“Bible Dictionary” N.N. Glubokovsky

(To the 160th anniversary of his death) Schema-Archimandrite Paisiy Velichkovsky belonged to that galaxy of remarkable spiritual figures with whom Ukraine was so rich in the 17th and early 18th centuries. He was not called, like Stephen of Yavorsky, Saint Demetrius of Rostov, Saint Joasaph of Belgorod, to the administrative service of the Church. Paisius fell to the more modest and inconspicuous lot of an ascetic ascetic, which he combined with extensive literary and translation activities, creating a large religious and educational center in the Neametsky monastery in Romania. Paisiy Velichkovsky, in the world Peter, was born in Poltava on December 21, 1722 in the family of a priest. At the age of four he lost his father. In 1735, Peter’s mother placed him in the Kyiv Theological Academy, which at that time was not inferior in education to the best foreign schools. Peter stayed at the Kyiv Academy for only four years; then he left her, because the idea of ​​learning internal monastic work had long been ripening in him. Visiting Kyiv churches, spending time in prayer, in spiritual conversations with like-minded friends and reading patristic literature, Peter became more and more convinced of his intention to leave the world. He and his friends firmly decided to take monastic vows not in some rich monastery, where the life of monks passes in bodily rest, but where they could, according to the monastic vow, follow the poverty of Christ. And so in the fall of 1739, Peter, on the instructions of his confessor, Hieroschemamonk Pachomius, went to the Lyubetsky Monastery, where he was received with love by Abbot Nikifor, in whose person he found the ideal of a true abbot. After three months of Peter’s stay in the Lyubetsky monastery, Herman Zagorovsky became its abbot, who ruled the monastery “not in the likeness of the previous one, but sovereignly” 1. The severity of the new abbot forced Peter to move to the Medvedovsky Monastery of St. Nicholas, located on an island in the Tyasmina River. In this monastery, on the day of the Transfiguration of the Lord in 1741, he was tonsured into a ryassophore with the name Parthenia. At the same time, another brother was tonsured, and was named Plato at the tonsure. The brethren of the monastery mixed up the names and began to call Peter Plato, and the other brother Parthenius. When Peter told the abbot about this, the abbot answered him so that he would not be embarrassed by this circumstance. “I... at his command were called Plato,” writes Elder Paisius, “as if I were ignorant of the power of holy obedience, and partly grieved about this, wishing that it would be possible to be called by the name given to me at the monastery” 2. The time when Peter took monastic vows in the St. Nicholas Monastery was extremely difficult for right-bank Ukraine: the union with its bitter consequences was making itself felt. Orthodox monasteries either closed completely or became Uniate. Orthodox monks found nothing better than to flee from persecution. Soon the oppression also affected the St. Nicholas Monastery. The monks were invited to accept the union. They refused. This was followed by a ban on worship, and the church was sealed. These circumstances forced the monk Plato to leave the monastery. Together with two other monks, he headed to Kyiv, where all three were accepted into the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Monk Platon was sure that he would spend his entire future life in the Lavra. However, retaining his intention to leave the world on a pilgrimage, accept Christ’s poverty and take tonsure from some ascetic pleasing to God, he left the Lavra. Visiting the monasteries of Ukraine and Moldova, Plato saw great ascetics of the spirit, fulfillers of the commandments of Christ. In his mind, the ideal of a true mentor began to emerge clearly, in obedience to whom he could succeed in spiritual life and fearlessly build his salvation. In search of a mentor, he went to Athos in 1746. At the time of the monk Plato’s arrival there, Mount Athos presented a sad picture regarding its political, economic, spiritual and moral state. Enslaved by the Turks, its inhabitants were exhausted under the burden of heavy taxes. Ignorance, national enmity, and gross vices penetrated the Athonite monasteries. Due to national strife, the Greeks captured the ancient Russian monastery of St. Panteleimon. The Holy Mountain, once “receiving and giving rest