With a few like-minded brethren, he withdrew to a forest wasteland near Volok Lamsky and there founded a monastery in the image of the monastery of Kirillov. The first church, in honor of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, was consecrated on August 15, 1479. Gradually, a multitude of brethren gathered around the spirit-bearing mentor. The monk established a strict and perfect communal life. The ustav of the monastery, later expounded by the Monk Joseph (

The Ustav is published in the book: Epistles of Joseph of Volotsk. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959. P. 296-321.), preserved for us the monastic rules. The basis of life in the monastery was the cutting off of one's will, complete non-acquisitiveness, unceasing work and prayer. Everything was common among the brethren: clothing, shoes, food, drink; without the blessing of the abbot, no one could take a single thing into the cell; no one was to drink or eat separately from others.

The food was the simplest, everyone wore thin clothes, there were no locks at the doors of the cells. In addition to the usual monastic rule, each monk made up to a thousand or more prostrations a day. The first good news was presented to the divine service, and each occupied a strictly defined place in the church; It was forbidden to move from place to place and talk during the service.

In their free time, the monks participated in common work or engaged in needlework in their cells. Among other works, the monastery paid great attention to the copying of liturgical and patristic books. After compline, all communication between the monks ceased, and everyone went to their cells. Confession was obligatory every evening with the revelation of thoughts to one's spiritual father.

Most of the night was spent in prayer, sleeping only for a short time, many sitting or standing. Women and children were strictly forbidden to enter the monastery, and the brethren were not even allowed to talk with them. Obeying this rule, the Monk Joseph himself refused to see his aged mother, a nun. In all things the Monk Joseph was an example for the brethren: he labored on an equal footing with everyone else, he spent the night at prayer, he dressed like a beggar.

For spiritual instruction to the God-bearing hegumen came both simple laymen and noble, dignitaries. In the years of famine, the monastery fed many sufferers. In a difficult time for the Russian Church, the Lord raised up the Monk Joseph as a zealous champion of Orthodoxy and a defender of church and state unity in the struggle against heresies and ecclesiastical disorders.

The Monk Joseph is one of the inspirers of the teaching about Holy Russia as the successor and guardian of ancient universal piety: "And just as in ancient times the Russian land surpassed all in its impiety, so now... it surpassed all in piety," he writes in the "Tale" that opens the "Enlightener". A follower of the Monk Joseph, the Saviour-Eleazar Elder Philotheus, explained the significance of Russia as the last stronghold of Orthodoxy on earth: "All the Christian kingdoms came to an end and were united in the one kingdom of our Sovereign.

According to the prophetic books, this is the Russian Kingdom: for two Romes (Rome and Constantinople – Ed.) have fallen, and the third (Moscow – Ed.) stands, and the fourth will not be" (See: Malinin, The Elder of the Spaso-Eleazarian Monastery Philotheus and His Epistles, Kiev, 1901). The Monk Joseph departed to the Lord at the age of 76, on September 9, 1515, shortly before his death he took the great schema.

The relics of the monk rest under a bushel in the cathedral church of his monastery. The church-wide veneration of the saint was established in 1591, under Patriarch Job. Many of the disciples and followers of the Monk Joseph of Volotsk also entered the ranks of Russian saints, were archpastors of the Russian Church; The monastery itself became the center of spiritual enlightenment for many centuries (

Publication of the Volokolamsk Patericon, containing the life of St. Joseph: Theological Works. Collection Ten. Moscow, 1973. Pp. 175-222.). The greatest feat of the Monk Joseph of Volotsk was his struggle against the heresy of the Judaizers. From the time, according to the testimony of the Tale of Bygone Years, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir rejected the temptation of the Jewish faith, brought by the Khazar preachers, and Rus' was renewed by the grace of Baptism, "the great Russian land remained in the Orthodox faith for 470 years, until the enemy of salvation, the all-evil devil, brought the vile Jew to Veliky Novgorod," writes the Monk Joseph in the Enlightener.

Assessing the heresy of the Judaizers as the greatest danger to which Rus', Russian Orthodoxy, and Russian statehood have ever been exposed, the Monk Joseph does not exaggerate. This heresy had a truly all-encompassing character: it affected all aspects of the doctrine, took possession of the minds of many people of the most diverse classes and conditions, penetrated to the very heights of church and state power, so that both the First Hierarch of the Russian Church and the Grand Duke were affected by it, and in Orthodox Russia unthinkable outrages were committed, described with sorrow by the Monk Joseph in "The Enlightener".

But God is not mocked, and the events directed by the enemy of the human race to perdition turn to the glory of God and to salvation. The Monk Joseph writes about the ineffable wisdom and goodness of God's Providence, about "Divine cunning" in the 4th Sermon of the "Enlightener"; this power of God's Providence was also manifested in the history of Russia in the victory over the heresy of the Judaizers, a victory inspired by the Spirit of God and headed by two luminaries of the Russian Church: Saint Gennadii of Novgorod († 1505, Comm. 4 December) and the Monk Joseph of Volotsk.

Let us set forth the essence and the main milestones of this struggle and this victory. In 1470, the Novgorodians invited the Lithuanian prince Mikhail Olelkovich († 1482) to reign. In the prince's retinue, the Jew Skhariya also arrived from Kiev. "And he was a tool of the devil," writes the Monk Joseph, "he was trained in every villainous invention: sorcery and blackmail, stargazing and astrology."

Taking advantage of the weakness of the faith of some clerics, Skhariya, or rather, Satan himself through his hands, took up the planting of Judaism in the bosom of our church. Skhariya's mission was a success, especially since soon several more Jews arrived from Lithuania to help him. The seductive danger of the destructive heresy lay in its hidden nature: it was not an open inculcation and preaching of the Jewish religion; The transformation of a person who grew up in the Orthodox faith into a heretic, rejecting all the foundations of Christianity, took place gradually and imperceptibly.