The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos 1789975182, 9781789975185

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction • Douglas Dales and Graham Speake
1 What Is Prayer? • Fr Stephen Platt
2 Worship and Prayer at an Athonite Monastery • Archimandrite Elisaios
3 St John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer • Fr Maximos Constas
4 Poetry as Prayer • Elizabeth Jeffreys
5 Painting Icons as Prayer • Aidan Hart
6 Music as Prayer • Dimitri Conomos
7 Monastic Work as Prayer • Archimandrite Ephraim
8 The Invocation of the Holy Name: A Prayer for All Seasons • Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos Edited by Douglas Dales and Graham Speake Peter Lang

DalesAthos and Speake (eds) The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos The Life of Prayer on Mount

The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos

Dales and Speake (eds)

The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos Edited by Douglas Dales and Graham Speake Peter Lang

The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos Edited by Douglas Dales and Graham Speake

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • NewYork • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dales, Douglas, 1952- editor. | Speake, Graham, 1946- editor. Title: The life of prayer on Mount Athos / Douglas Dales and Graham Speake. Description: Oxford New York : Peter Lang, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020005996 (print) | LCCN 2020005997 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789975185 (paperback) | ISBN 9781789975192 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789975208 (epub) | ISBN 9781789975215 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Athos (Greece)--Religious life and customs. | Prayer--Orthodox Eastern Church. | Jesus prayer. Classification: LCC BX385.A8 L54 2020 (print) | LCC BX385.A8 (ebook) | DDC 271/.8190949565--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005996 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005997 Cover image: This modern fresco, in the new church of St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain near Karyes, depicts the tonsure to the great schema of St Makarios of Corinth (1731–1805), compiler of the Philokalia. Photo © Graham Speake. Cover design: Brian Melville for Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-78997-518-5 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78997-519-2 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-78997-520-8 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78997-521-5 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2020 Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom [email protected], www.peterlang.com Douglas Dales and Graham Speake have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work. © the editors and contributors 2019 All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgements ix Douglas Dales and Graham Speake

Introduction 1 Fr Stephen Platt

1 What Is Prayer?

13

Archimandrite Elisaios

2 Worship and Prayer at an Athonite Monastery

25

Fr Maximos Constas

3 St John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer

41

Elizabeth Jeffreys

4 Poetry as Prayer

65

Aidan Hart

5 Painting Icons as Prayer

87

Dimitri Conomos

6 Music as Prayer

113

vi Contents Archimandrite Ephraim

7 Monastic Work as Prayer

127

Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia

8 The Invocation of the Holy Name: A Prayer for All Seasons

135

Bibliography 147 Notes on Contributors

153

Index 155

Figures

Figure 5.1. The Nativity of Christ. Private collection. (By the author.) Figure 5.2. The geometrical structure that underlies the illustrated Nativity icon. Figure 5.3. The Annunciation. Private collection. (By the author.) Figure 5.4. The Transfiguration. Lancaster University Chaplaincy. (By the author.) Figure 5.5. Triptych: Jacob wrestles with the angel; the Transfiguration; Jacob’s dream of the ladder. Shrewsbury School chapel. (By the author.) Figure 6.1. Choral setting of Psalm 83, verses 1–2. Figure 6.2. Choral setting of Psalm 83, verse 3.

92 93 94 95 97 122 123

Acknowledgements

Most of the papers collected in this volume were originally delivered at a conference entitled ‘The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos’ organized by the Friends of Mount Athos and held at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in March 2019. The society wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the generous sponsorship provided by the Prince’s Trust and the Gerald Palmer Eling Trust. The editors of the volume in their turn wish to thank the Friends of Mount Athos for contributing generously towards the production costs of the volume. Once again it is a pleasure to record our debt to our courteous and efficient publishers at Peter Lang in Oxford.

Douglas Dales and Graham Speake

Introduction

The first Madingley conference of the Friends of Mount Athos was held in 2003 and was devoted to the theme of ‘The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain’. There were no fewer than four Athonites among the speakers, two of them abbots of monasteries, and two others who received their tonsure on Athos. One of the abbots was Archimandrite Ephraim of the great and holy monastery of Vatopedi. He spoke in Greek, about Elder Joseph the Hesychast, one of the principal architects of the monastic renewal that took place on the Mountain in the second half of the twentieth century, who has recently been canonized. Abbot Ephraim was to have been present at the 2019 conference, the proceedings of which are contained in this volume, when he was scheduled to speak about ‘Work as Prayer’; but he was struck down by a serious heart attack when visiting Kiev and his doctors forbade him to travel to the UK. He sent instead the text of the paper that he would have given and it is included in this collection, whose theme is ‘The Life of Prayer on Mount Athos’. Prayer is central to the life of the Holy Mountain and it sustains a strong and deeply rooted spiritual tradition with a long history that is also intensely practical. We who live in the outside world, however, often struggle to concentrate on the daily routine of private prayer and the prescribed schedules of liturgical worship; and our life as a result becomes seriously unstructured, undisciplined, and pretty disorderly. There are so many distractions, so many conflicting priorities, and we seem to progress from one mini-crisis to the next. We feel that we live in unsettled and unsettling times. The first monks discovered Athos as a haven from a similarly unsettled and often violent world. This is why Athos is so important and so valuable: because life there is supremely well structured and highly disciplined; and that structure, that discipline, is provided by prayer. For the monks it is prayer in the cell

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at night; prayer in church both morning and evening; prayer before and after meals; prayer while working; probably even prayer while sleeping. A pilgrim can stand back in awe and admire the structure; but actually it is there on offer to us too, if only we are willing to engage with it seriously and not be simply a bystander. The Greek word for pilgrim (proskynitis) means someone who bends the knee, who worships and does not simply watch. Athos has often been called the mountain of prayer. In the words of Fr Nikon of Karoulia, the famous Russian elder who died in 1963, ‘Here every stone breathes prayers.’ Prayer is everywhere on Athos. You cannot escape it. The rhythmical striking of the talanto, the monks’ call to prayer, is surely the most evocative sound of any on the Mountain. It gets you out of bed in the morning. It brings you back to church in the afternoon. You can be walking on a remote path apparently miles from anywhere when in the distance you hear that unmistakable sound and you know immediately that the next monastery is not so far after all and, if you hurry, you might make it in time for vespers. If on the other hand you have the good fortune to be driven by Land Rover or some such vehicle over those unbelievably bone-shaking roads, your monastic driver will almost certainly not talk to you: he will be saying the Jesus Prayer, probably under his breath, and if you value your life, you will join him. Prayer provides the framework for every day and every action on Athos. Thus Athonites do indeed try to ‘pray without ceasing’, as we are all enjoined to do by St Paul. As one living Athonite has written, ‘here you can hear the hum of unceasing prayer.’ ‘What the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world … they dwell in the world but are not of the world: … they in fact hold the world together such is the important position to which God has appointed them.’1 These words, from an early Christian text called the Epistle to Diognetus, sum up the role of Athonite Christians in particular as they have embodied this vocation for over 1,000 years on the Holy Mountain. Their prayer and witness are of universal significance, stretching far beyond the confines of Orthodoxy. The renewal of monastic life on the Holy Mountain is one of the great signs of Christian hope in our time. It is also a challenge to 1

Epistle to Diognetus 6, in The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. M. W. Holmes, 3rd edn (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), pp. 703–4.

Introduction

3

the secularism, ignorance, and spiritual complacency of modern western society in particular. It is of course impossible to do justice to the rich variety of expression within such a deep spiritual tradition. But this volume seeks to impart something of the manifold beauty and abiding character of Athonite prayer. However fascinating and beautiful Athos is in terms of architecture, art, and landscape, its raison d’être remains prayer, both private and liturgical. This is what draws most of the numerous pilgrims that flock to the Holy Mountain each year. What is striking is the wide social range of these pilgrims, and the capacity that so many of them have to participate fully in the rigorous demands of the services, which begin very early in the morning and often last for hours. What is also notable is the generous pastoral ministry of the monks to so many individuals and families, many of whom come from countries hard hit by economic deprivation and frustration, for example from Greece and other parts of Eastern Europe as well as from Russia and Ukraine. Indeed it is providential that the monasteries of Athos were revived in time to handle this relentless pastoral and spiritual need, including the outstanding women’s monastery nearby at Ormylia with its ministry of healing. All this is a demanding and sacrificial ministry of faith, hope, and love, which the Friends of Mount Athos seek to support, encourage, and cherish. In the first paper of this volume, entitled ‘What Is Prayer?’, Fr Stephen Platt addresses the inner spirit of Christian prayer within the worshipping tradition of Orthodoxy. He makes the distinction between asking and offering and notes how Orthodoxy has often drawn from western traditions of prayer to enrich its life. Central to Orthodox prayer, however, is the prayer of the heart and the mind in harmony together. This entails the worship of the whole person, body and soul; liturgical worship embodies this, as does the example of Jesus in the gospels. In such worship there is adoration, thanksgiving, and petition. Within the words of worship, however, lies hidden silence, which brings us to the threshold of eternity. In prayer, listening is as important as speaking, so that there is a dialogue developing between God and the human person. Fr Stephen indicates the spiritual significance of the striking icon of ‘Jesus Christ the divine silence’, noting the words of St Isaac the Syrian that ‘silence is the mystery of the age to come.’

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He discusses also the spirit of ‘boldness’ with which the prayers of the Mother of God come alongside our own prayers to Christ her Son and to God as ‘Abba’ – ‘Father’. Private prayer is always part of the worship of the Body of Christ, for it is the vocation of each Christian to become prayer in all that they do as a living sacrifice of love, becoming, as St Paul says, a ‘sanctuary of the Holy Spirit’. The writer describes the Divine Liturgy as ‘the creative juxtaposition between freedom and structure’, a spirit that should inform all Christian prayer, defending the aesthetic dimension of worship by citing the verdict of Dostoevsky that ‘beauty will save the world.’ He concludes with a revealing account of the ministry and witness of the little-known Archimandrite Denys Chambault in Paris. The second paper, ‘Worship and Prayer at an Athonite Monastery’, is by Archimandrite Elisaios, who is the abbot of Simonopetra monastery on the Holy Mountain. In a fully documented discussion he accounts for and summarizes the spiritual tradition taught by the late Elder Aimilianos, his revered predecessor as abbot. He notes that monastic prayer seeks to become angelic prayer, a constant vigil by day and night, cultivating without distraction ‘the memory of God’. He describes the roots of monastic prayer among the Desert Fathers, their recitation of the Psalms, and their use of silence. Then he explains why the sevenfold structure of the divine office came into being to support such prayer within a cenobitic community, showing how in due course hymns and troparia found their way into monastic prayer, though not without resistance from some. He indicates the influence of St Andrew of Crete and the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople in this process, which reached both Athos and Kiev. He notes the desire for more ascetic reform associated with the hesychast movement, but also the role of St John Koukouzeles of the Great Lavra in the development of elaborate monastic chant. Finally he describes the continuance of earlier forms of ascetic prayer in the sketes and cells of Mount Athos, right up to the present day, encapsulated in the perpetual use of the Jesus Prayer, often in place of the more formal liturgical hours. This he describes as a ‘neo-hesychast synthesis’, paying tribute to the ‘differing sensitivities’ with which the Jesus Prayer is used throughout the day. He concludes with a summary of the way in which Elder Aimilianos approached the renewal of monastic life at Simonopetra, saying that ‘the

Introduction

5

encounter of the monk with God in his cell in the middle of the night is the heart of his life.’ Around this belief the whole life and worship of that monastery are constructed. Fr Maximos Constas, a monk of Simonopetra now teaching in the United States, flew specially to deliver a learned examination of one strand of the tradition supporting the use of the Jesus Prayer, which comprises the third paper in this volume, entitled ‘St John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer’. He examines how a text called a Letter on the Jesus Prayer, long attributed to the hand of St John Chrysostom, became one of the key building blocks in the development of the use of the Jesus Prayer and its theological justification through many centuries. He begins by outlining the significance of the Philokalia, its provenance and publication, noting that for St Nikodimos it was a handbook for the practice of the Jesus Prayer, as his own introduction makes clear. For him, this prayer was an ‘instrument of deification’. This Letter on the Jesus Prayer was from the eleventh century attributed to Chrysostom, though its origins lie elsewhere, as this writer demonstrates in some detail. The essence of its teaching is summed up as ‘the name of Jesus descending into the depths of the heart’. Its patristic authority was cited in the Patriarchal Tome of 1341 during the hesychast controversy. The writer explains how authorship and authority were perceived in the late antique and medieval world, safeguarding the authenticity of what was being taught by appeal to a major patristic author like Chrysostom. In itself, this Letter gives a valuable glimpse into how the tradition surrounding the Jesus Prayer was developed in the late Byzantine period. It contains a rule for life supported by many biblical references, addressing inner spiritual life and also relationships within a Christian community. Echoing the teaching of St Isaac the Syrian, who said ‘remember God, that He too might always remember you’, this letter emphasizes the key role of memory in prayer, working in conjunction with the heart to sense and respond to the reality of God’s presence. The fourth paper, by Elizabeth Jeffreys, examines the role of ‘Poetry as Prayer’ in early Byzantine church and society. The poems discussed shed indirect light on the milieu from which the earliest monastic foundations on the Holy Mountain emerged in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

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The writer makes the point that ‘emotion was not an essential element in Byzantine poetry’, unlike in much modern expectation. Instead poetry was a precocious feat of composition, subject to elaborate rules of rhyme and rhetoric, which the writer examines in some detail. Both petition and praise take poetic form in many Byzantine prayer-books such as the Euchologia. She cites a poem by Theodore the Stoudite to be hung on the wall of a monastic dormitory as a more down-to-earth example of poetry used as prayer. John Geometres, an educated person who retired to a monastery, composed a prayer to the Mother of God, which was a sequence of greetings, like the Akathist Hymn, and probably designed for use by a lay fellowship in Constantinople. Symeon Metaphrastes composed the earliest known alphabetical prayer of penitence, a form which subsequently became popular in the monasteries and more widely. The writer shows how these alphabetical prayers gradually became more personal in tone, citing an example by Nikephoros Ouranos who was an early lay guardian of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos. Finally she examines the poetry of St Symeon the New Theologian, which combined mystical, penitential, and erotic language modelled on the Song of Songs in the Bible, ‘filled with love and beauty’. Two dedicatory epigrams reveal devotion to the Mother of God in language which became commonplace in the later Byzantine period. The fifth paper, by a leading specialist and practitioner, Aidan Hart, addresses the creation of icons. He draws on his own immediate and personal experience to write movingly about ‘Painting Icons as Prayer’. The discussion begins with a description of how icon painting proceeds: ‘Sometimes the process is contemplative, at other times it is a struggle. It is work, a form of asceticism. The act of painting icons is to pray with paint rather than words. It is to listen and discover as well as to express. It is to offer transformed matter in thanksgiving.’ The writer goes on to outline his theology of icon painting, using three designations of Christian life: as prophetic, priestly, and royal. Before drawing an icon, one must see before making, and hear before painting. An icon is thus a work of prayer in which word and image go together, along with liturgical context and traditional portrayal. The fourth dimension is the space before the icon in which those beholding it are spiritually addressed. Icons can also act like church bells to summon

Introduction

7

people to worship; thus their role is priestly in the sense of being offered to God while pointing beyond themselves. As in Jacob’s vision of the ladder up to Heaven, where its foot rested in his soul and the pillar he set up became a token of remembrance of something he experienced, so too an icon becomes a microcosm of creation which is directed back to its Creator, recalling a moment of encounter with the living God or with a saint. In Christianity, ‘we want to make the good very good’, following the example of the Creator. This kind of authority – to enhance and to nurture creation – is key to understanding the ‘royal’ role of humanity, which the painter expresses in creating an icon. Thus a window is opened on to the world as a divine ‘love-letter’, a sacramental reality which mirrors the glory of God, and we find ourselves standing before an icon, being contemplated by God and His saints. For God’s image is found in an embodied human soul, and the saints are those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. The sixth paper also addresses how Orthodox prayer finds aesthetic expression – this time in music. Dimitri Conomos draws on his long experience of teaching and practising Byzantine music to reflect on ‘Music as Prayer’. He writes with great perception as well as feeling, and helps to explain what many experience in Athonite services without being able to articulate it adequately. He begins by discussing the whole question of the place of music within divine worship, citing a notable text from the Desert Fathers which dismissed music as distracting and thus alien to monastic prayer. This ambivalence is not peculiar to Orthodoxy: St Augustine, for example, was very wary of the power of music in church to move him as a deeply musical person. The writer presents a spread of modern Athonite views on this subject, all of which are revealing and interesting. Then he launches into an apologia for music in worship, seeing it as a way of engaging a community in a common spiritual experience, by grafting melody and words in the memory, and hopefully within the soul as well. In the light of the book of Revelation, earthly music in worship can be seen to mirror the music of Heaven. Indeed in western monasticism there are examples of people, such as St Dunstan, learning music in heavenly visions, which was then written down as plainchant and used in worship.

