Because the question of the veneration of St Gregory Palamas by Eastern Catholics comes up from time to time on social media, I thought it might be useful to see how his commemoration was restored in the Melkite Catholic Church in the early 1970s. The debate that this caused was somewhat contentious, but some of the information raised by various participants is also quite useful for the history of liturgy within the Orthodox Church of Antioch. Of particular interest, to me at least, is that, despite the large number of available Arabic and Syriac manuscripts, no one seems to have identified any Greek liturgical manuscripts used in the Patriarchate of Antioch in the 14th-17th centuries. Also, the letter to the Propaganda Fide attributed to Patriarch Athanasius Dabbas is very unlikely to have been written by the patriarch himself, who by 1718 had already decisively turned against the Latin missionaries. It should almost certainly be attributed to his ardently Catholic secretary, Abdallah Zakher, who is known to have written two short anti-Palamite treatises and in other matters (such as the affair of Euthymius Sayfi) is known to have been reprimanded by Dabbas for writing hyper-Latin statements in his name.
The following is translated from the journal Istina 21.1 (1976), 55-65:
On the “Reintroduction” of the Feast of Gregory Palamas in the Melkite Liturgy
A small phrase, slipped without malice into the introduction to issue 3, 1974 of Istina, dedicated to Gregory Palamas, has provoked correspondence that we think is useful to bring to the attention of our readers. The phrase that became a topic of debate was the following: “These facts should incite Catholics who lay claim to the entirety of the patristic tradition to extreme circumspection about the fundamental thesis of Palamism. Otherwise, they risk doing like the Eastern Greek patriarchate which, in its haste to ‘reintroduce’ Palamas into the liturgy, did not realize that, when it was still Orthodox, it had never given him such a place” (p. 259). One will quickly recognize an allusion to the decision of the Holy Synod of the Melkite Church held at Ain Traz in August 1971.
We will first publish a letter by the Rev Fr Olivier Raquez, superior of the Greek College of Rome. It is a private letter addressed to the journal. Following an indiscretion, this letter was published, without any authorization being asked, in Le Lien (1974, no. 6, pp. 47-48), the official bulletin of the Melkite Patriarchate, even before Fr Raquez’s letter reached the journal. Fr Raquez reminds us—something we already knew—that certain liturgical books of the Melkite Patriarchate in the 17th century contained a commemoration of Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday of Lent.
Putting this letter into the public domain, the editors of Le Lien accompanied it with a brief note by Mgr P. L. Medawar which recounts the circumstances under which the decision of Ain Traz was made in 1971.
The facts evoked by Fr Raquez did not, however, seem convincing to Mgr Nasrallah, exarch of Antioch in Paris. In the article that we publish below, Mgr Nasrallah argues that the decision of 1971 cannot be considered a “reintroduction” of Palamas’ feast into the Melkite liturgy but rather constitutes a real innovation. He is certain that the facts uncovered by Fr Raquez at most prove the existence of a commemoration of Gregory Palamas in the Melkite Church in the 17th and 18th centuries. But at present in the Byzantine liturgy it is a solemn feast with its own office, which is rather different and of altogether different significance.
We sent Mgr Nasrallah’s text to Fr Raquez. We are grateful to him for once again informing us of the result of his research on the place of Palamaas in the liturgy of the Melkite Church of the 17th century.
The differences of opinion that thus appear with regard to this liturgical fact demonstrate, in any case, that it covers an underlying question deserving attention.
I. Letter of Fr Olivier Raquez
October 16, 1974
I read with surprise in no. 3 (1974) of your journal the final phrase of your introduction (p. 259): “they risk doing like the Eastern Greek patriarchate which, in its haste to ‘reintroduce’ Palamas into the liturgy, did not notice that, when it was still Orthodox, it had never given him such a place.”
Your write “in its haste to reintroduce Palamas into its liturgy.” You might have read Le Lien 1971, no. 5, p. 14, which gives a summary of the Synod of Ain Traz, which dealt with that issue. It states the following: “Re-introduction into the Triodion of the commemoration of the commemoration and Office of Saint Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday of Lent. It is in response to a question from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that His Beatitude the Patriarch submitted the issue to our Holy Synod. The favorable response given by the Holy Synod is the subject of a letter that His Beatitude sent to Cardinal Seper dated August 29, 1971.”
