Theoleptus of Philadelphia

Nicean writer and teacher

• Born: c. 1250
• Birthplace: Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey)
• Died: c. 1326
• Place of death: Philadelphia (now Alasehir, Turkey)

As a spiritual writer, dynamic speaker, and respected teacher among medieval Greeks, Theoleptus played a major role in preventing the reunion of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. He also was influential in promoting Hesychasm, a mystical form of prayer and meditation.

Early Life

Theoleptus (THEE-ah-LEHP-tuhs) was born into a Christendom that was divided, long before the sixteenth century Reformation. Differences between the Latin Christianity of the West and the Greek Christianity of the East were long-standing. In the sixth century, the Filioque controversy had begun. The Western church, believing that the Christian Church could grow and unfold in time, and trusting in reason and the intellect, added this word to the Nicene Creed of the second century: “Credo . . . in Spiritum Sanctum . . . qui ex Patre Filioque procedit” (I believe . . . in the Holy Spirit . . . who proceeds from the Father and the Son). The Eastern church, believing the Christian Church to be fixed and immutable, and relying on tradition and mysticism, insisted that the Holy Spirit proceeded only from the Father and that this doctrine had been upheld by the early Church fathers. Theologians of the West desired a more precise definition of the Godhead, while those of the East saw such a quest as producing legalistic interference. The Filioque doctrine had become entrenched in the West by the eighth century, but the Eastern church continued to oppose it and to claim true orthodoxy for its interpretation.

In addition to the Filioque issue, there were other doctrinal and liturgical differences. The Western church eventually came to forbid marriage of the clergy, while the East continued to allow it. The West forbade divorce; the Eastern church, never having completely cut its ties to the state, viewed marriage as a civil contract and tolerated divorce under certain conditions. The West had teachings on Purgatory, while in the East such things were thought to be unknowable. The Western church used cold water and unleavened bread in the celebration of the Eucharist, while the Eastern church used warm water and leavened bread.

All these matters reflected the deepest division, which centered on the question of authority: Would Rome or Constantinople lead Christianity? In 1054, a Western cardinal laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople a decree excommunicating the patriarch of Constantinople. The next day, the patriarch expelled the papal legate, and a schism between the two churches resulted. While Latin churches and monasteries in the East continued to maintain contact with local Orthodox bishops, the Western church increasingly came to view Constantinople as rigid and decadent, and the Eastern church came to see Rome as careless and arrogant.

The Crusades, which began in 1095 and which brought a massive Western presence into the Byzantine world, steadily reinforced these differences. During the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), the Greeks, hating their emperor, Alexius III Angelus, for taking orders from Western Crusaders and the pope, resisted the emperor. Crusaders then overthrew Alexius; sacked, pillaged, and raped in Constantinople; made Baldwin, count of Flanders, the Eastern Roman emperor; and divided Asia Minor among ten rulers and four national groups. This situation did not last; still, the Crusades, and particularly the events of 1204, served to solidify the differences between the Roman West and the Greek East.

During the latter half of the thirteenth century, when Theoleptus was a young man, the Eastern emperor, Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1259-1282), sought reconciliation with the Western powers, for he feared the power of the encroaching Turks. He was joined by Patriarch John XI Becchus (1275-1282) and certain other powerful Orthodox clergymen. The majority of the Orthodox clergy and people, however, remembering centuries of differences and the abuses of the Crusades, opposed such a reunion. Theoleptus would join the latter.

Life’s Work

Reconciliation between the Roman and Byzantine churches was accomplished at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. Opening on May 2, it was presided over by Pope Gregory X and attended by more than five hundred prominent Western clergymen, making it the largest ecclesiastical gathering since the Second Lateran Council of 1139. The Greek delegation, which did not arrive until June 24, consisted of Germanus, a representative of the patriarch of Constantinople; Theophanus, archbishop of Nicaea; the chancellor; and two high officials of the Eastern Empire. The Greek delegation also brought a letter of support signed by five hundred Greek clergymen. Nevertheless, most prominent Orthodox clergymen boycotted the council.

The council agreed on July 26, at its fourth session, to a plan of reconciliation. The council agreed to the Filioque doctrine a determination that had been made even before the Greek delegation arrived on June 24. The reunion plan also upheld Western teachings on marriage of the clergy, Purgatory, and the celebration of the Eucharist. Finally, the plan called for the supremacy of the Roman pope in all disputes. Virtually every area of dispute was decided in favor of the Western teaching, and the Greek delegation accepted these decisions.

