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Biographical note
Sergius (Serge) Bolshakoff (1901-1990), both the author and the translator of Russian Mystics, was born in Saint Petersburg in 1901 and died in retirement at the Cistercian abbey of Hauterive, Switzerland, in 1990. His life spanned not only the Russian Revolution and the fall of Communism, but also the Christian Ecumenical Movement, in which he took an active role. Dedicated to the cause of Christian unity throughout his life and intimately familiar with the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Anglican traditions and their monastic expressions, he was personally acquainted with the great leaders of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII, the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury, and the abbé Paul Couturier. Exiled from his homeland for most of his life, he lived in England—where he received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford —or France and traveled and wrote extensively. Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Catholic convert, Cistercian monk and hermit, poet, contemplative, social critic, and pioneer of interreligious dialogue, was a seminal figure of twentieth-century American Christianity.[Bolshakoff has written] . . . essentially a history of the great personalities of Russian monasticism—a study of memorable saintly figures whose spiritual lives characteristically varied from their Western counterparts.Parabola
. . . an introduction to the lives, the spirituality, and the writings of the great Russian mysticsÉit can also serve as an outline of Russian monastic history.Theology Digest
A panorama of Russian Christian spirituality, richly illustrated with passages from formative works.
"The author of this unusual book has given it much too modest a title. It is in fact not only an introduction to the lives, the spirituality and the writings of the great mystics, many of whom are unknown in the West, but it is also at the same time a clear and practical outline of Russian monastic history. The journey which the reader now begins is not without excitement, for it takes him into new territory, the silence of the great Russian forests. . ."
~ Thomas Merton, in the Preface
Preface by Thomas Merton ix
Introduction xix
1 Russian Monasticism to the End of the fifteenth Century 1
2 St Nilus of Sora 18
3 Russian Monasticism in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 39
4 St Tikhon of Zadonsk 61
5 Archimandrite Paisius Velishkovsky and his Disciples 79
6 Russian Monasticism in the Nineteenth Century 99
7 St Seraphim of Sarov 133
8 Bishop Ignatius Bryanchaninov 144
9 The Startzy of Optino 164
10 Bishop Theophane the Recluse 196
11 Russian Monasticism in the Twentieth Century 222
12 Russian Mystic in the Twentieth Century 244
Conclusion 272
Selected Bibliography 285