The text speaks succinctly about the protagonist's environment; nevertheless, it is possible to replace some tile: epoch of the affair is the one immediately following the Angevin conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1266, which granted to ecclesiastical apparatus in the South that full political support necessary to repressive activity of the papacy, denied previously by the Swabian monarchy. The paleographic examination helps us in dating, because the writing of this page can not be later than 1282, but we can be even more precise about the term ante quem: in 1274 the Byzantine Empire signed the union of Lyon with the Roman Church and from that time until 1282, those who opposed it were arrested. Ours would not have found a cozy place in Unionist Byzantium. Then the events took place in the second half of the century. His parents are defined omophrones of Latin heresy, an ethnically ambiguous definition, which could indicate both Latins and Italo-Greeks obedient to Rome. I consider the second hypothesis true for this reason: the expression omophrones etunchanon presupposes otherness that meet, in this case the Greek that accepts Latin. In the third century the high-ranking Greek-Calabrian families were in the process of Latinization and Greece began to be a badge of the lower classes. He lived in one of the most important Calabrian cities populated by both Latins and Greeks. There was a cultural life, which allowed to discuss with many people. The description seems to correspond to Rossano, one of the few centers to have preserved a Greek bishop and also a monastery of the Eastern rite favored by the Latin rulers, the Patir, equipped with a large library. He indeed points out that by divine inspiration the family made him enter and grow inside a structure that had allowed him the means for spiritual rebirth and for his conversion to Orthodoxy. He was a young man, as can be deduced from his brief curriculum vitae and from naive idealism that pervades him, and he had to have an ecclesiastical status that provided him with a certain authority to discuss theology. He was a monk, as evidenced by the fact of calling brothers the Greek monks to whom he introduces himself. His ecclesiastical condition is also confirmed by absence of references to a family formed by him or affections, a situation that evidently facilitated his expatriation without regrets. The Calabrian Greeks are described by him as obedient to Latin dogmas. The inquisitors, when they come, must discover any Greek opponents; this means that the external conduct was of conformity and submission. Our author seems completely marginalized, so even the Greeks, avoided him and isolated him. In the not short period of time in which he publicly argued with the Catholic clergy, he suffered attacks and persecutions by the Church, but in the end he had retained personal freedom. Polemicist activity of our refugee surely could expose any crypto-oppositions and thus attract attention and violent reactions on those who discreetly opposed the assimilation. In any case, his isolation did not have to be so total, because his escape had to enjoy support in order to succeed.
As for the theological content, it concerns the main point of contention at that time between the Western and Eastern Churches, namely the “proceeding” of the Holy Spirit also from the Son = Filioque, an expression that had been added to the Creed in Rome around the year 1000. This Western doctrine was vigorously defended by the Greek-rite bishop of Crotone, Nicholas of Durazzo, during the very same years as our protagonist. The anonymous author lists Scripture, the Church Fathers, and reason (syllogisms) as his sources. Scripture, in reality, was of very little use in the Filioque controversy, and so he likely based his arguments primarily on quotations from patristic expressions and axioms. In the Greek monasteries of Calabria, works of anti-Latin polemical theology were not available, and our anonymous author therefore derived his arguments from his own study, which differ from the standard ones, despite the obvious agreement on the main theses. Characteristic, for example, is the absolute absence of the terms probolé and proagogé, understood as “production/emission,” which are instead fundamental to the syllogisms attributed to Patriarch Photius. Instead, he inserted (lines 15–17) a paragraph on the definition of procession that has no counterpart in Nicholas of Metone, and which refers directly, in both vocabulary and argumentation, to the most famous works of Greek patristics on the Trinity and the Holy Spirit: he adapted to the procession of the Spirit the He applied to the procession of the Spirit the rejection of all material analogies that the Fathers had used to defend the supernatural nature of the Son’s generation and his divinity. ix Thus, our exile displays a particular originality in attempting to move beyond the concepts of cause and production that clouded the entire debate on the Holy Spirit, emphasizing instead the equality and co-eternity of the divine Persons.
