Without questioning Sergius' well-known knowledge of Palamism, and admitting with good reason that Sergius could not have ignored the teaching, which in many respects corresponded both to the nature of his spiritual podvig and to the very spirit that determined his ascetic practice, we must nevertheless assume that there were other (and earlier) sources of Sergius' hesychia-silence.

First of all, in the tradition of asceticism in Russia, there are other examples of the feat of silence, noted, in particular, in the "Life" of Sergius (the example of Isaac is especially characteristic). This practice could also combine the Russian line of silence proper: it would be more cautious to say that there was a certain general tendency to cultivate this particular feat; In this sense, the Russian tradition reflects a fairly general type of asceticism, which, if it is not a typological universal, can perhaps be called "frequentalia" with some justification. Earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century, examples of silence in Russia may have reflected both its own tradition of this type of asceticism and the influence of pre-Palamite versions of hesychasm. The theme of silence was also known to Symeon the New Theologian († 1032) [423], whose name is associated with the doctrine of the heavenly illumination of the soul, which later led to disputes between the Palamites and the Barlaamites [424].

Sergius grew up in a pious family and in early childhood learned about his predestination to God and accepted it as a sign of fate. This personal, individual aspiration of Sergius explains his amazing receptivity to the sphere of the spiritual, the divine: like a sponge, he absorbs everything that strengthens him on the chosen path, and assimilates it to himself. Bearing in mind the high social position of Father Sergius under the Rostov prince, one can think that his father also communicated with clergymen of the corresponding rank and was aware of religious life in Russia and those processes that were gaining momentum (wilderness dwelling, etc.), which were a new phenomenon on such a scale. In any case, the atmosphere in the family and, apparently, around it was undoubtedly favorable for religious upbringing: it cannot be explained by chance that both Sergius' brother Stephen and the latter's son Theodore, the nephew of the monk, left a very noticeable mark in the history of the Church.

But the change in the social status of his father, the impoverishment of the family, and the general hardships of life at that time also pushed Sergius to leave the world: he was ready to wait, but nothing could change his decision. Later, when he became an interlocutor of Metropolitan Alexis, the space of what was happening in the religious life of Byzantium was greatly expanded for Sergius, and he could not ignore the new trends that shook Byzantium and resonated not only there, but also among the South Slavs and in Russia. It can be assumed that in the second half of the 1840s and early 1850s, "his own" (in particular, his silence) was combined with what he learned about the contemporary Palamite experience in Byzantium and among the South Slavs. Both of them, apparently, came into agreement and formed a single whole, where there was no place for discord and contradictions – it was this feature that was the foundation of Sergius's religious genius. And it seems that everything worked for the good – its own tradition and novelty in Byzantine theology and ascetic experience of the fourteenth century, deep intuition and amazing spiritual insights, revelations of the future and the depths of religious consciousness and, of course, the mind. Of course, in the system of religious values of the Sergius epoch and his own religious consciousness, reason, logic, and science were put under a certain doubt, and faith, religious intuition, and revelation were valued higher.

But Sergius – it seems that no one talks about this and, perhaps, does not even notice it – possessed an unusually sober and practically oriented mind – a mind that was not seduced by speculations, did not strive for the sophistication of mental constructions, but knew its place and its limits, and understood that, having been introduced into a fairly rigid framework, it could also be a help in his working path. In a word, Sergius was not a religious radical here either: he did not treat either his mind or his body as enemies, but he knew that temptation came through them and they needed to be protected. It can be thought that it is precisely the intellect and its sobriety that explain much in this ability of Sergius to harmonize the results of the activity of the body, heart, soul, and spirit, taking from each of them what it can give on the path to God, and discarding what it can complicate this path. But this ability to reconcile is extremely far from compromise, unless we are talking about mundane, everyday conflicts or actions explained by ambition and ambition (as in the case of Stephen, when Sergius preferred a silent departure, without a single reproach or justification), to clarifications and explanations). On the path to God, concord is that highest simplicity, the highest wholeness, without which life in God is generally unrealizable, it is the overcoming of "bad" multiplicity and, above all, anthropological dualism, the struggle against which is a characteristic feature of the work of Gregory Palamas, which is quite fully reflected in his texts. In this connection, and summing up what has been said so far, it is necessary to once again mention those common features that were shared by Sergius of Radonezh and Gregory Palamas: in the former in the experience of the podvig of life, in the latter in his ascetic practice and in his theology. At the same time, it is necessary to remember the difference that exists between the outstanding theological writer and polygistor Gregory Palamas and Sergius of Radonezh, who left behind no texts and about whom everything we know is drawn from his "Life", the author of which, apparently, was completely devoid of interest in theological problems, in the dogmatics of Christianity, in that "conceptual" which lives primarily by the practice of the real. everyday religious experience. But, fortunately, the same author has given a detailed account of the life of Sergius, and his story, in combination with other early sources relating to the monk, provides grounds for a number of reconstructions or, at least, assumptions with a high degree of probability. It is only necessary to emphasize that the theme of the common between Gregory Palamas and Sergius in no way excludes the specifics of the individual and personal in each of them. It should also be remembered that, in accordance with the above description of these common features, its language itself is necessarily more oriented towards Gregory Palamas and the sources of our knowledge of him connected with him.