to so many toiling and burdened people, rejecters of the world and adherents of Christ,” 3 now looked coldly and indifferently at the homeless wandering Russian monks, “despised of all,” as testified by Grigorovich-Barsky, who visited Athos in 1744 4 . The monk Plato visited many hermits and hermits in the hope of finding a spiritual leader. And, not finding such a thing, he settled in a kaliva near the Pantokrator monastery 5. Here, in silence, he devoted himself to spiritual exploits and was very successful in them, “rising from strength to strength.” He lived like this for more than three years. At the beginning of 1750, Elder Polyanomerulsky arrived on Athos from Moldova and tonsured the monk Plato into a mantle with the name Paisius. From this time on, Paisiy became a student of Elder Vasily. How can we explain that the monk Plato did not find a spiritual leader on Athos? According to the testimony of the same G. Barsky, despite the general decline in the spiritual and moral life of Athos, there were “quite a few Russian monks living an abstinent, godly life” 6. But they, apparently, could not satisfy Plato. It is possible that at that time the monk Plato was already at a higher level of spiritual perfection than those to whom he addressed. This can also be explained by the strict requirements that he imposed on the spiritual leader. He subsequently outlined his view of what qualities a true leader for salvation should have to Vissarion, his first student. A true spiritual mentor, in his opinion, can only be one who constantly forces himself to fulfill the commandments of Christ. No one can teach another what he himself has not learned through personal experience. The mentor himself must first of all conquer the passions that fight him. He pointed to the Savior, the Leader of the war and the Leader of victory, who repelled the attack of Satan by fasting, vigil and prayer and taught people to do the same, giving them strength during the war to repel their enemies. Humility, meekness, the poverty of Christ, long-suffering, mercy, love for God and neighbor - these are the virtues that one who takes upon himself the leadership of others must possess. The God-bearing Fathers foresaw that it would be difficult to find such a mentor, and therefore they left their writings, in which they set everything out. From these writings, in the absence of a mentor, one must learn 7. This view of the spiritual leader, formed under the influence of a deep study of patristic literature, testifies to the high degree of moral perfection of Elder Paisius. Having come to Athos with the goal of learning from the Athonite monks, he himself, contrary to his wishes, joined the ranks of spiritual leaders. Under the influence of Elder Basil’s conversations, Elder Paisius gradually comes to the conclusion “that poor imaginary silence is beyond my measure, but perfect and dispassionate... intentions to pass through his life in the royal way, with one like-minded... brother: instead of a father, God, have for yourself a mentor, and the teachings of the Holy Fathers, and obey each other” 8, as he later wrote to his friend Priest Demetrius. With this thought, he joyfully accepted the first student who came to him, the Moldavian Vissarion, whom he had previously refused many times. Following Vissarion, brethren from the Slavs and Moldavians began to gather near Paisius. With the increase in the number of brothers, Elder Paisios was forced to move to the cell of St. Constantine, which belonged to the Pantokrator monastery. When twelve brothers gathered, an urgent need for a priest and confessor arose. All the brethren began to ask Elder Paisius to accept the priesthood and clergy, but the elder did not want to hear about it, explaining that he left Moldova precisely because he would not be ordained a priest. The brothers continued to beg him. The spiritual fathers of the Holy Mountain also joined the requests of the brethren, exhorting him not to refuse, since they saw in him a worthy confessor. When all the arguments of the Holy Scriptures were exhausted, the fathers resorted to the last one, which, in their opinion, was supposed to break his will. “How are you,” they said, “teach the brethren obedience... while you yourself disobeyed and despised the tearful prayer of so many praying people and us” 9 . The fathers were not mistaken. Although against his will, the elder obeyed, saying with tears: “God’s will be done.” To the great joy of