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The writer notes that, when Athonite chant is recorded, it never makes the same impact as when it is heard live in church: the music is the prayer in action, and, as T. S Eliot said, ‘you are the music while the music lasts.’ In some ways the sacred sound in situ becomes more important than the sense; but this is because it is rooted deeply in the sense of Scripture, thus transcending the limitations of a specific language, normally Greek. Its temporal and timeless quality touches the soul and enables it to sing. The writer then discusses the particular way in which liturgical music has been developed so richly at Simonopetra, noting the appeal of such singing well beyond the confines of Athos itself. Athonite chant is unhurried and without overt emotion, and its resolution is not always obvious: yet for the pilgrim, ‘this is the stream into which you are invited to step.’ The seventh paper condenses the wisdom and long experience of Abbot Ephraim of Vatopedi, writing about ‘Monastic Work as Prayer’. No one who has visited Vatopedi can fail to marvel at the great feat of organization it represents, marshalling a swarm of pilgrims and a regiment of monks. Abbot Ephraim begins with a definition of ‘work’, suggesting that the etymology of the word diakonos – in English ‘deacon’ – actually means someone who is covered in dust (konis) and therefore rooted in humility. He provides a graphic picture of monastic organization and briefly describes the governance of the Holy Mountain itself, both of them as patterns of monastic work in action. He notes that the key to the whole enterprise is obedience by which a monk comes to experience ‘carefree care’. He cites the Athonite tradition that ‘prayer comes from obedience, not obedience from prayer’, for obedience induces humility. The abbot is also frank about the vital role of ordered work in driving away akēdia, or monastic boredom and depression. Instead work has to be seen within the framework of loving prayer, not least in the service of others. The disciplined relationship between elder and disciple should be modelled on that between Christ and His disciples in the gospels, a paradigm of love and humility, because ‘the main task of the monk is prayer.’ Thus, in the words of St Porphyrios, ‘work does not prevent prayer.’ Finally the abbot describes the use of the Jesus Prayer as an accompaniment to manual labour in particular, something in which all involved, both monks and laity, can participate. What this contribution reveals is the sheer scale of monastic

Introduction

9

thought and organization that is necessary to maintain the life and witness of a place the size of Vatopedi. It also demonstrates how in monastic life and work nothing happens without good reason. The ethos of a monastery is thus a dynamic synthesis of reason, love, and prayer. It is fitting that the final contribution to this collection should be that of Bishop Kallistos, who has done so much to communicate the riches of Orthodox theology and prayer. Here he sums up his teaching about the Jesus Prayer. He begins with the story of Moses before the Burning Bush, removing his shoes and sensing the holiness of the place he is in. Christians are called to shed boredom and laziness in order to encounter the living God. Use of the Jesus Prayer can help to develop this sensibility and capacity for loving prayer and waiting upon God. He notes the variety of its expression while centring on the Holy Name of Jesus itself. He also acknowledges similar devotion in the western tradition, citing the example of the medieval English mystic, Richard Rolle. Indeed devotion to the Holy Name in the west has a long tap-root, stretching back through the Franciscans to the Cistercians and into the early Middle Ages. For example, Alcuin in the eighth century commended regular use of the words ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, in your Name I lift up my hands.’ Repetition of the Jesus Prayer can deepen spiritual recollection, though the bishop recommends seeking guidance in the early stages of its use ‘in a gentle and humble manner’. The prayer is not a mantra or a spiritual technique of meditation as such. This is because the Holy Name of Jesus is a saving name, a sacramental reality, invoked by the solemn words of the Jesus Prayer. This is a prayer of repentance as well as of devotion, a prayer that can change lives profoundly by divine grace. The Jesus Prayer makes excellent preparation for receiving the Eucharist, thus linking it to the liturgical prayer of the Church. The bishop unfolds two dimensions to using the Jesus Prayer: to ‘find Christ everywhere’ in the daily round of life, and to ‘create silence’ by ordered times of its regular and unhurried use in daily prayer, thus ‘rendering the secular sacred’. It can also be prayed silently while attending pastorally to the needs of others. Using a prayer rope or rosary helps to engage the whole person, body and soul: as St Theophan the Recluse said, ‘the hands at work, the mind and heart with God.’ Such prayer is non-iconic: it means,

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in the words of Evagrios, ‘the shedding of thoughts’. Nevertheless the Jesus Prayer may be described as ‘affective prayer’; as such, it engages with important strands of western spirituality and its use is now widespread in western Christianity. The Jesus Prayer can bring a person to the threshold of divine silence, to a place of listening for and to God, as He comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. The bishop closes with an illuminating testimony by St Symeon the New Theologian to the way in which this kind of prayer can open the eyes of the soul to the divine light of transfiguration. Let Bishop Kallistos have the last word: It is a prayer for all seasons, a prayer for every Christian, western or eastern, monastic or lay. It is never out of place. It is an uncomplicated way of praying that requires no special knowledge and no elaborate preparation. Yet, though uncomplicated, the Jesus Prayer can lead us into the hidden places of the heart and into the deepest mysteries of secret contemplation.

The Jesus Prayer lies close to the heart of Athonite spirituality and monastic practice: it is a path to sanctity. Mount Athos is not the only holy mountain in Christendom: another obvious example is Mount Sinai, beneath which lies the ancient Orthodox monastery of St Catherine. The concept of the holy mountain as a place of prayer and encounter with God has its origin in the Bible, in the stories of Moses and Elijah, and in the account of the Transfiguration of Christ and His Ascension in the gospels. In Italy, for example, both La Verna and Camaldoli are in their way holy mountains of monastic vision; and in Dante’s Divina Commedia the poet ascends the great mountain of Purgatory at the top of which is the earthly paradise and the threshold of Heaven. This vision of the spiritual significance of a holy mountain thus transcends the historical divisions within Christianity. Compare these words by St Bonaventure, which can readily be applied to the Holy Mountain of Athos. He lived in the thirteenth century and for some years led and formed the Franciscan movement, as a leading biblical teacher and guide to the contemplative life of prayer. This description comes from his commentary on St Luke’s account of the Transfiguration:2 2

See D. Dales, Divine Remaking: St Bonaventure and the Gospel of Luke (Cambridge, 2017), p. 56.

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11

Now the place to which the Lord ascended for the Transfiguration can be fittingly understood as the eminence or height of the contemplative life, for a mountain is a place for teaching. From this is it given to us to understand that the contemplative life abounds in understanding.     A mountain is also a place of sacrifice: and from this one gathers that the contemplative life abounds in devoted dedication.     The mountain is also the place for fire and great reflections: from this it is understood that the contemplative life abounds in love.     A mountain is also a place of refuge: from this it is understood that the contemplative life abounds in having spiritual defences.     A mountain is also a place of silence: from which it is understood that the contemplative soul abounds in tranquillity.     A mountain is also a place for pasturing: from which it is understood that the contemplative soul abounds in sweetness. Finally, the mountain is a place of eminence or a peak: from this we understand that the contemplative life exceedingly abounds in the ability to rise up. As a sign of this, the Lord ascended into Heaven from the Mount of Olives. From this we can see the excellence of the contemplative life, and how desirable it should be: for it is full of discernment, devoted dedication, love, security, tranquillity, sweetness, and the ability to rise up to God.

Fr Stephen Platt

1  What Is Prayer?

The subject of my paper is the question ‘What is prayer?’ In the ancient languages of the Christian traditions with which I am familiar, there is a consensus that the word ‘prayer’ has to do with asking or beseeching. The Latin oratio, δέησις in Greek, and молитва in Church Slavonic are all words with a connotation of imploring, beseeching, or asking for something. But this is surely only a very partial understanding of what is happening when we pray. In fact, in the very act of asking, we discern from the times of the Old Testament onwards not only a needy reaching out for God to give, but an offering of our own faith and hope. ‘Let my prayer [δέησις in the Greek of the Septuagint Old Testament] be set forth in thy sight as incense, and the lifting up of my hands an evening sacrifice’ (Ps. 141:2) are words that will be familiar to many from the Orthodox service of Vespers, sung as incense is offered at the setting of the sun. As the deacon censes the icons and the people together, the action of prayer is seen not only as a needy reaching out to God but as an offering made to Him. The same idea is expressed in the fiftieth Psalm (Psalm 51 in the Hebrew numbering): ‘The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and a contrite heart you will not despise’ (Ps. 50:17). If, however, we are to look for a broader definition of prayer, we might turn our attention to the catechisms of different Christian traditions. As a young child brought up in a family with a very devout Irish Catholic grandmother, I was familiar with the ‘Penny Catechism’ of the Catholic Church, the Catechism of Christian Doctrine. When this catechism deals with the question of prayer, it does so in the following manner: Question: What is prayer? Answer: Prayer is the raising up of the mind and the heart to God.

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Fr Stephen Platt Question: How do we raise up our mind and our heart to God? Answer: We raise up our mind and heart by thinking of God, by adoring, praising, and thanking Him, and by begging of Him all blessings for soul and body.

This is not a bad definition of prayer, but perhaps something is lacking. We might next turn to an Orthodox definition of prayer by way of comparison, though this will be something of a false comparison because the following definition comes from the Orthodox catechism of the nineteenth-century Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow. Metropolitan Philaret, venerated as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, produced a plethora of sermons and writings. Unfortunately, much of his material is not yet translated into English, although certain texts are familiar, in particular the so-called Prayer of the Optina Elders (in fact a composition of Philaret, or at least his adaptation of a late medieval French prayer). St Philaret was an avid recycler of passages of western spiritual literature which he found useful. In fact, in the Orthodox Church there is a long-standing tradition of adapting helpful pieces of western spiritual writing by removing elements that are incompatible with Orthodox theology and republishing them for an Orthodox audience. The great Athonite spiritual writer St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain did precisely this in his publication of Unseen Warfare, his revised translation of Lorenzo Scupoli’s original work. Philaret, in writing his catechism, was heavily dependent on Catholic works of the same genre, yet he expands on the Catholic original. His litany of questions and answers proceeds as follows: Question: What is prayer? Answer: The lifting up of man’s mind and heart to God manifested by devout words. Question: What should the Christian do when he lifts up his mind and heart God? Answer: First he should glorify Him for His divine perfections, secondly give thanks to Him for His mercies, thirdly ask Him for what he needs. So there are three chief forms of prayer: praise, thanksgiving, and petition. Question: Can a man pray without words? Answer: He can – in mind and heart. An example of this may be seen in Moses before the crossing of the Red Sea.

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Question: Has not such a prayer a name of its own? Answer: It is called spiritual prayer or prayer of the heart and mind, inward prayer, whilst on the other hand prayer expressed in words and accompanied by outward marks of devotion is called oral or outward prayer.1

But then St Philaret gives some serious warnings about the sincerity of the prayer: Question: Can there be outward prayer without inward answer? Answer: There can. Question: If anyone offers prayer without attention or earnestness, does outward prayer alone suffice to obtain grace? Answer: Rather than sufficing to obtain grace, such prayer may provoke God to anger. God has Himself declared His displeasure at such prayer: ‘This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain do they worship Me’ (Isaiah 29:13).2

Finally, and interestingly, St Philaret asks the question:  ‘Does inward prayer alone suffice without outward?’ In answer, he remarks, This question is as if one should ask whether the soul alone might suffice for man without a body. It is idle to ask this, seeing that God has been pleased to make man consist of soul and body. Likewise, idle is it to ask whether inward prayer alone may not suffice without outward. Since we have both soul and body, we ought to glorify God in our bodies and in our souls which are God’s, this being natural, that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth should speak. Our Lord Jesus Christ was spiritual in the highest degree, but even He expressed His spiritual prayer both by words and by devout gestures of body, sometimes for instance lifting up His eyes to heaven, sometimes kneeling or falling on His face to the ground.3

So Philaret points out certain important things about prayer. Yes, prayer is indeed the turning of the heart and the mind to God, but also 1 2 3

Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (Moscow, 1830), pp.  390–3, quoted in P.  Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York, 1899), pp. 507–8. Ibid., pp. 394–5. Ibid., p. 396.

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something more than that: it is the turning of the physical being, the physical senses to God along with the heart and mind – in adoration, thanksgiving, and petition. Prayer may be uttered aloud or it may be silent, it may be something which is expressed internally or it may be external. External prayer, which is expressed without inner turning to God, is an empty shell and may be a delusion. Prayer may be adoration as that of the Cherubim and the Seraphim who hover around the throne of God unceasingly hymning Him (cf. Isaiah 6:3). Prayer may be thanksgiving, most particularly the thanksgiving which we experience in the eucharistic offering of the Divine Liturgy. ‘Let us give thanks to the Lord’ – εὐχαριστήσωμεν τῷ Κυρίῷ – is the central focus of our attention as we begin the eucharistic canon of the Divine Liturgy in which we ask God to make Himself manifest in the poor gifts of bread and wine which we offer Him out of our own incarnate humility. Prayer may be petition. Perhaps the most central petition that we offer God is for His mercy. In fact, ‘Lord, have mercy’ may be seen as the distillation of all of our intercessory and petitionary prayer. This petition, offered repeatedly in every Orthodox service, reminds us immediately of the justified prayer of the publican: ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’ (Luke 8:13). In fact, it is important to contrast the prayer of the publican with that of the Pharisee in this parable of Christ. The Pharisee offers prayers of thanksgiving – ‘Lord, I thank you …’ – but his prayers are deemed by the church hymnographers to be madness because they are empty prayers of thanksgiving coming forth from his own pride. In contrast, it is the humility of the publican that leads to his salvation, and by it he leaves the temple justified. What then of the difference between prayer in words and the prayer of silence? Words are frequently a necessity in order for us to reach out and communicate with one another, but communication ceases to be a dialogue until we start to listen. The importance of listening in prayer is something which is apparent already in the Old Testament. Remember the opening words of the great prayer, the Shema: ‘Hear, O Israel …!’ It is an invitation for the chosen people of God not only to speak but to listen. If we turn our attention to the Psalms, how many times we are entreated to hear and to listen: ‘O that today you would listen to his voice: harden

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not your hearts’ (Ps. 94). But listening is also something which pertains to God’s role in the relationship with His people: ‘Lord I have cried unto you, hear me: attend to the voice of my supplication, when I cry out to you.’ As quoted before, this is one of the Psalms used at the censing in the Orthodox service of Vespers. Prayer is a dialogue of speech and of silence, of talking and of listening. Without such a dialogue, we are left only with a monologue. Silence can be the active expression of prayer, but it may also be God’s response to our prayer offered using words. Christ Himself is the Word of the Heavenly Father, but as St Ignatius of Antioch reminds us, He is ‘the word who proceeds from silence’.4 This concept relates to a type of icon of Christ, found in the later medieval Russian tradition of iconography, in which the Saviour is portrayed as an angel, similar to certain depictions of Christ as Sophia, the Divine Wisdom. The angel is depicted with his mouth closed, occasionally with hands placed in front of the mouth, and the inscription reads: ‘Jesus Christ the divine silence’. Indeed, there is something of the essence of God, even as manifest in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, which is of its essence silent – not out of rejection of the creation, but of intent listening. There is also a need for silence in our own prayer. St Isaac the Syrian reminds us that the highest form of prayer is to stand in silent adoration before God. Elsewhere Isaac tells us that ‘silence is the mystery of the age to come.’5 Where there is silence, there is eternity, and we may enter into the eternity of God’s silence as we ourselves keep silent in order to hear His voice. How, then, should we pray? The disciples themselves ask Christ in the Gospels: ‘Lord, teach us to pray’ (Luke 11:1). In response, Jesus gives them the words of the Lord’s Prayer. In the Orthodox liturgy, as the priest introduces the congregation to the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, he does so by asking God the following: ‘Count us worthy, Master, that with boldness and without condemnation we may dare to call upon you, the heavenly God, as Father and to say “Our Father”.’ What is the significance of the 4 5

Letter to the Magnesians 8. 2. Homily 65.

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word ‘boldness’? The word is found frequently in the hymnography of the Orthodox tradition, in particular with reference to the Mother of God. The Virgin is described by the Byzantine hymnographers as having boldness before her Son. As an illustration of this, we might consider the place of the Mother of God in the account of the wedding at Cana in Galilee in John’s Gospel ( John 2:1–12). It is she who approaches her son and simply says: ‘They have no wine.’ She is consequently the one who is also able to prompt Him to perform His first miracle in spite of His initial response to her: ‘What have you to do with me woman? My hour has not yet come.’ In fact here we have a very human example of a mother asking her son to do something, and he listens and he obeys. In the human relationship of the Divine Son to His mother there is something very powerful, and the hymnographers understand and realize this, ascribing to the Virgin a role which is both deeply human but also profoundly spiritual, centred on this maternal boldness. Such boldness is, moreover, not something that belongs by right only to Mary, but is even within reach of each and every one of us. We have a calling to be free to approach God and call Him not only Father but Abba [‘Papa’ or ‘Daddy’], quite a remarkable thing if we think about it. So then prayer, if it is the turning of the whole self to God, is an action of love which reciprocates, and is reciprocated by, God’s own self-giving love. We are called not only to say prayers to God but, as Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was fond of saying, we are called to be prayers – to become a living sacrifice of ourselves offered to God, since we have nothing else to give Him. Here we might consider again the words of the Psalmist: ‘What shall I give to the Lord for all that he has done for me? I will receive the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord’ (Ps. 116:12–13). Of course, the Fathers understand these words as relating to the eucharistic offering, and see in it our return to Christ through uniting ourselves with Him in Communion. Liturgical prayer – the prayer of the public worship of the Church – is extremely important in the Orthodox tradition. For the Orthodox Christian, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ‘private prayer’. All of our prayer is corporate; even if we are praying at home, alone in our own room, we are joined with the whole communion of the saints and with the whole body of the Church. And this is quite

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significant in the context of Christ’s instructions as to how we might pray. Jesus admonishes his listeners with the following familiar words: When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (Matt. 6:5–6)

Anyone familiar with Orthodox worship might well ask where the point of contact lies between this command of Christ and what we see in an Orthodox church service with the seemingly infinite repetitions of the same prayers, many bowings, crossings, prostrations. Certainly, Orthodox worship in church does make considerable use of the physical manifestations of prayer. Moreover, Orthodox prayer at home would typically make use of the same physical practices. When one goes to one’s room and closes the door, the sign of the Cross is still used, the prostrations are still performed, and standing before the icons, lighting the icon lamp, and chanting hymns are just as important as in church. Of course, we may say that, inasmuch as the prayer proceeds from a broken and contrite heart, there is no right or wrong way to pray. But Orthodox are still very much shaped by a liturgical pattern in their private devotions – what Russian faithful would call prayer по молитвослову or ‘according to the prayer book’. An Orthodox Christian will typically begin to pray using a fixed form of words that they will know by heart, the same prayers that they will hear in church week after week. This is by no means a straitjacket or a cage, limiting their sense of freedom or of personal relationship with God. Rather, this formal framework of prayer serves as a skeleton that supports and protects the living flesh of their prayer life, allowing it space to breathe, to grow, and to live, and for its heart to beat. And not only in private prayer is this the case, but also in the Orthodox Church’s liturgical worship. It sometimes comes as a surprise to non-Orthodox Christians to see how little our eucharistic liturgy changes from week to week. Of course there is much variety to be found in the round of the non-eucharistic services found in the daily and weekly cycle of services, but in the Divine

