Review of a St Elisabeth Biography

Today, 5 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the New Martyr Elisabeth of Russia. In honour of St Elisabeth, patron of my daughter as well as my mother (and likely, many, many other convert women as well!), I thought I would post a little review—written years ago in a reader’s journal I used to keep—of a secular biography of the New Martyr: Hugo Mager’s Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1999). I have made one or two minor editorial changes, and added page references where I could still find them.

The first problem I have is the author’s utter ignorance of Orthodoxy. After repeated remarks about the ‘rottenness’ of the relics of St Seraphim of ‘Sarovo’ [sic], Mager concludes that this ‘should have barred him from sainthood’; [1] but a brief look into the glorification of saints in the Orthodox Church would have shown that incorrupt remains are not required by any means. He claims that all startsy (which he translates imprecisely as ‘holy men’) are ‘semiliterate, eternal wanderer[s]’; some of them ‘fastened chains to their legs as a sign of asceticism’, or ‘claimed to possess powers of healing’. [2] He gives a dramatic description of some schema-monks without apparently realising what they are. He consistently uses imprecise, western language to describe Orthodox things: ‘High Mass’, ‘Te Deum’, ‘Monsignor’. He repeatedly refers to the Roman Catholic ‘saint’ Elisabeth of Hungary, an ancestor of the New Martyr, as ‘St Elizabeth’ without noting that she was not Orthodox (a legitimate ‘bar to sainthood’ in the Orthodox Church). [3] He mentions ‘the monastery at Mount Athos’, apparently unaware that there are twenty. [4]

More importantly, the ignorance of Orthodoxy in particular seems to be aligned to a deeper ignorance of and lack of interest in what it means to be a believer, period. The spiritual life seems to him to consist mostly of consolations, feelings and sentiments, except where it’s expressed in charitable works—which, to his credit, he covers admirably. But the account of St Elisabeth’s life in the Ss Martha and Mary Convent is given short schrift in favour of a sensationalistic and historically questionable account of the fall of the autocracy. Even clothes, jewelry, and balls are given more attention than spiritual things.

But even from a secular perspective the book leaves something to be desired. First of all, there are quite a few typographical and grammatical mistakes (he spells podvig ‘nodvig’!). Then, there’s the historiography. Although it doesn’t give any credentials, the jacket refers to the author as ‘historian Hugo Mager’, and indeed, the appendix (‘Documentary Evidence of the Last Journey & Death of Grand Duchess Elizabeth & the Removal of Her Remains to Beijing’) shows him to be pretty good at doing historical scholarship when he wants to be. [5] But the rest of the book makes matter of fact assertions about the nature and motivations of various people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions about which—having read other accounts—I sometimes felt rather dubious. At the very least, how can Mager claim to know some of the things he does? He does not provide extensive reasoning or documentation behind much of it, probably because he intended the book as a popular biography and not a work of scholarly historiography. But some of the more extraordinary claims (like the allegation of Grand Duke Sergei Nikolaievich’s homosexuality, or perhaps more importantly, the ‘cool’ sexual relations which provide the basis for the allegation) could have done with a good deal more well-documented evidence (although sexuality might have been left entirely unmentioned in any case). In numerous cases, it is clear to someone a little bit acquainted with the subject that much of what is presented is founded on more or less unreliable testimony, including, in at least one or two places, that of witnesses whom Mager himself has discredited. Furthermore, serious scholars of the Revolution would disagree with the central rôle he assigns to Rasputin in the story. The latter certainly didn’t help matters, but didn’t Vladimir Lenin have at least something to do with it, not to mention well nigh irresistable historical forces?

Another problem is the author’s obvious biases: for Britain and liberal politics, against Pobedonostsev, Grand Duke Sergei Nikolaievich, the Russian peasants, the Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra, and certainly Rasputin (who, despite the testimony of multiple witnesses, is made to seem closer to the Tsaritsa-Martyr than anyone else she knows). One friend of the Tsaritsa-Martyr’s who was an admirer of Rasputin is consistently referred to as ‘plain and unintelligent’, and even ‘fat’, whenever she figures into the narrative. [6] The author’s opinions on politics are constantly interjected. Whenever someone becomes drunk, it is said to be in ‘typical Russian fashion’. He always describes the Tsar-Martyr—in typical biographer fashion—as ‘weak’ and ‘indecisive’.

But most annoying, I think, is Mager’s apparent determination to play up a dramatic contrast between the New Martyr Elisabeth and her sister, the Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra. St Elisabeth is presented as the warm, saintly, reasonable sister who does everything she can to save Russia, St Alexandra as the cold, self-centered, hysterical sister who does everything she can to ruin it. The author seems quite satisfied—often basing himself on the testimony of witnesses he himself elsewhere calls unreliable—to pronounce their relationship as being at distressing odds and ending in complete coldness.

There are good things to be said about the book. The author certainly reveres St Elisabeth. He also appears to respect Christianity, monarchy and, to some extent, Ss Nicholas and Alexandra. Passages like the note contrasting the ‘repression’ of Tsar Alexander III’s reign with that of communism—concluding, ‘Compared with its Soviet successor, Alexander III’s empire was a remarkably free country’—are really nice. [7] But Mager’s politics, his preoccupation with Grand Duke Sergei’s sexuality (about which he himself acknowledges that there is ‘no firm evidence’), [8] his ignorance of Orthodoxy and superficial notions of spirituality, and his exaggerrated antinomy between the two saintly sisters are all very annoying, and detract greatly from an interesting story. More importantly, Mager clearly lacks the experience and insight to do any kind of justice to the spiritual life of a great Saint. His Victorian psychologising is a poor substitute, not compensated for, in the end, by his attention to detail in presenting an in-depth story.

Those who want to read about St Elisabeth should stick with the Life by Lubov Millar, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke (Richfield Springs, NY: Nikodemos, 1991), only venturing toward Mager’s book for superficial and extraneous details about things like the Hessian grand duchy or Queen Victoria. Those interested in St Alexandra should never open Mager’s book, but stick with A Gathered Radiance: The Life of Alexandra Romanov, Russia’s Last Empress (Chico, CA: Valaam Society of America, 1992), by Mother Nectaria (McLees).

Addendum: Mary Mansur has just informed me that Nikodemos has recently published a new, expanded edition of Millar's biography of St Elisabeth, featuring all new materials. It can be ordered for $26.95 + $4 s&h. Just send a check to Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, PO Box 383, Richfield Springs, NY 13439-0383.


[1] Hugo Mager, Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1999), p. 200.

[2] Ibid., p. 226. True startsy, or ‘elders’, of course, may well be educated, are rarely wanderers, would never display an external ‘sign of asceticism’, and would never claim to ‘possess powers of healing’.

[3] Ibid., pp. 19-20, 240.

[4] Ibid., p. 227.

[5] Ibid., pp. 343-9.

[6] Ibid., pp. 235, 255, 277.

[7] Ibid., p. 80. The final paragraph of this lengthy note deserves to be quoted in full:

However, these enormous powers [of the tsarist political police] were used with remarkable leniency. During Alexander [III]’s repressive reign only four thousand persons, out of a population of nearly a hundred million, were detained or interrogated in connection with political offenses; only forty-four, all assassins or potential assassins, were executed for political crimes. The right to travel abroad and property rights, even those of expatriate revolutionaries, were scrupulously respected. The vast majority of criminals were tried fairly, by jury. Censorship was little more than a nuisance: between 1867 and 1894 only 158 books, not including Marx’s Capital, were forbidden to circulate in Russia. Compared with its Soviet successor, Alexander III’s empire was a remarkably free country.

[8] Ibid., p. 74.

Met. Anthony on Tolstoy, Logismoi News

Thanks to a kind reader, last night I received a pdf of the article I referred to in the last post—‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’ by Pål Kolstø. Although I haven’t yet had time to read it (I am, however, currently reading Kolstø’s similar article on Tolstoy’s relationship to the strannik tradition in Russian spirituality), I did note the following interesting footnote right there on page 2:

After Tolstoi’s death in November 1910, the highly respected Russian theologian and church dignitary [Metropolitan] Antonii Khrapovitskii [of Kiev, later First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad] gave a talk on the topic ‘How Influence from Orthodoxy Is Reflected in Count L.N. Tolstoi’s Later Works’. The spiritual relationship between Orthodoxy and Tolstoi’s thinking went deep, Antonii asserted—much deeper, in fact, than Tolstoi himself had realized. Antonii (Khrapovitskii), ‘V chem prodolzhalo otrazhat’sia vliianie pravoslaviia na posledniia proizvedeniia gr. L.N. Tolstogo’, in Zhizneopisanie i tvoreniia blazhenneishego Antoniia, mitropolita Kievskogo i Galitskogo, 17 vols. (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1978), 14:247-68. Antonii had known Tolstoi personally and wrote no less than seven articles and small booklets about various aspects of Tolstoianism. For further details, see Pål Kolstø, ‘The Demonized Double: The Image of Lev Tolstoi in Russian Orthodox Polemics’, Slavic Review 65, 2 (2006): 304-24. [1]

This last is of course another article I’d like to see, readers! [Addendum: the article has just arrived, courtesy of Samn! of Notes on Arab Orthodoxy fame.]

In other news, I’m afraid I must announce that this post will likely be my last for the next week and a half. My best friend and fellow parishioner, Christopher, and I leave this morning for Memphis, TN, followed tomorrow by Wayne, WV, and Saturday by Long Island, NY. I will be spending two nights—Sunday and Monday—in Manhattan, and returning to Oklahoma City for only one day before departing for Durham, NC, for the annual Association of Christian Classical Schools conference for the rest of the week. I know of at least two or three readers/fellow bloggers I will be seeing during my travels, but I’d still love to hear from any others who might like to get together somewhere along the way. Feel free to e-mail me—probably the sooner, the better. In the meantime, I would ask all to pray for our safe journey.


[1]Pål Kolstø, ‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History, Vol. 9, #3, Summer 2008 (New Series), p. 534, n. 6.

