Makovets Beginnings: The Hermitage in the Forest

How Bartholomew and his brother Stefan cleared a forest on the hill of Makovets and raised a church to the Holy Trinity (c. 1337); how, left alone after Stefan’s departure, the young hermit endured the years of solitude that the Life renders in the bear story and the demonic assaults; his tonsure as Sergius by the abbot Mitrofan; and the gathering of the first twelve disciples that drew him, against his will, into the abbacy and the priesthood (c. 1354).

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized by 1452)

The Hill of Makovets and the Trinity Dedication

After the death of their parents (see Rostov Childhood), Bartholomew and his elder brother Stefan went out, around 1337, into the dense forest some twelve versts from Radonezh and settled on a low hill called Makovets. There they cleared trees with their own hands, built a cell, and raised a small wooden church. With the blessing of Metropolitan Theognostus of Kiev and All Rus’ (whose tenure, 1328–53, fixes the episode in the late 1330s), the church was consecrated in the name of the Holy Trinity (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; OCA, Repose of Venerable Sergius; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2, ch. 7).

The dedication is not incidental detail. The choice of the Trinity — rare as a Russian church dedication at that date — became the theological signature of Sergius’s whole life and of the community he founded: the unity-in-love of the three divine Persons taken as the pattern for human community, the vision that Andrei Rublev would later render in the Trinity icon painted for the monastery in Sergius’s honor (Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia, ch. 7; and see Russian Monasticism). The Makovets dedication is, in effect, the first appearance of the devotion that organizes everything in the Trinity Lavra.

Stefan’s Departure and the Years Alone

The forest hermitage proved too severe for Stefan. Unable to bear the privations and isolation, he left for the Bogoyavlensky (Epiphany) Monastery in Moscow, where he later became abbot and a figure of standing (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; Borisov, Sergii Radonezhskii). Bartholomew remained alone on Makovets — and the Life devotes its most vivid passages to these solitary years.

Epiphanius recounts the demonic assaults: the hermit was assailed by terrors, by phantoms, and — when the demons could not move him by fear of themselves — by the threat of wild beasts, until through unceasing prayer he was granted, in the hagiographer’s phrase, power over them and ceased to be afraid (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia’s Epics). Pinned to this same period is the famous bear story: a wild bear came regularly from the forest to the hermit’s cell, and Sergius, perceiving that the animal came not to threaten but in hunger, shared with it his single slice of bread, sometimes going without himself (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; Borisov, Sergii Radonezhskii). The episode — the saint and the bear at peace, the restoration of Eden’s concord between man and beast — is among the most beloved in Russian hagiography. As with all such accounts, it is reported here as what Epiphanius’s Life attests, not as documented event.

Tonsure as Sergius

After settling on Makovets, Bartholomew received the monastic tonsure, taking the name Sergius. The Life tradition assigns the tonsure to an abbot named Mitrofan, who came to the hermitage to perform it; the saint was then about twenty-three years old, the act traditionally dated October 7, 1337 (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; OCA, Repose of Venerable Sergius; the precise year here, like the birth year, depends on the contested chronology discussed in Rostov Childhood). With the tonsure Bartholomew passes out of the records under his baptismal name and into history as Sergius.

The Gathering of the Twelve

Word of the hermit spread, and others came seeking to share his life. Epiphanius gives the community its symbolic shape: monks gathered until they numbered twelve, each building his own cell, the small brotherhood living a life of prayer and manual labor around the Trinity church (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; Fedotov, vol. 2, ch. 7). The number twelve, echoing the apostolic college, is part of the Life’s theological framing of the foundation as a new beginning.

Reluctant Abbacy and Ordination (c. 1354)

The brethren needed an abbot and a priest to celebrate the Liturgy among them, and they pressed Sergius to accept both. Epiphanius stresses his resistance: Sergius regarded the office as a burden and a danger to humility and accepted only under the persuasion of the brethren and the authority of the hierarch. He was ordained hieromonk and installed as igumen (abbot) — the Life tradition naming Bishop Athanasius of Volhynia (acting for Metropolitan Alexius) as the ordaining hierarch, around 1354 (Epiphanius, Life of Sergius; OCA, Repose of Venerable Sergius; Borisov, Sergii Radonezhskii). Even as abbot he insisted on outworking and outserving every monk — the pattern of laboring humility that would define his reform of the common life, treated in Cenobitic Reform.

References

Epiphanius the Wise. The Life of Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1417–18; reworked by Pachomius the Serb, mid-15th c.). English selections in Zenkovsky, below.
Zenkovsky, Serge A., ed. and trans. Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales. Rev. ed. New York: Dutton, 1974 (“The Life of St. Sergius”).
Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, ch. 7.
Borisov, Nikolai S. Sergii Radonezhskii [Sergius of Radonezh]. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya (ZhZL series).
Meyendorff, John. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, ch. 7.
“Repose of Venerable Sergius the Wonderworker, Abbot of Radonezh.” Orthodox Church in America, oca.org (hagiographical-tradition locator).
Trinity-Sergius Lavra, stsl.ru (institutional locator).