed
among the works in Sinkewicz 2002, 138–155.
1090
OCGS 6:282.
1091
Markesinis 1994, 473–474.
1092
In addition to the arguments already compiled against Palamas’s authorship (Markesinis 1994, 469–493),
there is the additional fact that Kokkinos’s and Kabasilas’s florilegium contained a passage condemning the
use of syllogisms in theology. As proven in the work of Fyrigos (2005, 81–82), such denigration of the
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Still, in the Scholarian citation above, he only mentions the names of Barlaam and
Akindynos. I can guess that one reason to exclude mention of Gregoras might be Scholarios’s
custom of not naming his proximate sources for his reader. Similarly, Scholarios avoided
mentioning a number of other Latin and Greek authors upon whom he depended. While there
was nothing peculiarly dishonest about a lack of attribution to one’s sources in this period,
Scholarios did betray the habit of sometimes omitting the sources upon whom he most directly
relied (save, here, Aquinas and Palamas). One can suspect that the omission of relatively
obscure authors (e.g., Franciscans) and somewhat unavailable sources (viz., the paucity of
MSS for the late debate with Gregoras) gave Scholarios an effectively unique role as the sole
conduit of very interesting information, otherwise difficult to obtain and to understand, at least
for his contemporary Byzantines. Perhaps that is just what Scholarios wanted: to be appreciated
for his unique information and theological genius.
While Scholarios’s summation of Gregorios is easily verifiable, his closing summation
of the facts surrounding the renewal of anti-Palamite hostilities is uncomfortably condensed
with the result that one gets the impression that Scholarios is trying too much to describe anti-
Palamism as a monolithic and continuous school of opposition:
Those followers of Barlaam and Akindynos arrived at such an opinion, first, because they
thought it wrong to distinguish in their minds the divine between essence and energy in
whatever way. For, they thought that, in such a case, multiple res (πράγματα) would exist in
God and thereby He would be composite, because He would encompass many [separated]
items united together. Therefore, fleeing from thinking the divine to be composite, they thought
that these things are distinguished according to reason alone (κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν μόνην). And they
syllogism is entirely out of character for Palamas, who defended and employed syllogisms in theology. Ware
(1973, 19–21, 25–27) emphasized some Palamites (Bryennios, Symeon of Thessalonica, et al.) and Orthodox
(Nektarios of Jerusalem) opposed syllogisms. However, in his respectable list of anti-syllogistic theologians,
Palamas was nowhere to be found. In the end, Ware leaves open the question if one can or cannot reconcile
Scholastic method to Orthodox traditions of theology. Above, however, it was Gregoras who had multiply
condemned Palamas for his multiplication of syllogisms. Gregoras – like Barlaam – condemned the utility of
syllogisms in theology. The reason for this anti-Palamas or non-Palamas volte-face on the part of Kokkinos and
Neilos likely has more to do with their contemporary opposition to the controversy recently arisen from
Prochoros Kydones, who was syllogizing against Palamas. Shortly after this period, Prochoros also wrote an
ex professo defense of syllogisms in theology, as a refutation of Kokkinos and Neilos and the synod of 1351.
Therefore, more in reaction to Prochoros versus imitation of Palamas, Kokkinos and Neilos turned to the
Synodikon of Orthodoxy and its condemnation of Jon Italos’s use of syllogisms in theology.
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were thinking that they had this teacher –I mean Thomas Aquinas–, too, as an advocate of this
opinion.
In reality, the Kydones brothers were not “followers” of these Orthodox Byzantines, qua
Thomists, though the Kydones’ sources for understanding the conflict of the two prior
generations had, in part, come from Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras, whose works were
widely circulated. Still, Scholarios classed “anti-Palamism” into a genus, as if a negation to or
position against Palamas somehow made everyone metaphysical allies. Despite this
oversimplistic construction, Scholarios was in the end accurate, since Thomism ranked as a
more precise and detailed exposition of the Kydones’ predecessors. All anti-Palamistic parties
agreed that the distinctions in God were in no way de re or ad intra, but only a matter of the
mind comparing attributes and terms, said of God, but taking these notions from creatures, who
inevitably fall into Aristotelian categories of being. Above, I draw special attention to the fact
that Scholarios was in no way using ἐπίνοια according to its Stoic sense. The discussion and
vocabulary are purely Scholastic, following on the heels of his discussion of “second
intentions,” which were a purely Scholastic improvement on and greater precision of preceding
Greek logic.
In the end, Scholarios did no substantial harm by associating all these parties with each
other. However, it is surprising that Scholarios was really willing to concede (perhaps under
the pressure from accusers of Latinism) that Aquinas was a pure “Barlaamite,” for he assuredly
understood his negative evaluation of Aquinas was going to encourage a certain odium
theologicum and damnatio memoriae upon the person and, consequently, the character of
Aquinas. However, Scholarios did try to mitigate the effects of the Barlaam-Thomas
association in his subsequent lines:
[…The followers of Barlaam and Akindynos opined that] Aquinas did not allow that the
aforesaid items be distinguished realiter (πραγματικῶς), but argued that they differ from each
other by reason (λόγῳ διαφέρειν). Now, famed Barlaam seemed to breathe the same air of this
Thomas (regardless of the fact that he altogether despised Aquinas with regard to the question
about the Spirit), and this was the reason why the supporters of Barlaam and Akindynos
[Kydones], translated the books of this doctor [Aquinas] into the Greek language; they were
thinking that after being allied by the wisdom of this doctor, they would be able to persuade
all others concerning these matters, and, further on, to make them join the Roman Church,
299
which, as they thought, held the same views, expressing itself via Thomas [Aquinas] – unaware
of the fact that many of the magistri [Franciscans and Hervaeus Natalis, OP] among Latins had
determined for themselves on this problem more conguently with sacred Gregory of
Thessalonica and the whole of our Church than with what they [the followers of Barlaam and
Akindynos] had determined for themselves. It would not be fair to despise their number, since
they are most wise and their views were approved by our Church, insofar as it clear that they
held the same views as our Church.
As Dumont has already cataloged, the great metaphysical transition that Scotism highlighted,
at the end of the thirteenth century, was that a kind of distinction could exist in a thing whose
distinct items were in no wise really separable realities. Above, as elsewhere, Scholarios was
aware of this wider range of distinctions. He was also very precise that debate was over
distinctions realiter, or between a real a and a real b, where b is a realitas found in a. “Reality”
is a term describing some object, neither potentially a complete essence, nor a subsistent
essence per se, where such is the source of some distinction. A formalitas or “formality” was
a logical distinction that may or may not signify a real distinction in the thing itself. However,
all perceptible realitates were formally (formaliter) distinct in virtue of their foundation and
among themselves by the non-concentric nature of the concepts themselves. For example
“rationality” cannot in anyway overlap (mentally) with the notion or abstraction of “animality,”
though animality is foundational for a being to understand that “this animality” is rational. So,
mental or formal distinctions and real distinctions are not universally convertible. A distinction
realiter in one being, if perceptible, always causes a mental distinction formaliter, but not vice
versa. Because Aquinas’s position did not admit that God’s attributes were realitates or quid
rei in a foundation or essence, Scholarios conceded that Thomism (as a school) was reducible
to “Barlaamitism.” 1093
Impressive, too, is Scholarios’s awareness of the fourteenth-century mixing and
matching of Thomism with Scotism. Scholarios was a careful reader of posterior Schoolmen.
As Iribarren has recently proven, the sometime eponymous hero of Thomism, Hervaeus, was
only too willing to embrace Scotistic metaphysics on the question of the essence, persons, and
1093
On this score, see Salaville 1924, 133, that found, written in the same hand as the MS, a marginal note
attributable to Scholarios within his commentary-translation of the De ente et essentia: “Οὕτος ὁ σοφὸς πλὴν
τοῦ εἶναι Λατῖνος καὶ Βαρλααμίτης, μᾶλλον καὶ ὁ Βάρλααμ Θωμαΐτις ἦν καὶ Λατῖνος, τὰ ἄλλα Θαυμάσιος.”
300
attributes of God. 1094 In this way, Scholarios was not wrong to correct those who considered
“the company of St. Thomas” or Dominicans to be Barlaamites. In fact, Scholarios knew that
a number of them had developed a Thomism along the lines of Scotism in fact, if not in name.
Barbour unfortunately misdiagnosed the problem in the extreme, rejecting both Scholarios’s
estimation of contemporary Thomism – as if Scholarios were somehow confused – and
Guichardan’s description of a denominatively Scotistic Scholarios, as if Guichardan somehow
misread Scholarian propensities. 1095
5. Retrojecting Meyronnes’ Fourfold Real Distinction into Thomism
In chapter six, we were fortunate to discover that the underlying sources for
Scholarios’s project proved to be a mixture of Bonaventure, Scotus, and Meyronnes. This
amalgamation reflects exactly what one would expect to be taught in Franciscan studia in
contemporary Italy, as witnessed in my notes concerning the Franciscan periti who were
present at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. However, as we have already discussed, Scholarios
did not see Aquinas as his philosophical foe. Scholarios especially appreciated his
Aristotelianism and, above all, his ethics. 1096 Franciscans – starting with Scotus – unabashedly
and overtly disagreed with Aristotle on any number of subjects, perhaps best exemplified by
Meyronnes’ description of the Stagirite: Aristoteles pessimus metaphysicus! 1097 Clearly, such
a critical approach to Aristotle would have proven entirely unattractive to Scholarios in his
post-Florentine polemics against the Platonism and paganism of Pletho. Because of these, as
well as many other factors, Aquinas proved to be more attractive to Scholarios on a number of
issues.
If, like Hervaeus before him, Scholarios was going to adopt a substantially eclectic – if
ostensibly Thomistic – system of theologizing, then it was important to resolve the apparent
1094
Iribarren, 2002, 607–627; Iribarren 2005.
1095
Barbour (1993, 92–94) undoubtedly read about hodgepodge Thomism of the first generation of Scotism
(Roensch 1964), but he assumes that Scholarios was confused about orthodox Thomism. Actually, Scholarios
could not be clearer. For his part, Barbour ironically – on the subject of first and second intentions – argues
Scholarios’s metaphysical and logical Thomism by appealing to “what Gennadios actually intends.”
1096
This includes, of course, other Aristotelian works such as the De anima, as already noticed in Eszer 1992,
189.
1097
Meyronnes 2013, I, d. 47, q. 3: “Aliter dicitur quod Aristoteles fuit optimus physicus, sed pessimus
metaphysicus, quia nescivit abstrahere, et ideo pessimam metaphysicam fecit.”
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conflict where Scotus’s and Meyronnes’ categories of distinctions were diametrically opposed
to distinction of contemporary Thomists. In my chapter six, Meyronnes admitted four real
distinctions in things. The first case encompassed two beings compared to one another who
are perceptible as separate essences, have separate individuating properties, and exist
according to diverse modes (viz., God and creature). Secondly, there was the case of one
essence with two distinct hypostases existing in the same mode and essence, but with two
distinct individuating properties (e.g., two persons of the Trinity). Next, there are creatures that
are really distinct in essence and their individuating properties (viz., man and horse), but each
exists in the same mode (finite), while the species (viz., human) has the potential (like the
degrees of white on a surface) to be a more intense mode of existence (vs. the specific mode
of equinity). However, the formal properties and notions of rationality and equinity are really
distinct from their animality and from each other. In this kind of formal distinction two real
items are really distinct in the thing. Also, the properties of rationality and equinity can in no
wise be thought of as (formally) concentric, though each can coexist in an essence that contains
animality, which exists in but one mode for all species concerned. Finally, for Meyronnes, an
essence and its finite or infinite mode are really distinct from the quiddity to which they attach.
Also, the concept of being, or good, or true is indifferent to existing in either finite or infinite
mode. Thus, it is not intrinsic to these concepts to be necessarily of either one or the other
mode, but rather it is something superadded onto their formal notions, yet intrinsic to their
reality and existence. With all these distinctions in mind, we turn to Scholarios’s exposition of
how to place Meyronnes’ formal-real distinction within a less intricate series of foregoing
Thomistic distinctions:
[The Kinds of Latin Distinctions:] Certainly, in an equal manner, Thomas reflected:
[Distinction – Class I:] There is the distinctio rationis (διάκρισιν λόγου). This distinction [1.]
does not hold two res are opposite of their fundamenta [foundations] (θεμελίων) and their
terms (ὅρων), [2.] but holds for two aliquid’s [somethings] (τινά), that are [i.] [said] of the
thing (τὸ ὄν τοῦ πράγματος) and [ii.] [said to be] in the thing (ἐν τῷ πράγματι):
[Explanation of the foregoing:] Now these two res differ much so as to predicate of both that
they are two aliquids of the thing and in the thing and altogether, as if [Thomas] were making
302
some determination of a distinction of reason (distinctio rationis; διάκρισιν τοῦ λόγου)
between two res. 1098
The fundamental point here is to distinguish Meyronnes (in chapter six) from Aquinas. The
foundations of a Thomistic rational distinction, in this case, are not somehow reflective of real
attributes having a necessary relation to the mind that is producing concepts of the same, as an
act of perceiving these foundational realities co-present in the thing. For example, whiteness
relates to Socrates, just as – more metaphysically – goodness relates to being. However, for
Aquinas – as for most of the previous Latin tradition of Scholasticism – the terms being, one,
true, and good, were declared to be universally convertible, so that both “good is being” and
“being is good” are sound and true propositions, unlike “Socrates is white” and “white is
Socrates.” In the second series of converted propositions, instances of whiteness, qua white,
are certainly not always instances of Socrates. For Scotus and Palamas, so Scholarios argued,
ens is foundational to some real item (realitas or entitas) that is perceived as, for example,
“good” in ens. So, therefore, ens is not convertible with good, as the traditional Scholastic
customarily held. Scholarios most clearly affirmed this theory in his subsequent comments:
[Conclusion:] [Thomas] was considering as falling under the genus of distinction of reason all
the species of the ineffective (ἀδρανεστέραν) distinction, [1.] i.e. either the distinction from
concepts (ἐκ τῶν λόγων; ratione ratiocinantis) [2.] or the distinction from the nature of the
thing (ex rei natura; ἐκ τῆς τοῦ πράγματος φύσεως),
[Definition of no. 1:], not only the distinction of reason (τοῦ λόγου), i.e., the conceptual (τῆς
ἐπινοίας) in the pure and strict sense of the terms, which is understood by two terms (ὅροις)
produced (πεποιημένοις) by the soul and to which no distinction in the thing corresponds.
[Counterexample of a second intention:] Indeed, he [Thomas] was not as naive (ἀφελής) as to
believe that the divine essence and its energy are two [items] in the way in which the mind
arbitrarily divides (διαιρῶν) Socrates and composes a proposition of this sort: “Socrates is
Socrates.” Yet, in the following way, the mind does not know an essential distinction (οὐσιώδη
διάκρισιν), [etc.]
The logical distinction between Socrates and Socrates is obviously very weak and is purely
mental. What is more, “essential distinction” marks the very phrase that we saw Palamas using
(οὐσιώδης, οὐσιώδες) to analogize the essence-energies distinction to the real, but absolutely
1098
303
inseparable, distinction between a specific difference (διαφορά) and Socrates, or – in the earlier
distinction of Methodios of Olympus – between two coessential attributes that cannot exist per
se in any respect, save in a unitive being, while each attribute is neither hypostasis nor accident.
As we continue in our investigation into the classes of distinctions, I note that Guichardan was
unaware of Meyronnes’ fourfold division of real distinctions, and so presented only an
impoverished chart on the topic. 1099 In Guichardan’s Thomistic chart of distinctions, he
proposed the following:
Distinction of
Real Distinction or Thomistic Reason, no. 1
Distinction, no. 2 supra (ex Distinctions supra (ex
parte rei) parte
intelluctus)
Distinctio rationis
ratiocinatae:
Distinctio virtualis: Based Based upon the
Minor Real or
Major Real or Distinction no. 2 upon the mind mind alone
Distinction that exists
supra: Based on two distinctly & considering an object as considering an
in a thing without
separable res (substance- containing items, object (e.g.,
existing as an accident
accident, substance and cognizing under two or
(e.g., matter-form, esse- imposing
substance) more concepts referable
essentia) quadrants to
to the res (e.g., being & divide the surface
unity) of a shape).
I now compare this to Scholarios’s own division of Thomistic distinctions:

[Distinction – Class 2:] Also there is a distinctio maior (ἱσχυροτέραν) other than this previous
[class of] distinction. Yes, indeed, all these former distinctions are beyond the real distinction
(πραγματικήν). [Thomas] was used to calling all these “real distinctions” (πραγματικάς). 1100
[Definition of Class 2:] All of these “major distinctions” fell under the real distinction in the
following way; namely, all distinctions crossing beyond the minor (ἐλάττω) and comparatively
unreal difference (ἀδρανεστέραν διαφοράν). All of them we call “the distinction of reason”
(διαφορὰ τοῦ λόγου). These [greater] are distinctions that caused (στρεφομένας) that division
1099
1100
304
be made (χωρίζεσθαι) between two subsistent res and two individuals and two wholes or
between two separables or two potencies-powers. However, they [viz., Scotists] speak rather
of “the essential definition” (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) in concepts (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις).
As expected, the Thomists thought of any two items that enjoyed the character of a real
distinction to be intrinsically separable from one another. Therefore, a Scotist was unable to
be interpreted as anyone less than someone positing a “real distinction” in the godhead, so that
Scotists were adjudged to be theologians compromising divine simplicity. In this scenario,
Scholarios has accurately identified the distinctions of the various Latin and Greek factions,
with the result that he understood all of the following:
Examples of Socrates & persons of the rationality & created essence Soul & its Ens &
Distinctions Plato Trinity & their animality & existence faculties Bonum
  essence     
Aquinas major-real major-reason minor-real ex minor-real ex major-real ex major-reason
ex parte rei rationis parte rei parte rei parte rei ex parte rei
ratiocinatae
Scotus real ex parte formal distinction ex parte rei formal distinction ex parte rei
rei
Meyronnes essential- hypostatic-real ex formal-real ex modal-real ex formal- formal-real ex

real ex parte parte rei (more parte rei parte rei real ex parte parte rei
rei distinct than rei
formal)
Palamas essential- hypostatic-real ex real ex parte modal-real ex real ex parte essential-real
real ex parte parte rei (more rei parte rei rei ex parte rei
rei distinct than
formal)
Gregoras essential- minor-reason minor-reason minor-reason minor-reason minor-reason
real ex parte rationis rationis rationis virtualis rationis
rei ratiocinantis ratiocinantis ratiocinantis ratiocinantis
What we discover by comparing Scholarios’s division is that the Italian Thomists of