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Liturgy one notices very little that changes except for the scripture readings and hymns of the saints commemorated each day. In fact, some of my non-Orthodox Christian friends occasionally ask whether I get bored with such a perceived lack of variety in worship. My answer is ‘no’, because in the context of this fixed framework lies an infinite freedom, in which to reach out to God, to speak, and to keep silent. In this context the Orthodox Christian constantly encounters the creative juxtaposition between freedom and structure. A good visual example of this would be a traditional Orthodox church building. On the one hand, the church has a very definite structure, arranged as it is in its different component parts – narthex, nave, and sanctuary, with the iconostasis laid out according to the rules of Byzantine iconography. But there is also a sense of freedom that comes from the lack of pews or rows of chairs, and this same freedom, within the structure of a very carefully arranged liturgy, allows people to come and go, sometimes a little too freely perhaps, in order to find their own space with God. Indeed, perhaps it is better for somebody to enter the church freely and have a glimpse of the divine, a touch of God’s grace, than to stay away for fear of being constrained. One of the most saintly figures of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe in the twentieth century was the now practically forgotten Archimandrite Denys Chambault. Fr Denys was a very unusual archimandrite, a Frenchman with English roots on one side of his family. A convert to Orthodoxy, he joined the Church in an unusual manner, being received into the Moscow Patriarchate as part of a group using the western rite. In the Paris of the mid-twentieth century there were two Orthodox groups with approaches to using a western form of church services. Fr Evgraph Kovalevsky (later Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis) reconstructed a Gallican rite of the liturgy. Père Denys came from a tradition using basically Tridentine Catholic services and, after his entry into Orthodoxy, he simply continued to do this with the blessing of the Moscow hierarchy, which had in any case approved a western form of liturgy based on the Tridentine mass in the late nineteenth century. Père Denys was also unusual because he established in Paris the first Benedictine Orthodox monastic community to have existed in the Orthodox world since the collapse of the Amalfitan monastery on Mount Athos in the thirteenth century. Père Denys’s small

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and poor community had a role to play not only in establishing a western, Benedictine tradition in an Orthodox context, but also because of his own particular gifts of spiritual healing and exorcism. His capacity for spiritual healing made him well known, not only amongst the Orthodox in Paris, but in the wider Christian community. A report about Archimandrite Denys and his unique ministry even appeared in the Church Times in the 1950s. The small monastic community, which sadly did not continue after the death of the founder, lived in complete poverty and relied simply on the donations of well-wishers. Père Denys’s ministry of spiritual healing and exorcism is interesting because, outwardly, it was completely unremarkable. He simply opened the book which contained the prayers of exorcism and read them over the people who had come to see him. Then he would bless them and send them away without any emotion, without any great signs or wonders, and usually in complete privacy with only the person who had come to be healed and their relatives being admitted to the chapel. Yet, time and time again, people went away healed and whole because of the faith of a man who simply trusted in the words of the prayers which embodied his own faith and his own dependence on the will of God. Archimandrite Denys completed his life at an untimely young age, his physical body worn out by his work. His ministry speaks very clearly of the role of personal faith in prayer. We can certainly trust the words of Christ in the Gospel when he says, ‘Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you’ (Matt. 7:7; cf. Luke 11:9). We have no reason to believe that our Lord is lying to us! And this trust in Christ is what lies behind Fr Denys’s remarkable ministry of healing and of spiritual deliverance. Incidentally, whilst visiting America last autumn (2018), I discovered one or two people who told me that they too had been healed by Père Denys after he had appeared to them in dreams. They did not know the identity of the unfamiliar monk who had visited them as they slept, but soon afterwards recognized him in photographs. Archimandrite Denys’s ministry demonstrates that written, liturgical prayers can be things of immense power and channels of divine grace and healing. Sometimes I am asked by evangelical Christians, ‘Why do you feel the need to restrict yourself so much to praying in other people’s words

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according to the prayers in a prayer book?’ My answer is that these words have become sanctified through usage, through time, and as such possess their own sanctifying power. Also these words have the capacity to become my own offering, once again like the offering of incense at Vespers. If we see our prayer as expressing a relationship with God, then such a relationship may be one of deep love, friendship, and joy. Here I must disagree with Dean Inge of St Paul’s, who remarks, ‘Never at any time have I thought it at all probable that [God] … is the kind of person who enjoys being serenaded.’6 In a similar vein, C. S. Lewis was remembered at his Oxford college as having had no time for choral services, attending instead the simple celebration with no music held early on Sunday morning. The pew where Lewis sat in his parish church (Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry, in Oxford) lies behind a pillar which hides the altar, and so also any liturgical action. It would seem that, for Lewis, beauty was immaterial in the context of worship, a mere extravagance. Orthodox Christians, by contrast, would most likely feel uncomfortable if they were to give God ‘just enough’ in prayer. Rather, we are called to give Him an abundance of the little that we have to offer. We are called to be before God like the little child who, having nothing, plucks the flower out of the parent’s own garden and offers it to the parent as a gesture of love. We are called to offer to God all that we have – our own broken selves – and to do so with a sense of wonder and of beauty. ‘Beauty’, Dostoevsky says, ‘will save the world.’7 In prayer, our offering is not only an offering of utilitarian need but of beautiful exultation in God’s grace. The Orthodox approach to prayer is multi-sensory. As incarnate beings, with bodies as well as minds and souls, we are called by the Apostle Paul to ‘Glorify God in (y)our body’ (1 Cor. 6:20). Our bodies are not only reined in to the divine will through subjugating the flesh to the spirit – through prostrations, fasting, and multiple signs of the Cross – but our bodies are also offered to God through the use of our senses: our eyes are consecrated by the sight of the icons; our ears become themselves the channel of offering to God through hearing the words of the gospel and the chanting 6 7

Quoted in A. Fox, Dean Inge (London, 1960), p. 115. F. Dostoevsky, The Idiot, trans. C. Garnett (New York, 1981), p. 370.

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of the church hymns; even our nostrils become channels of prayer through smelling the sweet savour of the incense which ascends before the Divine Presence. Orthodox worship is not merely a means of providing visual aids to help in prayer. In her multi-sensory worship the Church consecrates back to God that which is made in His image and likeness, even though it is marred by sin. The Orthodox funeral service speaks of this when it says, ‘I am an icon of your ineffable glory, even though I am scarred by my own transgressions.’ The same hymn goes on to ask God to restore in each one of us the pristine beauty of His image and likeness in which we were created. The process of prayer for the Orthodox Christian is one of gradual and patient return to God through both thanksgiving and repentance. In fact, all prayer may be distilled into these phrases: ‘Lord, have mercy’, ‘Glory to Thee, our God’, and ‘Let us give thanks to the Lord.’ At the heart of our prayer will always lie thanksgiving and repentance, but the ways in which these two characteristics are expressed may be many, varied, and wonderful. I pray and hope that, in the course of this volume, as you go on to read papers far more erudite and far more learned than this, you may be encouraged to continue to ask yourself the question, ‘what is prayer?’ In answering this question, may you find the means by which the heart, the mind, and the whole being may turn to God through repentance and thanksgiving.

Archimandrite Elisaios

2  Worship and Prayer at an Athonite Monastery

It is a commonplace to depict monasticism as an angelic way of living.1 Monks are said to resemble the angelic powers, not only for their total dedication to God and to virginity, but also because of their unceasing acts of glorification.2 Unaware, as they are, of the multiplicity and disunity of our fallen world, angels are by nature wakeful. Interminably upright before the glory of God, they chant the thrice-holy hymn (trisagion). In the same way, monks (in Syriac monks are called ‘watchers’) attempt to imitate with all their might – both here and now – the angelic choir: a foretaste of eternal life while yet alive on earth. Chanting is the work of the bodiless powers, of those who celebrate, and are ever present, standing diligently before God. A monk, accordingly, is obliged constantly and unremittingly to celebrate this doxology to God.3 A monk who perseveres in vigil with a discerning intellect will not seem to be clad with flesh, for this is truly the work of the angelic estate.4

1

‘The monk finds himself in an earthly and defiled body, but pushes himself into the rank and status of the incorporeal angels’, John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent 1, trans. C.  Luibheid and N.  Russell (Mahwah, NJ, 1982), p.  74; PG 88, 633B. Monks are ‘heavenly men and terrestrial angels’, Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of St Sabas, 58, ed. Schwartz (Leipzig, 1939), p. 158. The monastic habit is called the ‘angelic habit’. On the different aspects of this imitation of the angels (virginity, impassibility, undistracted life, continual doxology), see Jonathan L. Zecher, ‘The Angelic Life in Desert and Ladder:  John Climacus’s Re-Formulation of Ascetic Spirituality’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21: 1 (2013), 111–36. 2 On the union of angels with men in worship, see E. Peterson, The Angels and the Liturgy (New York, 1964). 3 Antiochos, Pandektes 38, PG 89, 1749. 4 Isaac the Syrian, Homily 20, trans. D. Miller (Boston, MA, 1984), p. 101.

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The earliest monks aspired to apply, literally, the exhortation of the Apostle: ‘Pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:16–18) or ‘Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication …’ (Eph. 6:18).5 With this commitment they fled into the desert so as to persevere, without distraction, in that ‘isangelic’ doxology. The hermits, such as Antony the Great, lived a life almost without liturgy: very rarely did they partake of the holy mysteries. At the same time, these men were not isolated; in an intense manner they lived the mystery of the Church’s unity as a permanent presence, erect before the ‘invisible God as if visible’.6 Depriving themselves of every care and association with the outside world, they would be transported to Heaven and to the future age, with the unceasing ‘memory of God’. This they called ‘reflection’ (meleté). Far from being a meditation with diverse pious thoughts, it was simply a continuous declaration, aloud and from the heart, of the word of God. This could have been Psalms, even the entire Psalter, or scriptural verses that were repeated frequently so that the sense of the presence of God would never be severed.7 5 6

7

Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, ‘“Pray without Ceasing”: The Ideal of Continual Prayer in Eastern Monasticism’, Eastern Churches Review, 2: 3 (1969), 253–61. Τόν ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρατόν προορώμενος, Life of St Nilos of Calabria 13 (ed. Ormylia Monastery, 2002), p. 138: ‘The whole point is to stand in front of the everywhere present God … The invisibility of God will become for me the best proof of His presence. I  should not seek to see God, but to be seen by God’, Archimandrite Aimilianos, Χαρισματική ὁδός. Commentary on the Life of St Nilos of Calabria (Ormylia, 2008), pp. 923, 90. On monastic meleté, which cannot be translated exactly by ‘meditation’, see Lucien Regnault, The Day to Day Life of the Desert Fathers (Petersham, MA, 1999), pp. 97, 102; D. Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford, 1993), pp. 122–9; C. Stewart OSB, ‘The Practices of Monastic Prayer:  Origins, Evolution, and Tensions’ in Philip Sellew (ed.), Living for Eternity: The White Monastery and its Neighborhood. Proceedings of a Symposium at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, 2003); and J. Wortley, ‘How the Desert Fathers Meditated’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 46 (2006), 315–28.

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This was indeed difficult to achieve. The first apophthegm in the Paterikon informs us that when the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?’ A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, ‘Do this and you will be saved.’ At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.8

The task of a monk who lives in his cell, instructed Abba Poemen, is to ‘eat once a day, maintain silence and quietude, and occupy himself with his manual work and meleté’.9 Such remained the practice for the majority of strict hermits: suspending their unceasing ‘meditation’ (meleté) by counterpointing it with moments of increased, intense prayer. This was known as synaxis [assembly], in order to emphasize the ecclesiastical character of that kind of prayer.10 Rising, the monks faced to the east, and crossing themselves, they recounted either a brief prayer or a supplication. Then, having made a low prostration, they returned to their meleté, also known as ‘concealed work’ or ‘memory of God’,11 with restraint of thought and vigilance. Several fathers, such as Abba Makarios, recited up to 100 of such ‘prayers’ (or ‘supplications’) a day. Abba Apollos completed fifty by day and sixty at night.12 Abba Isidoros recalled that in his youth he possessed neither a routine nor an order of service: ‘When I was younger and remained in my cell I set no limit to prayer; the night was for me as much the time of prayer as the day.’13 The unvarying and the intensity of the monastics’ watchfulness to sinful thoughts – which was demanded by this practice – yielded 8 9 10 11 12 13

Abba Anthony 1, Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. B. Ward, Cistercian Publications (Oxford, 1975), pp. 1–2. Abba Poemen 168, Ward, p. 190. D. Burton-Christie, p. 118. Regnault, pp. 112–25; Ware, p. 257. Regnault, pp. 105–6. Abba Isidore the Priest 4, Ward p. 97.

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much fruit: visitations of holy grace, glimpses of heavenly dwellings, etc. These are mentioned only sparingly in the Paterikon – they were only for the resilient ascetics. In the face of human weakness, which requires some variety in order to renew enthusiasm, many hermits soon adopted, as a part of their ascetic practice, prayers said at regular intervals, a feature which was common among, and characteristic of, lay Christians. They had been adopted from apostolic times and were based on Jewish customs: morning and evening prayers – these corresponded to the ‘daily sacrifice of the temple – as well as the customary prayers, taken from the tradition of the synagogue at the third (Acts 2:15), the sixth (Acts 10:9), and the ninth hours (Acts 3:1; 10:3).14 There was a particular preference for praying during the night, thereby imitating the prayers of Christ Himself (Acts 16:2; 2 Cor. 6:5). Offer up your prayers in the morning, at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, the evening, and at cock-crowing: in the morning, returning thanks that the Lord has sent you light, that He has brought you past the night, and brought on the day; at the third hour, because at that hour the Lord received the sentence of condemnation from Pilate; at the sixth, because at that hour He was crucified; at the ninth, because all things were in commotion at the crucifixion of the Lord, as trembling at the bold attempt of the impious Jews, and not bearing the injury offered to their Lord; in the evening, giving thanks that He has given you the night to rest from the daily labours; at cock-crowing, because that hour brings the good news of the coming on of the day for the operations proper for the light.15

St Basil the Great emphasizes the need for variation in prayer in order to renew one’s alacrity: I think that variety and diversity in the prayers and psalms recited at appointed hours are desirable for the reason that routine and boredom, somehow, often cause

14 15

On the history of the formation of daily prayers, see Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, MN, 1986). Constitutions of the Holy Apostles VIII, 34, in Schaff, Library of the Ante-Nicene Fathers 7 (1886, reprint Grand Rapids, MI, 2001), p. 496.

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distraction in the soul, while by change and variety in the psalmody and prayers said at the stated hours it is refreshed in devotion and renewed in sobriety.16

Seven times of prayer were devised in order to symbolize the ceaseless characteristic of prayer, as mentioned in Psalm 118:164: ‘Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.’ The notion, nonetheless, that prayer must be ceaseless remained in the consciousness of the monks. To one abbot who boasted that in his monastery they applied these regular hours of prayer, St Epiphanius replied, ‘It is clear that you do not trouble about the other hours of the day, if you cease from prayer. The true monk should have prayer and psalmody continually in his heart.’17 Ceaseless memory of God remained the chief preoccupation of the monks and they initiated certain other solutions to obey that commandment. In the cenobitic monasteries of the Thebaid the rule of ‘twelve Psalms’ was implemented which had been revealed by an angel to St Pachomios.18 This rule consisted of two assemblies (synaxeis) during which the community recited twelve Psalms with ‘prayers’ (that is, periods of silent prayer and prostrations). This was, in fact, a modification of the rule as evidenced in the oldest manuscripts of Holy Scripture and in the Horologion, which contained in their appendices a list of twenty-four Psalms, one for each hour of the day.19 From this tradition emerged the so-called ‘unsleeping doxology’ of the monks of the Sleepless Monastery in Constantinople.20 It was initially established by St Alexander, who had organized his brotherhood into eight 16 Basil the Great, Long Rules 37, PG 31, 1016, trans. R.J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church (Boston, MA, 1950), p. 40. 17 Abba Epiphanius 3, Ward, p. 57. 18 Palladios, Lausiac History, 32, ed. Butler, 1904, vol.  2, p.  92; Regnault, p.  106; Armand Veilleux, La Liturgie dans le cénobitisme pachômien au IVe siècle, Studia Anselmiana 57 (Rome, 1968), pp. 324–39. 19 For important new insights on the relation between meleté and the formation of the two synaxeis of twelves Psalms in Egyptian monasticism, see Stig Simeon R.  Frøyshov, ‘The Cathedral-Monastic Distinction Revisited. Was Egyptian Monastic Office Monastic?’, Studia Liturgica (2007), pp.  198–216, especially pp. 208–11. 20 See Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1, p. 46.

