Tonsure and Early Years (1831–1834)

In 1831 Bishop Stephen of Vologda tonsured Dmitry Brianchaninov a monk under the name Ignatius, ordained him deacon and then priest within weeks, and set him over the dilapidated Lopotov monastery in the Vologda diocese. The chronic ill health that had freed him from the army and unsettled his wandering years now became the permanent condition of his life — the bodily weakness against which all his labor was performed, and which gave his ascetical writing its sober, unillusioned tone.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized 1988)

Tonsure as Ignatius (1831)

After four unsettled years of novitiate (see The Search for an Elder), Dmitry Brianchaninov was professed a monk in 1831 by Bishop Stephen (Romanovsky) of Vologda, receiving the name Ignatius — by long tradition associated with St. Ignatius the God-bearer of Antioch, the martyr-bishop of the apostolic age (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA, Lives of the Saints, April 30; Ignatius Brianchaninov, en.wikipedia.org). The OCA Life dates the tonsure to June 20, 1831, with ordination to the diaconate on July 5 and to the priesthood on July 20 of the same year — a rapid passage through the orders that reflects both his evident formation and the Church’s need for capable men (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA). At his profession he was twenty-four years old.

The name proved apt in the manner the tradition prizes. As Ignatius of Antioch had been a bishop who wrote, on the road to martyrdom, letters that became permanent possessions of the Church, so the new monk Ignatius would become a bishop whose written legacy outweighed his administrative one. The tonsure closed the long search of the wandering years not by giving him the elder he had sought but by making him, in time, the kind of guide-through-writing that the elder’s scarcity required.

Ordination and the First Obediences

Ordained hieromonk in the summer of 1831, Ignatius was at once a priest-monk in a Church short of educated and serious clergy — and his gifts, the same gifts that had made him first in his class at the Engineering School, could not stay hidden. Within a year the diocesan authority entrusted him with responsibility, and the pattern of his life was set: a man drawn by temperament to stillness and the inner life, repeatedly pulled by his abilities and his obedience into administration. The tension between the contemplative he wished to be and the administrator he was required to be runs through his whole career, and he names it himself, with rueful honesty, throughout The Ascetical Experiences.

The Lopotov Monastery (1832–1833)

In 1832 Ignatius was appointed superior of the Grigoriev–Pelshma Lopotov Monastery (the Lopotov monastery) in the Vologda diocese, a small and decayed house, and in January 1833 he was elevated to the rank of igumen (abbot) (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA). His faithful friend Mikhail Chikhachov was with him there. The Lopotov assignment was his apprenticeship in the work that would consume the next quarter-century: the restoration of a run-down monastery — its buildings, its finances, and above all its spiritual discipline. The Lives record that he set the house in order with notable effectiveness, the first demonstration of the administrative competence that would make him, paradoxically, too useful to be left in peace (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA).

The damp climate of the place told on his already fragile health, and the sources note that the conditions there were among the reasons the post did not last (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA; cf. johnsanidopoulos.com). Within two years he would be summoned to a far larger task near the capital — by the direct intervention of the Tsar (see Archimandrite Near the Capital).

The Permanent Burden of Illness

No fact is more constant in Brianchaninov’s biography than his ill health, and none more important for understanding his teaching. Illness had cut short his military service and freed him for monasticism (see The Young Nobleman); illness had unsettled his novitiate, driving him from damp houses; and from his tonsure onward chronic sickness was simply the medium in which he lived and worked. The sources speak of recurrent grave illnesses across his whole life, culminating in the breakdown that would force his retirement from the episcopate in 1861 (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, OCA; johnsanidopoulos.com).

