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An icon of Saint Gregory Palamas in bishop’s vestments, holding the Gospels, painted in the fifteenth century

Saint Gregory Palamas

Athonite monk who defended the hesychasts’ prayer and the uncreated light of Tabor

Patron of
Thessaloniki, as its co-patron
Western calendar
Not kept
Orthodox calendar
14 November, his repose in 1359 (27 November on the old calendar)

Gregory was raised at the imperial court of Constantinople, and at about twenty he left for Mount Athos, where he learned the prayer of the heart in stillness that the monks called hesychasm. When the monk Barlaam called that prayer heresy, Gregory defended the monks in his Triads, and in 1341 a council at Hagia Sophia accepted his teaching that God, unapproachable in His essence, reveals Himself through His energies, which are neither material nor created, like the light of Tabor. Imprisoned for four years by his opponents, made Archbishop of Thessalonica in 1347 and held a year by the Turks, he died on 14 November 1359 with the words "To the heights! To the heights!"

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