Chapter 1. Centers of Orthodox Monastic Spirituality, Their Origin and Continuity

The Sinaitic-Athonite Movement of the XIV Century

The history of mankind, like the history of the individual, in its deepest ontological essence is an unceasing struggle against the enemy of the human race, a struggle which, having begun with the fall of the first people, will continue until the end of time. To those who struggle in this invisible battle by the good fight of faith, the all-merciful Lord tirelessly sends His help. He generously pours out the grace of the Holy Spirit, which has been and is in the Church founded by Jesus Christ. Thanks to the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, the Church becomes the Kingdom of God on earth, where the communion of its members with God takes place. To unite people with God in grace-filled unity through life according to the law of the Gospel is the most essential purpose of the Church. Unity with God, which begins in the process of cleansing from sinfulness and consists in the deification of all human nature, is uninterruptedly and unswervingly accomplished in all generations of Christians up to our days. The true life of the Church was realized where there was an ardent striving for the Christian ideal through the strict fulfillment of the Gospel commandments. At every time in the history of the Church, there have been Christians who have realized this ideal. Following the indicated path of salvation, they gained experience in great struggles with their fallen nature and, receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit from God, attained holiness. The highest intensity of their spiritual life, their zeal for God and grace gathered around them a multitude of those who sought experienced and divinely enlightened teachers and guides for salvation and the highest grace-filled enlightenment. Thus arose communities, settlements of monks, united by the salvific ideas and rules of the ascetic life of their elder-teacher. Over time, they grew into large monasteries, known for their traditions and statutes approved by the holy founders. Monasteries became centers of spiritual life, exerted a huge moral, educational and cultural influence on the life of contemporary society. In addition, they worked out everything necessary for the leadership of both their own and subsequent generations into the Kingdom of God [71, p. 80].If we trace the emergence and activity of such monastic centers, we can see that most of them have a close spiritual successive connection with each other. A great grace-filled elder, appearing as a luminary in the Christian horizon, enlightened a multitude of disciples with the knowledge of mental work and taught his methods of asceticism. His disciples, strictly following his instructions, eventually grew to the measure of their teacher, and often successively received spiritual gifts from him. With the blessing of the holy elder or after his death, they often left the places of their upbringing and growth in search of a place more convenient for higher ascetic deeds and inner prayer. But with the arrival of their disciples, their shelters turned into sketes and even into large monasteries. Now, they, in turn, passed on to their disciples those traditions and laws of monastic activity that they had learned from their elder. Living succession has maintained genuine spirituality and traditions throughout the history of the Orthodox Church.The concentration of spiritual potential that arose around monastic centers and its movement by virtue of their continuity took place both in time and in space.However, such centers of spirituality were created not only by disciples who received their teaching directly from their elders. We can name a number of monasteries founded by famous saints, about the succession of which we can say nothing. In all likelihood, this cannot be done due to the lack of information. But at the same time we must not forget about the existence of an inner connection between the saints, about the emergence of kinship in spirit between people brought up in the same concepts of Christianity, taught by the works of the same holy fathers and nourished by the same grace-filled church sacraments. This bond is especially strong when their inner success and growth are the same. All this speaks of a deep movement in the mysterious body of the Church, inspired by the one Holy Spirit. Its simultaneous appearance in Orthodox countries testifies to the catholic unity of the church body.One of the centers from which a new wave of spiritual and cultural revival emanated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was Holy Mount Athos. Here, at that time, a powerful Sinaitic-Athonite movement was born, which caused a spiritual uplift. It is named after its founder, St. Gregory the Sinaite, and after the place of its origin. This movement, which began with an appeal to the origins of Orthodox spirituality and the renewal of ancient monastic traditions, gave rise to a whole religious-cultural current, known in history as "hesychasm". The hesychast movement, spreading widely throughout the Balkan and South Slavic countries, exerted a great influence not only on morality, but also on other spheres of life and activity of human society.St. Gregory of Sinai, thanks to his asceticism, became the founder of the spiritual succession that arose, laid the foundation for a whole genealogy of hesychasts, and