Saint Leonid, the First Elder

St. Leonid of Optina (Lev Nagolkin, 1768–1841), in the schema Leo, was the first true elder of Optina — the disciple of a disciple of St. Paisius who brought open, confessional startchestvo into the skete in 1829. His reception of crowds of monks and laypeople, and the eldership’s apparent novelty, drew suspicion and formal restriction from church authorities, an early trial through which the Optina eldership was tested and vindicated.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Optina synaxis glorified 1996 local / 2000 general)

From Lev Nagolkin to the Elder Leonid

The first Optina elder was born Lev Danilovich Nagolkin in 1768 in Karachev, in Oryol province, of modest background; he worked for a time in commerce, which took him among people of every class and gave him, his biographers note, an unusual worldly shrewdness and a gift for reading character that would later serve his eldership (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, on his origins and early life; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn i eyo vremya, Jordanville, 1970, on Leonid). He entered monastic life at Optina in 1797, then moved to other houses, and was tonsured with the name Leonid; later, receiving the great schema, he took the name Leo (Lev), so that he is called in the sources both Leonid and Lev (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood; the double name is standard).

The decisive event of his formation was his discipleship under the Hieroschemamonk Theodore of Svir (Feodor), a direct disciple of St. Paisius Velichkovsky at Neamț. Through Theodore, Leonid received the Paisian eldership — the Jesus Prayer, the disclosure of thoughts, obedience — at first hand, and after Theodore’s death he was recognized as an elder in his own right (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Theodore of Svir and Leonid; Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood; see The Paisian Root of the Eldership). For years Leonid lived in the northern forests and at the Ploshchansk and Valaam and Alexander-Svir monasteries, gathering disciples — among them the future St. Macarius — and moving on when his growing renown or the friction it caused made staying difficult (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970).

Arrival at Optina, 1829

In 1829, at the invitation of Abbot Moses, the elder Leonid came with several disciples to Optina and settled in the newly built Skete of St. John the Forerunner (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Leonid’s arrival in 1829; Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood; see The Monastery and the Skete). This is the date from which the Optina eldership, in its mature and famous form, is reckoned. Leonid began at once to receive not only the monks of the skete and monastery but a growing stream of laypeople — peasants above all, but soon people of every condition — who came to open their hearts to him, to confess their troubles, and to receive his counsel (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood, on the crowds at Leonid’s cell; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970). He was a large, powerful man of great directness and humor, capable of blunt words and of profound tenderness, and the accounts describe him surrounded from morning to night by a press of visitors (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood).

It was Leonid who set the pattern that Optina would keep for a century: the elder seated in his cell or at the skete gate, receiving one soul after another, hearing the disclosure of thoughts, and giving direction — an eldership turned not only inward to the monks but outward to the whole people (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Leonid as the founder of Optina’s open eldership; Paert, Spiritual Elders, Northern Illinois University Press, 2010, ch. 3). Among the disciples formed under him in these years was the young Alexander Grenkov, the future St. Ambrose, who came to Optina in 1839 and was placed under Leonid before passing, at Leonid’s own direction, to Macarius (see St. Ambrose in the Line of Optina; Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy, Nordland, 1972, ch. 2).

The Early Opposition to Startchestvo

The open eldership Leonid practiced was, or seemed, a novelty, and it met resistance. To some in the church administration the spectacle of crowds of laypeople — including women — flocking to an unlettered schemamonk, confiding in him and treating his word as authoritative, looked like an irregularity: an unauthorized cure of souls that bypassed the parish clergy and the ordinary hierarchical order, and that risked, in the eyes of critics, spiritual pride in the elder and unhealthy dependence in his followers (Paert, Spiritual Elders, 2010, ch. 3, on the ecclesiastical suspicion of startchestvo; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on the opposition to Leonid). There were denunciations to the diocesan authority, and at times Leonid was forbidden to receive visitors, moved from cell to cell, and pressed to give up the eldership; the accounts record periods in which he was formally restricted and obeyed the restriction while quietly continuing to help those who reached him (Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood, on the prohibitions and Leonid’s obedience; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970).

The opposition was not merely bureaucratic malice; it reflected a genuine tension that the eldership always carries. The disclosure of thoughts to a non-ordained elder, the intensity of the elder–disciple bond, and the veneration that gathered around a living holy man could, if misused, shade into precisely the delusion and the personality-cult that the ascetic tradition itself most fears (Paert, Spiritual Elders, 2010, on the double-edged character of charismatic eldership; see Startchestvo and Spiritual Direction). What vindicated Leonid — and, through him, the Optina eldership — was the fruit: the manifest humility of the elder, his submission to the restrictions imposed on him, the sobriety of his counsel, and the transformed lives of those he guided, together with the steady protection of Abbot Moses, who shielded the eldership within the monastery’s walls (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Abbot Moses’s protection and the vindication of the eldership; Elder Leonid of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood).

Death and Legacy

St. Leonid died at Optina on 11 October 1841 (the date on which his feast is now kept; the Synaxis of the Optina Elders and the individual commemorations, following the Optina record). His feast-day of 11 October (24 October, New Style) is also, not by accident, the day chosen for the common feast of all the Optina elders, so that the founder’s memory carries the whole synaxis (see Glorification and Veneration). By the time of his death the eldership was securely established in the skete and passed, without a break, to his disciple and co-laborer St. Macarius.

Leonid’s importance is foundational rather than literary: he left no books, and his teaching survives in the accounts of his disciples and in the pattern of life he established. He is the man who proved, against suspicion, that the Paisian eldership could live in a Russian monastery and serve the whole people — the root from which the whole Optina flowering grew (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Leonid’s foundational role; Paert, Spiritual Elders, 2010).

See Also

References

  • Elder Leonid of Optina (Optina Elders Series). Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. (Nagolkin’s origins and life; Theodore of Svir; arrival at Optina 1829; the crowds; the prohibitions and Leonid’s obedience; death 1841.)
  • Kontzevitch, I. M. Optina Pustyn’ i eyo vremya. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1970. (Leonid as founder of Optina’s open eldership; the Paisian line; the opposition; Abbot Moses’s protection.)
  • Paert, Irina. Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. (Ch. 3: the ecclesiastical suspicion of startchestvo; the tensions of charismatic eldership.)
  • Dunlop, John B. Staretz Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky’s Staretz Zossima. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972. (Ch. 2: the young Grenkov under Leonid.)