The Skete as a Third Way

The monastic tradition had long recognized two principal forms of the monk’s life: the coenobium, the large community in which all things are held in common under an abbot, and the eremitical life of the solitary hermit. St. Nilus of Sora planted in Russia a third, middle form — the skete: a small brotherhood of two or three monks living in separate cells near one another, under a shared rule and the guidance of a spiritual elder rather than the authority of an abbot. This file sets out the skete as Nilus understood it, its Athonite and Sinaite roots, and why he judged it the form best suited to the inner prayer he had come to teach.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)

The Three Forms of Monastic Life

The ascetic tradition Nilus inherited distinguished three ways in which a monk might live. The first is the coenobium (Greek koinobion, “common life”): the large community in which the monks share a common rule, common meals, common worship, and common property under the governance of an abbot — the form St. Pachomius founded, that St. Basil shaped, and that St. Sergius and his disciples had planted across the Russian north. The second is the eremitical or anchoritic life: the solitary hermit who, after long testing in community, withdraws to live alone in the wilderness, answerable to God and to his own conscience under an elder’s distant care. Between these stands the third form, which Nilus made his own (Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986; on the three ways generally, see Monasticism).

Nilus himself, drawing on the fathers, names this threefold scheme and locates his own preference within it. The fully solitary life he regarded as the province of the few who are ready for it and as fraught with danger for the unprepared; the large coenobium he saw as drawn, by its size and wealth, away from the conditions of stillness. The middle way — the small skete — he judged the safest and most fruitful road for most who seek inner prayer (Nil Sorsky, Ustav, on the three modes of life; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II).

The Skete Defined

The skete (Greek skētē) as Nilus understood it is a settlement of a very few monks — ideally two or three — living in separate cells close enough to share worship and counsel but far enough for solitude and silence (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). It is governed not by the institutional authority of an abbot over a large community but by a shared rule and by the spiritual guidance of an experienced elder to whom the brothers open their thoughts. The small number is essential: it preserves silence and stillness, makes real spiritual fellowship possible, removes the administrative apparatus of a large house, and keeps the settlement too small to become a wealthy estate (Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008, introduction).

This middle form holds together the goods of the two extremes while guarding against their dangers. From the coenobium it keeps the protection of fellowship, common worship, mutual correction, and obedience to an elder — guarding against the self-deception (prelest) and despair that threaten the unsupported solitary. From the eremitical life it keeps the solitude, silence, and freedom from institutional business that the practice of inner prayer requires — guarding against the distraction and worldliness that threaten the large house (Nil Sorsky, Ustav; trans. Maloney 2003; Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). The skete is, in Nilus’s hands, a school of contemplation: small enough for stillness, communal enough for safety.

The Athonite and Sinaite Roots

The skete was not Nilus’s invention but his importation. The form had deep roots in the Christian East — in the ancient semi-eremitical settlements of the Egyptian desert (the lavra, where solitaries lived around a common church) and, in Nilus’s own time, in the sketes of Mount Athos, where small groups of monks lived this middle life on the dependencies of the great monasteries (Maloney 1973; Špidlík 1986). It was precisely this Athonite skete life that Nilus had observed during his pilgrimage (see The Journey to Athos and Constantinople), and what he founded on the Sora was a faithful transplantation of it. The hesychast masters Nilus revered — Gregory of Sinai above all — had taught and practiced inner prayer in exactly such small settlements, and the skete was the institutional setting natural to the prayer of the heart (Maloney 1973; Meyendorff 1974; see The Philokalic Inheritance).

Why the Middle Way Suits Inner Prayer

The deep reason Nilus preferred the skete is that the conditions it creates are the conditions the hesychast method requires. Inner prayer demands silence, freedom from distraction and care, long stretches of solitude in the cell, and the regular, unhurried discipline of attention — none of which the busy, populous, administratively burdened great monastery readily affords (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). At the same time, inner prayer is perilous without guidance: the analysis of the thoughts, the discernment of true compunction from false, the avoidance of spiritual delusion all require an experienced elder to whom the disciple can lay bare his soul (see Guarding the Thoughts). The skete supplies both — the solitude and the guidance — in a single form, and that is why Nilus, the master of inner prayer, was also the founder of sketes.

A Pattern for Russia

In planting the skete on the Sora, Nilus gave Russian monasticism a form it had possessed only sporadically before. The Russian tradition had developed the great cenobitic houses and produced individual hermits; the deliberately cultivated, rule-governed skete of two or three contemplatives was Nilus’s distinctive contribution (Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973). The “Trans-Volga elders” who carried his tradition forward lived this skete life in the forests beyond the Volga (see The Trans-Volga Elders), and the skete ideal Nilus naturalized would surface again in the later Russian contemplative revivals — at Optina and in the line of Paisius Velichkovsky, who would again transplant the Athonite skete and the Philokalia into Russian soil (see The Modern Rediscovery; St. Ambrose of Optina). The third way Nilus chose proved to be the form in which the Russian contemplative tradition would most characteristically renew itself.

See Also

• The Skete on the Sora — the concrete foundation that embodied the skete ideal
• The Journey to Athos and Constantinople — the Athonite skete life Nilus observed
• The Philokalic Inheritance — the hesychast masters who practiced this middle way
• Guarding the Thoughts — the inner discipline the skete was designed to support
• The Trans-Volga Elders — the heirs who lived the skete life after Nilus
• Monasticism — the three forms of monastic life in the tradition

References

• Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. (The three forms of monastic life and Nilus’s preference for the skete; its Athonite roots and its fitness for inner prayer.)
• Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. (The skete as Nilus’s distinctive contribution to Russian monasticism.)
• Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008. (The skete model and the small brotherhood under an elder; translation of the Ustav.)
• Meyendorff, John. St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974. (The hesychast masters and the semi-eremitical setting of inner prayer.)
• Špidlík, Tomáš. The Spirituality of the Christian East. Trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986. (The three modes of monastic life in the Eastern tradition.)
• Nil Sorsky. The Ustav (Skete Rule), in Maloney, Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. (Nilus on the three ways of monastic life and the middle way.)