his spiritual descendants can undoubtedly be found at the present time. The genealogical tree of the Sinaitic saints is extraordinarily large and has many branches. These are, first of all, direct disciples, of whom the holy Patriarch Kallistos speaks in the Life of the Monk Gregory; then his followers, about whom we are informed by some lives of saints of that time and documents of a historical nature; and finally, the pious folk and monastic tradition, which preserved the memory of the monks-Sinaites. The activity of St. Gregory the Sinaite and his spiritual successors not only revived the ancient monastic traditions of inner work, but it was the root of a colossal genealogical tree of monasteries that arose in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and lived in the spirit of their founding father. In this regard, they also became centers of enlightenment and bookishness, where patristic works and church literature were copied and translated. The dormitories of the hesychasts were also unifying cultural and spiritual centers. The main force connecting these monasteries was their teaching, which fully served the pan-Orthodox goals – the unity of all Orthodox Christians. One of the most significant centers of this kind, which contributed to spiritual and cultural communication and the unification of the Slavs and Greeks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were Mount Athos and Constantinople [118, p. 15]. Such communication between the Byzantines and the Slavs became the basis for cooperation in the field of culture, art, etc. Researchers note the role of St. Gregory and his disciples in this process [54, p. 127]. Centers of Byzantine-Slavic communication and cooperation existed in the lands of the Slavic peoples, and primarily in the South Slavic countries. As a rule, these were the monasteries of hesychast monks of Slavic and Byzantine origin. "Especially for the XIV century, the monasteries of Bulgaria should be especially noted," says Academician D. Likhachev. "Especially noteworthy in this respect is the Paroria monastery, from where the teaching of the hesychasts was intensively spread both to Bulgaria and to Serbia" [69, p. 15].In the second half of the fourteenth century, after the death of the Monk Gregory the Sinaite, the hesychast monks were forced to leave the Paroria hermitage in view of the impending Turkish conquest. Leaving the walls of the monastery, they took with them the spirit and teachings of its founder, the great Sinaite. The hermits founded or renewed monasteries in other desert places, and there they preached sacred silence and taught it.Some of the disciples remained in the Kilifarevo monastery with St. Theodosius of Tarnovo, while others moved along the Danube to Cherven, to the mountains of Madara. Many cells and several churches were built there. At that time, as the researchers note, "the Bulgarian Thebaids, located along the course of the Rusenka and Cherny Lom rivers, on the slope of the Shumen and Provadia plateaus, in the rocks of Madara and near Varna, experienced a special flourishing" [39, p. 381]. Some of these monasteries in their educational activity [71, p. 80] turned into large centers of spirituality and laid the foundation for the revival of Orthodoxy and the rise of spiritual life both in individual countries and in entire regions. "Serbian and Bulgarian education," notes A. A. Tikhomirov, "developed strongly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in spite of, or rather, in spite of, the difficult political situation of these countries, which resisted Turkish aggression" [117, p. 44]. And this turned out to be possible thanks to the spiritual revival of the entire Orthodox East, the impetus for which was the hesychast movement.

Western Renaissance and Orthodox Revival

Before talking about the main revivers and bearers of hesychasm in the fourteenth century, such as St. Gregory the Sinaite and his spiritual successors, it is necessary to give some characteristics of their epoch and the mentality of their contemporaries. have had a strong impact on subsequent generations. This connection of the centuries with the XIV century is of great interest to researchers, especially in recent years. The XIV century in the history of mankind was marked by extreme instability, social instability, sharp political and ideological struggle. Characterizing this period, G. M. Prokhorov says: "In the history of European public consciousness, the fourteenth century completes the thousand-year reign of medieval values. The Renaissance was coming, the revival of pagan antiquity in its self-consciousness, the dialectical conclusion of the European Middle Ages in the internal logic of its development. The God-Man as the highest "reigning" value in society was pressed by Man, the State, and the People" [91, p. 3]. The desire to restore pagan antiquity inevitably led to an ideological crisis, the hotbed of which in the Eastern European Orthodox countries was Byzantium. "The ideological crisis, in the course of which the revision of its culture took place in Byzantium, was," says G. M. Prokhorov, "a clash of two differently directed individualistic currents (emphasis added). — I.P.): rationalistic humanism and contemplative hesychasm" [91, p. 4].This clash was expressed in the hesychastic disputes that took place in the 30s-60s of the XIV century in Byzantium. Modern scientists come to the conclusion that they