Two Takes on Tolstoy's Excommunication

Much of the drama of the story told in my last two posts (here and here) hinges on the fact that Tolstoy had been very publicly excommunicated by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. The situation is almost humourously referenced in the great writer’s words to the Optina guestmaster, Fr Michael, ‘Perhaps it’s not possible for me [to enter the monastery]; I’m Tolstoy.’ [1]

The story of the excommunication has been told in a ridiculously over-the-top, Dan Brown-fashion by W. Bruce Lincoln in his survey of Russian artistic life, Between Heaven & Hell. First, Lincoln indulges in a dramatic build-up, describing Tolstoy’s ‘prophetic’ denunciations of Church and state and suggesting, ‘Only his immense public stature at home and abroad restrained the authorities from acting against him, but, as the 1880s shaded into the 1890s, no one knew how long Russia’s high churchmen and statesmen could be held in check.’ [2] Then, he portrays the serial publication of Resurrection as a titillating call to rebellion heard with enthusiasm by the entire world, who sensed ‘the stirrings of a titanic confrontation between prophet and Emperor.’ Despite being thoroughly censored, Lincoln tells us, ‘Resurrection remained an intensely powerful work—and one that stirred bitter feelings among the men who led the government and Church it criticized.’ [3] Finally, Lincoln suggests, the sword of Damocles came crashing down on Tolstoy’s head:

On February 24, 1901, the Holy Synod, which had governed the Russian Orthodox Church since the days of Peter the Great, ordered an edict to be posted in every church in the Empire. ‘God has permitted a new false teacher to appear [in the person of] Count Lev Tolstoi,’ the document began. Amonger his many sins, it explained, Tolstoi had tried to destroy the true faith in the minds and hearts of the faithful. He had preached the overthrow of Orthodox dogmas, denied the Holy Trinity, and questioned the virginity of Mary. He had rejected all the sacraments and derided the Holy Eucharist. Therefore, the document concluded, ‘the Church does not beckon [sic] him as its member and cannot so reckon him until he repents and resumes his communion with her.’ In St Petersburg Ilia Repin’s famous portrait of the barefoot ‘Tolstoi at Prayer’ became a national icon and the focus of large demonstrations as the telegraph flashed the news around the world. Most of all, as repressive acts of Church and State so often do, Tolstoi’s excommunication enlarged the forum from which he spoke. The eyes of the world were on Russia, and the seventy-two-year-old author of Resurrection had every intention of rising to the occasion. [4]

Lincoln then quotes Tolstoy’s reply, which despite its high-flown rhetoric and hubristic attempt at fashioning a personal ‘creed’, amounts to no more than a defiant affirmation that the Holy Synod had done the right thing. Lincoln cannot deny that all of the things Tolstoy was excommunicated for were true. Furthermore, it is hard to take Tolstoy seriously, as Lincoln tacitly appears to do, when he says he had ‘escaped’ the Church with much ‘suffering’. [5] The earlier Confession makes his escape sound rather painless, in my opinion.

By way of contrast, consider the evaluation of the same events in Prince Dmitri S. Mirsky’s classic, A History of Russian Literature. After detailing Tolstoy’s activities in attracting disciples, encouraging the shirking of military duty, and agitating on behalf of ‘certain sects of Christian communists and anarchists’, [6] Mirsky concludes:

But Tolstoy himself was unmolested by the government. Only in 1901 the Synod excommunicated him. This act, widely but very unjudiciously resented both at home and abroad, merely registered a matter of common knowledge—that Tolstoy had ceased to be an Orthodox Churchman. [7]

Prince Mirsky is the voice of reason here. [8] Is it an act of ‘repression’ to deny Holy Communion to a man who has denounced and mocked the practice of Holy Communion, or to declare outside the Church a man who applauds himself for having escaped the Church?


[1] Tatiana V. Torstensen, Elder Sebastian of Optina, ed. Vera Koroleva, tr. David Koubek (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999), p. 78.

[2] W. Bruce Lincoln, Between Heaven & Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia (NY: Viking, 1998), p. 184.

[3] Ibid., p. 184.

[4] Ibid., pp. 184-5.

[5] Ibid., p. 185.

[6] Prince Dmitri Svyatopolk Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1900, ed. Francis J. Whitfield (NY: Vintage, 1958), pp. 323-4.

[7] Ibid., p. 324.

[8] Incidentally, a reading of Prince Mirsky also places in a comic light Lincoln’s portrayal of the composition of Resurrection as a heroic literary event. Prince Mirsky points out that the novel ‘was written, strange to say, for money’ to fund the Dukhobors, that its ‘moral idea . . . is not organically infused into the fabric’, that its greatest strengths are ‘the minor realistic details he condemned so severely in What is Art?’, and that it contains a ‘gratuitous and [aesthetically] unnecessary’ satire of an Orthodox Church service which ‘can scarcely be qualified otherwise than as a grave lapse from good taste’ (ibid., pp. 319-20). Prince Mirsky concludes that it is ‘Tolstoy at his worst’ (p. 320).

'A Successor of the Grace of Optina Eldership'—St Sebastian the Confessor

Today, 6 April on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Sebastian the Confessor of Optina and Karaganda (1884-1966). Although St Sebastian carried out his struggles as an Elder far away from the monastery of his repentance, in exile in Kazakhstan, in the decree of his glorification, Archbishop Alexei of Alma-Ata and Semipalatinsk describes him as ‘successor of the grace of Optina eldership’. [1] (For those as yet unfamiliar with the Elders of Optina, I have written of their number and glorification, compiled some links, and reposted an overview in a post here.) St Sebastian was renowned for his ‘soft-heartedness and compassion’. [2] According to his Life, St Barsanuphius of Optina called him ‘the grace-filled one’, while his own Elder, St Joseph, said, ‘He is a tender soul.’ [3] Here is a brief overview of his life by the compiler of the available material on St Sebastian at the time of his glorification, Vera Koroleva:

One of the last elders who grew up from the root of pre-revolutionary Optina is Schema-archimandrite Sebastian (Fomin, 1966)—a disciple [and cell-attendant] of Elder Joseph and, after his death, of Elder Nektary. Having absorbed within himself the traditions and the grace-filled patristic spirit of Optina Monastery and having been tried, like iron, in the furnace of fiery trials, enduring banishment and imprisonment in the soviet camps, he, by the ineffable judgments of God, bore his service of eldership in the sultry steppe of Central Kazakhstan, in much-suffering and blessed Karaganda where, during the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, one of the most tragic acts of the God-fighting drama of our century unfolded. The unbounded steppe of Kazakhstan stretches out like a massive antimension, filled with the blood of the martyrs and sanctified by their prayers, over which the Optina Elder, Schema-archimandrite Sebastian of blessed memory, extended his powerful wings. [4]

Even as a child, St Sebastian had longed to follow an older brother into Optina. He studied hard and ‘had a great thirst for reading’. [5] He worked as a shepherd, being very fond of animals all his life, and this gave him time for reading and prayer. Later, as a monk under the guidance of Elders Joseph and Nektary, ‘he developed the spiritual gifts which he had had since birth and acquired many new, lofty ones—the gifts of meekness, discernment, exalted prayer, clairvoyance, mercifulness and compassion.’ [6] He was eventually ordained a hierodeacon. After the forced closure of the monastery in 1923, St Sebastian followed his Elder, St Nektary, performing errands for him, and undergoing ordination to the priesthood, until the latter’s blessed repose in 1928 under the epitrachelion of the future Archbishop Andrew of Novo-Diveevo.

St Sebastian’s hagiographer, T.V. Torstensen, tells us the Elder ‘had a natural breadth of soul, a love for beauty in general and for the beauty of nature in particular. . . . He felt great warmth and love for art. There was a certain special softness of soul in him.’ She continues:

All of these qualities and all of his spiritual experience—acquired during fourteen years of life in the Skete and nineteen years of close daily interaction with the great Optina Elders, his life having passed under their guidance—predetermined his path toward active ascetic service to men, taking the most varied forms of help. [7]

For five years St Sebastian served as a priest in Tambov province, continuing to receive spiritual children. The Elder became a Confessor for the Faith when he was arrested and taken to the GPU in 1933. According to the files of the UFSB in Tambov province, St Sebastian told the authorities:

I look upon all the measures of the soviet authority as the anger of God; this authority is a punishment for the people. I have expressed such views among those close to me, as well as among the rest of the citizens with whom I have had occasion to speak on this topic. At these times I have said that one must pray, pray to God, and also live in love. Then only can we be delivered from this. I have been little pleased with the soviet authorities because of the closing of churches and monasteries, since by this the Orthodox Faith is being destroyed. [8]

St Sebastian was placed in a forced labour camp in the summer of 1933 and was transferred to Karaganda in Kazakhstan in May of 1934. He remained there, subjected to beatings and tortures in an attempt to destroy his faith, until the eve of the Ascension, 1939. A number of spiritual children, in particular a few of the nuns of Shamordino, followed him into exile and did what they could to help him while he suffered in the camp. When he was released, these nuns formed the core of a community of spiritual children who lived as best they could a monastic life in the world. As long as necessary, the Elder would conduct services in secret at the homes of the faithful. Torstensen writes:

Ah, Batiushka! Batiushka! How gentle, radiant and loving! Whoever was once with him at Lower Street will never forget it. Soon the residents of Mikhailovka learned about him and began to invite him over to their houses with liturgical request, since he could not receive them at home. After the daily refectory meal Fr Sebastian would take the addresses which had been left for him and would go to conduct the requested services until evening. Permission to conduct the various services had not been given, but he went without refusing. The people in Karaganda were faithful then. ‘Don’t betray him,’ they would say. Even the children, although they all knew, observed the rule ‘not to tell’.

