Letters

Ἐπιστολαί (Epistulae) · Gregory Palamas · 14th century (c. 1338-1358) · letter

Greek · domain: later-byzantine · researched 2026-11-13

Why this is in the register

Checked 2026-11-13. The letter corpus is spread across Chrestou's Syngrammata: vol. 1 has the letters to Barlaam and Akindynos, vol. 2 the treatises and letters of 1340-1346, vol. 4 those of 1348-1358 (https://hollis.harvard.edu/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Gregoriou%20tou%20Palama%20Syngrammata%20Chrestou&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2&offset=0 Norman Russell's 'Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam' (Translated Texts for Byzantinists 8, Liverpool UP, 2020) translates the prison letters to John Gabras, Philotheos, Bessarion and the Empress Anna Palaiologina, the letter to his church, and the disputation with the Chionai - a small selection (https://hollis.harvard.edu/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Gregory%20Palamas%20letters&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2&offset=0 No complete English translation of the letters was located.

Russell's volume also gives the first English translation of Philotheos Kokkinos's Life of Palamas and of the synodal Tomoi of 1341-1368, but only a handful of Palamas's own letters.

Existing translations recorded

Electronic text

No open electronic text was verified for this work. The Greek/Coptic/Geʿez may exist only in a print or subscription edition (Migne, CSCO, TLG, CMCL).

Scanned witnesses

Scan search: no scan located. Checked the two Migne volumes that carry the Palamas corpus. PG 150 (patrologia-volumes 150_djvu.txt — the only one of the sampled volumes 065, 087a-c, 119, 122, 127, 150, 151 whose OCR used Greek script: 41.7% Greek codepoints) contains the letters only as incipits in the appendix 'Operum argumenta ex codd. Coislin': at ~65% of the text it reads 'LXVI. Τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἐπιστολὴ ἣν ἐξ Ἀσίας ... ἔγραψεν ... Initium: Ταπεινὺς μητροπολίτης θεσσαλονίκης ... Fol. 102 verso' — a manuscript inventory, not the text. PG 151 has no Greek OCR at all (0.0 Greek codepoints) and prints Barlaam's and Acindynus's letters, not Palamas's. The per-work text PDFs of PG 150-151 in the 'patrologia' item (tomos 1 = 129 pp, tomos 2 = 162 pp) were searched for 'ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛ/Ἐπιστολ' and contain none. Chrestou's Syngrammata (Θεσσαλονικεῖς, 1980s-90s) is the only full edition and is in copyright; no digitised manuscript (DigiVatLib search 403, LOC Sinai 0 hits, BnF SRU returns print records only) was verified. Not a guess: no scan located.

Harvard Hollis

Hollis query: Gregory Palamas Letters — 9 record(s); match basis author_title.

Sources checked

• HOLLIS search — Gregoriou tou Palama Syngrammata Chrestou
• HOLLIS search — Gregory Palamas letters

Cite: Tergwame, “Letters” (greek gap dossier), 2026. https://naxiai.com/christian/gaps/greek-gregory-palamas-epistulae