Ignatius Brianchaninov and the Neptic Revival

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867) was, alongside St. Theophan the Recluse, the other great teacher of the Philokalic tradition in nineteenth-century Russia. A former army engineer turned bishop and ascetic writer, he did not produce his own edition of the Dobrotolyubie but distilled the neptic fathers into his own systematic works on the ascetic life and the Jesus Prayer — with a sobriety and caution that make an instructive contrast to Theophan and mark the Russian recovery of hesychasm.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox

The Other Great Voice

If the nineteenth-century Russian recovery of the Philokalic tradition had two principal teachers, they were St. Theophan the Recluse and St. Ignatius Brianchaninov — near contemporaries, both bishops who withdrew from active administration to write, both formed in the Paisian revival, and both dedicated to transmitting the neptic fathers to a modern Russian readership (on the two as the paired teachers of the Russian neptic revival, see Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” in Bingaman and Nassif, eds., The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, Oxford University Press, 2012; and the biographical treatment in St. Ignatius Brianchaninov). Ignatius’s full life — his aristocratic origins, his training as a military engineer, his monastic tonsure, his years as archimandrite of the Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg, and his episcopate — belongs to his own collection; the concern here is his place in the transmission of the Philokalia.

Not an Edition but a Distillation

Ignatius’s contribution to the Philokalic tradition took a different form from Theophan’s. Where Theophan produced a translated and expanded Dobrotolyubie (see Theophan the Recluse and the Russian Dobrotolyubie), Ignatius wrote his own systematic works, saturated with the neptic fathers, in which he digested and re-presented the tradition rather than editing the anthology itself. His major writings — above all the Ascetical Experiences (Asketicheskie opyty) and the treatise On the Prayer of Jesus (part of his Ascetical Homilies / Prinoshenie sovremennomu monashestvu, “An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism”) — are woven throughout of quotations from and commentary on the very fathers gathered in the Philokalia: the desert fathers, Isaac the Syrian, the hesychasts (on the character of Ignatius’s works as a distillation of the neptic fathers, the standard accounts; deferred to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov). His achievement was to make the teaching of the neptic fathers into a coherent, practical guide for the monks and serious lay Christians of his own age, written in clear Russian and organized for use.

A Sober and Cautious Hesychasm

Ignatius is especially known for the sobriety and caution of his teaching on the Jesus Prayer — a caution that runs even deeper than Theophan’s. He warned repeatedly and emphatically against the dangers of spiritual delusion (prelest), against the premature or unguided pursuit of the higher states of prayer, and against seeking sensible “experiences” or the vision of light through technique. He counseled beginners to a humble, attentive, repentant practice of the Jesus Prayer joined to the keeping of the commandments, and he was deeply skeptical of readers who would take up the loftier hesychast methods on their own authority from a book (on Ignatius’s caution about prelest and the higher states, the standard accounts of his teaching; cf. Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” 2012, on the general caution of the Russian teachers). His writings are thus, in part, a sustained warning about the very dangers the Philokalia itself flags: that its teaching is perilous without discernment and a guide (see Reading the Philokalia).

Two Teachers, Two Emphases

The pairing of Ignatius and Theophan illustrates that the Russian reception of the Philokalia was not monolithic. The two saints agreed on essentials — the centrality of the Jesus Prayer, the primacy of humility and repentance, the danger of prelest, the necessity of grace — but they differed in emphasis and, at points, in counsel, and their differences were real enough that later readers have sometimes contrasted them [Disputed: the extent and significance of the differences between Sts. Ignatius Brianchaninov and Theophan the Recluse on the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Both are venerated teachers of prayer, and both counsel caution; but they are commonly read as differing in tone and detail — Ignatius often presented as the more austere and wary, especially regarding bodily technique and the aspiration to higher states, Theophan as somewhat more accommodating to the layperson's inner practice. Some Orthodox writers press these differences; others regard them as complementary emphases within one tradition. The compendium notes the contrast without exaggerating it into a doctrinal conflict, and defers the detailed comparison to the two saints' own collections.] (on the relationship and the contrast between the two teachers, see the treatments in their respective collections, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and St. Theophan the Recluse). What matters for the history of the Philokalia is that between them these two teachers made the neptic tradition a living pastoral force in the Russian Church of the nineteenth century, each in his own key.

The Shape of the Russian Recovery

Taken together, the Paisian revival, the Optina eldership, Theophan’s Dobrotolyubie, and Ignatius’s ascetical works constitute the great nineteenth-century Russian recovery of hesychasm — the transformation of the Philokalia from an ancient Greek anthology into a living Russian spirituality of the Jesus Prayer (Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” 2012; Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015). This recovery had a threefold face: the living transmission through elders (Optina and the Paisian houses; see The Philokalia Comes to Russia); the scholarly and pastoral transmission through the books of Theophan and Ignatius; and the popular transmission through The Way of a Pilgrim, which carried the Jesus Prayer to the widest readership of all (see The Way of a Pilgrim). Through all three the Philokalia became, by the end of the nineteenth century, one of the deepest currents of Russian religious life — and thereby was poised, in the twentieth, to be carried by the Russian emigration into the West.

See Also

References

  • Ware, Kallistos. “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia.” In The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, 9–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. (The Russian neptic revival; the caution of the Russian teachers; the threefold transmission.)
  • Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (The nineteenth-century Russian recovery at the head of the modern Orthodox revival.)
  • Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism and On the Prayer of Jesus, various English editions (e.g. Holy Trinity Publications; New Sarov Press). (The distillation of the neptic fathers; the teaching on the Jesus Prayer and the warnings against prelest; cited as representative of Ignatius’s transmission.)