Few facts about Kyparissiotes’ life are known. The Kyparissiotes family name appears in Byzantine records occasionally from the tenth century onwards. It points to a family origin in Kyparissia, a town on the southwest coast of the Peloponnesus; whether John Kyparissiotes was born there, however, or at Constantinople, or at some other location, remains uncertain. The level of sophistication of his writings suggests that, wherever he was born, he was educated in the Byzantine capital. By 1342 at the latest he had sided with the opponents of Palamas in the religious controversy over Hesychasm that was then dividing Byzantine society and exacerbating a civil war. He may have belonged to the circle of scholars who frequented the house of Nikephoros Gregoras; he speaks of him with great respect, and is our sole source for the information that, after Gregoras’s death, the Palamites dragged his dead body through the streets. Other acquaintances included Demetrios Kydones, the prime minister to John VI Kantakouzenos and John V Palaiologos and translator of Aquinas.