GILLET, LEV

GILLET, LEV, “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” monastic priest, theologian, ecumenist (1892/3–29 March 1980). Reared in a Roman Catholic family near Grenoble, he studied philosophy there and at Paris. In 1914 he served in the French army, was wounded and taken prisoner, and served two years in a German camp. Released in 1917, he settled in Geneva to pursue studies in mathematics and psychology. In 1920 he entered the French Benedictine Abbey of Farnborough, England, and came under the influence of the Uniate Metr. Andrew Szeptyckyi of Lvov. The community sent him to study at St. Anselmo, Rome, where he collaborated with Dom Lambert Beauduin on ways to bring about the unity of the Roman and Russian Churches.

Deeply influenced by the ecumenical outlook of Vladimir Soloviev (q.v.) and unsupported at Farnborough in his Orthodox interests, he went to Lvov in 1924 where Metropolitan Szeptyckyi ordained him deacon and priest following profession as monk. He served briefly as Szeptyckyi’s secretary. In 1927 he did relief work for the Russian emigrants in Nice, and on 25 May 1928 he concelebrated Divine Liturgy with Metropolitan Evlogii (q.v.). Archimandrite Lev was thus received into the Orthodox Church, and from 25 May until his death served only the Orthodox. From 1928 he did charity work for the Russian Student Christian Movement and was assigned by Evlogii to serve the chapel of Mother Maria Skobtsova’s (q.v.) “hermitage,” and was the rector of Paris’s only French-speaking Orthodox parish. In Paris he became interested in the ideas of Sergius Bulgakov and was a close friend to Paul Evdokimov (qq.v.), and lived there until his departure for London in February 1938.

In the early 1940s he had a research fellowship to study Jewish-Christian relations at Selly Oak College, Birmingham. From 1948 until his death he served as Orthodox chaplain to the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (q.v.), London. He is author of Communion in the Messiah (1942), Orthodox Spirituality: An Outline of the Orthodox Ascetical and Mystical Tradition (trans. 1945), On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus (trans. 1949), Jesus, A Dialogue with the Saviour (trans., 2nd ed. 1963), In Thy Presence (trans. 1977), The Jesus Prayer (trans., rev. 1987), and Encounter at the Well: Retreat Addresses (1988).