People in other suburbs also heard about him and strove to come to see him. Yea, and not only people, but even the beasts as well. When he, small and insignificant, walked with his quick, light stride along the street of Mikhailovka in his long, black overcoat and black skufia, dogs would crawl out from behind all the fences to see him. They rushed, fearing to be late, to miss him. When the gap in the fence was narrow and they could not crawl through it, then, having sniffed the Elder, they would dig a hole with their paws under the fence in order to force their heads through and would lie there, flat as a pancake. Laughing, their owners would tell of this, and I myself saw it. ‘When Fr Sebastian walks by,’ the people said, ‘they crawl out like snakes.’ Where houses had low garden fences, the dogs would fly over them like birds. They would all decorously sit in front of their homes. They did not run out onto the street, nor did they bark at anyone. They would sit quietly, following the Elder with their heads as he passed by. What were they trying to express? Ah, the dogs of Mikhailovka! The dogs of Mikhailovka! How they impressed me with the keenness and depth of their dog souls and hearts. [9]

It wasn’t finally until 1955 that St Sebastian obtained permission to turn the very shabby house church in which he and the sisters had been praying into a church temple where they could hold the Divine Liturgy. Gradually, in order to get help in caring for the spiritual needs of the faithful in those dark times, the Elder brought about the ordination of three of his spiritual children to the priesthood. One of them, the former church warden, Paul Alexandrovich Kovalenko, ‘had competed several times, with the Elder’s blessing, in debates with a Baptist leader who had come to the church courtyard to put the “popes” [priests] to shame in debate. But the Baptist himself had been put to shame by Paul Alexandrovich.’ [10]

The Russian literary critic and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, in one of the religious debates characteristic of the early years of the godless communist regime was reported to have ‘complained of, and worried about, the fact that socialism had no care for the dead (as if there weren’t enough services for the dead!), and that, accordingly, in some future time, the people would not fogive us such neglect’. [11] Thus, it is interesting to note that the commemoration of the dead played an enormous rôle in the Elder’s ministry. Torstensen relates the following story:

Once the Elder was walking with the nuns Maria and Matha to the cemetery which lay beyond Tikhonovka. There, in the middle of the cemetery, were common graves in which two hundred reposed peasants a day had been buried, who had died from hunger and sickness. They had been buried without funerals, without mounds, without crosses. The Elder, after seeing and hearing about it, said, ‘Here, day and night, over these common graves of the martyrs, there burn candles from earth to heaven.’ And Fr Sebastian was an intercessor for them all. [12]

When St Sebastian’s community was petitioning the authorities for the opening of the church in Mikhailovka, Torstensen tells us, ‘The parents of soldiers who had died during the Second World War wrote to the military commander of the Karaganda Province that their sole consolation was to pray for their sons who had died in the war. “But,” one letter said, “they deprive us even of this possibility.”’ [13] When the church finally was opened, we read of St Sebastian:

He especially loved memorial services celebrated according to the monastery custom he had inherited—he zealously served Pannikhidas daily, and continued celebrating funeral services until the end of his life. He said that he liked to commemorate and serve funerals for women more because among women there were far fewer sins. To him all the sins of people were visible. [14]

But St Sebastian did not neglect the living either. According to Torstensen, ‘The Elder expended much labor for the nurturing of his flock. . . . The lives of these people were models of virtue. They were called the “Batiushka-ites”. . . . It was said that a good half of Mikhailovka was like a secret monastery in the world.’ [15] In addition, apart from the people immediately around him in Mikhailovka, St Sebastian would travel to other settlements to minister to the faithful there as well. Of these, he especially loved the distant community at Melkombinat, where there was a grain-milling factory. ‘He would say that in Mikhailovka he had his “Optina”, and in Melkombinat he had his “Skete”. He gathered his orphans and widows there, bought them a house and became their guardian. . . . A spirit of peace reigned here.’ [16]

Torstensen relates from her own experience what it was like to live in obedience to the Elder:

For thirteen and a half years I was Elder Sebastian’s spiritual daughter. This happiness cannot be compared with anything. There was such total protection in everything, such love. No matter what would happen, if you would only manage to run to him and succeed in informing him, he would take everything away and right every wrong. He would even prolong one’s life. As he once told me, or, to be more precise, as he once spilled out during a frank conversation, ‘How many lives I’ve prolonged.’ [17]

During Great Lent of 1966, St Sebastian’s health declined rapidly, a process Torstensen relates in minute detail in a diary she kept daily during those weeks. He fell asleep in the Lord on Tuesday, 6 April on the Church’s calendar, on Radonitsa. In the words of Tatiana Torstensen:

The earthly path of his half century of pastoral care and twenty-two years of guidance of eldership was completed in the church in Mikhailovka in the city of Karaganda, whose cemetery will always be famous, and where a white marble cross shines over the grave of Elder Sebastian. The sacred podvig of the blessed Elder, who had acquired great gifts of grace from the Lord, was now completed. His service to God, through upholding the good in mankind for the salvation of souls, had come to its end, and his superb example of holy spiritual love was concluded—‘his fruit is unto holiness and the end everlasting life’ (Rom. 6:22).

Fr Sebastian often spoke of eternal life and the kingdom of God, and this found its expression through a certain concept of his—the ‘Great Family’. Once, not long before his death (I did not note the date), to my words, ‘Batiushka, stay alive with us,’ he replied, ‘They’re already waiting for me there.’ [18]

The volume on St Sebastian compiled by Vera Koroleva, which includes Torstensen’s biography, also contains numerous accounts of his miracles by various spiritual children. Here, as just a tiny sample, are two stories related by Monk Sebastian (Khmyrov):

One day I came to church in the evening, when suddenly during the service I was seized by a fever and my nose began to feel very painful. I decided to wait for the anointing and then leave—I felt that bad. I stepped up to be anointed, and Fr Sebastian anointed me and touched my nose as if by accident. It was so painful! I was walking towards the exit and felt that I was getting better, and I understood that he had sensed my illness and had healed me.

Once he invited my sixteen-year-old daughter Lyuba, my eldest, to see him in his cell. He spoke with her, and during their conversation he was suddenly transfigured—he became young, beardless, and bright as an angel, and the whole cell was covered by an unusual light. In this manner the Lord revealed the spiritual greatness and purity of the Elder, even while he was still alive. [19]

Koroleva also has a section of various teachings of the Elder, as well as one of selections from his sermons. From the first section:

He repeatedly said, ‘If you fail to observe the fasts without a good reason, the time will come when you’ll be overtaken by sickness. Then you’ll fast against your will. The Lord will allow this because of sins.’

He would speak with pity of those who rarely came to church and who rarely if ever received Communion (especially the elderly). As an example, he would point out those who lived next door to the church: ‘They sit on the bench during the whole service but don’t come to church, even though they call themselves Christians! And other people who live in distant places, even many miles away from the church, find time, for the sake of the salvation of their souls, to come to church on feast days to pray.’ . . . [20]

And here are a couple of brief paragraphs from the ‘Selections from Sermons’:

Sermon on the Repentant Sinner
(January 18/31, 1960)

Sinner, abandon your passions and sinful habits. Heaven, with more than ninety-nine righteous ones is calling you! The angels in heaven rejoice over a single repentant sinner. Heaven is seeking your salvation. Only repent and be converted, and break yourself of sin.

For your sake the Lord Himself was born in a manger of dumb beasts and suffered. He was insulted, spat upon, crowned with thorns, and was nailed to the Cross by the hand of his own creation. He suffered and died so as afterwards to be glorified and exalted. But you, O man, what can you be proud of? What do you possess that is truly yours, which is fit for eternity? You won’t take your riches with you, and honor, glory, and health are temporal. Let us enrich ourselves for the future, and gather our wealth there through beggards, the poor, and the sick. You are a citizen of heaven, so why are you glued ot the earth?! You are an heir of the Kingdom of Heaven and you possess an immortal soul, which the Only-begotten Son Himself redeemed by His death upon the Cross. [21]

In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion of the Saint:

Troparion, Tone 3

O servant of the Holy Trinity, * earthly angel and heavenly man, * successor of the spiritual eldership of Optina, * initiate of the mysteries of Christ and confessor, * all-honorable abode of the Holy Spirit, * holy and venerable Father Sebastian, * ask for the world peace, * and for our souls great mercy.

Kontakion, Tone 3

Let us glorify, O ye faithful * him who hath entered into the joy of the Risen Lord, * the fellow-member of the choir of the Elders of Optina, * sharer in the lot of the martyrs and confessors, * co-celebrant with the initiates of God’s mysteries, * earthly angel and heavenly man, * godly adornment of the city of Karaganda, * exceeding great intercessor for the land of Kazakhstan, * praise of the Church of Russia, * and let us cry out to him with gladness: * Rejoice O our all-honored and venerable Sebastian. [22]

[1] Tatiana V. Torstensen, Elder Sebastian of Optina, ed. Vera Koroleva, tr. David Koubek (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999), p. 174.

[2] Ibid., p. 33.

[3] Ibid., p. 54.

[4] Ibid., p. 21.

[5] Ibid., p. 26.

[6] Ibid., p. 32.

[7] Ibid., p. 72.

[8] Ibid., p. 43.

[9] Ibid., pp. 57-8.

[10] Ibid., p. 70.

[11] Qtd. in Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, tr. Wlad Godzich, Vol. 13 of Theory & History of Literature (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994), p. 4.

[12] Torstensen, pp. 56-7.

[13] Ibid., p. 53.

[14] Ibid., p. 71.

[15] Ibid., p. 75.

[16] Ibid., p. 76.

[17] Ibid., p. 78.

[18] Ibid., pp. 162-3.

[19] Ibid., p. 240.

[20] Ibid., p. 350.

[21] Ibid., p. 373.

[22] Ibid., p. 448.