First of all, both Gregory and Sergius shared as a common mysterious feeling of God, the striving for God "with all the strength of the soul, without mortifying anything natural in it" (Bibikhin 1995, 362) and life in Him, "a bold confession of love for God." It is very likely that the prayer practice of Gregory Palamas and Sergius of Radonezh itself was close both in its "psychophysical" features, and in the nature of prayerful contemplation, which presupposes the descent of the mind into the heart ("mental prayer"), and in its content, the direct vision of the uncreated light (the two visions of Sergius noted in the Life provide grounds for such an assumption). Also, proceeding from the general context and a number of details, most often indirect (because direct evidence in the "Life" would be difficult to expect), it can be assumed that Sergius shared with Palamas the attitude to the body, to the very problem of the dualism of soul and body: it seems that, struggling with evil thoughts and temptations emanating from the body, Sergius also remembered the "common action" of the soul and body. when the former "raises the flesh to spiritual dignity, taking the flesh with it upward," when the action is directed not from the body to the mind, but from the mind to the heart. The moderate asceticism of Sergius, coupled with his general severe severity and sobriety, allows us to think that the very absence of evidence of the physical, even "mechanical" mortification of the flesh in the ascetic practice of Sergius cannot but assume that he struggled with bodily thoughts and temptations in a different way – by mental prayer, spiritual contemplation. It was they who were the allies and the main weapon of Sergius, thanks to whom he not only withstood the terrible demonic temptations, but also, having emerged victorious from this struggle, having freed himself from the darkness that surrounded him, he went out into the space where he was a witness to the uncreated light that the apostles had seen on Tabor on the day of the Transfiguration.

The above-mentioned severe austerity as a kind of "grand style" of Christianity of the fourteenth century in Byzantium and Russia, opposed to the excess of official pomp and the rhetoric accompanying it, having a certain moral position behind it and, as it were, expanding the circle of asceticism practiced, also manifests itself in the phenomenon that in Russia was called "non-acquisitiveness." It is well known that the Byzantine Palamites had a positive attitude towards the confiscation of monastic (and even ecclesiastical) possessions and valuables and their transfer to the state. The "non-acquisitiveness" of Sergius, and of Sergius personally, can hardly be questioned either (cf. in the "Word of Praise": "But this is the greatest acquisition of true non-acquisitiveness and namelessness, and wealth is spiritual poverty"), and the only thing that can be the subject of discussion is what the position of the monk would have been if he had lived 20-30 years longer. The tendency to acquire both in monasteries and in churches, of course, existed before Sergius and, apparently, partly in his time (although more likely in the old "pre-Sergius" monasteries, and not in the newly created monasteries of Sergius' disciples). And the question is formulated only in this way —

