The Little Russian Philokalia

The Little Russian Philokalia series, published by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood under Fr. Seraphim Rose’s editorial direction, brought key texts of the Russian hesychast and ascetical tradition into English. The series grew to six volumes drawn from Russian ascetical authors; Rose himself prepared the first volume on St. Seraphim of Sarov (1978), while the later numbered volumes – including those on St. Herman of Alaska (Vol. III, 1989) and St. Paisius Velichkovsky (Vol. IV, 1994) – were issued by the Brotherhood after his death in 1982. His own major work on St. Paisius had appeared separately as Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia (1976). Rose’s editorial and translation work was not merely academic but pastoral: he sought to make the living spiritual tradition of Russian Orthodoxy accessible to English-speaking Christians who were encountering Orthodoxy for the first time.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (with pan-Orthodox significance; the Philokalic tradition is universal)

The Concept of the Series

What Is the “Little Russian Philokalia”?

The name “Little Russian Philokalia” (Malen’kaya Russkaya Filokaliya) designates a series of compact volumes, each devoted to a single saint or spiritual writer from the Russian hesychast tradition. The series was conceived as a complement to the great Philokalia (Dobrotolubie) – the massive anthology of neptic (watchful) texts compiled by Sts. Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Macarius of Corinth (Greek edition, 1782) and translated into Russian by St. Theophan the Recluse (five-volume Russian edition, 1877–1889).

While the Philokalia proper contains texts primarily from the Greek patristic tradition (4th–15th centuries), the “Little Russian Philokalia” focuses on the Russian continuation of this tradition – the saints and spiritual writers who received the Philokalic inheritance through St. Paisius Velichkovsky and transmitted it within the Russian Church. The series thus fills a gap: the great Philokalia ends, roughly, with the late Byzantine hesychasts, while the Russian tradition carries the same spiritual lineage forward into the modern era. As the Brotherhood described the series, the Little Russian Philokalia gathers texts “drawn from Russian sources” and “dedicated to Russian ascetic authors, chiefly of the 18th to 20th centuries” (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood series description; cf. Rose, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky, on the Paisian transmission of the Philokalia to the Slavic world).

Rose’s Role

Rose served as editor, translator, and compiler of the series. His work involved:

Translation from Russian (and in some cases from Church Slavonic or French) into English
Editorial selection of texts: choosing which writings to include and how to arrange them
Introduction and commentary: providing contextual introductions to help English-speaking readers understand the significance of each text
Integration with the Brotherhood’s broader publishing program: the Little Russian Philokalia volumes were part of the St. Herman Brotherhood’s mission to make the Russian Orthodox tradition accessible in English

Volume on St. Seraphim of Sarov

The Life and Significance of St. Seraphim

St. Seraphim of Sarov (1754–1833; secular name Prokhor Moshnin) is one of the most beloved and widely venerated saints of the Russian Orthodox Church. A monk of the Sarov Monastery in the Tambov province, St. Seraphim lived as a cenobite, then as a hermit in the forest for many years, and finally as an elder (starets) who received pilgrims and offered spiritual counsel. He is renowned for:

His extreme asceticism (the hagiographic tradition recounts that he spent a thousand days and nights in prayer on a rock in the forest, standing or kneeling, descending only for brief rest and nourishment)
His radiant love and joy, expressed in his greeting to all visitors: “My joy! Christ is risen!”
His spiritual gifts: clairvoyance, healing, prophecy, and the visible manifestation of the grace of the Holy Spirit
His teaching on the purpose of the Christian life: the acquisition of the Holy Spirit

St. Seraphim was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1903, in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Imperial family – one of the last great acts of the pre-revolutionary Church. He was already one of the most popular saints in Russian popular piety long before his formal canonization (Christensen, Not of This World, passim; Rose, Little Russian Philokalia: St. Seraphim of Sarov).

The Conversation with Motovilov

The centerpiece of the volume on St. Seraphim is the famous Conversation with Nicholas Alexandrovich Motovilov on the purpose of the Christian life. This remarkable document, recorded by Motovilov himself and published in 1903, is one of the most important texts in Russian Orthodox spirituality.