his spiritual children, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1758 and became the confessor of his brethren. When the number of brethren greatly increased, Elder Paisios moved to the cell of the holy prophet Elijah, belonging to the same monastery of Pantokrator, and here he created a monastery with the rules of a cenobitic monastery. The need for spiritual guidance for the brethren who had gathered to Elder Paisius forced him to look for patristic literature in the Slavic language. With great difficulty he found it, but after a long study he became convinced that a satisfactory Slavic translation of the patristic works did not exist. Then he began to look for the works of the Holy Fathers in Greek and compare Slavic translations with them, laying the foundation for that school of copyists and translators, which subsequently reached full development in the Neametsky monastery in Moldova. Elder Paisios soon became the confessor of many Athonite ascetics and even the former Patriarch of Constantinople Seraphim II, who was in retirement there. But at the same time, damaging rumors began to spread about him. The Moldavian Afanasy, who lived with his disciples in the monastery of Kapsokalive, called the elder a heretic and blasphemed the mental prayer that the elder taught his brethren. Not content with verbal slander, Athanasius, in a letter to Elder Paisius, showered him with reproaches for replacing church rules with the Jesus Prayer, being too trusting of Greek manuscripts, and incorrectly interpreting the teaching of St. Gregory of Sinaite on mental prayer. But Elder Paisios, at the insistence of the fathers of the Spiritual Council of the Holy Mountain, wrote a denunciation against Athanasius, in which he refuted all his accusations and errors. Due to the increase in the number of brethren, which exceeded sixty people in 1763, and the impossibility of organizing a hostel for everyone who sought to live under his leadership, Elder Paisius had to move to Moldavia. But his seventeen-year stay on the Holy Mountain did not pass without a trace for Athos. By establishing his monastery, Elder Paisios laid the foundation for the creation of that well-appointed St. Elias monastery, in which his traditions are still alive today. The stay on Mount Athos did not pass without a trace for Elder Paisius himself. Here his spiritual education ended, and his service began as a teacher of monasticism in the spirit of strict asceticism with “smart work” and constant “sobriety,” which gives him the right to stand alongside the “Russian luminary” St. Nil of Sorsky. In Moldova, Elder Paisios, by order of the Moldavian ruler Gregory Kalimakh and with the blessing of Metropolitan Gabriel of Moldova, settled with the brethren in the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Dragomirna, provided to them, 10 and from that time the said monastery entered a new period of its existence. Before this, it was almost empty, but now it began to quickly fill up with monastics coming from Russia and the right bank of Ukraine. Elder Paisios introduced a charter in the monastery, which he used in the Elias monastery on Athos and drawn up on the basis of the charters of St. Basil the Great, Theodosius the Great and Theodore the Studite. The main requirements of this charter were: obedience, non-covetousness and humility. During general obediences, silence and the saying of the Jesus Prayer had to be strictly observed. All the brethren, and especially the novices, daily revealed their thoughts to their spiritual fathers 11 . In the Dragomirna Monastery, more than on Mount Athos, the elder and his brotherhood began intensive studies of translations of patristic literature into Slavic and Moldavian languages ​​and their correspondence. Here the old translations of the works of St. Hesychius, Diadoche, Macarius the Great, Philotheus of Sinai, Nile of Sinai, Abba Thalasius, Gregory of Sinai, Simeon the New Theologian, Rev. Cassian the Roman and others. In addition to correcting these books, the works of the following holy fathers were translated again: Anthony the Great, Isaiah the Hermit, Peter Damascene - the second book, Theodore the Studite, Mark the Ascetic, Nikita Stiphatus - three hundred chapters, Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople and his co-faster Ignatius Xanthopoulos, the life of St. Gregory of Sinaita, written by his disciple Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople. In addition