Diadochos of Photiki

Diadochos was bishop of Photike, a town in Epirus in northwestern Greece, in the middle of the fifth century. One firm date anchors him: in 457 he signed the letter that the bishops of his province sent to the emperor Leo I, protesting the murder of Proterius, the patriarch of Alexandria, and affirming the Council of Chalcedon. That places him squarely on the Chalcedonian side in the sharpest dispute of his generation.

His book is the Hundred Chapters on Spiritual Knowledge, a set of a hundred short paragraphs on the interior life. It became one of the most influential texts in Eastern Christian spirituality, and it stands near the front of the Philokalia, the great anthology of Greek ascetic writing.

Diadochos was writing against a movement called Messalianism, which taught that a demon dwells alongside grace in the baptized soul and that only ecstatic prayer, not the sacraments or moral effort, drives it out. Diadochos denied it flatly: grace is present in the soul from baptism, hidden at first, and sin comes from outside pressure on a will that is free. But he refused to answer error by denying experience. He insisted that grace can be felt, that there is a real, perceptible warmth and sweetness that God gives, and also a real withdrawal of that sense, permitted for the sake of training, which is not abandonment.

His practical contribution is the one that carried furthest. He taught that a mind which will not stay still should be given one thing to hold: the continual repetition of the name of Jesus"Lord Jesus" said inwardly with every breath, until the memory of God becomes constant. That is the seed of the Jesus Prayer, the practice that shaped Mount Athos, the hesychast tradition, and Russian spirituality through the nineteenth-century classic The Way of a Pilgrim.

He also wrote about discernment, how to tell the consolation that comes from God from the counterfeit that comes from the enemy, and how humility is the test of both. And he was clear that this was not a technique for specialists but the ordinary way any believer learns to pray.

A sermon on the Ascension and a short Vision also circulate under his name. He is thought to have died before 486. Beyond that, almost nothing of his outward life survives.

Sources: Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, translated by Palmer, Sherrard and Ware; Diadoque de Photicé, Œuvres spirituelles (Sources Chrétiennes 5); the letter of the bishops of Epirus Vetus to the Emperor Leo (457).