Nilus Cabasilas’s Treatise «On the Causes of Divisions in the Church»

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the outstanding representative of the Byzantine polemical theology of the XIV century, Nilus Cabasilas (1285-1363), who followed St. Gregory Palamas to the archbishop of Thessalonica. In the center of his scientific interests were mainly the Greek-Latin theological, ecclesiastical and diplomatic relations of the XIV century. He penned many fundamental theological studies and works that were used by Byzantine polemicists as aids for disputes with Roman Catholics on various pressing theological issues. This article analyzes the first anti-Latin treatise of Nilus Cabasilas’s «On the Causes of Divisions in the Church». This work raises the actual to this day the question of the relationship between primacy and conciliarity in the Church. Nilus Cabasilas proves in his treatise that all problems in the Church begin with ignoring the conciliar institution and that the only remedy for all Church troubles is the restoration of the conciliarity of the Church at the highest Ecumenical level.