Scholarios’s day were consistently classing Scotus’s “formal distinction” and Meyronnes’
“formal-real” as “a real minor distinction” according to their own schema. In fact, Meyronnes’
use of the term “real” – though entirely faithful to the core of Scotus’s doctrine – sounded
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dangerous to non-Scotist Schoolmen who were familiar with the stereotypical use of “real” to
describe objects that are physically or metaphysically separable from each other in one res and
that these are categorized into the Aristotelian schema of substance and accident, or at least
into the Aristotelico-Porphyrian predicables of genus, species, difference, property, and
accident. The “essential definition” that Scotistic theologians referenced, as a case to explain
the formal distinction, lie in the fact that some things contained a number of essential items
that are required for the same something to be even a possible being (e.g., intellect in something
falling under the definition of angelic nature). Yet, whatever was essential in a non-material
nature was something distinct from any other real attribute that was understood under another
concept or definition. With the example of an angel and its intellect, this makes no reference
to any material division between substance and accident. If an angel or immaterial soul, were
composed of non-material or spiritual items that are each, taken per se, less than a substance
or accident, and less than a hypostasis, and the same are logically and really unable to exist
outside of their foundation, then these kinds of items would be distinct but inseparable from
their foundation. In an angel, intellect and its foundation (“angelic nature”) are impossible
logically or metaphysically to create or to subsist in their own right, save the subsistent subject
and essential attribute both exist in one unity.
The closest a Thomist came to acknowledging such kinds of distinctions were in esse
and essentia composites, as with Socrates’ humanity in comparison to his own existence,
making him an existentially real human. Still, for Thomists, Socrates’ esse was separable from
his essentia insofar as “humanity” and “created esse” are concerned. I mean that, speaking
objectively, Thomists did not hold that a world existed, where created esse’s and created
essentia’s (devoid of their esse) might be possible existents. Furthermore, essence was often
interpreted among Thomists as a delimiting or contracting item that assures the esse of a
creature to be limited in comparison with the esse of God. Each creaturely essence possessed
a limited esse per its contraction or union within a delimited essentia of a certain kind of thing.
Still, Scholarios knew of an earlier generation of Thomists – as I have already demonstrated –
who had borrowed freely from Scotism. After the example of Hervaeus Natalis, Scholarios
argued that a more advanced Thomism was capable of incorporating the Scotistic insight. For
this reason, Scholarios classed the historically enlightened Thomists who had adopted Scotus’s
distinction as people who had collocated Scotus’s distinction into the realm of the “distinction
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of reason.” Most scholarly confusion about what Scholarios really thought on the Palamite
distinction comes from the failure to see the interplay between chapters ninety-three and
ninety-four. If Scholarios is consistent in his future Palamite writings – and I have no reason
to suppose that he is inconsistent – then any would-be interpreter needs to understand that
Scholarian use of “distinctio rationis,” as applied to Palamas, will likely be due to speaking
about Palamas in reference to Scotistic-minded Thomists (e.g., Hervaeus), while any mention
of the “distinctio realis” will likely be a citation from either Palamas or from Meyronnes.
Finally, mention of the “distinctio formalis” may be from either Scotus, or Hervaeus, or
Meyronnes.
Despite Scholarios’s defense of a modified Thomism, as something reconcilable to
Palamism, adroit Palamites of the past (just as contemporary Scholarian critics) needed to be
silenced, lest Scholarios be implicated in anti-Palamite Thomism. Consequently, Scholarios
reluctantly undertook a religiously motivated condemnation of Aquinas as follows:
If there might have been major distinctions (ἱσχυρότεραι), indeed these would have been called
precisely differences of reason (λόγων διαφοραί). These definitely are distinguished
(διακρινομένων) from one another, but [as such] by the nature (φύσει) of [their] terms,
whenever they also are in the res following [the ratiocination] of the soul, as opposed to –
certainly least of all – being produced (πεποιημένοις) by the soul in two terms, the latter of
which distinction would have been precisely named “a distinction of reason.”
Whether or not Thomas was ignorant about the formal distinction (εἰδικὴν διαφοράν)
stemming from the nature of the thing, any [Orthodox reader] would have easily gone into a
fit of sweating from the writings of Thomas on account of the difference of concepts (τῶν
λόγων διαφοράν), and on account of these minor distinctions, and those distinctions lesser that
that; namely, those which come in the class after the real distinction – which Thomas diffusely
called “distinctions of reason.”
Scholarios’s solution unsurprisingly reflects Scotus, who also knew about his contemporaries’
misgivings concerning the realness of the formal distinction. In order to placate (albeit
unsuccessfully) their criticisms, Duns asserted that one might think of the formal distinction
as a clearer vision of the Scholastic “virtual distinction” or “a distinction of reason.” 1101
Scholarios conceded that Aquinas’s works (as a whole) were unable to justify “formal
1101
Scotus, Ord. I, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–4 [nos. 398–402].
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distinction,” but he seems undecided on the matter. Scholarios hints at being privy to Scotistic-
leaning interpretations stemming from Aquinas’s Scriptum super Sententiis (scripsit 1252).
Therein, Aquinas upheld a distinctio in divinis ex parte rei. Aquinas acknowledged a stronger
a parte rei distinction among the Trinity of persons than among the attributes, which
constituted Neoplatonic exemplarism! For example, Aquinas writes in his Scriptum super
Sententiis, I, d. 22, q. 1, a. 3:
A multiplicity of names can happen on the part of the thing (ex parte rei): according to which
the names signify a res; and, from this, the expressive names come, i.e., that which is in God.
However, in God is not to be found some real distinction, except of persons who are three.
From this, too, a multiplicity of personal names comes, which signify three res. Yet, beyond
this, is also to be found in God a distinction of rationes, which really and truly are in him, as
the ratio of wisdom and of goodness, and such. These are all one indeed as regards the res, and
they differ by their ratio, which is conserved in its property and truth, according as we say that
God is truly wise and good, and this is not only in the intellect of the ratiocinator
(ratiocinantis). From this, too, come the diverse names of attributes. All these attributes, albeit
they signify one res, do not however signify one res according to one ratio. 1102
What comes as most surprising in Aquinas is his admission that “a real distinction” obtains
between the persons, while ad intra distinctions among rationes obtain within the divine
essence. With all this in mind, Aquinas does not want to call the distinctions between the really
present rationes in divinis “real” but only rationes ex parte rei. This is fairly understandable
for his late-thirteenth-century context, where a “real distinction” supposes an attribute to exist
or subsist (potentially) apart from its subject (like an accident miraculously existing apart from
its substance). Of course, any thinkable “separation” between God’s esse and perfections was
impossible for any Christian theologian. What is more, the passage above possibly serves as a
point of departure for Thomists, like Hervaeus Natalis, to justify their drift toward Scotism and
its “real distinction,” without suffering their consciences to feel guilty about abandoning
Thomism. Above, we see the ipsissima verba of a young Thomas, but he is still under the spell
of the universitarian reception of Augustine, the same that equally informed the theology of
Bonaventure. In a similar passage, Aquinas had written earlier in Scriptum super Sententiis, I,
d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, corpus:
1102
Aquinas 2018d, I, d. 22, q. 1, a. 3, corpus.
308
In God is wisdom, goodness, and such, whichever of which is itself the divine essence, and
thus all are one through [one] res. Also, because one whatsoever of the aforesaid is in God
according to its truest ratio, it is also the case that the ratio of wisdom is not the ratio of
goodness [...] which are in a diverse ratio, not merely on the part of the ratiocinator (ex parte
ipsius ratiocinantis), but on account of a property of the very thing (ex proprietate ipsius rei).
From this, too, it is not that he is in every way an equivocal cause of things, since [a cause]
according to its form produces similar effects to itself, not univocally but analogically, just as
every wisdom is derived from his wisdom and, thus, regarding other attributes according to the
doctrine of [Ps.-]Dionysios. Whence, he is the exemplary form of things, not so much as with
respect to those items that are in his wisdom, namely, idea-rationes, but even on account of
such things that are in his nature, viz., attributes. However, certain people say that these
attributes do not differ, except as connoted in power of creatures. But this is not able to be: for
then, since a cause doesn’t have anything in its effect, but vice versa. From this argument, God
is not called wise because wisdom is from him, but rather a created res is called wise, inasmuch
as it imitates divine wisdom. Then, since creatures don’t exist from eternity, even if they would
have never come about, it was [nonetheless always] true to say what is wise, good, and such.
What is the same cannot be signified in every way for one and another thing, as the same thing
can be signified by synonyms.
This fascinating passage from Aquinas betrays his early agreement with Bonaventure on the
complexity of God ad intra. Still, one notes a few oddities. First, we can see that his appeal to
Ps.-Dionysios anticipates Aquinas’s future approach where he will more and more favor
apophaticism according to plausible readings of the Areopagite. Secondly, Aquinas’s appeal
to analogy is not a surprise. As will become clearer, the appeal to analogy is an appeal to one
of about five Aristotelian usages of the term (as received among Schoolmen) and is a topos for
avoiding what I call “old univocity.” I will deal with the various kinds of univocity below. At
this point, it is only apparent that Aquinas wants to hold for a multiplicity of persons, who are
really distinct from each other, and of attributes that are really non-concentric and do not enjoy
formal equivalence. It is not very difficult to see that the non-formal but real sameness (in re)
of goodness and wisdom in the divine essence, which obtains ex parte rei, is nothing short of
Scotus’s formal distinction, of which Scotus was implicitly aware, just as he argued above his
position to be equivalent to the Thomistic “virtual distinction,” which represented a more
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agnostic shift in Aquinas’s thinking on the matter of the ex parte rei distinction in divinis from
his youth. While the present two passages already highlight a proto-Scotism (and, by extension,
proto-Palamism) in youthful Aquinas, this Neoplatonism does not immediately disappear from
his more notable works in favor of pure Aristotelianism. Instead, we at least see last traces off
this doctrine in the SG I (scripsit c. 1258), which Scholarios edited in Greek (using Demetrios
Kydones’ first edition). 1103 As far as I know, SG I.54 represents the last remnants of Aquinas’s
Neoplatonism on the relevant questions of ad intra metaphysics:
[Neoplatonist opening:] The divine essence comprehends the becoming items of all beings in
himself [...] via a perfect mode. [...] Every form [...] is the same kind of perfection. [...]
Therefore, the divine intellect can comprehend that which is proper to anything within his own
essence, by understanding in what items his essence is imitated and in what anything is lacking
in such a perfection. For example, by understanding his essence as imitable via a mode of life
and not via a mode cognition, it receives its proper form of plant, but if imitable via a mode of
cognition and not of intellection, it receives its proper form of animal, etc. In this way,
therefore, it is obvious that the divine essence inasmuch as it is absolutely perfect, can be
received as a proper ratio of singular [beings]. From this, God can have through such [a ratio]
a proper cognition with respect to all singulars. Now, however, the proper ratio of one item is
distinguished from the proper ratio of another. [Transition to the Aristotelian prime mover
(actus purus):] Yet, distinction is the principle of plurality: It is proper that one consider a
certain distinction and plurality of intellected rationes in the divine intellect, after which that
which is in the divine intellect is the proper ratio of diverse [beings]. From this, since this is in
line with that which God understands as a proper relation (respectum) of assimilation, which
any one creature has to himself, it remains that rationes of things are not many, or distinct, in
the divine intellect, save according to the fact that God knows things as likened to himself in
many and diverse ways. [Respectful rejection of Augustinian Neoplatonism:] In this way, too,
Augustine says that God by another ratio makes either “human” or “horse.” He says also that
rationes of things are in the divine mind in their diversity (pluraliter). By this, the opinion of
Plato, who supposes [divine] ideas, is somewhat saved, after which [pattern] are formed all
things that exist in material things.
1103
Fyrigos 2011, 164–167.
310
As Szabó (1955, 30–34) pointed out some time ago, what Aquinas begins acknowledging (viz.,
Augustinian Neoplatonism), he substantially rejects in the last third of his explanation. In the
end of his disquisition, Aquinas claims only that there is only an imperfect, viz., rhetorical,
way to save Augustine’s doctrine of a plurality of ideas, since Aquinas has opted for the
(Aristotelian) prime mover. 1104 This seems to me to mark the point of transition from a “real
distinction” (qua future Scotism) in divinis to a virtual distinction. Thereafter, this virtual
distinction becomes the standard fare of Thomistic expositions of the divine essence. For this
reason, Scholarios was right to be somewhat reticent to condemn Aquinas wholesale, for he
early on had acknowledged the essence-energies distinction, only to abandon it beginning
around 1260. In this vein, we can now understand Scholarios’s words:
Yet, now he [Thomas] is not our concern in this excursus of this consideration, but our holy
Church and the blessed Gregorios of Thessalonica, for the sake of whom two we decided to
discuss these issues. Whence, let the issues regarding Thomas (i.e. whether he agrees or
disagrees with other teachers [viz., Scotus, Meyronnes, and Natalis] and whether his views are
true or not) be given leave to others to consider; for, Thomas is not so much important for us
that we should by every means plead on behalf of him, even if otherwise I have previously
regarded and still now regard him admirable.
The subsequent section of Scholarios’s discussion returns to the defense of Palamism by
clarifying, yet again, the fact that Barlaamites and their ilk wanted an impossible muddle of
metaphysics to defend the simplicity of God: First they wanted a God so simple that no
predicates (e.g., wisdom) were in the essence ex parte rei, but they simultaneously wished to
affirm that certain predicates were properly said of God and that each of these predicates is
different from another formally or conceptually, as when the concept of “will” is compared to
that of “mind.” In his summation of arguments, Scholarios returned to Scotus’s and Palamas’s
own assertions that, if there are meaningful attributes in God (intellect, will, etc.), then the
divine attributes (contra the Thomistic distinctio virtualis) cannot be a matter of taking
attributes of categorical being and merely comparing them to their cause and, subsequently, of
predicating these attributes to God, as if somehow fitting to his being:
For who does not know that, even in the case that all the souls and every created mind be
deleted, both the essence of God and His energy and the difference among these two would
1104
Szabó 1955, 30–34.
311
still exist and that neither the actus essendi (τὸ εἶναι), nor “the act of existence” (τὸ ὑπάρχειν),
nor the act of projecting (τὸ προάγεσθαι) is opposed to the divine energy, whether ad intra, or
ad extra, even in it happens that every mind who predicates these things of God be deleted?
The reason for this is that it is not because of this act of predication that goodness exists in God
or that it exists in Him in absolute way (απολελυμένως), like wisdom, intellect et sim., but not
with reference to something else (ἀναφορικῶς) [outside of God], in the way in which there is
in God begetting (γέννησις) and emanation (προβολή) and paternity and likewise sonship? 1105
There can be no doubt that, Scholarios, God’s activities ad intra, and his free choice of creating
things ad extra are each a case of “first intentional” beings, that is, cases where God’s mind
sees something (when this something [quiddity/essence] is only accessible to him). However,
any intellectual faculty of abstraction can see energies that are in re (for the energy-object is
perceptible to intellects naturally) and, in such cases, this mind takes its intention from
contemplation of the object, not by comparison of the divine object (energy) with some created
object (a created quality) in order to establish a mental relation between an attribute in God
and a creature (forming only a second intention). 1106 In effect, Scholarios was entirely outside
the Thomistic mode of conceptualizing divine attributes, as these are reductively second
intentions that are established by the mind creating a relation between two items that are not
primarily related on the intentional level.
Along these lines, Scholarios continued to sum up his position according to Palamas’s
and Scotus’s shared values; namely, the properties in divine nature are the source of divine and
human cognizing and human predicating of the divine properties in question. Scholarios,
however, might initially confuse a reader unaware of his use of Scholastic (versus Methodian
and Cappadocian) vocabulary. Scholarios, departing from Palamas on this score, equated the
Scholastic distinctions by “thought alone” or “distinctiones minores” of the Thomistic variety
with the distinction “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν.” Importantly, Schoolmen did not have access to the Stoic
distinction “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν” in all its detail – that is, as something implying potential separation
1105
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 94.22–26. Cf. Bonaventure 1891d, q. 1, a. 1 [nos. 10–20] (Quarrachi 5:46b–
47a); Bonaventure 1891c, III.3 (Quarrachi 5:304a).
1106
While I have already shown that the Scholarian discussion on ad intra and ad extra willing (viz., creation)
relies heavily upon the Neoplatonist Bonaventure, as ulteriorly interpreted in Scotus, Tavardon (1977, 272)
discovered that Pletho had blamed Aristotle for his lack of such a distinction. Instead, argued Pletho, Plato (via
Proclus) had more anticipated a demiurge and creator than anything argued by the Stagirite. This 1443/4
argument of Scholarios with Pletho is perhaps behind his attentiveness to this distinction.
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and hypostasization of objectively separated elements. Schoolmen used the distinction
“secundum rationem” in a non-Stoic manner. Scholarios’s translation of “secundum rationem,”
as “κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν,” did not take into account Stoicism and, thus, did not commit Scholarios
either to affirm or to deny the separability of attributes by virtue of this term. Consequently,
the existential status of the items under such a notion as “secundum rationem,” or the source
of such concepts that exist in the human mind, is open to interpretation in this Scholastic turn
of phrase. Hence, Scholarios was entirely Scholastic on the question of his terminology here.
For his part, Palamas understandably avoided “ἐπίνοια” (or Latin ratio) in his denomination of
the essence-energies distinction. The divergence in Scholastic and Stoic vocabulary marks yet
another case, of which Scholarios had himself complained, where his Byzantines were
confused by Scholarios’s newfangled vocabulary and by the intricacies of making distinctions
that were very different from the Stoic and Byzantine traditions of logic that they had come to
know.
6. Scholarios’s Theory of Predication: Univocity or Analogy of the Concept of Being?
Anyone who is aware of the debates among medieval logicians cannot help but be
cognizant of the debate between Scotus’s new version of univocity versus the vague, if
traditional, doctrine of “analogy of the concept of being.” I wish to avoid recounting all the
intricacies and divisions, especially among inharmonious Thomists, on whether or not the
problems associated with analogy can be objectively reduced to a logical or metaphysical
problem. Secondly, I avoid rehashing questions of the various kinds of analogical concepts,
which range from esse or ens under a “confused notion” to ens under the classification of some
kind of equivocity; 1107 each competing theory represents diversity of interpretation of Aristotle
who had famously asserted: “Being is said in many ways” (Metaphysica, 1003b5). For our
purposes, it is important to note that Scholarios, about two years prior to producing his
translation-commentary on the De ente et essentia, was already engaged in this logical debate
against Pletho. Propitiously, the debate took its point of departure in a Byzantino-Thomistic
context, where both Pletho and Scholarios had already familiarized themselves with Aquinas
1107
Scholarios interpreted Aquinas to embrace a “confused concept” of being common to both God and
creature, in Scholarios and Aquinas 1931b, I.4.3. For this interpretation of esse and ens as something
conceptually confused/understood, see Theron 1987, 37–50.
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graecus (cf. ST I.4.2–I.5.6, I.13.1–5). Their clashing world views are summarized in a
forthcoming study of Demetracopoulos:
Viewing Thomas Aquinas as the best of the Latin sages, he [viz., Scholarios] believed that the
Thomistic synthesis of Revelation with reason would provide him with the best framework as
well as the most effective arguments for his Christian polemics against the only anti-Christian
intellectual in Byzantium, i.e., Georgios Gemistos or Pletho. In his first piece against Pletho,
the Κατὰ τῶν Πλήθωνος ἀποριῶν ἐπ’ Ἀριστοτέλει (1443/44), which is his most important
philosophical writing, he made (as Pletho himself occasionally remarked in his counter-reply)
extensive use of Thomas’s theological methodology as well as of Thomas’s reading of
Aristotle, in order to refute one by one almost all of the eighteen points of Pletho’s short but
bitter critique of the “ridiculous” and “silly” “pseudo-philosopher” (σοφιστής) Aristotle in his
Περὶ ὧν Ἀριστοτέλης πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαφέρεται (On the Issues on which Aristotle
Contentiously Disagrees with Plato), which was delivered in Florence in 1439. 1108
Once again, we see that the Thomistic atmosphere of Ferrara-Florence sets the stage for the
debate, even if cloaked under the mantle of a historically Greek debate about the superiority of
Plato versus Aristotle. Demetracopoulos underlines a wider discussion, within which I wish to
concentrate on neopagan Plethonian anti-Palamism in its struggle against post-Thomistic
Palamism. This focus means to highlight the fact that Aquinas’s works made a profound
impression on Pletho and Scholarios alike. The numerous literary dependencies of Pletho on
Aquinas have already been meticulously described by Demetracopoulos. Importantly, even
Pletho’s theology – albeit pro-pagan – was under the spell of Thomistic interpretations of
Hellenic and Hellenistic traditions. An outstanding example lies in Pletho’s adoption of the
ordering and interpretation of the “four cardinal virtues” along the commentary of Aquinas. 1109
While this does not necessarily mean that Aquinas profoundly affected most, or even the main
portion, of Pletho’s thought, it does signal the fact that Pletho was not immune from the
influence of Thomistic reasoning.
For this reason, it is unsurprising that Pletho was aware of what has become known as
“the analogical concept of being.” For Pletho, ens or τὸ ὄν signifies a concept that is accurately
and proportionately taken from objects in the universe, including the divinity! As Tavardon
1108
Demetracopoulos 2019a.
1109
Demetracopoulos 2004b, 49–68, 145–168; Demetracopoulos 2006, 276–341.
314
notices, the debate between Scholarios and Pletho was relevant to debates in coeval
Latindom. 1110 At the basis of Pletho’s criticism of Aristotle was his argument that τὸ ὄν, if
conceptually equivocal, destroys all certitude about the fundamental concept necessary for
understanding either God’s being or that of the creature: 1111 “If all beings are priorly from one,
unique principle [...] it is nevertheless impossible that they should not possess each an element
that is one and common between themselves. Yet, that there should be consequently not
otherwise than ens and one ens that is not a homonym. Now, if ens were a homonym it would
not be able to be something one.” 1112 Tavardon locates another passage, which is an extract
transcribed from MS Marcianus gr. 517, where Pletho argued that, if God is a unique being,
and if he produces the world and its beings, then all beings fall under the concept of being.
Ergo, the first cause and its world are each contained under one category or the genus of
being. 1113 Of course, the argument that being (τὸ ὄν) falls into a genus, under which there is
divine being and created being, results in pantheism in its classical presentation. Insofar as
gods and humans are beings, they partake of the same universal genus. This is precisely what
Pletho attempted to argue against Aristotle’s Metaphysica, for if a “prime mover” is taken to
be explicable according to the order of causes in the universe, then God, as cause, is taken in a
sense univocal to created causes. 1114 Thomists had to confront these same difficulties. Thus, it
is not surprising that Pletho brought up this point. What is more, Demetracopoulos’s study
underlines the importance of this discussion, when writing:
Scholarios, in his polemics against Pletho’s “polytheism,” argues for the unity and uniqueness
of God on the grounds that it impossible to conceive of many absolutely perfect beings; he
goes as far as to say that it is impossible even for God to fully impart his supreme perfection
to another being, just as he is unable not to will himself. Parallel to this, however, he accuses
“Hellenic theology” (including Pletho) of absolutely identifying God’s “essence” and
“energies” and thus failing to bridge the gap between God and the derivative beings; for were
God to have produced things by means of his essence, his productions would have been of the
1110
Tavardon 1977, 268–269.
1111
Scholarios 1935d, bk. I (OCGS 4:44–46), openly wards off this accusation, attempting to argue that
“science” is possible in Aristotle since every application of “being” has a necessary relation to some principle
(ἀρχή).
1112
Pletho 1973, 324.
1113
Tavardon 1977, 272. Cf. Pletho 1973, 324.
1114
Tavardon 1977, 274.
315
same nature as himself, i.e., gods, which has proved absurd. Some sort of distinction should,
therefore, be drawn between God’s “essence” and “energies.” Doing so does not clash with
God’s simplicity; for, in fact, a difference between “essence” and “energies” is met within
every being. 1115
From this we see the relevance of Tavardon’s own analysis of the Pletho-Scholarios debate for
his later essence-energies treatises. First, Scholarios must explain how the concept of being
and concepts of various attributes in God point to something really different, though
understood in an accurate and literal way. Secondly, Scholarios affirmed what amounts to a
fundamentally anti-Thomistic metaphysics – meaning that he cannot use Thomist analogical
predication – for Scholarios admitted to Pletho that a fusion of essence and operation is a
species of “Hellenic” paganism. What is most interesting about this analysis is that it reflects
the age-old accusation against Thomism on the part of Orthodox; namely, Thomistic theology
of God is not Christian. 1116 While Scholarios was willing to concede that the fusion of essence
and energies in God is nothing less than a pagan error, clearly Aquinas’s theological values
and conclusions upheld God as entirely “other” from his creation. Besides his affection for
Aquinas’s theological program, the theological reason for Scholarios to avoid conflating Pletho
and Aquinas lies in the theological conclusions of Aquinas. Thomas attempted to justify a
Christian world view vis-à-vis contemporary Averroism, while different conclusions were in
the mind of Pletho from the start. Still, the metaphysical affinities shared between the
metaphysical premises of Aquinas and Pletho on this particular question have not been lost on
Byzantine theologians from late Byzantium until modern times.
If Aquinas did not hold the answers to Pletho’s objections against Aristotle, then who
did possess the answer sufficient for Scholarios? Tavardon argued that Scholarios’s response
Κατὰ τῶν Πλήθωνος ἀποριῶν ἐπ’ Ἀριστοτέλει (1443/4) to Pletho’s Περὶ ὧν Ἀριστοτέλης πρὸς
Πλάτωνα διαφέρεται (1439) is in fact the abandonment of Thomism for the sake of Scotism in
favor of the univocity of the concept of being. Ebbesen and Pinborg, as we saw, already
demonstrate that (contra Tavardon) the original Latin author of the Scholarian commentaries
1115
See Demetracopoulos 2019a, where he also provides the relevant passage to substantiate his quote from
Scholarios’s relatively major debate with Pletho, in Scholarios 1935f (OCGS 4:165.1–5, 165.29–32, 168.17–
169.6); Scholarios 1935e (OCGS 4:126.22–127.30).
1116
For a summation of these criticisms of Aquinas from an Orthodox viewpoint, see Bradshaw 2004, 214–
255.
316
on the Logica vetus was none other than Radulphus Brito. So, whatever the merit of Tavardon
(1977, 268–278), it is clear that he makes an incorrect, though intelligent guess, given
Scholarios’s approval of Scotus in 1445. It seems logical to infer that Scotism was earlier
employed in Scholarian polemics against Pletho in 1443. While Tavardon’s inference is
logical, it ultimately proves to be wrong. Let us compare Scholarios’s treatment of univocity
in Prolégomènes à la logique et à “l’Isagoge” de Porphyre, with its arguments for univocity,
as central in Scholarios’s 1443/4 response to Pletho: 1117
Scholarios and Brito, Prolégomènes à la logique et Scholarios, Contre les difficulties de Pléthon au
à “l’Isagoge” de Porphyre, 12: sujet d’Aristote, bk. 1 (OCGS 4:47):
καὶ ὅτι οὗτος ὁ λόγος τοῦ ὄντος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπίσης ἡ διαίρεσις προσήκει τοῖς ἀναλογικῶς λεγομένοις·
μετεχόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος, ἔστι γὰρ διαίρεσις πράγματος ἓν ἔχοντος ὄνομα καὶ
ἀλλὰ κατὰ μὲν τὸ πρότερον μετέχεται ὑπὸ τῆς οὐσίας, λόγον ἕνα μὲν τὸν γενικόν· εἰρήσθω γὰρ οὕτως, ἐπεὶ
κατὰ δὲ τὸ ὕστερον, ὑπὸ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος. Τὸ μὲν καὶ τὸ κοινὸν καὶ καθόλου γένος εἴωθεν Ἀριστοτέλης
οὖν πρῶτον δείκνυσιν οὕτως. Ἐν οἷς ἐστιν εἷς τρόπος καλεῖν· εἰδικὸν δὲ οὐχ ἕνα, ἀλλὰ πλείους. Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ
τοῦ ὑπάρχειν κοινός, ἐν αὐτοῖς δύναται εἶναι καὶ εἷς ὁ ἑκάστων λόγος ἐκ τοῦ τῆς ὑπάρξεως αὐτῶν τρόπου
λόγος τοῦ νοεῖσθαι κοινός, διότι ὁ λόγος ὁ νοητικὸς λαμβάνεται, τὸ δὲ καθ’ αὑτὸ ὂν ἕνα τρόπον ὑπάρξεως
λαμβάνεται ἐκ τοῦ ὑπαρκτικοῦ τρόπου, ὥστε καὶ ἡ ἔχει, ᾧ τοῦ τε κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ὄντος καὶ τοῦ ἐν τῇ
ἑνότης τοῦ λόγου ἐκ τῆς τοῦ τρόπου ἑνότητος, τὸ δὲ διανοίᾳ, τουτέστι τοῦ ἀληθοῦς, διακρίνεται, εἰκότως
ὂν ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ καὶ τῷ συμβεβηκότι ἔχει ἕνα τοῦ εἶναι ἑνός ἐστι λόγου τὸ ὄν, τό τε ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ καὶ τὸ ἐν τῷ
τρόπον· ἑνὸς ἄρα λόγου πρὸς τὴν οὐσίαν ἐστὶ καὶ τὸ συμβεβηκότι· ἀληθὲς γάρ ἐστι καθ’ αὑτὸ τήν τε
συμβεβηκός. Ἡ ἐλάττων δείκνυται οὕτως. Ἐν τῷ οὐσίαν ἀνὰ μέρος, τό τε συμβεβηκὸς τοιοῦτό τι ὂν
λέγειν οὕτως· τὸ συμβεβηκός ἐστιν ὄν, κατηγορεῖται ἀποφήνασθαι· καὶ εἰ ποιητικῶς τὸ εἶναι τὸ
τὸ ὂν κατὰ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος τῇ εἰδικῇ ὀντότητι τοῦ συμβεβηκὸς διὰ τὴν οὐσίαν ἔχει, εἰδικῶς μέντοι γε
συμβεβηκότος, καὶ οὐ τῇ ὀντότητι ἥτις ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας, ἀλλὰ τῇ εἰδικῇ τοῦ
οὐσίᾳ· καὶ τὸ ὂν κατηγορούμενον κατὰ τῆς οὐσίας συμβεβηκότος ὀντότητι κατ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ ὂν λέγεται,
κατηγορεῖται κατ’ αὐτῆς τῇ εἰδικῇ ὀντότητι τῆς ὥσπερ καὶ κατὰ τῆς οὐσίας, τῇ εἰδικῇ ταύτης ὑπάρξει·
οὐσίας. Ὅθεν ἀληθές ἐστιν, ὅτι ποιητικῶς μὲν ἡ καὶ διὰ ταῦτα τὸ ὂν ἕνα τε τρόπον ἔχει κοινὸν τῆς ἐν
ὀντότης τοῦ συμβεβηκότος ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τῆς ὀντότητος ἀμφοῖν τούτοιν ὑπάρξεως καὶ ἅμα λόγον ἕνα κοινόν.
τῆς οὐσίας, ἀλλ’ εἰδικῶς, οὐχὶ ὅθεν καθ’ αὑτό ἐστιν Μέχρι μὲν οὖν τούτου γένος οὐσίας τε καὶ
αὕτη ἡ πρότασις, τὸ συμβεβηκός ἐστιν ὄν, ὥσπερ συμβεβηκότος εἶναι δοκεῖ τὸ ὄν· ἀλλ’ ἔστι τι
1117
My analysis that follows is quite unexpected, since Scholarios translated (ante 1443/1445) into Greek
Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysica. Unfortunately, the MS thereof was destroyed by fire in
1671. For details, see Balkoyiannopoulou 2018, 20. Scholarios apparently was unable to count on Aquinas’s
account of analogy to oppose Pletho. Hence, no sooner was the translation completed than it proved inadequate
to meet Scholarios’s anti-Plethonic needs.
317
ἐκείνη ἡ οὐσία ἐστὶν ὄν. Ὅθεν ἡ λευκότης οὐκ ἔστιν προσιστάμενον. Εἰ γὰρ καὶ εἷς ἐστι καθ’ αὑτὸ ὁ
ὂν εἰδικῶς διὰ τῆς οὐσίας, εἰ καὶ ποιητικῶς ἔχει τὸ κοινὸς ἀμφοῖν λόγος, ἀλλὰ πρότερον μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς
εἶναι διὰ τῆς οὐσίας· τὸ δὲ εἶναι εἰδικῶς ἐν ἄλλῳ ἔστι οὐσίας, ὕστερον δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος μετέχεται.
τις τρόπος ὑπάρξεως. Τὸ ἄρα ὄν, ἐπειδὴ ἔχει τὸ εἶναι
εἰδικῶς ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ καὶ τῷ συμβεβηκότι, ἕξει ἕνα
τρόπον τοῦ εἶναι κοινὸν ἐν τούτοις, καὶ ἀκολούθως
ἕνα λόγον κοινόν.
Above, Scholarios employed vocabulary and argument found nowhere else in his works,
including his essence-energies treatises. Above, too, we encounter Scholarios relying on Brito
and his theory of univocity to defend Palamas’s intrinsically univocal understanding of
conceptual being in defense of his division between God’s attributes and his divine essence.
Brito’s theory of univocity is not entirely reducible to that of Scotus. The mature
position of Scotus had, by Brito’s time, become well known among Modistae; namely, that a
neutral or indifferent nature (known again as “common nature”) accounts for the fact that
“equinity” can be both universal (viz., a universal in an understanding mind) and particular
(e.g., the horse Bucephalus). So far, Tavardon correctly identifies the fact that Scholarios’s
translation of Brito’s Prolégomènes à la logique et à “l’Isagoge” de Porphyre (that Tavardon
mistakes to be a Scholarian composition ex novo) and the Scholarian objection to Pletho,
above, both are “Avicennian” or Scotistic (and, thus, Neoplatonic on this score) in opposition
to what might be deemed the Plethonian (and Thomistic) view of the divine essence and divine
energies. 1118
Also, Ebbesen catalogs the fact that both Scotus and Brito agree about concrete
accidental terms (e.g., album, or white) and abstract accidental terms (e.g., albedo, or
whiteness) having each one significatum (i.e., an attribute), but that a concrete term, “Socrates
is white,” implies in the mind that this “white” exists in something else, while – mentally –
“whiteness” as such lacks any such implication of “being in another” upon cognizing the
essence of whiteness de abstracto. 1119 Furthermore, like Scholarios’s essence-energies
doctrine, each energy or “accidental term” can be called, in modista fashion, a significatum or
1118
Tavardon 1977, 278. Cf. Meyronnes 2013, I, d. 47, q. 3: “Et ideo dicunt alii magis sequentes Avicennam
quod illa praecisio non solum est ex parte intellectus, sed ex parte objecti.”
1119
Ebbesen 1988, 121–122.
318
res. 1120 What is more, both Scotus and Brito concentrated on the fact that the mind’s
abstraction of “white” (album) must presuppose a subject or foundation for the existence of
the aforesaid item, whereas the mental abstraction of “white-ness” (albedo) is something
conceived of as entirely indifferent to existing as a subject or accident. Whiteness is not the
kind of thing that implies in the mind a subject, but is only an abstracted essential, universal,
and meaningful concept. In effect, both Scotus and Brito are useful to Scholarios since they
agree that the common nature (Brito’s essentia albedinis, or essence of whiteness) is the
centrally indifferent item that can either be universalized in the human mind, that is, understood
as “whiteness,” or concretely inhere in beings, as “white dog.” 1121
On this point, there seems to be no substantial difference between Scotistic and
Britonian univocity. Both Schoolmen held the doctrine that the mind understands both
substance and accident under the more general concept of “ens.” This, of course, makes their
doctrine antithetical to Thomistic analogy. All the same, Aquinas waffled during his career,
sometimes believing that the human mind abstracted essences directly from objects, while
sometimes he doubted this. 1122 All the same, strict Aristotelico-Thomists and the Thomistic
school in general interpreted Aquinas to argue that the notion of substance and accident to be
items that are quite immediately abstracted as a concomitant piece of the intelligible content
in the abstracting mind. In effect, this meant that “man” and “white” were always conceived
by the mind under their proper universal concepts and modes, as abstracted from the object of
experience. In this scenario – unlike for Scotists – accidents are not gathered by the mind into
a unity, as items present to the soul hic et nunc, and subsequently used by reason to designate
this or that collection of accidents (apparently united into one existence) as a substance. In the
Scotistic scenario accidents were sufficiently known under the concept of “ens” (or being),
even if a concrete accident – as abstracted – leads the knower of accidents to some underlying
foundation or substance. Thus, accidents acted as media quo for the human mind to understand
that a substance was present.
1120
Ebbesen 1988, 122; Demetracopoulos 2004a, 353–362. NB, the Thomistically-influenced John
Kyparissiotis was almost surely the source of Pletho’s doctrine of purely logical distinction between οὐσία and
ἐνεργείᾳ (vs. ἐνέργεια) in the highest divinity, providing a metaphysics amenable to monism, or putative
nominalism, aiding Pletho to return to archaic Hellenic essence-energy necessitarianism.
1121
Ebbesen 1988, 129–131.
1122
See the finer points of this discussion in Pini 2008, 281–315.
319
For Thomists, oppositely, substances are generally considered knowable in their own
right. If so, then there can be no confusion about substances, nor – it would seem – doubts as
to whether or not something is “x,” “y,” or “z” substance. Of course, the Thomistic explanation
of how the mind can be fooled into believing a collection of perfectly perceived accidents is a
certain kind of substance, when in fact it constitutes only an aggregate of diverse substances,
or the question of how such an object is actually a different kind of substance than the human
mind initially judged, takes us too far away from our main topic.
The important addition in Brito, above, is his use of predication per prius (πρότερον)
and posterius (ὕστερον). Scotus, so far as I know, did not adopt this reinvention of analogy via
recourse to predication per prius and posterius, as did subsequent Scotists and Modistae. In
the traditional scenario, upheld by Guichardan in his critique of Palamas, Scotus, and
Scholarios, Thomists argue that something is said of both God and creature only “analogously”
or in a proportion that it is partly the same and partly different. 1123 Using the argument of ST
I.13 on the divine names, Thomists tend to favor the notion that “good” or “wise” can be said
of God only in some non-univocal but relatively applicable fashion. For example, a human is
said to be “healthy” as a property that is perfective of man. Secondarily, health might be a
property of fruit, insofar as it relates to man, for ripe fruit is a cause of health in the human
body. Lastly, “health” might even be predicated of urine, in that urine acts as a natural sign of
the proper attribute of health. Of course, Scotists rejected this argument based upon at least
two major criticisms. First, if the word “health” is not defined in such a way that all three cases
employ a definition capable of serving as a middle term in a syllogism, then a fallacy occurs.
Health (or suchlike divine attribute) must be sufficiently understood to be inhering in both
subject “a” and subject “b” such that the attribute can be used without equivocation. 1124
Secondly, as in Guichardan’s arguments, a term-attribute is somehow proportionate to its
subject, as in “good Socrates,” where analogy of proportion supposes a grasp of all terms in
question. In Guichardan’s arguments against Palamas and Scotus, he set up the standard
equation: 1/3 is to 2/6, as goodness⁄Socrates is to ∞goodness⁄∞God. The classic criticism of
such proportionality lies in the fact that each quantitative value in a fraction is known, whereas
1123
1124
For Scholarios’s discussion of Thomistic analogy by recourse to “health” as said of human, food, and urine,
see Scholarios and Brito 1933, 12 (I have provided the text, supra, in the main text).
320
the proportions in God are unknown and unknowable for Thomists. Since no human concept
of God and of his attributes can be obtained from created beings, or even naturally understood
by the human mind (as an intention), the proportion fails. What is more, God – for Thomists –
does not see an infinitely proportionate goodness in himself, such that he can identify this
attribute as a distinct concept. Here, the analogy again fails even when considering the divinity
and what he knows in himself. In the case of each and every divine attribute, only the first
proportion is known (the human concept of goodness in relation to the human concept of
humanity), but humans (and even God) have no access to unlimited concepts such as “divine
goodness.” If God’s esse is not accessible conceptually to humans, it is nonetheless the only
concept that God can be said to know when contemplating himself.
Obviously, for someone like Scholarios, this is not a satisfactory explanation of the
attributes in God. Consequently, in what way does Brito mean something to be understood
“analogically,” when referring to the concept of being as univocally understood by the human
mind with respect to both substance and accident? In response, Scholarios explicitly wrote
Pletho on the very same matter, as already cited earlier, so that the relevant sense of analogy
always signifies a case where two items are mentally compared to a third item. To aid our
understanding of Scholarios’s citation of Brito, above, we might also beneficially refer to a
final Franciscan, whom Scholarios might have read under the name of Richard of Mediavilla
at Ferrara-Florence. The authentic Richard was the person to whom Scholarios made reference,
as one of the few Latins, besides some Scotists, who understood and possessed an Orthodox
approach to the filioque question. 1125 Other than his knowledge of the filioque debate, Richard
did not reflect Scotus on divine matters, but embodied synthesis of Bonaventure and Thomas
1125
Scholarios 1929b, 6 (OCGS 2:223):
Ἃ μὲν οὖν οἱ Λατῖνοι κομίζουσιν ὑπὲρ ἑαυτῶν οὐδὲν μέγα πρὸς συνηγορίαν τῆς καινοτομίας σφίσι
παρέχονται, ὡς μηδ’ ἔχειν ἡμᾶς αὐτὰ προσαρμόσαι τοῖς τῶν ἡμετέρων διδασκάλων λογίοις· τὰς δὲ τῇ
παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀληθείᾳ περιφανῶς βοηθούσας ῥήσεις ἐκείνων καὶ τὴν ἀμφισβήτησιν ταύτην λυούσας ὑπὲρ
ἡμῶν, οἴδασι μὲν Λατῖνοι καλῶς, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν τῆς καινοτομίας σύστασιν ἕλκουσι· βούλονται γὰρ
οὐ τὰς πρεσβυτικὰς ἐκείνας τῶν διδασκάλων ἐννοίας καὶ τὴν ἀρχαίαν τῆς ἐκκλησίας δόξαν κρατεῖν,
ἀλλ’ ἅπερ αὐτοὶ καθ’ ἡμέραν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν λόγοις φιλοτιμίας ἐπινενοήκασιν, ἐπὶ κενώσει τοῦ μυστηρίου
τῆς καθ’ἡμᾶς πίστεως τῶν ἀπορρήτων κατεξορχούμενοι, Σκότους τινὰς προστησάμενοι καὶ
Ῥικάρδους, οἷς εἴ τις βούλοιτο προσέχειν, πάντα ἂν ἀγνοήσειε τἀληθῆ, οὕτως ὑπὸ πολλῆς τῶν φρενῶν
λεπτότητος ὥσπερ ἐκβεβακχευμένοι φύρουσι πάντα, τῆς ἀρχαίας καὶ πρεσβυτικῆς ἐκείνης καὶ ἀτύφου
καὶ ἱερᾶς ὄντως θεολογίας ἴχνος οὐδὲν ἀποσῴζοντες.
321
Aquinas. 1126 For example, Richard, like Hervaeus, was not favorable to arguments on behalf
of the distinction between esse and essentia. 1127 Furthermore, Richard’s metaphysics have
been cataloged as more akin to those of Aquinas. This makes him suspiciously “Barlaamite”
in his propensities to interpret God’s attributes along the lines of the Thomistic “distinctio
minor,” or a distinctio rationis ratiocinatae.
Circumstantially, Scholarios’s interest in Brito, Armandus, Scotus, and Natalis
suggests that more – not less – logical precision would be helpful in revamping analogy to be
a useful concept for Palamite metaphysics. This would have been wanting in Mediavilla on the
question of the essence and energies. Be that as it may, as we saw, at Florence, Scholarios had
access to a likely anonymous MS of Armandus, as well as to a certainly anonymous MS of
Bonaventure. It likewise suggests that Scholarios might have accessed another available MS
that is mistakenly attributed to Richard of Mediavilla. It would have appeared attractive and
would have been present in Florence at that time. 1128 However, the author is not in fact Richard,
but a Scotist Hugo of Novocastro (c. 1280–c. 1322). 1129 This fact does lend weight to
Scholarios’s implied language of knowing more than just Scotus and Meyronnes. Indeed,
Scholarios’s interest in Richard might have led him to investigate its content. He would have
discovered yet another Scotist, but one who would have better connected him to an important
consideration picked up by Scholarios from Brito against Pletho in 1443/4. Hugo’s discussion
of analogy might easily account for Scholarios’s facility in combining his Britonian doctrine
of analogy with similar thought among Scotists. 1130 If we take a look at Hugo’s doctrine of
analogy, it enjoys an immediate utility for interpreting Scholarian metaphysics as undergirded
by univocity:
1126
Scholarios accurately identified Richard of Mediavilla on the question of the filioque, which can be inferred
from the paucity of authors to confront the issue in any detail, just as Scholarios complains above. For more
detail, see Schabel 2015b, 203–204.
1127
Cunningham 1970, 49–76.
1128
Plut. 30 (Laurenziana Santa Croce), fols. 1r–92r. I am grateful to Dr. Garrett Smith (Bonn) for alerting me
to the MS and to the questions concerning its authorship.
1129
For an introduction to his thought on the first book of the Sentences, as well as for the attribution of the MS
to Hugo, see Amoros 1933, 177–221.
1130
Tavardon (1977, 276–277) already notes that – like Scotus – Scholarios argued against Pletho that analogy
was a valid method of the metaphysician to compare “things,” while univocity is fundamental to compare
concepts.
322
Hugo de Novocastro, In sententias, I, d. 25, q. 4 My translation:
(f. 47vb, ll. 21–34):
Analogum autem medio modo se habet quia est The analogate belongs to a middle way since it is a name
nomen impositum pluribus non attendendo ad imposed on many [items] by not turning the mind to the
unitatem rationis eorum sed ad solam unity of ratio of these items [analogized], but to the mere
habitudinem unius ad alterum sicut est sanum in relation of one item to another, just like “health” is in an
animali et in urina: unde non est contra rationem animal and in urine. Whence, it is not contrary to the ratio
analogi quod illa quibus imponitur conveniant in of the analogate that those objects on which it is imposed
aliqua ratione commune distinctionem tamen should agree in some common ratio. However, the one
imponens istam convenientiam non attendat. sed imposing this distinction does not consider this harmony,
solam habitudinem unius ad alterum ut quod but only a relation of one to another, just as something is
imponatur uni principaliter et alteri in habitudine imposed principally on one and another in relation to a
ad primum sicut patet de ente quod licet dicat first, as is obvious regarding ens. That to which one turns
rationem communem substantiae et accidenti his mind – although one call it a common ratio for
tamen/tum quia imponens ad hoc non attendit sed substance and accident – does not impose this, but merely
ad solam habitudinem accidentis ad substantiam turns the mind to the relation of an accident to a substance.
ideo ens manet analogum. Therefore, ens remains an analogate.
At this point we can finally make sense of Scholarios’s entire logical and metaphysical
program since the time when he first adopted Britonian logic in the early 1430s. Scholarios
never abandoned the more advanced logic of Brito to revert to that of Aquinas, though it
remains to be seen whether or not Scholarios’s translations of Aquinas’s logical commentaries
admit of interpolations or variations that allow for a Britonian-Scotist reading. Even if
Scholarios’s translations prove to preserve every jot and tittle of Aquinas’s original Latin, this
does not present the reader a problem; after all, Scholarios identified the Latin author of all
these commentaries. Diversely, he presented Brito’s and Scotistic logic and metaphysics as his
own in treatises that can be reduced to position statements. In his Britonian commentaries and
in his ad hoc use of Bonaventurian and Scotistic sources, Scholarios professedly employed
these to make arguments on behalf of his own position. As we have already seen, in the case
of the principle of individuation, Scholarios had edited Brito’s logical commentaries to agree
with his dubious interpretation of Aquinas’s principle of individuation, as reductively materia
prima. Later, in his essence-energies treatises and in those against Pletho, Scholarios took up
Britonian-Scotist logical doctrines to avoid both Plethonian (old) univocity and Thomistic
analogical predication.
323
In modista and Scotistic discussions, the positive embrace of analogy points to an
entirely different consideration. In the order of knowing, there is a first moment of abstracting
and cognizing of any substance or accident under the notion of “being” (ens/τὸ ὄν). Then, a
second intellectual moment occurs in which the mind compares the abstract simpliciter simplex
concept of ens to the abstract notion of a substance and to that of an abstracted accident. The
result of such a comparison is recognition, in the mind, that substance enjoys a more intense
participation in the concept of ens than does an accident. This is the case since “white,” when
compared to “man,” carries with it the notion of somehow lacking an account for its
subsistence, in need of a relation to something else (viz., substance). If accident, as some sort
of real being (ens diminutum) extra animam, is mentally understood always to have a relation
to a foundation other than itself, then accidental being is somehow not as robust in its intensity
of instantiating ens in comparison to substance. 1131 The net result of such a comparison is the
creation of relations in the human mind that are posterior to the act of perception and cognizing.
Hence, this is a second intention or mental relation that is drawn between the concept of ens
and the first intention of “this” substance and, again, ens and “this” accident. For Scholarios,
as for Scotists posterior to Scotus, “analogy of the concept of being” is an entirely valid
description of something useful for understanding relations, but it is not a description of the
classical analogy of Aquinas and of his supporters at the last quarter of the thirteenth century.
While all Schoolmen felt the tension to harmonize divine transcendence with the
scriptural teaching that some attributes known in this world can be accurately and appropriately
applied to God, Thomists had attempted to divvy up the classification of equivocity, as applied
to God, so as to ground the meaningfulness of terms sayable of God and of categorical beings.
In answer to Pletho’s criticisms on more or less the same problem, Scholarios needed to show
that, if God is the cause of all substances and all accidents, then it is not sufficient to say “God
is wise” merely in virtue of the fact that he “causes wisdom.” Instead, some further justification
is necessary, lest God also be supremely “rocky”; after all he is the cause of all rocks! Univocity
marks an approach that really grounds God’s attributes in realities that are in the divine essence
versus other kinds of realities that are really not in the divine essence. In this, Scotus tried to
1131
For Meyronnes’ frequent appeals to “degrees” or quantitas virtutis (in Scotist jargon sometimes gradus) or
intensities of perfection (viz., infinite degree, finite degree: substance, accident, ens rationis or second
intentional being) in his Reportatio, see Duba (forthcoming), 199–200.
324
explain that any theology not entirely apophatic needed a more refined kind of univocity in
order to justify its claims to know something meaningful about God’s being. Let’s compare
some relevant examples of applied “old univocity” (cf. ST I.4.3 and ST I.13) to Scotus’s
refined or “new univocity”:
Predication Mode of conceiving Mode of saying Mode of existing

