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Theology for Rent Nicholas Mesarites as a Compiler of Andronicus Camaterus
Nicholas Mesarites (ca. 1163/1164 – post 1214) was rather a “theologian of transition”, than an independent thinker. Yannis Spiteris discovered in 1977 that the entire chapter on the primacy of Rome in Mesarites’ treatise The Account of the Political and Ecclesiastical Events of the Year 1214 turned out to be a large quote from the Sacred Arsenal (1173–1174) by Andronicus Camaterus. We have enlarged Spiteris’ observations by discovering that Chs. 35–50 of the treatise are a large quotation (with the elements of a paraphrase) of the triadological section of the Arsenal, which was centered on the Filioque. We can conclude that Mesarites’ piece might have served as a florilegium and a channel of transmission of Camaterus’ ideas concerning the interpenetration of the Persons within the Holy Trinity and the inadmissibility of confounding their hypostatic properties, like the Holy Spirit’s hypostatic projection by the Father, with the natural ones.