His escape was not to mark the end of his misfortunes because, paradoxically, the Byzantine Empire—a bastion of true worship, which should have been his safe and happy refuge—accepted the primacy of the pope and his doctrine a few years later. The Empire believed that the Roman Church’s lack of hostility was indispensable to its survival. The agreement ended in 1282 due to popular hostility, but during the eight years it lasted, the enemies of the filioque and of the Latins were persecuted even in the East. In 1276, a monk of Italian origin, Nicephorus, was arrested by order of the emperor and handed over to the Latin inquisitors. If that Nicephorus is our anonymous author, he found himself face to face with the very same Inquisition he had escaped in Italy. After leaving Italy, Nicephorus had become a monk on Mount Athos and wrote about spirituality in *Logos perì nepseos kai phylakés kardias*, and about anti-Latin polemics (again!) in *Dialexis*.
The Byzantine author George Pachymeres also mentions a monk named Nilus, originally from Sicily, who, between 1263 and 1274, had become a strict spiritual teacher and had gained considerable influence with John Palaiologos, brother of Emperor Michael VIII.x
Two other refugees, James, the igumen of the Monastery of the Holy Savior in Messina, and the famous theologian and philosopher Barlaam of Seminara, left Italy in later years, but it cannot be ruled out that they were aware of the story of our anonymous Calabrian and that they drew encouragement from it to attempt the journey to Byzantium themselves.
ii Ta ierà grammata, an expression from the Byzantine religious world referring to the study of all written manifestations of the ecclesiastical tradition, namely the Bible, the Fathers, the canons, and liturgical texts. This education could only take place in a large Greek monastery, where our subject was raised, likely to pursue an ecclesiastical career. See J. Goar: Euchologion sive Rituale Graecorum, 1st ed. Paris, 1647, 720–721.
i Sabellius and Macedonius were two heretics: one held that the Trinity was an apparent mode of the one God, the other denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
A previous instance of the death sentence by burning at the stake of Greeks occurred in the East, in Cyprus, where thirteen monks were martyred in 1231 (see K. Sathas: Mesaionike bibliotheke II, Venice 1872, 20–39).
iii Annick Peters-Custot, The Greeks of Post-Byzantine Southern Italy. Une acculturation en douceur, Rome 2009, 558
iv He grew up amidst "tà ierà grammata", an expression from the Byzantine religious world referring to the study of all written manifestations of the ecclesiastical tradition’s heritage, namely the Bible, the Fathers, the canons, and liturgical texts. This education could only take place in a large Greek monastery. See J. Goar: Euchologion sive Rituale Graecorum, 1st ed. Paris, 1647, 720–721.
v Filippo Ronconi, “Per speculum in aenigmate. Encounters of cultures in the Norman-Swabian South. Reflections in the light of manuscripts” in Civilizations in contact in the Norman-Swabian South. Economy, Society, Institutions, Proceedings of the 21st Norman-Swabian Days, October 13–14, 2014, Adda, Bari 2018, 359–361 and 392. The only anti-Latin text in circulation was Nicetas Stethatos’s Dialexis, which does not address the Filioque issue.
cf. Nicholas of Methone: Syllogisms, ed. A. Demetrakopulos (Ekklesiastikè bibliotheke, Leipzig, 1865, pp. 359–380); Nicholas/Nectarius of Casole, Syntagma I, eds. J. Hoeck-R. Loenertz: Nikolaos-Nektarios von Otranto, abbot of Casole, Ettal, 1965
viii Patriarch Photius: Mystagogy on the Holy Spirit, PG 102, cols. 279–400; ibid.: Contra veteris Romae asseclas libellus, PG 102, col. 392–400.
ix cf. Basil of Caesarea: Against Eunomius II, 5, PG 29, 581b; Gregory of Nazianzus: Oratio Theologica V, 31, PG 36, 169a; Hier. Gr. Dialogus de sancta Trinitate, PG 40, col. 853b.
x A. Rigo: “Nicephorus the Hesychast (13th cent.): some reflections on his life and works,” in “Amore del bello. Studies on the Philokalia,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Philokalia, Pont. Coll. Gr., Rome, 1989, Bose, 1991, 85.
xi G. Pachymeres, Syngraphikai Historiai, III.21 (A. Failler, Paris 1984, 289).