Canonization and Feast

St. Nilus of Sora reposed at his skete on 7 May 1508, having directed in his last will that his body be cast out to be devoured by the beasts and birds, or buried without honor, as a thing unworthy of veneration. The Church nonetheless came, in time, to honor him as a saint — but the canonization was late and quiet, fitting a man who had forbidden his own cult, and it carries to the end the irony that runs through his whole story: the contemplative who asked to be forgotten became a venerated saint of the Russian Church. This file treats his repose, his self-effacing will, and the late and reticent veneration.

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

The Repose

Nilus died at his skete on the Sora on 7 May 1508 (Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). The date of his repose is the one firm date in his biography, and 7 May (Old Style) became the day of his commemoration. He died as he had lived — in poverty, in the small brotherhood of his skete, far from the councils and controversies of Moscow, having spent his last years in the contemplative life he had transplanted from Athos and taught in his writings (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). The man whose public role later tradition would magnify into the leadership of a national movement died, in historical fact, as a poor and obscure hermit in the northern forests.

The Last Will

The most eloquent witness to Nilus’s spirit at his death is his last will (testament), in which he gave directions for the disposal of his body. He asked that his corpse be cast out into the wilderness to be devoured by the wild beasts and the birds, or else buried without any honor, because his body had grievously sinned against God and was unworthy of burial; he forbade any costly funeral, any memorial, any veneration of his remains, and he asked the brothers to bury him, if they must, without ceremony and to give to the poor whatever might otherwise be spent on his funeral (Nil Sorsky, Testament / Last Will; trans. Maloney 2003; Goldfrank 2008; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). The will is the perfect epitome of his teaching — the radical humility, the contempt for the glorification of the flesh, the refusal of all honor, the self-effacement that made even his biography so thin (see The Tradition (Predanie) and Letters).

This is not a pose but the logical end of Nilus’s whole spirituality. The monk who taught that the body’s glory is nothing and the heart’s purity everything, who asked his brothers to renounce costly ornament even in the church, who legislated poverty and refused all accumulation, could not have asked anything else for his own remains. The will is his last and most uncompromising act of the poverty and humility he had preached for a lifetime (Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973).

The Irony of Veneration

Herein lies the irony that crowns Nilus’s story: the man who forbade his own veneration became a venerated saint. The Church’s instinct to honor holiness proved stronger than the saint’s own self-effacement, and Nilus came in time to be commemorated as a saint of the Russian Church, his name entered in the calendar, his memory kept on 7 May, his relics held in honor at the place of his skete (Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). There is no contradiction here that an Orthodox reader cannot hold: the saint’s humility and the Church’s veneration are not at war but are the two faces of sanctity — the saint flees honor, and precisely his flight from honor is what the Church honors. Nilus’s will did not prevent his veneration; it became part of the reason for it, the very humility he sought to hide shining out as the mark of his holiness.

The Late and Quiet Canonization

The veneration of Nilus was, fittingly, late and quiet rather than swift and triumphant. [Disputed: the precise history and date of Nilus's formal glorification are not sharply documented; he was venerated locally and his memory kept from relatively early, but a formal, general canonization came late and is variously placed by the sources, with much of the wider recognition belonging to the period of his rediscovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rather than to the centuries of the Josephite ascendancy immediately after his death. The scholarship (Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008) treats the canonization as late and the cult as having grown quietly and unevenly, in keeping both with Nilus's own self-effacement and with the long marginalization of his tradition]. The reticence of the cult mirrors the reticence of the man: there was no great translation of relics, no flood of early miracle accounts magnifying him, no triumphant elevation. The Church kept his memory, honored his place, and at last numbered him among the saints — but it did so in a manner as quiet as his own poverty, and the fuller flowering of his veneration awaited the rediscovery of his writings and his spirit in later centuries (see The Modern Rediscovery).

The Feast and the Memory

Nilus is commemorated on 7 May (Old Style), the day of his repose. His memory is kept above all in the contemplative and hesychast tradition of the Russian Church — among monks of the inner prayer, in the line of the spiritual revival that recovered him, and among all who cherish the prayer of the heart he transplanted from Athos (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). His veneration is not the loud cult of a wonder-worker but the quiet honor paid to a master of the inner life and a model of monastic humility and poverty — exactly the kind of veneration that a man who asked to be cast out to the beasts could, perhaps, bear: a remembrance not of his body or his deeds but of his teaching and his spirit. In the calendar of the Russian Church the poor hermit of the Sora stands among the saints, his feast a quiet annual return to the contemplative ideal he embodied (Goldfrank 2008; Fedotov 1966, vol. II).

See Also

References

  • Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. (Nilus’s repose on 7 May 1508; the last will and its directions; the late and quiet character of his veneration.)
  • Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008. (Translation of the testament; the history of Nilus’s cult and the lateness of his formal recognition.)
  • Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. (The last will, the humility of Nilus’s death, and the irony of his veneration.)
  • Nil Sorsky. Last Will (Testament), in Maloney, Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.