This bodily weakness is not incidental to his thought; it is woven into it. A man who is never well, who governs and writes from a sickbed as often as from a desk, does not write the literature of spiritual athleticism and high mystical attainment. He writes, instead, the literature of repentance, patience, and sober self-knowledge — the literature of one who knows his own weakness from the inside and distrusts every spiritual experience that flatters the self. The unillusioned, repentance-centered tone that is the signature of The Ascetical Experiences and The Arena is, in part, the tone of a lifelong invalid. His teaching that the present age is weak and must be guided gently and soberly (see Discernment for a Weakened Age) had its first and nearest illustration in his own body.

There is a deeper theological reading of this, which the tradition and Brianchaninov himself invite. In the patristic understanding, bodily weakness, borne with patience, is itself a school of humility and a guard against the spiritual pride that is the root of delusion. The healthy, vigorous ascetic is tempted to attribute his progress to his own strength and to reach, in that confidence, for high states he cannot safely hold; the chronically sick monk has his weakness pressed upon him daily and is taught, by his own body, that he can do nothing of himself. Brianchaninov’s illness was, in this sense, of a piece with his message: it kept him in the humility he preached. The man who taught that the safe path is the path of acknowledged weakness lived that acknowledgment as an unchosen condition, and his teaching carries the authenticity of one who did not merely recommend humility but was held in it by his own frailty.

The Tension Between Stillness and Service

The early years also set the permanent tension of his life, which he names repeatedly and without self-pity in his writings: the conflict between his longing for stillness (the hesychast’s silence, solitude, and undistracted prayer) and the service his gifts and his obediences continually demanded of him. By temperament and conviction he wanted the cell and the prayer of the heart; by ability and circumstance he was made an administrator, a restorer of monasteries, and eventually a bishop. The Lopotov abbacy was the first turn of this screw, and the screw would tighten for thirty years before the retirement at Nikolo-Babaevsky finally released it (see Retirement to Nikolo-Babaevsky). This tension is not merely biographical color; it is part of why his ascetical teaching is so realistic about the conditions of the active life and so cautious about the higher reaches of contemplative prayer. He wrote for people who, like himself, could not simply withdraw — who had to seek God in the midst of duty, distraction, and weakness — because that was the only life he had ever been allowed to live.

The Name and Its Meaning

The name given at tonsure is, in the monastic tradition, never accidental, and the name Ignatius carried a weight that the new monk would grow into. By long association it honors St. Ignatius the God-bearer (Theophoros) of Antioch, the bishop and martyr of the apostolic age (d. c. 107), who on his journey under guard to martyrdom in Rome wrote the seven letters that are among the earliest and most treasured documents of the post-apostolic Church. The pattern set by the patron proved prophetic for the disciple. The ancient Ignatius was a bishop who wrote — a hierarch whose enduring gift to the Church was not his administration but his letters, composed in extremity and read ever after; and the modern Ignatius would likewise be a bishop whose lasting legacy was his writing rather than his governance. The God-bearer longed to be wholly Christ’s, to have Christ formed in him; the Russian Ignatius would make exactly that — the formation of Christ in the soul through repentance and prayer — the burden of his whole teaching. A monastic name is a vocation in a word, and this one named, in advance, the bishop-writer the young monk was to become.

References

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Bishop of the Caucasus and Stavropol. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), Lives of the Saints, April 30. (Tonsure June 20, 1831, by Bishop Stephen of Vologda; name Ignatius; ordination deacon July 5 and priest July 20, 1831; superior of the Pelshma Lopotov monastery; igumen January 1833; Chikhachov; recurrent illness.)
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea (+ 1867). John Sanidopoulos, johnsanidopoulos.com (2018). (Profession by Bishop Stephen of Vologda, 1831; the appointment to a small Vologda monastery and the damp climate; the chronic ill health.)
“Ignatius Brianchaninov.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org (used to locate the dates of tonsure 1831 and ordination; cross-checked against the OCA Life).
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Ascetical Experiences (Asketicheskie opyty), in Polnoe sobranie tvorenii [Complete Collected Works], vols. 1–2. (The recurring autobiographical note of weakness, illness, and the tension between administration and stillness.)