Theophan, Ignatius, and the Pilgrim

Nineteenth-century Russia gave the Jesus Prayer its modern literature: the systematic guidance of two bishop-ascetics, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and St. Theophan the Recluse — including their sober amendments to the old bodily technique — and the anonymous narrative, The Way of a Pilgrim, that carried the prayer to the widest audience it has ever had. This file treats the two teachers’ teaching and their deliberate corrections, the Pilgrim and its disputed authorship, and St. John of Kronstadt as the century’s closing witness.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox

Two Bishops, One Concern

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867), Bishop of the Caucasus, and St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), Bishop of Tambov and then recluse of Vysha, wrote for the same situation: a Russia in which the Philokalic texts were newly available (see From Nil Sorsky to Optina) but experienced elders were rare — a combination they both judged dangerous, since the fourteenth-century manuals presuppose exactly the living guidance that was scarce. Their shared program was therefore to transmit the tradition with its safety-catches engaged: full fidelity to the fathers on the prayer’s centrality, deliberate reserve about the psychosomatic technique (Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, trans. Lazarus [Moore], Watkins, 1965; Theophan’s letters in The Art of Prayer, ed. Igumen Chariton of Valaam, trans. Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Faber, 1966, with Kallistos Ware’s introduction situating both teachers).

Ignatius: The Prayer on the Foundation of Repentance

Ignatius’s On the Prayer of Jesus (in his collected Ascetical Works; English by Fr. Lazarus Moore, 1965) is the tradition’s most rigorous modern statement. Its emphases: begin with attentive oral prayer and do not despise it, for attention is the soul of the prayer; unite the prayer with repentance — “have mercy on me, a sinner” is its truth-condition — and with the keeping of the commandments; expect dryness and labor rather than experiences; and treat all sweetness, warmth, and light with suspicion until tested (Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965). On the bodily method his position is precise rather than hostile: the technique of the fathers is genuine, but it belongs to the strong and to those under expert direction, and in his own time such directors were nearly extinct; therefore the prayer should ordinarily be practiced in its oral and mental forms, enclosed in the words, with the attention held — his one concession to localization — “at the top of the heart,” and without any manipulation of breath beyond praying unhurriedly (Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965; his classification of prelest and the guidance question are treated in Section 08, and his life in St. Ignatius Brianchaninov).

Theophan: The Mind in the Heart, Without the Mechanics

Theophan’s teaching is scattered through his immense correspondence and was distilled by Igumen Chariton of Valaam into the anthology Umnoe delanie (1936; English The Art of Prayer, 1966). Its center is the definition all later writers quote: “The principal thing is to stand with the mind in the heart before God, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life” (Theophan, in The Art of Prayer, trans. Kadloubovsky and Palmer, 1966, p. 63). Prayer for Theophan is a state — standing before God — of which the Jesus Prayer is the most convenient instrument; the progression oral → mental → prayer of the heart he teaches patiently and gradually, with the constant refrain that the essence is attention and feeling, not the words’ count nor any physical procedure (Theophan, in The Art of Prayer, 1966; the degrees are treated in The Three Degrees).

His handling of the technique was editorial as well as pastoral: in translating the Dobrotolyubie into Russian (five volumes, 1877–1890), Theophan deliberately omitted or abridged the passages of the fourteenth-century texts describing the physical method — the postures, the breath-control, the gaze — judging them liable to misuse without a guide; readers of his Russian Philokalia thus received the hesychast doctrine of the heart without its mechanics (Ware, introduction to The Art of Prayer, 1966, on Theophan’s omissions and his caution about the bodily art; the fact is likewise noted in the hub article on the Philokalia’s Russian version). In his letters he replaces the old localization-by-breath with a simpler counsel: find the place of the heart by attention and warmth of feeling, not by technique — “descend from the head to the heart” meaning the union of mind and feeling before God, with any physical experimentation discouraged and the seeking of sensations of warmth expressly warned against, since grace-given warmth cannot be manufactured and counterfeit warmth breeds delusion (Theophan, in The Art of Prayer, 1966; on the head-vs-heart language see also The Psychosomatic Method).

The two bishops differed in temperament — Ignatius austerer, Theophan warmer and more encouraging — and famously disagreed in a theological correspondence on other matters (the nature of the soul), but on the Jesus Prayer their amendments converge so closely that the tradition has received them as one counsel: keep the prayer, drop the mechanics unless guided, never force the heart, never trust sensations (Ware, introduction to The Art of Prayer, 1966; Brianchaninov, On the Prayer of Jesus, 1965; the convergence is noted in the hub article The Jesus Prayer). Their sober rebalancing — a Russian epoché on the Athonite technique, made from within the tradition and for the tradition’s own stated reasons — is among the most consequential developments in the prayer’s modern history, and it is the proximate background of every responsible modern presentation, Orthodox handbooks and this collection included.

