St. Nicholas Cabasilas
Saint Nicholas Cabasilas was a fourteenth-century Byzantine monk and mystic. He was likely a priest and possibly Archbishop of Thessaloniki, though some historians dispute this. His uncle Neilos (also born Nicholas) was for a time Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Saint Nicholas also knew St. Gregory Palamas and joined him in defending the traditional distinction, deriving from the New Testament and the Church Fathers, between the unknowable divine essence and the divine energies, by which people come to know God, see the divine light, and become like God in Christ. He is known for his commentary on the Divine Liturgy and his spiritual classic The Life in Christ.
So why is St. Nicholas Cabasilas patron saint of this institute? Before he became a monk, he spent time in law and politics. During this time, he wrote a strident defense of monastic property against those zealots who argued that the state should appropriate monastic estates. He warned that:
“Rulers have a right to manage subjects’ property, but this does not extend to private, only to common [i.e., public] property…. Neither rulers of communities nor judges, nor even emperors with universal rule, may demand an account of what the proprietor does with it, even should he waste it.”
St. Nicholas taught that property rights derived from an Orthodox understanding of human nature as made in the image of God, possessing reason, free will, and dominion over creation. Thus, because “the privilege of speech and the freedom of decision … are what make man what he is,” every just society must respect the freedom and dignity of its citizens, including over whatever dominion and property they have. Cabasilas thus connected human nature, property rights, freedom of speech, and self-determination, even musing:
“How could there ever be a stable form of government which made it impossible to live in freedom?”
After all,
“Who, then,—what craftsman, farmer, merchant—will take the trouble to make money, knowing that everything he earns will go to other people? How can anyone sustain the pursuit of wisdom when struggling against poverty?”
For these and many more statements, St. Nicholas Cabasilas stands out as a saint seemingly ahead of his time. Yet, though only recently canonized in 1983, he lived and died in the Byzantine Empire, and his life and work testify to greater nuance in Orthodox Holy Tradition when it comes to questions of how the Church should relate to the world than critics since the time of Edward Gibbon have ever credited it. The St. Nicholas Cabasilas Institute takes him as its patron and invokes his intercession with the goal of bringing to light more such overlooked resources to better engage our world today, bearing witness in our own times to the divine and eternal light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just as Cabasilas had both spiritual insight and practical expertise, our research fellows infuse their expertise as theologians, economists, political philosophers, historians, bioethicists, and more, with sincere faith and piety. In this way, all of our programming and publications exist to equip Orthodox clergy and laity to better understand and engage our very strange modern world today, whether in terms of business, civic life, religious pluralism, or new technologies.
Saint Nicholas Cabasilas, intercede on our behalf! We are happy to imitate your life, you who are quick to help us and pray for our souls.