St. Paisy Velichovsky (1722–1794)

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

Also known as St. Paisy of Neamt, from the Romanian monastery where he did most of his publishing work. He was a very important disseminator of the spiritual tradition of the Philokalia to the Slavic Orthodox lands. Along with the original Greek editors of the Philokalia – St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite and St. Macarius of Corinth – he

is one of the major early modern Philokalic fathers. His intense labors for the rediscovery of the classical hesychastic tradition bore fruit in many revivals across the Orthodox world, lasting to the present. He was a native of the Ukraine, son of the dean of Poltava Cathedral. Orphaned at an early age and brought up by his elder brother, the priest John, the child learned to read from the holy books (scripture and the Menaion) and developed a great love for the works of the Fathers. He entered the Kiev Mohyla Academy (1735–9) but was attracted to the ascetic life, and in 1740 entered the monastery of Lubetch, moving soon after to St. Nicholas’ monastery where he was tonsured in 1741. It was a time when many Orthodox monasteries were being forcibly closed. He himself took refuge with Hieromonk Michael in 1743, who brought him to the Romanian Skete of St. Nicholas at Traisteni. After two years there, following Athonite observance, he left to study under the hermit Onuphrios in Wallachia, and in 1746 finally made his way to Mount Athos, where he entered the Great Lavra before moving to settle at St. Panteleimon’s. In 1750 he was admitted to the Lesser Schema and began accepting disciples. His first followers were

Romanians, and shortly after he accepted Russian monks, making his foundation a dual-language community. In 1758 he was ordained priest and became a highly regarded spiritual father on Athos. His community grew rapidly and he first realized the need to provide serious spiritual seekers with a library of patristic advice. He commissioned several monks to translate patristic mystical texts into Slavonic. This labor was carried with his community when it relocated to Romania in 1764, at Dragomirna, and would be constitutive of the mission of the Paisian houses. In 1775 the Austrian forces captured Bukovina, and Paisy was forced to relocate once more. In 1779 he was given charge of the monastery of Neamt. His community here soon numbered more than 700. After the publication of the Greek Philokalia in 1782, Paisy made a version in Slavonic (Dobrotoloubie) which from its appearance in 1793 electrified the Russian monastic world. In 1790 he was given the Great Schema and made archimandrite, and died at Neamt on November 15, 1794, aged 72. Mount Athos and the Romanian Church were the first to venerate him as a saint, and this was followed by the Russian Synod in 1988. Paisy’s main labors were the dissemination of Philokalic texts, but he also presided over a radical reorganization of the monastic Typikon or structure of the daily life in Athonite-style nasteries. His purpose (causing controversy at the time) was to bring back into cenobitic houses a greater flexibility which would allow monastics greater possibilities for solitude and prayer. The later Russian hesychastic tradition owes much to him, including such figures such as such as St. Seraphim of Sarov, the Optina Elders, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, and St. Theophan the Recluse.