'The Harp of the Seraphim'—St Philaret & Pushkin

In a paper on ‘Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic’, Robert L. Nichols says of St Philaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow, ‘Filaret of Moscow (1782-1867) is arguably the greatest Orthodox churchman in modern times. His name is inextricably linked with the reawakening of Orthodox life in Russia and abroad in the past two centuries.’ [1] As Nichols notes, he was an ascetic who thought that ‘the only adequate means for combating a new irreligious and secular age could be found in the healing power of the Holy Spirit most effectively mediated through those perfected by asceticism, prayer, and silence.’ [2] But he did not have a narrow-minded, combative view of the secular or extra-ecclesiastical world. As Fr Florovsky has observed, even behind the troubling currents of contemporary ‘spirituality’, St Philaret ‘could recognize a vital need for religion, a thirst for religious instruction and enlightenment’, [3] and he was able to ‘find a common language’ with such seekers. [4]

I can think of no better illustration of this capacity than in St Philaret’s dealings with Pushkin. The icon above depicts the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, in poetic dialogue with St Philaret. According to an account of the latter’s life (here) at the website of St John the Baptist Cathedral (ROCOR) in Washington, DC:

In May 1828, a despondent Pushkin wrote the famous stanzas: ‘A gift in vain, a gift by chance.’ [5] Elizabeth Khitrovo, a spiritual child of the Metropolitan, gave them to him. The Moscow Hierarch, who appreciated the poet’s talent, read in those verses ‘the cry of a lost soul, the murmuring of self-destructive despondency’, and as a spiritual physician, he responded with an uplifting missive:

Not in vain and not by chance
Was life granted me by God
And not without God’s hidden will
Has it been condemned to death.

I myself through willful power
Summoned evil from the dark abyss
And my soul I filled with passion,
Stirring up my mind with doubts.

Remember Him whom I’d forgotten
Pierce through with light the gloom of thoughts
Then it will be, through You created
A heart that’s pure, a mind that’s clear.

This inspired outpouring of prayer for the poet suffering from gloomy thoughts is a living expression of the needs of a soul which has not yet entered into the life-giving light of God it has forgotten, and which [is] therefore tortured by the gloom of bewilderment and error. At the same time, it points to the main source of healing. Pushkin understood this. Moved and brought to his senses, he expressed his gratitude to his healer with the following poem:

In hours of amusement or idle boredom,
Once upon a time, I used to confide
To my lyre the cosseted sounds
Of madness, indolence and passion.

But even then I would arrest
The vibration of the treacherous string
When your majestic voice
Suddenly struck me.

I poured forth streams of sudden tears,
And to the wounds of my conscience
The balsam of your fragrant words
Was a pure delight.

And now from a spiritual height
You extend a hand to me
And with meek and loving strength
Becalm restless dreams.

Set afire by your flame my soul
Has thrown off the darkness of earthly cares,
And in a state of holy awe
The poet listens to the harp of the seraphim. [6]

I thought this a fascinating instance of the Church’s frequent interaction with secular culture, as well as an eloquent testimony to the power of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘the penetrated word, that is, a word capable of actively and confidently interfering in the interior dialogue of the other person, helping that person to find his own voice.’ [7] Clearly, St Philaret was not merely a great ‘churchman’, but something like a God-bearing elder working in the world.


[1] Robert L. Nichols, ‘Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic’, The Legacy of St Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia, America, ed. Fr John Breck, Fr John Meyendorff, & E. Silk (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1990), p. 81.

[2] Ibid., p. 83.

[3] Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Pt. 1, tr. Robert L. Nichols, Vol. 5 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979), p. 206. Yes, Nichols is both the author of the article and the translator of Fr Florovsky—a funny coincidence I didn't notice until I started to write this citation!

[4] Ibid., p. 205.

[5] The first line of the poem, ‘On My Birthday’ (tr. Eugene Mark Kayden, The Sewanee Review 50.4, Oct.-Dec. 1942, p. 530):

Gift of chance, a favor aimless,
Why the gift of life to me?
By what law divine or nameless
Doomed in dark infinity?

Who, and why, without compassion
Called me out of nothingness?
Filled my soul with doubt and passion,
Wasted me with loneliness?

All my ways are dim and dreary;
Vain the mind, the heart is bare;
Days monotonous and weary
Trouble me with dull despair.

[6] Rather than the unknown translation of nine lines from the St John Cathedral page, I have taken a translation of the full poem from Andrew Kahn, Pushkin’s Lyric Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford U, 2008), p. 60.

[7] Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & tr. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994), p. 242.

'Return Again with Precious Treasure'—Ivan Kireevsky on Pagan Philosophy

I suppose most of my readers will already know the great 19th-c. intellectual, ‘Slavophile’ philosopher, and spiritual son of the Optina Elder, St Macarius—Ivan Kireevsky. Concerning Kireevsky, Fr Seraphim (Rose) writes, ‘Having . . . gone to Germany to study with the most advanced philosophers, Hegel and Schelling, Kireeyevsky was thoroughly penetrated with the Western spirit and then became thoroughly converted to Orthodoxy. Therefore he saw that these two things cannot be put together.’ [1] In his study of Optina Pustyn, I.M. Kontzevitch has observed:

Of all the lay people who spent time in Optina Monastery, Kireeyevsky was closer than anyone to its spirit. . . . In Optina he saw the wisdom of the Holy Fathers brought to life. Being a philosopher, he felt that higher knowledge of truth was linked with integrity of spirit, with the restoration of the harmony of all mankind’s spiritual powers. This restoration is attained by inner ascetic labor, by spiritual activity. [2]

Kireevsky’s essay, ‘On the Possibility & Necessity of New Principles in Philosophy’, in Kontzevitch’s opinion, ‘laid a foundation for independent thought in Russian philosophy’, [3] and in it, according to Boris Jakim and Robert Bird, he ‘foresaw the return of philosophy to life and to the Church, which would restore the wholeness of philosophy in the integral knowledge granted by Christian belief.’ [4] The essay elicited the following verses from A.S. Khomiakov:

Beyond the sea of meditation,
Beyond, like waves, your thoughts, your dreams:
A realm of bright illumination,
Transcendent beauty, radiance gleams.
Unfurl thy sail, thou trav’ler bold,
Like the white wing of a swan;
Prepare to journey, and behold,
Before thine eyes, a new sun dawn.
Return again with precious treasure;
Bring nurture to the hungry heart,
Granting burdened souls new leisure,
Strength to weary wills impart. [5]

After his death, Kontzevitch notes that Kireevsky’s body was buried near the monastery church of Optina ‘at the feet of the grave of Elder Leonid’. When St Philaret of Moscow found out, he ‘perceived the great honor which was shown by Optina Monastery to her devoted son’. [6]

Well, I was looking through this essay again trying to find a particular passage, and instead I came across the passage below (the other turned out to be St Ignatius Brianchaninov anyway). I had forgotten it, but upon a rereading, was reminded of how closely Kireevsky supported some of the points I’d been trying to make in earlier posts here and here.

Christianity, however, which altered the spirit of the ancient world and resurrected the lost dignity of man’s nature, did not unconditionally reject ancient philosophy. For the harm and falsehood of philosophy lay not in the development of the mind which it produced, but in its final conclusions, which depended on the fact that it considered itself the highest and only truth, conclusions which were eliminated as soon as the intellect recognized a superior truth. Then philosophy took a subordinate position, appearing as relative truth and serving as the means for the confirmation of the highest principle in the realm of a different culture.

Although engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the falsehood of pagan mythology, Christianity did not destroy pagan philosophy but accepted it and transformed it in accordance with its own higher philosophy. The brightest lights of the Church—Justin, Clement, Origen (insofar as he was Orthodox), Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, and most of the great Holy Fathers upon whose work, so to speak, the Christian teaching became established in the midst of a pagan culture—not only were thoroughly versed in ancient philosophy but also utilized it for the rational construction of the first Christian philosophy, which combined the development of science and reason into one all-embracing vision of faith. The part of pagan philosophy which was true and was pervaded with the Christian spirit was the intermediary between faith and the external culture of mankind. And not only at the time when Christianity was still combating paganism, but also in the whole subsequentexistence of Byzantium, we see that the profound study of the Greek philosophers was the common legacy of almost all the Church teachers. For Plato and Aristotle could only be of use to Christian culture as great scholars; they could not endanger it as long as as Christian truth occupied the summit of man’s culture. For it should not be forgotten that in its struggle with paganism Christianity did not concede superiority in intelligence to it, but, permeating paganism, placed in its own service the whole intellectual activity of the world, past and present, to the extent to which it was known.

If there was any danger anywhere that a Christian people might deviate from the true teaching, the danger lay primarily in ignorance. The growth of rational knowledge, of course, does not offer salvation, but protects from false knowledge. It is true that where the mind and the heart have once been permeated by Divine truth, there the degree of learning becomes a side issue. It is also true that consciousness of the Divine is equally compatible with all stages of rational development. But in order that Divine truth might permeate, inspire, and guide man’s intellectual life, it must subordinate external reason to itself and dominate it, not remain outside its sphere of action. Divine truth must stand above other truths in the general consciousness as the sovereign principle pervading all culture. For each separate individual Divine truth must be supported by the like-mindedness of cultivated society. Ignorance, by contrast, keeps people from vital intellectual interchange through which truth among men and nations is sustained, advanced, and enlarged. An ignorant mind, even when accompanied by the most righteous convictions of the heart, gives birth to irrational jealousy, from which in turn springs the deviation of the mind and the heart from true convictions. [7]

The entire essay can be found translated by Peter Christoff in James M. Edie, et al., eds., Russian Philosophy, Vol. 1: The Beginnings of Russian Philosophy; The Slavophiles; The Westernizers [8] and in a revised version in Boris Jakim & Robert Bird, tr. & eds., On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader. [9] I have excerpted the unrevised version.


[1] Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life & Works (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), p. 620.

[2] Ivan M. Kontzevitch, ‘The Life of Elder Macarius’ Disciple, Ivan V. Kireyevsky’, Elder Macarius of Optina, by Fr Leonid Kavelin, tr. Valentina V. Lyovina (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995), p. 297.

[3] Ibid., p. 302.

[4] Boris Jakim & Robert Bird, tr. & eds., On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne, 1998)), p. 233.

[5] Qtd. in Kontzevitch, p. 302.

[6] Ibid., p. 304.

[7] Ivan V. Kireevsky, ‘On the Possibility & Necessity of New Principles in Philosophy’, tr. Peter Christoff, Russian Philosophy, Vol. 1: The Beginnings of Russian Philosophy; The Slavophiles; The Westernizers, ed. James M. Edie, et al. (Knoxville: U of Tennessee, 1994), pp. 188-9.