to translating, in the very first years of his stay in Dragomirna, Elder Paisius composed six chapters on mental prayer, as a refutation of the teaching that was then being spread in Ukraine by one monk who denied mental prayer. While managing the monastery, the elder held conversations with the brethren every day, starting from the Nativity Fast and ending with Lazarus Saturday - one day in the Moldavian language, and the other in Slavic. During the conversations, the elder interpreted the patristic works. All the elder’s instructions tended towards the same goal: to encourage the brothers to keep “with all their heart and with all their soul” the commandments of God. The elder considered the best way to achieve this to be reading patristic literature. “When you move away from the attention of the books of your fathers,” he said, “you will fall away from the peace of Christ and love, that is, from doing the commandments. Christ, and rebellion, rumors and disorder, mental confusion, hesitation and hopelessness, and grumbling and condemnation against each other will enter into you: for the multiplication of these, the love of many will dry up, much less a few and not all: and if this happens, you will soon be ruined to have this cathedral, first of all spiritually, but in time and physically” 12 . In 1775, Elder Paisius, together with his brotherhood, was forced to leave Dragomirna due to the following circumstances. Soon, after the end of the Russian-Turkish war in 1774 (1768 - 1774), Austria, taking advantage of Turkey's weakness, demanded that it cede Bukovina. The Ottoman Porte, not wanting to start a feud with Austria, agreed to this and gave Bukovina and a number of Moldavian lands, including Dragomirna, into the possession of the House of Habsburg 13 . Elder Paisius did not want to remain in a Catholic country and, at the suggestion of the Moldavian ruler Gregory Ghik and the Moldavian Metropolitan Gabriel, he moved with 350 brothers to the Sekul monastery. It was with great sorrow that the elder and his brethren parted with the Dragomirn monastery. But, the elder writes, “my conscience... is at peace.” The proposal to move to Sekul was in accordance with the repeated requests of the abbot of the monastery Euthymius, the pro-abbot Nifont and other brethren 14, and on October 14, 1775, Elder Paisios arrived with part of the brethren to the Sekul monastery of the Beheading of John the Baptist. This monastery, which had only 14 cells, could not accommodate the entire Paisian brotherhood, and it was necessary to begin the construction of new cells in order to resettle all the brethren from Dragomirna to Sekul. Despite these concerns, life in Sekula was organized according to the ranks of the Dragomirn monastery, with daily conversations by the elder in the winter and continuous translation activities. In 1779, Elder Paisiy was forced to take over the Nyametsky monastery, which throughout its existence was a center of religious education for Moldova and raised many fighters who selflessly defended Orthodoxy and the people from Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. The Nyametsky monastery had the same significance for Moldova as the Trinity-Sergius and Kiev-Pechersk Lavras for Russia. In 1779, the Moldavian ruler Constantin Muruz, who considered the Sekul monastery due to its location extremely inconvenient for the supply of everything necessary, invited Elder Paisius to move to the Neametsky monastery. But Elder Paisius twice stubbornly refused to accept the Nyametsky monastery. Finally, on August 9, 1779, he received a decisive order from the ruler and metropolitan, forcing him to move to a new monastery. Having deeply thought through all the circumstances, the elder decided not to resist any longer and, “placing his neck... the yoke of Divine obedience,” left Sekul, entrusting its management to the confessor Hilarion. In the Nyametsky monastery, just as on Athos, Dragomirna and Sekula, the life of the monks was built on the principles of community life with the daily revelation of thoughts to the spiritual fathers. And here Elder Paisius continued to translate patristic literature into Slavic and Moldavian languages. As the basis for his new translations, he took Bulgarian manuscripts, partly found in the Nyametsky library, partly taken from the Athonite monasteries of Zograf, Pantocrator and St. Pavel. By 1787, the number of brethren of the Nyametsky monastery reached seven hundred people. At this time, the peaceful life of the monastery was disrupted by the outbreak of the Russian-Turkish war. The town of Neamets, located 15 kilometers from the monastery, was occupied by the Turks. The elder and the brethren were forced to leave the monastery and move to Sekul. But the mercy of God protected the Nyamet monastery: the Turks who were nearby did not enter it. Soon the Russian army ousted the Turks from Moldova. In 1790, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Potemkin, arrived in Iasi, and with him the Archbishop of Ekaterinoslav Ambrose (Serebryannikov), who elevated Elder Paisius to the rank of archimandrite. Through the labors of Elder Paisius, the Nyametsky monastery turned into a major center of theological and ascetic education. As if the crown of this activity was the publication in 1793 of the Slavic translation of the Greek Philokalia by Elder Paisius. Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Novgorod Gabriel (Petrov) wanted to see this translation published, but the elder, not being confident in the quality of his work, refused this event for a long time. Finally, he agreed. “The publication of the Slovenian-Russian Philokalia was an event not only in the history of Russian monasticism, but also in the history of Russian spiritual culture in general. It was a shift and a push... a return to the origins, it was the opening of new paths, it was the acquisition of new horizons” 15. Anticipating the approach of death, Elder Paisios began writing his autobiography. But not in order to talk about himself, but in order, as he himself writes, to tell the story of the multinational monastic brotherhood he created 16. Unfortunately, this autobiography remained unfinished. Obviously, the death of the elder, which followed on November 14, 1794, interrupted his work. Concluding the review of the activities of Elder Paisius, it must be said that he was not only a scribe, but sought to creatively update the traditions of his fathers in contemporary monasticism. And in this direction he was lucky to do a lot, because he found a “heavenly treasure on earth” - patristic literature, which contained everything necessary for the revival of monasticism: the patristic teaching on prayer, community life and monastic vows. The influence of Elder Paisius was felt in the life of many monasteries, hermitages and monastic communities in Russia, Romania and Athos, 17 for many of his disciples, prepared by him for spiritual leadership and equipped with manuscripts of his translations, dispersed to Russian and Romanian monasteries, breathed life into them and greatly contributed to their revival. Autobiography of Elder Paisius. Manuscript from the Library of the Academy of Sciences. 13.3.26L.43. Autobiography of Elder Paisius. Manuscript from the Library of the Academy of Sciences. 13.3.26L.59. Anthony Archim., Notes of a worshiper of the Holy Mountain, Kiev, 1864, p. 382. Barsky G., Journey to Holy Places..., St. Petersburg, 1819, part 1, p. 283. The Athonite monks call a cell a house with a church. If there is no church near the house, then it is called kaliva. Barsky G., Journey to Holy Places..., St. Petersburg, 1819, part I, p. 282. Life and writings of the Moldavian elder Paisius (Velichkovsky), M., 1847, p. 39. Life and writings of the Moldavian elder Paisius (Velichkovsky). Abraham's deeds to the imitator..., p. 289. Life and writings of the Moldavian elder Paisius Velichkovsky. Abraham's deeds to the imitator..., pp. 43 – 44. The Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Dragomirna already existed in the 16th century, but was in ruins. In 1602 it was resumed by Bishop of Radovetsky Anastasy Krymkovich. The monastery suffered severe destruction under the Moldavian ruler Vasily I Lupul (1634 - 1654) (Mordvinov V., Orthodox Church in Bukovina, St. Petersburg, 1874, pp. 117 - 122). Rule of Elder Paisius. RK collection of the Leningrad Public Library, St. Petersburg, DA No. 279 l., pp. 183 – 202. Life and writings of the Moldavian elder Paisius Velichkovsky, p. 61. Mordvinov V., Orthodox Church in Bukovina, p. 3. Message from the elder about moving to the Nyametsky monastery. RK Library of the Academy of Sciences. 13.5.6.L. 2. Frolovsky G., Paths of Russian theology, p. 127. Autobiography of Elder Paisnya. RK Library of the Academy of Sciences. 13.3.26L.1. Chetverikov S., Archpriest, Moldavian Elder Schema-Archimandrite Paisius (Velichkovsky). 1938, issue. 2, pp. 39 – 43.