Let me allow myself to point out to you that it is not the Melkites who took the initiative, but the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Second, the Eastern Catholic patriarchate does not speak directly of reintroducing into its Liturgy but gives its opinion on the re-introduction into the Byzantine liturgy in general, which was Cardinal Seper’s question. In fact, in any case, up to the present the Melkite liturgy in force has not been modified. So there is no haste to reintroduce into the liturgy!
Your introduction continues by stating that said patriarchate did not realize that, when it was still Orthodox, it had never given such a place to Gregory Palamas. I do not know who the informant of your journal is, but this is truly unfortunate, since the Melkites or the Greeks of the Near East did indeed celebrate the memory of Gregory Palamas when they were Orthodox and even during the period when they started the long negotiations that would end in union with Rome by one part of that Church.
In fact, you will know that the first printed Arabic liturgical books are from the beginning of the 18th century. The first printed Horologion is from 1701-1702. It was printed in Wallachia at the request of the Patriarch Athanasius who, at the time, was Catholic (elected patriarch in 1685, having made a Catholic profession of faith, he would be confirmed by Rome in 1687- his position nevertheless remains ambiguous because in 1722 he signed, along with Chysanthos of Jerusalem, an encyclical against the doctrinal divergences of the Catholics). This Horologion contains a mention of the commemoration of Gregory Palamas.
The earlier manuscript tradition gives us the same testimony. I draw to your attention in this regard that Fr Cyrill Korolevsky, in his Histoire des Patriarcats melkites, vol. 3, pp. 100-102, describes manuscript Arabic 172 of the Borgia Arabic collection, held at the Vatican Library. On folios 205v-206r, it has the note “On the Second Sunday of Lent we celebrate the memory of our holy Father Gregory the Wonderworker, archbishop of Thessalonica.” This rubric is followed by the troparia, apolitikon and kontakion corresponding to the traditional Greek texts. This manuscript is dated 1634. It is a translation from the Greek by the bishop of Aleppo, Meletius, who later became patriarch under the name Euthymius Karma (1635-1648). Meletius himself sent this manuscript to Rome, to Pope Urban VIII, at the time when he wanted to unite with him.
The manuscript mentioned by Korolevsky is not unique in its genre. A rapid survey at the Vatican allowed me to find one other in the Sbath collection (no. 24, f. 174). This latter example, contemporary to the first, is amusing since the text that refers to Gregory Palamas was crossed out, probably by some pious hand that saw in it a disturbing theme; but in the margin someone later wrote, “on this day which is the Second Sunday of Lent, we celebrate the entire office of Saint Gregory the Theologian. May the hand whither which dared to erase the memory of this saint, the Advocate of Orthodoxy, who continues until today to perform his miracles for those who invoke him!”
The memory of Palamas was genuinely venerated. We find a witness for this in a request sent around the year 1718 by the Patriarch Athanasius, which we mentioned above. This request is kept in the Archives of the Propaganda in Rome (Scritture riferite 1718, folios 235-236). Athanasius’ request to the Roman congregation is the following: “Can a Catholic prelate tolerate the office of Saint Gregory Palamas, a bishop who died in schism but considered holy by the Greeks, in order to be able to suppress his commemoration after a certain period of time, when we have taken hold of the spirit of the clergy and people who are not yet Catholic; would it be sufficient, while waiting for that, to understand by the this name that of Gregory of Nazianzus or of Nyssa?”
Finally, you will know that the Office of the Holy Relics in usage among the Melkite Catholics is a composition by the Patriarch Maximos Mazloum (1833-1855). No specific office replaced that of Palamas before its composition last century. Consulting a catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts of Deir el-Shir, we found mention of several Arabic manuscripts of the Triodion. Most contain the office of Palamas, even if they were completed with a marginal note making it known that this office had been abrogated by Patriarch Mazloum and replaced with that of the Holy Relics (cf., for example, MS 155, folios 178-194, dated 1724 and MS 156, folio 541, which is older)…
Fr Olivier Raquez
II. Note on the Feast of Saint Gregory Palamas
By Mgr Pierre K. Médawar
In Le Lien no. 4 of 1971, pages 48-53, there is the first part of an article on the Greek Catholic missionaries in China, of which the first was Fr Antoine Cotta, who died in 1957. At the bottom of page 49, there is a note (2) where there is a discussion of an Arabic manuscript of the Triodion, copied by a certain Antoine Cotta in 1839 in Cairo and offered to the Church of Our Lady. Attached is a complementary extract of that note (2).
