based on theology,[1] useful as a cyclopædia of the knowledge of his age. Theophylact, the archbishop of Achrida in Bulgaria, was a contemporary of Psellus, who composed a commentary in the form of a catena. Euthymius Zigabenus, a monk at Constantinople, wrote a reply to the heretics at the command of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, a mere compilation, though famous in its day. Eustathius, the archbishop of Thessalonica, was a commentator on Homer and Pindar, but also a Christian theologian and a reformer of monasticism. Michael Acominatus, a respected statesman at Constantinople, produced a defence of orthodoxy in opposition to the heretics, which is deemed an abler and more independent work than Euthymius's official book written to order. Nicolas of Methone in Messenia composed a reply to the Neo-Platonist Proclus, in which he anticipated Anselm's doctrine of redemption. All these writers belong to the same prolific period of late Greek literature. The emperor's own daughter Anna has already been mentioned. She takes her place among the Byzantine historians.
Coming to the next period, which follows the disorders and miseries of the Latin usurpation, we have two centuries of less brilliant, but still more or less continuous literary activity under the Palæologi (a.d. 1250–1453), chiefly occupied with the question of reunion with Western Christendom. It is refreshing to discover in the midst of this controversy a man who would direct our attention away from arid theological and ecclesiastical polemics to the eternal verities. This is Nicolas Cabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica, a mystic, who defended his brother mystics at Mount Athos when they were charged with heresy, and that with a depth of spirituality which throws a favourable light on what, when seen among the monks, has been regarded as an ignorant superstition. The very title of this book is like a gleam of light from heaven in a world of very secular ecclesiasticism, for that title is Concerning the Life in Christ.[2] The mystics are of no age