It can only be noted that both trends, which already in the fifteenth century associated themselves with the solution of the problem of monastic property, either did not remain faithful to the Gospel precepts of Christ, or did not offer a solution adequate to the trends of the time and its challenges. The "Josephites" who gathered around Joseph of Volotsk undoubtedly did not hold on to the moral and religious height assumed by Christian doctrine, and entered into a dangerous connection with the secular authorities, which threatened the Church with the infringement of her sovereignty, "worldly" captivity, the tragedy of Russian holiness and, consequently, the living spirit of Christianity. The "Trans-Volga elders" and their spiritual leader Nil Sorsky, faithfully following the precepts of Christ [426], in fact, were unable to give an answer to the question of what the ever-increasing monasteries and brethren should do in the proposed circumstances of Russia in the second half of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This problem of "what monasteries should do" was not invented or purely theoretical: it demanded a timely answer, because in the absence of it a natural spontaneous process would have begun, which would have led to what the "policy" and practice of Joseph of Volotsk and his associates had led to, or even to the unleashing of those chaotic forces that would inevitably have gone out of the control of the Church. and perhaps of state power. It is difficult to say what Sergius's potential solution would have been in these circumstances, but neither of the two proposed ("realistic" and "romantic") seems to have received his approval. However, the essential in this case common feature of the "non-acquisitiveness" of Gregory Palamas and Sergius of Radonezh is beyond doubt, just as there is no place for it in the assumption that the very idea of non-acquisitiveness is only an organic product of deeper moral and religious characteristics common to both figures under consideration. Mystical sojourn with God and in God is only the most general designation of this "Palamite-Sergius" commonality.

Something in the field of this "common" can also be expanded and supplemented by turning to the point of view of the opponents of Gregory Palamas at the Council of Constantinople of 1351, where the few of the "anti-Palamite" bishops who remained at large also received the floor. As could be expected, the battle could have been given in connection with a change in the text of the episcopal form of confession of faith and, accordingly, the service itself. It is also known that a particularly sharp rejection was caused by the Trinitarian troparion, the author of which was Isidore [427]. In addition, the hesychasts and Gregory Palamas himself were accused of "disrespect for holy icons, sacred vessels and other Christian deanery." Of course, even in this conflict there is already a noticeable taste of the controversy that was assumed by the disputes between the "acquirers" and the "non-possessors". But the conflict was not limited to this side of the matter. A modern researcher has rightly seen something else behind this conflict:

In addition, behind the crude and obviously unjust reproach of burning icons, there was also a deeper unconscious basis, which could only be clearly formulated by Nicephorus Gregoras: in his opinion, if God's energies deify not only the mind, the inner man, but also the external flesh, then the body of the saint is thereby excluded from the natural order of nature and can no longer be depicted as such. By the action of uncreated energies, the earthly flesh itself is "burned", as it were, it leaves the visible world, escapes the ordinary gaze. The reproach of "oikonomachy" from this standpoint, at first glance convincing, in reality only testified to the fact that hesychasm spoke with a new acuteness about the mystery of the Incarnation brought to the world by Christianity.

(Bibikhin 1995, 367).

But the same mystery of the Incarnation reveals itself in the Trinitarian idea (the Life-Giving Trinity itself is "the Incarnation of God, redemption", see Bulgakov 1991, 363) of Sergius of Radonezh, and in the experiments of iconographers, both Russian and Greek, in Russia, and above all in Andrei Rublev's "Trinity" (see Appendix IV). Since any incarnation is the creativity in which Sophia the Wisdom, the assistant and accomplice of the artist, participates, and which by its nature is artistic creativity, it acquires weight and endowment with the feeling of artistic, Sophia, and Gregory Palamas and Sergius of Radonezh. However, this is a special topic, and here we can confine ourselves to the fact that for both of these saints, the "artistically marked" are first of all the Psalms of David, independently of each other constantly quoted.

But, of course, the most important common heritage of Gregory Palamas and Sergius of Radonezh is silence and the Trinitarian idea. But the first, hesychia, has already been spoken of more than once and in some detail above in relation to Sergius (but not only to him). There is an extensive literature on the hesychia of Palamas and the hesychasts, and it is enough to refer the reader to a fundamental study of the life and works of St. Gregory Palamas — Meyendorff 1997. The spiritual situation was also indicated above, when there is a need to turn to hesychia, and when it turns out to be the most adequate response to this situation, if you will, its only solution for man, when he, almost like the God of the Old Testament, bears witness to that absolute truth, which is understood as a good that coincides with being, which is, rather, even super-being ("over-being"). its successful essence, cf. J.-Heb. *es(u), equally denoting both good and being-being: "And God saw all that he had created [i.e., the fullness of that which is and that which alone is and is important now, at any rate more important than how it was created. — V. T.], and behold, it is very good" (Genesis 1:31) [428]. This "being-good" or "good-being" present in the act of genuine creativity (and the hesychia of the "sacredly silent" is the podvig which, bringing us as close to God as possible, reveals this "good-being"), can reveal itself precisely as the fullness of the present, as an all-vision, and as an experience of the moment of revelation. M. Buber wrote about this connection between silence-hesychia and creativity in a different context: