03 — The Philokalia

The work for which Nicodemus is above all remembered: the Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers, compiled with St. Makarios of Corinth from the hesychast manuscripts of Mount Athos and first published at Venice in 1782 — and its astonishing afterlife in Slavonic, Russian, and English, by which an Athonite anthology became a world spiritual classic.

Files

File Description
compiling-the-philokalia.md The flagship account: the 1777 discovery of the manuscript at Vatopedi by St. Makarios; the division of labor; the contents from Evagrius to Palamas; the structure and the neptic-hesychast aim; the 1782 Venice publication and its preface.
the-philokalia-and-its-diffusion.md The diffusion: Paisius Velichkovsky’s Slavonic Dobrotolyubie (1793); Theophan the Recluse’s expanded Russian Dobrotolyubie; the twentieth-century English Philokalia of Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware; the worldwide Philokalic revival.

See Also