"O silence and abiding in silence! You are the mother of the living spirit and the mirror of sins. You compel us to repentance. You purge tears from us and direct our supplications to heaven. Meekness dwells with you. From you the soul is enlightened. In you we are present and taught by the Angels. Meekness and peace with people come from you. O silence, oh loneliness! You enlighten the spirit. You examine thoughts and help to recognize them. You are the mother of prayer. You provide leisure for reading. You give strength in fasting. You keep your tongue behind the fence, free you from immoderation. The detachment of worries, silence and the inner ascent of the spirit in the heart engenders the fear of God and chastity. The inner ascent of the spirit in the heart is an unceasing mental prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, Son of God, help me!" – with these words the holy hermit Theodora glorifies solitude (con. IV century).

We see that very early in ascetic exercise and in mystical contemplation mental prayer was in use. Hesychia and mental prayer became more widespread in the mysticism of the Eastern Church over time. They belong to the highest levels of contemplation, and many Church Fathers considered them the main goal of asceticism, almost all post-Makariev ascetics speak of "spiritual work" or "mental prayer." The two great Syrians, Nilus and Isaac, John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, as well as Symeon the New Theologian, emphasize the importance of this spiritual exercise, the importance of self-concentration, of withdrawing not only from earthly thoughts, but in general from thoughts connected with any image. From the hymns of St. Simeon we learn that hesychia can lead to the highest spiritual ecstasy, to the knowledge of God.

As has already been said, St. Simeon ends the great epoch of ecclesiastical mysticism of the Eastern Church, which has been briefly described here. It is important for us to point out that mental prayer is the central point of Eastern mysticism, along with obedience and the general prayer of asceticism. We will see that later, after a long interval, these three concepts arose again in a completely new form, connected with the development of eldership, and spread widely.

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Regarding the spread and practice of hesychia in the nose. We do not have an exact idea of the exact situation in the centuries that followed. We note that even by the time of St. Simeon, this practice began to be forgotten, and very soon it was completely forgotten in the countries of the Orthodox East. However, the day came when this practice was revived among ascetics, who sought to free it from the dust of oblivion and develop it further.

These were the hermits of Mount Athos, the Athonite hermits. Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, the jewel of Byzantium, is the easternmost of the three "languages" with which the Halkidiki peninsula juts out into the Aegean Sea. "A grain of peace", as Marcus Aurelius called it, "the workshop of virtue", "the place chosen by God", as the local monks, the Athonite monks, call their mountainous homeland.

"Athos is the forest cathedral of Eastern Christianity," writes Dr. Fulmerayer, "more than twelve hours' walk in length and two or three hours in width. Connected to the continent only by a narrow long isthmus, Mount Athos majestically rises above the sea. Athos is adapted only for monastic life. This is a kind of Orthodox Vatican, on which the spiritual eyes of Orthodox Christians from all over the world are directed."

First of all, the Holy Mountain is the spiritual center of the Eastern Church, a perfect example of Christian asceticism, the "Kingdom of Heaven," as many called it. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the entire history of Eastern asceticism would not have existed without the Holy Mountain. Eldership in general, and Russian eldership in particular, is the legacy of the spiritual development that took place over the course of many centuries on Mount Athos. And although in the course of time the insignificant aspects of spiritual life changed, its essence and purpose remained the same. What stood at the center of the Athonite mysticism became the central point of the teaching of the Russian eldership. And this was nothing more than the isihamm and his spiritual tool, mental prayer.

The beginning of monastic life on Mount Athos dates back to approximately the last quarter of the seventh century, and the first known hesychast was Peter of the Holy Mountain, who settled on Mount Athos as early as 681. He was a Greek, in his youth he was in military service at the imperial court in Constantinople. Then he was captured by the Arabs. After nine years of captivity, Peter came to Rome and took monastic vows there. In a dream, the Mother of God appeared to him, who said that Athos would become the greatest center of monastic life. Encouraged by this vision, Peter went to Mount Athos and lived there in a cave for 53 years until his death. He was canonized. In the stichera dedicated to him, we find the following words: "St. Peter of the Holy Mountain had a burning faith, like the holy Apostle Peter, and possessed true love, unshakable hope, patience, tenderness and weeping, meekness, overcoming the flesh, impassibility, purity of life and soul, silence in the sight of God." He died in 734 A.D. Some later information and traditions of the Byzantine court of the 9th-10th centuries point to monks who lived on Mount Athos independently of the monasteries.

Difficult times came for the Athonite hesychasts, when the leadership over them passed to St. Athanasius. His activity marked a new period in the history of Athos.

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('v. Athanasius was descended from the >Lagorodion family. ()p was born and 'Ipaiic-yaoundé, studied at first in Constantinople, but very early it occurred to him to devote himself to asceticism!" He entered a monastery on Mount Kiminos in Asia Minor, where he was under the spiritual guidance of Hegumen Michael Maleinus. At the age of forty-six, he went to Mount Athos. For some time he observed with amazement the ascetic life of the Athonite people, but soon came to the conviction that such a way of life was possible only for a select few, and decided to introduce on Athos a coenobitic rule. He wrote the Typikon, that is, the rules of life for his coenobia. The activities of Athanasius did not find full recognition among the Athonite hermits. A struggle began between him and the hesychasts, which lasted more than a century. It cannot be said that this struggle ended in a complete victory for the Cynovians: although the subsequent period was characterized by the rapid development of coenobitic monasteries, at the same time there was also hermitage.

In the coenobia, the monks lived under the guidance of the abbot. They had no personal property, wore the same monastic clothes, and ate together. Monastic work and daily routine were determined by the abbot. In contrast, hermits lived alone. However, they also elected an abbot for a period of one year. As has already been said, the struggle between the two ascetic trends lasted a very long time and had a heavy impact on the condition of the hesychasts.