The Gathering of Brethren

Once word of the hermit in the cave on the Berestov hill spread, men began to come to St. Anthony to share his life: among them the priest Nikon, who tonsured the newcomers, and a young man from Kursk named Theodosius, the future abbot and the true organizer of the community. This file traces what the Povest’ vremennykh let and the Kiev Caves Paterik report of those first disciples, and of Anthony’s settled rule — that he would not himself live in community, but blessed each brother to dig his own cell.

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

From Hermit to Magnet

The transition from a single hermit’s cave to a monastery is, in the sources, almost involuntary on Anthony’s part. The Povest’ vremennykh let (hereafter PVL), s.a. 1051, says simply that “men became aware of him and came to him, bringing what he needed, and others came wishing to live with him” (PVL, s.a. 1051; trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Medieval Academy 1953). The pull was the ascetic life itself, not any program of recruitment; Anthony, the Chronicle stresses, sought solitude, and the community grew around him precisely because of his flight from community. Fedotov makes this the interpretive key to the whole foundation: the Caves monastery was generated by the gravitational force of one man’s holiness, drawing others into a way of life he had brought back from Mount Athos and was living out in hidden austerity (Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass. 1946; see The Cave on the Berestov Hill).

The PVL names a threshold: when the brethren who had gathered numbered about twelve, “they dug a great cave, and a church, and cells, which remain to this day in the cave under the old monastery” (PVL, s.a. 1051; trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor). Twelve is plainly a freighted number — the apostolic college — and the Chronicle’s editor may well have shaped it so; but the underlying datum, that the eremitic cell had become a small dug-out coenobium of cells, a church, and a refectory chamber, is consistent across the sources (cf. Heppell, The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, Harvard 1989).

Nikon the Priest

The first companion the PVL names by office is Nikon, and the function attached to him is decisive for the community’s life: he was the priest who performed the tonsures. The Chronicle relates that when men came desiring to renounce the world, Anthony received them, “and the great Nikon tonsured them,” Anthony himself directing the candidate to Nikon for the monastic habit (PVL, s.a. 1051; trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor). This is a point of some importance, because Anthony — though a tonsured monk himself — is not depicted in the earliest stratum as a priest, and the sacramental and clothing acts of receiving brethren therefore fell to Nikon, who was an ordained priest and monk (PVL, s.a. 1051; Heppell, Paterik, 1989).

Nikon is a substantial figure in his own right and not merely a functionary. The PVL and the Paterik both make him the elder who tonsures Theodosius and, in a famous episode, draws upon himself the anger of Prince Izyaslav for tonsuring, without princely leave, men close to the court — including, the sources say, a favorite of the prince and Varlaam, son of the boyar Ioann (PVL, s.a. 1051; Heppell, Paterik, 1989). The fallout from these tonsures — Izyaslav’s threat to dig up the cave and scatter the monks, and Anthony’s readiness to depart rather than yield — belongs to the collection’s later treatment of the conflict with the prince; here it suffices to note that Nikon’s office as tonsurer is what set that conflict in motion (Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200, London 1996). Nikon would later withdraw for a time to found a monastery at Tmutorokan on the Black Sea before returning, and eventually became abbot of the Caves himself — a trajectory the Paterik records and modern scholarship treats as historically anchored (Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946).

Theodosius

The disciple who matters most for the future is Theodosius. The PVL, s.a. 1051, introduces him in the roll of early brethren — “and there came to him Theodosius” — but his arrival, vocation, and character are narrated in incomparably greater depth by Nestor in the Life of Theodosius, the earliest sustained Russian saint’s life and the indispensable source for him (Nestor, Life of Theodosius, in Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946).

Nestor reports that Theodosius came from Kursk (in some readings the family moved there), that he was drawn from boyhood to the church and to a life of humble labor against the wishes of his mother, who is portrayed resisting his ascetic inclinations with striking force, and that he eventually made his way to Kiev seeking the monastic life. Turned away or unreceived at the established monasteries — Nestor presents him as too poor and obscure to be welcomed where wealth and standing counted — he came at last to Anthony in the cave (Nestor, Life of Theodosius, in Heppell, Paterik, 1989). The Life has Anthony, testing him, warn the young man of the hardness of the cave-life; Theodosius answers that God has brought him there, and Anthony, recognizing his resolve, directs Nikon to tonsure him (Nestor, Life of Theodosius; PVL, s.a. 1051; Heppell, Paterik, 1989). Theodosius would in time become abbot, introduce the cenobitic Studite rule from Constantinople, and bring the brethren up out of the caves into the monastery that became the Lavra — but that organizing work, and the contrast between his cenobitic genius and Anthony’s eremitic temperament, belongs to the collection’s later sections on the two founders. What matters here is the beginning: a poor, determined young man received into a hole in the riverbank and tonsured by Nikon at Anthony’s word (Nestor, Life of Theodosius, in Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946).