Old univocity1 I conceive a This definition is predicated “x” & “y” exist in the same in/finite mode
 quiddity/definition of “x” and “y” in every because they enjoy the same definition under
consisting of genus + same detail, viz., univocally the same concepts
difference + species
Old univocity2 I conceive a genus This term is sayable of “x” “x” & “y” exist according to the same
(quality such as “wise”), and “y” and there is conception and the same mode, whether as
which is among the absolutely no mode by substances or as accidents
predicables which they differ (as in
shades of the same color)
New Univocity1 I mentally isolate a Animality can be predicated The intensity of the mode of equine existence
 simple concept, e.g., of two beings (e.g., man & and human existence are in this case of the
animality, versus genus horse), though differing in same modal intensity, for concepts that
+ species + difference species and difference. notionally imply limitation must implicitly
There is no evident reason be finite
I mentally isolate to suppose different
“good,” but as an “intensities” or modes of
accident in the category animality between, e.g.,
of quality. humans and horses. Each is
equally an instance of
animality
New Univocity2 I mentally isolate “Good” is predicated of There is not intrinsic limitation on
 goodness as a concept God, who is conceived of “goodness” since it is co-present in every
that applies to every one under the notion of being, kind of being, no matter its intensity of
of the 10 categories, for just as creatures are. “Good” existence. Because there is no contradiction
everything that it may accurately be said of in saying: “infinite goodness,” if there is an
implies has a God, of substance, and of infinite being, then it must be infinitely good.
corresponding degree of accident without any falsity. “Goodness” is not an attribute like
goodness insofar as it is However, the intrinsic mode “animality” or “redness” that intrinsically
some being of each of these need not be connote limited items. Goodness can be
the same actually infinite. Thus, the mode of human
325
conceiving and saying is abstractive, but
modes are not species to be abstracted by
intensities of existence, which is not an
abstraction of a quiddity. Thus, the mode of
any concept like goodness is possibly finite
or infinite.
Scotus’s “new univocity” differed from what pagans and medieval Latin Schoolmen had been
accustomed to in prior ages. Scotus’s univocity was more complex. Still, this kind of univocity
is not exactly that for which Scholarios was arguing in 1443/4 against Pletho. Scholarios had
apparently not yet finished his studies on the Palamite question, which he had promised to do
in response to Markos of Ephesus after the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Presumably still in
the midst of studies and translating (both full texts and ad hoc Scotistic passages), Scholarios
first relied upon the solution of Brito, familiar from Scholarios’s youth. However, by 1445, as
we have seen in the previous and present chapter, Scholarios had been won over by Meyronnes’
version of Scotism that harmonizes with Britonian univocity, but also adds additional
arguments on behalf of a new kind of analogy that involves a mental comparison of the
univocal notion of being to a cognized substance and accident. It is by this comparison that the
mind distinguishes between ens as a subject and en in alio.
Conclusions
Scholarios aptly concluded chapter ninety-four of his Excursus as follows:

