Saint Anatoly the Younger and Saint Nektary

The two great elders of Optina’s last days: St. Anatoly “the Younger” (Potapov, 1855–1922), called “the consoler” for the tenderness with which he received the multitudes who came in the years of war and revolution; and St. Nektary (Tikhonov, 1853–1928), the last elder formally chosen by the brotherhood, a hidden man given at times to the manner of a fool-for-Christ, who survived the closure of the monastery and died in exile.

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

Saint Anatoly the Younger (Potapov)

St. Anatoly of Optina, called “the Younger” to distinguish him from St. Anatoly Zertsalov of the earlier generation, was born Alexander Alekseevich Potapov in 1855, of a Moscow merchant family; he entered Optina and became a disciple of Ambrose, Joseph, and Barsanuphius, serving long years in the humble office of cell-attendant before he was recognized as an elder (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn i eyo vremya, Jordanville, 1970, on Anatoly Potapov; the Optina Lives). Tonsured with the name Anatoly, he became, in the years around and after the death of St. Joseph (1911), the principal elder receiving the laypeople — the successor, in the popular eldership, to Ambrose himself (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970).

He is remembered above all as “the consoler” (uteshitel’). In the terrible years of the First World War, the Revolution, and the Civil War, when the crowds who came to Optina were laden with grief — mothers of the dead and missing, refugees, the frightened and the ruined — Anatoly the Younger received them with an outpouring of compassion that the sources dwell on: he wept with those who wept, and sent them away comforted, and the people loved him as they had loved Ambrose (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Anatoly the Younger as “the consoler”; the Optina hagiographies). His eldership thus fell in the darkest hour, and its character was fitted to it: not the golden-age eldership of counsel for a settled world, but a ministry of consolation to a people entering the furnace.

Anatoly did not long outlive the monastery’s closure. When Optina was suppressed and the authorities came to arrest him, the accounts relate that he asked for a night to prepare, spent it in prayer, and was found dead the next morning, 30 July 1922 — dying, as the tradition tells it, rather than be taken (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on the circumstances of Anatoly’s death in 1922; the account of the arrest is reported as the hagiography attests it). The date of his repose, 30 July, is the day of his feast (the Optina record and the Synaxis of the Elders).

Saint Nektary (Tikhonov)

St. Nektary of Optina was the last of the great Optina elders. He was born Nikolai Vasilievich Tikhonov in 1853, in Yelets, of a poor working family, orphaned young; he came to Optina about 1873 and was formed under Ambrose, Anatoly Zertsalov, and the skete brotherhood, spending some twenty years in near-total seclusion in his cell before he was drawn out into the eldership (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Nektary Tikhonov’s long seclusion; Elder Nektary of Optina, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, the principal English Life). Tonsured with the name Nektary, he was chosen by the brotherhood as elder around 1913, after the removal of Barsanuphius — the last elder to be so chosen in the old way (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970; Elder Nektary of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood).

Nektary was the most enigmatic of the elders. Deeply learned beneath a simple exterior, he often conveyed his counsel through symbolic actions and the manner of a fool-for-Christ — small toys, odd gestures, riddling words, whose meaning became clear only later; the sources present this as a deliberate ascetic concealment of his gifts and of the prophetic character of much of his counsel in the years of the Revolution (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Nektary’s fool-for-Christ manner; Elder Nektary of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood). Many of the Russian religious intelligentsia sought him out in these last years, and a number of them — writers and thinkers caught in the catastrophe — found in Nektary their spiritual father (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970; see Optina and the Russian Intelligentsia).

When Optina was closed, Nektary was arrested and imprisoned, then released and forbidden to live near the monastery; he settled in the village of Kholmishchi, in the Bryansk region, where he continued quietly to receive those who found him until his death on 29 April 1928 — the last of the elders to have lived the eldership in the monastery itself, dying in exile from it (Kontzevitch, Optina Pustyn, 1970, on Nektary’s arrest, exile to Kholmishchi, and death in 1928; Elder Nektary of Optina, St. Herman Brotherhood). His feast is kept on 29 April (the Optina record and the Synaxis of the Elders). With Nektary the direct, monastery-rooted eldership of Optina comes to its end; what continued after him — in Nikon and the scattered monks — was the eldership in the catacombs (see St. Nikon the Confessor and The Eldership under Persecution).

The Close of the Line

Anatoly the Younger and Nektary are the hinge between the age of the elders and the age of the martyrs. Both were formed in the old Optina; both exercised the eldership as the old world collapsed; both suffered arrest; and both handed on the flame to men who would carry it into exile and death. Anatoly consoled the people at the edge of the abyss; Nektary hid his light and carried it out of the ruined monastery into a village exile. After them the eldership at Optina did not continue in the monastery, because the monastery no longer existed — but it did not die, for it lived on in St. Nikon the Confessor and in the many Optina monks scattered across Russia, who kept the tradition secretly until they too were taken (see The Eldership under Persecution).

See Also

References

  • Kontzevitch, I. M. Optina Pustyn’ i eyo vremya. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1970. (Anatoly Potapov “the consoler,” the crowds of the war years, and his death in 1922; Nektary Tikhonov’s seclusion, his fool-for-Christ manner, his election as elder, his arrest, exile to Kholmishchi, and death in 1928.)
  • Elder Nektary of Optina (Optina Elders Series). Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. (The principal English Life of Nektary: his origins, seclusion, eldership, the symbolic counsel, and the exile.)
  • The Synaxis of the Optina Elders and the Optina record — for the repose dates (Anatoly the Younger, 30 July 1922; Nektary, 29 April 1928), cross-checked against Kontzevitch.