Shortly after the council’s pronouncements had been promulgated, Theoleptus, an Orthodox church deacon, openly repudiated the council’s stance. With the support of the majority of Orthodox clergy, he began to organize opposition to the decrees, principally in Bithynia, in northwestern Asia Minor near Constantinople. His polemics resulted in his excommunication by the patriarch of Constantinople, and Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus imprisoned and mistreated him. After his release in 1275, Theoleptus left the wife whom he had only recently married, abandoned the diaconate, and retired as a monk to Mount Athos in northeastern Greece, near the city of Thessalonica.

Mount Athos was a center of monasticism. Here Theoleptus practiced a form of prayer and spirituality known as Hesychasm, from the Greek word hĪsychia (quiet). An early form of Hesychasm had been practiced by certain Greeks who had called for a solitary life and withdrawal from the world. At Mount Athos, Theoleptus was a student of Nicephorus the Athonite, who taught a variation on Hesychasm that did not require withdrawing into the wilderness. Under Nicephorus, Theoleptus learned a profound silence and spiritual vigilance brought about by fixing the eyes on the middle of the body, controlled breathing, and concentrating on a litany known as the “Jesus prayer.” These disciplines elevated the mind from the world and human passions and were believed to result in an intuition of God in the form of light. Theoleptus’s writings on Hesychasm exerted a profound influence on the fourteenth century Hesychast and contemplative Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). Theoleptus remained at Mount Athos, first as a student and later as a spiritual teacher, for ten years, and his reputation grew throughout the Byzantine world.

With the 1282 accession of Andronicus II Palaeologus as Eastern Roman emperor and of Gregory II Cyprius (1241-1290) in 1283 as patriarch of Constantinople, the antiunionists among the Greeks once again gained ascendancy. To Theoleptus’s satisfaction, the Council of Lyon’ decrees and union with the West were repudiated. Because of his earlier opposition to reunion and his reputation as a spiritual leader at Mount Athos, Theoleptus was made archbishop of Philadelphia in 1285. Philadelphia, in southeastern Asia Minor, eighty miles east of the port city of Smyrna (now İzmir), had been Christian since apostolic times. It was the titular see of the province of Lydia, but during the fourteenth century its jurisdiction came to extend over other neighboring sees as well. Theoleptus would be the spiritual leader here for at least thirty-five years, until his death; he did, however, frequently depart to spend long periods in Constantinople.

As archbishop of Philadelphia, Theoleptus was once again thrust into controversy. He wrote a blistering attack against the Orthodox clergy who had followed the unionist patriarch John XI Becchus. He even turned on the new patriarch, Gregory II. Gregory actually had wanted unity, but without a complete surrender to Western doctrines. In opposition to the Western Filioque doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son the Orthodox followed Photius’s teaching regarding the “eternal progression” of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone and the “emission in time” by the Son.

Gregory, seeing a need for delineating a clearer, more permanent relationship between the Father and the Son, attempted a compromise. In a tome written in 1285, Gregory proposed the “eternal manifestation” of the Spirit by the Son. After the publication of this treatise, Theoleptus and many other Orthodox clergy refused to mention Gregory’s name during the enactment of the liturgy; later, however, Theoleptus pronounced Gregory orthodox, after the latter disavowed certain passages in the 1285 tome. Nevertheless, Gregory ultimately pleased no one; he came to be denounced by unionists and antiunionists alike, including Theoleptus, whose renewed attack was instrumental in persuading the emperor and a church synod to remove Gregory from the office of patriarch in 1289.

In 1303, Theoleptus reportedly helped to rally the residents of Philadelphia against a Turkish siege of the city, at a time when many bishops were deserting their sees because of the Turkish threat. The city would change hands many times between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, succumbing permanently to the Turks under Sultan Bayezid I’s leadership (r. 1389-1402) in 1390; at that time, it was renamed Alasehir.

On the death in 1308 of John Palaeologus, son of Emperor Andronicus II, Theoleptus became spiritual adviser to his widow, the empress Irene, daughter of Nicephorus Chumnus. Widowed at sixteen, after four years of marriage, she entered a convent in Constantinople under the name Eulogia. Theoleptus was the spiritual director of this convent and also of an adjacent monastery. In about 1320, Eulogia’s parents requested of Theoleptus that they be allowed to be near their daughter. Nicephorus Chumnus was permitted to enter the monastery, and her mother joined Eulogia’s convent. Not long afterward, Theoleptus died, and it was Nicephorus who presented the funeral oration, which has been preserved as a valuable summary of Theoleptus’s life. A generation after Theoleptus’s death, Eulogia would take part in theological controversies against Gregory Palamas.