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choirs of fifty monks. In this way the ceaseless doxology of the Psalms21 was distributed into four parts and was interrupted with twelve readings. Subsequently, St Alexander, concerned to apply the command of God literally, separated the sleepless doxology into twenty-four brief services. This gave the effect of accommodating the entire day and night with actual ecclesiastical services and applying, literally, the precept of ceaseless prayer now in a manner different from the procedure of the older fathers.22 Thus, in different forms, a monastic, liturgical tradition began to take shape. Nevertheless, for centuries the content of the services was confined to the recitation of the Psalms, either with the melodious responses of the brotherhood to a solo cantor (responsorial psalmody) or with two choirs antiphonally (antiphonal psalmody). Moreover, this psalmody was countered by periods of silent prayer. During the fifth century St Auxentius introduced syllabic troparia into the recitation of the Psalms23 – a novelty that raised opposition from among the monks. They remained faithful to the Egyptian tradition, considering hymns and troparia to be worldly affectations that were thought to be quite the opposite of the mourning and compunction which should always attend a monk.24 Towards the end of the sixth century or beginning of the seventh, John Moschos and St Sophronios (later Patriarch of Jerusalem) paid a visit to Abba Neilos in Sinai. On Sunday they celebrated an all-night vigil, following the practices of the Palestine monasteries. The form of the service was similar to what is done today except for the fact that there was not the slightest sound of musical hymnody. The two visitors asked Abba Neilos why hymns were not sung. He replied that while hymns and troparia might be appropriate for secular priests, deacons, and cantors, who are ordained Life of St Alexander the Akoimites 26–7, ed. De Stoop, Patrologia Orientalis VI, 5 (Paris, 1911), pp. 677–8; Symeon Metaphrastes, Life of St Markellos the Akoimites 4, PG 116, 709. 22 Life of St Alexander 30, p.  681. See I.  Fountoulis, Ἡ Εἰκοσιτετράωρος ἀκοιμητός δοξολογία (Thessalonique, 1963). 23 Life of St Auxentios in Makarios of Simonos Petras, The Synaxarion, vol. 3 (Ormylia Monastery, 2001), p. 506. 24 J. McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism and 4th Century Psalmodic Movement’, Music & Letters, 75: 4 (1994), 505–21. 21

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to attend to the church services, they are not for the monastics who grieve for their sins.25 This question and its response, however, inform us that troparia had already begun to appear in the monasteries. A considerable increase in the writing of troparia had already appeared from the fifth century, in particular within the circle of spoudaioi [zealous] monks who were committed to the divine services at the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.26 It is likely that, after the destruction of Jerusalem and of its local monasteries in 614 by the Persians, monks at the Lavra of St Sabba and other communities began to introduce hymns into the monastic typikon. During that time, canons with inserted troparia between the verses of the biblical odes began to proliferate – especially those by St Andrew of Crete who had served in the Church of the Resurrection.27 This practice made its way to Constantinople during the eighth and ninth centuries, probably instigated by the Graptos brothers, Theodore and Theophanes, together with their elder, Michael Synkellos. However, it happened once again by reason of a crisis – this time iconoclasm – that hymnody was adopted in monastic worship, chiefly at the monastery of Stoudios and later at other cloisters under the influence of St Theodore and his brother Joseph, as well as other Stoudite monks who composed numerous hymns.28 These hymnographic compositions provoked a change in the profile and character of monastic prayer, which on this occasion assimilated not only the sacerdotal prayers and supplications from the urban Euchologion, but also the cycle of the feasts. Indeed, as a result of these changes, our liturgical books, such as the Triodion, Pentocostarion, Parakletiki, and others, received their current construct.

25 A. Longo (ed.), ‘Il testo integrale della “Narrazione degli Abba Giovanni e Sofronio” attraverso le Hermineiai di Nicone’, Rivista degli Studii Bizantini e Neoellenici (1965–6), pp. 223–68. See Taft, pp. 198–201, 274. 26 The Georgian translation of the ancient Tropologion of Jerusalem (ancient Iadgari), which was recently published, shows remnants of the older form of the Oktoechos, which was enriched later by St John of Damascus. See S. S. R. Frøyshov, ‘Rite of Jerusalem’, in Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (2013) (online). 27 Taft, p. 276, 28 R. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, MN, 1993), pp. 52–66.

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At the time of this initial liturgical synthesis – which was critically connected with the theology of icons – the monastic typikon adopted the doxological and apocalyptic dimensions of the liturgy, which hitherto had been confined to the urban churches. Subsequently, one may discern an ever-increasing polarization of monastic prayer, one that preserves the ancient ideal of unceasing and concentrated ‘meditation’ (meleté) of scripture. This we could name the ‘ascetic dimension’, whereas the development of the liturgical cycle which, together with the adoption of frequent Divine Liturgies in the monasteries, constitutes the doxological or ‘theophanic dimension’. These two features henceforth will combine inextricably to nurture the life of the monks. Thereafter, it would be not only a pursuit for ceaseless prayer, but also a standing before the glory of the Kingdom of God, which is exposed in worship through symbols, images, and hymns. The first liturgical synthesis, the so-called Stoudite, extended all over the Byzantine world. It was adopted in the tenth century by St Athanasios the Athonite for the Great Lavra, as well as for Athonite monasticism in general, and also in the eleventh century by St Anthony of the Lavra of the Caves in Kiev and subsequently became the prototype of worship in the Russian monasteries. Between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries a considerable diversity emerged from one locality to the next, so much so that this new ordering may be categorized as mixed or hybrid. The monastery of St Sabbas, whence this movement originated, remained more or less faithful to ancient ascetic prayer. The fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders in 1204, which brought about immense turmoil to the monasteries, was again the cause for a transformation (the term ‘transformation’ rather than ‘reformation’ is used here, as the latter does not conform to Orthodox tradition). The new conditions of occupation under the Latins led to the abandonment of the asmatikon typikon [chanted order] and the application of the monastic, Palestinian typikon, not only to the monasteries, but also to the urban churches, thereby creating progressively one single liturgical type, which the Church would inherit and retain up until the present. Moreover, it would guarantee a profound impact of monastic prayer in lay piety. Hesychasm, a major theological, spiritual, and cultural movement that surfaced in the fourteenth century, was accompanied by a liturgical

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revival named ‘Neo-Sabaitic Synthesis’.29 It was initiated and inspired by St Philotheos Kokkinos, disciple and biographer of St Gregory Palamas, when he was abbot at the Great Lavra (c. 1344–7). During that period he wrote the Ordinances of Vigils (Diataxis) in which he adapted regulations for the services at St Sabbas’s monastery to the requirements of the Great Lavra. This was, in fact, a slightly modified Palestinian typikon, which was eventually printed around the sixteenth century with the title Typikon of St Sabbas and was conveyed from that time into the Church. In reality, however, it was a typikon of the Holy Mountain, distinguished by its endeavour to return to the simplicity and ascetic spirit of a monastic service and exhibiting a synthesis between the monastic order and the Euchologion of Constantinople.30 This development and the gradual assimilation of the doxological dimension of worship in monastic prayer continued throughout Ottoman rule, particularly on the Holy Mountain, where Byzantine monody experienced an immense growth. From the fourteenth century, protracted melodies, typical of urban worship, had begun to penetrate the monastic offices, under the influence of St John Koukouzeles. This trend expanded significantly once transcriptions in the new notational method were introduced (beginning of the nineteenth century). Music for church services, especially festal ones, became more and more ornate with intricate soloist vocalizations. The result was an extension of the daily offices amounting to a programme of around eight hours, and for the all-night vigils up to fourteen hours. At the same time, new items were added to the liturgical repertory: services of intercession (Parakliseis), Akathists, canons for the Virgin, etc. These added even more to the already prolonged obligations of monks to be in church, and all this at the expense of their private prayer in the cell. Most likely the excessive expansion of the hours of worship, together with other factors (in particular, the prevailing idiorrhythmic way of life at the large monasteries), drove a good number of monks, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the sketes and smaller cells. There 2 9 Ibid., pp. 79–80. 30 Ibid., pp.  81–3, and idem, ‘Mount Athos:  A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 42 (1988), 179–94.

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they could find greater silence and preoccupy themselves with prayers of compunction and also with inner prayer, according to the spirit of the ancient Desert Fathers. These cell-dwelling fathers, even today, retire to the Holy Mountain’s wilderness in order to live in solitude or in small communities. There they are able to devote more time to inner prayer and to manual work while following a limited liturgical agenda. It is true to say that many monks have difficulty in understanding fully the language of the Psalter or of the ecclesiastical hymns. They have equal difficulty in executing Byzantine plainchant. Thus they had the inclination to replace the regular offices with the Jesus Prayer. For example, the content of Vespers and Matins might well be substituted by about forty rounds of the prayer rope (each of 300 knots). Such ordering is applied with considerable diversity, depending on the place and in accordance with the wish of the spiritual fathers, but always alone. However, whenever these cell-dwellers find themselves in the company of other monks for common prayer, they revert to the appropriate services from the typikon, which they execute with complete accuracy, simplicity, and sobriety, on occasion intoning the hymn texts as recitatives without melody. The ‘monologic’31 Jesus Prayer remains the prevalent prayer of Athonite monks, together with the service of intercession and the Akathist to the Mother of God. While most monks recite all of these prayers by heart throughout the day, they differentiate between the various forms of their prayer. When someone asked St Ephraim of Katounakia (d. 1998, canonized 2019)32 about prayer, he replied that, when a monk gets up in the night, he must first complete his rule of private prayer, that is to say, a specific number of prostrations followed by the Jesus Prayer with prayer rope. Next, he must complete his ‘office’ which, according to the rule of cell-dwellers, consists of a specific number of recitations of the Jesus Prayer with prayer rope. Finally, he must cultivate inner prayer, that is to say, the Jesus Prayer once again, but in a different spirit: striving to lower one’s mind into the heart and at the same time continuing, undistracted, with the invocation of 3 1 32

Prayer of single word or phrase. See his biography by his disciple Hieromonk Joseph, Elder Ephraim of Katounakia (Mount Athos, Katounakia, 2003).

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the Lord’s name. Almost exclusively, the Jesus Prayer is recited for around six hours a day, but with differing sensitivities. The hesychasts, some of whom live in this manner even today, have preserved the experience of the hermits of old and have assimilated, in a private manner, the two dimensions of monastic prayer mentioned above. But the lack of diversity in the Jesus Prayer makes it also difficult to accomplish. For that reason, St Ephraim, having accepted new disciples, insisted that they complete the office of their cenobitic monasteries after their private rule. In the large monasteries, despite idiorrhythmia and the occasional diversion from monastic tradition, the monks in every epoch maintained a sense of their responsibility before God and also their obligation both to be present in church for the services, but also to complete their daily prayer routines. For the elderly fathers of the previous generation, most of whom were neither highly educated nor very ascetic, it would have been inconceivable to abandon the rule, which had been passed on to them from their elders. Owing to the work load and long services, the private rule was reduced in length but remained compulsory. In many cenobitic monasteries bells are rung one hour before the morning office in order for the monks to carry out their private rule. Anyone might be astonished to learn that between 1960 and 1970, when there was a sharp decline in the monastic population on the Holy Mountain, most of the monks safeguarded this distinctive spiritual sensitivity in relation to worship and private prayer. This was the flame that burned beneath the ash. And when, from 1970 onwards, through the miraculous intervention of the Virgin, new monks began to populate the sketes and monasteries, what they found was a living tradition, which emanated from the very beginnings of monasticism. They were inspired by the presence of imposing spiritual figures such as St Paisios, Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, St Ephraim of Katounakia, Elder Haralambos of Dionysiou, Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra, Elder George of Grigoriou, and many others. The intention of all was, and still is today for the younger generation, to follow the footprints of the hesychast fathers and to seek continuous communion with Christ through prayer.33 33 For a summary of this revival, see Graham Speake, Mount Athos:  Renewal in Paradise, 2nd edn (Limni, Evia, 2014), pp. 154–71.

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The recent burgeoning of Athonite monasticism was a result of the paradigm of the hesychast fathers, and was also due to the effect of the general renewal of patristic thought throughout Orthodoxy. Consequently, it was only natural that the new monks craved to ‘live’ the experience of the ‘inner prayer’ – not only in the cells but also in those large monasteries which had benefited from the advantages of cenobitic life. This revival of Athonite monasticism over the last forty years has been something more than a mere monastic arithmetical increment. It was marked equally by a trend towards a synthesis of hesychast spirituality and the cenobitic tradition. We could name this a ‘neo-hesychast synthesis’ because, as with the Hesychasm of the fourteenth century, it has not only spiritual, but also theological and liturgical dimensions. The difficulty that confronted the new monks, especially those who aspired to go deeper into the experience of ‘inner prayer’, was how to combine private prayer – which was lived especially during the night – with worship that had developed so significantly in Athos’s cenobitic houses. Different solutions were found, according to the abbots and the local tradition of each monastery.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra: Prayer and Worship Elder Aimilianos began his monastic life at the Meteora in around 1961. Endowed with extraordinary mystical qualities, he set out to renew monastic life at the monastery of the Transfiguration (Great Meteoron), which had found itself in decline. This situation afforded him considerable freedom to organize the life of a new brotherhood based on hesychast tradition – something for which his followers longed. He created a harmonious combination of intense nocturnal personal prayer together with liturgical life: a form of worship in which he wished to convey those doxological and ‘theophanic’ dimensions which we noted above. When the brotherhood replanted itself on the Holy Mountain (1973), they encountered at Simonopetra ten elderly monks who upheld with

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stringent accuracy the entire typikon. It was out of the question for them to endorse any kind of ‘reform’: the Athonites’ sensitivity would understandably reject such action. With abundant gentle understanding Elder Aimilianos made a few adjustments. Initially they were created in order for the monks to acquire additional time for private prayer in their cells. He regulated the life of the brotherhood so that the tasks would not exceed four to five hours, and he also reduced the length of the services without altering their structure. The elder eliminated certain patristic readings that had been heard already in the church and made a few other reductions of later elements, thereby restoring to the daily services their original form. Still, he left it up to the monks to read the services in their cells or to replace the readings either with patristic texts or with ‘inner prayer’. His main concern was to provide each monk with the ability, every night on a daily basis, to have a meeting with the coming Lord. The elder did not like the word ‘rule’, but rather preferred ‘vigil’, with its implications of ascetical watchfulness. This also implied that, when the monk finds himself alone before the invisible God, he is also in communion with the entire Church. He serves the Church by holding his synaxis [assembly] just as it was with the ancient, desert elders. Nevertheless, it is imperative for this private vigil to have an organic relationship with the brotherhood’s life of worship. When there is no vigil in church, then the monk performs his own rule or ‘liturgy’, and ‘while peaceful silence enwraps all things, and night is in mid-course’ (Wisd. 18:14) and the all-powerful Word comes, invited, so that the true light shines forth. For coming in the middle of the night as He does, ‘they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God will illumine them, and they shall reign for ever and ever’ (Rev. 22:5). ‘And they shall see his face’ (Rev. 22:4). The encounter of the monk with God in his cell in the middle of the night is the heart of his life. It is this which regulates the whole of his daily round: work, rest, diet and so on. The faithful monk emerges as from a fiery furnace which is in flames but does not burn. Such personal development forms the structure and training of the ‘body’ of the whole of the brotherhood.34 34 Archimandrite Aimilianos, ‘Monastic Life. The House of God and the Gate of Heaven’, in The Authentic Seal (Monastery of Ormylia, 1999), p. 121.

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The next point which the elder considered to be altogether fundamental for the life of his monks was precisely this doxological dimension, something that had been developed throughout the trajectory of monastic prayer. He wanted a living, joyful, doxological worship, which would be expressed by brisk, congregational, choral chanting, in accord with the principles that were expressed by St Gregory of Nyssa and other Fathers: ‘Out of the two groups, I managed to create a rhythmical and harmonious unity in their singing of the psalms, exactly like proper choral singing: a beautifully ordered blend owing to the shared responses of all.’35 For this reason Elder Aimilianos gave instruction to one of the monks who was gifted in musical composition to compile original pieces based on the tradition of Byzantine plainchant – but to avoid excessively longdrawn-out melismatic vocalizations – and to set to music a collection of Psalms to be sung in place of the lengthy communion chants. This he did, without abandoning the original melodies altogether, which he confined to certain great feasts. What the elder wanted was that, when a monk enters the church in the morning, after having spent four hours in private prayer, struggling against thoughts and distractions in the darkness of his cell – so that he has experience of his weakness – he should find there, as in a ‘mystery’, the light of the Kingdom and the glory of God. Now, during the liturgical gathering, and accompanied by the appearance of the sun, the monk will sense the revelation of the Sun of Righteousness who comes to illuminate the darkness of his heart: Christ, the true light, who enlighten and hallow everyone who comes into the world, may the light of your countenance be signed upon us, that in it we may see your unapproachable light; and direct our steps to the doing of your commandments; at the intercessions of your most pure Mother and of all your Saints. Amen.36

This daily walk, which begins in the darkness of his cell, is climaxed in the church with the partaking of the cup of life. After the church service and a short rest, the monk will return to the company of the brotherhood bearing a personal witness to the Resurrection 35 3 6

Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St Macrina 33, trans. K. Korrigan (Eugene, OR, 2005). Prayer of Prime.

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and the victory of Christ. Throughout the entire day he will attempt to prolong this experience through ‘the memory of God’ and through ‘concealed labour’: equivalent to the ‘reflection’ (meleté) of the ancient Fathers. During this time of common life, either with the brothers or making contact with pilgrims, the monk can improve the authenticity of his experience. This is revealed by his patience, love, and tolerance towards his neighbour, seen as an image of God. With the approach of Vespers, he returns again to the church (katholikon) in order to greet the setting of the sun and the lighting of the lamps – symbolic of the perpetual vigil with which the monk is called to struggle, and thus together with Christ the Saviour to overcome the change of the worldly light into the night. After Compline, he will return with renewed zeal to his cell as though to the Babylonian furnace37 in order to undertake once more – following an acceptable rest – the ascetic struggle of prayer with the assistance of the invisible but all-present God. The darkness, both of the night and of his heart, is lit by the lamp of faith and hope, which has been revivified with the psalmody of Vespers, and he is supported by the angels and the saints – especially those saints who are celebrated on that day – in the accomplishment of his own ‘vigil’ which will reveal, in the morning, the ‘true light’. For the monk who meekly follows the schedule of the monastery, ‘forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto these things which are before’ (Phil. 3:13), that is to say, waiting for the coming Lord, his private ascesis of prayer becomes, at one and the same time, an extension of and a preparation for his mystical and liturgical life. The aim of a monk is to become the priest of a mystical celebration (hierourgia), whereby his cell is the vestibule where access is opened to the sanctuary of his heart. By changing his manner of prayer the monk creates a diversity, which assists him in renewing his willingness. Whatever he lives mystically in the sacred services becomes ‘matter’ for the ‘inner liturgy’ that he undertakes 37

‘The cell of a monk is the furnace of Babylon wherein the Three Children found the Son of God, and it is also the pillar of cloud where from God spake’, Sayings of the Fathers I. 1. 54 in W. Budge, Paradise of the Fathers (from Syriac) (London, 1907), vol. 2, p. 14.