“On the Second Sunday of Lent there figures the commemoration of Saint Gregory Palamas, with the entire office. Which means that at that time our Church still celebrated said feast. When, several years later (December 1843), Maximos III Mazloum replaced this commemoration with the Feast of the Holy Relics, the pages with the office of Saint Gregory Palamas were crossed out.”
The first edition of our Arabic Triodion, that of Khalil Badaoui, was made in 1903. Up until that time, we used manuscript Triodia (like that of Antoine Cotta) or the Orthodox edition made in 1856 by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. After the order of Maximos III Mazloum, the pages of this printed Orthodox Triodion were crossed out by us or were simply cut out and destroyed. I have seen books in this condition.
What happened in 1971 is exactly the following:
The Greek editions of the Triodion made by Rome in 1738 and 1879 had omitted inclusion of the commemoration and office of Saint Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday of Lent. Now, the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches is in the process of editing a Greek Anthologion in four small, elegant and practical volumes. Volumes I and IV have already appeared. Before printing Volume II of this Anthologion, which includes the Tridion, the ad hoc liturgical commission wanted to get the opinion of certain Roman dicastries on the precise question of whether the feast and office of Saint Gregory Palamas should be reestablished for the Second Sunday of Lent. Before giving his response, Cardinal Seper wanted to consult our Patriarch—and probably other church leaders—about the orthodoxy of Palamite doctrine and the possibility of recognizing the sainthood of figures who died outside the Catholic Church (letter of April 3, 1971). Our Patriarch Maximos V Hakim made the following response on April 21, 1971 (later adopted by the Holy Synod in its session of August 1971):
“… As concerns the question of the principle followed by the Catholic Church up to now of not officially recognizing a member of a separated Church as a saint, it seems that this principle needs, in the current ecumenical era, to be reviewed and rectified; all the more since the separation, as it was triggered and experienced, did not in itself imply a personal or even communal rejection of a doctrine defined or taught by tradition…
With regard to the opportunity to reintroduce the commemoration of Gregory Palamas in the second volume of the Anthologion that will be published, in the current situation I do not see anything inconvenient about reintroducing the feast and the office of this saint of the Orthodox Church, taking care to mention that this feast was introduced by the Orthodox Church in the 14th century. In short, we recognize a fact of the Orthodox Church, without approving its legitimacy, just as we now call them Orthodox without insisting on the real meaning of the word.
The importance of the question from the dogmatic and liturgical point of view would, in my opinion, require a synodal response. Our Holy Synod will meet this coming August. We will examine this aspect and we will write to you immediately after the conclusion of the synod…”
III. The Melkite Church and Gregory Palamas
By Mgr Joseph Nasrallah
After our Synod of Ain Traz in August 1971 had admitted the “re-integration” (introduction would have been more accurate and more in line with history) of the feast of Gregory Palamas into the calendar of the Triodion on the Second Sunday of Lent, we undertook a small study to show our disagreement. Urgent activities obliged us to delay its publication until later.
Reading an article in Le Lien (1974, no. 6, pp. 47-48) obliges us to step out of our reserve and to deliver the following reflections.
The Rev Fr Olivier Raquez takes up the defense of our Church against the journal Istina.[1] We thank the Reverend Father superior of the Greek College for his intention. Unfortunately, his arguments are quite weak and made from steel that would benefit from being quenched.
Our response to the Synod included three parts:
1. True sainthood can exist and effectively has existed in the non-Catholic Churches, whether non-Chalcedonian or “Orthodox.” Among the former, we could present the typical case of Isaac of Nineveh, considered by our Melkite authors of the Middle Ages as a saint and whose works, first translated into Greek by the Sabaites Patrikios and Abraham, and then into Arabic by one of the most prolific Melkite authors, Abdallah ibn al-Fadl (11th century), afterwards held a place among the ascetic collections of our Church. We add these details as a compliment to the wonderful demonstration undertaken by the Re Fr I. Hausherr[2] in which he evokes the figure of someone who is more than just a “heterodox” Father, who lit the way for the monastic life of generations of monks, whether Catholic or not. Let us content ourselves to cite two passages concerning Isaac of Nineveh: “No mystical writer has been praised more magnificently than ‘Saint Isaac the Syrian’. Even among the Latins, although he was confused with the Isaac of which Saint Gregory the Great spoke of in his Dialogues.”[3] For Arseniev, Isaac of Nineveh is “the great Isaac the Syrian”, “perhaps the greatest mystic of the Eastern Church, superior to Symeon the New Theologian, who is only one of the greatest mystics of the Church of the East.”[4]
We could also cite the Monophysite Philoxenus of Mabbug, from whom our Melkite homilaries borrowed several sermons. If we pass to the saints venerated in our Melkite calendar, we could cite the martyrs of Najran, al-Harith and his companions.