The Content

The conversation took place in November 1831, in the forest near Sarov. St. Seraphim and Motovilov discuss the purpose of the Christian life. St. Seraphim teaches:

The purpose of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and all good works are not ends in themselves but means to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Acquire the Spirit of Peace, and a thousand souls around you will be saved” (St. Seraphim, in the Conversation with Motovilov).
The Holy Spirit can be consciously experienced. St. Seraphim insists that the presence of the Holy Spirit is not merely a theological abstraction but a reality that can be perceived by the whole person – body, soul, and spirit. When Motovilov asks how one can know whether the Spirit is present, St. Seraphim demonstrates: both men are suddenly enveloped in a brilliant light, and Motovilov experiences warmth, peace, sweetness, and joy beyond description, despite the winter cold.
This experience is the goal of all Christian life. St. Seraphim identifies this conscious experience of the Spirit’s presence with the state of Adam before the Fall and with the transfiguration that awaits the saints in the age to come. It is not reserved for monks or mystics alone but is the inheritance of every baptized Christian who pursues the acquisition of the Spirit.

The Theological Significance

The Conversation with Motovilov is theologically significant for several reasons:

It provides a vivid, experiential account of what the patristic tradition describes more abstractly as the vision of the uncreated light (cf. St. Gregory Palamas, Triads)
It grounds the theology of theosis in concrete, lived experience: the light that Motovilov saw is identified with the light of Tabor (Matthew 17:2) and with the uncreated energies of God
It teaches that the goal of the Christian life is not merely moral improvement but genuine, conscious participation in the divine life – a point that Rose emphasized throughout his own theological work
It demonstrates the continuity of the hesychast tradition from the Greek Fathers through the Russian saints to the modern era

Rose’s inclusion of this text in the Little Russian Philokalia was deliberate: it served as a vivid illustration of the reality of theosis and of the authenticity of the Orthodox spiritual tradition (Rose, Little Russian Philokalia: St. Seraphim of Sarov).

The Theology of the Holy Spirit in St. Seraphim’s Teaching

St. Seraphim’s theology of the Holy Spirit, as presented in Rose’s volume, includes several key emphases:

The Spirit as personal presence: The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force but a divine Person who dwells in the believer and can be known experientially.
The Spirit’s role in theosis: It is the Holy Spirit who accomplishes the transformation of the human person – the purification, illumination, and deification described by the Fathers. The Spirit is the agent of theosis.
The fruits of the Spirit as evidence: The authentic presence of the Spirit is evidenced not by extraordinary phenomena (tongues, visions) but by the fruits described by St. Paul: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). St. Seraphim’s own life – his radiant joy, his love for all, his peace in the midst of extreme asceticism – is the evidence.
The Spirit and the sacraments: St. Seraphim’s teaching presupposes the sacramental life of the Church. The acquisition of the Spirit occurs through baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, and the entire liturgical and ascetical life of the Church – not through techniques or methods divorced from this context.

Rose connected St. Seraphim’s pneumatology directly to his own critique of the charismatic movement (see The Charismatic Movement): the charismatic experience is a counterfeit of the genuine experience of the Holy Spirit described by St. Seraphim.

Other Texts in the Volume

In addition to the Conversation with Motovilov, Little Russian Philokalia Vol. I (1978) includes the Life of St. Seraphim; his “Spiritual Instructions to Laymen and Monks”; and the “Diveyevo Mystery” (material on the Diveyevo Convent, the women’s monastic community founded under St. Seraphim’s spiritual direction), together with introductory and contextual matter situating St. Seraphim within the broader Russian spiritual tradition (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. I: St. Seraphim of Sarov, 1978).

Volume on St. Paisius Velichkovsky

The Life and Significance of St. Paisius

St. Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794; secular name Pyotr Velichkovsky) is one of the most important figures in the history of Orthodox monasticism and spirituality. Born in Poltava (Ukraine), he entered monastic life as a young man and eventually traveled to Mount Athos, where he spent seventeen years (c. 1746–1763). On Athos, he discovered and collected manuscripts of the Greek neptic Fathers – the texts that would later be compiled as the Philokalia.

After leaving Athos, St. Paisius settled in Moldavia (present-day Romania and Moldova), where he became the abbot of a series of monasteries, most notably the Neamt Monastery (Manastr. Neamt). Under his leadership, Neamt became one of the largest and most spiritually vibrant monasteries in the Orthodox world, housing several hundred monks and serving as a center of translation, liturgical life, and the practice of the Jesus Prayer.