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in the cell. He must assimilate such symbolic representations and mysteries offered in worship, in order to acquire a ‘noetic sensitivity’ of divine light. And, conversely, the monk’s battle against ‘thoughts’ in order to maintain the permanent memory of God and to hold the ‘sobriety’ (nepsis) of his mind is a preparation of his heart, so that the ‘images’ of worship may become the energy of God’s revelation within him. In this way the life of a struggling monk turns out to be a marvellous circle whereby each day he can ascend, step by step, towards heaven. Thus it is possible today, after so many centuries of a developing monastic tradition, for monks to live that same experience of ceaseless prayer. Like the Desert Fathers of old, today’s monastics are being enriched by that synthesis between liturgical and ‘neptic’ prayer, as consolidated from the experience of generations of monks. Life in a cenobitic monastery, which encourages private prayer, provides us with the ability to live the mystery of the Body of Christ, wherein the brethren complement one another: The brethren, therefore, regardless of what work they are doing, ought to conduct themselves toward each other in love and cheerfulness. And the one who works should say of him who is praying: ‘I also possess the treasure which my brother possesses since it is common.’ And let him who prays say of him who reads: ‘What he gains from reading redounds also to my advantage.’ And he who works let him thus say: ‘The work which I am doing is for the common good.’ For as the members of the body, being many, are one body (1 Cor. 12:12) and help each other while each still performs its own function – as the eye sees for the whole body and the hand labors for all the members and the foot – walks, sustaining all the members, and another member suffers with all the others – so also the brethren should be among themselves. Thus he who prays should not judge the one working because he is not praying. Neither should he who works condemn the one praying because he is resting while he himself is at work. Neither should he who is serving condemn another. But let each one do whatever he is doing for the glory of God. He who reads should regard the one praying with love and joy with the thought: ‘For me he is praying.’ And let him who prays consider that what the one working is doing is done for the common good.38

38 Macarius of Egypt, Homily 3, 2, in Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. G. Maloney (New York 1992), p. 47.

Fr Maximos Constas

3  St John Chrysostom and the Jesus Prayer

St Nikodimos and the Philokalia The Philokalia, published in Venice in 1782, is the most important work ever produced by (if not actually on) Mount Athos. It is an extensive collection of Orthodox Christian spiritual writings, comprising works by nearly forty Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers from the fourth to the fifteenth century. It represents a comprehensive library of ascetic and spiritual writings, universally recognized as a definitive expression of Orthodox spirituality, with special emphasis on the practice of the Jesus Prayer, also known as the ‘Prayer of the Heart’ (καρδιακή προσευχή) or the ‘Prayer of the Mind’ (νοερά προσευχή). A mere eleven years after its publication, the Philokalia was translated into Slavonic (Moscow, 1793), followed by two Russian translations (beginning in 1877), and today is available in virtually all European languages, as well as in Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, and other foreignlanguage versions. Though the Philokalia was published in the eighteenth century, it is not a product of early modern Orthodox piety. The collection has its roots in the late Byzantine period (1261–1453), when Byzantine hesychasts compiled anthologies of works on spirituality, ascetic practice, and the Jesus Prayer. Many of these anthologies survive in manuscripts housed in libraries on Mount Athos, such as the Great Lavra, Vatopedi, and Karakalou. Their contents are varied, but they all contain a common core of material that is also found in the Philokalia. These collections have various titles, such as Paterikon or Asketikon (i.e. a collection of patristic or ascetical texts), and, in some cases, Philokalia (a word which originally meant ‘anthology’). As a result, modern scholars refer to these earlier collections as ‘pre-Philokalic’

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collections, and describe them as ‘Philokalias before the Philokalia’.1 Some scholars believe that the Philokalia published in 1782 was simply a printed version of a late Byzantine collection that has either not yet been found or which has been lost or destroyed. But it is just as likely that the two eighteenth-century editors of the Philokalia, St Makarios of Corinth and St Nikodimos, made their own choices when selecting certain extracts and works from these older collections. For the Philokalia, St Nikodimos wrote an introduction or prologue, the relative brevity of which is in marked contrast to the significance of its contents.2 The long-standing lack of an English translation of St Nikodimos’s introduction has created unnecessary confusion among English-speaking readers concerning the nature of the Philokalia, and has effectively obscured the book’s meaning and purpose.3 For St Nikodimos, the Philokalia is essentially a book about the Jesus Prayer. His introduction begins with a summary account of mankind’s creation, fall, loss of grace, redemption in Christ, and restoration of grace through the sacrament of baptism. He laments that the grace of the Holy Spirit given in baptism can so quickly and easily be ‘buried and darkened by worldly cares’. In response to this predicament, God provided the Church with a ‘way to find grace again; a way which is truly wondrous’, and this is the way of the Jesus Prayer, which is ‘ceaseless prayer to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. As a gift from God, the Jesus Prayer is the divinely sanctioned way to enter the heart and recover the gift of grace given to us in baptism, which is why the Lord says: ‘The kingdom of God is within 1

2 3

See, for example, Paul Géhin, ‘Le Filocalie che hanno preceduto la “Filocalia”’, in Nicodemo l’Aghiorita e la Filocalia. Atti dell’VIII Convegno ecumenico internazionale di spiritualità ortodossa sessione bizantina, Bose, 16–19 settembre 2000, ed. Antonio Rigo (Magnano, 2001), pp. 83–102; and Symeon Paschalides, ‘Autour de l’histoire d’une collection ascétique: la Philocalie, les circonstances de son edition et sa tradition manuscrite’, in Da Teognosto alla Filocalia (XIII-XVIII secolo), ed. Antonio Rigo (Bari, 2016), pp. 199–224. St Nikodimos (1749–1809) was a prolific writer, hymnographer, and compiler of spiritual and ecclesiastical books. Together with St Makarios of Corinth (1731– 1805), he began work on the Philokalia in 1777, when he was only 28 years old. For an English translation of St Nikodimos’s introduction, see Constantine Cavarnos, The Philokalia (Belmont, MA, 2008), pp. 27–40.

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you’ (Luke 17:21). For St Nikodimos, the Jesus Prayer is the ‘instrument of deification’ and the Philokalia is the ‘mystical school of the Prayer of the Heart’. He therefore rejects the notion that the practice of the Jesus Prayer is only for monks and nuns, and instead teaches that it should be practised by ‘all the faithful’, who are all called to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:17). He believes that the failure of the faithful to practise this prayer has deprived them of sanctification, and robbed the world of saints.

St John Chrysostom and the Philokalia To support these arguments, St Nikodimos underlines that the Jesus Prayer is the teaching of both Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, who were teachers of prayer. In the first place, and with respect to the biblical exhortation to ‘pray without ceasing’, St Basil held that it was ‘impiety to say that the commandments of the Holy Spirit in Scripture contain things that are impossible to carry out’.4 As a teacher of prayer, St Gregory the Theologian affirms that: ‘It is better to remember God than it is to breathe.’5 It is at this point that St Nikodimos turns to St John Chrysostom, stating that:  ‘The divine Chrysostom wrote three whole works on the unceasing prayer of the mind (τῆς ἀδιαλείπτου καὶ νοερᾶς προσευχῆς), and in innumerable places in his other works he exhorts everyone without exception to practise continual prayer.’ In his Handbook of Spiritual Counsel, published in 1801, St Nikodimos again emphasizes that the Jesus Prayer should be practised by all the faithful, reminding us that: ‘According to St John Chrysostom, ceaseless prayer is best achieved 4 5

St Basil, Homily on the Words: ‘Give Heed to Thyself’, in Saint Basil: The Ascetical Works, trans. Monica Wagner (Washington, DC, 1950), p. 434. St Gregory the Theologian, Oration 27:4 (SC 250:78); cf. St Athanasios, Life of Anthony 91.3, where St Anthony exhorts us to ‘breathe Christ always’ (SC 400:368). See also Jean-Robert Pouchet, ‘Grégoire de Nazianze, précurseur de l’Hésychasme’, in Il Monachesimo tra eredità e aperture, eds Maciej Bielawski and Daniel Hombergen (Rome, 2004), pp. 119–49.

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through the Prayer of the Heart (διὰ τῆς καρδιακῆς προσευχῆς), which can be practised anytime, anywhere, and during all forms of activity.’6 In presenting St John Chrysostom as a teacher of the Jesus Prayer, St Nikodimos was following a tradition that by his day and age was already more than half a millennium old, reaching back to at least the eleventh century and probably earlier. He is likely to have learned about these ‘three works on unceasing prayer’ from the writings in the Philokalia, which contain multiple references to St John Chrysostom, including references to works attributed to him on the Jesus Prayer. St Peter of Damascus, for example, a twelfth-century writer who occupies a significant place in the Philokalia, clearly knows writings on the Jesus Prayer attributed to St John Chrysostom. The Philokalia contains two voluminous works by Peter, known simply as ‘Book 1’ and ‘Book 2’ (the former also known as An Admonition to His Own Soul, and the latter as The Spiritual Alphabet). In many of the Greek manuscripts preserving these works, Book 1 is called a Synoptikon and begins with a table of contents that was not reproduced in the Philokalia: ‘Table of contents for the Synoptikon written by Peter, a monk of Damascus, comprising four works the second of which contains St John Chrysostom’s teaching on prayer’.7 In the Philokalia Peter appears to paraphrase a passage from a Letter on the Jesus Prayer.8 Elsewhere, in a work not included in the Philokalia, he cites extensive, verbatim passages from this same Letter, and produces a brief résumé of it, with particular attention to the subject of the Jesus Prayer.9 The fourteenth-century writers Sts Kallistos and Ignatios likewise cite extensive, verbatim excerpts from the Letter on the Jesus Prayer in their 6 7

8 9

St Nikodemos, A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Peter A.  Chamberas (New York, 1988), p. 170. These manuscripts have been studied by Vincent Desprez and Antonio Rigo, ‘L’Exposition de la Règle de Jean l’Ermite et sa fortune sous le nom de Jean Chrysostome aux 11e–13e siècles’, Manuscripta graeca et orientalia:  Mélanges monastiques et patristiques en l’honneur de Paul Géhin (Leuven, 2016), pp. 283–336, at p. 329. Φιλοκαλια τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 3 (Athens, 1957), p. 11, lines 16–18. This previously unpublished text has been edited by Panayiotis Nikolopoulos, Αἰ εἰς τὸν Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον ἐσφαλμένως ἀποδιδόμεναι ἐπιστολαί (Athens, 1973), pp. 207–12; cf. Desprez and Rigo, ‘L’Exposition,’ pp. 330–1.

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treatise, An Exact Method and Rule for Hesychasts, a lengthy work of 100 chapters. After St Gregory Palamas, St Kallistos was the leading hesychast writer of the later fourteenth century, and the Exact Method and Rule is considered a definitive codification of the entire hesychastic tradition. It was a popular work, extant in a large number of manuscripts, and continued to be copied until the time of St Nikodimos. The Exact Method and Rule contains a large number of often lengthy excerpts from patristic texts, over 300 in all, and among them are seven verbatim excerpts from the Letter on the Jesus Prayer mentioned a moment ago.10 St Nikodimos could also have learned about these works from St Symeon of Thessaloniki (c. 1381–1429), whose short treatise On Prayer mentions the ‘saving invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ, over which many of our holy Fathers laboured, and which the golden-tongued Chrysostom taught in three works’.11

St John Chrysostom, Letter on the Jesus Prayer What exactly are these works that are said to have been written by St John Chrysostom? As we have seen, the works in question were well known in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period. By the early seventeenth century some of these texts were available in printed form thanks to the efforts of Sir Henry Savile (1549–1622), a brilliant scholar, mathematician, 10 Sts Kallistos and Ignatios, An Exact Method and Rule, Containing Testimonies of the Saints, for Those Who Undertake to Live a Life of Solitary Hesychasm, Φιλοκαλία, vol.  4, pp.  247–8; cf. p.  222; see also Nikolopoulos, Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον, pp.  212–15; and Antonio Rigo, ‘Une Summa ou un florilège commenté pour la vie spirituelle? L’oeuvre Μέθοδος καὶ Κανών de Calliste et Ignace Xanthopouloi’, in Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium:  Proceedings of the International Conference held in Leuven, 6–8 May 2009, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 2012, eds Peter van Deun and Caroline Macé (Leuven, 2011), pp. 387–437. 11 St Symeon of Thessaloniki, On Prayer 2 (PG 155:541D). Note that a portion of this work is included in the Φιλοκαλία, vol. 5, pp. 60–1.

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and a translator of the King James Bible, who published the works of Chrysostom in eight folio volumes (Eton, 1610–13). Work on this monumental project required him to dispatch his assistants to consult manuscripts in various European libraries, including the Patriarchal Library at Halki. However, the Chrysostomic texts in question were not themselves the object of scholarly study until the work of Panayiotis Nikolopoulos, who published the results of his extensive research in 1973.12 Nikolopoulos’s study identified five letters ascribed to Chrysostom, one of which is the Letter on the Jesus Prayer. The five letters in question, which survive in different forms and versions, are as follows: (1) To Kyriakos the Bishop, (2) On the Jesus Prayer, (3) To Antiochos, (4) To the Empress Eudoxia, and (5) To Caesarius the Monk. Nikolopoulos demonstrated that these are not authentic works by St John Chrysostom, though they are all ascribed to his hand. All of these letters are extant in a large number of manuscripts and have a complicated history of transmission, which Nikolopoulos has clarified with exemplary patience, skill, and detail in his monumental, 600-page study. In what follows, we will be concerned only with the Letter on the Jesus Prayer. In the manuscripts the Greek text of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer is found in two different versions, each one in the form of a letter. The first is called a Letter to an Abbot (Ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς ἡγούμενον), and the second a Letter to Monks (Ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς μοναχοὺς).13 The first letter has a stable manuscript tradition. The second shows more variety, with different manuscripts preserving whole or parts of the text. The Letter to the Monks is extant only in a number of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts, which suggests that it was popular among the hesychasts, who may have also compiled it. The first part of the Letter to the Monks is taken more or less directly from the Letter to an Abbot. The Letter on the Jesus Prayer, that is, the Letter to an Abbot, survives in approximately forty manuscripts dating from the eleventh century onward,

1 2 13

Cited above, n. 9. On which, see Antonio Rigo, ‘L’Epistola ai monaci (e L’Epistola ad un igumeno) di uno Pseudo-Crisostomo: un trattato dell’orazione esicasta scritto nello spirit dello Pseudo-Macario’, Studi e Ricerche sull’Oriente Cristiano, 6 (1983), 197–215.

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though most are from the late Byzantine period.14 The Letter is a coherent, unified document and clearly the work of a single writer or editor. Because the Letter is extant in twelfth-century manuscripts, it is contemporary with other texts on the Jesus Prayer, including the influential work ascribed to St Symeon the New Theologian, The Three Methods of Prayer, which is a canonical text for the practice of the Jesus Prayer.15 This work may very well have emanated from the circle around St Symeon, perhaps being written by one of his disciples. The Three Methods also has many parallels with a thirteenth-century work by St Nikephoros the Solitary, On Watchfulness and the Guarding of the Heart, for which it surely forms the background.16 Nikolopoulos therefore suggests that an earlier version of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer – which we will consider in a moment – was a bridge between writers like Symeon the New Theologian and later Byzantine Hesychasm, though the Letter does not mention the breathing practices that are central to both the Three Methods and On Watchfulness.17 Since the work of Nikolopoulos, scholarship has thrown further light on the origins of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer.18 An eleventh-century Greek manuscript, now in Paris at the National Library of France, contains a work whose first half was incorporated into the Letter on the Jesus Prayer.19 The manuscript is a collection of patristic writings, beginning with more than a dozen works by Ephraim the Syrian (all of them by the Greek writer 14 These manuscripts are catalogued by Nikolopoulos, Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον, pp. 176–203. 15 The Greek text has been edited by Irénée Hausherr, La Méthode d’oraison hésychaste, Orientalia Christiana 9 (1927), pp. 150–72; cf. Philokalia, vol. 4, pp. 67–75. 16 Philokalia, vol.  4, pp.  194–206; cf. Antonio Rigo, ‘Niceforo l’Esicasta (XIIIe sec.):  Alcune considerazioni sull vita e sull’opera’, in Amore del Bello:  Studi sulla Filocalia. Atti del ‘Simposio Internatzionale sulla Filocalia,’ Pontifico Collegio Greco, Roma, novembre 1989 (Magnano, 1991), pp. 81–119. 17 Nikolopoulos, Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον, p. 229. A note in an eighteenth-century manuscript at the monastery of the Great Lavra contends that Letter on the Jesus Prayer was written by St Symeon the New Theologian (‘Συμεὼν τοῦ νέου Θεολόγου ἐστίν, οὐχὶ τοῦ Χρυσοστόμου’); cf. ibid., pp. 204, 230. 18 See the study of Desprez and Rigo cited above, n. 7. 19 The manuscript, Parisinus graecus 1188, is described in detail by Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique, Traité Pratique ou Le Moine, vol. 1, SC 170 (Paris, 1971), pp. 142–52.