[8] Ibid., pp. 171-213.

[9] Jakim & Bird, pp. 234-73.

'A Theologian by Virtue of Thy Life in God'—St Nazarius of Valaam

Today, 23 February on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Nazarius (1735-1809), Abbot of Valaam. The Life of St Nazarius compiled and translated from 19th-c. sources by Fr Seraphim (Rose)—who, providentially, was tonsured on the day of St Nazarius’s repose [1]—describes him as ‘a man of virtue who loved the solitary life of silence in the wilderness.’ [2] We Orthodox in America are indebted to St Nazarius for sending us the extraordinary missionaries to Alaska, including the great St Herman. Here is the brief account of his life from the Valaam Patericon Book of Days:

A severe Sarov Monastery ascetic from the age of 17, and a counselor during the publication of the first Philokalia in Russia, he revived ancient Valaam, after almost two centuries of desolation, by installing the Sarov Rule there. Living such a refined spiritual life he inspired a whole army of holy monks for a century hence, including such saint-disciples as Herman of Alaska and later, Seraphim of Sarov. After sending off the first Orthodox Mission to America, he left Valaam to retire to Sarov, where in the bosom of nature he wandered the forest in a state of ecstasy, truly a monk not of this world. Abbot Nazarius was formed by great luminaries of his time: St Tikhon of Zadonsk, Elder Theodore of Sanaxar and St Paisius Velichkovsky. Even during his lifetime the holy foundress of Diveyevo Convent, Alexandra, would pray before his portrait when in trouble, and he would always hear from afar. Abbot Nazarius possessed a poetic gift of speech, which can be seen from his ‘Counsels’ to monks on daily life. . . . [3]

St Nazarius was a simple, unlearned man, but according to his Life, ‘The reading of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers was the daily food of his soul.’ [4] Because of this study of the truly essential writings of the Church, and because of his great spiritual experience and wisdom, he was also able to contribute to one of the most influential literary endeavours in the Orthodox world since the 14th and 15th centuries: the translation and publication of the Philokalia in Slavonic. According to the biography of Metropolitan Gabriel of St Petersburg (1730-1801):

Metropolitan Gabriel, having received from Elder Paisius [Velichkovsky] from Moldavia the translation of the book, the Philokalia, chose Father Theophanes as one of the advisors together with the scholars of the seminary of St Alexander Nevsky. To them he entrusted this translation, because in this work was required not only a precise knowledge of the Greek language, but also a faithful and experienced understanding of spiritual life. Those who labored in the comparison of the translation of this book with the Greek original, according to the Metropolitan’s instructions, were obliged to constantly take counsel concerning all necessary corrections with spiritual elders who had actual experience in conducting their spiritual lives in accordance with this exalted teaching set forth in the Philokalia. [5]

Met. Gabriel himself told the editors, ‘These fathers, although they do not know the Greek language, out of experience know better than you the truths of the spiritual life and therefore understand more correctly the teaching contained in this book.’ [6] Concerning St Nazarius’s rôle, not only in the preparation, but in the dissemination of the Philokalia, Fr Placide (Deseille) writes:

One of the reviewers of the Dobrotoliubie [Philokalia] . . . —designated by Gabriel, the Metropolitan of St Petersburg—was Fr Nazarios . . . When Catherine II charged Metropolitan Gabriel with sending missionaries to Alaska, Gabriel asked hegumen Nazarios to confide this task to some of his monks. They left in 1793, taking with them the Dobrotoliubie, which had just been published. . . .

In 1801 Fr Nazarios gave up his position as hegumen [at Valaam] and retired to Sarov to live in solitude. He brought the Dobrotoliubie to St Seraphim (1759-1833), who was living in the forest as a hermit. [7]

St Nazarius was first and foremost a solitary ascetic and afterwards a father of monks. When he re-established Valaam, he took care to reintroduce all three modes of monastic life: coenobitism, the skete life, and anchoretism. According to his Life, ‘He began the building of the Great Skete in the woods beyond the Monastery enclosure as well as other sketes, and encouraged anchorites—making himself the first example of eremitic life.’ [8] As a ‘monk’s monk’, St Nazarius was different from many of the famous elders of subsequent decades. While St Nectarius of Optina deliberately cultivated an ability to converse on nearly any subject (see this post), the better to relate to the countless lay pilgrims who sought his help, St Nazarius’s Life tells us, ‘As for worldly things, he knew not at all how to speak of them. But if he opened his mouth in order to speak of ascetic labors against the passions, of love for virtue, then his converse was an inexhaustible fount of sweetness.’ [9] But that is not to say that St Nazarius was of ‘no use’ to lay people. A delightful story has come down to us of a trip the great ascetic once made to St Petersburg:

In the reign of Paul I, the Elder Nazarius was once invited in St Petersburg to the house of a certain K., who at that time had fallen into the Tsar’s disfavor. The statesman’s wife begged the Elder: ‘Pray, Father Nazarius, that my husband’s case will end well.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the Elder; ‘one must pray to the Lord to give the Tsar enlightenment. But one must ask also those who are close to him.’ The statesman’s wife, thinking he was referring to her husband’s superiors, said: ‘We’ve already asked all of them, but there is little hope from them.’ ‘No, not them, and one shouldn’t ask in such a way; give me some money.’ She took out several gold coins. ‘No, these a re no good. Haven’t you any copper coins, or small silver ones?’ She ordered both kinds to be given him. Fr Nazarius took the money and left the house.

For a whole day Fr Nazarius walked the streets and places where he supposed poor people and paupers were to be found and distributed the coins to them. Towards evening he appeared at K.’s house and confidently said: ‘Glory be to God, all those close to the Tsar have promised to intercede for you.’ The wife went and with joy informed her husband, who had become ill out of sorrow, and K. himself summoned Fr Nazarius and thanked him for his intercessions with the high officials.

Fr Nazarius had not even left the sick man’s bed when news came of the successful end of K.’s case. Immediately K. in his joy felt already stronger, and he asked Fr Nazarius which of the Tsar’s officials had shown the more favor to him. Here he found out that these ‘officials’ were paupers—those close to the Lord Himself, in the words of Fr Nazarius. Deeply moved by the piety of the Elder, he always kept for him a reverent love. [10]

As was mentioned above, although St Nazarius was an unlearned man, he was ‘a theologian by virtue of thy life in God’, according to a sticheron in his honour by Fr Seraphim (Rose). [11] He had read much in the Scriptures and the Fathers, he had great spiritual experience, and he had ‘a poetic gift of speech’. All of these are on full display in his simple but insightful ‘Counsels’. I shall first offer a quite practical example:

When the time for morning worship arrives, with all zeal arise and hasten to the beginning of the Church’s Divine service; and having come to church for the common prayer, stand in the appropriate place, collect all your mind’s power of thought, so that you will not dream or fly away in every direction, following evil qualities and objects which arouse our passions.

Strive as well as you can to enter deeply with the heart into the church reading and singing and to imprint these on the tablets of the heart.

Pay heed without sloth, do not weaken the body, do not lean against the wall or pillar in church; but put your feet straight and plant them firmly on the ground; keep your hands together; bow your head toward the ground and direct your midn to the heavenly dwellings.

Take care, as well as you can, that you do not dare, not only to speak about anything, but even to look at anyone or anything with the eyes. Pay attention to the church reading and singing, and strive as much as possible not to let your mind grow idle.

If, in listening to the church singing and reading, you cannot understand them, then with reverence say to yourself the Prayer of the Name of Jesus, in this way: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. [12]

On the more theoretical side of things, it is interesting to see that, although unlearned, St Nazarius echoes the Socratic injunction to ‘Know thyself’, which was very much affirmed by the Fathers of the Church as an essential component of the true ‘philosophy’ of Christianity: [13]

Self-knowledge is needful; this is the knowledge of oneself and especially of the limitations of one’s talents, one’s failings, and lack of skill. From this it should result that we consider ourselves unworthy of any kind of position, and therefore that we do not desire any special positions, but rather accept what is placed upon us with fear and humility. He who knows himself pays no heed to the sins of others, but looks at his own and is always repenting over them; he reflects concerning himself, and condemns himself, and does not interfere in anything apart from his own position. He who is exercising himself in self-knowledge and has faith, does not trust his faith, does not cease to test it, in order to acquire a great and more perfect one, heeding the word of the Apostle: Examine yourself, whether ye be in the faith (II Cor. 13:5). [14]

Finally, imbued as he was the practice and spirit of hesychasm, it is not surprising to find that a later Abbot of Valaam, Igumen Chariton, included a passage of St Nazarius’s ‘Counsels’ in his famous anthology known as The Art of Prayer:

With reverence call in secret upon the Name of Jesus, thus: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.’

Try to make this prayer enter ever more deeply into your soul and heart. Pray the prayer with your mind and thought, and do not let it leave your lips even for a moment. Combine it, if possible, with your breathing, and with all your strength try though the prayer to force yourself to a heart-felt contrition, repenting over your sins with tears. If there are no tears, at least there should be contrition and mourning
in the heart. [15]

In conclusion, here are the Troparion for St Nazarius in Tone 2, and three stichera to follow ‘Lord, I have cried’ in Tone 1, composed by Fr Seraphim (Rose):

Troparion, Tone 2

Humility is thy power, * patience thy rampart, * and love crowns all thy ways, * O Nazarius, chieftain leader of Valaam monks. * Call us to duty and order * that we may inherit God’s heavenly realm. [16]

On ‘Lord, I have cried’, Tone 1, to the Special Melody, ‘Rejoicing of the Heavenly Hierarchies’:

Ye islands of Valaam, rejoice, * be glad, ye forest of Sarov, * in you hath shone forth a wondrous teacher, * the glorious Nazarius, * who enlightened a multitude of monks * with the rays of true patristic teaching, * and taught all to wage unceasing warfare * against the world, the flesh, and the devil * unto the salvation of their souls.

