This towering figure of Orthodox spiritual life and teaching, the boast of Thessaloniki and spokesman for the Holy Mountain of Athos, is well known to students of Orthodox theology for his defense of the Hesychasts and exposition of the teaching of the Fathers on the Divine Energies and Theosis. What is not known, and with regard to which there is often great ignorance, even among Orthodox theologians in the West, is that the great hesychast was...