Symeon the New Theologian

Symeon the New Theologian was a Byzantine monk, abbot, and writer of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, remembered above all as a teacher of the conscious, personal experience of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is one of only three figures in the Eastern Orthodox tradition honored with the title "the Theologian," alongside John the Apostle and Gregory of Nazianzus. The qualifier "New" was originally used in his own lifetime to distinguish him from an earlier Symeon, his own spiritual father.

By tradition he was born in 949 in Galatia, in the region of Paphlagonia, to parents who belonged to the Byzantine nobility. He received a Greek education and completed his studies at the imperial court in Constantinople. At about the age of fourteen he met the monk Symeon the Studite, also called the Pious, who became his spiritual father and turned him toward the monastic life. After a brief period at the Monastery of Stoudios, he settled at the Monastery of Saint Mamas in Constantinople, where he was tonsured, ordained a priest, and elected abbot, an office he held for roughly twenty-five years.

Symeon taught that every Christian is called to seek a direct and conscious vision of God, and he spoke openly of his own experiences of the divine light. This emphasis, together with his deep veneration of his departed spiritual father, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities of the capital. He was sent into exile across the Bosphorus, and although the sentence was later lifted, he chose to remain and re-establish a monastery there. He reposed on March 12, 1022.