Saint Joseph and Saint Barsanuphius

Two elders of the last flowering before the Revolution: St. Joseph (Litovkin, 1837–1911), St. Ambrose’s own cell-attendant, closest disciple, and successor, who continued his elder’s work in humble hiddenness; and St. Barsanuphius (Plikhankov, 1845–1913), the army colonel converted late in life who became a powerful elder, a military chaplain in the Russo-Japanese War, and the last superior of the skete in its glory.

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

Saint Joseph (Litovkin)

St. Joseph of Optina was born Ivan Efimovich Litovkin in 1837, in a village of the Kharkov region, into a pious peasant family; orphaned young and after some years in trade, he came to Optina in 1861, drawn by the fame of Elder Ambrose, and was received by him (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn i eyo vremya, Jordanville, 1970, on Joseph Litovkin; the Optina Lives). He became Ambrose’s cell-attendant and remained at the elder’s side for some thirty years, sharing his cell, screening his visitors, and absorbing his spirit more intimately than anyone; the sources present Joseph as the disciple who most fully reproduced Ambrose’s own manner — the same gentleness, the same brief and homely counsel, the same hiddenness (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Joseph as Ambrose’s closest disciple; the Optina hagiographies). Tonsured with the name Joseph, he was, after Ambrose’s death in 1891, recognized as an elder and as skete superior, and he carried the confessional eldership and the care of Shamordino into the new century (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970).

Joseph’s holiness was of the self-effacing kind: he sought no prominence, spoke little, and pointed always away from himself; and precisely for this he was loved. He bore a long final illness, and died on 9 May 1911, the date of his feast (the Optina record and the Synaxis of the Elders). In the lineage he is the faithful transmitter — the disciple in whom Ambrose’s spirit passed, almost undiluted, to the generation that would face the Revolution (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Joseph’s place in the line).

Saint Barsanuphius (Plikhankov)

The most dramatic vocation among all the Optina elders is that of St. Barsanuphius. He was born Pavel Ivanovich Plikhankov in 1845, in Samara, and entered not the monastery but the army, rising to the rank of colonel on the staff — a cultivated officer of the world, fond of music, literature, and society, with a distinguished military career and no evident thought of the monastic life (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Plikhankov’s military career; Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, the principal English Life). His conversion came late and, the accounts say, through a decisive inner experience; released from the army, he came to Optina in the early 1890s, near the end of Ambrose’s life, and placed himself under the elders — Ambrose himself, then Anatoly (Zertsalov) and the skete brotherhood — beginning the monastic life as a middle-aged man among monks who had entered as youths (Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood, on his conversion and entry; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970).

Tonsured with the name Barsanuphius, he advanced rapidly and became one of the most powerful of the elders — a man whose worldly cultivation, joined to deep prayer, made him an unusually effective director of the educated, and whose gift of insight into souls is much attested in the sources (Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood; Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970). During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) he was sent to the front as a military chaplain, ministering to the wounded and dying of the army he had once served as an officer — a striking return, in a new capacity, to the world he had left (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Barsanuphius’s service in the Russo-Japanese War; Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood). On his return he became superior of the skete and the leading elder of Optina in the years before the Revolution, receiving crowds as Ambrose had done and forming disciples of his own — among them the young Nikolai Belyaev, the future St. Nikon the Confessor (see St. Nikon the Confessor).

Barsanuphius’s very success drew opposition, as Leonid’s had two generations before: intrigues within the church administration led, in his last years, to his removal from Optina and his transfer, in 1912, to be abbot of another monastery (the Golutvin monastery near Kolomna), a demotion in effect that separated him from the skete he had led (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on the intrigues and Barsanuphius’s transfer; Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood). He did not long survive the separation and died on 1 April 1913, the date of his feast (the Optina record and the Synaxis of the Elders). That an elder of his stature could be moved by administrative maneuver is a reminder that the eldership never lost the ambivalent standing it had held since Leonid’s day — venerated by the faithful, eyed with suspicion by parts of the institution (see St. Leonid the First Elder; Paert, Spiritual Elders, Northern Illinois University Press, 2010, ch. 5).

The Line on the Eve of the Revolution

Joseph and Barsanuphius are the last elders of Optina in its unbroken glory. Joseph transmitted Ambrose’s spirit in hiddenness; Barsanuphius brought the eldership its most brilliant late flowering and formed the confessor who would guard Optina’s life to the end. Between them they carried the line to the very threshold of 1917, and each handed on a disciple to the final generation: through Barsanuphius the young Nikon; and the whole brotherhood, the two Anatolys and Nektary. The next elders — St. Anatoly the Younger and St. Nektary — would exercise the eldership not in the golden age but under the gathering shadow of the Revolution (see The Last Elders).

See Also

References

  • Kontzevitch, I. M. Optina Pustyn’ i eyo vremya. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1970. (Joseph Litovkin as Ambrose’s cell-attendant and successor, d. 1911; Barsanuphius’s military career, conversion, chaplaincy in the Russo-Japanese War, skete superiorship, transfer, and death 1913.)
  • Elder Barsanuphius of Optina (Optina Elders Series). Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. (The principal English Life: Plikhankov’s army years, conversion, entry, eldership, chaplaincy, and the intrigues and transfer.)
  • Paert, Irina. Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. (Ch. 5: the later elders and the persistence of institutional ambivalence toward the eldership.)
  • The Synaxis of the Optina Elders and the Optina record — for the repose dates (Joseph, 9 May 1911; Barsanuphius, 1 April 1913), cross-checked against Kontzevitch.