Paisiy of Bansko

The little that can be said of Paisiy’s origins. He was born around 1722, most probably in Bansko in the Razlog region of the southwestern Bulgarian lands, though other birthplaces have been proposed; his brother Lavrentiy was abbot of the Hilandar Monastery on Athos; and he himself came to the Holy Mountain around 1745, in his early twenties. Almost every one of these facts rests on a handful of autobiographical lines in his own History and must be given with the caution the thin record demands.

Tradition: Bulgarian Orthodox

How Little Is Known

Before anything is said about Paisiy’s birth, it must be said plainly how little is known. He is one of those figures — common in the history of a subjected and largely unlettered people — of whom no independent contemporary record survives: no baptismal register, no reliable notice by another hand written in his lifetime, no portrait from life (Daskalov, The Making of a Nation in the Balkans, CEU Press, 2004, ch. 1, on the near-total absence of external documentation). What is known is drawn, almost in its entirety, from the few autobiographical sentences Paisiy set down in the Slavo-Bulgarian History itself — in its preface and in the concluding note in which he named himself and dated his work — together with a small number of monastic documents from Hilandar and Zograph and inferences from the manuscript tradition (Paisiy, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska, 1762, the author’s concluding note; Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). The source-critical consequences of this situation are treated in full in What Is Known of His Life; this file gives the traditional outline, flagging the contested points.

The Year of Birth

Paisiy tells us, in the concluding note to the History, that he completed the work in 1762 at the age of forty (Paisiy, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska, 1762, author’s note). From this single datum the birth year is back-computed to 1722, and that is the date universally given (Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2005, ch. 3; Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 3rd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, “Paisiy of Hilendar”). It should be held with the awareness that it depends wholly on his own round statement of his age; no register confirms it. It is nonetheless the firmest date in his biography, and 1722 is accepted across the scholarship without serious dispute.

The Disputed Birthplace

Where Paisiy was born is genuinely uncertain, and the question has been argued for well over a century.

[Disputed: Paisiy’s birthplace. The prevailing view, and the one held by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and most modern scholarship, is that he was born in Bansko, a town in the Razlog valley of the Pirin region in the southwestern Bulgarian lands; the Bansko tradition is supported by the presence there of the prominent Hadzhivelyov family, to whom he is often connected, and by long local memory (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015, “Paisiy of Hilendar”; Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). Alternative birthplaces have, however, been proposed in the scholarly literature — among them Samokov, Kremikovtsi, and the village of Dospey near Samokov — chiefly on the basis of later monastic and local traditions and of the ambiguity of the sources; none can be established with certainty. Paisiy himself does not name his birthplace in the History. The collection reports Bansko as the received and most probable answer while noting that it is not documented in his own hand and that the question remains open (Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1, on the disputes).]

Bansko is the answer that has entered the national memory and the Church’s commemoration, and it is not without warrant; but it is a probability resting on tradition and inference, not a fact fixed by a record. The honest formula is that Paisiy was born, in or about 1722, most likely at Bansko in the Razlog region.

Family: The Brother at Hilandar

One family connection is comparatively well grounded, because it touches the monastic institutions that kept records. Paisiy’s elder brother Lavrentiy was a monk and, at the relevant period, abbot (igumen) of the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015, “Paisiy of Hilendar”; MacDermott, A History of Bulgaria 1393–1885, Allen & Unwin, 1962, ch. 2). It was to Hilandar, and to this brother, that Paisiy came, and the fraternal tie helps explain both his path to the Holy Mountain and his position within its Slavonic community. Some accounts also connect the family to a third brother active in trade, part of the milieu of prosperous Bulgarian merchant and craft families of Bansko — the kind of family from which Athonite monks and, in the next generations, the patrons of the Revival tended to come (MacDermott, History of Bulgaria, 1962, ch. 2). These details are less securely attested and are given as tradition.

Coming to the Holy Mountain

Paisiy came to Mount Athos around 1745, at roughly twenty-three years of age (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015; Crampton, Concise History, 2005, ch. 3). Of his life before that — his childhood in Bansko, his early education, whatever brought him from the Razlog valley to the sea and across it to the peninsula of the monasteries — nothing reliable is recorded. It is a reasonable inference that he received his first letters in a monastery or parish school and that the presence of his brother at Hilandar drew him to the Holy Mountain; but these are inferences, not testimony (Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). What can be said is that by the mid-1740s the young man from Bansko had entered the Bulgarian and Slavonic monastic world of Athos — the world of Hilandar and Zograph, the two houses most associated with the Slavs — where he would spend his monastic life, gather his sources, and write the book that made him (see Monk of Hilandar and Zograph).

The pattern of what is knowable is worth marking at the outset, because it governs this entire collection: a firm relative date (age forty in 1762, hence born 1722), a probable but undocumented birthplace (Bansko), a fairly secure family tie (the brother-abbot Lavrentiy at Hilandar), and an approximate date of arrival on Athos (c. 1745) — and beyond these, the silence out of which the History itself is nearly the only voice (Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). The man is known, in the end, chiefly through the thing he made.

See Also

• The Bulgarian Lands Under the Ottomans — the world he was born into
• Monk of Hilandar and Zograph — his monastic life on the Holy Mountain
• What Is Known of His Life — the source-critical treatment of these thin biographical facts
• Writing the Istoriya, 1762 — the self-dating on which his birth year depends

References

• Paisiy Hilendarski. Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska [Slavo-Bulgarian History]. Zograph Monastery, Mount Athos, 1762. (The author’s concluding note giving his age as forty in 1762 — the basis of the 1722 birth year; the near-total absence of other autobiographical data.)
• Detrez, Raymond. Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. (Entry “Paisiy of Hilendar”: the Bansko tradition and alternatives; the brother Lavrentiy at Hilandar; the arrival on Athos c. 1745.)
• Daskalov, Roumen. The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004. (The near-total dependence of the biography on the History’s own notes; the disputes over the birthplace.)
• Crampton, R. J. A Concise History of Bulgaria. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (The birth year 1722; the arrival on Athos; Paisiy within the Revival.)
• MacDermott, Mercia. A History of Bulgaria 1393–1885. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962. (The Bansko merchant-family milieu; the brother at Hilandar.)