01 — Foundations
The origins of St. Joseph the Hesychast: Frangiskos Kottis of the island of Paros — a poor and worldly youth, a sailor and small trader — whose conversion turned him toward the Holy Mountain, where he arrived c. 1921 and, in a period of Athonite decline, went in search of a living teacher of the hesychast prayer he had read about but could not find practiced.
Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite
This section covers the two movements that precede everything else in Joseph’s life: the call and the search. The call took a Cycladic sailor named Frangiskos Kottis from a life of hard work and worldly ambition to a decisive conversion and a resolve to become a monk on Athos. The search — harder, and central to understanding him — was for a genuine elder of noetic prayer at a moment when, by the testimony of his own disciples and of modern historians, the tradition of hesychast prayer on the Holy Mountain had grown thin. What Joseph could not easily find, he would spend his life recovering and transmitting.
Because his early life is known almost entirely through the biography written by his disciple Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi and the memoir of Elder Ephraim of Arizona, the dates and details are given here with the caution the sources require — above all his birth year, which the sources report inconsistently and which is flagged as [Disputed: ...].
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| frangiskos-and-the-call-to-athos.md | Birth on Paros (c. 1897/98, flagged as disputed); the fatherless, poor childhood; the years as a sailor and trader; the conversion and reading of ascetic literature; the resolve to become a monk and the arrival on Mount Athos c. 1921. |
| the-search-for-a-living-elder.md | The diminished state of Athonite hesychasm in the early twentieth century; the search for a teacher of noetic prayer; the guidance of Elder Daniel of Katounakia; the joining of the simple Elder Ephraim and the beginning of the ascetic life. |
See Also
- The Cave Life at Little St. Anne’s and Katounakia — the desert to which the search led
- The Sources for His Life — the biography and letters on which this account rests
- Monasticism — the Athonite forms of monastic life Joseph entered
References
- Joseph of Vatopaidi, Elder. Elder Joseph the Hesychast: Struggles, Experiences, Teachings. Mount Athos: The Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi, 1999.
- Ephraim of Philotheou (of Arizona), Elder. My Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Florence, AZ: St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 2013.
- Speake, Graham. Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.