2. Setting aside Gregory Palamas’ belonging to the Orthodox Church—which poses no problem—before pronouncing on the “re-introduction” of his feast our Synod should have examined: 1. the rectitude of his doctrine; 2. the holiness of his life. But these two points have hardly been addressed, to our knowledge, and some Orthodox authors themselves do not accept them without restriction.[5] Moreover, the response of His Beatitude Maximos V, dated April 21, 1971, to the consultation that Cardinal Seper requested on April 3, 1971, was much more nuanced than the Synod’s decision: “With regard to the opportunity to reintroduce the commemoration of Gregory Palamas in the second volume of the Anthologion that will be published, in the current situation I do not see anything inconvenient about reintroducing the feast and the office of this saint of the Orthodox Church, taking care to mention that this feast was introduced by the Orthodox Church in the 14th century. In short, we recognize a fact of the Orthodox Church, without approving its legitimacy, just as we now call them Orthodox without insisting on the real meaning of the word.”
3. Our Patriarchate of Antioch was among the great opponents of Palamas. So we can’t blame ourselves for forgetting our own tradition. On the contrary, it is out of fidelity to it that the “re-introduciton” of the feast of Palamas should have been based on a serious study. One should remember the position of our hierarch Ignatius II (before November 1344-1360) who, in a letter to John Calecas, treated Palamas as an innovator who suddenly appeared in the Byzantine church. His courageous opposition caused him to be deposed from his patriarchal see. Have we forgotten that his representative in Constantinople, Arsenius of Tyre, was, along with Matthew of Ephesus, Joseph of Ganos, Theodore Dexios, the young humanist Theodore Atouemis and especially Nicephoros Gregoras, one of the enemies of Palamism, which he refuted in his writings?[6] When a triumphant Palamism was imposed on Antioch by Byzantium and the Melkite patriarchs of the time signed the synodal decision taken in 1368 by the Ecumenical Patriarch Philotheos and his synod to canonize Palamas, Gregory’s feast was nevertheless not introduced into the Antiochian patriarchate. At least we have no trace of it. Manuscript 149 of Bkerké (codex 38 of Khalife’s catalogue), a Triodion copied in 1603, better reflects the liturgical practice of Antioch than the later manuscripts cited by Fr Raquez. And this manuscript has on the Second Sunday of Lent “Sunday of the Prodigal Son”. The copyist thought to add, “The Greeks celebrate (on this day) the akolouthia of Gregory of Thessalonica.” This is one example that we cite. In order to pronounce a definitive judgment, we should, however, examine all the Melkite Triodia copied between the end of the 14th century and the first quarter of the 17th century. Without making the least guarantee, Fr Raquez nevertheless states to Istina, “I do not know who the informant of your journal is, but this is truly unfortunate, since the Melkites or the Greeks of the Near East did indeed celebrate the memory of Gregory Palamas when they were Orthodox and even during the period when they started the long negotiations that would end in union with Rome by one part of that Church.” This is exactly what has to be proved, as does the claim that the Melkite Catholic Church goes back to Cyril Tanas. He gives as evidence for the existence of a feast of Palamas: the Horologion published in 1702 (not in 1701-1702, as he stated—moreover, it is not the first Melkite Horologion to have been printed; that of Fano (1514) predates it by 188 years), a Horologion found in Vat. Borg. arab. 178 (1634 AD), another of the 17th century constituting Sbath 23, and two Triodia of Deir el-Shir: 155 (1724 AD) and 156 (not dated).
