Philokalic texts

This article presents a selection of texts drawn from the final chapters of the Greek Philokalia, attributed to Kallistos the Patriarch and Kallistos Kataphygiotes, two figures of fourteenth-century Byzantine mysticism. It consists of an annotated translation, accompanied by a brief introduction, prepared by Jacques Touraille for the publication of the eleventh and final fascicle of the Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers by the Éditions de l'Abbaye de Bellefontaine. The central idea is that these texts represent the "vanishing point" of the hesychast tradition: beyond the methodical transmission of prayer, they bear witness to an experience of divine union in which the intellect, drawn by divine eros, passes from the created to the uncreated. On the theological level, these excerpts illuminate the doctrine of contemplation, of the unification of the intellect in the One, and of deification, thereby extending the heritage of Gregory Palamas in its most apophatic dimension.