Now, sacred Gregory, having all these points within the range of his vision and both aligning
himself with the judgment of the ancient doctors and fully following the prevailing sentence
of our Mother, the Church, said that the divine essence and the divine energy are really
distinguished (πραγματικῶς διακρίνεσθαι), without meaning that the perfections (τελειότητες)
or energies in God are res (πράγματα) in the strict sense (ἔννοια) of the term (as we assert that
the divine hypostases are res), but meaning that these items [i.e. perfections or energies] are
“aliquid rei” (τι τοῦ πράγματος) and “in re” (ἐν τῷ πράγματι) and that, in a nutshell, these items
are not res (πράγματα) but realia [or real non-subsistent entities] (πραγματικά) rather than res
(πράγματα), but nevertheless according to another mode (τρόπον), they are things as well,
326
inasmuch as they exist even out of the soul and in the nature of the thing (ἐν τῇ φύσει τοῦ
πράγματος), non conceding to the position that their distinction is “by reason alone” (ἐπινοίᾳ
μόνῃ), which would imply that the items, too, exist [only] conceptually (ἐπινοίᾳ) (referring at
least to the divine perfections (what Palamas called δύναμις in contrast to ἐνέργεια]), as those
who followed Akindynos and Barlaam nonsensically were blathering. On which account,
Palamas was using “πραγματικῶς” with end of removing the expressions “by reason” (λόγῳ)
and “according to a concept” (κατ᾽ ἐπίνοιαν), but he was distinguishing these same [attributes]
by means of concepts (τοῖς λόγοις), i.e. by means of the concepts which denote what is essential
(τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) and which are derivable from the nature of the thing itself (ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς τοῦ
πράγματος φύσεως). Now these things suffice, for now, said in a contracted way as an excursus
and somewhat simply, in order that they become clear to most people. We will sink deeper into
this question, if God wills, in a special treatise on these matters, and we shall explore into those
aspects of it that is necessary [to explore], in the way in which we will be inspired at that time
[by God]. But now it is necessary to examine the rest of the sections [of Aquinas’s treatise]
before us.
Scholarios was impressively aware of Palamas’s exact vocabulary with its relatively unusual
1132
way of presenting divine energies as “τι τοῦ πράγματος” and as items “ἐν πράγματι.”
Likewise Scholarios’s attentive reading of Palamas led to an accurate assessment of Palamas’s
differences with Scholastic vocabulary on the question at hand. From his reading of
Schoolmen, Scholarios would have accustomed himself to the notion of divine “perfectiones,”
or τελειότητες, being applied to God. Be that as it may, Scholarios was familiar with Scholastic
misgivings about using the term “perfection” in reference to the divine essence. Aquinas had
spent significant time justifying the ill-suited term to refer to divine attributes in ST I.5.5. The
problem was felt in the term’s notion of “making” or “completing” something to its highest
potential. If applied to God definitionally, it is obviously a cause for worry. Nonetheless, it
was a universal and traditional term in Latin theology. Consequently, Aquinas proposed an
adequate definition of divine perfections as “what lacks in nothing” (cui nihil deest) (ST I.5.5,
corpus). For his part, Scholarios was completely correct in noting that Palamas was almost
completely immune from this difficulty. As far as I can tell, only in one case does Palamas
ever associate the term “perfection” with the essence and energies of God. Otherwise, as we
1132
Palamas 1970d, 21.76–21.78 (GPS 3:443–446); Palamas 1966e, sec. 12 (GPS 2:406).
327
have seen in the last two chapters, Scholarios demonstrated his impressive grasp of both Latin
and Greek theology. Furthermore, Scholarios has been found to be a capable synthesizer of the
Franciscan tradition of theology with Palamism to address Latins by exploiting their own
sources against them. Lastly, Scholarios simply developed, on the main, the very same points
of Palamas against Gregoras, but with more logical rigor than either Phakrases or Gregoras
had recorded in the historical debate with Gregoras.
328
329
Chapter Eight: Assessment of Jugie and Guichardan and Dogmatic
Conclusions
1. Assessment of Anti-Palamistic Critiques in the Works of Jugie and Guichardan
Now that we have effectively deciphered the meaning of Scholarios’s Excursus on

Armandus’s commentary, we can confidently claim that Scholarios committed himself to
defend what both Franciscans and Palamites denominate “a real distinction” in divinis. 1133 This
categorically contradicts the theses of Jugie and Guichardan, who argued for defining
Scholarios’s approach to the essence-energies distinction as a matter “of mitigated Palamism,”
or “De palamismo mitigato.” 1134 I recall a passage where Jugie once confidently proposed:
“We see that George Scholarios had tempered and mitigated Palamism, on whose behalf he
was fighting, to such a point as to fall into the result of Scotus’s and his disciples’ formal
distinction a parte rei. However, this interpretation stands far apart enough from genuine
Palamism.” In addition to misinterpreting the tradition of Scotism, especially as taken up by
Schoolmen such as Francis Meyronnes, Jugie sometimes vacillated as to whether Scholarios
truly professed either the formal distinction, or – contradictorily – the Thomistic virtual
distinction (distinctio rationis). Both Assumptionist authors attempted to style Scholarios as a
distorter of the original doctrine of Palamism. 1135 Because of the philosophical complexities
that our own investigation of chapters ninety-three and ninety-four of Scholarios’s Excursus
uncovered, it comes as little surprise that Jugie’s classification of Scholarios is somewhat
confusedly stated in various places. 1136 Sometimes Jugie even seemed decided upon the fact
that Scholarios was nearly a Thomist on the essence-energies distinction, in respect of which
he refers to Scholarios and his “discreet Palamism.” 1137
1133
The aversion to any notion of “a real distinction” in Palamas (or anyone else) between the essence and
energies has been recently condemned, as well, as for instance in Coffey 1988, 334–342.
1134
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:125.
1135
Jugie 1941, col. 1549.
1136
Jugie 1941, col. 1552.
1137
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:125; Jugie 1941, col. 1529.
330
Furthermore, Jugie’s understudy Guichardan supplied a supplementary list of
descriptors that supposedly show how Scholarios fell afoul of the supposed error of Palamism
and how George-Gennadios rather agreed with Jugie’s criteria of presumably Roman Catholic
(Thomistic) orthodoxy. Guichardan was essentially correct about the fundamentally Scotistic
foundation of the Scholarian doctrine of the essence-energies, at least in terms of its
philosophical exposition. Guichardan is also correct that Palamas placed divinely physical
essence in juxtaposition to operation. Guichardan was equally accurate to classify Palamas as
a Neoplatonist, insofar as such sources as these were important points of departure for
Palamas’s thought. However, contra Guichardan in accord with Grumel’s and Lossky’s
critiques, he oversimplified the range and kinds of distinctions that were available to both the
Latin and the Byzantine worlds of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
In regard to another rather superficial claim, Guichardan described one of Palamas’s
putative errors to be that of arguing that “the good” is allegedly prior to being. Yet, we saw
that such an accusation might be laid upon Thomas Aquinas (cf. SG I.13; ST I.5.1), insofar as
the principle was verbally affirmed, for it was presumably formulated from the historical
Dionysios the Areopagite of the New Testament (Acts 17:34). With respect to Palamas’s
sources, Guichardan was totally unaware of the abundance of Stoic and Skeptic sources within
Palamas’s opera. Furthermore, Guichardan leveled a rather commonplace accusation that
Palamas allegedly created a “genus” of being for God and creatures. While Guichardan failed
to notice that this accusation was typically laid at the feet of Scotism, Guichardan’s dissertation
defended Scotus as an orthodox Roman Catholic thinker. Nonetheless, Guichardan sometimes
admitted Jugie’s criticisms of Scotus, albeit in a more subdued fashion. Naturally, the more
that Guichardan sought to distance Scholarios from the putative heresy of Palamas, the more
he emphasized the orthodoxy of Scotus and, by extension, of Scholarios (in opposition to
Palamas). Jugie was less indulgent on this matter, accusing anyone under the influence of
Scotism to be someone in danger of falling into its logical corollary, that is, Palamism (viz.,
Scotism is designated to be Palamismus in fieri). 1138 On the question of univocity, Guichardan
accused Palamas of placing all being into one genus (just as Pletho overtly had accused
Aristotle of doing the same). In this scenario, Guichardan explains that Palamas’s theology
leads to God, angels, and souls all “participating” in being. As we saw, however, this same
1138
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:147–148.
331
accusation was used on all sides as a sort of topos, for Pletho’s ostensible opposition to
Aristotelianism lay in the fact that the prime mover of the Physica is described in terms of a
univocal kind of cause in comparison with the definition of cause among the rest of the beings
in Aristotle’s universe. This is, of course, similar in the Metaphysica where “movement” is
predicated of the prime mover, where it is a form in act, which seems to admit of a univocal
meaning of form and of movement between the prime mover and other beings. Still, throughout
Jugie’s and Guichardan’s works, one looks in vain to locate a passage where Palamas declared
or necessitated both finite and infinite being (ens) to be contracted into a delimiting category
of a genus that acts (per Aristotle’s Metaphysica) as something “potential” or “passive” to
actualization of the (infimae) species through the addition of a specific difference (e.g., by
rationality actualizing humanity out of the genus animal). 1139
Oddly, Guichardan admitted the central importance of infinity and the transcendental
modes of being in Scotism, but failed to explore and compare Palamas and Scotus on this
question. 1140 All the same, both Jugie and Guichardan were somewhat correct that “Duns
Scotus” exercised a decisive influence on the Scholarian corpus. It would be better to say,
however, that the somewhat idiosyncratic Scotist, Francis Meyronnes, provided the most
important arguments for classifying distinctions in the Scholarian lexicon, at least within the
Scholarian translation of Armandus’s commentary. Against both Jugie’s and Guichardan’s
thesis, Scholarios did not embrace any school of interpretation of Scotism, which sustained
Scotus as allegedly upholding a merely rational or mental distinction between the essence and
energies of God. Although there had been some medieval attempts to read Scotus in this
fashion, Scholarios openly declared his affinity to the subtlety of Francis Meyronnes and
employed the very “real distinction” of that (in)famous Scotist. 1141 What is more, Guichardan
is further incorrect in the fact that Scholarios embraced a modal distinction (or a-less-than-
formal, but nonetheless real distinction) between God’s form (τὸ εἶδος) and his infinite act
(ἐνεργείᾳ). Meyronnes was someone who upheld the reality and objective nature of the modal
1139
1140
1141
See Duba (forthcoming), 185–217; he spends considerable time in his monograph building on Dumont’s
research on the two opposing readings of Scotus’s distinction after his death. Duba ably defends the plausibility
of the “realist” reading of Scotus’s formal distinction in Meyronnes, in the sense that Meyronnes was not
inventive, but rather seems to develop nascent ideas of Scotus into full theories and definitions in order to
solidify the realitas of each corresponding formalitas in re that is a result of cognizing an object that is truly
the source for both aforesaid formalitates.
332
and real distinctions in God with all exactitude. The Mayronist real-formal distinction obtains
between the essence and energies, and among the energies in comparison to each other, but not
in regard to divine infinity in contradistinction to essence or energies, which is again an
intrinsic mode of the divine essence. Again, the major premise that distinguished “rationalists”
from “realists” in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries can be boiled down to
whether or not real distinctions implied a plurality of items that are logically and
metaphysically separable. For orthodox Thomists, the Mayronist distinction was certainly
declared liable to result in a “real distinction,” because Dominicans and Thomists supposed
that each attribute must be really separable from its foundation and from one another when
judging Scotism according to their intra muros metaphysics. For his part, Meyronnes
employed an equivocal sense of the term “real.” Oppositely, he taught essence and energies to
be logically and metaphysically distinct and distinguishable in re, but he did not believe that
modal and formal distinctions in God were such that goodness can possibly and really be
separated or really exist a se apart from its foundation in the divine being. Nor did he believe
it was logically and metaphysically possible for being to subsist without its modally and
formally distinct passiones or attributes. To this extent, contrary to Guichardan’s
understanding of Scotism in general, Scotus and Meyronnes anticipate the metaphysical insight
of Palamas very well, insofar as all three of them develop their respective Neoplatonist sources
in a more rigorous fashion. Palamas represented a mixture of Stoicism and Proclean elements
in dialogue with Aristotelian preoccupations about definitions of simplicity within the
Metaphysica, while Meyronnes developed the Avicennian tradition along Bonaventurian lines
(in including Proclean inspiration from the Liber de causis), but as posteriorly developed in
Scotus. 1142
The present study has clearly debunked, too, any supposition that Palamas denied God
to be entirely one with the divine essence. According to Guichardan, Palamas supposed another
item, or other items, to constitute energies that are not the essence and are yet somehow
divine. 1143 Instead, we saw the Palamite tradition of calling the energies οὐσιώδη is one where
“essential” is meant to designate coessential productions of the essence that cannot be really
1142
Tavardon (1977, 278) disagrees with this assessment, bypassing Proclus and arguing that the Ps.-Dionysian
influence exercised on Scotus and the Hesychasm of Scholarios stems from Plotinian metaphysics of being.
1143
333
distinguished from it (viz., separable from it and, as such, numerically individual), but energies
that can be distinguished as properly conceptual or intelligible essences and, thus, as essential
productions of the divine essence. Each energy does not intrinsically cover the same semantic
range as the notion of the divine esse. Still, each energy really is “in the essence” while the
essence is contrarily and certainly not “in the energies.” Thus, the essence acts as a container
of these natural and co-infinite attributes.
Most important, however, for our critique is the paramount fact that both Jugie and
Guichardan were unaware of Scotus’s non-separability criterion, especially as ulteriorly
developed in Meyronnes. Jugie only dismissively referred to Scholarios’s defense of the non-
separability criterion, as if it were something dubiously going back to Theodore Graptos. 1144
However, Jugie was unaware of Franciscan interest in an equivalent criterion, which at times
functioned as a fundamental point in Franciscan metaphysics of essence and energies
distinctions. This fact leads me to return to Guichardan’s (now) bewildering condemnation of
Palamas’s simplicity criterion, which the Assumptionist explains as the doctrine of absolutely
asserting that two items are impossible to separate, which items together do not constitute a
composite (σύνθεσις). Guichardan wrongly claims this non-separability criterion to be
unknown to Schoolmen. 1145 Guichardan’s major criticism of Palamite simplicity ought to be
parasitic on Scotus’s claims to Roman Catholic orthodoxy, as upheld by Guichardan in his
thesis. After all, Guichardan says of Scotus that he affirms divine simplicity “in all its
theological rigor.” 1146 If Guichardan (and Jugie) had been aware of Scotistic separability
criterion, would this a se have been enough to dogmatically condemn Scotus as a heretic?
Finally, we saw evidence that both Jugie and Guichardan had assumed the Dominican
definition of “the light of glory” to enjoy dogmatic status in Roman Catholicism. Yet, an
officially obligatory and Thomistic definition of the lumen gloriae is lacking in Roman
Catholic dogmatic canons and decrees (cf. Council of Vienne, DZ 895). How could both
authors have mistaken a Thomistic theologoumenon to be the dogmatic key for rejecting
Palamas’s interpretation of the light on Tabor as heretical, as well as to criticize Scholarios’s
version of the doctrine? I have already cited passages from Scholarios (contrary to Jugie’s
1144
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:125–126; OCGS 3:18.
1145
1146
Guichardan 1933, 129n3.
334
thesis) deleting Thomistic phrases that uphold a created accident known as the lumen gloriae.
Jugie’s and Guichardan’s summary arguments and suspicions regarding a potential Scholarian
rejection of the Palamistic doctrine of the Tabor light can be dismissed as unfounded. Not even
Franciscan Schoolmen of the Renaissance were obliged or even accustomed to affirm the
existence of the Thomistic lumen gloriae, that is, a created accident that inheres in the human
soul. 1147 Consequently, almost every criticism of Jugie and Guichardan leveled against
Palamas, Scotus, and Scholarios has proven to be baseless, for they all depend upon an
imperfect knowledge of Scholarian sources among other things. The very complicated world
of medieval logic and metaphysics was only very little understood among the neo-Scholastics,
which was exacerbated further by the fact that historical readings of the sources were typically
subjected to apologetic needs “to prove” entire philosophical and theological personages and
movements to be of value only to the extent that they anticipated Aquinas. Oppositely, all
thinkers and movements were evaluated as entirely reprehensible to the extent that they were
unable to be reconciled with a vague nineteenth-century canon of supposedly Thomistic
doctrines later concretized into the twenty-four theses of Pope Pius X in the early twentieth
century. Both Jugie and Guichardan had a penchant to test every thinker’s orthodoxy through
the lens of neo-Thomism, even Franciscan thinkers who were far more logically and
metaphysically advanced than mid- and late-thirteenth-century authors (and frankly more
advanced than Jugie and Guichard in logic and metaphysics). Likewise Orthodox
Neoplatonists, who relied heavily on Stoic and Neoplatonic sources – left unexplored by each
Assumptionist – were anachronistically fitted into Thomistic categories of distinctions. Again,
Grumel was unable to find examples of such vocabulary and categories in the Greek patristic
tradition. 1148
Objectively speaking, the whole of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the essence and
energies distinction in divinis is far less consistent than either the Kydones brothers, or Italian-
Renaissance Thomists, or neo-Thomists were able to discern, or perhaps willing to admit. For
his part, Scholarios had been exposed to just such inconsistent passages. It is no wonder,
therefore, that he was reticent to condemn Aquinas outright on his essence-energies doctrine.
Really, Scholarios favored a Scotistic reading of Aquinas along the lines of Hervaeus Natalis.
1147
Cf. SG III.58; ST I.12.1–13.
1148
Grumel 1935, 85–86.
335
It would be interesting to know if Natalis was himself aware of Aquinas’s own proto-Scotistic
tendencies toward the formal distinction. His acumen and enthusiasm for Aquinas at least
require of us to inquire further into this question before giving a definitive answer.
Consequently, Scholarios ought not be accused of inventing a philosophical utopia, where
Aquinas was only improperly taken up for Orthodox purposes, for Scholarios had edited and
condensed a version of Demetrios Kydones’ Greek SG, which surprisingly betrays lingering
Neoplatonism on the question of the essence and λόγοι ὄντων or rationes entium in the divine
essence: 1149
Aquinas, SG, I.54 [nos. 6–9]: Scholarios, Résumé de la Somme contre Gentils
de saint Thomas d’Aquin (premiere partie), I.54:
Divina autem essentia in se nobilitates omnium entium Ὅπως ἡ θεία οὐσία μία καὶ ἁπλῆ οὖσα, ἰδία
comprehendit, non quidem per modum compositionis, ὁμοιότης ἐστὶ πάντων τῶν νοητῶν. Ὁ γὰρ θεῖος
sed per modum perfectionis, ut supra ostensum est. νοῦς, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἴδιον ἑκάστου, ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ
Forma autem omnis, tam propria quam communis, οὐσίᾳ δύναται συλλαμβάνειν, ἅμα νοῶν ἐν ᾧ καὶ
secundum id quod aliquid ponit, est perfectio quaedam: τῆς ἰδίας τελειότητος ἕκαστον ἀποδεῖ· ὡς λόγου
non autem imperfectionem includit nisi secundum quod χάριν, νοῶν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ οὐσίαν, ὡς δυναμένην
deficit a vero esse. Intellectus igitur divinus id quod est ὁμοίαν γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸν τῆς ζωῆς, ἀλλ’ οὐ κατὰ
proprium unicuique in essentia sua comprehendere τὸν τῆς γνώσεως τρόπον, λαμβάνει τὸ ἴδιον εἶδος
potest, intelligendo in quo eius essentiam imitetur, et in τοῦ φυτοῦ· εἰ δὲ ὡς δυναμένην ὁμοίως
quo ab eius perfectione deficit unumquodque: utpote, γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸν τρόπον τῆς γνώσεως ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦ
intelligendo essentiam suam ut imitabilem per modum νοῦ, τὸ ἴδιον εἶδος λαμβάνει τοῦ ζῴου· οὕτω δὴ καὶ
vitae et non cognitionis, accipit propriam formam περὶ τῶν ἄλλων. Οὕτω τοίνυν φανερόν, ὡς ἡ θεία
plantae; si vero ut imitabilem per modum cognitionis et οὐσία, καθόσον ἐστὶν ἀπολελυμένως τελεία, ὡς
non intellectus, propriam formam animalis; et sic de aliis. ἴδιος λόγος ἑκάστου λαμβάνεσθαι δύναται· ὅθεν
Sic igitur patet quod essentia divina, inquantum est κατὰ ταύτην ὁ Θεὸς ἰδίαν ἔχει περὶ πάντων γνῶσιν.
absolute perfecta, potest accipi ut propria ratio Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἴδιος λόγος τοῦ τοῦ ἑτέρου ἰδίου
singulorum. Unde per eam Deus propriam cognitionem λόγου διακρίνεται, ἡ δὲ διάκρισις πλήθους ἐστὶν
de omnibus habere potest. ἀρχή, ἀνάγκη ἐν τῷ θείῳ νῷ διάκρισίν τινα καὶ
Quia vero propria ratio unius distinguitur a propria πλῆθος τῶν λόγων νοεῖν, καθὸ τὸ ἐν τῷ θείῳ νῷ ὄν,
ratione alterius; distinctio autem est pluralitatis ἴδιος λόγος τῶν διαφόρων ἐστίν. Καταλείπεται
principium: oportet in intellectu divino distinctionem τοίνυν μὴ εἶναι πλείους ἢ διακεκριμένους ἐν τῷ
quandam et pluralitatem rationum intellectarum θείῳ νῷ τοὺς τῶν πραγμάτων λόγους, εἰ μὴ
For details on Scholarios’s use of Demetrios Kydones’ first edition of his SG to create the Scholarian
1149
synopsis, see Fyrigos 2011, 164–168.
336
considerare, secundum quod id quod est in intellectu καθόσον ὁ Θεὸς γινώσκει τὰ πράγματα πλείοσι καὶ
divino est propria ratio diversorum. Unde, cum hoc sit διαφόροις τρόποις αὐτῷ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι δυνάμενα·
secundum quod Deus intelligit proprium respectum καὶ διὰ τοῦτο φησὶν Αὐγουστῖνος, ὅτι ἑτέρῳ λόγῳ
assimilationis quam habet unaquaeque creatura ad ipsum, τὸν ἄνθρωπον πεποίηκεν ὁ Θεός, καὶ ἑτέρῳ τὸν
relinquitur quod rationes rerum in intellectu divino non ἵππον“· καὶ τοὺς τῶν ὄντων λόγους,
sint plures vel distinctae nisi secundum quod Deus πεπληθυσμένως ἐν τῷ θείῳ νῷ εἶναι φησίν· ἐν ᾧ
cognoscit res pluribus et diversis modis esse assimilabiles ἁμηγέπη καὶ ἡ τοῦ Πλάτωνος σῴζεται δόξα περὶ
sibi. Et secundum hoc Augustinus dicit quod Deus alia ἰδεῶν, αἷς τὰ ἐν τοῖς ὑλικοῖς ὑφεστῶτα εἰδοποιεῖται.
ratione facit hominem et alia equum; et rationes rerum
pluraliter in mente divina esse dicit. quo etiam aliqualiter
salvatur Platonis opinio ponentis ideas, secundum quas
formarentur omnia quae in rebus materialibus existunt.
Of the relatively few texts of Aquinas that would have been amenable to Palamistic theology,
the Kydones brothers and Scholarios had in fact edited SG I.54. The sense of the passage is
clearly favorable toward exemplarist interpretations, appealing to the authority of Augustine.
All the same, passages such as this one were often glossed over in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries – just as in more recent neo-Thomism – because Aquinas’s more developed thought
clearly embraced a purer form of Aristotelianism with respect to the prime mover, whose
simplicity was judged to be compromised by Neoplatonic exemplarism. An older Aquinas
abandoned arguments on behalf of a diversity of “ideas” in the divine essence. 1150 In this
regard, Bonaventurian and Scotist scholars, who wrote during Jugie’s and Guichardan’s
twilight years, made a point of defending the formal distinction as Augustinian-inspired
Neoplatonic distinctions rooted in a common Dominican and Franciscan tradition at Paris. 1151
This exemplarism was gradually abandoned in non-Franciscan schools due to the cultural shift
toward Aristotelianism. In a relevant example, below, we see that “the doctrine of neo-
Thomism” and “the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas” are fairly incompatible, for the former
allows for no inconsistency or diversity of opinion within the allegedly consistent divus
Thomas. In his Scriptum super Sententiis, Aquinas wrote:
I respond that it is necessary to say that multiplicity of names can occur twofold: [1.] On the
part of the intellect (ex parte intellectus): Since – as these names express what is understood –
1150
Szabó 1955, 31–32.
1151
Szabó 1955, 30–34; Babcock 1956, 40–41.
337
it happens that one and the same is signified by diverse names, according to which such is able
to be received in the intellect diversely. Also, from this, is the fact that we are both able to
name God and what is according to what is in him, and what is according to what belongs to
creatures. [...] [2.] Likewise, a multiplicity of names can happen on the part of the thing (ex
parte rei): According to which the names signify a res; and, from this, the expressive names
come, i.e., that which is in God. However, in God is not to be found some real distinction,
except of persons who are three. From this, too, a multiplicity of personal names comes, which
signify three res. Yet, beyond this, is also to be found in God a distinction of rationes, which
really and truly are in him, as the ratio of wisdom and of goodness, and such. These are all one
indeed as regards the res, and they differ by their ratio, which is conserved in its property and
truth, according as we say that God is truly wise and good, and this is not only in the intellect
of the ratiocinator (ratiocinantis). From this, too, come the diverse names of attributes. All
these attributes, albeit they signify one res, do not however signify one res according to one
ratio. 1152
Above, the Scholarian genius was readily able to discern the fact that Thomas could be read
(at least sometimes) along the lines of more recent Thomists to whom he obliquely referred in
chapter ninety-four of his Excursus. The passage above looks to be completely reconcilable to
Scholarios’s project of a Palamite Thomism, where Aquinas does not need to be completely
abandoned, but only subject to more Scotist-inclined commentators. Let us recall Scholarios’s
closing statements in chapter ninety-four of his Excursus:
Whether or not Thomas was ignorant about the formal distinction (εἰδικὴν διαφοράν)
stemming from the nature of thing, any [Orthodox reader] would have easily gone into a fit of
sweating from the writings of Thomas on account of the difference of concepts (τῶν λόγων
1152
Aquinas 2018d, I, d. 22, q. 1, a. 3, corpus (for similar observations, see Iribarren 2002, 611):
Respondeo dicendum, quod multiplicitas nominum potest dupliciter contingere. Vel ex parte
intellectus, quia cum nomina exprimant intellectum, contingit unum et idem diversis nominibus
significari, secundum quod diversimode in intellectu accipi potest. Et inde est quod Deum possumus
nominare et secundum quod in se est, et secundum id quod est ad creaturas se habens [. . .] Item,
multiplicitas nominum potest contingere ex parte rei secundum quod nomina rem significant; et inde
veniunt nomina exprimentia id quod in Deo est. In Deo autem non est invenire aliquam realem
distinctionem nisi personarum, quae sunt tres res; et inde venit multiplicitas nominum personalium
significantium tres res. Sed praeter hoc est etiam in Deo invenire distinctionem rationum, quae realiter
et vere in ipso sunt, sicut ratio sapientiae et bonitatis et hujusmodi, quae quidem omnia sunt unum re,
et differunt ratione, quae salvatur in proprietate et veritate, prout dicimus Deum vere esse sapientem
et bonum, et non tantum in intellectu ratiocinantis; et inde veniunt diversa nomina attributorum; quae
omnia quamvis significent unam rem, non tamen significant unam secundum unam rationem.
338
διαφοράν), and on account of these minor distinctions, and those distinctions lesser that that.
[...] Whence, let the matter along the lines of Thomas [Aquinas] be given leave to others to
consider [...] in what way one estimates the sentences of the former [Thomas]. [...] Now,
Thomas is not exceedingly important for us, that we should plead on behalf of all his artifices,
even if otherwise that marvelous man is important to us and was the glory of the prior age and
even now still seems to be such. 1153
While scholarship has firmly reached a consensus that the aforementioned Scriptum super
Sententiis, I, d. 22, q. 1, a. 3, passage emphatically does not represent Aquinas’s mature
synthesis, it does show that Scholarios’s solution to the impasse was endorsed by Aquinas in
his youth. Thus, in this sense Thomism proves to be inconsistent and liable to both an Orthodox
and heterodox interpretation. This inherent ambiguity of comparing each text in Aquinas’s
writings ought to be cause for concern. Scholarios exploited to the advantage of the Orthodox
position. Both Aquinas and Scholarios suggested that a distinction ex parte rei – which is
somehow more robust in the divine persons than among the attributes – is really and truly in
God, but that it is not a “distinctio realis.” If we remember Dumont’s and Duba’s studies, where
Thomists and Scotists of the early-fourteenth century were accustomed to “real distinction”
meaning “a distinction where two items in re are really separable,” then it is quite clear that
Scholarios’s positioning of the Mayronist formal-real and modal-real distinctions (allowing for
1153
Cf. Aquinas 2018d, I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, corpus:
Sic ergo dicendum est, quod in Deo est sapientia, bonitas, et hujusmodi, quorum quodlibet est ipsa
divina essentia, et ita omnia sunt unum re. Et quia unumquodque eorum est in Deo secundum sui
verissimam rationem, et ratio sapientiae non est ratio bonitatis, inquantum hujusmodi, relinquitur quod
sunt diversa ratione, non tantum ex parte ipsius ratiocinantis sed ex proprietate ipsius rei: et inde est
quod ipse non est causa rerum omnino aequivoca, cum secundum formam suam producat effectus
similes, non univoce, sed analogice; sicut a sua sapientia derivatur omnis sapientia, et ita de aliis
attributis, secundum doctrinam Dionysii. Unde ipse est exemplaris forma rerum, non tantum quantum
ad ea quae sunt in sapientia sua, scilicet secundum rationes ideales, sed etiam quantum ad ea quae sunt
in natura sua, scilicet attributa. Quidam autem dicunt, quod ista attributa non differunt nisi penes
connotata in creaturis: quod non potest esse: tum quia causa non habet aliquid ab effectu, sed e
converso: unde Deus non dicitur sapiens quia ab eo est sapientia, sed potius res creata dicitur sapiens
inquantum imitatur divinam sapientiam: tum quia ab aeterno creaturis non existentibus, etiam si
nunquam futurae fuissent, fuit verum dicere, quod est sapiens, bonus et hujusmodi. Nec idem omnino
significatur per unum et per aliud, sicut idem significatur per nomina synonima.
The appeal to analogy here is rather unconvincing, as a mere ad hoc strategy to avoid the contemporary and
singular notion of univocity, which signifies that two items share the same definition (versus one simple
concept). All the same, it is quite obvious that Aquinas’s exemplarism is outside of his later endorsement of a
more Aristotelian notion of the prime mover. Aquinas’s immature exemplarism places him in the camp of
coeval Bonaventure.
339
no separability) into an earlier Thomist typology of distinctions is actually very much ad
mentem Thomae, or according to authentically “Thomistic” texts. This, of course, does not
mean that contemporary Thomists would have changed their opposition to his theology, for
they were more confident in their tradition of reading Aquinas and would have proved resistant
to such problematic passages of his authentic works.
Scholarios acknowledged, above, that the contemporary typology of distinctions, as
used among Thomists such as Armandus of Bellovisu, was reflective of the overall “writings”
of Aquinas. However, we should emphasize that Scholarios seems aware of the fact that some
Schoolmen proposed the “formal distinction” to originate with Thomas Aquinas. Scholarios –
like modern scholars – does not definitively endorse this opinion as fact, but he obviously
prefers the metaphysics to which such an opinion leads. What is more, Thomists like Hervaeus
can plausibly be said to be developing youthful Aquinas’s tradition of the ex parte rei
distinction in divinis and his mention of multiple divine rationes in deo, taking them to their
logical and metaphysical conclusions.
While the evidence above sufficiently divests Renaissance Thomists and modern neo-
Thomists of much of their force against Palamas’s orthodoxy and Scholarios’s version thereof
(unless they wish to confess a youthful period when Aquinas was a “heretic”), there is still the
matter of the Palamite-Thomist controversy of today. On the question of Roman Catholic
orthodoxy intra muros, more recent papal magisterium has – since the time of Jugie and
Guichardan – debased the currency of the former “gold standard” of neo-Thomism in Roman
Catholic orthodoxy (post-1879). Since the reversal of course in Roman Catholicism, signaled
by Second Vatican Council, Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have all officially
endorsed the Scotistic school and the theological orthodoxy of Scotus. 1154 Such a change of
1154
Paul VI 1966, 609–614, esp. at 611:
alii enumerantur Scholastici doctores, et in eminenti collocatur gradu S. Bonaventura, qui postea a S.
Pio X “princeps Scholasticorum alter” vocatus est; et huius Seraphici Doctoris apud omnes constat
Ioannem Duns Scotum perfectorem evasisse. Praeterea animadvertendum est Oecumenicum
Concilium Vaticanum II edito De institutione sacerdotali [use italics?], praescripsisse: “Philosophicae
disciplinae ita tradantur, ut alumni imprimis ad solidam et cohaerentem hominis, mundi et Dei
cognitionem acquirendam manducantur, innixi patrimonio philosophico perenniter valido,” quo haud
dubie franciscalis Schola continetur. Apud augustum et primarium templum S. Thomae Aquinatis
praeter alia honorabile exsurgit, quamvis dissimili structura et mole, templum, quod, firmis innixum
fundamentis et arduis exornatum pinnaculis, ardenti contemplativo ingenio usus, Ioannes Duns Scotus
ad aethera extulit. In speculando, rationem et inclinationem Platonicam et Augustinianam is
plerumque secutus est, Stagiritam modo probans, modo improbans; cumque summatim
comprehendisset et altius perpolisset de re sacra commentationes quinquaginta plusque franciscalium
340
policy effectively arrests generalizations about the intrinsic authority, even infallibility, of each
and every Thomistic principle to serve as the criteria for judging any orthodox theologian of
the Roman Catholic variety. To the contrary, John Paul II officially asserts of Scotus: “Duns
Scotus [...] is even today a pillar of Catholic theology.” 1155
While making these observations, I do not mean to suppose that Bonaventurian Scotism
is somehow on the rise in Roman Catholic theological culture, let alone any idea that it enjoys
an ecclesial position of dominance, but only to underline the fact that two inharmonious
systems of theology (Thomism and Scotism) now officially coexist in one and the same Roman
Church, as Paul VI acknowledges: “Beside the principal [...] temple, which is of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, there are others, among which, although differing from it in style and size, is that
splendid temple which John Duns Scotus [...] based on solid foundations [...] sometimes
agreeing with the Stagirite, sometimes disagreeing.” 1156 In Roman Catholic teaching on the
proper methods and principles of philosophy and theology, there now stand at least two
irreconcilable figures on a matter of logical and metaphysical principles. This point divests
Jugie and Guichardan even of their appeal to authority intra muros in order to condemn
Palamas, as if his alleged (per Jugie) quasi-Scotistic principles of philosophical theology
somehow put him at odds with the official policy of philosophy and theology of the Roman
Church (a cultural and magisterial argument that would have enjoyed considerable weight
1879–1966). Afterwards, various papacies have conscientiously embraced eclecticism in
theological systems and methods intra muros, at least on the topic of the relevant discussion,
by beatifying and officially endorsing the orthodoxy of John Duns Scotus. The corollary of
this theological decentralization from monarchical neo-Thomism, as the Roman Catholic
cultural norm for orthodoxy in universum, neutralizes some of the cultural force and all of the
magisterial force, to which Jugie’s and Guichardan’s arguments laid claim long ago.
Nowadays, the criterion for divine simplicity should enjoy pride of place in such
discussions by means of first supplying an objective philosophical definition of the same in the
Scholasticorum doctorum, in quibus [. . .] S. Bonaventura, [. . .] Richardus de Mediavilla, [. . .]

