In volume 92 of the Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca, Alessandra Bucossi and Luigi D'Amelia present the first complete critical edition of the six dialogues de processione Spiritus Sancti by the twelfth-century "latinophrone" theologian Nicetas, metropolitan of Thessaloniki. This is the most original and innovative Byzantine text on the Filioque discussion.
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The Dialogi sex de processione Spiritus Sancti by Niketas, metropolitan of Thessaloniki, once known unproperly as "of Maroneia", is one of the most outstanding polemical works against the Latins, written in form of a dialogue, of the Comnenian era. Niketas (first half of the 12th c.) is commonly considered a "latinophrone" theologian, since he was "prepared to accept the Latin wording" (A. Kazhdan, Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Berkeley 1985, p. 189), and his Dialogi are the only Byzantine twelfth-century writings on the discussions with the Latin Church where Greek and Latin speakers reach an agreement on the procession of the Holy Spirit "through the Son", and where the Latin’s arguments turn out to be ultimately longer and more persuasive than the Greek’s mostly brief and provocative replies. The critical edition of these influential six dialogues, edited for the first time in their complete form, offers one of the most original and innovative texts on the Filioque discussion and witnesses to the existence in the twelfth century of an uncommon way of interpreting the inter-Trinitarian relationship and to the usage of Aristotelic philosophy for interpreting the procession of the Holy Spirit.
Alessandra Bucossi is associate professor of Byzantine Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Luigi D’Amelia is a research fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice within the "RAP (Repertorium Auctorum Polemicorum" project funded by Ca' Foscari University of Venice and Labex RESMED.