laid the foundation for a new era in the life of mankind. Hence such a close interest in all the processes that took place at that time. The new era, according to scientists, is characterized by the emergence of two spiritual and cultural trends with their own ideas about the purpose and purpose of man. The Hesychast disputes, according to G. M. Prokhorov, "were the point of meeting and divergence of the two European Renaissances (emphasis added). — I.P.) at the very beginning of their journey" [91, p. 8]. Each of them had its own path of movement: one went along a non-ecclesiastical channel and became known in history as the Western European Renaissance; the other, the Orthodox Renaissance, moved along the ecclesiastical path. Periods of revival have repeatedly taken place at various stages of human history, since all Renaissance phenomena, no matter how different they may be from one another in their external manifestation, have "a single core—an interest in the human personality" [132, p. 6]. The presence of this interest and its intensity determine the emergence of Renaissance phenomena. "If we make global generalizations, we will see that everyone is social. The organism has two poles: on one of them are the interests of the individual, the indivisible; on the other, the interests of society, of the whole. The interaction between them determines the dynamics of social life. The dominance of the individual creates favorable conditions for spiritual and cultural upliftment, but ultimately weakens the whole. The predominance of the whole allows society and the state to overcome crisis phenomena and act as a monolithic force outside, but this situation hinders the development of internal creative forces and gradually leads to stagnation and decline. Looking at the evolution of human civilization from this point of view, it is easy to notice its cyclicality, conditioned by the alternation of personal and transpersonal, substantial phases" [132, p. 7]. If we correlate personal phases with the epochs of the Renaissance, then we can identify a certain pattern. Thanks to the cyclical nature of human development, thanks to the constant appeal to the past, humanity gets the opportunity to find answers to the painful questions of its time. It is not surprising that in the 20th century, interest in the Renaissance and their origins increased significantly. What are their prerequisites? The fourteenth century was a century of intense struggle between the West and the East. "In the fourteenth century, Europe was cut from north to south, from Scandinavia to the island of Crete, by a clearly visible front line, over which Catholic banners fluttered," writes G. M. Prokhorov. "The period of the Crusades in the Middle East ended, and the time of struggle against Eastern European pagans and 'schismatics' began" [95: p. 8; cf. 128: p. 9]. The papal curia became the ideological center of the attacking side. In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed that "every human being is subject to the Roman high priest" [cited by: 95, p. 89]. Catholics took this statement as a program of action.By the fourteenth century, philosophical differences between East and West were also clearly outlined. The Western philosophical tradition has tried to construct a comprehensible, understandable plan of the universe. At the same time, an antagonistic opposition of thought and feeling was outlined in it. Greek and Byzantine philosophy, on the other hand, strove for synthesis, strove "to feel every thought and to think over every feeling—and this is not separately, not in turn, but at once. This is precisely where the main feature lies: not thought and feeling in their European antagonism, but a merged feeling-thought transmitted in a living tradition. In accordance with this, the Greeks believed that the mind draws strength from the heart" [95, pp. 90-91].Thanks to this understanding, the preaching of hesychasm with the method of attention and mental action fell on the prepared ground and was easily perceived. The hesychasts became the spokesmen of Byzantine public opinion and gave the last creative synthesis of its traditional culture. The broad cultural and social movement they initiated led to the renewal of the spiritual life of medieval society and the revival of Orthodoxy throughout Eastern Europe. The hesychastic teaching consistently and convincingly reveals the essence of Orthodoxy. "The mystical and antinomic teaching of the hesychasts was the antithesis of Thomism, the official ideology of Rome, and from this point of view the hesychastic disputes marked a deeper watershed between the two faiths than the conflicts of the times of the Constantinople patriarchs Photius and Michael Cerularius" [133: p. 293]. It was for this reason that the hesychasts were attacked by the Roman Catholics, although there seemed to be no visible, external reasons for this. This also gave rise to a different orientation in the development of Christian cultures. As the priest Igor Ekonomtsev says, "two poles have formed: on one (Eastern Christianity. — I.P.) there is a creative person who creates in synergy with God; on the other (Western Christianity. — I.P.) — a person who dares to create independently" [132, p. 9].Thus, in the fourteenth century, in the era of instability, social instability and all kinds of disorders, ideological and political struggle, the individual comes to the fore. "The fourteenth