Here is an award-winning, new translation that brings to light Gregory's complex identity as an early mystic. Gregory (c. 332-395) was one of the Greek Cappadocian Fathers, along with St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen.

Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) monk, archbishop and theologian was a major figure in fourteenth-century Orthodox Byzantium. This, his greatest work, presents a defense in support of the monastic groups known as the "hesychasts," the originators of the Jesus Prayer.

For over a thousand years, Eastern Christendom had as its center the second capital of the Roman Empire-Constantinople, the New Rome, or Byzantium. The geographical division between the Eastern and Western Churches was only one manifestation of deeper rifts, characterized by a long history of conflicts, suspicions, and misunderstandings. Although the art, monasticism, and spirituality of Byzantium have come to be recognized as inspirational and influential in the shaping of Eastern European civilization, and of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as well, the West has been in the main...

The history of Russia is often considered as if that immense country had always been an isolated continent. However, at the time of its rise as a nation, it was politically a province of the Mongol Empire, whose capital was in Central Asia; and ecclesiastically, it was a dependency of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, or Byzantium. This book describes the role of Byzantine (predominantly ecclesiastical) diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow as the capital of Russia in the fourteenth century, and the cultural, religious and political ties which connected the Northern periphery of the...