Monk of Hilandar and Zograph

Paisiy’s monastic life on Mount Athos: his entry at the Hilandar Monastery around 1745, where his brother Lavrentiy was abbot; his ordination and rise to the rank of proegumen (deputy or former abbot); his association with both Hilandar and the Bulgarian house of Zograph; and above all the travels he undertook as a taxidiot — a monk sent out to collect alms — which carried him through the Bulgarian lands and made him a witness to the condition of his people.

Tradition: Bulgarian Orthodox

The Two Slavonic Houses of the Holy Mountain

Mount Athos — the Holy Mountain, the great monastic peninsula of the Aegean, home since the tenth century to a self-governing federation of monasteries — was in Paisiy’s day, as it is now, a pan-Orthodox commonwealth in which the several Orthodox peoples had their own houses (see Orthodoxy: Monasticism). Two of the twenty ruling monasteries were the historic homes of the Slavs: Hilandar, founded at the end of the twelfth century by St. Sava and his father St. Simeon (Stefan Nemanja) as the monastery of the Serbs, and Zograph, long associated with the Bulgarians (MacDermott, A History of Bulgaria 1393–1885, Allen & Unwin, 1962, ch. 2; Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 3rd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, “Zograph Monastery”). In practice the Slavonic brotherhoods of the two houses overlapped and mixed; Bulgarians were numerous at Hilandar as well as at Zograph, and the two monasteries between them preserved a living Slavonic monastic culture, with libraries of Church Slavonic manuscripts, at a time when Slavonic letters had all but vanished from the plains below (Daskalov, The Making of a Nation in the Balkans, CEU Press, 2004, ch. 1). It is significant that the History — a book about the Bulgarians as a Slavonic Orthodox people — was conceived and written within this bilingual, pan-Slavonic monastic world, and that its very title binds “Slavo-” to “-Bulgarian.”

Entry, Ordination, and Office

Paisiy came to Hilandar around 1745, in his early twenties, drawn to the house where his brother Lavrentiy was abbot (igumen) (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015, “Paisiy of Hilendar”; MacDermott, History of Bulgaria, 1962, ch. 2). He entered the monastic life there and in time was ordained; the sources report that he rose to the rank of hieromonk and then to that of proegumen — a title designating a monk who has held or is associated with the office of abbot, a senior rank within the community (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015). The precise chronology of his ordinations and offices cannot be reconstructed in detail from the surviving record; what is clear is that by the later 1750s he was a senior and trusted member of the Slavonic brotherhood, and that his standing gave him access to the monastery’s manuscripts and the mandate to travel on its business (Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1).

His name in religion, Paisiy (Greek Paḯsios, from the ascetic Paisios of Egypt), is the name by which he is known; his surname or lay name is not securely recorded, and “Hilendarski” — “of Hilandar,” from the monastery — is not a family name but a monastic designation, exactly as St. Paisius Velichkovsky is named from his lay surname and St. Paisios the Athonite from the Holy Mountain. The three Paisii are wholly distinct persons; the coincidence of name and, in the case of Velichkovsky, of century has caused recurrent confusion (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015).

The Taxidiot: Procurator and Traveler

The office that shaped the History more than any other was that of taxidiot (also rendered procurator or taksidiot) — a monk sent out from the monastery into the world to collect alms, manage the house’s affairs and properties (its metochia), and maintain its ties with the Orthodox populations who supported it (MacDermott, History of Bulgaria, 1962, ch. 2; Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015). The Athonite monasteries depended heavily on such collections, and the taxidiot was a familiar figure in the Balkan Orthodox world: a monk arriving in a village or town with relics or an icon, lodging in the parish, gathering donations, and carrying the monastery’s blessing to the faithful.

For Paisiy this office was providential. As a taxidiot he traveled widely through the Bulgarian lands and the wider Balkans over a period of years, moving among Bulgarian towns and villages, monasteries and churches (MacDermott, History of Bulgaria, 1962, ch. 2; Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). The travels did two things. First, they made him a direct witness to the condition of his people — their subjection under Ottoman rule, their ecclesiastical subordination to a Greek-speaking hierarchy, and, most painfully to him, the readiness of the more prosperous and educated among them to Hellenize, to be ashamed of the Bulgarian name and tongue (Paisiy, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska, 1762, the appeal against those who prefer Greek; see Content and the Famous Appeal). The indignation that drives the History is the indignation of a man who has seen this at first hand. Second, the travels gave him the practical means and occasion to search for sources — for the chronicles, manuscripts, and books out of which a Bulgarian history might be assembled (see The Search for the Sources).

The Monk Behind the Book

It is worth resisting the temptation, natural in a collection devoted to the History, to reduce Paisiy to the author of one book. He was, first and for the whole of his adult life, an Athonite monk — a man of the daily cycle of services, the Jesus Prayer, obedience, and the common life of a Slavonic brotherhood on the Holy Mountain (see Orthodoxy: Monasticism). The History itself is framed in monastic and religious terms: it is offered for the spiritual benefit of the Bulgarian people, it culminates in the Bulgarian saints, and it is signed by a monk who names his monastery and asks the reader’s prayers (Paisiy, Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska, 1762, preface and author’s note). The national awakening it began was, in its author’s own mind, inseparable from the Orthodox faith of the people it addressed — a point that becomes important when the later, secular appropriation of Paisiy is weighed (see National Saint and Symbol).

Of the last phase of Paisiy’s life little is known. He continued, it appears, in his monastic duties and his travels after completing the History in 1762, carrying copies of it with him; he is generally held to have died around 1773, though the date and place of his death are uncertain and are treated with the other biographical disputes (see What Is Known of His Life) (Detrez, Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, 2015; Daskalov, Making of a Nation, 2004, ch. 1). The monk of Hilandar and Zograph left the Holy Mountain his monastic labor and left his people a book.

See Also

References

  • Paisiy Hilendarski. Istoriya Slavyanobolgarska. Zograph Monastery, Mount Athos, 1762. (The preface and author’s note framing the work in monastic and religious terms; the appeal against Hellenization born of what he witnessed as a traveler.)
  • MacDermott, Mercia. A History of Bulgaria 1393–1885. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962. (Hilandar and Zograph as the Slavonic houses; the brother Lavrentiy as abbot; the taxidiot office and Paisiy’s travels.)
  • Detrez, Raymond. Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. (Entries “Paisiy of Hilendar” and “Zograph Monastery”: entry at Hilandar c. 1745; ranks of hieromonk and proegumen; the c. 1773 death.)
  • Daskalov, Roumen. The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004. (The Slavonic monastic world of Athos; Paisiy’s standing and access to manuscripts; the travels as the occasion of his indignation and his research.)