century is anthropocentric. Its representatives cannot be divided into humanists and non-humanists. At that time everyone was humanists" [132, p. 9]. But, of course, the humanism of the representatives of the Western Renaissance and Orthodox hesychasm was different. Byzantine hesychasts and rational humanists were opponents and understood many important things differently, but they solved the same problems, spoke the same language, and the focus of attention of both was the human being. In this sense, the concept of "Christian humanism" is applicable to hesychasm. "Byzantine hesychasts and humanists (of the Western persuasion. — I.P.) argued not about abstrusely abstract philosophical-scholastic propositions, but about the nature of man" [75, p. 305]. The division of Christian cultures paved the way for the emergence of rationalistic humanism. Its main feature, according to V. Velchev, is "anthropocentrism as the beginning of opposition to the theocentrism of the medieval religious worldview" [48, p. 244]. Interest is transferred to man in his isolation from God. The emphasis is placed on the self-consciousness of man, on confidence in his self-worth, in his ontological and moral autonomy and independence in relation to the super-earthly forces standing outside him. From this follows the secularization of thought, the desire to realize knowledge only with one's own reason and to create without divine participation.Rationalist humanism also determined a new attitude to nature, which was expressed in an increased interest in the natural sciences based on experience and reason.Further, rationalist humanism, which was the basis of the Western Renaissance, is also characterized by a peculiar attitude to the past: the exaltation of ancient, classical Greco-Roman antiquity. Thus, for example, one of the founders of the Western Renaissance, Dante, Alighieri, introduced into a new circulation the ancient ancient idea, which later became "the vital nerve of all the activity of humanists, who with tireless inspiration inspired and for a long time assimilated it to the world. This is the thought of posthumous glory" [130, p. 17]. Dante developed a theory of glory that has survived to this day. A poet, according to him, can immortalize himself with his creations, he can immortalize others, mentioning them in his works. This illusion of immortality was contrasted by Western humanists with the real immortality promised by Christ after the general resurrection, of which the Church speaks.The successor of Dante's ideas was Francesco Petrarch, who became the main figure of the Western Renaissance. He "introduced the principle of humanism into the intellectual ferment of the new world. Petrarch not only showed the way to humanism, but also followed it to the end" [130, p. 23]. Mastering the ancient pagan worldview, Petrarch also developed his own, on which he mainly relied in his polemical writings. Following his principle of humanism, Petrarch manifested himself in various spheres of human life and activity, and everywhere in his isolation and even opposition to the God-established path. "His intellectual activity and propaganda of purely spiritual aspirations," says G. Voigt, "are indefinable, there is something demonic in them" [130, p. 68].Petrarch and his like-minded person Boccaccio did not ignore the issues of aesthetics and music. Under their influence, in the fourteenth century, the principle of Renaissance aesthetics was gradually laid, and the connection of music with pleasure and pleasure was asserted.All the principles of the new art were dictated only by "the needs of sensory perception, which requires a variety of consonances, rhythms, duration of tones, etc. This new aesthetic principle becomes dominant, it determines the development of musical theory" [131, p. 132]. As a result, the art of music, instead of helping man in his ascent to God, becomes the greatest obstacle on this path and begins to serve only the passions.The ideas of rationalistic humanism spread in Byzantium as well, but, not finding sufficiently favorable soil there, they took root poorly. With the victory of hesychasm, the weak sprouts of the Western Renaissance were suppressed, but not completely eradicated. Byzantine adherents of humanism emigrated to the West, where they found their active supporters. Having suffered defeat in polemics with the hesychasts from Saint Gregory Palamas, Barlaam also went to Italy. There he taught Greek to Petrarch, and was later ordained bishop by the Pope. As we can see, rationalist humanism in the Balkans differed from Western European humanism not so much in essence as in degree.The beginning and development of rationalist humanism in the Balkans is associated with Theodore Metochytes, Nicephorus Humnus, and Georgius Gemistos Pletho. They are very characterized by ambition, love for their creations, adherence to the idea of immortality, acquired by literary fame. For example, Humn wrote in one of his letters: "There is nothing in the world that I would prefer to literary fame" [quoted by: 74, p. 23]. Metochytes is often called "the predecessor of humanism in Byzantium" [74, p. 7]. In the treatise "Ethikos, or On Education", Metochit glorified the beauty of life in science, defining mental work as the highest form of pleasure. He called on scientists "in the name of science (but not in the name of God! — I.P.) renounce worldly cares and family life" [74, p. 23].In this