The English Philokalia

The Philokalia reached the English-speaking world in two stages. First came the selections of E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer — Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart (1951) and Early Fathers from the Philokalia (1954) — translated not from the Greek but from St. Theophan’s Russian Dobrotolyubie. Then came the great complete translation from the Greek by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, published by Faber and Faber in five volumes between 1979 and 2023 — now the standard English Philokalia and the anchor of this guide.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The First English Selections

English readers first met the Philokalia at one remove — through the Russian. In 1951 the London publisher Faber and Faber brought out Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, translated by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer, a selection focused on the texts concerning the Jesus Prayer; it was followed in 1954 by a second volume, Early Fathers from the Philokalia (Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Faber, 1951; Early Fathers from the Philokalia, Faber, 1954). Crucially, these were rendered not from the original Greek of the 1782 Venice edition but from St. Theophan the Recluse’s nineteenth-century Russian Dobrotolyubie — so that the first English Philokalia inherited Theophan’s selection, arrangement, and editorial choices (on the translation from Theophan’s Russian, the title pages and the editions themselves; see Theophan the Recluse and the Russian Dobrotolyubie). Between them the two volumes covered only a portion of the material — by the translators’ own reckoning something less than a third of the whole — but they were the doorway through which mid-twentieth-century English readers first entered the tradition.

Their timing was significant. Appearing in the 1950s, just as The Way of a Pilgrim was also circulating in English, these selections helped introduce the Jesus Prayer to a Western readership hungry for contemplative prayer, and they had an influence out of proportion to their modest scope, shaping the Western image of the Philokalia for a generation (on the reach of the Kadloubovsky–Palmer selections, Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” in Bingaman and Nassif, eds., The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, Oxford University Press, 2012). G. E. H. Palmer, who had a hand in both these selections and the later complete translation, is the thread connecting the two stages of the English Philokalia.

The Complete Translation from the Greek

The definitive English Philokalia is the complete translation made directly from the Greek text by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware and published by Faber and Faber under the title The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth. It appeared over more than four decades, in five volumes: volume 1 in 1979, volume 2 in 1981, volume 3 in 1984, volume 4 in 1995, and the fifth and final volume in 2023 (the English Philokalia, vols. 1–5, London: Faber and Faber, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1995, 2023). The long span between the fourth and fifth volumes reflected the deaths of Philip Sherrard (1995) and, later, of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (2022), and the labor of completing the work fell to a widened team of collaborators; the fifth volume appeared posthumously with respect to all three of the original translators, carrying the project to completion (on the completion of the fifth volume, the volume’s own front matter, Faber, 2023).

This translation differs from the earlier English selections in three decisive ways. First, it is made from the Greek original, not from Theophan’s Russian, and so restores the collection to the form Nikodemos and Makarios gave it — including the texts and passages Theophan had abridged or omitted, such as the fuller instructions on the physical method of prayer (English Philokalia, vol. 1, 1979, Introduction; see Theophan the Recluse and the Russian Dobrotolyubie). Second, it is complete: it renders the whole of the Greek Philokalia, the first time the entire anthology had been available in English. Third, it is furnished with a serious scholarly apparatus — introductions, notes on authorship (including the recognition of Evagrius behind the On Prayer ascribed to Neilos), and, notably, a glossary of the key Greek terms (nous, nepsis, kardia, apatheia, theosis, logismos, and the rest) that has itself become a standard reference for the vocabulary of Orthodox spirituality (English Philokalia, vol. 1, 1979, Glossary and notes).

The Translators

The three translators brought complementary gifts. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (1934–2022), the Oxford theologian and bishop, supplied much of the scholarly framing — the introductions, the notes, and the interpretive essays that made the translation not only accurate but intelligible to modern readers (on Ware’s role, and his later essay “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” 2012). Philip Sherrard (1922–1995), poet, translator, and scholar of Greek, and G. E. H. Palmer (1904–1984), who had worked on the earlier selections, brought literary skill and long engagement with the tradition. The result is widely regarded as one of the finest achievements of modern religious translation, and it has done more than any other single work to make the Philokalia a living presence in the English-speaking world, Orthodox and beyond (Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015, on the significance of the English translation).

The Western Rediscovery

The English Philokalia was part of a broad twentieth-century Western rediscovery of Eastern Christian spirituality. Alongside the parallel French, German, and other translations, and alongside the diffusion of The Way of a Pilgrim, it brought the hesychast tradition and the Jesus Prayer to a wide non-Orthodox audience — Catholic and Protestant contemplatives, scholars, and seekers — and made “the Philokalia” a recognized name far outside the Orthodox Church (Ware, “St Nikodimos and the Philokalia,” 2012; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015). This Western reception is one face of a larger phenomenon: the twentieth-century renaissance of Orthodox theology itself, which took the Philokalia as one of its founding texts and drew from it a renewed vision of the Christian life as deification through prayer. That renaissance — Romanian, Greek, Russian émigré, and diaspora — is the subject of the companion file.

See Also

• The Philokalic Renaissance — the theological revival the book inspired
• Theophan the Recluse and the Russian Dobrotolyubie — the Russian source of the early English selections
• The Authors from Antony to Palamas — the Evagrius-under-Neilos attribution the English edition notes
• Nikodemos and Makarios — the Greek original the complete translation restores

References

• Palmer, G. E. H., Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, trans. The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, vols. 1–5. London: Faber and Faber, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1995, 2023. (The complete English translation from the Greek; the Introduction, notes, and Glossary; the completion of the fifth volume.)
• Kadloubovsky, E., and G. E. H. Palmer, trans. Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart. London: Faber and Faber, 1951; and Early Fathers from the Philokalia. London: Faber and Faber, 1954. (The earlier selections, translated from Theophan’s Russian Dobrotolyubie.)
• 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 English selections and the complete translation; the Western reception.)
• Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (The significance of the English translation and the Western rediscovery.)