The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism

The Arena (Prinoshenie sovremennomu monashestvu — literally “An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism”) is St. Ignatius’s focused guidebook for monks, and the most widely read of all his works in English through the translation of Archimandrite Lazarus Moore. Written near the end of his life and associated with 1867, the year of his death, it gathers his counsel on the whole monastic path — obedience, the cell, the reading of the Fathers, the Jesus Prayer, and above all the discernment needed to walk that path safely in a spiritually weakened age.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized 1988)

The Work and Its Title

The Arena is the English title given by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore to Brianchaninov’s Prinoshenie sovremennomu monashestvu — “An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism” — the work that occupies the latter part of the standard collected edition and that the saint composed as his considered gift to the monks of his own and future generations (Brianchaninov, The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, trans. Lazarus Moore, Holy Trinity Publications; Prinoshenie sovremennomu monashestvu, in Polnoe sobranie tvorenii, vol. 5). The Russian title is the more precise: this is an offering (prinoshenie) laid before contemporary monasticism — the monasticism of the nineteenth century specifically, which Brianchaninov judged to be living in conditions very different from those of the desert and the great monastic ages, and which therefore needed counsel adapted to its weakness (see Discernment for a Weakened Age).

The English title The Arena renders the ancient image of the monastic life as the stadion or arena of spiritual contest — the place of the athlete’s struggle. The edition note to the Holy Trinity Publications text dates the work to the very end of the saint’s life, associating it with 1867, the year of his repose, after some forty years of monastic life (“The Arena,” Holy Trinity Publications, holytrinitypublications.com; edition note, biblio.com).

The Argument

The Arena is, in effect, a manual for the monastic novice and the monk in the conditions Brianchaninov saw around him. Its governing premise is the one that organizes his whole thought: that the age has changed, that Spirit-bearing elders capable of the old, unconditional direction have become rare, and that the monastic life must therefore be conducted with a particular sobriety and caution, leaning heavily on the Scriptures and the Fathers, on mutual counsel, and on the disciplined avoidance of self-deception (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Lazarus Moore; see The Search for an Elder).

The chapters move across the whole terrain of the monastic path:

The foundation — faith, the fear of God, repentance, the reading of the Gospel and the Fathers as the indispensable groundwork.
Obedience and direction — how the monk is to seek guidance when true elders are scarce: by “life according to the counsel” of the prudent and by the Fathers’ writings, rather than by an obedience the age can no longer reliably support.
The cell and the order of life — the disciplines of solitude, vigil, the management of the body, and the ordering of the day.
The warfare of the thoughts — the recognition and resistance of the passions at the level of the pomysly (thoughts), drawn from Climacus and the Philokalia.
Prayer and the Jesus Prayer — the place of the invocation of the name within the monastic life, treated with the same cautions that govern On the Prayer of Jesus (see The Treatise on the Jesus Prayer).
The discernment of delusion — the persistent warning against prelest, the spiritual self-deception that imperils the unguided ascetic (see Against Delusion).

A Book for the Weak

What makes The Arena distinctive among monastic guidebooks is its frank pessimism about the spiritual capacities of its own age — a pessimism that is, paradoxically, the source of its compassion. Brianchaninov does not pretend that the modern monk can simply replicate the desert. He assumes weakness, distraction, the absence of great elders, the prevalence of self-will and self-deception, and he builds his counsel for that reality. The book’s repeated refrain is humility: the monk who knows he is weak, who distrusts his own spiritual experiences, who clings to the Scriptures and the Fathers and seeks counsel rather than trusting his own judgment, walks safely; the one who reaches for high states, who trusts his own visions and consolations, walks toward delusion and ruin (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Lazarus Moore; cf. Osipov, The Basics of Spiritual Life, orthochristian.com/53476.html).

This is why The Arena, though written for monks, has been read so widely by laypeople and converts: its diagnosis of spiritual weakness and its prescription of sober humility apply far beyond the monastery. It is the most accessible single entry into Brianchaninov’s whole outlook.

Obedience Without an Elder

The most theologically consequential chapters of The Arena are those on obedience and spiritual direction, because here Brianchaninov confronts directly the central problem of his whole pastoral theology: how is the monk to be guided when the Spirit-bearing elder, the linchpin of the classical monastic system, has become rare to the point of near-absence (see Discernment for a Weakened Age)? His answer is bold and has been influential and, in some quarters, controversial. He teaches that the full, unconditional obedience of the ancient monastic ideal — the disciple’s total surrender of will and judgment to an elder who bears responsibility for his soul — presupposes a genuinely Spirit-bearing elder, and that to render such obedience to a guide who is not himself enlightened is not virtue but peril, for a blind guide leads the blind into the pit (Brianchaninov, The Arena, on obedience).