regard, the personality and mentality of Pletho are interesting, who, although he lived after the hesychastic disputes, continued to struggle with hesychasm. In the end, he came to fight Christianity. George Scholarius (later Patriarch Gennadius) noted "that over Pletho even before he was perfected in reason... Hellenic ideas prevailed to such an extent that he cared little for the study of the Christian teachings of his ancestors. Naturally, because of the shortcomings of Divine grace and thanks to the participation of demons, his inclination to constant error increased, as was the case with Julian and other apostates" [74, p. 39]. As a result, he began to study with the Jewish Kabbalist Elisha, who expounded to him the teachings of Zoroaster and the Chaldean oracles. Under his influence, he wrote his main work, in which he showed the pinnacle of his philosophical thought. It was a large anti-Christian treatise "Laws". Around 1460-1465, Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius burned this treatise. He considered it a socially harmful and unnecessary institution, since monks are not engaged in social production, and therefore do not participate in the creation of social wealth. At the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439), where he arrived with the Greeks, he asserted that "in a few years the whole world, as it were, will be possessed by one and the same religion... Both Islam and Christianity will fall, and the true truth will shine to the extreme ends of the earth" [cited by: 74, p. 78]. Thus, "the maximum program of Pletho and his associates was the abolition of Christianity and the establishment of a new religious cult, pagan in its basis," as I. P. Medvedev asserts [74, p. 87]. Pletho's followers multiplied and developed his ideas. With their migration to the West, they organically joined the ranks of the Italian humanists, mixed with them and dissolved in their midst, fully realizing their aspirations. The direction of these aspirations is unambiguous. Tearing man away from God as his Creator, they locked him in time and in themselves, thereby depriving him of personal immortality, destroying the innate need of each person – the God-given desire for eternity. "The Church Revival gave the Greeks, Slavs, and Romanians during five hundred years of slavery to resist the colossal Turkish pressure internally," writes G. M. Prokhorov. Reserves for such a confrontation were found in the Church. "Man did not want to admit the impossibility of communion with God... People wanted not only intellectually, but with all their being, in the flesh, to penetrate into the Kingdom of Heaven. For these people, the "eschatological future" was already a reality, fully anticipated in the Church and therefore in the spiritual experience of Christians. This anticipation meant the sanctification of the material as a sphere of manifestation and as an inevitable component of the personality, the human person, the individuality capable of becoming "God by grace" [91, p. 14]. Thus, in the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy, the opposition of spirit and matter was overcome. The hesychastic controversies prompted the Church to more fully reveal the Orthodox teaching on the deification of man, to give a theological justification for the need to enlighten man with the Holy Spirit.The hesychast movement called on the whole of society to become partakers of the Divine light, and "the abyss between the monastery and the world was overcome. The figure of the anchorite-ascetic turned out to be not peripheral, but central, pivotal in culture. The fugitives from the 'world' took upon themselves the task of telling the world about peace" [122: p. 127].Thus, the hesychasm movement, which gave rise to the Orthodox Renaissance, also gave rise to the famous hesychastic disputes, in which the Eastern worldview clashed with the Western one. The controversy concerned the very essence of Christian anthropology—the deification of man. The understanding of this question by Eastern Orthodoxy, or hesychastic humanists, whose main representative was the disciple of St. Gregory the Sinaite, St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and by the Western humanists who were nourished by the philosophical Hellenic heritage, headed by Barlaam and Akindynos, were different. This difference marked the beginning of two opposite paths of development of culture, art, etc. Eastern Orthodoxy oriented man to live relying on God's help, to strive for unity with God, to achieve in this world the transformation of the perishable into the incorruptible. In this way, it contributed to the widening of the abyss between God and man.The term "hesychasm" was previously applied only to the theological disputes that took place in Byzantium in the fourteenth century. However, in recent years it has been used more widely in accordance with the influence of hesychasm on various aspects of life: politics, economics, art, etc. [see: 75, pp. 292-295]. In application to Christian ascetics, this term is found from the IV century. Initially, hesychasm was one of the spiritual trends of Eastern contemplative monasticism, which arose at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth centuries in Egypt, Palestine and Asia Minor.The etymology of the word "hesychia" indicates the ascetic ideal of a solitary hermit's life, a form of asceticism that is different from the coenobitic active