[Disputed: the exact sequence and relative dating of the early arrivals — Nikon, Theodosius, and the others. The PVL, s.a. 1051, telescopes the gathering into a single year-entry and does not give a firm internal chronology (trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor). Nestor’s Life of Theodosius and the Paterik supply ordering and detail, but they are hagiographic and partly schematic, and they do not perfectly agree among themselves on who came first or on Theodosius’s age at arrival (Nestor, Life of Theodosius, and the Paterik, both in Heppell, 1989). Franklin and Shepard caution that the sub anno 1051 placement is a literary anchor — the Chronicle gathering several years of development under the year of Hilarion’s elevation — rather than a precise date for each event (Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 1996). This collection therefore reports the named episodes without committing to a single chronology of arrivals.]

The Others

Beyond Nikon and Theodosius the sources preserve a cluster of named early brethren whose stories the Paterik tells at length. Among them are Varlaam, son of the boyar Ioann, whom Anthony appointed the first abbot when the community grew too large for him to oversee and who later moved to head Yaroslav’s monastery of St. Demetrius; and Ephraim, a eunuch of the princely household who, like Varlaam, was tonsured and later rose to ecclesiastical office (the Paterik makes him bishop of Pereyaslavl) (Heppell, Paterik, 1989; PVL, s.a. 1051; Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 1996). The Paterik also gathers the foundational stories of the holy men whose relics lie in the Near Caves — Moses the Hungarian, Damian the healer, Jeremiah and Matthew the seers, Isaac the recluse — though these accounts vary widely in date and in the firmness of their attestation and are best treated where the Paterik itself is examined as a source (Heppell, Paterik, 1989; cf. METHODOLOGY, §3.5). What unites the reliable early notices is that these were men drawn personally to Anthony’s cave and received into the dug-out community there, several of them men of standing whose tonsure carried political weight.

Anthony’s Rule: He Would Not Live in Community

The single most characteristic feature of Anthony’s leadership — and the hinge on which the whole later history of the Caves turns — is that he would not himself govern or live within the community he had attracted. The PVL, s.a. 1051, is explicit: when the brethren had multiplied, Anthony, “who loved solitude,” would not endure to live among the press of them. He appointed an abbot over them — the Chronicle names Varlaam — and withdrew, “and he himself went into another cave,” shutting himself up apart and continuing the solitary, enclosed life he had always sought (PVL, s.a. 1051; trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor; cf. Heppell, Paterik, 1989).

This was not negligence but vocation. The pattern the sources attribute to Anthony is that of the anchoritic father of a lavra in the old Palestinian and Athonite sense: an elder who lives in strict seclusion, around whom disciples settle in separate cells, governed by their own routine and a delegated superior, drawing on the elder’s prayer and counsel without sharing his enclosure (Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946; Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 1996). Concretely, the rule the PVL and Paterik report is that Anthony “blessed” each brother to dig his own cell into the hillside — the community was, at first, a scatter of individual hermit-cells linked by tunnels, not a single shared dormitory (PVL, s.a. 1051; Heppell, Paterik, 1989). Anthony gives the blessing; the brother digs; the abbot administers; Anthony prays in seclusion. The cenobitic life proper — common rule, common refectory, common obedience under the Studite typikon — would be the work of Theodosius, and it is in that succession from Anthony’s eremitism to Theodosius’s coenobium that the deepest interpretive question of the collection lies (Nestor, Life of Theodosius, in Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946).

Fedotov frames the consequence sharply: Anthony is the father of the Caves and, through them, of Russian monasticism, yet he is not its organizer; he gives the example and the blessing and then withdraws, leaving the building of an institution to others. The greatness and the limitation of his fatherhood are the same fact — he would not live in community (Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946).

What the Gathering Established

By the close of the narrative the PVL gathers under 1051, the essential shape of the Caves is set: a secluded founding elder; a priest, Nikon, to tonsure and to clothe; an abbot, Varlaam, to administer; a rising disciple, Theodosius, who will reorganize everything; and a body of brethren each blessed to dig his own cell in the hill (PVL, s.a. 1051; trans. Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor; Heppell, Paterik, 1989). From this dug-out beginning the monastery would grow into the Kiev Caves Lavra, the mother-house of Russian monasticism, sending out abbots and bishops across the land — a diffusion the Paterik itself celebrates and which Fedotov and Franklin–Shepard trace as the institutional legacy of these first gathered brethren (Heppell, Paterik, 1989; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, 1946; Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 1996). The gathering on the Berestov hill is thus the moment a hermit’s vocation became a school of holiness — without Anthony ceasing, even then, to be a hermit.

References

The Russian Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let), s.a. 1051. Trans. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1953. (The gathering of brethren; Nikon as tonsurer; Theodosius among the early disciples; Anthony’s appointment of Varlaam as abbot and his withdrawal into seclusion; brethren blessed to dig their own cells.)
The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. Trans. Muriel Heppell. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations, vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. (The fuller narratives of Nikon, Varlaam, Ephraim, and the early holy men; the tonsures that provoked Prince Izyaslav.)
Nestor. Life of Theodosius (of the Caves). In Heppell, The Paterik (above), and discussed in Fedotov (below). (The principal source for Theodosius’s origins, his mother’s resistance, his coming to Kiev, and his reception and tonsure at Anthony’s cave.)
Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946. (Anthony as founder but not organizer; the eremitic character of his rule; the Caves as mother of Russian monasticism.)
Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. London and New York: Longman, 1996. (The political dimension of the tonsures; the literary character of the sub anno 1051 placement; the institutional diffusion of the Caves brethren.)