The growth of the "personal" principle and, more broadly, the importance of the spiritual sphere in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is evidenced by the texts whose purpose was to show what a true Christian, a spiritual man, should be, and by the texts in the center of which was the problem of sin and its redemption and repentance, and by the "neutral" texts, between the first and the second (what could be called fiction, spiritual and teaching literature, the epistles of pastors, even that new, emphatically spiritual translated literature that allows us to guess what attracted the special attention of readers). It is not always easy, or rather, almost always difficult, to single out the "personal" layer in these texts, but its presence and the internal dynamics of the growth of this principle can hardly be disputed. Moreover, it is possible, apparently, to expand the sources to some extent. Thus, for example, it has recently been shown what a valuable source in connection with the question under discussion are the so-called "Penitential Books", penances and renewals, which served for confession and are similar in function to Catholic penitentials. This most popular source [407] on Russian spiritual culture, which has been repeatedly studied (although in a slightly different aspect, as a source for the study of everyday life and customs) and earlier (see Almazov 1894; Pavlov 1902; Smirnov 1912; cf. also Shchapov 1972 and others, who contributed to the study of the correlation between the Penitential Books and the canon law of the Church), appears in the last book of A. I. Klibanov as material which also testifies to the spiritual state of Russian society (Klibanov 1996, 35–45), to the continuing process of Christianization of Russia (it can be added with a high degree of certainty that this "second" Christianization embraced, firstly, a very wide stratum of the population and, secondly, was not a formal, not superficial Christianization: it was in the fourteenth century, especially in its second half, that the process of internal assimilation of Christianity began as a guide for life "in truth". in any case, "not according to lies"); about the expansion (extensive aspect) and deepening (intensive aspect) of the space of Christianity, both in the human soul and throughout Russia; that people themselves went towards Christianity, consciously and willingly, that it became not only a fact of man's religious consciousness, but also a factor that determined all life – everyday life, work, family relations, civic behavior, morality, self-consciousness; about that religious phenomenon of holiness, which so unexpectedly for the external eye, but nevertheless prepared and justifiably miraculously manifested itself in the fourteenth century, and not so much in the person of princes – defenders or martyrs, as it was before, as in the person of representatives of the new asceticism – the desert dwellers (repentance and the sacrament of communion with God), who in time passed over to communalism, when the tasks of monastic "oikonomia" were added.

It should not seem strange that the fourteenth century, when holiness again flourished abundantly and grace-filled in Russia and passed the baton to the next, the fifteenth century, also became the century of a noticeable strengthening of religious freethinking, expressed in heretical movements and heresies. Of course, most often they represented a deviation from Christianity (not always, however, consciously), but not so much as an attempt to overcome it and criticize it, but as a search for "genuine" Christianity, the Christianity of Christ and one's own hopes and hopes. Undoubtedly, much in these movements is explained by social protest, but something essential must also be explained by the omissions, and sometimes by the obvious guilt of the Church in the person of many of her pastors. Studies of recent decades on heretical movements in Russia, which took place in the fourteenth century and later, mainly concerned the aspect of social protest, the "anti-feudal" orientation of these movements (cf. Kazakova–Lurie 1955; Klibanov 1960; Snigireva 1982; cf. also Klibanov 1977 and others); unfortunately, less attention was paid to the religious aspect of this phenomenon proper, although the autonomy of religious communities associated with such a phenomenon of Russian social and religious life as the "world parish", which in fact contributed to the initiative in the field of "its own" interpretation of questions of faith, to a significant extent explains both the level of peasant self-consciousness in the North of Russia and the very intensity of religious searches (cf. Pavlov-Silvanovsky 1910 [Pavlov-Silvanovsky 1988]; Yushkov 1913; Kopanev 1980; Tcherepnin 1984, 293–294; Klibanov 1996, 15–20 and others).

In a word, religious life in Russia in the fourteenth century became more and more Christian, rich, dense, and intense. Along with (and also in parallel) with external piety, a deeper layer was formed, in which the emphasis on the "inner," spiritual presupposed the emergence and actualization of the "personal" principle, the realization (or approaches to it) that there exists that equality of all people in God, in which the Holy Spirit can act in every person of high Christian merit. Awareness of one's openness to Him, of one's potentialities on the path to God, marked the most important milestone in the history of Christianity in Russia and raised the question of practical ways to embody these possibilities in one's own life, of a new personal responsibility for this incarnation.

This general context of spirituality in Russia in the fourteenth century makes it possible to return to the theme of Sergius' silence and, on the one hand, to emphasize the essence and meaning of this type of asceticism, i.e., to clarify the narrower, but also more tense and profound context of the phenomenon under consideration, and, on the other hand, on the contrary, to define an even broader, one might say, the broadest context of those that they were present in the "general" context of Russian spirituality in the fourteenth century, which was known in Russia and, of course, in Sergius himself, and could have exerted a certain influence (at least theoretically) on Sergius's choice.

Like apophasis, silence is the path to God, to His immediate proximity, the path of spiritual ascent (άνήβασις), in which all that is accidental, subjective, psychological, and cosmological in its contact with Divine oikonomia is successively removed. This purification, the devastation (κένоσις, cf. the kenotic type of holiness in Russia) of the image of God from everything superfluous, secondary, distracting from a genuine encounter with God, is at the same time the purification of oneself on the chosen path to God. In the non-strict approach, silence is placed in the same space as άπόφασις, but the latter is still a certain position, albeit a negative one, and moreover, it is not isolated from the linguistic form of expression. In this respect, silence is a more powerful means than the apophatic definition of God: it is precisely this that does not define God, but makes possible that spiritual growth which leads to prayerful deepening, to God.