Villelmus de Ware, eosdem omnes subsecutus [Francis of Meyronnes (?)], franciscalis Scholae maiore
nobilitate praestans signifer exstitit.
NB, Paul VI explicitly endorsed Scotus’s doctrine of God as “verum infinitum,” in Paul VI 1966, 612. See also
John Paul II 2002; Benedict XVI 2009, 3–6.
1155
John Paul II 2002.
1156
Paul VI 1967, 7.
341
Roman Catholic Magisterium. 1157 Until some sort of parameters are officially promulgated on
the question, no real reason can be found for criticizing Palamas on the essence-energies
question from a Roman Catholic theological perspective. Instead, it would appear to be more
a matter of philosophical dispute for Roman Catholic Thomists (quatenus metaphysica) against
neo-Palamites.
For Orthodox, the matter may prove to be slightly different. Even though the most
celebrated Palamites of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries rejected the nominalism of
Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras, exactly which Byzantine or modern canons and synods
provide a descriptive or adequate definition of the Palamistic “real distinction” and “divine
simplicity” in order to categorically exclude Thomism a priori? From the Orthodox
perspective, Markos of Ephesus’s objections to a purely rational distinction ought to carry
considerable theological and moral weight, for his canonical and liturgical status is secure and
he is ecclesiastically honored as a true “Pillar of Orthodoxy.” However, the theologoumena of
Markos of Ephesus on the question of divine simplicity and its definition are assuredly not per
se adequate to constitute the formal and irreformable position of each and every autocephalous
Orthodox Church on the question. This is particularly the case given the fact that his
antirrhetics against Manuel Kalekas have been published only recently, save his minor treatise
against the Akindynists (cf. Gass 1844).
Likewise, Scholarios’s evaluation of Thomism as a metaphysical system objectively
irreconcilable to the Orthodox dogma of Palamism may prove attractive to contemporary
Orthodox theologians, but more likely because of its cultural appeal intra muros to anti-
Latinism versus its philosophical or theological insights that utilize Franciscan theologians in
service of Orthodoxy. Culturally, it is currently a contentious issue as to whether or not
Orthodox theologians can make a priori a positive employment of post-schism Latin
theologians without incurring the ipso facto effect of adulterating pure Orthodox doctrine (at
least in the realm of dogmatics). Though Scholarios is clearly enamored with some aspects of
Scholastic thought, he clearly rejects Thomas Aquinas as Orthodox on the essence-energies
1157
The ironical oversimplification of “Scholastic” simplicity criteria is evident in De Halleux 1973, 432, who
otherwise acts as a talented Thomist, though naively reducing Scholastic simplicity criteria to a set of
parameters that are convertible with Thomistic criteria. As we have seen, many deviations from such simplicity
criteria were present in the Franciscan school, not to mention other schools and the eclectic theologians of the
Renaissance.
342
question. This is a sufficiently censorious fact that likely proves attractive to many
contemporary Orthodox theologians, regardless whether or not they embrace a principled anti-
Latin stance and oppose open Sobornicity. In the end, some canon or description of divine
simplicity that definitively excludes orthodox Thomism is, to my mind, still required in order
for Thomism’s exposition of the essence-energies doctrine, in se, to meet the requirements of
canonical heresy, whereby someone is anathametized in virtue of a positively stated position
that contradicts a canonical decree or definition. However, given Thomists’ penchant to
condemn any reading of Palamas that is equal to the position of Francis Meyronnes (or beyond
it), Thomists certainly fall under the anathema of the Palamite synods of 1351 and 1368,
insofar as they oppose their formulae and implications as being a defense of a categorically
“real distinction” through their optic of orthodox Thomism. It may be true that Thomism and
Palamism are also dogmatically at odds and obviously irreconcilable on the questions of the
Tabor light, the lumen gloriae (insofar as a Thomist may be found to insist on its dogmatic
character), 1158 and the nature of the divine light, but I have only concerned myself with the
matter of the essence-energies distinction. This is more elusive, since Thomism was not
directly the focus of any of the condemnations during the history of the Palamite conflict until
1368 (although it was, as I argue, at the source of Barlaam’s errors on the filioque in 1334).
While Augustine is positively invoked as an authority (against Prochoros Kydones) in the 1368
synod, Aquinas (who is also cited by Kydones) and his followers are simply ignored. 1159 At
least on the subject at hand, if we wish to compare Thomism to Orthodox dogma on the
conditions for divine simplicity to be met, we will find both sides lacking in an official
definition of the various elements of simplicity, although Orthodoxy at least provides a
negative description of simplicity in the synodical tomes of 1351 and 1368. However, we
would not be wrong to suppose the majority of theologians identifying themselves as followers
of Aquinas in the Renaissance, Enlightenment, modernity, and contemporary periods, to agree
that Palamism is theologically heterodox and worthy of condemnation. It is only a recent
phenomenon that Dominicans and orthodox Thomists have sought to tolerate and to justify
1158
Cf. Council of Vienne, DZ 894, in which the lumen gloriae is prescribed, but its definition and parameters
are left open; there is only a series of condemnations of propositions that seem to exclude some sort of light
(aliunde) for the soul to enjoy the beatific vision. For some Franciscan interpretations of the decree in a non-
Dominican fashion, see Duba 2009, 358–360.
1159
Endêmousa Synod of Constantinople, Kabasilas, and Kokkinos 2004, ll. 313–314.
343
Palamism, albeit by recourse to a plethora of methods and often by employing different
theological principles than those of Dominicans and Thomists of yore. 1160
With regard to Scholarios, much work is still to be done before his definitive and most
mature position can be completely delineated. This thesis has been entirely absorbed with
uncovering his theological position, principally during the years 1410–1445, on divine matters.
I emphasize this point before I move to summarize “Scholarian theology” of the essence and
the energies of God. In this vein, it behooves me to at least mention in summary other
Palamistic treatises of Scholarios, so that we do not leave this concluding chapter with the
impression that the last word has been said on all of Scholarios’s essence-energies thought. Of
course, I have provided some citations from post-1445 works on essence-energies themes, but
I would not call these relatively few references sufficient to constitute a systematic study. I
believe references to later Palamistic works do indicate, with a great deal of plausibility,
Scholarios’s enduring commitment to his theological program that was sketched out in 1445.
In this vein, we can reasonably expect the list of works summarized in the next section of this
chapter to portend a continuous use of Scotus, Meyronnes, and Natalis in order to accomplish
Scholarios’s project of refuting post-Thomistic anti-Palamism. Still, this anticipated
conclusion must be thoroughly checked against the sources within Scholarios’s remaining
Palamistic opera before a final judgment can be definitively rendered on the nature of
Scholarios’s Palamistic theology.
2. Scholarios’s Mature Position on Dogmatic Palamism
From 1443 to 1445 Scholarios explicitly embraced a version of the univocity of the
concept of being in Latin terms. However, in this, Scholarios’s real point of departure was
always the official Palamism and the works of Gregorios Palamas, as we have earlier shown
to be at the root of the Scholarian discussion of chapters ninety-three and ninety-four of
Scholarios’s translation of Armandus of Bellovisu. I argue Palamas’s fundamental insight into
being and its energies or attributtes to be the necessary foundation for Scholarios building a
1160
One of the most respected conciliatory Thomists, De Halleux (1973, 419–421), simply commends both the
distinctio formalis ex parte rei (of Scotism) and the distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re (of Thomism) for
trying to break “the shackles” of Aristotelianism that proves too weak to justify the operations ad intra of the
Christian God.
344
Palamite method of theology that was able to make use of a similar strain of thought in anti-
Thomist Scotists. Although Scholarios’s desire to develop his Excursus by means of a fuller
treatise dedicated to the subject allows us to anticipate a consistent promotion of the Mayronist
“real distinction” between the essence and energies of God, not to mention his modal
distinction between the divine essence and divine infinity, this likely facet of Scholarios’s
mature Palamism must still be proven by systematic exposition of his future writings. In the
last chapter, we saw Scholarios conclude his Excursus as follows: “We will sink deeper into
this question, if God wills, in a special treatise on these matters, and as much as is necessary,
we shall retrace our steps on this very matter, just as shall be inspired for us at that time but
now it is necessary to examine the rest of the sections [of Armandus’s treatise] before us.” I
underline the fact that Scholarios is engaging Latin theology explicitly and willfully in order
to exploit its tendencies to justify Palamism despite Dominican attempts to exploit
Aristotelian-based theology in a very different direction. Following the announcement of this
desideratum, Scholarios’s first ex professo treatise on the essence-energies question comes in
the same year (1445) in the form of a response to an Orthodox churchman (viz., John Basilikos)
curious about the fourteenth-century Hesychastic conflict. This fact would seem to mean that
the Scholarian treatise Contre les partisans d’Acindyne does not actually fulfill his intention to
write an original tract on the intricacies outlined in Scholarios’s problems and solutions
(ἐντάσεις) in chapter ninety-four of his Excursus. The petitioner writing to Scholarios is the
initiator of this first formal treatise. The petitioner was apparently someone unfamiliar with the
subject and its historical debates. Scholarios attempted to respond to his friend’s request for
information. 1161
Blanchet sheds much light on the background to this treatise. There is a touch of a
mystery behind this Contre les partisans d’Acindyne because it mixes his discussion of the
Barlaamites and Akindynists with a discourse against Latins on the filioque. Blanchet outlines
the debates in Constantinople and the activities of the promoters of the Council of Florence in
the capital during this same time. Scholarios, at the time of the publication of Contre les
1161
Blanchet (2008, 77–78, 483) suggests that Scholarios began reconsidering his theological positions as early
as 1440. John Basilikos is most likely the addressee. Secondly, Blanchet also records the significant conflict
between the papal representative Bartholomew Lapacci and Scholarios in Constantinople. The debates between
anti-unionists and unionists were raging in the capital. This explains the curious link between the Holy Spirit
question and the essence-energies treatise of 1445. See also Blanchet 2008, 387–390. Manuel Kalekas was
named passim at the beginning of the treatise. See Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:212).
345
partisans d’Acindyne, was in the midst of writing and correcting his materials for his debates
with Latins and Latinophiles (sometimes called Greco-Latins), especially on the subject of the
Holy Spirit. The sum total of these works, including three different treatises on the Holy Spirit
and a dialogue against the Latins, totals over five hundred pages of text in its modern critical
edition. Similar to Scholarios’s engagement with Latin Schoolmen in 1445, his filioque
treatises profoundly engage Latin theology in its own terms in order to refute it. At the
beginning of Scholarios’s dogmatic treatise, he summarizes to a personal correspondent, John
Basilikos, who writes him asking about the details of the former controversy. Contre les
partisans d’Acindyne begins by noting that the innovators in Byzantium exploited Aristotle in
a non-traditional way in order to make theological innovations into Orthodox theology. 1162 It
should also be noted that the principal opponent at the beginning of the work is Akindynos,
which already affirms what was discussed earlier; namely, that the main dogmatic document
of focus for Scholarios proves to be the Synodical Tome of 1351. The filioque is first introduced
to his correspondent due to the fact that Scholarios needed to inform him about the fact that –
though Akindynists are heretics (like the Latins) in their heresy on the essence and energies –
the Akindynists were not heretics on the filioque question. Scholarios repeats, first of all, the
classic line that Latins found insuperable since the time that Damascene had been translated
into Latin: “Non dicimus ex filio,” 1163 or “οὐ λέγομεν ἐκ τοῦ ὑιοῦ.” 1164 This had constituted
the main point of departure for Markos of Ephesus at Florence and was obviously maintained
by Scholarios. His disquisition on the position of the Latins begins thus: “Ἐπειδή, φασί, τὸ
πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον πατρός ἐστι καὶ ὑιοῦ πνεῦμα, καὶ ἔνεστι καὶ ὡσαύτως ἐν αμφοῖν, ὅτι οὐσιωδῶς
δηλονότι, διατί μὴ καὶ ὁ ὑιὸς αἰτιός ἐστι αὐτοῦ ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ πατήρ.” 1165 If one compares
Scholarios’s following discourse to what we have already seen with respect to Markos
1162
1163
Damascene and Burgundio 1955, 37: “Cum enim audirimus principorum et maiorem Filio Patrem, causam
intelligamus. Et sicut non dicimus alterius substantiae [. . .]”; ibid., 41: “Unde neque dicimus speciem ex
hypostasibus, sed in hypostasibus: ex imperfectis autem dicimus ex hiis quae”; ibid., 47: “oportet scire quoniam
Patrem non dicimus ex aliquo [. . .]”; ibid., “filium autem non dicimus anetium (id est since causa) esse [. . .]”;
ibid.: “dicimus autem eum et ex patre, et filium patris”; “Ex filio vero Spiritum non dicimus [. . .]”; ibid., 138:
“oporte autem scire quoniam in Deo voluntatem quidem dicimus, electionem autem principaliter non dicimus”;
ibid., 182: “Non enim dicimus divinitatem passibilem ve creabilem [. . .]”; ibid., 210: “Christotocon autem (id
est Christi genitricem) non dicimus Virginem [. . .]”; ibid., 396: “Non enim dicimus deitatem passibilem aut
creatam.”
1164
Damascene 1973, chap. 8.
1165
346
Eugenikos, one notices that the same sources that Markos developed at Florence are those that
evoked interest with Scholarios; namely, Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa, Basil’s Contra
Eunomium and De spiritu sancto, and references to several of Cyril of Alexandria’s works,
just as these had been utilized by John Montenero at Florence. 1166 In short, Scholarios does not
exhaust or systematize arguments for his interlocutor, but merely focuses in on the two major
issues that Scholarios learned very well at Florence; namely, that Latins were accustomed to
call the Son a principle and/or cause of the Spirit, and that they made a distinction in the causes,
so that one was a cause of the Spirit in a manner that was not exactly the same as the other. As
the Orthodox tradition before him, there was a recognition of the fact that Latins’ claim to “one
principle” of the Spirit was dubious if not dishonest, since two persons were both exercising a
causal or productive function, qua person, meaning that there were two persons both Spiriting
one product or one Spirit.
In effect, the one time in all of Scholarios’s writings that he makes an explicit literary
connection between the filioque debate and the essence-energy debate is uniquely at the
opening of this rather short dogmatic treatise. While the treatise Contre les partisans
d’Acindyne ranges from pages 204 to 228 of the critical edition, making an opusculum of less
than twenty-five pages, only pages 209–210 of this edition make mention of the filioque, which
amounts to about two full printed pages in the critical edition. Half of the first page is spent
introducing the correspondent to Akindynos in comparison and contrast to the Orthodox, while
another half-page is spent summarizing the Latin position, while only about one other
paragraph summarizes the position of Markos of Ephesus as Scholarios had gleaned in contrast
to the Latins at Florence.
This leaves only about a half-page of text to speak on an additional idea that Scholarios
has on the nature of the filioque, if the debate has any genetic relation to the essence-energies
question. This is an interesting point and is not often developed. In the second Apodictic
Treatise of Gregorios Palamas, he became the first Orthodox to note the thematic association
between the Latin doctrine of the filioque and their errors on the gifts of the Spirit, as a result
of their refusal to understand that divine energy can be participated as something uncreated.
For Thomists, these gifts could only be either the unconditioned essence of God or a created
habit (ἕξις), while for Palamistic theology the fact that God possessed substantial activities that
1166
347
were communicable ad intra to creatures – since they were of the essence but not the
unqualified essence – meant that one could participate in aspects of God without grasping or
comprehending his essence. This exact point of Palamas’s Λόγος ἀποδεικτικός Β´ on the Holy
Spirit was first noticed by the Dominican Manuel Kalekas in his De processione Spiritus
Sancto adversus Gregoriaum Palamam (PG 152:835–862) where he too discussed the nature
of the energetic gifts in a Thomist fashion in opposition to Palamas’s exegesis of Scripture.
Later, at Florence, it was the exact doctrine of Kalekas’s anti-Palamistic theology that was the
source of John Montenero’s introduction of the Palamistic doctrine of the gifts of the Spirit
into the debates. Accordingly, since Scholarios’s 1445 Contre les partisans d’Acindyne
constitutes a dogmatic panoply against the opponents of Markos at Florence, we see that
Scholarios, too, even if only briefly – just as both Scholarios and Markos – associated the error
of the filioque with related errors on participation in the Holy Spirit. While Scholarios’s
affirmation of Palamas and Markos is very brief, it constitutes a real contribution since
Scholarios lifted a patristic source ordinarily invoked by anti-Palamites since Nikephoros
Gregoras in order to strengthen the Palamistic doctrine. For his part, Scholarios was led to cite
from (Ps.-)Theodore Graptos, as if he were the author of the work that I will cite momentarily.
In reality, the true author was St. Nikephoros of Constantinople, who is a Father with few
equals in the Eastern Church at this time of the iconoclastic struggles. Scholarios followed
earlier Palamites by citing this passage against anti-Palamites but he also added it as the
transitional citation to shift from the filioque discussion to the essence-energies question:
Ἄκουε δὲ καὶ περὶ τῆς τοῦ μακαρίου Θεοδώρου ῥήσεως ἐφεξῆς, περὶ ἧς δὴ μάλιστα καὶ
προὔργου πυνθάνῃ· αὐτὴν δὲ πρῶτον τὴν ῥῆσιν ἡμᾶς ἐκθέσθαι σοι χρή. Φησὶ τοίνυν ἐκεῖνος·
“Οὐ προφητικῇ προγνώσει καὶ χάριτι, (ἄπαγε·) τοιαῦτα ἔπραττεν ὁ Δεσπότης καὶ τοῖς
μαθηταῖς προὔλεγεν, ὥσπερ βλέπων τὰ ἔμπροσθεν· ὡς Θεὸς δὲ παρὼν ἅπασιν οὐδὲ ἐνεργείᾳ
ψιλῇ κατά τινας τῶν πάλαι ληρωδησάντων κενῶσαι μὲν τοὺς οὐρανοὺς τῆς ἑαυτοῦ
ὑποστάσεως κατὰ τοὺς καιροὺς τῆς θείας σαρκώσεως, εἶναί τε οὐσιωδῶς ἐν ἡμῖν, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ
καὶ ἀξίᾳ μόνῃ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν καὶ Πατέρα, ἐπεὶ ἕτερον οὐσίαν καὶ ἄλλο ἐνέργειαν, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ
τῶν σωματικῶς θεωρουμένων, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θείου Λόγου ἐτίθεντο, ὅπερ τοῖς εὐσεβέσιν
ἀπείρηται. Ἐπὶ γὰρ τῶν ἁπλῶν καὶ ἀσωμάτων ἐν οὐδενὶ διαφέρειν ἴσασιν· οὐ γὰρ διοριστέον
ταῦτα ἀλλήλων, ἵνα μὴ σύνθετον τὸ ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν ἁπλότητα νοοῖτο· οὔτε γὰρ ἡ θεία οὐσία
ἀνενέργητος εἴη ἄν ποτε, οὔτε ἀνούσιος ἡ ἐνέργεια. Ὁ Πατήρ μου γάρ, φησίν, ἕως ἄρτι
348
ἐργάζεται, κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι. Ἣ μὲν γὰρ τὸ ὑπερουσίως εἶναι αὐτὸν καὶ ἀεὶ ὡσαύτως εἶναι καὶ
ἀπαρεγκλίτως ἐπὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ μονιμότητος καὶ ἱδρύσεως ἵστασθαι δηλοῖ· ἣ δὲ τὰς ἐν τοῖς οὖσι
προνοητικὰς προόδους καὶ ἀρρήτους οἰκονομίας παρίστησι, καθ’ ἃς ἀνεκφοιτήτως τῆς οἰκείας
ἁπλότητος προϊών, πρακτικεύεται τὴν τῶν ὅλων ἐργαζόμενος πρόνοιαν.” 1167
To my knowledge, Scholarios is unique to explain the citation in full. What we discover is
underlined for emphasis: (1.) The notion of energy is not something ψιλόν, or fictitious,
existing only in the mind but not in the thing, (2.) that humans can essentially or substantially
partake of the Spirit, (3.) and that divine simplicity includes the notion of an energetic activity
of the divinity, which is illustrated by the divine determinations as they are contained but
unparticipable in the divine essence. Although Nikephoros Gregoras is the seemingly earliest
witness to these texts, one can suspect that they were used by Palamas in some unnamed work,
since Nikephoros uses the citation in various antirrhetics against Palamas’s doctrine. From all
this we can gather that Scholarios’s abrupt transition from discussion of the filioque to
participation in the Spirit by means of the energies is meant to imitate his saintly predecessors
who did the same, which had in fact been highlighted by the polemical literature especially of
Manuel Kalekas.
Clearly, for Scholarios, these materials served his apologetic purposes against persons
representing the Roman Catholic position. An example of such is Bartholomew Lapacci, who
was in Constantinople in 1445. 1168 This background explains the treatise’s overt concern about
the filioque. As we have already seen, the essence-energies question traditionally involved
Trinitarian distinctions to the extent that David Dishypatos and Gregorios Palamas exploited
the distinction between the Trinitarian emanations as an analogical proof of the possibility for
lesser distinctions among the energies. 1169 This Trinitarian aspect of the essence-energies
debate does not intrinsically or metaphysically lend itself to any obvious consideration of the
filioque, unless we recall the disagreement about the Holy Spirit habens esse ab filio, as
discussed between Eugenikos and Montenero at Florence in 1439. For this reason, with Latins
and philo-Latins of the same ilk in Constantinople, Scholarios was perhaps inspired to include
both themes. Lastly, Scholarios condemned Latin use of violence and of force in the Inquisition
1167
Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:210–211). Cf. Nikephoros of Constantinople 1865 (PG 100:304C–305A).
1168
Blanchet 2008, 255.
1169
Dishypatos 1973, 86–89; Palamas, Περὶ τῶν θείων ἐνεργειῶν καὶ τῆς κατ᾽ αὐτὰς μεθέξεως, 19 (GPS 2:111).
349
to turn people toward the Roman Church. In the background were lingering concerns about
Latin figures like Leonardo of Chios. He was an inquisitor in the East (1431) and a forceful
promoter of the Union. He had even lamented the fact that Emperor Constantine XI did not
forcefully rid himself of Scholarios’s Holy Synaxis and its opposition and propaganda against
Florence (1452).
Scholarios’s fundamental dogmatic teaching is built upon his research into the Latin
positions as already discussed in his mode of translating and editing Armandus of Bellovisu in
1445. This work, though a response to an inquirer, builds upon Scholarios’s research after the
watershed of the Council of Florence. The dogmatic heading of this treatise, when properly
begun, is contained after the rather elongated introduction from pages 204 to 212. Whereupon
Scholarios opposes both the original Barlaamitico-Akindynists and Thomist by means of a
thesis statement: “τὸ δὲ τῆς ἀληθεία φρόνημα ἔκ τε τῶν κοινῶν τῆς πίστεως ὑποθέσεων καὶ ἐκ
τῆς κοινῆς τῶν διδασκάλων ἁπάντων καὶ συμφώνου γνώμης ἀθροίζουσα, διδάσκει φρονεῖν
ἡμᾶς τὴν θείαν οὐσίαν καὶ τὰς ἐνεργείας αὐτῆς πραγματικῶς διακρίνεσθαι, τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς
τοῦ πράγματος φύσεως, οὐ κατ’ ἐπίνοιαν μόνην, τοῖς δὲ κατ’ ἐπίνοιαν μόνην αὐτὰ
διακρίνουσιν, ὡς μητραλοίαις καὶ ἀμαθέσι πρὸς τούτῳ, μήτε προσέχειν καὶ πολεμεῖν.” 1170
Effectively, Scholarios then makes a move to develop his association of Latin Schoolmen with
Barlaam and Akindynos. As Scholarios notes, both Barlaam and Akindynos, similar to the
aforementioned Thomists who adopted the doctrine of first and second intentions, believed
that the human mind “additionally comes upon” (adinvenit) or mentally attributes to be
assigned to each energy of God, but that these are fictions and do not actually enjoy reality in
God himself. From the beginning, then, of Scholarios’s dogmatic treatise his expertise on Latin
logic allows him to draw parallels between the heretical positions of anathematized Greeks and
like-minded Latins of past and present. Next, Scholarios distinguishes for his correspondent
that the energies can be discussed in two respects: “εἴτε τὴν ἔνδον, εἴτε τὴν ἔξω.” Scholarios,
in all his treatises, concentrates the great bulk of his efforts on the ad intra energies, since this
was the principle point of attack by the Latins.
Scholarios locates the issue at hand in the context of the Thomist presentation of first
and second intentions in logic, as generally adopted in the Renaissance. He notes that the
question is not one of a theologoumenon but about doctrine of the Barlaamitico-Akindynists
1170
350
and Latins, which puts Orthodoxy at risk even by merely adopting their underlying
philosophical assumptions: Orthodox put themselves at risk by the mere adoption of the notion
that divine energies are mental products that are projected onto God by considerations of the
human mind. 1171 Adroitly, Scholarios tells his reader that the ultimate risk is to undermine
Scripture. Since the various passages of Scripture clearly distinguish between the divine will
and the divine attributes and activities, then a theology must justify Scripture. 1172 For
Scholarios the Latin doctrine that God is “pure act,” as if without any distinctions, is based
upon a Hellenic and incorrect reading of Aristotle and simply has the heresiarchal effect of
discarding the clear testimony of the Bible and subjecting it to a philosophical system.
To assure his reader that the connection between Latins and Barlaamitico-Akindynists
is valid, Scholarios underlines the fact that the latinophrôn Manuel Kalekas wrote on precisely
these issues against Gregorios Palamas and that Scholarios’s spiritual father, Markos
Eugenikos, composed a response by exegeting numerous patristic passages on the subject. 1173
In fact, Scholarios’s own citations from Greek Fathers often coincide in length and reference
with Markos’s work to which Scholarios explicitly refers. Building on his earlier analysis of
second intentions, he notes that the Latins use the example of “Peter is Peter.” 1174 Here the
mind invents a relation of the subject Peter to himself that is accomplished by the grammatical
copula: “a” is “a.” In no uncertain terms, Scholarios remarks that Latins are “crazy” to think
that God’s goodness is purely a case of the human mind applying these kinds of notions to
God, when – as they say – in reality he is purely a monad with no ulterior real distinctions save
“the opposition of persons.” Next, explicitly invoking “Gregorios of Thessalonica” (Palamas),
Scholarios obliquely refers to Gregorios’s works (which we have already discussed), where
Palamas makes a distinction in the human being between mind (νοῦν) and will (θέλησιν). This
is the apt example to apply to God’s own interior distinction between his essence and his
will. 1175
So far each of Scholarios’s dogmatic commitments has been shown to defend dogmatic
lines already explained by Palamas and the synodical tomes. Scholarios, who had just
1171
1172
These claims of New Testament reliance on an essence-energies distinction have been shown to be rather
well founded, in Bradshaw 2006b, 189–223.
1173
This is found in Marcus Eugenikos, Αντιῤῥητικὸς Α´.
1174
1175
351
completed about five years of study on the contested dogmas between Latins and Greeks at
Florence, is clearly comfortable in relating every detail of how the Palamite conflict can be
viewed from consideration of logic and metaphysics as developed in the Latin West,
principally by recourse to the corpus Aristotelicum.
However, we see the gross inaccuracy of Jugie’s analysis of Scholarios, for the
Assumptionist was shown to suggest that Scholarios rejected or mitigated his commitment to
the uncreated light of the divinity, as if Scholarios admitted that this was not part of the
erroneous doctrine of Barlaamitico-Akindynism. Contrariwise, Scholarios, in his short
dogmatic treatise, whose dogmatic content totals twenty pages, dedicates about seven pages
toward affirming the traditional doctrine of the uncreated light by beginning thus: “τὸ
περιαστράψαν τὸν ἡμέτερον Δεσπότην ἐν Θαβωρίῳ φῶς κτίσμα εἶναι ἐτίθουν, ἢ ἐκ τοῦ
ἡλιακοῦ προσειλημμένον φωτός, ἢ τότ’ εὐθὺς τῆς χρείας ἕνεκα δημιουργηθὲν καὶ πάλιν
ἀπογενόμενον· ὧν θάτερον μὲν ἀνάξιον Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀληθινῆς ἐκείνου θαυματουργίας,
θάτερον δὲ οὔτ’ ἀναγκαῖον καὶ ἅμα ἀδύνατον· τίς γὰρ ἦν ἀνάγκη δημιουργεῖν φῶς ὀθνεῖον,
ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀνακαλύπτειν.” 1176 Scholarios goes on to affirm Palamas’s doctrine but had
access to the Synodical Tome of 1368, which he partially quotes against the Barlaamitico-
1177
Akindynists. This is interesting since Scholarios condemns the Barlaamites and
Akindynists in the terms of Prochoros Kydones. For Scholarios there is an organic symmetry
between Akindynism and Thomism on this question. Furthermore, Scholarios, taking his cue
from the Palamite florilegia and his reading of Markos of Ephesos’s work against Kalekas,
lists florilegia from Basil the Great, Gregory Nyssa, Maximus Confessor, and Nikephoros to
root his theology in patristics, so as not to rely principally on his mastery of Latin logic, but on
the patristic reception of the essence-energies doctrine from Scripture. 1178
After finishing his dogmatic exposition of adherence to the uncreated light, as seen by
the saints and as naturally emanating from Christ on Tabor in virtue of his divinity, Scholarios
turned back to the latinizing question of logical intentions. He begins what he terms a new
“discourse” (λόγος) on the question. As already seen in his refutation of Armandus of
Bellovisu, Scholarios repeats key points from around 1445: (1) the heretics don’t seem to
1176
1177
Cf. Endêmousa Synod, Testi I. Il Tomo sinodale del 1368, 106.
1178
352
understand that the very notion of essence is entirely diverse from the notion of energy, (2) the
distinction is not the invention of the human mind but based upon an experience of a real thing,
(3) and the divine infinity is key to understanding Orthodox doctrine that affirms the utter
simplicity of the deity. 1179
The end of his letter to John Basilikos returns in a culminating moment where
Scholarios epitomizes the poor scholarship and Latin hubris illustrated by Thomas Aquinas.
Though Scholarios does not name him, the only Latin known to theorize that John Damascene
was a Nestorian is indeed Aquinas. Both Prochoros Kydones and Demetrios Kydones preferred
to risk insulting their fellow Byzantines by translating Aquinas’s rather insulting argument,
rather than editing their translation to be more pacific. In two of his works, Aquinas simply
accused the Eastern Church of being heretical for following the “Nestorian” Creed of John
Damascene:
Aquinas, De potentia, q. X, a. 4: Aquinas and Prochoros, De Neilos Kabasilas, Oratio 5 de

