International Conference of St Gregory Palamas (March 2012)

From 7 to 15 March 2012, The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, in collaboration with the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki and the Metropolitanates of Thessaloniki, of Lagkada, Litis and Rentinis, of Veroia, Naousa and Campania, of Neapoleos and Stavroupoleos, and the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies at the Monastery of Vlatadon, and with the support of the Friends of Mount Athos, mounted a major International Conference to explore and celebrate the life and work of St Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) in the city of his birth, Thessaloniki, which in his last years was also his archepiscopal see.

Delegates visited sites of key significance to the saint’s spiritual development and to his articulation of a theology derived from the Fathers that defended the practice of hesychastic (silent) prayer as a means to experience God and has proved formative for modern Orthodox belief. We saw the Cave of St Gregory Palamas (in Skete Veroias), where the saint remained for days at a time enclosed by rock, praying for illumination, and the men were able to visit the Monastery of Vatopaidi and the Kathisma (Seat) where as a novice monk the young Gregory Palamas was initiated into monastic life and the disciplines of prayer by St Nikephoros the Hesychast. A highlight of our Conference was the celebration of a hierarchical liturgy on the saint’s feast-day, the Second Sunday in Lent, in the Cathedral dedicated to his name and in the presence of his relics.

The Conference attracted some 85 delegates, an additional 200 or so dropped in as occasional guests, and there were 47 scholarly contributions from all overGreece, from theUnited Kingdomand theUnited States, fromRussia, Romania, Austria, Switzerland, Montenegro, Portugal, Lebanon, Norway, Denmark, Bulgaria, Africa and India. Papers were of outstanding quality and interest, bearing on many aspects of the saint’s thought and practice and its implications for Christian life, past and present. It is pleasing to note that eight of the papers were offered by Directors, staff or students from the Cambridge Institute and two more by our distinguished Visiting Lecturers.

Moving to different venues almost every day, welcomed by a benign succession of scholarly hierarchs, we experienced the extraordinary warmth and generosity of our hosts in the various institutes, Metropolitanates and monasteries, and had a sense of the corporate intellectual and spiritual excitement that the saint’s legacy still stimulates among his countrymen and in the Church at large.

Visitors from overseas met a Greece still vibrant at the core in the face of difficulties, bonded by a common devotion to the Orthodox faith and to their local saint, capable of piety and mirth in equal measure, offering guests repasts that caused some of us to coin the term ‘fasting-feasts’, loading us with gifts intellectual and devotional, but diverting us with displays of dancing to folk music in traditional costumes by teams of students and seniors. Bonds of friendship were forged, valuable intellectual contacts established, and plans laid for academic cooperation and exchange.

Delegates expressed their consciousness of the debt they owed to Dr Constantinos Athanasopoulos, Director of Distance Learning for IOCS, who with his counterpart at the Ecclesiastical Academy, Professor Gregory Stampkopoulos, successfully completed what had clearly been a massive task of organizing and co-ordinating the various academic occasions, devotional visits, social events and also our culminating tours.

We were aware that we had had the privilege of participating in a major scholarly event that marked a milestone in St Gregory Palamas studies and we came away with a heightened sense of the value of the inheritance he has left us. If some of us had also a touch of mental indigestion it was a comfort to know that video-recordings from the Conference will be available shortly through the IOCS Video Streaming Webpage, and that the full Conference Proceedings of the Conference will be published in English in due time. Further information regarding the Conference is available on the Conference Web page: http://distancelearning2.iocs.cam.ac.uk/ICStGP-2/

Professor David Frost,
Principal,

The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies,Cambridge