In his final years, Theoleptus is supposed to have skillfully defended Hesychasm against the attacks of one its most virulent critics, Barlaam the Calabrian (c. 1290-c. 1350), a pro-Western Italo-Greek monk, theologian, and bishop. Because Barlaam first appeared as a teacher at the Imperial University in Constantinople in 1326, many believe that Theoleptus lived until that year. According to Nicephorus Chumnas, however, Theoleptus died shortly after 1320. In any case, Barlaam ridiculed Hesychasm, calling its practitioners omphalopsychoi (men with their souls in their navels). The written and oral debates of Barlaam with the monks of Mount Athos after the death of Theoleptus (in the 1330’s and 1340’) actually helped bring Hesychasm into prominence.

Significance

Centuries before the Reformation, the most serious division in the medieval Church was the one that separated the church of Rome from the church of Constantinople. Theoleptus of Philadelphia played a major role during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in opposing, reversing, and keeping reversed the reunion of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.

Despite the centuries of division, the Orthodox were much closer to Rome dogmatically than were the individualistic Protestant sects that arose later. Paradoxically, Theoleptus actually spent his life upholding sacramentalism and the ideal unity of the Christian Church. According to Theoleptus, Christ never intended anything less than one faith, one doctrine, and one Church, united under him. Theoleptus conceived of the monastic Hesychast life as having a prophetic mission to benefit the whole world, not merely as a means of individual salvation.

Theoleptus was a dynamic religious writer and orator, a charismatic teacher and spiritual leader, and a composer of hymns. Almost all of his works remain unedited. Despite his importance, his name is rarely mentioned even in histories of the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire or of the Greek Orthodox church. Scholars in the English-speaking world would do well to give attention to this influential teacher.

Bibliography

Geanakoplos, Deno John. Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258-1282: A Study in Byzantine-Latin Relations. 1959. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1973. A helpful work on the character of the Eastern emperor who sought reunion with the West. Chapter 2, “The Ecclesiastical Union of Lyons,” contains an excellent summary of East-West differences, although it does not mention Theoleptus. Well annotated and indexed, good bibliography.

Hero, Angela Constantinides, ed. The Life and Letters of Theoleptos of Philadelphia. Brookline, Mass.: Hellenic College Press, 1994. Surveys Theoleptus’s significant work toward the spiritual formation of the Eastern Orthodox church. Also discusses Empress Irene. Greek text with English translation and commentary. Bibliography, index.

Hughes, Philip. The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1961. While it does not contain information on Theoleptus, this work is a clear and concise description of the important Second General Council of Lyon in 1274, which reunited the Latin West and Orthodox East after more than two centuries of division. It was his repudiation of this council that gave Theoleptus historical importance. Bibliography, index.

Le Guillou, M. J. The Spirit of Eastern Orthodoxy. Translated by Donald Attwater. New York: Hawthorn, 1962. This concise monograph introduces the reader to the “church outside the Church,” that is, the Byzantine (Orthodox) heritage in Christendom. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on the estrangement between Rome and the Orthodox churches of the East, concentrating on the two largest churches, the Greek and Russian Orthodox. Select bibliography.

Meyendorff, John. A Study of Gregory Palamas. Translated by George Lawrence. 1964. Reprint. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998. This work centers on the renowned contemplative Gregory Palamas, who was influenced by Theoleptus in the practice of Hesychasm and who was a spokesman for conservative Orthodoxy. There are numerous references to Theoleptus but only about four or five total pages of information on him, which appear mostly in chapter 1. Brief bibliography and an index.

Pavlikianov, Cyril. The Medieval Aristocracy on Mount Athos: The Philological and Documentary Evidence for the Activity of Byzantine, Georgian, and Slav Aristocrats and Eminent Churchmen in the Monasteries of Mount Athos from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century. Sofia, Bulgaria: Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies, 2001. A study of the literary and documentary evidence of the activities of the ruling elite of Mount Athos during Theoleptus’s time.

Runciman, Steven. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Chapter 4, “The Church and the Churches,” is an excellent description of the differences between Latin West and Greek East just before and during the time of Theoleptus, although Theoleptus himself is only briefly mentioned. Bibliography and thorough index.

Sinkewicz, Robert E., trans. The Monastic Discourses: Theoleptos of Philadelphia. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992. A critical examination of Theoleptus’s theological writings during his monastic life. English and Greek text on facing pages. Bibliography, index.