02 — The Wandering Years
The decade and more between Paisius’s flight from the Kiev Mohyla Academy and the central labors of his maturity: his restless search through Ukraine, the Kiev Caves Lavra, and the sketes of Wallachia and Moldavia for a living elder and the practice of inner prayer, and his decision to seek that tradition at its source on Mount Athos, where he arrived about 1746. These years are known chiefly from his own unfinished Autobiography, and they explain why the man who could not find the hesychast tradition ready-made would spend his life reconstituting it.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Russian-Moldavian (hesychast; Philokalic revival)
What unites the wandering years is a single hunger: the search for the living transmission of the prayer of the heart under an experienced spiritual father, which the secularized Church of the post-Petrine empire could no longer easily supply at home. Paisius left the Academy for the Kiev Caves Lavra and found its ancient form without the living core he sought; he crossed the frontier into Wallachia and Moldavia, where Slavonic skete life survived more freely under Ottoman suzerainty, and there at last met genuine eldership in the hesychast sketes and the tradition associated with Basil of Poiana Mărului; and, still wanting a master of the higher contemplative prayer and reliable patristic texts, he resolved to go to the Holy Mountain. This section follows that search to the threshold of his Athonite period (Section 03), where the seeker would become a founder.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Seeking a Living Tradition | The search through Ukraine, the Kiev Caves Lavra (and his dissatisfaction with it), and the crossing into Wallachia/Moldavia; the sketes of Trăisteni, Dălhăuți, and Cârnul; the elders he encountered and the formative tradition of Basil of Poiana Mărului; the quest driven by the absence of living teachers of hesychast prayer at home. Drawn chiefly from his Autobiography (trans. Featherstone). |
| To the Holy Mountain | The decision for Athos as the surviving source of the hesychast tradition; the journey, c. 1746 (with a note on scholarly variation in the date and route); his arrival and his disappointment that even on Athos living elders of the prayer were hard to find, so that he began as a solitary — setting up the Athonite period treated in Section 03. |
See Also
- Poltava and the Kiev Academy — the Latinizing scholasticism he abandoned, which set the wandering years in motion
- The Hermit and the Brotherhood — the Athonite period to which this section leads
- Obedience and Spiritual Fatherhood — the starchestvo he first met in the Wallachian sketes and later restored
- Spiritual Direction — the disclosure of thoughts to an elder that he sought and found
- St. Nilus of Sora — the earlier Russian skete-hesychast tradition Paisius was, in effect, recovering
References
- Paisius Velichkovsky. The Life of Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj / Autobiography. Trans. J. M. E. Featherstone. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations vol. 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press / Ukrainian Research Institute, 1989.
- Chetverikov, Sergei. Starets Paisii Velichkovskii: His Life, Teachings, and Influence on Orthodox Monasticism. Trans. from the Russian. Belmont, MA: Nordland / St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.
- Ware, Kallistos. Introduction(s) to The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1979–.
- Meyendorff, John. St Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality. Trans. Adele Fiske. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974.