Dance for joy, ye waters of Ladoga, * leap up, O brook Sarovka, * by your side walked the wondrous anchorite, * the abbot and instructor of many monks, * the wise Elder Nazarius * who could not be hid in the wilderness, * but was placed upon a candlestand * that he might shine for the salvation of our souls.

Instructor of St Herman, * and conversor with our holy Father Seraphim, * O Nazarius, wise in God, * by thine angelic life and teaching, * thou wast a model for holy men, * a theologian by virtue of thy life in God. * Now dwelling in the choirs of those who praise God without ceasing * do thou entreat Him to save our souls. [17]

[1] Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life & Works (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), p. 429.

[2] Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), ed. & tr., Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. 2: Abbot Nazarius, 2nd ed. (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1996), p. 19.

[3] Valaam Patericon Book of Days (New Valaam Monastery, AK: Valaam Society of America, 1999), p. 25.

[4] Fr Seraphim, Abbot Nazarius, p. 20.

[5] Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), ed. & tr., Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994), p. 237.

[6] Fr Seraphim, Abbot Nazarius, p. 24.

[7] Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008), p. 163.

[8] Fr Seraphim, Abbot Nazarius, p. 23

[9] Ibid., p. 22.

[10] Ibid., pp. 26-7.

[11] Ibid., p. 121.

[12] Ibid., p. 56.

[13] On this, see Constantine Cavarnos, The Hellenic-Christian Philosophical Tradition (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 1989), p. 105.

[14] Fr Seraphim, Abbot Nazarius, p. 88.

[15] Igumen Chariton of Valamo, comp., The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, tr. E. Kadloubovsky & E.M. Palmer, ed. Timothy Ware [now Met. Kallistos of Diokleia] (London: Faber, 1997), p. 279; cf. the equivalent passage in Fr Seraphim, Abbot Nazarius, p. 56.

[16] Ibid., p. 122.

[17] Ibid., p. 121.

'Vouchsafed the Intelligence of the Rhetors'—St Maximus the Greek

Today, 21 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Maximus the Greek (c. 1475-1556), the ‘Enlightener of the Russians’. [1] Pierre Kovalevsky calls him ‘the great Orthodox humanist’, and observes that he ‘was one of the most erudite men of his period’. [2] In this post on his life in Greek at the Vatopaidi blog, he is referred to as ‘a most learned monk, distinguished as a theologian, philosopher, writer, and poet during the 16th century’, and as ‘an enlightener and reformer of the Russian nation’. Here is the excruciatingly brief account of St Maximus’s life in the Prologue:

He was born in Greece, whence he was called to the court of Russian Tsar Vasilii Ivanovitch as Imperial librarian and translator. He laboured much and also suffered much for the truth. He spent a long time in prison, where he wrote the well-known Canon to the Holy Spirit which is still used in church, and entered into rest in the Lord in the year 1556. [3]

There is a great Life of St Maximus here, at the website of the St John the Baptist Cathedral (ROCOR) in Washington, DC. Also, in my post on St Maximus last year, I did my best to sketch a more substantial Life of this little-known Saint based largely on Fr Georges Florovsky’s Ways of Russian Theology and James Billington’s The Icon & the Axe—the two most substantial sources on St Maximus that I had at the time. As regular readers will know, however, I have since acquired a copy of Sir Dimitri Obolensky’s invaluable Six Byzantine Portraits, which dedicates a whole chapter to St Maximus. [4] Although my account of St Maximus’s life on the Holy Mountain and in Russia still stands, Obolensky has enabled me to expand greatly on the years he spent in the West, prior to his tonsure at Vatopaidi. It is worth quoting Obolensky’s own words about our historical knowledge of this period.

. . . In 1942 the Russian scholar Élie Denissoff published in Louvain a book entitled Maxime le Grec et l’Occident. In it he proved conclusively that Maxim was none other than Michael Trivolis, a Greek expatriate who frequented the humanistic schools of Italy in the late fifteenth century. It is not often that the biography of a major historical figure is so unexpectedly enlarged by a scholarly discovery; and Denissoff could justifiably claim that, thanks to his book, the life of Maximos the Greek assumed the shape of a diptych, of which Mount Athos is the hinge, and Italy and Muscovite Russia are the two leaves.

There is no need to rehearse here Denissoff’s arguments. They are based on compelling historical, literary, and graphological evidence, and are generally accepted today. [5] Thus, in any account of the life and work of Maximos the Greek, we must start with Michael Trivolis. [6]

Now, to my mind the most fascinating information we gain from this is precisely all of the detail of St Maximus’s life in the West. For instance, Obolensky points out, ‘In Florence, where he [probably moved in 1492 and] remained for three years, his vocation as a scholar was shaped by the teaching of the Greek philologist John [aka ‘Janus’] Lascaris and by the influence of the great Platonist Marsilio Ficino.’[7] Lascaris was a librarian and book-collector for Lorenzo de’ Medici, and one of the men responsible for the flourishing of Greek studies in Renaissance humanism. [8] Ficino, for those who do not know him, is the ‘most central and most influential representative of Renaissance Platonism . . . , in whom the medieval philosophical and religious heritage and the teachings of Greek Platonism are brought together in a novel synthesis.’ [9] Ficino produced the first complete translations of Plato and Plotinus into Latin, as well as the Corpus Hermeticum and the writings of St Dionysius the Areopagite.

Another important influence is the Dominican reformer, Savonarola, whom I mentioned briefly in my earlier post. Obolensky writes:

He probably never met him personally; but he certainly heard him preach. The full impact of this influence was to come later, after Savonarola’s execution in 1498. Later still, in Moscow, he wrote for the Russians a detailed account of Savonarola’s life, describing his famous Lenten sermons, his conflict with the pope, and his grisly execution in Florence. He extolled him as a man ‘filled with every kind of wisdom’, and added, perhaps with a touch of tactful self-censorship, that, had Savonarola not belonged to the Latin faith, he would surely have been numbered among the Church’s holy confessors. . . . [T]he influence of the Italian friar [is easily identifiable] on Maxim’s later concern with moral problems, on his love of poverty, and perhaps too on his outspokenness and courage in adversity. [10]

Obolensky also mentions a name which should be familiar to all true bibliophiles: that of Aldus Manutius (1449-1515), the famous humanist printer who invented italic type. The Aldine Press in Venice was set up ‘primarily for the printing of Greek texts’, both classical and patristic. [11] When St Maximus went to Venice in 1496, he ‘became associated with Aldus’. Indeed, ‘He later told a Russian correspondent that he often visited Aldus for reasons which had to do with books.’ [12] Obolensky points out that it is possible St Maximus may actually have been employed at the press, ‘and that he worked on the edition of Aristotle which Aldus was then preparing in Venice; but we cannot be certain of this. His later work . . . suggests that he had been trained to edit texts . . . .’ [13] It is interesting to note too that according to Dennis Lackner’s brilliant article on the Camaldolese order and humanist Platonism, ‘Five humanists associated with the Aldine circle . . . either were or became Camaldolese hermits’, that is, hermits in the tradition of St Romuald of Ravenna (about whom I have blogged here and here). [14] In this light, the decision of young Michael Trivolis to join the Dominicans, and his later departure for Mt Athos, acquire new interest.

Next, in 1498, in his apparent quest to meet all of the important figures of Renaissance Italy, St Maximus came into ‘the service of another Italian, the distinguished Hellenist Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, nephew of the celebrated Platonist Giovanni Pico’. [15] Obolensky writes:

The four years which he spent at Mirandola were an important landmark in his life. Gianfrancesco Pico was not only a classical scholar, a true ελληνομανής, as Michael wrote to a friend in March 1500. He was also a convinced Christian, a student of patristic writings, and a great admirer of Savonarola. The news of Savonarola’s execution was received at Mirandola while Michael was there. [16]

But perhaps the most surprising fact brought to light by Denissoff’s discovery—which was entirely unknown to me at the time of the writing of my earlier post and first brought to my attention in a comment there by my good friend Esteban Vázquez—is that under the influence of Savonarola, the young Michael Trivolis actually joined the Dominican Order. Obolensky notes that around 1500, the influences of Platonic philosophy and classical scholarship, the patristic tradition, and Savonarola must all have been competing somewhat in him, and the one that won out at the time was the last. Obolensky writes, ‘A note in an unpublished chronicle of the monastery of San Marco in Florence states that in 1502 Michael (‘Frater Michael Emmanuelis de civitate Arta’) was professed as a monk of that monastery. It is worth noting that this was the very house of which Savonarola had been the prior.’ [17]

Already by 1504, however, Michael had abandoned the Order. Though vague about his reasons, in a letter to a friend ‘he compared himself to a ship tossed by the waves in the midst of the sea, and begged for help in his present affliction’. In 1505 or 1506, he became a monk at Vatopaidi Monastery on the Holy Mountain and was ‘back in the Church of his fathers’. Many Greeks at the time had in Obolensky’s words a ‘tolerant attitude towards the Latin Church’, but this was not true of Vatopaidi, ‘where a harsher attitude towards the Latins prevailed’. [18] Obolensky writes:

In his Russian writings Maximos severely criticized several Latin beliefs and practices, which he roundly denounced as heretical. Foremost among them was the doctrine of the Filioque, the major bone of theological contention between the Greek and Latin Churches since the ninth century. The other major issue, the claims of the papacy to exercise direct and universal jurisdiction throughout the Christian Church, is touched upon more lightly by Maximos. Most of his strictures are directed at what he considered to be the popes’ arrogant desire to extend their own power. On the whole, Maximos’s criticism of the Latin Church was measured and courteous, and lacked the emotional overtones of the anti-Latin pronouncements of many of his contemporaries, Greek and Russian. [19]

I surmised in last year’s post that St Maximus had gone to the Holy Mountain wanting ‘something more than worldly learning and glory’, and this is no doubt true, but when I wrote those words I was ignorant of his two years as a Dominican. In the Order of Preachers, and particularly in the priory of Savonarola, he had presumably already sought something more than these. To go to the Holy Mountain, St Maximus must also have wanted the Orthodox Faith and, perhaps, the Eastern tradition of unceasing prayer.