We allow ourselves to point out to Fr Raquez that these liturgical codices are merely versions made after 1612 on the basis of Greek books printed in Venice, books belonging to the Great Church. They reflect the practice of the Patriarchate of Constantinople rather than that of Antioch. Their translators did not exercise any criticism, contenting themselves with translating what they had before their eyes without looking any further. The person who made the greatest effort in this field was the bishop of Aleppo, Meletius Karma (1612 to 1634), later patriarch under the name Euthymius II (1/10 May, 1634 – 1/10 January, 1635) (He died on that date and not in 1648 as Fr Olivier wrote). Karma revised the Arabic version of the Liturgikon (1612), the Typikon (1612), the Sticherarion (1633); he translated the Horologion (around 1628) and the Euchologion (1633). In addition, he undertook the translation of the Synaxarion of the Menologion, the 1607 Venice edition. He died before completing that work. It was completed by his brother Thalja who translated the Synaxaria of the Triodion and the Pentekostarion. The translation of the Triodion properly speaking was the work of one of Karma’s disciples, Elias ibn al-hajj Masarra ibn al-hajj Sa’ade, in 1678. The Patriarch Athanasius Dabbas (1685-1724) seems to have produced another one.
Despite his merits, his zeal and the holiness of his life, Karma bears responsibility before history for having completely byzantinized our liturgy and, by spreading his new version, for having allowed many ritual peculiarities that we had preserved, despite the byzantinization of the 11th century, to fall into disuse. The true Melkite tradition of Antioch is to be found in the manuscripts prior to 1612.
We know of a series of patriarchal orders issued by Karma and especially Macarius Za’im (1647-1672). None contains any mention of the adoption of a feast of Palamas. Even the request addressed around the year 1718 by the Patriarch Athanasius Dabbas (1685-1724) to the Propaganda, which Fr Raquez cites, is in conformity with the tortuous character of that patriarch—although it does constitute an attestation of a cult to the archbishop of Thessalonica—though we are in 1718—it denotes an embarrassment and the desire to get rid of an annoying commemoration. We cite Fr Raquez: “Athanasius’ request to the Roman congregation is the following: can a Catholic prelate tolerate the office of Saint Gregory Palamas, a bishop who died in schism but considered holy by the Greeks, in order to be able to suppress his commemoration after a certain period of time, when we have taken hold of the spirit of the clergy and people who are not yet Catholic; would it be sufficient, while waiting for that, to understand by the this name that of Gregory of Nazianzus or of Nyssa?” Dabbas’ proposal seems to have perhaps been put into practice, since we find in two manuscripts of the Triodion (158, 1755 AD) and 161 (before 1770 AD) of the library of Deir el-Shir: “Second Sunday of Lent, we chant the akolouthia of our venerable father among the saints Gregory the Theologian” (ms. 158, p. 161). “We chant this akolouthia of our venerable father among the saints, Gregory the Theologian” (ms. 161, p. 188). The name of “Gregory the Theologian”, al-Thaloghos, is only applied in our liturgy to Gregory of Nazianzus.
“The Melkite Church,” Fr Raquez says in the end, “is striving to renew contacts with the Orthodox sister-church. She should not be discouraged.” We thank the father superior of the Greek College for his concern for our church. But at the same time we note that “every ecumenical effort based on compromises risks having harmful repercussions. The union of the Churches is not made; it is discovered.”[7] History is the best teacher to help us in this discovery of our faith and of our traditions in common with Orthodoxy. Fr Congar, whose contribution to ecumenism no one will dispute, wrote a few months ago, “Ah! If there could exist, for peoples and Churches, a sort of radical psychoanalysis, therapy that would allow them to liquidate the defects and complexes contracted from childhood and consolidated by the years! If there could exist a way to clarify the reasons for so many failures, while an incomparable treasure of substance should be able to establish total communion! A means and a therapy exist: it is history established with the maximum possible amount of honesty and objectivity. It in fact has the result of situating the other and situating ourselves in the truth.”[8] The hasty infatuation of the Latin West with Gregory Palamas and our real desire for rapprochement with Orthodoxy should not make us forget our authentic tradition.
IV. Letter of Fr Olivier Raquez
November 8, 1975
Mgr Nasrallah thinks that my “arguments are quite weak and made from steel that would benefit from being quenched” and that my statements are made “without making the least guarantee.”
We evidently have to come to an agreement about what we want to prove. Mgr Nasrallah does not want one to date the Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch from 1724. For him, “the Patriarchate of Antioch has never officially broken its reelations with Rome…” (cf. correspondence in Le Lien 1974, 2, p. 70). If we accept this thesis, it is obvious that the evidence that I presented in my letter on this subject from the 17th century lose their value since at that time the patriarchate would not have been Orthodox, but rather Catholic. But what are the criteria for judging the Orthodoxy or the Catholicism of a patriarchate? Besides putting myself in line with the date that is still generally recognized, I continue to believe that one can determine belonging to one confession or another by the fact that one is in communion with one or the other. I know very well that in the 17th century the criteria for communio in sacris and, consequently, for full communion were not as precise as they are today, but it nevertheless seems to me that, despite some exceptions and a progressive rapprochement with Catholicism, the Patriarchate of Antioch still remained in communion with the other Orthodox Churches.
