This paper examines the in-depth way Nicholas Cabasilas assimilated Palamite Hesychastic theological anthropology, transforming it into a Mariological humanism of theological provenance, which responds to the humanism of the Western Renaissance. Then it compares it with an analogous tendency in Bulgakov\u2019s thought, putting this theological humanism in dialogue with the self-sufficient humanism of the post-modern kingdom of man.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Long Introduction: Byzantine Individualism and Hesychasm<\/p>\n

According to the experts, the conflict between the iconoclasts and the iconophiles, which ended in the victory of the latter, seems to present a key to the interpretation for the understanding of the spiritual state of Byzantium in the period that Paul Lemerle refers to as the \u2018first Byzantine humanism\u2019 in his eponymous book.1<\/span> This era spiritually preceded and somehow inaugurated the period that Steven Runciman calls the \u2018second (or last) Byzantine Renaissance\/Humanism\u2019,2<\/span> \u00a0the period during which St Nicholas Cabasilas lived. The essence of the matter is that the icon defends the completeness of human nature and of the world against the likelihood of an Eastern (Semitic and Asian) \u2018blending\u2019 of this nature in the ocean of the divine nature. In this sense, the spiritual purview of icon veneration (apart from being the locus where a distinctive eschatological ontology was consolidated, the significant theological and philosophical consequences of which have yet to be studied) also provided a home for a humanism which, apart from anything else, preserved certain fundamental requirements of classical Greek education as well as the whole of medieval \u2018Greek\u2019 Aristotelianism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. In the \u2018historical\u2019 pages which follow an attempt is made to construct a critique of the works of specialists. See particularly P. Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantine. Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture \u00e0 Byzance des origines au Xe si\u00e8cle (Paris: P.U.F., 1971); C. Mango, Byzantium, The Empire of New Rome (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980); H. G. Beck, Das Byzantinische Jahrtausend (M\u00fcnchen: O. Beck, 1978); S. Runciman, Byzantine Civilization (London: Edward Arnold, 1959); S. Runciman, The Last Byzantine Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970; H. Ahrweiler, L\u2019ideologie politique de l\u2019Empire Byzantin (Paris: P.U.F., 1975).<\/p>\n

2. This also, not coincidentally, functions as the title of his book, The Last Byzantine Renaissance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This paper examines the in-depth way Nicholas Cabasilas assimilated Palamite Hesychastic theological anthropology, transforming it into a Mariological humanism of theological provenance, which responds to the humanism of the Western Renaissance. Then it compares it with an analogous tendency in Bulgakov\u2019s thought, putting this theological humanism in dialogue with the self-sufficient humanism of the post-modern kingdom of man.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0},"categories":[42],"tags":[43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analogiajournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}