09 — Veneration and Legacy
St. Nilus of Sora reposed on 7 May 1508, having asked in his will that his body be left without honor — yet the Church came in time to venerate him as a saint, and the contemplative tradition he planted, eclipsed for centuries, was recovered and made luminous again in the great Russian spiritual revivals. These files trace, first, his repose, his self-effacing will, and the late and quiet canonization and feast; and second, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century rediscovery of Nilus — through Optina, the Philokalic revival, and modern scholarship — together with the limits the sources still impose on knowing him.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (hesychast; “Non-Possessors”)
There is a deep irony in Nilus’s afterlife: the man who forbade any veneration of his remains became a venerated saint, and the contemplative whose cause was crushed in his own century became, in later ages, one of the most cherished figures of the Russian spiritual tradition. This section traces both the quiet, almost reluctant canonization and the great recovery, and it closes the collection by returning to its governing discipline — the honest acknowledgment of how much of Nilus is securely known and how much remains, by his own choice and the silence of the record, hidden.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Canonization and Feast | Nilus’s repose on 7 May 1508; the last will asking that his body be left to the beasts or buried without honor; the late, quiet canonization and the feast day; the irony of the cult of a man who forbade his own veneration. |
| The Modern Rediscovery | The nineteenth- and twentieth-century recovery of Nilus: Optina, the Philokalic revival in the line of Paisius Velichkovsky, the printing of his writings, modern scholarship (Fedotov, Maloney, Goldfrank), his stature today, and the enduring limits of the sources. |
See Also
- The Tradition (Predanie) and Letters — the last will treated among the writings
- The Eclipse of the Movement — the suppression from which the tradition was recovered
- The Prayer of the Heart — the contemplative teaching the revival recovered
- St. Ambrose of Optina — the Optina revival that recovered Nilus
References
- Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
- Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
- Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008.