Joseph Bryennios

From Textus Receptus

Joseph Bryennios (Ἰωσήφ Βρυέννιος) was a 15th century Palamite theologian, hieromonk, leader of the Church of Crete, and a court theologian in Constantinople. He was a monk at the Monastery of Stoudios. He wrote many important works of scholarship in support of Orthodoxy, and against the Union of Churches. He died sometime between 1431 and 1438. Bryennios’s library included books on grammar, prosody, poetry, rhetoric, geometry, music, geography, and works by Ptolemy, Aristotle, Planudēs, and Magistros, see his Diataxis, in ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia Graeca Sacra (St Petersburg: Kirshbaum, 1909), 295, l. 30–296, l. 11. According to Martin Jugie, ‘C’est une vrai disciple de Palamas que nous trouvons en Joseph Bryennios’ (It is a true disciple of Palamas that we find in Joseph Bryennios) (‘Palamite [Controverse]’, Dictionnaire du théologie Catholique 11.2:1799). For Bryennios’s defense of the essence-energies distinction and other Palamite tenets, see E. Voulgaris, Ἰωσήφ Μοναχοῦ τοῦ Βρυεννίου, Τὰ εὑρεθέντα, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1768; repr. Θεσσαλονίκη: Β. Ρηγοπούλου, 1990), 99–119; vol. 3 (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1784; repr. Θεσσαλονίκη: Β. Ρηγοπούλου, 1990), 54–62.

Bryennios elaborated the most detailed explication of Byzantine triadology. His opus magnum is formed with 21 theological homilies delivered in different places before the high officials of the Church and the State in 1421 and 1422 and the Hortatory Sermon on the Unity of the Churches, 1422, which look together as a teaching course composed from 22 lectures. The main feature of Bryennios’s “teaching course” of triadology is its fundamentality. Far from being limited to the Filioque, it explores the very notions of divine hypostases and their mutual relations. [1]

The novelty of Bryennios’s approach will become more understandable against some historical background. The Palamite “energetical” understanding of δι’ υἱοῦ (“through the Son”) goes back to Gregory of Cyprus and, through him, to Nicephore Blemmydes. The original meaning of the Blemmydian “through the Son” remains an object of scholarly discussions, but, at least, “the Blemmydes of the Palamite tradition” is the Blemmydes we seem to know. In one of Blemmydes’s most influential works, we read: “…if the Logos and the Spirit are from the Father as from the principle/beginning and not as one of the two is through another (μὴ διὰ θατέρου θάτερον), a division would be introduced into the divinity”. [2]

References

Andronikos Dimitrakopoulos (1872). Ορθόδοξος Ελλάς : ήτοι περί των Ελλήνων των γραψάντων κατά Λατίνων και περί των συγγραμμάτων αυτών (in Greek). Leipzig: Metzger und Wittig.

Bibliography

N. V. Tomadakis, «Ἁγιορειτικοὶ κώδικες τῶν ἔργων Ἰωσὴφ Βρυεννίου» Επ.Επ.Ετ.Βυζ.Σπ. Vol.32(1963), pp. 26–39.
Konstantinos Dyovouniotis, «Τὸ δήθεν διπλωματικὸν απόρρητον του Ἰωσὴφ Βρυεννίου», Πρακτικὰ τῆς Ἀκαδημίας Ἀθηνῶν, Vol.4 (1923), pp. 117–184.
N. V. Tomadakis, Ο Ιωσήφ Βρυέννιος και η Κρήτη κατά το 1400. Μελέτη φιλολογική και ιστορική. Athens 1947
Nikolaos Ioannidis, Ἰωσὴφ Βρυεννίου περὶ μνημοσύνου τοῦ Πάπα, Athens 1984
E Peruzzi, «Ὁ τόπος τῆς ἐν Κρήτῃ διαμονής Ἰωσὴφ του Βρυεννίου», Cretica Chronica, Vol.2 (1948), pp. 366–370
N. V. Tomadakis, «Ἰωσὴφ Βρυέννιος», Σύλλαβος βυζαντινῶν μελετῶν καὶ κειμένων. Athens 1961, pp. 491–611

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