St. Paisius’s significance lies in several areas:

The revival of hesychasm: St. Paisius is the principal figure in the 18th-century revival of the hesychast tradition of the Jesus Prayer and the neptic (watchful) spiritual life. Through his influence, the practice of the Jesus Prayer – which had been declining in many Orthodox monasteries – was renewed in Romania, Russia, and throughout the Slavic world.
The Slavonic Philokalia (Dobrotolubie): St. Paisius translated a collection of Greek patristic texts on prayer and the spiritual life into Church Slavonic. This collection, published in Moscow in 1793, was the first Slavonic translation of what would become known as the Philokalia. St. Theophan the Recluse later produced the expanded five-volume Russian translation (1877–1889).
The transmission of the startsy tradition: St. Paisius’s disciples carried his monastic teaching into Russia, where they founded or revitalized monasteries that became centers of the startsy (elders) tradition – most notably Optina Pustyn, whose great elders (Sts. Leo, Macarius, Ambrose, and others) profoundly influenced Russian spiritual and literary culture in the 19th century.
The link between Greece and Russia: St. Paisius serves as the critical personal and institutional link between the Greek hesychast tradition (rooted in Mount Athos and the Philokalia) and the Russian spiritual tradition. Without St. Paisius, the Philokalic revival in Russia would not have occurred as it did.

(Rose, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia; cf. the entries on the Jesus Prayer and on Russian monasticism in the orthodoxy guide)

Rose’s Work on St. Paisius

Rose’s principal work on St. Paisius was not a numbered volume of the series but a standalone book, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1976) – his translation and compilation, from the Life written by Paisius’s disciple Schema-monk Metrophanes of Neamt and other Russian sources, issued to mark the bicentennial of the saint’s repose. (A later numbered Little Russian Philokalia volume on St. Paisius, Vol. IV, Field Flowers, was published by the Brotherhood in 1994, after Rose’s death.) Rose’s 1976 work includes:

1. The Life of St. Paisius

Rose translated or compiled a biographical account of St. Paisius, tracing his journey from Ukraine to Athos to Moldavia and detailing his monastic reforms, his translation work, and his spiritual teaching.

2. The Revival of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer

The volume presents St. Paisius’s teaching on the Jesus Prayer and the hesychast tradition, including:

The practice of the Jesus Prayer as the central activity of the monastic life
The importance of obedience to a spiritual father (starets) in the practice of the Prayer
The stages of prayer: oral prayer, mental prayer, and prayer of the heart (following the traditional schema described in the Philokalia)
The dangers of unsupervised practice: St. Paisius, like the Fathers before him, warns against attempting the advanced forms of the Jesus Prayer without guidance

3. The Slavonic Philokalia

Rose situates St. Paisius’s translation work within the broader history of the Philokalia tradition:

The Greek Philokalia (1782), compiled by Sts. Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Macarius of Corinth
St. Paisius’s Slavonic Dobrotolubie (1793), which made selected Philokalic texts available to the Slavic world
St. Theophan the Recluse’s expanded Russian Dobrotolubie (1877–1889), which built on St. Paisius’s work and became the foundational text of the Russian spiritual revival
The English Philokalia (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, 1979–present), which brought the tradition to the English-speaking world

Rose emphasizes that the Philokalic tradition is not a set of techniques but a living inheritance: a continuous tradition of prayer, discernment, and theosis transmitted from master to disciple across centuries and cultures.

4. The Transmission to Russia

Rose traces the influence of St. Paisius’s disciples in Russia:

Monks trained at Neamt Monastery carried the hesychast revival into Russian monasteries
The foundation and renewal of monasteries in the style of St. Paisius’s Neamt community
The emergence of the startsy tradition at Optina Pustyn and other Russian monasteries
The eventual influence on millions of Russian faithful through the spiritual literature produced by these monasteries – including The Way of a Pilgrim, the most famous popular introduction to the Jesus Prayer

(Rose, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia)

Rose’s Editorial Work and Translation Methodology

Sources

Rose worked primarily from Russian sources – hagiographic texts, collected works, and previous Russian-language compilations. For Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky he translated and compiled from the 1847 Optina Life by Schema-monk Metrophanes and related Russian materials; his linguistic competence allowed him to compare translations with originals where possible (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood publishing notes; Rose, Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky, translator’s preface).