While noting that St Maximus’s ten or so years on the Holy Mountain are ‘the least well documented’ of his life, Obolensky writes about them at some length:

A few writings by him have survived from this period, mostly Greek epitaphs in verse. They are distinguished by elegance of form and a liking for classical imagery. On a deeper level, there is no doubt that on Mount Athos Maximos immersed himself in Byzantine literature, both religious and secular. . . . It was almost certainly in Vatopedi that Maximos studied in depth the works of John of Damascus, the Byzantine theologian who seems to have been the most congenial to him, and whom he later described as having reached ‘the summit of philosophy and theology’. Among the early Fathers Gregory of Nazianzus appears to have been his favourite. Of the secular Byzantine works, the one he used, and translated most frequently in Russia, was the encyclopædia known today as Suda and formerly believed to have been written by a certain Suidas. [20]

. . . To judge from his later Russian writings, he was fully aware, from a strictly orthodox standpoint, of the pitfalls of Platonism; and he explicitly rejected some of Plato’s teachings, such as the belief he ascribed to him in the coeternity of God and the world. Maximos’s views on the relationship of faith to knowledge were unimpeachably orthodox. ‘Do not think’, he wrote in Russia, ‘that I condemn all external [i.e. secular] learning that is useful . . . I am not so ungrateful a student of this learning. Although I did not long remain on its threshold, yet I condemn those who pursue it through excessive rational inquiry.’ . . . [21]

To conclude this lengthy addendum to my earlier post, it is interesting to note the words of a man who must have known St Maximus well during this period. In a letter to Tsar Vasili III, St Maximus’s own abbot at Vatopaidi refers to him as ‘our most honourable brother Maximos . . . , proficient in divine Scripture and adept in interpreting all kinds of books, both ecclesiastical and those called Hellenic [i.e. secular], because from his early youth he has grown up in them and learned [to understand] them through the practice of virtue, and not simply by reading them often, as others do.’ [22]

As I have mentioned, there is not much material in English on St Maximus. A kind reader by the name of Symeon pointed out the Obolensky book to me last year, as well as the ‘unfortunately very scarce’ (and thus, prohibitively expensive) study by Jack V. Haney, From Italy to Muscovy: The Life and Works of Maxim the Greek, according to Obolensky ‘the only book in English on Maxim’. [23] I know of at least one book on him in Greek—Άγιος Μάξιμος ο Γραίκος ο Φωτιστής των Ρωσών [St Maximus the Greek, the Enlightener of the Russians], by the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou, Mt Athos, which contains an introduction, a Life, and a brief anthology of some of his writings translated into Modern Greek. [24] On the Internet there are a few things. In English, there is the short Life at the DC cathedral website (here), as well as this article on discovery of his fragrant remains in 1996. In Greek, there is this brief Life and this longer one (from the Vatopaidi Synaxarion) at the Vatopaidi blog. There is a blog devoted to him in Russian (here), the most recent post of which—as of today—links to a fascinating sort of dictionary of names written by the Saint (here). There is also a website in Russian (here), which contains a long Life, links to his works in Russian, plus a canon to the Saint in Slavonic and two lengthy prayers of the sort printed at the end of Akathists, as well as a megalynarion. Perhaps next year I will have translated some of the Saint’s writings from Modern Greek, or I could post more on his Russian career. Who knows? Perhaps some holy person will even send me a copy of Haney’s book!

In conclusion, I offer the (rather wordy) Russian Troparion and Kontakion of the Saint: [25]

Troparion Tone 8

Made brilliant by the radiance of the Spirit, through divine wisdom thou wast vouchsafed the intelligence of the rhetors, enlightening with the light of piety the hearts of men, which were darkened by ignorance; and thou was shown to be a most splendid lamp of Orthodox, O venerable Maximus. Wherefore, having become a stranger and wanderer in thy zeal for Him Who seeth all things, thou was a sojourner in the land of Russia, suffering imprisonment and incarceration at the command of the sovereign; yet thou art crowned by the right hand of the Most High, and workest all-glorious miracles. Be thou also a true mediator for us who honor thy holy memory with love.

Kontakion Tone 8

With divinely inspired writings and the preaching of theology didst thou denounce the vanity of the heretics, O thou who art most rich; and establishing them firmly in Orthodoxy, thou didst guide them to the path of true understanding. And like a divinely melodious harp thou didst delight and unceasingly gladden the minds of those who hearkened unto thee, O right wondrous Maximus. Wherefore, we beseech thee: Entreat Christ God, that He send down remission of sins upon those who with faith hymn thy most holy dormition O Maximus our father.

[1] According to the title of Άγιος Μάξιμος ο Γραίκος ο Φωτιστής των Ρωσών, by the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou, Mt Athos (Athens: Armos, 1991).

[2] Pierre Kovalevsky, St Sergius & Russian Spirituality, trans. W. Elias Jones (Crestwood, NY: 1976), p. 142.

[3] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 83.

[4] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits (Oxford: Oxford U, 1999), pp. 201-19.

[5] It is worth noting that what Obolensky says here is true, not only of Western scholarly publications, but even of the Vatopaidi Synaxarion (Monk Moses Agioreites, Βατοπαιδινό Συναξάρι [Mt Athos: Vatopaidi Monastery, 2007]) and the book mentioned in note 1 written by the Fathers of Gregoriou Monastery on the Holy Mountain (see for example Άγιος Μάξιμος, pp. 17-18).

[6] Obolensky, p. 202.

[7] [Ibid., p. 202.

[8] L.D. Reynolds & N.G. Wilson, Scribes & Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford U, 1974), p. 154.

[9] Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought & Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (NY: Columbia U, 1979), p. 58.

[10] Obolensky, p. 203. Concerning this last point, Obolensky later notes that St Maximus ‘unfavourably’ compared the ‘Possessing’ monks of 16th-c. Russia ‘with the Carthusians, Franciscans, and Dominicans he had known in Italy, who led a life of dedicated poverty’ (ibid., p. 216).

[11] Reynolds & Wilson, p. 138.

[12] Obolensky, p. 204.

[13] Ibid., p. 204.

[14] Dennis F. Lackner, ‘The Camaldolese Academy: Ambrogio Traversari, Marsilio Ficino & the Christian Platonic Tradition’, Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J.B. Allen & Valery Rees, with Martin Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 43. Lackner’s article is a fascinating one, and its author a friendly fellow. He actually e-mailed me with compliments on this post on St Romuald, wherein I first made use of his article. He also graciously forgave me for misattributing it!

[15] Obolensky, p. 204. Concerning this Pico’s uncle, Russell Kirk has referred to his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man as ‘the most succinct expression of the mind of the Renaissance’ (‘Introduction’, Oration on the Dignity of Man, by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, tr. A. Robert Caponigri [Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1956], p. xi).

[16] Obolensky, p. 204.

[17] Ibid., p. 205.

[18] Ibid., p. 205

[19] Ibid., pp. 205-6.

[20] Ibid., p. 206.

[21] Ibid., p. 207.

[22] Qtd. in ibid., p. 208

[23] Ibid., p. 210.

[24] See note 1. Interestingly, among St Maximus’s writings included here is a ‘Discourse to Those who Want to Leave Their Spouses without a Legitimate Reason & Enter the Monastic Life’ (Άγιος Μάξιμος, pp. 150-3)!

[25] These hymns, from the Menaion translated from the Slavonic by Reader Isaac Lambertsen and published by St John of Kronstadt Press, were posted by Fr David Moser here. In Greek, there is a different set of hymns, which can be found here.

More on St Theophan & Tradition

In the very first paragraph of my post on St Theophan the Recluse, I mentioned the view of Fr Seraphim (Rose) that St Theophan and St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) were important figures for modern Orthodox. In making that observation, I cited a passage from Fr Seraphim’s biography that I believe is worth citing at greater length. Here at Logismoi, I have chosen deliberately to focus much of my attention on the past, but in this passage Fr Damascene, citing Fr Seraphim, reminds us that there must be a bridge from the past to the present:

Fr Seraphim emphasized that ‘the genuine, unchanging teaching of Christianity is handed down in unbroken succession both orally and by the written word, from spiritual father to spiritual son, from teacher to disciple.’ There was never a time, he said, when the Church was without Holy Fathers, or when it was necessary to discover a ‘lost’ Patristic teaching: ‘Even when many Orthodox Christians may have neglected this teaching (as is the case, for example, in our own day), its true representatives were still handing it down to those who hungered to receive it.’ He spoke of how important it is for us, the last Christians, ‘to take guidance and inspiration from the Holy Fathers of our own and recent times, those who lived in conditions similar to our own and yet kept unchanged the same ever-fresh teaching.’ There were two key figures whom he especially stressed in this regard: the Russian spiritual writers Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov (1867) and Bishop Theophan the Recluse (1894). . . .

‘We have to look to ourselves: if we see that we have zeal for Orthodoxy and yet are not “linked” with the line that goes back to Ignatius Brianchaninov and Theophan the Recluse, [1] there is a danger that we might not be linked up to all the Fathers. There should be a continuous line.’

It was by being a devoted son of the Fathers of his own time (beginning with Archbishop John) and of recent centuries (Ignatius, Theophan, Paisius, etc.) that Fr Seraphim became a true son of the ancients. Linked to the transmission, he became a transmitter of ancient Patristic wisdom in our days. [2]

St Theophan is a particularly apt example in this regard, because of the clear example of the great figures of the Russian Church Abroad in passing on his legacy. Although one must always be wary of his personal testimony, it seems to me there is little reason to mistrust the former ‘Fr Herman’ (Gleb Podmoshensky)—I’m not sure what to call him now—when he illustrates this observation in his Preface to The Path to Salvation:

My spiritual fathers and instructors, Archbishop Averky [of Jordanville], Bishop Nektary [of Seattle] and Fr Adrian [later Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo], were deeply indebted in their spiritual formation to the holy Recluse Theophan. They read and re-read his voluminous teachings, not only studying his words but engrossing themselves in his advice on prayer and involuntarily likening themselves to him to some extent. These men had actual mystical ties to St Theophan and possessed insights into the spiritual life that would otherwise have remained highly concealed from modern man. Their love for him made him alive and vibrant in their lives and teachings: they truly became his disciples, and clung to him as a lifeline. St Theophan governed the tenor of their archpastoral defense of their flock. They constantly referred to him, and treasured the patristic fragrance of his writings, which stemmed from ancient times. St Theophan turned them away from the Renovationist hierarchs of today who, disregarding that ancient model, follow a spirit alien to Orthodoxy and install foreign elements into their governance of the flock, cutting them off from the influence of Fathers such as St Theophan.

