Dragomirna, Secul, and Neamț

St. Paisius led his Athonite brotherhood back to Moldavia in 1763, driven from the Holy Mountain by overcrowding, by the fiscal and administrative pressure that bore on the Athonite communities under Ottoman rule, and drawn by the long-standing welcome the Orthodox principalities offered to monastic settlement. The community took root at Dragomirna Monastery (1763–1775), where it flourished and the translation work intensified; but the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 and the 1775 cession of Bukovina — the province in which Dragomirna lay — to Catholic Habsburg Austria forced the brotherhood out. It moved to Secul Monastery (1775–1779), and finally to the great house of Neamț (from 1779), which Paisius governed, eventually together with Secul, until his death there in 1794. This file follows that itinerary and fixes its dates against the war and the cession that shaped it.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Russian-Moldavian (hesychast; Philokalic revival)

Why Leave Athos

By the early 1760s the community that had gathered around Paisius at the skete of the Prophet Elias on Mount Athos had outgrown both its buildings and the conditions under which a large brotherhood could be sustained there (see The Hermit and the Brotherhood). What had begun as a solitary’s cell, then a small company sharing the cenobitic life, had become a brotherhood too numerous for the cramped Athonite sketes and the slender resources that could be wrung from them. Chetverikov, whose biography remains the fullest reconstruction of these years, presents the decision to leave as the convergence of several pressures rather than a single cause (Chetverikov, Starets Paisii Velichkovskii, trans. Lickwar and Lisenko, 1980, on the departure from Athos).

The first was simply numbers. The brotherhood had grown faster than the Holy Mountain could house it, and the Athonite economy — sketes dependent on alms, gardens, and the irregular charity of pilgrims — could not feed and shelter a growing community of Slavonic- and Romanian-speaking monks who had come to live under Paisius’s direction (Chetverikov 1980). Overcrowding was not a matter of discomfort only but of the viability of the common life the elder wished to lead.

The second was the burden that lay on the Athonite communities under Ottoman administration. The Holy Mountain in the eighteenth century carried a heavy and recurring weight of taxation and of the financial exactions and debts that fell on its houses, and a foreign-born brotherhood without an established endowment was acutely exposed to that pressure (Chetverikov 1980; on the period generally, Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” in The Philokalia, ed. Bingaman and Nassif, 2012). The sources transmit the Athonite years as ones in which the fiscal and administrative difficulties of holding a large community together on the Mountain became, over time, decisive. Where the precise weight to assign each factor is concerned the sources are summary rather than itemized, and it is more faithful to speak of a cumulative pressure — overcrowding, poverty, and the exactions bearing on the Athonite houses — than to isolate one cause as sufficient.

The third was the standing invitation of the Romanian principalities. Moldavia and Wallachia had for centuries been patrons of Athonite and Orthodox monasticism, and a body of their monasteries were “dedicated” houses whose revenues supported the Holy Mountain and the other Orthodox patriarchates; for an Orthodox brotherhood under a sympathetic, Christian-ruled (if Ottoman-suzerain) prince, the principalities offered land, security, and the freedom to live the full liturgical and ascetic life that the Mountain could no longer afford them (Chetverikov 1980; Featherstone, introduction to The Life of Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj, 1989). Paisius himself had spent time in Wallachia during his earlier wandering years and knew the principalities as a refuge for Slavonic-speaking monasticism. The move was thus not an exile but a return to ground he already knew to be hospitable.

The Return to Moldavia, 1763

Paisius brought his brotherhood back to Moldavia in 1763. The community that made the journey is generally given as numbering about sixty-four monks — a figure that recurs in the literature dependent on the disciple-Life and on Chetverikov’s reconstruction (Chetverikov 1980; cf. Featherstone 1989). The number should be held with the ordinary caution due to such figures: it represents the body that crossed from Athos under Paisius’s direction, and it is reported in the tradition rather than independently documented. [Disputed: the size of the brotherhood that left Athos with Paisius in 1763 is most often given as about 64 monks (Chetverikov, *Starets Paisii Velichkovskii*, 1980, following the disciple-*Life*); some accounts round or vary the figure, and the *Life*'s numbers throughout the Moldavian period are devotional reckonings rather than registers, so the precise count is not securely fixed].

The Prince of Moldavia — the principality being then under its phanariot and boyar governance within the Ottoman world — granted the brotherhood a monastery in which to settle: Dragomirna, in the north of the country, in the region that would shortly be detached as Bukovina (Chetverikov 1980; Featherstone 1989). The grant gave Paisius what Athos had ceased to give him: a single, defensible site large enough to hold the whole community in one place and to support it from settled land.

Dragomirna, 1763–1775

At Dragomirna the brotherhood entered its first season of stability and growth. Here Paisius set in order the cenobitic-hesychast rule that is the subject of the companion file (see The Organized Community) — the common life, the bilingual services, the daily disclosure of thoughts, the communal reading of the Fathers — and here the community grew well beyond the number that had come from Athos, drawing both Slavonic-speaking and Romanian-speaking monks (Chetverikov 1980). It was at Dragomirna, too, that the translation labor that Paisius had begun on Athos intensified into a sustained scholarly enterprise: the work of collating Greek ascetic manuscripts, rendering and correcting them in Church Slavonic, and copying the results, which would culminate in the Slavonic Dobrotolyubie (see Translating the Dobrotolyubie). The twelve years at Dragomirna are, in the sources, the formative period of the Paisian community as an institution.

