03 — Saint Silouan the Athonite
The years in which Sophrony became the keeper and revealer of his elder. After St. Silouan’s death on 24 September 1938, Sophrony withdrew into the “desert” of Athos — Karoulia and a cave near the New Skete by St. Paul’s Monastery — to live as a hermit and confessor and to guard, edit, and order the autograph notes Silouan had left; and from that labor came the book, Starets Siluan (Paris, 1948/1952) and in English at last Saint Silouan the Athonite (Edmonds, 1991), which made an unknown Athonite hermit known to the world, carried his word “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not,” and led toward his glorification in 1987.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (20th-c. elder; disciple of St Silouan)
This section turns from Sophrony’s discipleship under St. Silouan (Section 02) to the work that defined the rest of his life and is his single most consequential act in the history of Orthodox spirituality: the preservation and publication of Silouan. The two are inseparable. Silouan died unknown, having written only plain notes; Sophrony gathered, ordered, and interpreted those notes in the years of his Athonite solitude and then in Paris, and through his book the Church received the saint. The section therefore carries, throughout, the provenance question the methodology requires it to name: almost everything known of St. Silouan reaches the Church through Sophrony’s editorial and interpretive hands — “the Sophrony question” — a mediation to be stated honestly rather than concealed (Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. Edmonds, 1991; Sakharov, I Love, Therefore I Am, 2002, ch. 1–2; METHODOLOGY §2.4, §3.5).
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Preserving Silouan’s Writings | After Silouan’s death in 1938, Sophrony’s withdrawal into the desert of Athos — Karoulia and the cave near the New Skete by St. Paul’s — his life as hermit and confessor of hermits, and the guarding, editing, and ordering of Silouan’s autograph notes; the provenance question, that nearly all the world knows of Silouan passes through Sophrony’s hands. |
| The Book That Revealed Silouan | The book itself — Russian Starets Siluan (Paris, 1948/1952), English The Undistorted Image (1958), definitive Saint Silouan the Athonite (Edmonds, SVS Press, 1991); its two-part structure of biography/theology and Silouan’s own Writings; the word Christ gave Silouan, “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not”; and how the book made Silouan known and led toward his glorification in 1987. |
See Also
- Disciple of Saint Silouan — the eight years under Silouan that prepared Sophrony to be his editor
- The Writings — the edited corpus of Silouan’s notes within Sophrony’s larger body of work
- Bearing the Whole Adam — the prayer for the whole Adam that Sophrony drew from Silouan
- Spiritual Direction — the office of confessor Sophrony exercised in the Athonite desert
- St. Silouan the Athonite — the sibling collection on the elder Sophrony preserved and revealed
References
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. Saint Silouan the Athonite. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991. (The biography, the edited Writings, and “Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not.”)
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. The Undistorted Image: Staretz Silouan, 1866–1938. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. London: Faith Press, 1958. (The first English form of the book.)
- Sophrony (Sakharov), Archimandrite. We Shall See Him as He Is. Trans. Rosemary Edmonds. Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1988. (The desert years; his own development of Silouan’s themes.)
- Sakharov, Nicholas V. I Love, Therefore I Am: The Theological Legacy of Archimandrite Sophrony. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002. (The Sophrony–Silouan relation and the question of mediation.)
- Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Sophrony as editor and interpreter of Silouan; the book’s reception.)