Evergetinos (Benevolence. Volumes 1-4)

The collection “Evergetinos” (or “Evergetin”) is a large-scale anthology compiled in the 11th century by St. Pavel Evergetin. It includes sayings of the holy fathers (apophthegmas), edifying stories, fragments from lives and theological works. Although this work is close in form to the patericon (a collection of paternal instructions), its deep content, devoted to issues of contemplative and spiritual life, brings it closer to the famous “Philokalia”. This is what made the collection so beloved by many generations of Athos monks. St. Pavel divided all the material into 200 chapters, combined into 4 volumes. Each chapter is devoted to a specific passion or sin: it reveals its origin, suggests ways to combat it and instructions for acquiring the opposite virtue. The sources for the collection were the enormous heritage of patristic writing accumulated since the first centuries of Christianity. It included excerpts from various Patericons, Palladius's "Lavsaik", as well as the works of such great fathers of the Church as St. Ephraim the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian, John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor and many others. The new life of the collection began at the end of the 18th century, when St. Nikodim Svyatogorets discovered the forgotten and damaged manuscript of “Evergetin” in the Athonite monastery of Kutlumush. After working on the Philokalia, he edited the text, correcting copyist errors, and provided it with a significant preface. The book was printed in Venice in 1783. *The title of the work in Greek is Εὐεργετινός. A collection of the divine sayings and teachings of the God-bearing and Holy Fathers, collected from all God-inspired Scripture, appropriately and conveniently set forth by Paul, the most reverend monk and creator of the monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos Evergetis, nicknamed Evergetinus “EVERGETIN”, or “A collection of the divine sayings and teachings of the God-bearing and Holy Fathers, collected from all God-inspired Scripture, appropriately and conveniently presented by Paul, the most reverend monk and creator of the monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos Evergetin, nicknamed Evergetin” - a patristic anthology compiled in the 11th century by the monk Paul, who lived in Constantinople. Blessed Paul wanted to give people who are struggling with vice an accurate and comprehensive guide to salvation. Therefore, he collected from the patristic heritage what was most useful for this purpose and compiled it into one book. In it, he strictly systematically identified all the passions that hurt a person, and distributed them over two hundred chapters. Each chapter is devoted to a method of warfare against one passion and the acquisition of the opposite virtue. Blessed Paul divided the entire collection into four volumes, each of which consists of fifty chapters. This book, once eaten away by worms in the libraries of the Holy Mountain and almost unknown to anyone, was found at the end of the 18th century in the Svyatogorsk monastery of Kutlumush by the Monk Nicodemus the Svyatogorets. Immediately after finishing work on the Philokalia, the Monk Nicodemus began to correct it. He freed the manuscript of “Evergetin” from the errors of copyists and introduced it with an excellent and spiritually significant preface. The book was first printed in 1783 in Venice, following the Philokalia, in the printing house of Antonio Bortoli, at the expense of the “most noble citizen of Smyrna, John Canna.” "Evergetin" was published anonymously. "Evergetin" is being translated into Russian for the first time, but many of the sources - lives of saints, patericons, collections of patristic instructions - which Blessed Paul used as a compiler, have already been translated (usually from Greek, less often from Latin) at various times and exist both in Church Slavonic and in Russian. You might be interested in: