The Modern Rediscovery

The contemplative tradition of St. Nilus of Sora, eclipsed for centuries after the Josephite triumph, was recovered and made luminous again in the great Russian spiritual revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — in the Philokalic movement of St. Paisius Velichkovsky, in the startsy of Optina, in the printing of Nilus’s writings, and in modern scholarship from Fedotov to Goldfrank. This file traces that rediscovery, the rise of Nilus’s stature to its place today as a cherished master of Russian hesychasm, and the limits the sources still impose on knowing him — closing the collection where it began, in honest acknowledgment of what is and is not securely known.

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

The Philokalic Revival

The recovery of Nilus belongs to the larger story of the rebirth of contemplative, hesychast spirituality in the Orthodox world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The pivotal figure was St. Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794), who gathered, translated, and propagated the texts of the hesychast fathers — the Greek Philokalia, compiled and printed in 1782, and his own Slavonic Dobrotolyubie — and who revived in Russian and Romanian monasticism the very tradition of inner prayer, the skete life, and the eldership (starchestvo) that Nilus had transplanted from Athos three centuries before (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II; see St. Joseph of Volotsk for the contrasting model that had prevailed). Paisius’s movement was, in effect, a second transplantation of Athonite hesychasm into Russian soil — and it recovered, with the prayer of the heart, the memory and the writings of the first transplanter. In the Philokalic revival Nilus’s tradition rose from its long dormancy (see The Eclipse of the Movement).

Optina and the Russian Eldership

The current Paisius set flowing reached its fullest Russian flowering at the Optina hermitage (Optina Pustyn), the great center of the nineteenth-century Russian spiritual revival, where a line of holy elders — among them St. Ambrose of Optina — practiced and taught the prayer of the heart and the discernment of souls in the tradition of inner prayer (see St. Ambrose of Optina; Maloney 1973). The Optina monks were heirs of the same hesychast stream Nilus had planted, and it was in this milieu of recovered contemplation that Nilus’s own writings were once again read, valued, and printed. The Optina press and the monastic publishers of the nineteenth century brought out editions of the hesychast and ascetic fathers, and Nilus’s Ustav and writings were among the texts recovered and circulated, so that the master of the Sora skete spoke again to a Russia rediscovering inner prayer (Maloney 1973; Fedotov 1966, vol. II). The eclipse was over; the seed beneath the snow had come up.

The Recovery of the Writings and Modern Scholarship

The scholarly recovery of Nilus accompanied the spiritual one and has continued into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Nineteenth-century Russian scholarship began the critical study of his writings and his place in the property and heresy controversies, and the modern study of Nilus has been carried forward by a series of major figures. Georges Fedotov, in The Russian Religious Mind (vol. II, 1966), gave the classic interpretive portrait of Nilus as the supreme representative of the contemplative, mystical strand of Russian spirituality (Fedotov 1966, vol. II). George A. Maloney produced the principal English monograph, Russian Hesychasm (1973), and the first full English translation of the writings (Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings, 2003), making Nilus accessible to the English-reading world (Maloney 1973, 2003). David M. Goldfrank, in Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings (2008), produced the critical edition and translation and the decisive source-critical reassessment, separating the historical contemplative from the legendary party-leader and giving the field its most rigorous account of what in the traditional picture is and is not secure (Goldfrank 2008). The work of John Meyendorff and Tomáš Špidlík set Nilus within the broader hesychast and Eastern-Christian tradition (Meyendorff 1974; Špidlík 1986). Through this scholarship the modern reader can know Nilus more truly than any age since his own.

Nilus’s Stature Today

Nilus stands today as one of the most cherished and significant figures of the Russian spiritual tradition — the great Russian master of inner prayer, the transplanter of Athonite hesychasm to the Russian north, the model of monastic poverty and humility, and (in the tradition’s reading) the prophet of a contemplative and merciful Christianity over against a more institutional and severe one (Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008). The modern conscience, both within and beyond the Church, has been especially drawn to the Nilan ideals of poverty, mercy toward the erring, and the primacy of the inner life — and Nilus has accordingly become, for many, the more sympathetic of the two great saints of his age (see Two Visions of Monasticism). His writings are read by monks and laypeople seeking the prayer of the heart; his analysis of the thoughts remains a living instrument of the ascetic tradition; and his quiet, learned, gentle voice continues to nourish the contemplative life he served.

The Limits of the Sources

It is fitting to close the collection where it began — in honest acknowledgment of the limits of the sources. The modern rediscovery has given us Nilus’s writings in critical editions and his teaching in clear light; what it cannot give us is a full and secure biography or a documented account of his public role, because the sources for these simply do not exist in the needed form (Goldfrank 2008, introduction; Maloney 1973). The student of Nilus must therefore hold two things together: the secure and luminous teaching, recoverable from the Ustav, the Predanie, the letters, and the will; and the thin and partly legendary biography, especially the contested public role at 1503 and the constructed antithesis with Joseph (see The 1503 Council; Two Visions of Monasticism). The honest portrait of Nilus is one in which the inner man is vivid and the outer man is dim — which is, after all, exactly what a contemplative who asked to be cast out to the beasts and forgotten might have wished. The rediscovery of Nilus is, at its best, the recovery not of a legend but of a voice: the steady, humble, merciful voice of a master of the prayer of the heart, speaking again to a Church and a world that have learned once more to listen (Fedotov 1966, vol. II; Maloney 1973; Goldfrank 2008).

See Also

References

  • Goldfrank, David M., trans. and ed. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Cistercian Studies 221. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2008. (The critical edition; the source-critical reassessment; the modern recovery of the authentic Nilus and the limits of the biographical sources.)
  • Maloney, George A., S.J. Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. (The Philokalic revival, the recovery of Nilus’s writings, and his place in the Russian hesychast tradition.)
  • Maloney, George A., S.J., trans. Nil Sorsky: The Complete Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. (The English translation that opened Nilus to a wider readership.)
  • Fedotov, Georges P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. (The classic interpretive portrait of Nilus and his stature in Russian spirituality.)
  • Meyendorff, John. St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974. (Nilus within the hesychast tradition.)
  • Špidlík, Tomáš. The Spirituality of the Christian East. Trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986. (Nilus within the wider Eastern-Christian spiritual tradition.)