CABASILAS, NICHOLAS

CABASILAS, NICHOLAS, St. (ca. 1322-ca. 1390). Canonized by the Church of Greece in the 1980s, Cabasilas was a layman (perhaps a monk at the end of his life) active in the politics and social debate of Byzantium (q.v.), in particular of the city of Thessalonica (q.v.). His fierce social conscience, expressed in treatises such as his On Usury, led him to involvement in the crises affecting the failing Empire. He was at the same time an accomplished theologian, steeped in the spiritual and liturgical tradition (q.v.) of the Church. His Commentary on the Divine Liturgy and On the Life in Christ are masterpieces of Orthodox theology (q.v.) that continue to exercise a positive effect on contemporary Orthodox thought and piety (q.v.). Cabasilas was certainly acquainted and in sympathy with Gregory Palamas and Byzantine hesychasm (qq.v.), and his works reflect an attempt to bring Palamas’s insights to bear on lay Christian life. Previously, the audience had been almost exclusively monastic.