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known as Ephraim Graecus), followed by the works of other ascetic writers including Basil the Great, Evagrios of Pontus, Neilos of Ancyra, and others. The work that concerns us is on folio pages 150r–159r, and is called an Exposition of the Rule of John, a Monk of the Desert, to a certain Theophilos.20 ‘John the Monk’ is not John Chrysostom, and it is worth noting that the Paris manuscript contains two genuine works by Chrysostom, both of which are correctly ascribed to him. The Rule of John the Monk is extant only in the Paris manuscript, but the work enjoyed wide diffusion, since whole sections of it were incorporated both in the Letter (to an Abbot) on the Jesus Prayer and in the Letter to the Monks. It is not known who John the Monk was, though he was well read in the Macarian corpus, from which he derived much of his language, imagery, and ideas.21 Neither do we know the name of the anonymous editor-author of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer. It is clear, however, that the editor-author of the Letter took the first part of the Rule of John and used it as the basis for the first part the Letter (i.e. Chapters 1–13). The second part of the Letter (Chapters 14–27) shows greater variation. In freely adapting the Rule of John, the anonymous author-editor of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer removed the name of Theophilos, the addressee of the Rule, and reframed the text so that it was no longer intended as a foundation document for a soon-to-be-established monastery, but as a rule of life and prayer with special focus on the Jesus Prayer. To be sure, the Rule of John the Monk also teaches the Jesus Prayer, but as a practice it cannot be said to be central to the Rule. In the Letter on the Jesus Prayer, on the other hand, sections of the Rule have been modified and expanded, so that the practice of the Jesus Prayer is given a place of central importance. This can be seen in the following two examples:22 20 Ἔκθεσις κανόνος Ἰωάννου μοναχοῦ ἐρημίτου πρὸς Θεόφιλον τινα, a critical edition of which is available in Desprez and Rigo, ‘L’Exposition’, pp. 290–301. 21 Attempts to identify the author of the Rule with John the Eremopolitis have not been generally accepted by scholars; cf. François Halkin, ‘Saint Jean l’Érémopolite’, Analecta Bollandiana, 86 (1968), 13–20; reprinted in id., Saints moines d’Orient (London, 1973), no. V.  The Macarian corpus is a large body of ascetic writings attributed to St Makarios of Egypt; on the parallels between the corpus and the Rule of John, see A. G. Dunaev, Преп. Макарий Египетский. Духовные слова и посланиа: Собрание типа I (Vatic. graec. 694) (Moscow, 2002), pp. 273–80. 22 Here I am indebted to the work of Desprez and Rigo, ‘L’Exposition’, pp. 322–3.

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The Rule of John the Monk Letter on the Jesus Prayer 11. Do not, I beseech you, do not separate yourselves from God, nor let your heart be separated from God, but remain with Him and guard your heart with the memory of Jesus Christ.

20. Do not, I beseech you, do not separate yourselves from God, nor let your heart be separated from God, but remain with Him and guard your heart with the memory of the Lord Jesus Christ; do this and this alone always until such time as the name of the Lord is planted firmly in the heart, and nothing else, until such time as the Lord, and He alone, is magnified in you.

The Rule of John the Monk Letter on the Jesus Prayer 21. I beseech you, pray ceaselessly (1 Thess. 5:17) the rule of prayer, so that when a person becomes wholly prayer, no matter what he is doing – whether he is eating, drinking, working, sitting, or walking – he will not cease crying out, so that the memory of the Lord Jesus Christ will provoke the enemy to combat. A forceful soul will discover all things through the memory of the Lord, both evil and good; first it will see evil things in the heart and then the good things. For the memory can both provoke the dragon and subdue him. Memory can detect the sin dwelling within us. Memory can set in motion all the evil of the devil in the heart, and the memory has the power to conquer and uproot it.

21. I beseech you to keep and never give up the rule of this prayer. I have heard the holy fathers saying what kind of a monk can one be who abandons his rule , for he is obliged, even when he is eating or drinking, or travelling or working, to cry out ceaselessly (1 Thess. 5:17): ‘Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us’, so that the very memory of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will stir us up to wage war against the enemy. A forceful soul will come to discover all things through the memory of the Lord, both evil and good; first it will see evil things in the heart and then good things. For the memory can both provoke the dragon and the memory can also subdue him. The memory can both detect sin dwelling within us and the memory can also destroy it. The memory has the power to move all the power of the devil in the heart, and the memory has the power partly to uproot it, so that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, descending into the depths of the heart, can subdue the dragon who formerly had been ruling over the heart’s pastures, and save the soul and give it life. Thus, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will remain and be the heart’s unceasing cry, so that the heart swallows the Lord and the Lord swallows the heart, causing the two to become one (cf. 2 Cor. 5:4; Mark 10:8). This work, of course, is not a task for one day or even two days, but rather an ongoing task that requires much effort over a long period of time, until such time as the enemy is expelled and Christ comes to dwell in it.

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In the first example, the passage from the Rule is expanded and expressed with a greater sense of urgency (‘keep and never give up the rule’). The name of ‘Jesus Christ’ in the Rule becomes in the Letter, ‘Lord Jesus Christ’, perhaps to make it conform more closely to the form of the Jesus Prayer. Where the passage from the Rule ends, the Letter inserts a new sentence encouraging ceaseless repetition of the name of Jesus, indicating that such repetition will ‘implant’ (ἐμφυτευθῇ) the name of Jesus in the heart, making the Lord a living presence within the life of the believer. In the second example, the Rule’s reference to a generic ‘rule of prayer’ becomes in the Letter ‘the rule of this prayer’, that is, the Jesus Prayer. This is followed by a sentence that is not found in the Rule of John, warning the reader against abandoning the Jesus Prayer, which would result in the loss of one’s monastic identity. While the Rule refers to the ‘memory of the Lord Jesus’, the Letter replaces this with the actual words of the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.’ The Letter subsequently amplifies the remarks on memory and in a key sentence the ‘power of memory’ is replaced by the ‘name of Jesus descending into the depths of the heart’. The result is what we might call a reciprocal indwelling or mutual interiority of the Lord and the heart, expressed through the vivid imagery of 2 Corinthians 5:4.23 The expanded passage ends by noting that the practice of the Jesus Prayer is arduous, and progresses only slowly, marked by constant spiritual warfare in the heart. * The writings on the Jesus Prayer ascribed to St John Chrysostom had, as we have seen, a long afterlife in the Orthodox Church, and were widely read and copied down to the eighteenth century and beyond.24 In the For a similar exegesis of 2 Cor. 5:4, see St Maximos the Confessor, Ambiguum 21.11 (DOML 1:437–9). 24 Thus in The Way of a Pilgrim the Pilgrim defends the Philokalia to a Roman Catholic critic by mentioning St John Chrysostom: ‘Do not speak that way about this holy book, my dear sir! It was not written by simple Greek monks, but by great and holy men of ancient time, by men revered by your own church, such as Anthony the Great, Macarius the Great, Mark the Hermit, John Chrysostom and others.’ While there are no Chrysostomic works, genuine or otherwise, in the 23

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late Byzantine period they had become so popular that, on the eve of the hesychast controversy, the Patriarchal Synodical Tome of 10 July 1341 cites only three patristic authorities for the practice of the Jesus Prayer: St Diadochos of Photiki, St John Climacus, and a passage found both in the Letter on the Jesus Prayer and the Letter to the Monks ascribed to St John Chrysostom: About this sacred Prayer, the divine teacher John with golden words instructed monks, saying: ‘Devote yourself to the Lord and persist in supplicating him until he has mercy on us. Seek nothing else but only mercy from the ‘Lord of glory’ (1 Cor. 2:8). Seeking mercy, seek with a humble and merciful heart, and cry out from morning to evening, and if possible all night: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.’ I beseech you: force your mind to this work until death. For this work requires much force, because ‘narrow is the gate and hard is the way which leads to life’ (Matt. 7:14), and ‘men of force go in by it’ (Matt. 11:12). For the kingdom of heaven belongs to men of force. I beseech you, do not separate your heart from God, but persist and guard it with the recollection of our Lord Jesus Christ always, until the name of the Lord takes root within your heart, and think of nothing else but that Christ may be magnified in you. I beseech you, therefore, never desist or despise this rule of prayer, but whether you eat or drink or travel or do anything, unceasingly cry out: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.’ For ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:17) the divine apostle says, without anger and wandering thoughts.25

Greek or Slavonic Philokalia, this may be a simple reference to the sixty citations of Chrysostom in the Philokalia as a whole; cf. T. Allen Smith, The Pilgrim’s Tale (New York, 1999), p. 96. 25 Translation from Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, eds Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie R. Hotchkiss (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 330–1. For the Greek text of the Tomos, see Herbert Hunger, Das Register das Patriarchats von Konstantinopel, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1995), no. 132, pp. 206–56; the Chrysostomic passage is on pp. 246–8; and John Karmiris (ed.), Τὰ Δογματικὰ καὶ Συμβολικὰ Μνημεῖα τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας, vol. 1 (Athens, 1952), p. 308. The Synod considered Barlaam’s accusation against the hesychast monks regarding their method of prayer, and condemned him for blasphemy, ordered the destruction of his writings, and forbade all other discussion of these questions.

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Before turning to the contents of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer, it will be useful to say a word about its attribution to St John Chrysostom. There are several points that need to be kept in perspective. First, there is the problem of scribal error and simple confusion, especially as regards a common name like ‘John’. But Byzantine scribes and copyists were highly trained professionals, and took great pains to ensure the accuracy of their work. It goes without saying that errors occurred, but not with anything like the frequency we might imagine. Second, texts that were deemed to express important truths were considered extremely valuable and needed to be protected and preserved, typically by being assigned to the patronage of an authoritative writer. By today’s literary standards, this would be considered unprincipled and inappropriate, but it was common practice in antiquity. There is, however, something far more important than this, and it has to do with the process by which ideas are received and accepted by the Church. Historians are trained to look at how texts evolved, where they come from, and what sources they were supposedly derived from or influenced by, and then collapse the texts into their historical and literary antecedents. By this standard, the Logos of the Johannine prologue becomes little more than a borrowing from Philo of Alexandria or Stoicism. But what historians do not often consider is what actual readers and communities did with texts, how they received and understood them, and what was the rationale – the particular gift of discernment and insight – by means of which the Church accepted them. The opinions of historians are certainly worth considering, but they do not have the same authority in the Church as they do in the classroom. Even the opinions of bishops are subject to a higher authority, namely, that of a council. And councils themselves, finally, are subject to the judgement of the whole body of the faithful, the body of Christ, which alone can discern the fullness of the truth of the Church. In the end, it is the fullness of the charism of insight and discernment regarding the teaching of the true faith that determines the value of things in the Church. Though the Letter on the Jesus Prayer was not written by St John Chrysostom, it was recognized and received by the Church as bearing a degree of authority equal or similar to the writings of Chrysostom, and thus it was cherished, not because of the name it bears, but because of the truth it expresses.

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St John Chrysostom, On the Jesus Prayer The Letter on the Jesus Prayer, of which I have produced a forthcoming translation and commentary, is an important document in the history and development of what is without question the most beloved and widely practised prayer in the Orthodox Christian tradition. As a transformation of the Rule of John the Monk into a rule of prayer focused exclusively on the invocation of the name of Jesus, it illustrates the increasing popularity of the Jesus Prayer in the middle Byzantine period, that is, on the eve of Byzantine Hesychasm. The text subsequently enjoyed wide diffusion: it is extant in a large number of manuscripts dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries indicating that it was copied and reproduced without interruption for more than half a millennium.26 The Letter is a powerful exhortation to a life of prayer. Unadorned in style and direct in tone, it is deeply biblical in its thinking, contains a number of striking images, and offers a compelling and insightful account of the practice of the Jesus Prayer. A Rule of Prayer Though we know only very little about the Letter’s larger historical context, its immediate context is clear enough: the Letter on the Jesus Prayer is a response to a request for a rule of prayer (Chapter  1).27 For those seeking to live a spiritual life, the desire for such a rule is as natural as it is 26 Athonite monks continued to copy manuscripts long after the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, and it is unsurprising that the library of Dionysiou preserves a handwritten version of the Letter on the Jesus Prayer copied on 15 April 1938 by Elder Iakovos of Dionysiou; cf. Nikolopoulos, Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον, p. 180. 27 In one of the manuscripts, a note added in the fifteenth or sixteenth century states that the request for the rule was purportedly ‘submitted by the abbot when he was in Constantinople, after he heard Chrysostom speaking in Church’; cf. Nikolopoulos, Ἰωάννην τὸν Χρυσόστομον, p. 455.

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imperative. In the fourth century St Basil sought such a rule shortly after his conversion to a deeper faith.28 In the fourteenth century Sts Kallistos and Ignatios likewise compiled their Exact Method and Rule in response to a request for initiation into the spiritual life. Even Christ’s disciples asked him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1). The need for a rule, for a concrete practice, an authentic way of life, is a perennial human concern, and that the anonymous editor of the Letter found this notion useful and retained it from the Rule of John the Monk was not an act of sterile repetition, but a living response to the deeply felt human need for guidance and direction. To this request, the author responds with a rather remarkable confession: ‘I find myself at a loss as to what I should write to you,’ he says, ‘but Christ Jesus, the “Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8) is able to be your guide’ (Chapter 1). Rather than adopt the role of guide or teacher, the author’s first impulse is to direct the seeker to the Lord. In this way he begins his response by foregrounding the very virtue that is essential to the Christian life and the practice of prayer, namely, humility (Chapter 9). This is not a mere rhetorical gesture or feigned display of modesty. It is true teaching in the sense of modelling a form of behaviour, in so far as the writer’s imitation of the humility of Christ seeks to inspire the same humility in his reader, following the teaching of St Paul, who said: ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ’ (1 Cor. 11:1) (cf. Chapters 9, 16). At the same time, humility is a virtue necessary for the practice of the Jesus Prayer, which is a key theme of the work. Scripture As a theological document, the Letter is remarkable for its rich and varied use of Scripture, and contains over 100 biblical citations or allusions taken almost entirely from the New Testament. There is hardly a single idea that 28 See Basil, Letter 223: ‘I woke up, as if from a deep sleep, and beheld the wondrous light of the truth of the Gospel, and I recognized the uselessness of the wisdom “of the princes of this world, whose rule was doomed” (1 Cor. 2:6). Shedding a flood of tears over my wretched life, I prayed for a guide who might form in me the principles of piety’ (LCL 3:290–2).

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is not founded on or confirmed by a biblical passage or teaching from the Gospels or the Epistles of Paul. There is a very real sense in which the Letter is an anthology or florilegium of New Testament texts on the ascetic and spiritual life. As is stated explicitly in the prologue to the Exact Rule and Method by Sts Kallistos and Ignatios, initiation into the spiritual life requires not simply initiation into the art of prayer, but initiation into the mystery of Scripture.29 The centrality of Scripture to the life of ascetic prayer was already well established with the work of St Basil, whose Long Rules, which are the foundational principles for the organization of Orthodox monastic life, were assembled entirely with passages excerpted from Scripture.30 The Inner Life As a text primarily concerned with providing a rule of ascetic prayer, the Letter on the Jesus Prayer naturally focuses on the inner life, with particular emphasis on the heart, the mind, the nature of thoughts, and the power of memory or recollection. The same attention to the inner life means that, while virginity and bodily purity are highly valued, mere physiological virginity or outward asceticism alone are said to be insufficient and indeed of no benefit if the inner life is not cultivated. Emphasis on inward, spiritual virginity has a long history, and goes back to the writings of St Athanasios and St Gregory of Nyssa.31 The author of the Letter, Sts Kallistos and Ignatios, Exact Rule and Method: ‘Since you have a strong desire to investigate the divine and life-giving Scriptures, as the Lord exhorts us to do ( John 5:39), and to be initiated safely by us, you have asked for direction and a written rule (κανόνα ἔγγραφον) for your own benefit’ (Philokalia, vol. 4, p. 198). 30 See Basil, Letter 2.6 (LCL 1:15–17); and Jean Gribomont, ‘Les Régles Morales de Saint Basile et le Nouveau Testament’, Studia Patristica, 2 (1957), 416–26; reprinted in id., Saint Basile: Évangile et église, ed. Enzo Bianchi (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, 1984), pp. 191–200. 3 1 See St Athanasios of Alexandria, Letters to Virgins, and On Virginity, trans. David Brakke, Athanasios and Asceticism (Baltimore, MD, 1995), pp.  274–91; 292–302; 303–9; and St Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, trans. Virginia Woods Callahan (Washington, DC, 1967), pp. 6–75. 29

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however, characteristically uses biblical language to makes his point, for which he offers an extended, spiritual interpretation of the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25:1–13) (Chapters 1–2). Community At the same time, and as the Letter makes abundantly clear, emphasis on the inner life does not mean that a person devoted to prayer is unconcerned with those around him. Relations with one’s neighbours are paramount, and the Letter prescribes stringent codes for speech, conduct, dress, and worship (Chapters 5, 12–14, 22, 25). Particular discernment is needed in the assignment of work and tasks performed in the monastery, with special reference being made to the work of the cellerar (κελλάριος) (Chapter 23).32 The Letter highlights the importance of humility, mutual respect, obedience, the patient endurance of trials, and forgiveness, all of which are essential for life within a community (Chapters  6, 8–10, 12–14). The emphasis on practical, external matters is given heightened urgency by the author’s stress that ‘now’ is the time for spiritual work, since there is no possibility of repentance after death (Chapters 1–2), after which there will be only a final and definitive judgement (Chapters 4, 7, 10, 12–13, 15, 18). One’s place in the community is an essential part of the life in Christ, which is presented as requiring a threefold subjection: to the Lord, to the brethren, and to the abbot (Chapters 3–4), who himself must be ready to ‘offer himself together with the brethren to the Lord’ (Chapter 1). To acquire virtue requires a struggle. To cut off one’s selfish desires and enter into the life of the community requires force, for which the author cites Matthew 11:12: ‘The kingdom of heaven is taken by force’ (Chapter 19). To do this is to imitate the saints (Chapter 16). It is also to imitate Christ, who said: ‘I do not seek to do my own will, but the will of the Father who 32

St Basil, The Long Rules, likewise has special rules for the cellerar; cf. Qu. 147 and 156 (PG 31:1180AB; 1184D–1185A); and The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Abba Gelasios 3 (PG 65:148D).