In place of this, he prescribes life according to counsel (zhitie po sovetu): the humble seeking of advice from the Scriptures, from the writings of the Fathers, and from prudent fellow-Christians, weighed against the patristic norm and held with one’s own retained responsibility, rather than the absolute submission of the old ideal. This is, in effect, a re-grounding of monastic obedience for an age that has lost its elders — a teaching of enormous practical importance, and one that lies behind much subsequent Orthodox caution about false or premature spiritual submission and about the dangers of “elder-seeking” (cf. Spiritual Direction). The Arena is the place where this teaching is set out at length and for monastics specifically, and it is a chief reason the book has been read so attentively by all who think seriously about spiritual direction in the modern Church.

The Cell, the Body, and the Order of Life

Alongside its great themes, The Arena is also, very practically, a manual of monastic living — and its practical counsel reveals the same governing sobriety. Brianchaninov writes on the management of the body, on food and sleep and the bodily disciplines, with a marked moderation: he warns against excessive austerity quite as much as against laxity, holding that immoderate ascesis in a weak age breeds either pride or breakdown, and that the measured, sustainable discipline matched to one’s actual strength is the safer and truer path. He writes on the ordering of the day, on vigil and the rule of prayer, on the keeping of the cell and the value of solitude, on the guarding of the senses and the avoidance of distraction. Throughout, the counsel is adapted to the real conditions and the real (lesser) capacities of contemporary monastics rather than transposed unaltered from the desert (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Lazarus Moore). This practical moderation is not a lowering of the ideal but an application of his deepest principle: that the safe path for a weak generation is the path of acknowledged weakness, sustainable discipline, and humility, not the heroic austerity that, attempted beyond one’s strength and without a guide, leads to delusion or collapse.

The Lazarus Moore Translation

The Arena reached the English-speaking world above all through the translation of Archimandrite Lazarus Moore (1902–1992), the English-born Orthodox monk and translator who also rendered St. John Climacus’s Ladder and other ascetical texts into English. His translation, published by Holy Trinity Publications (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville), made The Arena the most widely circulated of Brianchaninov’s works in English; the second edition was re-edited and newly typeset, with subject and scripture indexes and a short life of the saint (“The Arena,” Holy Trinity Publications; edition note, biblio.com; Amazon listing for The Arena, ISBN 9780884650119). Through this translation The Arena became, for much of the English-speaking Orthodox world — and especially the convert and ROCOR milieu — the doorway into Brianchaninov, and one of the standard books placed in the hands of those approaching monasticism (see Influence and Reception).

Why It Endures

More than a century and a half after it was written, The Arena remains in print and in use, recommended not only to monastics but to serious lay Christians and especially to converts approaching the Orthodox spiritual life. Its endurance is worth explaining. Part of the reason is its comprehensiveness: it covers the whole of the inner life — foundation, direction, the cell, the thoughts, prayer, delusion — in a single, ordered, readable volume, so that a reader who has only one book of Brianchaninov can have in it the essentials of his whole teaching. Part is its accessibility: written for “contemporary” monasticism rather than for the desert, it assumes weakness, distraction, and the absence of elders — the reader’s actual condition — and meets him there. And part is its tone of honest, compassionate realism: it neither flatters the reader with promises of easy spiritual attainment nor crushes him with impossible demands, but offers a sober, sustainable, humble path that an ordinary modern person can actually begin to walk.

Above all, The Arena endures because the problem it addresses has not gone away. The question it answers — how to pursue the genuine ascetical and contemplative life when one is weak, distracted, surrounded by a thinned and worldly religiosity, and lacking a Spirit-bearing elder — is the question of the modern Orthodox Christian as such, lay or monastic, in Russia or in the diaspora. Brianchaninov wrote the book for the monks of 1867; it turned out to be a book for the whole modern Church. That is why, of all his works, The Arena is the one most often placed first in the hands of those beginning the serious spiritual life (see Influence and Reception).

References

Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. Archimandrite Lazarus Moore. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications (2nd ed., re-edited and newly typeset; ISBN 9780884650119). (The full text and argument; the monastic counsel for a weakened age.)
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. Prinoshenie sovremennomu monashestvu [An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism], in Polnoe sobranie tvorenii [Complete Collected Works], vol. 5.
“The Arena.” Holy Trinity Publications (holytrinitypublications.com); edition and dating note at biblio.com (book record for the Lazarus Moore translation). (Composition associated with 1867, the year of the saint’s death; the second-edition features.)
Osipov, Alexei Ilyich. The Basics of Spiritual Life, Based on the Writings of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). OrthoChristian.com (orthochristian.com/53476.html). (Humility and distrust of one’s own spiritual experiences as the safe path.)