In the fourteenth century a controversy arose in the Eastern empire between the Eastern Orthodox Theologian Gregory Palamas and a philosopher and monk from Calabria in southern Italy by the name of Barlaam. Barlaam was working on the problem of union between the Roman and Byzantine churches in the 1330s and actually acted as the representative of the Orthodox church. In his discussions, in which he repudiated the use of filioque (the addition to the...