HESTIA, a Greek goddess, who is probably the latest in origin of the greater deities. She seems to belong to a particular stage in the advance of civilization, and to embody the religious sanctiun that confirmed the social system then reached. When we compare her worship with that of Agni, the nearest parallel in the Vedic period, we see that the Greeks made this advance after they had separated from the Aryan conquerors of India. Agni is invoked in the Mig Veda as the brother, friend, and helper of men, as dwelling with them and mediating between them and the gods. But beyond this Hestia is the hearth-fire as the centre of an association, wider or narrower, which meets in common atthe hearth. Sheis not mentioned in Homer ; in the Odyssey sometimes one swears by Zeus, the table anid the hearth, ie, by Zeus as the god of the family both in its external relation of hospitality and its internal unity round its own hearth. Hence we have the Zeus éorwvaé, éatindyxos, ébéorios. The former of these two ideas is too delicate and fine ever to become more than a mere aspect of Zeus, but the second gradually formed itself into a distinct worship, in which the already existing worship of the fire was merged. The fact that Hestia is not wwentioned in Homer shows that her worship was not so universally acknowledyed at the time which these poems raveal to us, Perhaps we may see in the connexion of the Latin Jupiter and Vesta at Lavinium a relic of the original connexion of the two; and the fact that the worship of this same goddess under the same name (they are only two forms of the feminine of the passive participle of the root vas, burn) is found in Latium and Greece affords strong evidence of a specially close connexion between the two races. We find therefore in Hestia relics of the old pre-Greek worship ; she is the altar-fire, presiding over all sacrifices, and sharing in the honours of all the gods. The opening sacrifice was offered to Hestia ; to her at the sacrificial meal the first and the last libations were poured. The fire of Hestia was always kept burning, or if by any mischance it were extinguished, only sacred fire made by friction, or got direct from the sun, might be used to re- kindle it (see Kuhn, Hcrabkunft). But beyond this she is the goddess of the family union, the personification of the idea of home (see Welcker, Gr. Gott., ii. 694), the protec- tress along with Zeus of the suppliants who fled for refuge to the hearth. To her therefore is ascribed the art of housebuilding. Hestia and Hermes are often united as the representatives of home and private life on the one hand, and of all business and outdoor life on the other. The city union, moreover, is just the family union on a large scale ; it has its centre in the prytaneum, where the common hearth-fire round which the magistrates meet is always burning, and where the sacred rites that sanctify the con- cord of city life are performed. From this fire, as the representative of the life of the city, was taken the fire wherewith that on the hearth of a new colony was kindled. As patroness of the deliberations held in the prytaneum, Hestia is surnamed BovAaia. Even larger unions than the city had their central fire: in Tegea was the Hestia of the Arcadians; and it is probable that the Achzans had theirs at ASginium. In the later mystic philosophy Hestia bacame the hearth of the universe, the eternal fire at the centre of the world.
As Hestia had her home in the prytaneum, special temples to her rarely occur. There was one in Hermione, where the only symbol of the goddess was a fire always burning on the hearth, We also hear of her house at Olympia. Her statue stood in the prytaneum at Athens beside that of Peace. Though many statues of the Roman Vesta are preserved, more or less based on the Greek con- ception of Hestia, yet no really Greek representation of the goddess has come down to us.
HESYCHASTS (jovxacrad or jovydovres, also called éudadcyrxo, Umbilicanimi, and sometimes referred to as Euchites, Massalians, or Palamites), a quietistic sect which arose among the monks of the Greek Church, and especially of Mount Athos, during the later period of the Byzantine empire, and owing to various adventitious circumstances came into great prominence politically and ecclesiastically for a few years about the middle of the 14th century. Their opinion and practice will be best represented in the words of one of their early teachers (quoted by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 63) :—“ When thou art alone in thy cell shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thought towards the middle of thy belly, the revion of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if thou persevere day and night, thou wilt feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light.” About the year 1337 this Hesychasm, the affinity of which with certain well-known forms of Oriental mysticism is obvious, attracted the attention of the learned and versatile Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who at that time held the office of abbot in the Basilian monastery of St Saviour’s in Constantinople, and who had visited the fraternities of Mount Athos on a tour of inspection. Amid much that he disapproved, what he specially took exception to as heretical and blasphemous was the doctrine entertained as to the nature of this divine light, the fruition of which was the supposed reward of Hesychastic contemplation. It was maintained to be the pure and perfect essence of God Himself, that eternal light which had been manifested to the disciples on Mount Tabor at the transfiguration. This Barlaam held to be polytheistic, inasmuch as it postulated two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. On the Hesychastic side the controversy was taken up by Gregory Palamas, afterwards archbishop of Thessalonica, who laboured to establish a distinction between eternal ovata and eternal évépyea. In 1341 the dispute came before a synod held at Constantinople ; the decision, which no doubt was to a large extent determined by the excessive veneration in which the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were held in the Eastern Church, was adverse to Barlaam, who in consequence returned to Calabria, and afterwards became bishop of Hierace in the Latincommunion. ‘Three other synods in relation to the same subject were subse- quently held ; and at the last of these, held in 1351 under the presidency of the emperor John Cantacuzenus, the uncreated light of Mount Tabor was established as an article of faith for the Greeks, who ever since have been ready to recognize it as an additional ground of separation from the Roman Church. The contemporary historians Cantacuzenus and Nicephorus Gregoras have both dealt very copiously with this subject, which is also more or less discussed in all the church histories. See Engelhardt’s article on the Arsenians and Hesychasts in Ilgen’s Zettschr. f. Hist. Theol., viii. 48, and the account of the Hesychasts in Herzog’s Encyklopddie. It may be mentioned that in the time of Justinian the word Hesychast was applied to monks in general simply as descriptive of the quiet and contem- plative character of their pursuits.
