if he had not recanted, after which he withdrew to Italy and joined the Latin Church. But this did not end the controversy, which was taken up by Barlaam's admirer Gregory Acnidynus and Nicephorus the historian. Two more synods were held on the subject—the last in a.d. 1351, and these both followed the example of the earlier synod and declared in favour of the monks. Thus the idea of the uncreated light was repeatedly pronounced to be orthodox by the Greek Church.
It is difficult for a Western, and especially an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, mind not to feel contempt and disgust for what appears to be a gross and degrading superstition. And yet when we remember the trances of the prophets—especially of Ezekiel—and take note of the curious phenomena brought to light by recent experimental psychology, we may be led to suspend our judgment and allow the possibility that to some, if not all, who went through the abnormal experience, it may have been the condition of realising genuine spiritual communion, by means of its complete mastery of the distractions that come from the world of sense. Therefore, although itself apparently so completely materialistic, after all it may not have been so very alien to that internal light preached by George Fox, which his followers regard as the secret and source of their deepest religious life.
When we turn from the monks to the main body of the Church, and ask, What was its religious and moral condition during these later centuries of the Byzantine era? we are faced with a tantalising question which it is always difficult to answer. For most historians confine their attention to large movements and prominent personages. Suetonius's gossip of court scandal at Rome under the Cæsars does not give us any idea of the habits of the farmers on the plains of Italy, nor does Juvenal's satire on the fashionable society of his day teach us anything about the behaviour of the respectable citizens of the country towns. Still less do the Byzantine chroniclers throw light on the conduct and character of the subjects
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