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School

Hesychasm

The Eastern Orthodox tradition of inner stillness and the Jesus Prayer, defended by Gregory Palamas.

Also called the prayer of the heart, Orthodox contemplative tradition

A school of Christian Mysticism

Introduction

Hesychasm, from the Greek hēsychia, “stillness”, is the contemplative tradition of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Its practitioners seek stillness of body and mind in which to pray continually, above all through the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”, and to be united with God.

Hesychast writers describe a prayer in which the mind (nous) descends into the heart, and attention, breath and the name of Jesus are joined, until prayer becomes unceasing. Its fruit is purification from the passions, humility, and, for some, the vision of the uncreated light, the light seen by the disciples at Christ’s transfiguration.

Its theology was given definitive form by Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century: God’s essence is unknowable, but God’s uncreated energies are truly shared, so that the human being can be deified (theōsis) without ceasing to be a creature.

Hesychasm is less a school of ideas than a way of life, handed on from teacher to disciple. Its writers insist that the prayer should be learned under an experienced spiritual father or mother, that bodily techniques are aids and not ends, and that humility and repentance matter more than any experience of light.

History

Historical

Hesychasm grew from the prayer of the desert monks of Egypt, Palestine and Sinai in the fourth to seventh centuries, among them Evagrius, Diadochus of Photice and John Climacus, author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Symeon the New Theologian, around 1000, wrote of the vision of divine light. From the thirteenth century Mount Athos became its centre, and writers such as Nicephorus the Hesychast and Gregory of Sinai described the psychosomatic method of prayer.

In the 1330s Barlaam of Calabria attacked the hesychasts, and Gregory Palamas defended them in the Triads. Councils in Constantinople between 1341 and 1351 endorsed his teaching, which became part of Orthodox doctrine. Hesychasm spread to the Slavic lands, and in Russia shaped the tradition of the startsy, spiritual elders.

In 1782 Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Macarius of Corinth published the Philokalia, an anthology of hesychast texts, translated into Slavonic by Paisius Velichkovsky. The anonymous nineteenth-century Russian Way of a Pilgrim, and English translations of the Philokalia in the twentieth century, made the Jesus Prayer widely known.

  1. 4th–7th c.The desert monks; John Climacus’s Ladder
  2. c. 1000Symeon the New Theologian
  3. 13th–14th c.Mount Athos becomes the centre of hesychast prayer
  4. 1341–1351Councils in Constantinople endorse Palamas’s teaching
  5. 1782The Philokalia is published in Venice
  6. 19th c.The Way of a Pilgrim; the Russian elders

Major thinkers

Key concepts

Important texts

Convergence and divergence

Resemblance and difference, given equal room. Each note is marked with the kind of statement it makes.

Areas of convergence

Areas of divergence

  • Divine energies, with Christian Mysticism

    Historical

    The distinction between God’s essence and energies, central to hesychasm, has often been questioned by Western theologians, who speak instead of created grace and the vision of God’s essence.

  • Theōsis, with Advaita Vedānta

    Scholarship

    Deification is participation in God’s energies by grace, never identity with God’s essence; Advaita teaches identity with Brahman.

Cite this entry
Chicago (bibliography)

“Hesychasm.” Tradition. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/hesychasm.

Chicago (note)

“Hesychasm,” tradition, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/hesychasm.

MLA

“Hesychasm.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/hesychasm.

BibTeX
@misc{traditions-hesychasm,
  title = {{Hesychasm}},
  howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society},
  note = {Tradition. Last modified November 7, 2026},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/hesychasm}
}

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