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sent me’ ( John 5:30) (Chapter 18). The aim of the struggle is to place the Lord above everything, and to have nothing in this life that is above Him (Chapter 15). The most important means to this end is prayer, the recollection of the name of the Lord. These two poles of activity – the inner life and the outer life – come together in the reality of love, a subject that occupies the longest section in the Letter (Chapter 7). The foundation of everything is the love of God, and the manifestation of this is love of neighbour. Love is linked to the gift of forgiveness (Chapter 8) and more generally to the observance of the commandments, which is a response to and the sign of that love through which Christ’s disciples will be revealed to the world (Chapter 7). Love is the principal motivating force in the spiritual life, ‘for where love is, there Christ also dwells’ (Chapter 7). The element of desire is highlighted at the outset through a series of five conditional ‘if ’ clauses: the Lord can indeed be your guide if you genuinely give yourself to Him; if you are ready to renounce everything for Him; if you love the Lord with all your soul, and your neighbour as yourself; if you maintain the virginity of your body and soul; and if you have mercy and compassion in your heart (Chapter 1). This is further heightened by the repeated use of the phrase ‘I beseech you’ (παρακαλῶ), which occurs twenty times in the work, and serves as the initial phrase of seventeen of the work’s twentyseven chapters, highlighting the fact that the author is not imposing a rule but extending an invitation, appealing to his reader to take up the manner of life outlined in the Letter. The Heart Before turning to a discussion of the Letter’s teaching on the Jesus Prayer, it will be helpful to say a word about the place of the heart, which is the central element in the author’s biblical anthropology and world view.33 The word ‘heart’ is attested more than twenty times and occurs in virtually 33

On which, see Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden, 1971), which indicates that the understanding of the heart in the Orthodox spiritual tradition is deeply rooted in the theology of the New Testament.

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every section of the text. It designates the deepest, innermost aspect of the person; it is what St Paul calls the ‘inward man’ (Rom. 7:22) (Chapter 8). If the body is the ‘surface or outside of the cup’, the heart is the ‘inside’ (Chapter  2). We see only faces, but God sees the heart (Chapter  7). Because the heart is the deep core of the self, we need to ‘keep it secure and guard it’, to ‘keep it untroubled’ (Chapter 8), and ‘never allow it to be separated from God’ (Chapter 20). The heart is the seat or locus of emotional life,34 where the devil ‘paints his pictures’ (Chapter 17), and thus it can be filled with ‘evil, hatred, resentment, anger, jealousy, and pride’ (Chapter 2), and in this way be ‘poisoned’ (Chapter 3). The heart can ‘feel pain’ (Chapter 27), but it is also a ‘vessel of love and mercy’, like a lamp that can receive light (Chapter 1). It is the place from where we shed ‘tears of repentance’ (Chapter  15); it is the place from where we ‘chant with spiritual sobriety and true perception’ (Chapter 22); it causes us to ‘speak from its abundance’ (Matt 12:34) (Chapter 5), and ‘in humility it seeks mercy from God’ (19). The heart is the place where the ‘name of Jesus Christ is planted’ (Chapter 20). It is the heart that ‘speaks to the Lord’ (Chapter 18), and it is the heart that, in the end, will ‘swallow up the Lord and be swallowed up by him’ (2 Cor. 5:4) (Chapter 21). The Jesus Prayer The teaching on the Jesus Prayer commences in Chapter  17, signalled by the biblical exhortation to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:7). In a work of twenty-seven chapters, we are now well past the midpoint, and whereas we might have expected the author finally to embark on his teaching of the Jesus Prayer without any further delay, he immediately opens up a parenthesis on the problem of the thoughts (διαλογισμοί, λογισμοί) (Chapter 17). It is as if the very mention of the word prayer demands such a digression, and what follows is a fascinating discussion on the workings of the mind (νοῦς), which continues into Chapter 18. The 34 In Chapter 22, the heart is said to ‘know’, but in general does not seem to be an organ or means of ordinary cognition.

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word ‘mind’ occurs only about ten times in the entire Letter, and virtually all of these occurrences are found in these two chapters. Whatever else the ‘mind’ may have meant to our author, his chief interest here is to grapple with the problem of its wandering and distracted thoughts. From this point of view, thoughts  – even seemingly good ones  – are the enemies of prayer, since they separate the mind from God, inserting themselves between God and the self like so many walls and obstacles, leading the mind to distractions, darkness, and sin (Chapters 17–18). At the same time, the devil seeks to fill our thoughts with ‘rational and irrational fantasies’ (Chapter 17), which is illustrated by the striking image of the devil as an ‘old painter and an imitator of all things’ (παλαιὸς ζωγράφος καὶ πανταμίμητος), who ‘inscribes images’ (εἰκονογραφεῖ) in the heart for the sole purpose of separating the mind from God (Chapter 17). The discussion on thoughts continues into the next chapter, where we are told about the necessity of ‘bridling the mind’ (Chapter 18). The author insists that ‘where the body is, the mind must also be’, rejecting the distracted, outwardly oriented, and self-externalized existence that results in the radical absence, as it were, of a person from his own body. One must allow no barriers to arise between the mind and God, and when such thoughts do intrude upon us, we are not to ‘linger’ (ἐγχρονίζειν) with them (Chapter 18).35 To ‘linger’ in evil thoughts is to consent to them, and for this we will be severely judged ‘on the day when God will judge the hidden things of men’ (Rom. 2:26). If we do not reject our own will and bridle our mind, we will lose the kingdom. If, on the other hand, a man voluntarily endures temptation, it is ‘accounted to him as a crucifixion that makes him a child of the resurrection and a temple of Christ, who will come to dwell in 35 See Evagrios, Scholia on Proverbs 115:  ‘The intellect must not linger in debased thoughts, for “no one binds fire in his bosom without burning his garments”’ (Prov 6:27) (SC 340:912); id., Scholia on Ecclesiastes 63: ‘Do not allow an impious thought to linger in your heart, lest your soul commit an impiety and you die in ignorance’ (SC 397:168). For Evagrios, the duration of thoughts in the mind constitutes a form of consent to them, and leads to spiritual death; cf. Scholia on Proverbs 57: ‘It was for the sake of those who descend into death that David said: “The living have descended alive into Hades”’ (Ps. 54:16) (SC 340:148). See also St Maximos the Confessor, Chapters on Love I.84, II.19, II.87, II.90, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo (Rome, 1963), pp. 82, 98, 136, 138.

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him, and make his home in him’ (Chapter 18). Here the author of the Letter does not encourage the reader to fight against evil thoughts or counter and contradict them, but simply to endure them. We find a similar teaching in St Maximos the Confessor: ‘During the time of temptation, nobly endure the waves of thoughts that wash over you, especially those of sorrow and dejection. For being tested in this way through affliction, you will acquire firm hope in God.’36 The author of the Letter is likewise convinced that patient endurance of oppressive thoughts will result in their dispersal, for the simple reason that this is what God has promised (cf. John 14:23; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Pet. 5:4). In the face of the successive ‘waves of thoughts’ that crash relentlessly against the mind, we can only ask for God’s mercy. Here the passage rises to a crescendo in which the word ‘mercy’ is uttered three times, followed by a threefold repetition of the Jesus Prayer, which is itself a plea for mercy: ‘Remain with the Lord until He shows mercy and compassion on you; ask for nothing other than the mercy of the Lord of glory; seek His mercy with a humble and broken heart, and cry out from morning until night, and, if possible, all night: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy; Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy; Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Amen.’ As this passage makes clear, the Jesus Prayer is not simply an invocation of the divine name, but a cry for help, a plea for mercy from those who stand condemned by their own thoughts, and who have no recourse but the compassion of Christ. Memory Chapters 19–20 recapitulate the foregoing themes by calling for renewed effort and struggle in the spiritual life (Chapter  19), and by promising that a mind united to God will eventually experience the actual presence of the Lord ‘firmly planted in the heart’ (Chapter 20). In ­chapter 21 the author turns to the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and it is here that an interesting shift occurs. As we saw, teaching on prayer required preliminary attention to the problem of the thoughts. Now that that problem 36

St Maximos the Confessor, Chapters on Love I.52, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 68.

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has been addressed, the author is at liberty to consider the role of the memory or recollection in the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Because the author is more concerned about how the human person functions concretely as a spiritual being, he does not define the nature of ‘memory’ in terms of its abstract physiological or even psychological status. It is obvious, however, that in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the heart works closely with the memory. On a very basic level, memory is essential for the practice of the Jesus Prayer, since it is through focused recollection that one can observe the commandment to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:17).37 From this point of view, memory is the return from exile and reintegration – the re-collection – of the dispersed and fragmented energies of the mind. To remain stable and untroubled, the heart must be recollected and secure itself with the memory of Christ (Chapter 8). Their symbiotic relationship can be seen from the fact that, without the memory, the heart’s perception is limited, because it is only through the memory that the heart can observe and understand its own contents – both good and evil.38 The choice of ‘memory’ instead of ‘mind’ in this context is significant, and may suggest that, when the mind descends into the heart, we no longer encounter God through ideas or concepts, but rather through a direct awareness (or ‘recollection’) of His presence that enables us to submit our thoughts to the test of a greater reality. It is not the heart that finds rest in the mind, but the mind which rests in the depths of the heart, having found that for which it was searching. ‘Memory’ or ‘recollection’, then, is a way to describe the knowledge of the heart’s perception of God without confusing that knowledge with ideas and concepts that are typically associated with the mind. 37

38

See Basil, Letter 2.7: ‘The indwelling of God is this: to hold God ever in memory, enshrined within us’ (τοῦτό ἐστι Θεοῦ ἐνοίκησις, τὸ διὰ τῆς μνήμης ἐνιδρυμένον ἔχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὸν Θεόν) (LCL 1:16); cited by St Isaac the Syrian, Homily 51 (The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (Boston, MA, 2011), p.  385); cf. John Eudes Bamberger, ‘ΜΝΗΜΗ–ΔΙΑΘΕΣΙΣ:  The Psychic Dynamisms in the Ascetical Theology of St Basil’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 34 (1968), 234–51. Cf. St Isaac the Syrian, Homily 15: ‘He who wishes to see the Lord within himself devises means to cleanse his heart by continuous remembrance of God, and thus through the clearness of the eyes of his mind he will behold the Lord at all times’ (The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, p. 204).

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Memory has other functions as well. It is the memory that can either incite or defeat the devil; it can detect sin dwelling within us, and to an extent uproot it, clearing the way for the entry of Christ into the heart (Chapter 21).39 If the continual memory of God is the greatest human good, then forgetfulness of God is the greatest human evil, inasmuch as it is separation from God. Memory is not simply a remembrance of things past; it is not a mere storehouse for concepts or images, nor a place for passive reminiscences of ideas, persons, and events, though it is susceptible to impressions and influences projected into it. It is a force capable and indeed necessary for communion with God. Like the heart, it is part of the dynamic centre of human spiritual life. Altogether we have a somewhat loosely described yet highly practical anthropology, which is not uncommon in patristic and Byzantine ascetic and spiritual texts. The heart is obviously the deep core of the person, and is more or less the seat of the emotions, concerned with the more affective dimension of life. The memory, in general terms, would seem to express the cognitive side of the self, though it is not reducible to this. In this sense it is related to mind, but without the latter’s wandering thoughts. The word heart predominates. It is attested more than twenty times and is found scattered throughout the entire Letter, while both memory and mind are attested only around ten times, and are found in dense clusters specific to particular themes and discussions: mind is related to thoughts, and memory is related to the practice of the Jesus Prayer. Though not written by St John Chrysostom, the Letter on the Jesus Prayer is an important document in the history and development of the most beloved and widely practised prayer in the Orthodox Christian tradition. As an adaptation and expansion of the Rule of John the Monk, the 39 Cf. St Isaac the Syrian, Homily 5: ‘Remember God, that He too might always remember you; and when He has kept you in His memory and preserved you safe to the end, you will receive every blessing from Him. Do not forget Him, your mind being distracted with futile concerns, lest He forget you in the time of your warfare. Keep the memory of Him in your heart, lest having lingered outside His memory, you are unable to speak boldly when you enter in before Him. Our connection with men is through the body, but our connection with God is through the soul’s recollection’ (ibid., p. 163).

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Letter on the Jesus Prayer provides us with a rare example of how an earlier text on the Jesus Prayer was adopted and transformed in both the middle and late Byzantine periods. The Letter’s teaching on the Jesus Prayer, the nature of the heart, the unique role afforded to memory in the activity of prayer, and its extensive use of Scripture, are among its chief theological and literary characteristics. Among the hesychasts the Letter attained a kind of canonical status, and was widely cited not only in ascetical and spiritual writings, but also in conciliar documents affirming the theology of St Gregory Palamas. The Letter’s association with St John Chrysostom undoubtedly granted it considerable prestige and authority, but it was valued essentially for its teaching, and as such remained essential reading from the eleventh to the eighteenth century and beyond, especially on Mount Athos.

Elizabeth Jeffreys

4  Poetry as Prayer

On the face of it, the topic on which I have been asked to provide some thoughts should be straightforward – a matter of looking at some classic literary examples of Orthodox piety, from such well-known names as Gregory of Nazianzus, Romanos the Melode, Cassia, John of Damascus, and so forth – and exclaiming over their excellent qualities. But that approach is too simplistic. In the context of the conference recorded in this volume, on the life in prayer of the monks of Mount Athos, I have taken it that this contribution is tasked with considering a fundamental matter in the construction of prayers: the role of words, or, to put it another way, to take a literary approach. Arguably, without words, whether vocalized audibly or internalized silently, prayer cannot exist.1 In certain forms of presentation we call sequences of words poetry: I will return to definitions of poetry in a moment. Again, in the context of this conference, we can look for poetry in prayer in, for example, texts that were brought to the Holy Mountain: the liturgical prayers, which are the background to Fr Maximos’s paper and have many poetic elements, are prime instances of this (though I will not be discussing these further); or we can look for poetic texts composed on the Holy Mountain itself (of which there are relatively few, for various reasons, some of which will appear later); or we can look for other cases of devotional poetry which could have been used in both lay and monastic environments. I shall be focusing on texts which have monastic connections, of which copies may well be found in the Athonite libraries, but which more often than not were composed elsewhere in the Orthodox world – if only because the Athonite monasteries did not come into existence until 1

However, in his opening paper of this collection Fr Stephen Platt suggested interestingly that indeed silence can be a form of prayer (above, p. 17).

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the mid-ninth century, while many relevant texts date from earlier periods. Most prayerful texts are preserved in manuscripts, but a significant number are dedicatory prayers inscribed on objects by worshippers who include personal devotional elements in their offerings. The examples I shall be using are all composed in Byzantine Greek, passing over texts in Russian and Syriac, and most of those I have selected today were written by the thirteenth century (so I skirt round Hesychasm and its textual environment). But, to revert to definitions of poetry, what do we mean by poetry? The English language makes a useful distinction between ‘verse’ and ‘poetry’. ‘Verse’ can be defined as, for example, a ‘metrical line containing a definite number of feet; a metrical composition’, while ‘poetry’ is the ‘art, the work of the poet; the elevated expression of elevated thought or feeling in metrical form’. These are dictionary definitions.2 In English today ‘poetry’ and ‘poetic’ remain redolent with overtones from Romanticism: poetry is the verbal framework within which to emote, to make personal statements. But what makes a text poetic is a matter for debate and theoretical questioning: is it the text’s form, the presence of a metrical pattern? Is it a particularity of vocabulary and syntax? Is it a density of expression? Or is it indeed an emotional tone?3 A Byzantine author would have accepted all these as necessary markers of a poetic text – except, in most circumstances, for the last. Emotion was not an essential element in Byzantine poetry, and in fact virtually everything that could be expressed in prose by Byzantine writers was also expressed in verse, in a metrical form. Texts in verse range from rhetorical handbooks to imperial encomia to canon law. Questions to ask then are why this was so, and whether it has any relevance to personal prayers. Why did some authors choose to express their thoughts in metrical patterns rather than less demanding, relatively unstructured prose?4 2 3 4

H. W.  Fowler and F.  G. Fowler (eds), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1964). On this vast topic see, for example, C. Ricks, The Force of Poetry (Oxford, 2002), or N. Fabb, Language and Literary Structure: The Linguistic Analysis of Form in Verse and Narrative (Cambridge, 2002). See F. Bernard, Writing and Reading: Byzantine Secular Poetry 1025–1081 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 31–41, for a lucid discussion of Byzantine attitudes towards metrical compositions. On types of poetic text found in Byzantium, see M. Lauxtermann, ‘Texts and Contexts’, in W. Hörandner, A. Rhoby and N. Zagklas (eds), A Companion

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First, a quick background comment on Byzantine Greek and Byzantine metrics. Greek is a living language with a long history; languages evolve; by the time the Athonite monasteries were functioning, the vowel and consonant values that made up the syllable quantities in ancient Greek had been replaced by the modern stress accents and phonetics.5 This made verse composition using the ancient rules extraordinarily demanding. Simplified metrical structures were emerging, notably the twelve-syllable line replacing the iambic trimeter and the fifteen-syllable line in effect replacing the hexameter.6 However, use of even these simplified structures required considerable practice over years of education that were not open to many, while those to whom the opportunity was available, for long enjoyed the intellectual challenges of fitting square pegs in round holes: that is, attempting to write verse that combined both the ancient and the modern, that is, medieval, systems. Furthermore Byzantine linguistic snobbery inhibited the use of vernacular forms in written compositions, and gave an extra cachet to those who could demonstrate mastery of metric complexities combined with a high style.7 This is part of the answer to why unlikely material could be presented in metrical form, for it demonstrates the writer’s skill, and claims status for the text; it perhaps also accounts for my perception that relatively few poetic texts were produced on the Holy Mountain. However, this statement applies particularly to texts using the

5 6 7

to Byzantine Poetry (Leiden, 2019), pp.  19–37. In recent years there has been a revolution in approaches to Byzantine poetry, in the forefront of which is Marc Lauxtermann: I acknowledge with pleasure my great indebtedness to his work. G. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers, 2nd edn (Chichester, 2010), offers a useful overview. M. Jeffreys, ‘From Hexameters to Fifteen-syllable Verse’, in Hörandner, Rhoby and Zagklas, Companion to Byzantine Poetry, pp. 66–91, On interactions between poets and their potential patrons and public in secular contexts, see M. Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres: Text and Contexts, vol. 1 (Vienna, 2003), pp. 34–53. On the efforts required to compose in a high linguistic register, see A. Giannouli, ‘Education and Literary Language’, in M. Hinterberger (ed.), The Language of Byzantine Learned Literature (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 52–71, and also idem, ‘The Language of Byzantine Poetry: New Words, Alternative Forms, and “Mixed Language”’, in Hörandner, Rhoby and Zagklas, Companion to Byzantine Poetry, pp. 38–65.