trend based on the principle of obedience and strict observance of monastic discipline, work and prayer life. The Hesychast devoted himself entirely to mental activity, contemplation and prayerful union with God.The Athonite ascetics of the fourteenth century used the word "hesychia" to refer to their sublime prayerful and contemplative practice associated with mental work, or the Jesus Prayer. But since contemplation is preceded by the initial preparatory stages of ascetic activity, which consist in purification from sinful passions, the concept of "hesychasm" began to be defined as a teaching about the integral path of ascetics, beginning with an active life and ending with a contemplative one. "Hesychia," says V. N. Lossky, "is a properly Christian expression of impassibility, when activity and contemplation are considered not as two different ways of life, but, on the contrary, merge in the realization of mental activity" [quoted by: 122, p. 112].In connection with the unity of the spiritual path, the expression of which was hesychasm, it is necessary to clarify the understanding of the terms "asceticism" and "mysticism" and to clarify their interrelation, since these concepts are often used by researchers of the hesychastic teaching. The hesychastic path of spiritual work is conventionally divided into two periods: 1) active asceticism, purification from passions, and 2) grace-filled contemplation. To the first period, or act, corresponds the concept of "asceticism," and to the second, "mysticism." It should be noted that the word "mysticism" is absent in the language of the Holy Fathers of the Ancient Church. This word began to be used in the Western Christian world at a later time, and if it is used now in Orthodoxy, then it usually corresponds, according to the definition of Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern), "the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, the striving for a charismatic mood" [61, p. 111].The concept of qewria in the epoch under consideration, the fourteenth century, began to be used in a clearly differentiated way: on the one hand, it is the mustikh qewria of the hesychast-Palamists with all the features and signs of Christian mysticism; On the other hand, it is the qewria of humanists as a scientific, theoretical, philosophical cognition of reality. In the latter sense, the word "theory" is used mainly at the present time [74, p. 95; cf. 30, p. 50].According to the teaching of the hesychasts, action (praxiz) always precedes contemplation (qewria) and serves as a preparation for it. Consequently, mysticism is not a special spiritual path, different from asceticism, independent of it. Mysticism is a special state of grace, which is attained on the path of strict asceticism. It is inseparable from asceticism and requires ascetic preparation. Mysticism stems from asceticism and is closely connected with it. The state of contemplation, of mystical illumination, is not directly proportional to ascetic podvig. In this, too, one can see the peculiarity of the Orthodox understanding of both the human will and the will of God. God sends down His grace to man not according to the measure of his merits, but according to the spiritual receptivity of the ascetic. The active path exists only in order to prepare for the reception of grace, for contemplation. It is in grace that the highest perfection and the desired unity with God are contained, which man was deprived of in the Fall.Revive the teaching of the ancient Church Fathers and restore the only true understanding of the relationship between man and God – the creature and the Creator – the hesychasts also gave the only true understanding of the essence of God. In general, it consists of the following:In God, first of all, it is always necessary to distinguish His essence from His manifestation.The energy of the Godhead is uncreated, as is His essence.The distinction between the essence and the manifestation of the Godhead does not introduce complexity into the concept of God.The word "Godhead" is applied not only to the essence of God, but also to His energies.The essence is higher than its manifestation, as the cause is higher than the effect.The essence of God is transcendent to the created world (outside the world), and therefore is inaccessible to knowledge by man, who can know God only in His manifestations – His grace, power, love, wisdom, etc. The practical activity of the hesychasts with such theoretical premises consisted in mental activity, that is, in the fulfillment of the Gospel commandment of unceasing prayer (cf. Luke 18:1; 1 Thess. 5:17). The unceasing Jesus Prayer cleanses a person from every kind of spiritual corruption caused by the Fall, and makes him capable of spiritual transformation and of receiving Divine grace, opening up before him the possibility of ascending to the highest level of perfection and the desired unity with God. Thus, in the center of hesychastic work are the human person and the mystery of his union with God. The deification of the human personality that takes place in this process is the foundation and beginning of the transfiguration of all mankind and the entire universe.The founder of hesychasm is sometimes considered to be St. Symeon the New Theologian, who lived in the eleventh century. As is known, he was the first to clearly expound the doctrine of contemplation of God. But hesychasm was not something new even at that