Does the Holy Spirit Proceed from potentia, 10.4.24; 10.4.49: spiritu sancto, 42:
the Son?
Praeterea, Damascenus dicit, quod Ἔτι, ὁ Δαμασκηνὸς φησί· τὸ Καὶ πάλιν ὁ αὐτὸς ἐν ἄλλῳ
spiritus sanctus dicitur esse filii, sed Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, τοῦ Υἱοῦ μὲν κεφαλαίῳ ᾧ ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ «Εἰ τὸ
non a filio. ad 24. Dicendum, quod λέγεται, οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ δέ (…) πρόσωπον ἐκεῖνο ὃ Πνεῦμα ἅγιον
positio Nestorianorum fuit quod Πρὸς τὸ εἰκοστὸν τέταρτον ῥητέον, λέγεται, ἐκπορεύεται ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς
spiritus sanctus non sit a filio; unde ὅτι θέσις τῶν Νεστοριανῶν γέγονε, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ»: «Τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ
in quodam symbolo Nestorianorum, τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον μὴ εἶναι ἀπὸ τοῦ ἅγιον μὴ ἐκπορεύεσθαι ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ
condemnato in I Ephesina synodo, Υἱοῦ· ὅθεν ἔν τινι τῶν Νεστοριανῶν πρῶτον ὑπὸ τῶν νεστοριανῶν
dicitur sic: 1180 “spiritum sanctum συμβόλων, καταχειροτονηθέντι ἐν εἰσενήνεκται ὡς δῆλον ἔν τινι
neque filium putamus, neque per τῇ κατ’ Ἔφεσον πρώτῃ Συνόδῳ, συμβόλῳ νεστοριανῶν ἐν τῇ κατ’
filium essentiam accepisse.” 1181
οὕτω λέγεται· τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, Ἔφεσον καταδικασθέντι συνόδῳ·
Propter quod Cyrillus contra μήτε Υἱὸν οἰόμεθα, μήτε δι’ Υἱοῦ ταύτῃ δὲ τῇ αἱρέσει ἠκολούθησεν ὁ
Nestorium, in epistola praedicta, τὴν οὐσίαν λαμβάνειν· διά τοι τοῦτο νεστοριανὸς Θεοδώριτος καὶ
posuit spiritum sanctum esse a ὁ Κύριλλος ἀπεναντίας τῷ πλείονες ἄλλοι μετ’ αὐτοῦ, ἐν οἷς ἦν
filio. 1182
Theodorus vero, in Νεστορίῳ ἐν τῇ προειρημένῃ καὶ ὁ Δαμασκηνός· ὅθεν ἐν τούτῳ
1179
1180
Aquinas accepted Marius Mercator’s and Justinian I’s equating the “deformed” creed of Charisius at Acta
VI of Ephesus 431 with the creed of Theodore of Mopsuestia.
1181
Mercator 1862 (PL 48:447C).
1182
This argument is probably inspired by Bonaventure 1883, Commenta, I, d. 11, q. 1, cap. 2. The source-text
for Aquinas’s fictitious narrative appears to be the Anonymous (eleventh century), De spiritus sancti, in
353
quadam epistola ad Ioannem ἐπιστολῇ, τέθεικε τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ οὐ δεῖ τῇ ἀποφάσει τούτου
Antiochenum sic dicit: “spiritus ἅγιον εἶναι ἀπὸ τοῦ Υἱοῦ· συνίστασθαι, εἰ καὶ παρά τινων
sanctus non ex filio aut per filium Θεοδώριτος δὲ ἔν τινι ἐπιστολῇ, λέγοιτο τὸν Δαμασκηνὸν ἐν τούτῳ
habens substantiam, sed procedens πρὸς Ἰωάννην Ἀντιοχείας, οὕτω ὥσπερ οὐχ ὁμολογεῖ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ
quidem a patre” 1183; spiritus vero φησί· τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, οὐκ ἔστιν ἅγιον εἶναι ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ οὕτως οὐδ’
filii, eo quod et ei consubstantialis ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ· οὐδὲ δι’ Υἱοῦ, τὸ ἀπαρνεῖσθαι, ὅσον κατὰ τὴν
sit, nominatus. Haec autem verba ὑφεστάναι ἔχει· ἀλλὰ πρόεισι μὲν ἐκ δύναμιν τούτων τῶν λόγων.»
Theodorus praedictus imponit τοῦ Πατρός· ὀνομάζεται δὲ καὶ τοῦ
Cyrillo, tamquam ab eo sint dicta in Υἱοῦ, διὰ τὸ ὁμοούσιον εἶναι· ταῦτα
epistola quam ad Ioannem δὲ τὰ ῥήματα, ὁ προειρημένος
Antiochenum scripsit, licet in illa Θεοδώριτος ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ Κυρίλλῳ,
epistola hoc non legatur; sed dicitur ὡς παρ’ αὐτοῦ εἰρημένα ἐν τῇ Πρὸς
ibi sic: “spiritus Dei patris procedit Ἰωάννην τὸν Ἀντιοχείας ἐπιστολῇ·
quidem ex ipso, est autem et a filio εἰ καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἐπιστολῇ τοῦτο
non alienus secundum unius μὴ ἀναγινώσκεται· λέγεται γὰρ
essentiae rationem.” 1184 Hanc ἐκεῖ, οὕτως τὸ Πνεῦμα τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ
autem Theodori sententiam secutus Πατρός, πρόεισι μὲν ἐξ αὐτοῦ· ἔστι
est postmodum Damascenus, δὲ καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ οὐκ ἀλλότριον,
quamvis dogmata eiusdem κατὰ τὴν ὁμοουσιότητα· ταύτῃ δὲ τῇ
Theodori sint in quinta synodo [ab Θεοδωρίτου δόξῃ, ἐσέπειτα ὁ
Iustiniano] condemnata. Unde in Δαμασκηνὸς ἠκολούθησεν· εἰ καὶ
hoc non est standum sententiae τὰ Θεοδωρίτου δόγματα, ἐν τῇ
Damasceni. Πέμπτῃ Συνόδῳ κατέγνωσται· ὅθεν
οὐ πειστέον τῇ γνώμῃ τοῦ
Δαμασκηνοῦ.
ST I.36.2, arg. 3; ad 3: Vat. gr. 1294; Σούμμα θεολογική, Neilos Kabasilas, Oratio 5 de spiritu
I.36, fol. 277, 21–23; f. 280, 17–25: sancto, 41.1-14; 42.
Praeterea, Damascenus dicit, Ἔτι ὁ Δαμασκινὸς φησὶν τὸ πνεῦμα Φησὶ γοῦν οὗτος ἐν τῷ περὶ
spiritum sanctum ex patre dicimus, τὸ ἅγιον ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς λέγομεν καὶ δυνάμεως κεφαλαίῳ περὶ τῆς τοῦ
et spiritum patris nominamus, ex πνεῦμα πατρὸς ὀνομάζομεν· ἐκ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος ἐκπορεύσεως τὸν
filio autem spiritum sanctum non υἱοῦ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα οὐ λέγομεν, λόγον ποιούμενος: Θέσις ἦν
Anonymous (a) 1833, 246, cols. a–b: “Cyrillus ex Spiritu sancto quae sunt sanctorum patrum locutus est et
docuit [. . .] canonica epistola, quam ad Nestorium conscripsit, Spiritum sanctum a Patre et Filio procedere [. .
.] in altera canonica epistola, quam ad Iohannem scripserat antichenum, similem de spiritu sancti a patre et filio
processione protulit sententiam [. . .] qui procedit quidem ex ipso: est autem et a Filio non alienus secundum
unius essentiae rationem.”
1183
Ps.-Theodoret 1726, 250, col. a.
1184
Anonymous (a) 1833, 246, col. b. Cf. Cyril of Alexandria 1925–1926, 106.32–33.
354
dicimus, spiritum vero filii πνεῦμα δὲ υἱοῦ ὀνομάζομεν. Τὸ νεστοριανῶν τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον μὴ
nominamus. Ergo, spiritus sanctus πνεῦμα ἄρα τὸ ἅγιον, οὐκ εἶναι ἐκ τοῦ Υἱοῦ· ὅθεν ἔν τινι
non procedat a filio. ([...]) Ad ἐκπορεύεται παρὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ. (…) νεστοριανῶν συμβόλῳ ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ
tertium dicendum quod spiritum πρὸς τὸ γ´ τὸ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον μὴ κατ’ Ἔφεσον συνόδῳ
sanctum non procedere a filio, primo ἐκπορεύσθαι ἐκ τοῦ υἱοῦ πρῶτον ἀποδοκιμασθέντι οὕτω λέγεται: “Τὸ
fuit a Nestorianis introductum; ut ὑπὸ τῶν Νεστριανῶν εἰσενήνεκται· Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον οὔτε Υἱὸν
patet in quodam symbolo ὡς δῆλον ἐστῖν ἐν τίνι συμβόλῳ νομίζομεν οὔτε διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ λαβεῖν
Nestorianorum damnato in Ephesina νεστοριανῶν ἐν τῇ κατ᾽ Ἔφεσον τὴν οὐσίαν”. Καὶ πάλιν: “Ὁ δὲ
synodo. Et hunc errorem secutus fuit καταδικασθέντι συνόδῳ. Ταύτα δὲ Θεοδώριτος ἔν τινι ἐπιστολῇ πρὸς
Theodoretus Nestorianus, et plures τῇ αἱρέσει ἀκολούθησεν ὁ τὸν Ἀντιοχείας Ἰωάννην, οὕτω
post ipsum; inter quos fuit etiam Νεστοριανὸς Θεοδωρῖκος καὶ φησί: ‘τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον οὐκ ἐκ
Damascenus. Unde in hoc eius πλείονες ἄλλοι μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ἐν οἷς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ ἢ διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὴν
sententiae non est standum. ὁ Δαμασκηνὸς ὅθεν ἐν τούτῳ οὐ δεῖ ὑπόστασιν ἔχει ἢ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἀλλ’
Quamvis a quibusdam dicatur quod τῇ ἀποφάσει τούτου συνίστασθαι · ἐκπορεύεται μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός,
Damascenus, sicut non confitetur εἰ καὶ παρά τινων λέγοιτο τὸν Πνεῦμα δὲ Υἱοῦ λέγεται διὰ τὸ
spiritum sanctum esse a filio, ita Δαμασκηνὸν ἐν τούτῳ, ὥσπερ οὐχ ὁμοούσιον αὐτῷ εἶναι.’ Καὶ πάλιν:
etiam non negat, ex vi illorum ὁμολογεῖ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον εἶναι ‘Τῇ δὲ ἀποφάσει ταύτῃ τοῦ
verborum. ἐκ τοῦ υἱοῦ. Οὕτως οὐδ᾽ Θεοδωρίτου ἠκολούθησε μετὰ
ἀπαρνᾶσθαι ὅσον κατὰ υἱὸν δύναμιν ταῦτα καὶ ὁ Δαμασκηνός· τούτου δὲ
τούτων τῶν λόγων. τοῦ Θεοδωρίτου τὸ δόγμα καὶ ἐν τῇ
πέμπτῃ συνόδῳ ἐκβέβληται· ὅθεν,
ὅσον κατὰ τοῦτο, ἡ τοῦ
Δαμασκηνοῦ ἀπόφασις οὐκ ἔχει τὸ
βέβαιον.’ (…) Ὅπως μὲν οὖν καὶ
Θωμᾶς συνῆκε τὴν τοῦ
Δαμασκηνοῦ ῥῆσιν καὶ ὡς
περιφανῶς δείκνυται, βέλος ταύτην
ἡγούμενος τῆς δόξης τῆς ἑαυτοῦ,
δῆλον·
Scholarios concludes by summarily affirming Neilos Kabasilas’s criticism against Aquinas. If

