Preface

Preface

WHAT ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN is not exalted in heart and mind at the thought of the Egyptian Thebaid-the place of struggle of the great St. Anthony, first among monastic Fathers and model of the anchoretic life; of St. Pachomius the coenobiarch, who received the monastic rule of the common life from an Angel; and of the thousands of monks and nuns who followed them and made the desert a city peopled with Christians striving towards the heavens in the Angelic way of life?

Few, however, are those who know of Orthodoxy's Northern Thebaid – the Russian "desert" of the forested, marshy North-where no fewer thousands of monks and nuns sought out their salvation in the footsteps of the great monastic Fathers of more recent times: St. Sergius of Radonezh, St. Cyril of White Lake, St. Nilus of Sora, and hundreds of others whose names have been entered in the Calendar of Orthodox Saints.

Little has been published in English about these Saints, and most of what has appeared thus far is of little value. No work in English has even attempted to present the Orthodox monastic tradition which inspired and formed the great Russian Fathers. Indeed, the Russian religious intelligentsia of the Diaspora has been largely at fault for spreading false ideas about these Saints and their tradi tion. The most accessible works on Russian Saints in English (those of Fedotov and de Grunwald) are so filled with inaccuracies and distortions, with a Roman Catholic terminology totally foreign to Orthodoxy, and with an astonishingly fanciful notion of Orthodoxy, sanctity, and monasticism--as to be more a hindrance than a help to the serious student of Russian monastic tradition.

One Orthodox scholar of the Russian Diaspord-Ivan Michailovich Kontzevitch (†1965)-devoted his life to a serious study of the Orthodox spiritual tradition. Unlike the Westernized Russian intelligentsia, he was not an "academic" scholar, but proceeded rather from the living Orthodox tradition. Even while living in the Diaspora in the 1920's, he continued to receive spiritual guidance from Elder Nectarius of Optina, and to mold his life and thought, not on the heterodox "wisdom" of the West, but on the age-old tradition of Holy Russia. Having acquired a theological education, he planned to write (in Russian) a trilogy of works on this tradition: the first, on the spiritual tradition of ancient Russia, before Peter 1 (The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit in Ancient Russia, Paris, 1952), the second, on Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky (which was never completed); and the third, on the Optina Elders (Oprina Monastery and Its Epoch, published posthumously by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y., 1973).

The present work, which was inspired by Professor Kontzevitch, is a kind of "source book" in English for the first volume of his trilogy in Russian on ancient Russia, and utilizes above all two of his key ideas regarding the Orthodox spiritual tradition: (1) that the Lives of the Saints are the chief source of our knowledge of the Russian spiritual tradition of this period, and a careful examination of them will give a clear ides of this tradition to one who is well versed in the phenomena and the vocabulary of true Orthodox spirituality; and (2) that it is evidentas a result of such an examination that the Russian spir itual tradition is not at all something "uniquely Russian," or something novel in Orthodox history, but is identical in essence with the whole Byzantine tradition of spirituality, which in its monastic formulation comes down to us from the Fathers of the Egyptian desert. Indeed, the Orthodox reader of these Lives -which have been taken from sources in Russian and Slavonic as close to the original Lives as possible-will find that they breathe the same spiritual fragrance as the Lives of the great Fathers of the Egyptian desert, and have the same signs of true Orthodox monastic life: the "mental activity" of the Jesus Prayer, spiritual guidance by Elders, "revelation of thoughts to the Elder, spiritual labors joined with love of neighbor. The Introduction of Professor Kontzevitch consists of excerpts from his book, The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit in Ancient Rania, referring to the period of the "Northern Thebaid" the great spiritual current which proceeds from St. Sergius of Radonezh in the 14th century (and behind him, from Byzantine Hesychasm) to the end of the 17th century, when Russia, although outwardly in spiritual decline, was preparing its forces for a final spiritual current which has come down to our own times that of Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky and the great Elders of the 18th to the 20th centuries.

It was in the mid-19th century that a pious Orthodox Russian, Andrew Muraviev, undertook a pilgrimage to the almost-forgotten monasteries of the North and brought them back to life for the readers of his book, giving the whole region the name by which we now know it.1 At that time most of these monasteries still existed.

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1 Andrew Muraviev, The Russian Thebaid of the North, St. Petersburg, 1855.

Today, however, these monasteries have been closed and destroyed, and most of them removed from the face of the earth. Why speak of them any more, and give the Lives of their founders and the history of their monastic tradition, as we attempt to do in these pages-and that not merely as an example of dead history, but of living tradition, as is our definite intention? While these Lives were being printed separately in The Orthodox Word, one of the leading modernist "Orthodox theologians" chastized in print "those who call to non-existent deserts," evidently regarding such Lives as an appeal to a religious "romanticism" and idealism totally out of step with contemporary conditions of life. Why, indeed, should we inspire today's Orthodox youth with the call of the "Northern Thebaid," which has in it something more attractive and somehow more accessible for a 20th-century zealot than the barren desert of Egypt?

First of all, the monastic life here described has not entirely disappeared from the earth; it is still possible to find Orthodox monastic communities which teach the spiritual doctrine of the Holy Fathers, and to lead the Orthodox monastic life even in the 20th century with constant self-reproach over how far one falls short of the Lives of the ancient Fathers in these times. True Orthodox Christians have preserved the living monastic tradition of Holy Russia and are linked directly to Optina, Valaam, St. Seraphim's Diveyevo, St. Job's Pochaev, Lesna, and of course to the monastic citadels of the Holy Land and the Holy Mountain of Athos. The wise seeker can find his "desert" even in our barren 20th century.

But this book is not intended only for such fortunate ones.

Every Orthodox Christian should know the Lives of the Fathers of the desert, which together with the Lives of the Martyrs give us the model for our own life of Christian struggle. Even so, every Orthodox Christian should know of Valaam, of Solovki, of Svir, of Siya and Obrtnora and White Lake, of the Skete of Sora, and of the Angel-like men who dwelled there before being translated to heaven, living the Orthodox spiritual life to which every Orthodox Christian is called, according to his strength and the conditions of his life. Every Orthodox Christian should be inspired by their life of struggle far from the ways of the world. There is no "romanticism" here. The actual "romantics" of our time are the reformers of "Parisian Orthodoxy" who, disparaging the authentic Orthodox tradition, wish to "sanctify the world, to prostitute the spiritual tradition "for the life of the world," to replace the authentic Orthodox world-view with a thisworldly couterfeit of it based on modern Western thought. The spiritual life of the true monastic tradition is the norm of our Christian life, and we had better be informed of it before the terrible last day when we are called to account for our lax life. We shall not be judged for our ignorance of the vocabulary of contemporary "Orthodox theology," but we shall surely be judged for not struggling on the path of salvation. If we do not live like these Saints, then let us at least increase our far-too-feeble struggles for God, and offer our fervent tears of repentance and our constant self-reproach at falling so short of the standard of perfection which God has shown us in His wondrous Saints.

Monk Seraphim Rose
The Hermitage of the
St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
near Platina, in Northern California
Pentecost, 1975