The hesychast controversy : a practice and attitude

Abstract

The Hesychast controversy in the Late Byzantine period may be perceived as one of the last segments of the ongoing debate between outer wisdom, based on pagan philosophy, and inner wisdom, the teachings of Christianity. The focus of this thesis is an attitude perceived among a certain group of monks that dismisses scholarship, particularly secular learning, stressing religious experience instead and positioning its adherents as a spiritual elite in a fight for authority against a scholarly establishment. The controversy has not been researched thoroughly, and in the scholarly literature the controversy seems to be disjunct from the meditative practices of hesychasm itself and often presented as the result of political-social-intellectual developments. However, given the emphasis on religious experience and access to knowledge beyond words exhibited by the hesychasts when their divine visions during meditation came into question, the attitudes against secular learning should be investigated with the development of the practice itself. $ This thesis argues that the inner-outer wisdom debate, which had emerged in the Late Antique period, got its hesychast flavor only in and after the tenth century with the development of meditative practices. It was necessary for the meditative practices around hesychasm to mature to a sufficient extent in order for the rejection of scholarship based on reason and the accompanying spiritual elitism to make their presence felt. As religious experience, like any other experience, is mediated, only after the development of a successful practice, allowing replication and participation, could scholarship be countered with spiritual experience. A perspective from the Islamic world focusing on the developments around dhikr suggest that the controversy was already in the making. The development of a meditative practice would create a spiritual elite who, having gained confidence and legitimacy through their access to an alternative mode of knowledge acquisition, would ensure that regular learning should only have a secondary position in public life.