Barlaam of Seminara

Barlaam of Seminara (Bernardo Massari, as a layman), c. 1290–1348, or Barlaam of Calabria (Βαρλαὰμ Καλαβρός) was a Basilian monk, theologian and humanistic scholar born in southern Italy. He was a scholar and clergyman of the 14th century, as well as a humanist, philologist and theologian. When Gregorios Palamas defended Hesychasm (the Eastern Orthodox Church's mystical teaching on prayer), Barlaam accused him of heresy. Three Eastern Orthodox synods ruled against him and in Palamas's favor (two Councils of Sophia in June and August 1341, and a Council of Blachernae in 1351). Barlaam was born in what is now the comune of Seminara, Calabria, in a Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox environment. He was an ethnic Greek. Bernardo moved to Constantinople in the 1320s, where he soon gained entrance into ecclesiastical and political circles, especially those around the emperor Andronicus III Palaeologus, who gave him a teaching position at the university. He was made Basilian monk at the monastery of Sant'Elia di Capassino and assumed the name Barlaam. Eventually, he was made the Hegumen (abbot) of the Monastery of Our Savior, and two confidential missions on behalf of the emperor were entrusted to him. Historian Colin Wells characterizes Barlaam as "brilliant but sharp-tongued", describing him as "thoroughly versed in the classics, an astronomer, a mathematician, as well as a philosopher and a theologian. However, according to Wells, "this formidable learning was coupled with an arrogant, sarcastic manner, so caustic at times that he put off even friends and allies." During the years 1333–1334, Barlaam undertook to negotiate the union of churches with the representatives of Pope John XXII. For this occasion he wrote twenty-one treatises against the Latins in which he opposed papal primacy and the filioque doctrine. Emperor Andronicus III sent Barlaam on important diplomatic missions to Robert the Wise in Naples and to Philip VI in Paris.