Whatever the case may be about the question of the Orthodoxy or Catholicism of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the 17th century, Mgr Nasrallah does not write anything that could contradict the pertinence of the arguments that I presented to prove the existence of a commemoration of Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday of Lent in the Melkite Church in the 17th and 18th centuries. This commemoration is attested by the liturgical books in Arabic. These books were translated from the Greek: I said so myself in my letter. They date from the 17th century: I also said that and I have said absolutely nothing about an earlier tradition, believing that the testimonies of the 17th century are sufficient to prove that the Melkite Church at that time celebrated that feast and that, as a consequence, it was not necessary to introduce the office of Gregory Palamas ex novo, but rather to “reintroduce” it, as the Melkite Synod of Ain Traz decided in August of 1971.
With regard to the previous liturgical tradition, Mgr Nasrallah cites a liturgical text—only one—found in manuscript 149 of Bkerké, which he attributes to the year 1603 (I have not viewed Kalifé’s catalogue, but I. Armale, cited by Mgr Nasrallah in a note, dates it to 1612). What Mgr Nasrallah does not highlight is that this is a manuscript of the Melkite liturgy in Syriac. This rather archaic liturgy is very interesting. It has been carefully studied by C. Charon (alias Korolevsky or Karalevskij) and also recently by J.M. Sauget. I myself have been interested in it on several occasions and I have had the opportunity at the Vatican to examine several manuscripts earlier than the one cited by Mgr Nasrallah. I even lingered in particular on studying the question of the commemoration of Gregory Palamas. But that Melkite Syriac liturgy raises a number of issues that are impossible to address within the context of a simple letter, all the more so since it does not seem to me to be necessary for our limited purpose here.
Finally, I cannot keep myself from pointing out that the text sent by Mgr Nasrallah does not contribute anything new to the debate when he says that the Patriarch Ignatius (1344-1360) and his representative in Constantinople, Arsenius of Tyre, were among those opposed to Palamas. C. Karalevskij brought this to our attention already, with important details, in his 1920 article “Antioche” (cf. Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, III, 629-631). This opposition is well known but it was not exclusive to members of the Church of Antioch: we know that Palamite doctrine provoked notable opposition within the Orthodox Church. This opposition existed in Antioch as elsewhere. Nothing indicates to us that it was the case in the whole of the patriarchate or that it expresses its proper tradition. Several successors of Ignatius, perhaps for various reasons, were clearly Palamitizing: cf. Karalevskij, op. cit., among others the clearly Palamite profession of faith of Nikon (1387-1395)…
[1] In its number 3 of 1974 this journal published a series of articles on Gregory Palamas. The editors preceded them with an introduction that ends with a Parthian arrow: “These facts should incite Catholics who lay claim to the entirety of the patristic tradition to extreme circumspection about the fundamental thesis of Palamism. Otherwise, they risk doing like the Eastern Greek patriarchate which, in its haste to ‘reintroduce’ Palamas into the liturgy, did not realize that, when it was still Orthodox, it had never given him such a place” (p. 259). While we agree with the editors with regard to the “reintroduction” of the commemoration of Palamas, we do not at all agree when they claim that this Eastern Catholic patriarchate—which, to name names, is the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch—has always been Orthodox. But that is another issue. We shall attempt to focus on that in another article.
[2] “Dogme et spiritualité orientale,” in Etudes de Spiritualité orientale, « Orientalia Christiana Analecta » no. 183, Rome, 1969, pp. 144-179.
[3] Ibid., 154.
[4] Ibid., 178
[5] We refer to the remarkable “Bulletin sur le Palamisme” edited by Fr D. Stiernon, which appeared in the Revue des Etudes byzantines, 1972, pp. 231-341.
[6] Cf. our Chronologie des patriarches melchites d’Antioche de 1250 à 1500, Jerusalem, 1968, pp. 13-17.
[7] W. Lossky, Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Eglise d’Orient, Paris, 1944, p. 30.
[8] Y. Congar, “Présentation” of the book of W. de Vries, Orient et Occident. Les structures ecclésiales vues dans l’histoire des septs premiers conciles oecuméniques, Paris, Le Cerf, 1974, pp. 1-2.
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