The War, the Cession, and the Loss of Dragomirna

The stability of Dragomirna was broken by the wider politics of the region. The Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 carried fighting and military occupation across Moldavia, and the principality was for years a theatre and a thoroughfare of armies (Chetverikov 1980). The war was closed by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (Kuchuk-Kainarji) in 1774, but its consequences for the brotherhood came in the settlement that followed.

In 1775 the Habsburg monarchy obtained from the Ottoman Porte the cession of the northwestern corner of Moldavia — the territory that the Austrians named Bukovina — and annexed it to the Catholic empire. Dragomirna lay within the ceded territory (Chetverikov 1980; on the annexation, the standard regional histories of Bukovina). The brotherhood thus found itself, through no act of its own, transferred from an Orthodox principality to the rule of a Catholic state. The disciple-tradition and Chetverikov agree that Paisius judged it impossible for the Orthodox brotherhood to remain and continue its life under the new Austrian administration, and that the community accordingly left Dragomirna and recrossed into the part of Moldavia that remained outside the cession (Chetverikov 1980). The chronology is to be kept exact: the war of 1768–1774, the treaty of 1774, the Austrian acquisition of Bukovina in 1775, and the brotherhood’s removal from Dragomirna in that same year, 1775.

Secul, 1775–1779

The community withdrew to Secul Monastery — the house of Sihăstria Secului, commonly Secu — within Moldavia proper, and settled there from 1775 (Chetverikov 1980; Featherstone 1989). Secul, a smaller foundation, received the brotherhood but soon proved too cramped for a community that had grown large at Dragomirna and continued to attract monks. The four years at Secul are accordingly the briefest of the three Moldavian settlements, a way-station rather than a long home: the house could not contain the brotherhood Paisius now led, and the search for a larger seat resumed almost as soon as the community had arrived (Chetverikov 1980).

Neamț, from 1779

In 1779 Paisius and the principal body of the brotherhood moved to the great Monastery of Neamț (Neamţ), one of the foremost and most richly endowed houses of Moldavia (Chetverikov 1980; Featherstone 1989). Neamț gave the community at last a seat commensurate with its size and its work, and it was there that the Paisian enterprise reached its full scale — the large coenobium, the two-language brotherhood, and the mature stage of the translation and copying work that would issue in the printed Slavonic Dobrotolyubie of 1793 (see Translating the Dobrotolyubie; on the size of the community, The Organized Community).

The move to Neamț did not sever the community from Secul. The sources present Paisius as governing both houses, holding Secul together with Neamț so that the two formed a single brotherhood under one elder (Chetverikov 1980). [Disputed: accounts of the arrangement differ in emphasis — Chetverikov (1980) presents Paisius as governing Neamț and Secul together as one community under his eldership from 1779; some summaries describe Secul as retained as a dependent or daughter-house of Neamț rather than as a co-equal seat. The substance on which the sources agree is that after 1779 Paisius's authority extended over both monasteries; the administrative form is described variously].

At Neamț Paisius spent the last fifteen years of his life. He was, by this point, the elder of the largest and most influential Orthodox monastic community of his generation, the center of the hesychast and Philokalic revival whose lines would run from Neamț into nineteenth-century Russia (see Disciples Carry the Revival to Russia). He died at Neamț in 1794 and was buried there (Chetverikov 1980; the disciple-Life; his feast is kept on 15/28 November). The community he had carried from Athos through Dragomirna and Secul to Neamț remained, after his repose, the chief seedbed of the renewal he had set in motion.

Chronology

1763 — Paisius returns to Moldavia from Athos with the brotherhood (commonly given as c. 64 monks); the community is granted Dragomirna.
1763–1775 — Dragomirna: the brotherhood flourishes; the cenobitic-hesychast rule is set in order; the translation work intensifies.
1768–1774 — Russo-Turkish War, with Moldavia a theatre of operations; closed by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774).
1775 — Austria acquires Bukovina, in which Dragomirna lies; the brotherhood leaves Dragomirna and moves to Secul.
1775–1779 — Secul: the community settles but outgrows the smaller house.
1779 — Move to Neamț; Paisius governs Neamț and Secul together.
1794 — Death of Paisius at Neamț.

References

Chetverikov, Sergei. Starets Paisii Velichkovskii: His Life, Teachings, and Influence on Orthodox Monasticism. Trans. Vasily Lickwar and Alexander I. Lisenko. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1980. (The fullest critical reconstruction of the Moldavian communities; the departure from Athos and its causes; the return of 1763 and the figure of c. 64 monks; Dragomirna 1763–1775; the war, the cession of Bukovina, and the move to Secul in 1775; Secul 1775–1779; the move to Neamț in 1779 and the joint governance of Neamț and Secul; the death of Paisius at Neamț in 1794.)
Velichkovsky, Paisius. The Life of Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj. Trans. J. M. E. Featherstone. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. (Featherstone’s introduction on the principalities as a refuge for Slavonic monasticism and on the Moldavian settlements; primary first-person witness for the earlier life.)
Ware, Kallistos. “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia.” In The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. (The Athonite and Philokalic context of Paisius’s labors.)