an author was willing to invent such a distorted historical argument, so that he might classify
all Orthodox of the first millennium as “Nestorians” for following Damascene who clearly
rejected the Latin filioque (per Aquinas’s admission), then his kind of sycophantic obeisance
to the Latin narrative shows only that Latins preach another Gospel, different from that of
355
Greek Fathers and the pristine Church. 1185
3. Scholarios’s Final Opusculum Defending Dogmatic Palamism
More problematic is the contextualization of the second treatise Distinction entre

l’essence divine et ses opérations, which – as far as I am aware – represents a nominal polemic
against an unknown opponent (it is written against generic partisans of Barlaam and
Akindynos). Its content and references seem to focus on logical questions within Scholarios’s
1445 Excursus against neo-Barlaamites and neo-Akindynists (viz., the Kydones brothers and
Manuel Kalekas). Its arguments utilize a Latin logical theory of second intentions against anti-
Palamite teachings on the subject of the Orthodox essence-energies dogma. 1186
I believe a provisional date may be gleaned from the motives and locale involved in
the composition of this second treatise. The proposed date should account for Scholarios’s
theological preoccupations within this work. As mentioned above, Scholarios had made up his
mind to publish an ex professo treatise on the subject of the essence and energies. 1187 Only this
second treatise, Distinction entre l’essence divine et ses operations, seems to fulfill his earlier
intention. 1188 His inspiration to take back up his apologetic pen may have come from the Latin
1185
1186
Jugie and Barbour consider this treatise against “nominalism.” However, contemporary scholars have
argued that “nominalism” could result from a reductio of the Thomist position of a distinctio rationis
ratiocinantis. See Cross 2007, 104. In effect, Thomist authors admit that any distinction can simply be reduced
to a distinction of reason. E.g., Garrigou-Lagrange (1955, 392) writes his defense of Thomas against God’s
attributes being a mere tautology; he asserts: “Very many theologians admit a minor virtual distinction between
God’s essence and His attributes, inasmuch as His essence, which is conceived by us actually and implicitly,
but not explicitly, signifies the attributes that are derived from it.” However, it is the nature of the minor
distinction that ought to scandalize a true Palamite. Garrigou-Lagrange (1955, 168) states: “The virtual
distinction is a distinction founded on reality, which means, contrary to Scotus’s theory, that it is non-existent
previous to the mind’s consideration, and it does not destroy God’s absolute simplicity.” The referent
(signatum) for each of these conceptually distinct ideas (e.g., goodness, wisdom) in the mind is the unitary
principle of the divine essence. Thus, there are no processions, emanations, or other mentally distinct,
circumstantial attributes. There is only a singular “principle” that is the kind of thing that somehow is all these
items that logically differ when considered quoad nos. God is all these attributes substantially, even if we
conceive them as manifold via creaturely perfections. Each intention refers back to a unitary immutable
principle. Thus, from a logical point of view, this explanation may still leave Thomas open to Scholarios’s
exasperating evaluation that the Akindynist logical theory of God’s attributes as mere second intentions differs
in no substantial way from Thomas himself. See Garrigou-Lagrange 1955, 168, 392. Scholarios first recognizes
Thomas’s position to be a distinctio rationis tantum in his Excursus (OCGS 6:283). Cf. ST I.13.4 and ST I.28.2.
1187
Scholarios, Excursus, chap. 94, lines 18–22 (OCGS 6:285).
1188
I base this on several observations. First, the addendum of 1445 De ente et essentia concerns principally ad
intra Trinitarian attributes. There does appear a passing mention of the attributes “ἔξω.” However, this is clearly
not his concern with the context of Armandus (this does not necessarily mean a fuller treatise would neglect
356
bishop Leonardo of Chios (c. 1458). 1189 Leonardo wrote an Apologia fidei catholicae to
Scholarios in 1455. 1190 Gennadios, having just become patriarch, had no time to write a
reply. 1191 Only after his retirement into a monastery (1456) did he take up serious studies
again. 1192 Given Jugie’s identification of the monastery of the Prodromos for its composition,
Gennadios’s Palamite defense likely dated to a time before the death of Leonardo.
Consequently, Scholarios may have composed this opusculum in the Prodromos monastery c.
1456–1458. 1193 My hypothesis does not completely explain why the treatise was written in
Greek. On one hand Leonardo was a native-born son of Chios. On the other hand, he first wrote
to Gennadios in Latin. All the same, Leonardo’s mother tongue was Greek. The authors whom
Leonardo recommended to Scholarios for reflection (e.g., Demetrios Kydones and Manuel
Kalekas), who themselves wrote in Greek, were outstanding examples of anti-Palamistic
Thomism. Was this the inspiration Scholarios needed in order to make good on his desire to
produce an original essence-energies disquisition?
In light of Jugie, one item that remains to be explored in this last treatise, Distinction
entre l’essence divine et ses operations, is Scholarios’s notable silence on the controversy
the issue of the ad extra energies). Secondly, his express intention in the first treatise is to acquiesce to a learned
Orthodox who wanted more details on the historical conflict. Scholarios distracted himself with other issues
(the filioque, the Inquisition). He, or his secretary Syropoulos, also seems to have spliced the section on
Maximus the Confessor on the ad intra perfections. The insertion veers off course into the Tabor-light and
other related themes. Once that parenthesis is closed, the treatise immediately returns back to Maximus the
Confessor and ad intra discussion of God’s attributes. See Scholarios 1930a (OCGS 3:219–223). Section eight
begins this Maximian excursus, terminating in section ten. A full treatise on intentions is only accomplished in
Distinction entre l’essence divine et ses opérations.
1189
Kazhdan, Talbot, et al. 1991, 1212. The following is significant for the present discussion: “Dominican
eyewitness to the fall of Constantinople [. . .] died probably in Genoa, 1459. After studies in Italy, Leonardo
became archbishop of Mytilene (July 01, 1444). [. . .] He joined Isidore of Kiev and a papal delegation at Chios
and arrived with them at Constantinople on Oct. 26, 1452, to realize ecclesiastical union. Leonardo returned to
Italy c. 1458 to work for a counteroffensive against the Turks and probably died there.” Matschke 2000, 227–
236. The association with the Palamite controversy may come from the explicit invocation of the brothers
Kydones and especially of Manuel Kalekas. These anti-Palamite examples are cited to challenge Scholarios to
reconcile with the Roman Church. See Blanchet and Ganchou 2005, 85, 94. They produce an important edited
extract from a MS of Leonardo as follows: “Hanc predecessores magni viri Graii litteratissimi, Simon et
Philippus, effecti clerici in ordine Predicatorum professi, Demetrius Chidonius, Manuel Chrisollora et Iohannes
eius frater, Maximus perinde ac Theodorus et Andreas, fratres carnales et apud Predicatorum ordinem professi
et ad pontificium ultimi duo assumpti, item Manuel Calacha litteratissimus et ius frater Theodoritus monacus,
sed prior ad Predicatorum reductus clarus evasit, Romanam fidem constantissime tenuerunt” (De emanatione
recte fidei, fol. 138r).
1190
1191
1192
This takes place first at the monastery of Vatopedi in winter of 1456 until spring of 1458. Then, he is
installed in the Prodromos in August of 1458. See Blanchet 2008, 467.
1193
OCGS 3:xix.
357
surrounding the nature of the Tabor light and the beatific vision. Jugie made quite a fanfare
about the fact that Scholarios’s mature treatment on the essence-energies debate omitted
mention of this issue. 1194 He thought that this avoidance of the topic might signify Scholarios’s
abandonment of the doctrine. However, this argumentum ex silentio, has been addressed in the
body of the thesis, where I underlined that Scholarios’s résumé of the SG and ST, dated
approximately at this same time, rearranged Aquinas’s expositions in a way to be reconcilable
to Palamas on the question of the lumen gloriae (τὸ τῆς δόξης φῶς). 1195
Jugie’s suspicion is based upon the fact that, presumably before composing his Contre
les partisans d’Acindyne (1445), Scholarios may have delivered his Sermon pour la fête de la
Transfiguration (terminus ante quem 1448). Jugie underlines the fact that Scholarios makes a
distinction, unlike Palamas, between the Tabor light and the light of Christ after the
resurrection. 1196 He at times seems to depart from central tenets in Palamas concerning the
nature of light on Tabor in comparison to the light of Christ at the Resurrection. While
Blanchet’s work has significantly moved back Scholarios’s sermonizing to the post-Florentine
period, it is nonetheless true that Jugie’s observations about Scholarios’s doctrine of the
uncreated light in this sermon may at least hint at an early date for Scholarios’s sermon.
Scholarios openly confessed his dearth of knowledge of patristics in his youth, while he
likewise wrote to Markos Eugenikos in 1440 that he was intent on studying the questions of
the filioque and essence-energies doctrine, as I have already shown. It might be the case that
the Scholarian sermon on the Transfiguration dates to this period, that is, prior to Scholarios’s
in-depth study of Palamism and mastery of its terminology. This would account for
Scholarios’s quite unambiguous embrace of the language and argument surrounding the Tabor
light, some years afterwards (1445), in all its proper Palamistic detail. For Jugie’s part, he was
1194
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:130. Cf. OCGS 5:281–285.
1195
See Duba 2006, 48, where Bonaventure had been aware of the doctrine of Gregory’s Dialogos that placed
beatitude (beatitude, or μακαρία) in somewhere seeing the claritas of God. Ultimately, Bonaventure rejected
the doctrine. While I have not found Scholarios drawing from Gregory the Great’s authority on this question,
it is noteworthy that the Franciscans were aware of the doctrine being held by such an authoritative Latin Father
and that Scholarios was very aware of Franciscan positions. Hence, Scholarios would have already known that
even Latins took a diverse number of positions on the questions; for he had advised Markos of Ephesos on this
fact, as I mentioned, at the opening of the Council of Ferrara on the matter of the beatific vision. In short,
Scholarios was almost certainly the translator of Bernard of Clairveaux into Greek, alerting Markos that Latins
had abandoned Pope John XXII’s more Orthodox teaching on the beatific vision to embrace a more Dominican
position by 1336. Circumstantially, Scholarios would have known of the multiple disagreements among Latins
on the question of the beatific vision and what exactly is seen therein.
1196
Jugie 1926–1935, 3:126.
358
able to see that the presumably earlier Sermon pour la fête de la Transfiguration was not
combatively anti-Palamite, but that it suffered from an ambiguity on whether Scholarios
accepted the Palamite doctrine of the divine light in its fullness, or preferred a more
stereotypically Latin doctrine distinguishing the Tabor light from the light of the
Resurrection. 1197 Yet, Jugie underscores two counter-indications within the same sermon. 1198
For his part, Guichardan simply summarized Jugie’s already summary argument. 1199 While
Jugie admits that, by 1445, in Distinction entre l’essence divine et ses opérations, Scholarios
clearly embraced the entire doctrine of the Tabor light, Scholarios’s subsequent omission of
any mention of the doctrine in his last essence-energies treatise might naturally lead to
suspicion. This was certainly plausible when the sermon is taken in isolation, though I have
shown Scholarios was so committed to Palamism as to adjust his translations of Aquinas’s
Summae to be in harmony with Palamism. Furthermore, although Scholarios had been more
sympathetic to the project of union prior to his Ferrara-Florence experience of the Latins in
council, one must always keep in mind that Emperor John VIII explicitly selected Markos and
George-Gennadios on the basis of their upholding of all the officially Orthodox positions,
which they were going to defend at Ferrara, prior to the Council. It would be strange to suppose
that Emperor John VIII and Markos had both been likely present at the presentation of this
sermon (if prior to 1440) and remained unworried by Scholarios’s alleged departure from
Palamism. Secondly, if the sermon post-dates Scholarios’s return from Florence (1439–1445)
during his period of study, one must remember that Scholarios described this period of his life
as a period of study of all the questions that had arisen at Florence. Jugie’s hypothesis would
only be plausible if Scholarios had written the sermon between 1440 and 1445. Given the fact
that Scholarios’s Palamistic editing of his translation of Aquinas was part and parcel of his
reception of the works of Aquinas, and given the fact that this was completely unknown to
Jugie and to Guichardan, it certainly weakens the force of Jugie’s suspicions, even if they
cannot be rejected out of hand since Scholarios’s brief remarks admit of ambiguity. Jugie’s
argument rests firmly upon an early dating of the Transfiguration sermon. Until the sermon is
1197
More aspects of the Latin and Palamite disagreement are addressed in De Halleux 1973, 414–418.
1198
OCGS 1:157–158 versus OCGS 1:160.
1199
359
better studied and its sources are uncovered, Jugie’s supposition about Scholarios’s change of
heart remains, in theory, a distinct possibility.
More specifically, I now turn to the dogmatic context of Distinction entre l’essence
divine et ses opérations. This small work, consisting of only ten pages of text (pages 228–239),
clearly exposits Scholarios’s intention to fulfill his desire to write a systematic treatise on the
logic of Palamism against the Akindynists. This work is not composed of a series of
Aristotelian syllogisms, as for instance Prochoros Kydones’ style was accustomed to adopt,
but rather engages in a subtle analysis of the underlying principles of Greek and Latin tradition
of logical theorizing on the relation between thought and realities that are in and outside the
mind. However, Scholarios immediately pronounces his dogmatic point of departure for this
treatise thus:
Περὶ τῆς τῶν θείων ἐνεργειῶν πρός τε ἀλλήλας καὶ τὴν θείαν οὐσίαν διακρίσεως ὁ μὲν
μακάριος Θεσσαλονίκης τότε Γρηγόριος, ἀκριβεστέρως ἐξητακὼς ὑφ’ ἡγεμόσι τῆς ἐκκλησίας
τοῖς διδασκάλοις, πραγματικὴν ταύτην εἶναι ἐτίθει [...] Τῷ μακαρίῳ τοίνυν ἐκείνῳ Γρηγορίῳ
καὶ τῇ κοινῇ τῆς καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐκκλησίας ψήφῳ συνῳδὸν καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐνταῦθα τὴν περὶ τοῦ
ζητήματος τούτου κρίσιν ποιούμεθα, ὡς ἐν παρέργῳ τῆς ἡμῶν νῦν ἡσυχίας καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ
πολυειδῶν θρήνων ἐπὶ τὴν τοιαύτην ὡρμημένοι διατριβήν, τῶν πλησιαζόντων ἡμῖν τινὸς
ἀπαιτήσαντος. 1200
From this point, Scholarios simply reintroduces the typology of distinctions that were seen to
be taken from the highly unconventional Francis Meyronnes, who endorsed a real distinction
between God’s essence on the level of the soul and its faculties (e.g., will), on the level of the
divine hypostases, and on the question of the essence and energies. While Scholarios could
have attempted to use other typologies (e.g., Aristotle or Porphyry), this would have been
simply too primitive and too inaccurate to approach the doctrine of Palamas. On the other hand,
Scholarios must abandon the Thomist system since he had already announced in 1445 its
impotence to aid Palamistic theologians. Meyronnes’ utility was principally in the
development of an anti-Thomistic streak of metaphysics in the Latin universities of the time.
However, this theological approach is practically non-existent in the Roman Catholic Church
of today. Most of those attracted to this very unusual typology of distinctions were effectively
sidelined after the French Revolution, when mainly Jesuits and Dominicans were successful in
1200
Scholarios 1930b (OCGS 3:228).
360
attracting a resurgence of medieval philosophy outside the confines of their own order.
Similar to Damascene’s use of Aristotle, Porphyry, and Ammonios in service of the
Orthodox faith, Scholarios utilized this logic as an organon, or θεράπαινα, of theology. Still, it
is worthwhile emphasizing that Scholarios does not attempt to construct syllogisms, but
concerns himself only with the nature of mental concepts, the forming of definitions, and the
ontological status of such concepts, as well as how they relate to reality ad extra. Essentially
his concerns are the exact same as Palamas’s debate with Gregoras in the 1350s. Just as his
earlier doctrine in 1445, Scholarios represents the Latin (and Barlaamitico-Akindynist)
position (presumably of Thomists) as one that supposes that God’s energies are merely weak
human impositions of terminology and notions abstracted from creaturely accidents
(συμβεβηκότα) onto the divine essence. Scholarios ably pinpoints the entire East-West divide
since the Council of Florence to be centered on this point, insofar as the ad intra life of God is
concerned: Orthodox believe that the divine nature, enjoying the “undivided division” of a tri-
personal identity, naturally contains a potentially innumerable (by us) set of operations that are
participable by humans. These are really co-present “around” the divine essence in the sense
that they are not in it like an accident in a substance (which is Prochoros’s accusation) but they
are “characteristic” and naturally “spring forth” from eternity by the active and dynamic nature
of an infinite essence with tri-personal realities each in possession of every energy. 1201 As he
wrote to John Basilikos in 1445, he again restates his Palamistic conviction, just as we have
seen in Palamas’s debate with Gregoras, that the soul enjoys perfections of its operations that
are intrinsic and inseparable from itself. Not only this, but the soul’s perfections, like wisdom,
are in the soul not the soul itself. In this manner of distinction, the divinity possesses a will that
is not the same idea or definition that one applies to “essence” or “being.” Hence, the divine
will is an activity or energy of the essence and cannot be, in Thomist fashion, entirely
indistinguishable from the essence. Also, the divine attributes of wisdom and all others are
truly said of God, not in some fictitious sense. This all means that the Latin parallel drawn
between second intentions or their subtle logic – “Peter is Peter” – is inept to be applied to the
distinction between divine will and essence, or divine wisdom and a divine person. 1202 It is
also significant that Scholarios explicitly rejects the Kydones’ arguments against participation
1201
1202
361
in the divine life. Scholarios, here asserts that humans can participate in the divine energies in
this life. However, in his rejection of the energies existing only κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν μόνον, Scholarios
reproduces an assertion that appears to be taken nearly verbatim from Neilos Kabasilas. 1203
This is likely the fruit of Scholarios’s study of Neilos that was already mentioned to have taken
place in 1437 in preparation for the Council of Ferrara. Clearly, Scholarios’s underlying
principles are not only the dogmatic synodical tomes and Palamas’s own works, but the
reception of Palamite theology in Neilos Kabasilas, whom he had studied with his spiritual
father, Markos of Ephesus, in 1437 in case the Latins provoked formal debate on the subject
in Italy.
In his concluding pages, time and again, Scholarios’s major concern is to note that there
is indeed a πραγματικὴ διάκρισις between essence and energy in the divine reality. While it is
tempting for heretics to try to split out these energies into substances, Scholarios emphasizes
that each energy is not a πρᾶγμα, as if something subsisting and either dependent on or
independent of the divine essence. Energies exist beyond the categories of dependent accidents
and independent substances and can be classed as items τι τοῦ πράγματος or ἐν τῷ πράγματι,
where the πρᾶγμα is ὁ Θεός. 1204 In short, Scholarios never veered from his dogmatic embrace
of every aspect of Palamism: (1) the real distinction between essence and energy, (2) the human
vocation to participate in divine energy, and (3) the conviction that such participation is
exemplified by the saints’ participation in the divine light at Tabor.
In this vein, a last Palamistic work deserves to be mentioned before a complete picture
of Scholarios’s Palamism can be framed. I refer to his liturgical office for matins: Canon en
l’honneur de Grégoire Palamas. Jugie gave good reasons for dating the work 1444–1450.
Scholarios’s full adherence to Palamism is clearly viewed in the various hymns composed in
honor of Palamas to be intercalated between the verses of Old Testament odes sung for the
morning office of his feast. Especially indicative of the 1444–1445 dating is Scholarios’s
condemnation of those who hold for a distinction in God between his essence and energy
“according to thought alone” (κατ᾽ἐπίνοιαν μόνην). 1205 Still, the sources of many other poetic
thoughts and metaphors may shed light for us on his view of the uncreated light, for Scholarios
1203
Scholarios 1930b (OCGS 3:233). Cf. Kabasilas 1957, 246.
1204
1205
Scholarios 1935c (OCGS 4:397).
362
makes a generous and expected use of metaphors referring to light and splendor (because the
office is sung at sunrise).
While my preliminary investigations into these works only strengthen my convictions
that Scholarios maintains a very refined but real distinction between the essence and energies
in God, I can anticipate an even larger cache of Scholastic sources to be uncovered, evidencing
Scholarios’s absolute mastery of Latino-Scholastic discourse from the West, not just of the
Greek and Palamite tradition from the East.
363
Final Conclusions
My opening remarks explicitly stated my various interests to be developed throughout

