How Nicephorus Gregoras Thought Byzantium Could Have Saved Itself

During Byzantium’s fifteenth-century decline, Nicephorus Gregoras was one of the most distinguished Byzantine intellectuals, known as an historian, scientist, philosopher, and theologian. When Gregoras was born around 1293, Byzantium seemed to have a promising future as the greatest power in the Eastern Mediterranean; but by the time Gregoras died around 1361, Byzantium was an almost hopelessly failed state. Many modern scholars think Gregoras was right to support the capable John VI Cantacuzenus against the underage John V Palaeologus in the civil war of 1341-1354 that did so much harm to Byzantium. Many modern scholars also sympathize with Gregoras’ hostility to the mystical doctrines of Hesychasm, which have often been considered anti-intellectual. Nonetheless, most modern scholars think Gregoras wasted his talents and energy in his unsuccessful fight against Hesychasm, which before the end of the civi war had been accepted by nearly all Byzantines, including both John V and John VI. From a modern point of view, Gregoras may seem to have aggravated a minor theological dispute at a time when Byzantines desperately needed to unite against their Turkish, Slavic, and Western rivals. Yet Gregoras was well aware of the catastrophe overtaking the empire, and he claimed that this catastrophe was primarily caused by God’s anger at the Byzantines for accepting Hesychasm. Gregoras, intellectual though he was, believed Byzantium could be saved only if it repudiated Hesychasm as a serious heresy. In his opinion toleration of Hesychasm explained not just the persistence of the civil war and the depredations of the Ottomans, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Italians but the Black Death itself, which was perhaps the worst of the afflictions that ruined the empire.