Methodology

Rose’s editorial methodology in the Little Russian Philokalia was characterized by:

Faithfulness to the tradition: Rose presented the texts as the Orthodox Church received them, without modernizing, demythologizing, or “correcting” them according to contemporary sensibilities. Miracles are reported as miracles; demonic activity is reported as real; the saints are presented as the Church venerates them.
Contextual introduction: Rose provided introductions and notes that helped English-speaking readers understand the historical, theological, and spiritual context of the texts.
Liturgical and hagiographic integrity: Rose preserved the liturgical and hagiographic genre of the texts, resisting the temptation to reduce hagiography to biography or to strip spiritual texts of their supernatural content.
Pastoral purpose: The volumes were intended not for academic specialists but for Orthodox Christians seeking spiritual nourishment. The translations are clear and accessible, aimed at the general Orthodox reader.

The Significance of Making These Texts Available in English

The publication of the Little Russian Philokalia volumes was significant for several reasons:

1. Filling a Gap

Before Rose’s work, English-speaking Orthodox Christians had very limited access to the Russian hesychast and ascetical tradition. The Greek Philokalia was being translated into English (the first volume of the Palmer/Sherrard/Ware translation appeared in 1979), but the specifically Russian continuation of this tradition – St. Seraphim, St. Paisius, the Optina elders – was largely unavailable in English.

2. Supporting the Convert Mission

The growing number of English-speaking converts to Orthodoxy in the 1970s and 1980s needed access to the spiritual sources of the tradition, not merely to doctrinal summaries or liturgical texts. The Little Russian Philokalia provided this: living spiritual teaching from the saints of the tradition, presented in a form accessible to readers encountering these texts for the first time.

3. Demonstrating the Living Character of the Tradition

By publishing the writings of relatively recent saints (St. Seraphim died in 1833, St. Paisius in 1794), Rose demonstrated that the patristic tradition was not a relic of antiquity but a living reality that continued to produce saints and spiritual fruit into the modern era. This was an important point for Rose: the Fathers are not merely historical figures but living witnesses to a tradition that remains active in the Church.

4. Connecting to Rose’s Broader Theological Vision

The Little Russian Philokalia volumes are not separate from Rose’s other theological work. They embody his central convictions:

That authentic Orthodoxy is rooted in the hesychast tradition of prayer and theosis
That the Jesus Prayer is the heart of the Orthodox spiritual life
That the saints are the living proof of the truth of Orthodoxy
That the patristic tradition is continuous and unbroken from the apostolic age to the present

Connection to the Broader Philokalic Tradition

The Little Russian Philokalia should be understood within the broader history of the Philokalic tradition in Orthodoxy:

Date	Text	Significance
1782	Greek Philokalia (Sts. Nikodemos and Macarius)	First compilation of the neptic patristic tradition
1793	Slavonic Dobrotolubie (St. Paisius Velichkovsky)	Brought the Philokalic tradition to the Slavic world
1877–1889	Russian Dobrotolubie (St. Theophan the Recluse)	Expanded edition; foundational for the Russian spiritual revival
1979–present	English Philokalia (Palmer, Sherrard, Ware)	Making the Greek tradition accessible to English readers
1970s–1980s	Little Russian Philokalia (Rose, St. Herman Brotherhood)	Making the Russian continuation of the tradition accessible to English readers

Rose’s contribution is to extend the Philokalic tradition into English not only through the Greek texts (which others were translating) but through the specifically Russian continuation of that tradition – the saints and writers who received the Philokalic inheritance and lived it in the Russian context.

References

Rose, Seraphim, ed. and trans. Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. I: St. Seraphim of Sarov. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1978 (subsequently reprinted).
Metrophanes, Schema-monk. Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: The Man Behind the Philokalia. Translated and compiled by Fr. Seraphim Rose. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1976. (Rose’s principal work on St. Paisius; a separate numbered volume, Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. IV: St. Paisius Velichkovsky, was published by the Brotherhood in 1994, after Rose’s death.)
Little Russian Philokalia, Vol. III: St. Herman of Alaska — A Treasury of Spirituality. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1989 (posthumous).
Christensen, Damascene. Not of This World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose. Forestville, CA: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993.
The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Macarius of Corinth. Translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. 4 vols. London: Faber and Faber, 1979–1995.
Theophan the Recluse. Dobrotolubie (Russian Philokalia). 5 vols. Moscow, 1877–1889.
Chetverikov, Sergius. Starets Paisii Velichkovskii: His Life, Teachings, and Influence on Orthodox Monasticism. Translated from the Russian by Vasily Lickwar and Alexander I. Lisenko. Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1980.
The Orthodox Word. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1965–1982. Various issues.