the present investigation. I presupposed a real value to contextualizing Scholarios in his
Byzantine setting by exploring the early intellectual influences that led to, or occasioned, his
mature synthesis. I think, from the investigation of previous chapters, it has also become
obvious that Scholarios was always held by Orthodox writers of the past in great honor as a
faithful expositor of Orthodox doctrine in the Greek East. This reputation for Orthodoxy,
however, did not always include Scholarios’s essence-energies doctrine due to the fact that this
aspect of Scholarios’s writings was less diffused throughout the Orthodox world. Instead, the
literature of various ages bears witness to Scholarios’s reputation to be majorly based upon his
fight to defend the rights and independence of the Greek Church against the encroachments of
secular and papal powers during the fourteenth century. Secondly, Scholarios won renown for
his learned defense of the Orthodox canons and theology in order to preserve the original
Nicene-Constantinopolitan version of the common creed of Christendom. Yet, we discovered
that individual Orthodox authors were cognizant of Scholarios’s defense of Palamism, even
before the onset of Assumptionist polemics against the persons and doctrine associated with
Gregorios Palamas.
What is more, we have found that Scholarios’s penchant to synthesize Latin theology
was something that he inherited from his Palamite forebears and cannot be numbered among
innovators on this score. While his predecessors had welcomed the translations of Latin Fathers
of the first millennium, their reception of Thomas Aquinas more often turned out to be cautious
or negative. In some cases, however, Aquinas was found to be useful in polemics against
various heretical and pagan camps within the confines of Byzantium (e.g., against Islam).
There were even times and places where Aquinas was useful for creative theological projects
of Scholarios’s predecessors. Scholarios’s development of the Palamite school lay more in the
direction of embracing Aristotle and Aristotelianism as a bulwark defense from contemporary
neopaganism that was relying heavily on Plato and especially on Neoplatonists in order to
promote a cosmology that was fundamentally opposed to a God creating the cosmos ex nihilo.
In Scholarios’s office of opposing Georgios Gemistos Pletho’s version of Platonism,
Scholarios enlisted not only the help of Aristotle, but also of his seemingly best commentator
364
and most fervent Christian disciple, Thomas Aquinas. Scholarios threw caution into the wind
in favor of not only naming but also even translating and commending Aquinas for the sake of
his fellow Byzantines. In no short measure, his focused enthusiasm for Aquinas went hand in
hand with his pro-Aristotelian outlook against the Neoplatonism of the neopagan Pletho. In
this regard, we discovered that Markos Eugenikos cooled toward Scholarios’s fervor for the
Stagirite, attempting to redirect Scholarian energies to the Latin-Byzantine conflicts of the age.
While Scholarios accepted his spiritual father’s admonitions to promote and defend the
traditional doctrines of his patria, he never let go of his love for Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s
ingenious expositions thereof.
Simultaneously, we discover that Scholarios’s religious sentiments and pro-Palamite
stance on questions of ad intra theology of God required of Scholarios a non-Thomistic
solution to a variety of problems. What is more, in his treatises on the Holy Spirit, he also
embraced a non-Thomistic number of sources in order to defend better the insights of his
Orthodox forebears, but with more sagacity and with an eye to detail and with a fuller
knowledge of the learning and of the sources used among his Latin interlocutors. While
Scholarios remained ever the romantic toward his beloved Aquinas, he essentially abandoned
the most fundamental facets of Thomistic metaphysics on the questions surrounding God, his
constitution, his activities, and the filioque. Effectively, this means that Scholarios shares
surprisingly little with Aquinas on the question of God, Trinity, and creation, which represents
the bulk of Aquinas’s innovations and the very source of his fame among later generations of
Latin theologians. Secondly, Scholarios was shown to abandon Aquinas in important matters
concerning Aristotle’s Physica, such that Scholarios adopted a position on the principle of
individuation in material composites, which stemmed from a fellow eclectic theologian, who
had also modeled for Scholarios a meld of Thomism with Scotism. Furthermore, Scholarios’s
adoption of Bonaventurian and Mayronist exemplarism of the energies of creation within the
divine essence placed him at a great distance from Thomism; so much so, that Scholarios –
like Scotus and Meyronnes – could have only been interpreted by orthodox Thomists to be
guilty of introducing numerous real distinctions into the divine essence. 1206 The objective
reality and distinctiveness of the attributes of God in comparison to one another and to the
essence is so acute that there can be no doubt about these conclusions. Furthermore, though
1206
Gilson 1943, 134; Szabó 1955, 30.
365
Scholarios attempted to reconcile the Thomistic categorization of distinctions with the newer
and more complex number of distinctions in Scotism, he did so – as had some Scotists done
after the death of Scotus – to minimize criticisms against Aquinas, at least according to more
Scotistic readings of his distinctions. While Scholarios’s attempt at reconciliation between
Scotism and Thomism, at least among Latins, was not uncommon, his theological judgment of
Thomas Aquinas and Armandus of Bellovisu was, in the end, unequivocally negative. In fact,
Scholarios frankly admitted that Aquinas acted as a precursor of Barlaam and Akindynos. To
use Jugie’s phraseology, one might think of Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras as a case of
Thomismus in fieri, where all divine attributes are reduced to an indistinct and concrete monad
that seems impervious to any meaningful distinction of persons (quoad nos) among themselves
or in comparison to the divine essence. 1207
Next I explained in detail the fundamental simplicity criterion or kinds of distinctions
that are used in Aquinas, Scotus, and Palamas. This effectively allowed us to make an
intelligent reading of Scholarios’s Excursus and his sources that professedly deal with the
components of the essence-energies doctrine of Gregorios Palamas. We discovered that
Scholarios’s notion of separability, as the very criterion for an unacceptable type of real
distinction, not only imitated the doctrine of Palamas, but also reflected the same opinion in
his Franciscan sources. Both Palamas and Franciscans saw the metaphysical distinction in God
as absolutely non-threatening to divine simplicity. Furthermore, by recourse to divine infinity
and the disjunctive attributes of being, both schools of thought defended the complete actuality
of each energy in the divine essence through asserting their infinite mode of existence and their
complete reality and actuality, as a result of existing in an infinite mode. While Scholarios’s
interpretation of Palamas certainly ranks as an ulterior development of the Palamite thesis, we
saw that his faithfulness to the themes and fundamental approaches of Palamas, as in his debate
in 1355 with Gregoras, make the Scholarian approach highly defensible against those attacking
its Orthodox pedigree.
In this vein, we successfully discovered that Scholarios’s foundational text in his
Excursus was the Palamas-Gregoras debate of 1355 and a Palamite florilegium attributed to
1207
De Halleux (1973, 429–432) admits that Thomism’s obsession with Aristotelico-Thomistic simplicity has
unfortunately led to sacrifice somewhat the mystery of the Trinity (metaphysically), even to the point of
straining the meaning of patristic texts, anachronistically, to agree with Thomistic simplicity criterion.
366
Palamas (and employed in the synod of 1351), while also having access to the synodical tomes
of 1351 and 1368. Of course, the substance of this debate was inserted into the Scholarian
commentary-translation of Armandus on Aquinas’s De ente et essentia. After discovering
Scholarios’s embrace of Mayronist metaphysics in this same Excursus, we can now summarize
Scholarios’s essence-energies doctrine with a great deal of accuracy. Scholarios took up a
minor scholiast reading of Aristotle’s prime mover along the lines of Michael of Ephesus,
where there is a divine being whose act follows upon its essence or is a case of ens in actu.
This significant departure from Aquinas’s prime mover, as a case of restrictive actus purus,
was augmented with Meyronnes’ idiosyncratic Scotism. The effect of this synthesis led to
Scholarios distinguishing, in structural moments (sign, instantia) of nature, all interior divine
attributes in their natural order of existence, or of production. First, Scholarios views the
godhead, or θεότης, as a divine form, which supposes that it is something like a universal or
common nature. In scholiast fashion, Scholarios designated the divinity as “form” (τὸ εἶδος).
Secondly, Scholarios enlarged upon this description in his Excursus so that this form is said to
enjoy the attribute of infinity. However, because of his commitment to the fourfold mode of
real distinction in Meyronnes, this meant that, for Scholarios, the divine essence was modally
infinite. Effectively, this is a departure from Scotus’s distinctio formalis said to obtain between
modes and essences. In this respect, Scholarios is not really a Scotist but agrees with a more
complex description of the divinity and the explicit language of real distinctions in Francis
Meyronnes. After all, modal distinctions (viz., non-definable finitude vs. infinitude) are
completely real for Meyronnes, but they do not constitute cases of an essence (formalitas) that
contains an intelligible content (natura communis) that can be abstracted as a quiddity or
universal (τὸ κοινόν). Rather, Mayronist modes are intrinsic realities of every real essence that
attaches to the said essence supplying a necessary step in the order of a thing’s physical
structure, as the ratiocinating mind moves toward understanding a thing’s actuality or
existence. Next, both Scholarios and Meyronnes see infinity as the guarantor of a sort of
haecceity, or “this-ness,” belonging to the divine essence. As there can only be one actual
infinite in the universe, and since this infinite is not potentially divisible, but completely actual,
it must be a “this,” or an actual thing. Thus, like Palamas, George sees that the divine essence
can be designated as a res (πρᾶγμα). In his Excursus, Scholarios first explored a difference
between essence and existence with creatures. This common nature, or essence, is different
367
from the notion of an abstract essence in the mind as a universal. For Scholarios and
Meyronnes, existence cannot be reduced to finitude or infinitude of mode, as such, for finitude
or infinitude is only a designator of the possible intensity of existence for this or that being.
So, finitude or infinitude simply precedes the real existence of something, as a mode that
predetermines the intensity of an actual existence of whatever common nature actually exists.
Next, existence is an additive over and above the modally infinite or finite nature, with the
result that existence gives a thing the claim to reality. For Meyronnes, in God, actuality and
existence are one (unlike creatures). This would seem to be Scholarios’s assumption as well.
Once the formal essence of God and its infinity and existence are cataloged, then one can move
to a discussion of individuality (ἄτομο) of the divine persons, starting with the Father.
Scholarios’s and Meyronnes’ God views on God are very complex indeed. What is
more, we have not even begun a discussion of the distinction of the persons from the divine
essence (as something real for both Scholarios and Meyronnes), nor have we discussed in detail
Meyronnes and Scholarios and their doctrine of the rationes entium, or λόγοι ὄντων. Of course,
I explored values shared between the two authors when commenting on the Excursus. As
briefly mentioned by Scholarios, when he was citing Bonaventure’s Quaestiones disputatae
de mysterio trinitatis, each of these divine “ideas” or productions serves as an exemplar or
pattern upon which the finite attributes in beings are modeled. Like Meyronnes, Scholarios
holds that all attributes that are worthy of the divinity can be understood by human minds and
such notions are, thus, not intrinsically and per se infinite, but only potentially infinite when
they modify a divinely infinite essence. This exemplarism, allowing for creaturely participation
in the divine energies or attributes, though they are understood humanly in a purely finite
manner, is entirely alien to Thomistic thinking on the intelligible content within the mind of
the prime mover. Finally, we saw that Scholarios embraced the Scotistic rejoinder to Henry of
Ghent, whereby the divine will freely selects out rationes or (for Scotus) creabilia and creates
them without necessity. Of course, this position, whereby intellect and its operations are
distinguished from will and its operations, has no connection to Thomism. In short, Scholarios
thoroughly exposited a doctrine of modal and formal distinctions that – in every conceivable
way – justifies the ad intra metaphysics of Gregorios Palamas. The net result of Scholarios’s
Excursus is a complete divorce from Thomistic metaphysics and a radical embrace of
Palamism. The conceptual univocity of being, supposing a shared universe of energies between
368
God and human beings, formed the final seal on Scholarian doctrine, so that each and every
attribute of God justified the anthropomorphic language of scripture to a degree that would
have been unworthy of an Aristotelian prime mover. Finally, Scholarios did part ways with
standard Scholasticism on one matter, at least in the texts we were able to explore; namely, the
doctrine of the absolutely unknowable and non-signifiable essence of God. Even the
Franciscans, whom we have studied, had upheld some sort of vision of the divine essence,
often distinguishing like other Schoolmen between “comprehensive vision” and non-
comprehensive seeing of God’s naked being. 1208 As we saw with Torquemada’s (accurate)
accusations against Palamites at Florence, final beatitude in the Palamistic world consisted in
the mind’s eternal gaze on the plethora of divine perfections in patria. However, because the
essence of God is radically infinite, while the human intellect is at its core finite, there can be
no sense in which a finite intellect can know the divine essence directly. The following chart
conveys my conclusions, so far, on the matter from the texts investigated:
Visio Beatifica: Can mind see divine Can mind see divine Can mind see divine
divine vs. human mind essence directly? attributes directly? persons directly?
1208
For a discussion of the tenets within the Franciscan school and their fourteenth-century reception on the
question of human vision of divine essence, which proves unacceptable to Palamas and Scholarios, see Duba
2006, 41–50, 336–360. On the other hand, a small group of Franciscans defended (partially) the doctrine of
John XXII at Paris, especially Gerard Odinis. His Scotistic-based defense of the arguably more traditional
notion of the vision of God and final beatitude has been ably summarized in Duba 2009, 361. Therein, we
discover Gerard defending the following: (1) separate souls have a kind of vision of the divine essence (to be
taken equivocally to the notion of vision in a Thomist or even typical Franciscan); (2) the disembodied souls
have only essentially (soul) complete beatitude but still lack something proper to full (accidental) beatitude
since they lack the beatification (redundantia) of glory into the body; (3) therefore, perfect beatitude (like
Palamites) requires the glorified body; (4) the lumen gloriae is a virtuous disposition of the soul (unlike any
notion of ἕξις or διάθεσις in Palamism); (5) the beatific vision, essential to the state of beatitude (μακαριότης),
is intuitive (non-rational, non-discursive, non-abstractive) cognition lacking any species whatsoever; (6)
intuitive cognition, theoretically (unlike Palamism), could involve a species (like the other Schoolmen) but does
not factually do so in the real order of things; (7) abstract species are superfluous since the divine essence is
immediately present (not abstracted) in the intellect. The result of this theory is to place beatitude in an
experience of non-abstract or non-cognition presence of God that is perfectly “experienced” but not through
any concept or accident. The parting of ways between Gerard and Palamites would have been that (1) Palamites
entirely reject even the possibility of a species to mediate the divine presence that is quasi-mediated to the
soul/body by the divine attributes/energies, and (2) Palamites hold that not only divine presence is immediate
and unmediated and non-rationally experienced, but that entitates, or energies, in the divine essence are
contemplated by the soul (not through abstraction) in virtue of the divine presence in the soul.
369
Aquinas’s d: yes vs. h: yes d: no vs. h: no d: no vs. h: no
Work: Opera omnia (unitary object) (not an object) (not an object)
Bonaventure, commenta d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes
Scotus’s d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes
Work: Opera omnia (primary object) (tertiary object) (secondary object)
Hervaeus’s d: yes vs. h: no d: no vs. h: no d: yes vs. h: no
Work: commentaria (primary object) (not an object) (not an object)
Meyronnes’ d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes
Work: Opera omnia (primary object) (tertiary object) (secondary object)
Palamas’s d: yes vs. h: no d: yes vs. h: yes (primary d: yes vs. h: ?
Work: Opera omnia (not an object) object?) (secondary object?)
Scholarios’s d: yes vs. h: no d: yes vs. h: yes d: yes vs. h: yes
Work: Opera omnia (not an object) (primary object?) (secondary object?)
What becomes entirely clear in our study of Scholarios is the fact that he was fundamentally
motivated in his ad intra metaphysics of God by unadulterated Palamism. His entire
theological project of metaphysical theology can be reduced to an erudite and eclectic exercise
of intricate piety from a man, monk, and patriarch who was absolutely committed to his
Church’s tradition. Every aspect of Scholarios’s thought in our investigation has shown itself
to be under the spell of his Palamite forebears with respect to their fundamental conclusions,
and even with regard to the general outlines of their eclectic proclivities for doing theology.
As Kapriev correctly observes: “Scholarios consciously attempts to synthesize [metaphysical]
developments within the framework of the Latin speculative tradition with the Romaic
[Orthodox] tradition, as developed in Palamite doctrine. It has the power to hold together the
common foci within [what is otherwise] incommensurability. Scholarios has the potential to
become the engine for an even broader and more radical synthesis, which would nowadays be
able to exert an influence on the whole of Western culture. This synthesis was never
realized.” 1209 Such an evaluation of the Scholarian method of theology might satisfy Ware’s
own desideratum that scholars should search out common sources shared between Roman
Catholic Schoolmen and Orthodox Fathers and Palamites in order to bridge the gap between
the two traditions that often seem to be at odds with one another. 1210 In wholehearted
1209
Kapriev 2005, 344.
1210
Ware 1973, 16.
370
agreement with Kapriev’s sentiments, I consider it appropriate and even desirous to end this
study with a traditional Orthodox doxology to the Trinity. Scholarios’s own doxology in the
Ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκίνου βιβλίον τὸ Περὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῆς οὐσίας,
like the whole of his allegedly “Thomistic” work, glorifies the divinity in singular fashion:
Scholarios, εἰς τὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ, chap. 135: Armandus, Expositio Fratris Armandi, chap. 135:
ἔστιν αἰτία ποιητικὴ καὶ τελικὴ πάντων τῶν κτισμάτων. Solum illa prima substantia que est causa efficiens et
finalis omnium creaturarum
Καὶ αὕτη ἡ οὐσία ἐστὶν ὁ Θεός, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Υἱὸς αὐτοῦ
καὶ τὸ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα αὐτῶν, et hec substantia est ipse deus
ἡ ἐν τρισὶ προσώποις ἄκρα ἑνότης, καὶ ἐν ἄκρᾳ ἑνότητι

τριὰς ἀληθινή, [Bonaventure, Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio
trinitatis, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2: “Item, Bernardus ad
Eugenium: ‘Inter omnes unitates arcem tenet unitas
Trinitatis’; sed quod tenet summitatem inter aliqua
habet esse in summo: ergo unitas Trinitatis est unitas
summa, ergo simul stant vera trinitas et summa
unitas.”]
ἧς ἀρχὴ ὁ Πατὴρ μόνος, τουτέστι μόνος γεννήτωρ καὶ
μόνος προβολεύς· μόνος γάρ ἐστι προβολεὺς διὰ [Bonaventurian-inspired reduction of the filioque to
Λόγου, ὅτι μόνος γεννήτωρ· καὶ προβολεύς ἐστιν ὁ per filium versus ex filio]
αὐτός, καὶ μόνος ἐστὶ γεννήτωρ, ὅτι εἷς ἐστι Πατὴρ
αὐτός. Ὡσαύτως καὶ εἷς Υἱός, καὶ ἓν Πνεῦμα διὰ τοῦ
ἑνὸς Υἱοῦ τῷ ἑνὶ Πατρὶ συναπτόμενον, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ
ὁ Υἱὸς συνῆπται τῷ Πατρί· ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ Πατρός ἐστι
φυσικῶς τε καὶ συμφυῶς καὶ αὐτό.
Ταύτῃ τῇ μακαρίᾳ Τριάδι, τῇ μιᾷ πάντων ἀρχῇ, χάρις

καὶ τοῦ παρόντος ἔργου, ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ
εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα, αἶνός τε καὶ δόξα παρὰ πάντων in quo omnia: ex quo, et per quem omnia ipsi honor et
αὐτῷ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας· ἀμήν:— ipsius decus quem gloria per infinita secula
seculorum. Amen.
Τέλος τῆς εἰς τὸ βιβλίον τοῦ διδασκάλου Θωμᾶ περὶ
τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τοῦ εἶναι ἐξηγήσεως
371
[Preclarissimi ac eruditissimi sacre theologie magistri
Armandi ordinis predicatorum super librum De ente et
essentia Angelici doctoris [...] 1482]
372
Bibiliography
Manuscripts
Laurentianus Plut. 86, cod. 19
Oxoniensis Baroccianus gr. 145
Parisinus gr. 1417
Plut. 30 (Laurenziana Santa Croce)
Vat. gr. 609
Vat. gr. 1102
Vat. gr. 1294
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© Christiaan Kappes 2017

The Theology of the Divine Essence and Energies in George-Gennadios

Διδακτορικὴ Διατριβή, ὑποβληθείσα στὸ Τμῆμα Ποιμαντικῆς καὶ Κοινωνικῆς

In grateful acknowledgement of the support and guidance of His Eminence,

0.2 Chronology of George-Gennadios Scholarios ............................................................... 22

0.4 Ecclesiastico-Dogmatic Reception of Palamas’s Teaching in the Fourteenth Century . 29

0.6 The Second Stage of the Palamas-Barlaam Debate ....................................................... 32

0.7 The Third Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Akindynos ..................................................... 36

0.8 The Fourth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Gregoras ...................................................... 38

0.9 The Fifth Stage of the Debate: Palamas-Kydones.......................................................... 40

1. Latin Reception of Scholarios in Western Europe until Modern Times .......................... 49

2. Orthodox Reception of Scholarios within Greek Patriarchates until Modern Times....... 56

3. Conclusions regarding Historical Reception of Scholarios to Modernity. ....................... 63

Introduction: The Dogmatic Teaching of George-Gennadios Scholarios ............................ 65

1. Modern Misconceptions of Scholarios and Neo-Palamism ............................................. 66

2. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics by Martin Jugie ........................................... 69

3. The Deformation of Scholarian Dogmatics Sébastian Guichardan.................................. 77

4. Neo-Palamism in Opposition to Jugie and Guichardan ................................................... 79

5. Contemporary Status Quaestionis on the Scholarian Corpus and Doctrine ..................... 86

1. Manuel-Markos Eugenikos: Tutor of Young Scholarios (c. 1413–c. 1418/1420) ........... 98

2. Scholarios and Francesco Filelfo (1420–1427) .............................................................. 101

3. Georgios Gemistos Pletho: Scholarios’s Tutor (1428–1430)? ....................................... 103

5. John-Ignatios Chortasmenos (1370–d. c. 1431/6/7): Scholarios’s Professor of Logic (post

7. Scholarios in Constantinople until the Council of Florence (1430–1437) ..................... 112

Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 134

1. Scholarios as Palamite Researcher at Ferrara (1438) ..................................................... 144

2. Scholarios and the Scholarly Environment of Ferrara ................................................... 147

4. Scholarios in Florence until His Return to Constantinople (1439–1440) ...................... 159

5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 177

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 181

2. A Mere Translation of Armandus’s Commentary on the De ente et essentia? .............. 200

3. Scholarios’s Excursus within Armandus’s Commentary on De ente et essentia ........... 213

3. Scholarios’s Use of Franciscans in Service of Palamism............................................... 250

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 270

1. Divine Infinity as Foil to Composition in the Divinity .................................................. 271

2. Non-Separability Criterion as Foil to Composition in God ........................................... 284

3. Corollaries to the Non-Separability Criterion in Relation to Composition in God ........ 293

4. Reminiscences of the Council of Ferrara-Florence ........................................................ 295

5. Retrojecting Meyronnes’ Fourfold Real Distinction into Thomism .............................. 301

6. Scholarios’s Theory of Predication: Univocity or Analogy of the Concept of Being? .. 313

Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 326

2. Scholarios’s Mature Position on Dogmatic Palamism ................................................... 344

3. Scholarios’s Final Opusculum Defending Dogmatic Palamism .................................... 356

Manuscripts ........................................................................................................................ 373

Primary Sources ................................................................................................................. 373

Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................. 395

Apparatus G. Hoffman (ed.), Apparatus super decretum Florentinum unionis Graecorum,

CD B. Suchla, G. Heil, and A. Ritter (eds.), Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius

DZ H. Denzinger, P. Hünermann, R. Fastiggi (eds.), Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et

Excursus George-Gennadios Scholarios, Excursus, chaps. 94–95 (OCGS 6:281–285), in

HBPM Herders Bibliothek der Philosophie des Mittelalters 29

Memoirs Sylvester Syropoulos, Les “Mémoires” du Grand Ecclésiarque de l’Église de

PIOS Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum

NE Aristotlis Ethica Nicomachea

Quarrachi Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, 9 vols. Quarrachi: Ad

SG Summa contra Gentiles

Tractatus Andrew Escobar. Tractatus polemico–theologicus De graecis errantibus

TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae

George-Gennadios Kourteses Scholarios (c. 1400-c.1472), handpicked successor of

0.2 Chronology of George-Gennadios Scholarios

The updated prosopographic details of Scholarios are available in Prosopographisches

0.3 The Essence-Energies Dogma and the Place of Palamism in Orthodoxy

0.4 Ecclesiastico-Dogmatic Reception of Palamas’s Teaching in the Fourteenth Century