An Orthodox monk himself (though he later converted to Catholicism), Barlaam was also thoroughly versed in the classics, an astronomer and mathematician as well as a philosopher and theologian. Unfortunately for him, his formidable learning was coupled with an arrogant, sarcastic manner, so caustic at times that he put off even his friends and allies. Born about 1290 in Calabria in southern Italy, Barlaam came to Constantinople in the 1320s.∗ His learning immediately won him a wide reputation and a post as abbot of an important monastery. In 1334, two Catholic missionary bishops in Constantinople on their way from Genoa to the Crimea challenged the patriarch to a public disputation. Such debates were a common and favorite spectacle. Not willing to take on the bishops himself, the patriarch turned to Barlaam. Barlaam's assignment was to defend the Orthodox position that the Holy Spirit proceeded only from the Father and not from the Son. He chose an approach that was aggressively rationalistic, invoking Aristotelian logic to argue that matters concerning God could never actually be demonstrated but could only be rationally inferred.
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