The general context of Sergius' silence mentioned above presupposes, of course, that powerful spiritual movement among the Byzantine silent hesychasts, which, to a large extent, like that of its opponents, the Barlaamites, became responsible for the outbreak of the civil war that shook Byzantium from 1341 to 1347. Sergius of Radonezh was his younger contemporary, and it is in this connection that the question arises about the dependence of Sergius' practice of silence on the corresponding forms in Palamism, and in a broader sense, about the possibility of the influence of Byzantine, specifically Palamite, hesychasm on Sergius. Although Gregory Palamas was indeed the main figure of this movement, hesychasm in Byzantium did not begin with Palamas, and a certain tradition had already developed before Palamas. Gregory Palamas himself was undoubtedly influenced by his teachers, among whom are Gregory, Patriarch of Cyprus (1283-1289), and St. Theoliptus, Bishop of Philadelphia (died before 1327), to whom Palamas himself refers. If the influence of Gregory of Cyprus, in the opinion of one of the best specialists on hesychasm and on Gregory Palamas, "can be traced more in the field of theological formulations than in the spiritual plane" (Meyendorff 1997, 5), then the influence of Theoliptus was not only more significant, but also related to a more special field, namely, to hesychia itself. It is known that Theoliptus lived in a coenobitic monastery, but, however, he was also familiar with the tradition of hermit hesychasm, which, however, he did not treat "entirely favorably." Theoliptus was characterized by a sense of historical responsibility, rare among many of his contemporaries, who were not interested in anything but their inner perfection, for the historical fate of the Church, for its gathering into a whole, for its grace-filled unity, for the nourishment of the people, for whom he constantly prayed. The Bishop of Philadelphia repeatedly spoke out against internal strife in the Byzantine Church, and this combination of two ideas – the disastrous nature of strife and the gathering of the unity of the Church – can be considered with sufficient reason to be evidence of the same paradigm that would soon determine the behavior of Sergius of Radonezh, his attitude to that "hateful separateness of the world" that must be overcome by the gathering of spiritual forces in Russia in the name of their concord and unity.

The researcher of Palamism, emphasizing the presence in Theoliptus of "a subtle sense of local church unity and sacramental unity of the faithful," confirms this thesis with reference to the words of the saint himself:

"When they [the schismatics] joined you, the body of the Church grew, its members grew together into one whole [...]. The Church is being strengthened [...]; and Christ is seen as our only head, holding us with Himself and with each other by the union of one faith and one wisdom and one Church" ("The Word Spoken Before Philadelphia to the Most Christian Fulfillment...", sermon against the schismatic Arsenius, see Sinkewicz 1988, 70. 96–101, cf. Sinkewicz 1992).

"The Son of God became a sinless man for your sake, and by means of holy Baptism and the precious blood poured out on the cross, He recreated you [...] As a certain Paradise, He planted local churches and gathered us into them; but He established one Church in faith and wisdom [...] The trees [of these Gardens of Eden] are Orthodox pastors [...] sent by appointment [...] for them churches and placed for the enlightenment and prosperity of all Christians [...] the bishop is a mediator between God and people. For the people, he constantly sends up petitions, supplications, prayers, thanksgiving to God [...] If, however, the bread and wine offered by pious priests on the altar as gifts, transformed by the inspiration of the All-Holy Spirit, are truly the Body and Blood of Christ and are spoken, being priestly Orthodox faithful priests, then if anyone does not accept them, approaches them below, but denies communion with them, does he not reduce them to something filthy? […] Does he not bring down Christ to a mere man, like the Jews?" (Sinkewicz 1998, 56. 79–84 et al.; see also Meyendorff 1997, 15).

It is difficult to disagree with the opinion that "it is rare to find in Byzantine writers such a vivid in its sacramental essence exposition of Orthodox ecclesiology, the foundations of the hierarchical structure of the Church" and then – "The undoubted merit of St. Theoliptus lies in the inclusion of the spiritual tradition of the Eastern Christian mystics – often with a spiritualist bias – within the framework of Christocentric ecclesiology; it heralds the sacramental and theological renewal that we find in Saints Gregory Palamas and Nicholas Cabasilas" (Meyendorff 1997, 15).

Much in the texts of Theoliptus himself, and in the texts of researchers who studied him [410], makes it possible to reconstruct a religious type similar — ceteris paribus — to that which was revealed somewhat later by Sergius of Radonezh. Caution requires us to dwell on a more flexible conclusion: much in the teaching of Theoliptus is, in fact, very close to the mood of Sergius and to the very spirit of his religious work. At the same time, it must be remembered, of course, that, unlike Theoliptus, Sergius was not a theologian and had no inclination to write at all. His only known texts are oral, and they are conveyed in the Life only in a relatively authentic form. Finally, we have no information about Sergius' acquaintance with the ideas of Theoliptus and in general about the fame of this figure in Russia of the fourteenth century. In the end, however, all this is not an insurmountable obstacle, if only because the "Theoliptus" heritage was largely assimilated by Gregory Palamas, who in his "Triads" mentioned the name of Theoliptus with high reverence and deep gratitude. There can be no doubt that much of Theoliptus was also assimilated by Gregory Palamas [412].

There is no need here to speak in any detail about Gregory Palamas and Palamism, or in general about the hesychast movement in the fourteenth century, or to decide the question of whether Palamas was right or wrong in his theological debates with Barlaam.