Nicetas Thessalonicensis, Dialogi sex de processione Spiritus Sancti

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.