time. This direction of the spiritual experience of Orthodoxy was originally known in the Church, for its beginning dates back to the time of the emergence of Christianity. Hesychasm is nothing other than the teaching about the spiritual life in the Orthodox Church. Following this teaching, an innumerable multitude of ascetics attained holiness and blessed unity with the Lord. The main merit of the hesychasts of the fourteenth century and their teachers is that they reminded us of the forgotten path of knowledge of God and communion with God, expounded it in a harmonious, systematic form, and were able to draw a multitude of followers and supporters onto the God-given paths. p. 90; 54, p. 127], the leader of the ascetics of his epoch [66, p. 68] and the main founder of the great Orthodox Renaissance [45, p. 11]. Such a high assessment of the activities of Gregory the Sinaite is not accidental. Although he was not the only teacher of hesychasm of his time, his role and significance in the hesychastic movement are great. "The Monk Gregory," writes P. A. Syrcu, "was a strong nature, endowed to the highest degree with all the qualities of the soul, in order to become a preacher and disseminator of his idea and to inspire his interlocutor with complete faith in it, for he himself was completely imbued with it" [112: p. 76]. as the creator of the school of hesychastic work sometimes leads to a misunderstanding of the essence of this phenomenon. Proceeding from erroneous assumptions, critics of the Eastern Orthodox methods of spiritual life try to explain the phenomenon of hesychasm and the peculiarities of the teaching of St. Gregory by the existence in Eastern asceticism of different directions of spiritual life based on different principles. In the Catholic Church, there arose a division of monasticism into orders, each of which had its own distinctive principles and methods of spiritual life. There were several canonically approved schools in it, for example, Carmelite, Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine. The difference in the principles and methods of these schools gives researchers the right to speak of the different directions of the mysticism of the Western and Orthodox Churches. "It can be safely asserted," notes Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern), "that the Eastern tradition of mystics knows and teaches about the purification of the heart, about the struggle with the passions, about prayer exercises, but to group all this into any kind of currents is risky and wrong. There are no such trends. Characteristic signs by which it would be possible to distinguish the "schools" of spiritual life cannot be found" [60, p. 64].Consequently, if we encounter mentions of various Orthodox schools named after their founders, then we must always remember about the unity of the foundations of their spiritual path. Thus, the designation of St. Gregory the Sinaite as the founder does not mean that he invented new principles of spiritual life, but the revival and renewal of that one spiritual path which originally resided in the Church. In the so-called school of St. Gregory the Sinaite, the science of acquiring the grace of the Holy Spirit was taught, the science of educating man for the Kingdom of God. This education was carried out not within the framework of one school, but in the general course of church tradition, in the mainstream of patristic churchliness." There is nothing particularly new in this spirituality, except the intensity of this movement in the fourteenth century and its wide spread... In its essence, it was an ancient contemplative and mystical tradition of Eastern monasticism, already presented in the 4th-5th centuries by Evagrius and Macarius" [45, p. 9], and in the 11th century formulated by St. Symeon the New Theologian.Studying the hesychastic movement, G. M. Prokhorov distinguishes several of its stages: cell development, theoretical expression, and socio-political influence. Each of the stages corresponds to a certain circle and kind of literary works. According to G. M. Prokhorov, the first, cell stage of the movement is associated with ascetic-contemplative literature, which instructs in mental activity — hesychia. The second stage, the time of public theological disputes, gave rise to a large literature in Greek, which focused on the theoretical problem of "uncreated energy," "uncreated light," and the deification of man. The outcome of theoretical disputes in favor of the contemplatives and the victory in the civil war of 1341-1347 of John Kantakouzenos, their supporter, allowed the hesychasts to occupy a dominant position in the Church of Constantinople, and the monastic movement to become church-wide [95: p. 7]. "Beginning in the cells of hermits," writes G. M. Prokhorov, "practicing contemplative 'silence' or 'silence'... this movement later, during the disputes between Palamas and Barlaam, received its own theory, the theory of 'Divine energy', and later becoming dominant in the Byzantine Church, it exerted a cultural, social, and political influence on other Orthodox countries" [91: p. 9]. The name of St. Gregory the Sinaite is directly connected with the first stage of the development and movement of hesychasm, to the consideration of whose life and work we pass.

Chapter 2. St. Gregory the Sinaite and His Influence on the Revival and Spread of Hesychasm

The Initial Monastic Formation of the Monk Gregory