I remember how my Fr Adrian [Archbishop Andrei] would often quote from St Theophan’s Commentary on the 118th Psalm, and how once he told me that the mere remembrance of St Theophan’s Love for the Law of God had at one time miraculously resurrected hope and faith in his soul, whereas before that he had been literally robbed of faith and in deep despair because of the horrible reality of life under the communist yoke. I also recall how Archbishop Averky, a former cell-attendant of Theophan of Poltava, gave a sermon with tears streaming down his face, as he revealed the divine method—transmitted to him through the ‘Theophanic’ line—of softening one’s being with contrition of heart (umilenie), which draws God’s attention and eventually transfigures man’s whole being so that his naked eyes can behold divine light. Again I recall the many times in which Bishop Nektary, as well as his brother Ivan Kontzevitch and his wife Helen (also a disciple of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava), would draw unexpected answers from St Theophan the Recluse’s writings, which came like flashed of illumination. Sometimes, as in the case of Fr Adrian, only the remembrance of the power of St Theophan’s wisdom was enough to dissolve whole dramas of seemingly insoluble problems. Behold St Theophan’s power to ignite a mystic tie with the other world. [3]

It is precisely for this reason that I try to adhere to the spirit and guidance of the great figures of our Church Abroad, of whom Fr Seraphim is surely one, even as I blog about the Saints and writings of ages long since past.

Addendum: It is interesting to note that St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) himself has said something rather similar to Fr Seraphim. As Timothy Ware (now Met. Kallistos of Diokleia) points out, ‘(of course he is not in fact speaking of himself, but what he says applies also to him and Theophan): “The writings of the Russian Fathers are more accessible tous than those of the Greek authorities, owing to their particular clarity and simplicity of exposition, and also because they are closer to us in time.”’ [4]


[1] Obviously, for those outside the Russian tradition, one need not take these two Saints as the sole litmus test. The Greeks have their own such figures, starting with the Kollyvades and even including such lay figures as Papadiamandis and Kontoglou. Constantine Cavarnos’s books have much to say about the transmission of the Patristic legacy in modern Greece. I’m sure other Orthodox, like the Romanians, have their own figures to point to.

[2] Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim (Rose): His Life & Works (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), pp. 467-8.

[3] Herman Podmoshensky, Preface, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation, trans. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) & the St Herman Brotherhood (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Monastery, 1998), pp. 17-8.

[4] Timothy Ware [Met. Kallistos], Introduction, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, comp. Igumen Chariton of Valamo, trans. E. Kadloubovsky & G.E.H. Palmer, ed. Timothy Ware (London: Faber, 1997], p. 16.

'Resplendent as the Sun in Holiness'—St Philip of Moscow

Today, 9 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Hieromartyr Philip (1507-1569), Metropolitan of Moscow & All Russia. For his famous rôle in standing up to Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the popular historian Harold Lamb has called him ‘an ucompromising soul’. [1] But while he is rightly commemorated as one of the great Holy Hierarchs of Moscow, St Philip was also a great exemplar of the monastic spirit. His mother became St Barsanuphia, Schemanun of Moscow [2], and Father Seraphim (Rose) calls him ‘the greatest Abbot of Solovki since St Zosimas’. [3] Here is the account of his life in the Prologue:

Born on February 11th, 1507, he was standing one day in church, while still a young man, when he heard the priest read from the Gospel the words: ‘No man can serve two masters’ (Matt. 6:24). He was filled with awe at these words, as though they were said to him alone, and was enlightened in that same moment. He went off to the monastery of Solovetzk, where, after a long and hard novitiate, he received the monastic habit. In time he became abbot, and, resplendent as the sun in holiness, became known throughout the land of Russia. Because of this, Tsar Ivan the Terrible translated him to the vacant See of Moscow as Metropolitan in 1566. But the holy man could not witness with indifference the atrocities of that terrible Tsar, but counselled him strongly and then fearlessly denounced him. The Tsar found false witnesses against Philip, dismissed him, stripped him of all but his simple monastic rank and imprisoned him at Tver. On December 23rd, 1569, Malyuta Skhuratov, an emissary of the Tsar, came into Philip’s cell and suffocated him with a pillow. But a horrible death quickly overtook all who had opposed Philip.

After some years, the body of the saint was found to be whole and uncorrupt, and giving off a fragrant odour. It was transferred to the monastery of Solovetzk. [4]

It should be added that, according to James Billington, in 1652 Tsar Alexis ‘sent [Patriarch] Nikon to Solovetsk to bring back to the Cathedral of the Assumption the remains of Metropolitan Philip, whose murder by Ivan the Terrible had given an aura of holy martyrdom to the ecclesiastical hierarchy’. [5]

The account of St Philip’s life in the HTM Great Horologion fills in some more details about the Hieromartyr’s activities as Abbot of Solovki:

As abbot, Philip was a great builder and beautifier of Solovki Monastery. He laid the foundations for the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, [6] constructed cells, hermitages, and a hospital for the monks and for pilgrims, established a cattle yard on one of the islands, drained swamps and connected waterways by a series of canals and dams, built a mill and various workshops, and even invented ingenious machines and implements to help the monks with their work. [7]

Harold Lamb tells the story of St Philip’s confrontation with the Tsar in his usual novelistic style:

One spring morning they met, perforce, at the opening of a service in the Usspensky Sobor. Old custom prescribed that at such a meeting the Metropolitan should bless the prince at the door and at the same time intercede with him for any persons unjustly punished by the prince. This morning Ivan seems to have had his new bodyguards with him, clad as monks. Philip confronted him in silence.

When the Metropolitan refused to speak, Ivan had to ask for his blessing. Then before boyars and people, Philip accused Ivan bluntly of misconduct. How could he give the blessing to such a prince?

Ivan listened for a while, then broke in fiercely: ‘Be silent! All I ask is—be silent!’

‘Silence brings sin,’ cried Philip. ‘Sin leads to thy death.’

Ivan’s restraint broke down and he lashed out in angry words. Philip reminded him, ‘I did not ask to be appointed. Why did you call me from my hermitage?’ [8]

This last comment should serve to remind us in turn how St Philip models what I take to be the proper Orthodox approach to social injustice. The Holy Hierarch’s first concern was always with his own repentance. Had he had his druthers, he would have remained in the ascesis of Solovki, left to his prayers and podvigs. It was only out of duty to his Tsar that he left, and it was out of duty that he denounced the injustices he saw. St Philip did not set out to be a social reformer or a prophet, he set out to be a good and faithful servant, and it was for this that he was martyred. The result was that, in Billington’s words,

. . . Ivan passed on to Philip something of the halo of Russia’s first national saints, Boris and Gleb, who had voluntarily accepted a guiltless death in order to redeem the Russian people from their sin. Philip’s remains were venerated in the distant monastery of Solovetsk, which began to rival St Sergius at nearby Zagorsk as a center of pilgrimage. . . .

The martyred Philip and Ivan became new heroes of Russian folklore; and the Tsar’s enemies thus became in many eyes the true servants of ‘holy Russia’. In the religious crisis of the seventeenth century both contending factions traced their ancestry to Philip: Patriarch Nikon, who theatrically transplanted his remains to Moscow, and the Old Believers, who revered him as a saint. [9]

In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion of the Saint:

Dismissal Hymn of the Hierarch. Plagal of Fourth Tone

O successor of first prelates, pillar of Orthodoxy, champion of truth, new confessor, Saint Philip, thou didst lay down thy life for thy flock. Wherefore, since thou hast boldness with Christ, pray for the suffering Russian land and them that worthily honour thy holy memory.

Kontakion of the Hierarch. Third Tone

Let us praise most wise Philip, guide and teacher of Orthodoxy, herald of truth, emulator of Chrysostom, lamp of Russia, who fed his children spiritually with the food of his words; for by chanting praise with his tongue, he taught us to chant with our lips as an initiate of the grace of God. [10]

[1] Harold Lamb, The March of Muscovy: Ivan the Terrible & the Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648 (NY: Bantam, 1966), p. 142.

For more on Lamb, who apparently knew ‘French, Latin, ancient Persian, some Arabic, a smattering of Turkish, and a bit of Manchu-Tartar and medieval Ukranian’ see this bio. Here is an interesting Wall Street Journal article on the revival of interest in Lamb’s historical novels.

[2] Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) & Hieromonk Herman (Podmoshensky), comp. & trans., The Northern Thebaid: Monastic Saints of the Russian North, 3rd rev. ed. (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995), p. 222.

[3] Fr Seraphim, p. 84.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), pp. 40-1.

[5] James Billington, The Icon & the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (NY: Vintage, 1970), p.131.

[6] Of this cathedral, Fr Seraphim writes, ‘The main sanctuary of the northernmost Lavra of Holy Russia was the magnificent cathedral of the Holy Transfiguration, built by the greatest Abbot of Solovki since St Zosimas, St Philip, later the martyr-Metropolitan of Moscow’ (Fr Seraphim, p. 84).

[7] The Great Horologion, trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston: HTM, 1997), p. 377.

[8] Lamb, p. 142. For those inclined towards dramatic representations of the deeds of the Saints, John Sanidopoulos has pointed out that the star of the acclaimed film, Ostrov (‘The Island’), Pytor Mamonov, a devout Orthodox Christian, will be portraying Ivan the Terrible in a new film by Ostrov’s director—The Tsar. The trailer (here) and some of the photos (here) depict Oleg Yankovsky as St Philip of Moscow.


[9] Billington, p. 101.

[10] Horologion, p. 378.