St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica

St. Gregory Palamas was born in 1296 in Constantinople. His father, a dignitary in the court of the emperor Andronicus II Paleologos, died in St. Gregory's youth, and Andronicus himself took a hand in raising the boy. St. Gregory was bright and diligent, mastering all the subjects of a medieval higher education, and Andronicus hoped St. Gregory would devote himself to civil service. Instead, just past the age of 20, St. Gregory withdrew to Mt. Athos and became a novice at Vatopedi under the guidance of Elder Nicodemus.

St. Gregory spent ten years on Mt. Athos, and during this time he became fully imbued with the spirit of hesychasm, adopting it as an essential part of his life. In 1326, he and the brethren at skete of Glossia (where he had settled after the death of Elder Nicodemus and his second guide, Elder Nicephorus) relocated to Thessalonica because of the threat of Turkish invasion. In Thessalonica St. Gregory was ordained to the holy priesthood. Finding a suitable place for the solitary life near Thessalonica in Bereia, he moved there and soon gathered a small community of solitary monks, which he guided for five years.

In the 1330s the learned monk Barlaam, a skilled orator who had received a university chair in Constantinople, began to declare mental prayer a heretical error and disputed with the hesychasts. At the request of the Athonite monks, St. Gregory admonished Barlaam, at first verbally, but later with his Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts. He assisted the Athonite monks in preparing a more general response to Barlaam, and at the Constantinople Council of 1341 he debated Barlaam directly. St. Gregory's arguments convinced the rest of the council, and they condemned Barlaam's teachings as heresy.

This did not end the debates; Barlaam's disciple Akyndinos, Patriarch John XIV Kalekos and emperor Andronicus III Paleologos still held to Barlaam's error, and the Patriarch, calling St. Gregory "the cause of all disorders and disturbances in the Church," locked him up in prison for four years. However, when John was succeeded by Patriarch Isidore in 1347, St. Gregory was freed and was made Archbishop of Thessalonica. The Council of Blachernae in 1351 upheld the Orthodoxy of St. Gregory's teachings.

St. Gregory fell asleep in the Lord in 1359, and was canonized in 1368.