The Way of a Pilgrim

Alongside the bishops’ treatises stands the little book that outsold them all. The Way of a Pilgrim (Russian: Otkrovennye rasskazy strannika dukhovnomu svoemu ottsu, “Candid Tales of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father”) tells of a wandering peasant who, seized by the words “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), finds a starets who gives him the Jesus Prayer by rule — 3,000, then 6,000, then 12,000 repetitions a day — until the prayer descends into his heart and says itself; the Dobrotolyubie is his companion and the starets’s textbook throughout (The Way of a Pilgrim, trans. French, SPCK, 1930). The first known edition was published at Kazan in 1881 by Abbot Paisius (Fedorov), with an expanded edition in 1884; the English translation by R. M. French (1930) carried it into the Western languages, where its influence has been immense (see The Prayer and the Modern West).

[Disputed: the authorship and textual history. The tales circulated anonymously; Alexei Pentkovsky argued in 1994, with further manuscript support published later, that the first four tales derive from The Seeker of Unceasing Prayer of Archimandrite Michael (Kozlov), reworked by the monk Arseny (Troepolsky), and the question of recensions (Optina and Panteleimon lines) remains under discussion (Pentkovsky’s case and texts in The Pilgrim’s Tale, ed. Aleksei Pentkovsky, trans. T. Allan Smith, Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist, 1999). This collection does not adjudicate; the full treatment is deferred to the Philokalia compendium’s dedicated file, The Question of Authorship.]

One caution the tradition itself attaches to the beloved book: its rapid counts and quick progress are narrative, not prescription. Theophan, who knew and reworked the text’s fourth edition materials, and later teachers from Brianchaninov’s school, insist that numbers are scaffolding and that the Pilgrim’s speed is exceptional; the book is to be read as testimony to the prayer’s power, not as a syllabus (The Art of Prayer, 1966, for Theophan’s number-free counsel — he advises measuring the rule by time rather than by count; the caution is standard in modern Orthodox introductions, e.g., Ware’s foreword material to The Jesus Prayer of Lev Gillet, SVS Press, 1987).

St. John of Kronstadt

The century’s closing witness is not a monk but a married parish priest. St. John of Kronstadt (1829–1908), in the spiritual diary published as My Life in Christ (English trans. Goulaeff, 1897), testifies to a life of continual invocation lived amid crowds, liturgy, and pastoral labor — the prayer of the Name proven outside the cell. His diary contains the lapidary sentences on the Name’s power — including the famous formulation that in the Name of God invoked with faith the Lord Himself is present, sometimes cited as “the Name of God is God Himself” — which the next generation’s Athonite name-glorifiers would take up as a proof-text, drawing Kronstadt posthumously into the imiaslavie controversy (John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ, trans. Goulaeff, London, 1897; on the use of his formulations in the 1912–13 dispute, Alfeyev, Sviashchennaia taina Tserkvi, Aleteia, 2002; the controversy is treated in Section 07, and Kronstadt’s own life in St. John of Kronstadt). With him the Russian reception is complete in all its registers: the hermit’s science (Nil), the translator’s corpus (Paisius, Theophan), the elder’s direction (Optina), the bishop’s system (Ignatius), the layman’s rule (Seraphim), the wanderer’s tale, and the parish priest’s fire — one prayer in seven vessels.

References

Brianchaninov, Ignatius. On the Prayer of Jesus. Trans. Father Lazarus [Moore]. London: John M. Watkins, 1965. (The oral foundation; repentance; the restriction of the technique; “top of the heart.”)
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. Archimandrite Lazarus. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991.
The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology. Compiled by Igumen Chariton of Valaam. Trans. E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer, introduction by Timothy [Kallistos] Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. (Theophan’s definition, p. 63; the mind in the heart; the omission of the physical techniques; time not count.)
The Way of a Pilgrim. Trans. R. M. French. London: SPCK, 1930. (The narrative; the counts; the Dobrotolyubie as companion.)
The Pilgrim’s Tale. Ed. Aleksei Pentkovsky, trans. T. Allan Smith. Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999. (The authorship scholarship.)
John of Kronstadt. My Life in Christ. Trans. E. E. Goulaeff. London, 1897. (The diary; the formulations on the Name.)
Alfeyev, Hilarion. Sviashchennaia taina Tserkvi. 2 vols. St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 2002. (Kronstadt’s formulations in the imiaslavie dispute.)
A Monk of the Eastern Church [Lev Gillet]. The Jesus Prayer. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987. (The modern cautions on reading the Pilgrim.)