02 — Athos and Return

The pivotal episode in the early tradition of St. Anthony of the Kiev Caves (c. 983–1073): his journey from the land of Rus’ to Mount Athos, his tonsure and formation on the Holy Mountain, and his sending home under blessing with the reported prophecy that many monks would come from him. These files set out what the Russian Primary Chronicle and the Kiev Caves Paterik actually attest, keep the early Chronicle layer distinct from the later Paterik elaboration, and treat critically the unresolved problems of how many times Anthony went to Athos and under which prince.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Kievan; father of Russian monasticism)

The Athos episode is where the Caves tradition locates the spiritual origin of Russian monasticism: a single tonsured monk, formed on the Holy Mountain and sent home with a blessing, becomes the root from which a whole monastic line is said to spring. It is also, source-critically, the thinnest and most legendary stretch of Anthony’s biography, and the two files in this section are written to honor both facts at once. The first examines the tonsure itself and the well-known problem of one Athos journey versus two; the second examines the abbot’s sending and the prophecy of multiplied monasticism, pinned throughout to its sources as reported speech. The narrative weight of both rests less on dated event than on a claim about lineage — that the eremitic, hesychast ascesis of Byzantine Athos was deliberately transplanted into Kievan soil through Anthony.

Files in This Section

File	Description
Tonsure on the Holy Mountain	Anthony’s journey to Mount Athos, his tonsure and naming, and the abbot’s commission; the early Chronicle account (PVL, s.a. 1051) set against the later Paterik layer; the disputed problem of one Athos journey versus two and the question of whether his tonsure and decisive return fall under Vladimir or Yaroslav.
Sent Back to Rus’	The abbot’s sending of Anthony home and the prophecy that “many monks shall come from you,” reported as the source’s speech; the Athonite-hesychast, eremitic seed transplanted to Kiev; why the tradition insists the discipline came specifically through Athos, and what the sources can and cannot establish about the prophecy’s authenticity.

See Also

• Lyubech and the Early Life — Anthony’s origins in Rus’ before the Athos journey
• The Cave on the Berestov Hill — the eremitic life he took up on returning
• The Kiev Caves Paterik — the later source layer examined as a source
• The Primary Chronicle Account — the earliest witness to the foundation
• The Two Founders — Anthony’s eremitic seed and Theodosius’s cenobitic institution
• Father of Russian Monasticism — the title the Athos commission underwrites
• St. Vladimir of Kiev — the prince of the Baptism, under whose reign the two-journey tradition places an early tonsure
• St. Olga of Kiev — the earlier Christian generation of the Kievan dynasty
• St. Sergius of Radonezh — the later flowering of the monastic line the tradition traces to Anthony
• St. Symeon the New Theologian — the contemporary Byzantine hesychast world of Anthony’s Athonite formation
• St. Theodosius of the Kiev Caves — the co-founder who organized the community Anthony seeded
• Russian Monasticism — the tradition seeded by the Athos commission
• The Baptism of Rus — the conversion that set the stage for Kievan monasticism
• Russian Orthodox Tradition — the wider tradition Anthony helped found
• Orthodox Monasticism — the monastic life into which the Athos tonsure initiates
• Holy Tradition — monasticism as received and handed down
• Collection Overview — the full St. Anthony of the Kiev Caves collection
• Methodology — the citation and verification standard these files follow

References

• Povest’ vremennykh let (The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text), s.a. 1051. Trans. Samuel H. Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1953.
• The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. Trans. Muriel Heppell. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
• Fedotov, G. P. The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946.
• Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. London and New York: Longman, 1996.