A Treasury of Russian Spirituality by G. P. Fedotov

  • TreasRussSpiritGreg the Resource­ful Hus­band man­aged to find this out-of-print gem, and I’m glad to say you can find it here at Alib­ris, which is turn­ing out to be an invalu­able source of hard-to-find books. Pub­lished in 1950, it’s a much-needed com­pendium of Russ­ian Ortho­dox writ­ings from nine dif­fer­ent peri­ods, going in chrono­log­i­cal order from the 11th cen­tury to the 20th.

    Here are the chapters:

    1. St. Theo­do­sius: The First Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Kenoticism
    2. St. Sergius: The First Her­mit and Mystic
    3. St. Nilus Sorsky: The Teacher of Spir­i­tual Prayer
    4. Avvakum: The Con­ser­v­a­tive Rebel
    5. St. Tychon: A West­ern­iz­ing Kenotic
    6. St. Seraphim: Mys­tic and Prophet
    7. “The Way of the Pilgrim”
    8. John of Cron­stadt: A Genius of Prayer
    9. Father Yelchani­nov: The Teacher of Self-Examination

    Each chap­ter con­tains an intro­duc­tion to pro­vide bio­graph­i­cal back­ground. I also found the edi­to­r­ial tone to be just right — giv­ing due admi­ra­tion to the writ­ers but not ignor­ing their con­text and their weak spots, which adds dimen­sion­al­ity. The writ­ings them­selves vary — some are biogra­phies writ­ten by con­tem­po­raries, some are diaries, some are hom­i­lies, some are instruc­tions for monks.

    This is one to explore for your­self, so I won’t give any excerpts. There are just two com­ments worth making:

    • The chap­ter on Avvakum was jar­ring, and I’m not sure I would’ve included it. Avvakum was excom­mu­ni­cated and mar­tyred in the 1600s for being an Old Rit­u­al­ist. He wrote this auto­bi­og­ra­phy in prison await­ing his exe­cu­tion, and his bit­ter­ness and con­stant sto­ries of being starved, beaten, mis­treated and maligned (and occa­sion­ally beat­ing and malign­ing oth­ers just to make a point) stand out in sharp con­trast with the other chapters.
    • It’s worth the entire book for the last chap­ter by Fr. Yelchani­nov, whom I’ve quoted here and here. I only today found out (thank you , Fr. Tim!) that you can still buy the auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which “Trea­sury” gives selec­tions from. It’s called “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” with the spelling changed to ‘Elchani­nov’ and it’s on Ama­zon or Alib­ris. (Aside to Greg: three lit­tle words — manda­tory Christ­mas “surprise”)

    Related posts:

    1. Spir­i­tual Coun­sels by Fr. John of Kronstadt

    October 2nd, 2005 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Michelle 10.02.2005

    Wow, I’ve never heard of this book, it looks wonderful!

  • Grace

    Yep, this was an instant favorite of mine!

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