Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism asserts that the thinkers between Basil of Caesarea and Symeon the New Theologian were important mainly for their role in the formation of Hesychasm, a fourteenth-century mystical movement in the Eastern church. The book surveys previous research on Proto-Hesychasm and sets forth eight Hesychastic trends in its practitioners: monasticism, dark and light mysticism, and an emphasis on the heart, theosis, the humanity of Christ, penthos, and unceasing prayer. Theodore Sabo integrates detailed and carefully researched accounts of the lives and...

Holy Men of God is a history of the kings, priests, and monks of Eastern Orthodoxy, an intriguing subject especially for Western readers. It focuses on the violent and luxuriant worlds of Byzantium and medieval Russia, taking its readers from the Iconoclastic crisis, the last church fathers, the Bogomil heretics, the God-intoxicated Hesychasts, and the flowering of Russian saints under the Mongol yoke, to the quarrel between the Possessors and the Non-Possessors, the bizarre persecution of the Old Believers, the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, the spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim, and...