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twelve-syllable line with its clear antecedents in the ancient iambic trimeter. The fifteen-syllable line had no such history and its use was often deprecated by those who nevertheless used it, though there was also a sense that its apparent simplicity was a token of sincerity.8 Now for a little more on the types of prayer I propose to discuss. Fr Stephen opened the conference with some wide-ranging reflections; Fr Maximos explored some of the rich liturgical poetry to be found in kontakia and canons. As a general definition for my purposes, I think one can say that the prayer places the person uttering it into the presence of God, thinking, speaking, listening, using praise, petition, thanks, confession, penitence, compunction. Many such prayers – of praise, petition, thanks, confession, and penitence, as well as referencing the anxieties of daily life – are to be found in the large liturgical books known as Euchologia. The complex compilation and publishing history of these collections of prayers are currently being explored in a project directed by Professor Claudia Rapp in Vienna and supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences;9 its conclusions are expected to offer insights into the mundane preoccupations of medieval Orthodox society. But many prayers are also to be found outside Euchologia – many, of course, in the Horologion with the prayers for daily services – but many also in manuscript anthologies, such as the Anthologia Barberina, or added into margins of manuscripts, such as the Bodleian Psalter Clarke 15,10 or gathered up in collections of the poetic works of individual writers, such as John Geometres. My comments will begin with the mundane with some remarks on prayers for events in everyday life, then move on to an example of praise, then prayers of compunction, and end with the prayers embedded in dedicatory epigrams. M. Jeffreys, ‘The Nature and Origins of the Political Verse’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 28 (1974), 141–95, at p. 159. 9 Euchologia-project:  Byzantine Prayer Books as sources for Social History (FWF Project P 28219-G25); . 10 See on the Anthologia Barberina, Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres, vol. 1, pp. 123–8, and on the Oxford Psalter E. D. Clarke 15, idem, ‘The Perils of Travel:  Mark the Monk and Bodl. E.  D. Clarke 15’, in F.  Bernard and K.  Demoen (eds), Poetry and its Contexts in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Farnham, 2012), pp. 195–206. 8

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Prayers for events in daily life, secular or monastic: my encounters with such prayers have come from browsing through Goar’s Euchologion, first published in 1647,11 with its multitude of prayers for every imaginable occasion – for times of drought, for sailors on setting out to sea, for safety in times of war, on a child’s first haircut, for a prosperous harvest. The harvest that is being garnered by the Vienna prayer-book project referred to in the last paragraph suggests that it is likely to provide many sociological insights into the preoccupations of Orthodox society in the middle centuries of the last millennium as the divine is invoked to support the every day. For now I would like simply to present a straightforward prayer in a monastic context for a good night’s sleep. It comes from one of the great figures of Greek monasticism, Theodore of Stoudios or Theodore Studites (759–826), from a family steeped in monasticism (his uncle was abbot of the Sakkoudion, one of the major monasteries of the period). Theodore, often in conflict with both civic and ecclesiastical authorities, was a vehement advocate of monastic discipline, who made the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople a powerhouse of Orthodoxy, leading opposition to iconoclasm and developing an influential monastic rule.12 This rule was focused on a life of prayerful activity based on disciplined practical tasks in the garden, the scriptorium, the kitchen, the choir; discipline was vital. In contrast to his theological discourses, the prayer I quote now is simple. It comes from his collection of iambic epigrams that reflected on many aspects of monastic life. This one seems to have been intended to be painted on the wall of a dormitory – or perhaps a cell? Others in the collection were intended for a refectory’s walls. On the bedchamber You, who bestow sleep as a release from the toils of day, may you grant me too, my Christ, Word of God, sleep that is light, sweet, and swift to come, that drives away J. Goar, Euchologion, sive rituale Graecorum complectens ritus et ordines, 2nd revised edn (repr. Graz, 1960). 12 See T.  Miller (trans.), ‘Stoudios:  Rule of the Monastery of St John Studios in Constantinople’, in J. Thomas and A. Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 84–119. There is a large bibliography on Theodore; helpful is R.  Cholij, Theodore the Stoudite:  The Ordering of Holiness (Oxford, 2009). 11

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Elizabeth Jeffreys evil apparitions and is full of pleasant dreams. And when the semantron sounds, may you arouse me entire and ready to chant cheerfully, as you direct my feet firmly towards praise, shielding my thoughts from the wiles of devils, and tuning my tongue to sing harmoniously to the glory and praise of your great might, so that having passed the night in tranquillity and waking at dawn, I may see the light of your commands at the break of day.13

This is a straightforward, tranquil prayer, pointing its reader or readers – communal or individual – to a life of praise and harmony as they internalize these words either through their ears as the words are articulated audibly or through their eyes as the words are read silently. I turn from a renowned monastic figure from the Byzantine Middle Ages to one who spent his last years as a monastic, though this is not necessarily the aspect of his life for which he is best known. This is John Geometres. Living in the latter half of the tenth century (he died some time around the year 1000), Geometres exemplifies the points I have been making about language use. Coming from an elite family, he received a good education and became a major literary figure, composing rhetorical treatises, epigrams, and verse reflections on contemporary life. He combined this with a distinguished military career in a turbulent period that was marked by wars with Bulgaria and the assassination of the emperor 13

Είς τὸ κοιμητήριον Ὁ δοὺς τὸν ὕπνον πᾶσιν εἰς λύτρον κόπων, ὧνπερ παρέσχεν ἡ διαυγὴς ἡμέρα, κἀμοὶ παράσχου, Χριστέ μου, Θεοῦ Λόγε, κοῦφον τὸν ὕπνον, ἡδὺ καὶ ταχυδρόμον, φαντασμάτων μὲν τῶν κακῶν ἐξωσμένον ὀνειράτων δὲ τῶν καλῶν πεπλησμένον. Καί μ’ ἐξέγειρον κρουσματοῦντος τοῦ ξύλου ἀνέκλυτον, σταθηρὸν εὐθύμως ἄδειν, ἱστῶν πόδας μου καρτερῶς ἐν αἰνέσει, φρουρῶν νόας μου δαιμόνων πανουργίας, γλῶσσαν τρανῶν μου πρὸς τὸ μέλπειν εὐτόνως, εἰς δόξαν, αἶνον τοῦ μεγίστου σου κράτους, ὅπως τέλειος νυκτερεύσας, ὀρθρίσας τὸ φῶς ἴδω σου τῶν ἐντολῶν πρωΐθεν.



(Theodore Studites, no. 20; P. Speck (ed.), Jamben auf verschiedene Gegenstände (Berlin, 1968); my translation.)

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Nikephoros Phokas in 969. Dismissed from active service by the emperor Basil II around 985, he retired to a monastery in Constantinople where he seems to have written most of his religious works.14 Throughout his life he expressed heartfelt devotion to the Virgin. Among his most striking works are his five Hymns to the Virgin, in which his praise and gratitude for her care are expressed in sequences of Chairetismoi, or greetings. I quote a passage from the fourth hymn: Hail, thou that are the fount of grace, moving the heart of the merciful God that He may not pass judgement. Hail, thou that save wretched mortals from the just anger and wrath of the almighty Creator. Hail, thou that raise the creation when, flogged like a servant, it already falls to the ground. Hail, thou that in open fight expel even ferocious demons from the breath of our bodies. Hail, thou that are the remedy against myriad incurable ailments and bring souls back from the netherworld to the light of day. Hail, thou that turn away the soul-snatching angels and give swift respite to us ephemeral beings. Hail, thou that weep over human frailties and welcome the tears of repenting sinners. Hail, thou that, like a fresh sponge, wipe clean the diabolically dense pages of sinfulness.15

14 For an illuminating overview, see M.  Lauxtermann, ‘John Geometres:  Poet and Soldier’, Byzantion, 69 (1998), 356–80. 15 Χαῖρ᾽, ἐλέους πρόφασις φιλοοικτίστοιο Θεοῖο   σπλἀχνα κλινομένη μηδὲ δίκην δικάσαι. Χαῖρε, δικαίας μήνιδος οὐτιδανοῦσι βροτοῖσι   πανσθενέος ῥύστις Πλαστου ὀδυσσομένου. Χαῖρε, ῥαπιζομένην κτίσιν οἷα θεράπνιον εἰς γῆν   ἤδη κλινομένην αὖθις ἀνισταμένη. Χαῖρ᾽, ἀπελαυνομένη καὶ δαίμονας ἀγριοθύμους   πνεύματος ἡμετέρου σώματος άμφαδίην. Χαῖρε, νόσων μυρίων άνιάτων ἄλκαρ, ἀφ᾽ ᾅδου   ἕλκουσα ψυχὰς αὖθις ἐς ἡέλιον. Χαῖρ᾽, ἀποπεμπομένη ψυχἀρπαγας ἀγγελιήτας   καὶ χρόνον ἡμερίοις ῥίμφα χαριζομένη. Χαῖρ᾽, ἀποδυρομένη παθέων ὑπὲρ ἀνθρωπείων   καὶ τ᾽ ἀλιτρῶν στροφίμων δάκρυα δεχνυμένη. Χαῖρ᾽, ἀπαλειφομένη μυριὀγραφα δαίμοσι βίβλα   σπόγγος ἅτε δροσερὴ ἡμετέρης κακίης.



( John Geometres, Hymn IV, lines 15–33; J.  Sajdak, ed., Ioannis Kyriotis Geometrae Hymni in ss. Deiparam [Posnan, 1931]; trans. M. Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres: Texts and Contexts, vol. 2 (Vienna, 2019), 168.)

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We should note the form of this hymn: Geometres is using elegiac couplets, that is, a hexameter followed by a pentameter, and he is combining the standard ancient metre with vocabulary which acknowledges stress accents rather than ancient quantities. But he also uses forms such as φιλοοικτίστοιο, in the first line, which are archaic, but – to put it bluntly – make the metre work. This is Geometres the major literary figure demonstrating his professional skills, though he himself claims other motives. In a short epigram after the third hymn he justifies his choice of elegiac couplets in dense phrasing that has been well elucidated by Marc Lauxtermann.16 Geometres argues that the six feet of the hexameter and four complete feet of the pentameter provide ten perfect dactyls, and that ten is the pefect number because the first letter of the name Jesus, ‘Iησοῦς, is ι (iota), that is, the number 10. One might wonder whether this is a genuine justification or an elaborate sophistry. That aside, what might be the response of his hearers or readers to this passage? Is the intended audience for these Chairetismoi the Virgin alone? Or is it the Virgin and Geometres as he utters her praises? Or is there a congregation who is to hear, comprehend, and join in the moment of praise? In this hymn there is no refrain, but in the first three there are refrains, suggesting that a congregational response was anticipated. Geometres is often referred to with the epithet Kyriotes, which until recently has been assumed to refer to the Church of the Virgin that used to stand in the district of Constantinople named Ta Kyrou, that is, the district which once housed the palace of Kyros, Prefect of Constantinople in 435. Kyros was a considerable poet.17 It has long been taken for granted that this church had provided Geometres’ monastic residence: hence he was Kyriotes. Paul Magdalino, however, has recently demonstrated that in fact, probably prompted by this church’s connections to Romanos the Melode in the sixth century, there had continued to function there a confraternity of lay and monastics who venerated the Virgin with hymns,

16 Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres, vol. 2, pp. 166–7. 1 7 Alan Cameron, ‘The Empress and the Poet: Paganism and Politics at the Court of Theodosius II’, Yale Classical Studies, 27 (1982), 217–89.

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encomia, and night vigils.18 The literary tradition established in the fifth century by Kyros and Romanos in the sixth had established a custom with a high literary standard, which indeed lingered on into the twelfth century, though not always at such an elevated level – more verse than poetry, as we shall see. Geometres’ Hymns to the Virgin, to whom he expressed devotion throughout his life, were thus composed for an elite group of Constantinopolitan devotees rather than a monastic community. Let us also note the tone of the Chairetismoi. The Virgin is hailed as the fount of grace, and as the intercessor for sinful human kind. It is she who raises humanity when it quakes under God’s justified chastisement. She chases away the soul-snatching angels who hover at the moment of death, ‘bringing swift respite to us ephemeral beings’. We should note the plural ‘us’: Geometres is expressing compunction and penitence, not so much as an individual, but rather as a member of the human race, the mass of fallen humanity. The tears of compunction that he sheds are those of all repenting sinners, not his as a lone, isolated being. The debate over when individuals began to perceive a separate identity for themselves has rumbled on over the last several decades in medieval studies, both eastern and western: was it in the twelfth century, was it not till the Renaissance?19 Byzantine prayers offer insights into how in the ninth century the sense of an individual identity in the world of the Greek east remained inchoate. Compunction and penitence indeed form a major theme of Byzantine personal devotional poetry, both monastic and lay. At the most basic level these sentiments are prompted by awareness of mortality and fears of the Last Judgement, combined with a recollection of human sinfulness caused by the original sin of Adam and Eve that led to their fall and expulsion from 18 P. Magdalino, ‘The Liturgical Poetics of an Elite Religious Confraternity’, in T.  Shawcross and I.  Toth (eds), Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 116–32. 19 For discussions in connection with Byzantine literature, see, for example, M.  Angold, ‘The Autobiographical Impulse in Byzantium’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 52 (1998), 225–57; S. Papioannou, Michael Psellos: Rhetoric and Authorship in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 2–4 and passim thereafter; most significantly, see I. Drpić, ‘The Patron’s “I”: Art, Selfhood and the Later Byzantine Dedicatory Epigram’, Speculum, 89 (2014), 895–935.

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Paradise. These fears are often expressed in what are known as catanyctic alphabets (catanyctic from the Greek katanyxis, or ‘compunction’), so penitential alphabets is in fact the more sensible term to use. These alphabets are usually made up of couplets, though units of three lines are also found; the units are linked by an alphabetic acrostic, and so each poem contains twenty-four units. What is perhaps the earliest example comes from Symeon Metaphrastes. He is best known as the compiler, at the behest of the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (d. 959), of a ten-volume Menologion, in which he revised and standardized linguistically a large number of saints’ lives:20 in other words, he subjected them to a metaphrasis, a metaphrastic process that transposed them from a variety of styles into one that was uniform. So, let us consider the opening of the Metaphrast’s penitential alphabet. Tears from my eyes, pain from my heart, repentance from my soul – these I offer to you, my Creator. My lustful acts have now become barbs, my lusts have turned into grievous pains. Humankind is prone to slip into sin, I know; but woe is me, I have run to it faster than even an animal would. Come hither, compassionate souls, shed showers of tears over a most lamentable soul. I say in all honesty: Christ, if your goodness prevails over boundless evil, let it show itself to me now. How much better it is to die than to live in such sin; it would have been better for me not to have been born at all! I lift up the eyes of my heart unto you, Lord, I cry bitterly: ‘Have mercy!’ All hope is gone. O Death, the thought of you is bitter for mankind, but more than death, it is the hereafter that consumes my thoughts.21

20 C. Hogel, Symeon Metaphrastes:  Rewriting and Caonization (Copenhagen, 2001), and idem, ‘Symeon Metaphrastes and the Metaphrastic Movement’, in S. Efthymiadis (ed.), Ashgtate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, vol. 2 (Farnham, 2014), pp. 181–96. This Symeon is not to be identified with chronicle author Symeon Logothetes, a near contemporary. 21 Ἀπὸ βλεφάρων δἀκρυα, ἀπὸ καρδίας πόνους,   ἀπὸ ψυχῆς μετάνοιαν προσφέρω σοι τῷ Κτίστῃ. Βέλη μοι νῦν γεγόνασιν αἱ φιλήδονοι πράξεις·   ἡδόναι μετεστράφησαν εἰς χαλεπὰς ὀδύνας.

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The letters of the acrostic are indicated in the Greek text in the footnote in bold type, but the translation, by my colleague Marc Lauxtermann, sensibly does not attempt to reflect this in the English version. Tears are present from the outset, a marker of the poet’s anguish and a sign of his repentance. Perhaps as a result of the rise of academic interest in the history of the emotions, recent studies of these and other penitential texts by, for example, Hannah Hunt, have highlighted the significance of tears as a sign of deep, genuine feelings.22 In this extract the tears come from the speaker, but are also summoned from kindred souls, those round him, who feel compassion for him. But it is not clear whether they too are clamouring for mercy for themselves, although all mankind is included in the bitterness of the thought of death. In the sub-theme of this paper – the development of an individual sense of the person rather than a collective one – this passage makes an individual howl of sorrow, ‘I cry bitterly, have mercy’, but then moves on swiftly to cover the wider community. In the current preoccupation with gender-neutral vocabulary this extract offers two terms for all humanity, translated as ‘humankind’ in the gamma (Γ) couplet (γένος βροτῶν) and as ‘mankind’ (ἀνθρώποις) in the theta (Θ) couplet. I am sure that Symeon intended both to cover all humanity ­regardless of gender.

Γένος βροτῶν εὐόλισθον, οἶδα, πρὸς ἁμαρτίαν·   ἀλλ᾽ἐγὼ, φεῦ! παρέδραμον καὶ τὴν ἄλογον φύσιν. Δεῦτε, ψυχαὶ φιλάνθρωποι, δεῦτε δακρύων ὄμβρους   ἐπὶ ψυχὴν κενώσατε πολλῶν θρήνων ἀξίαν. Ἐρῶ τι καὶ θρασύτερον· εἰ νικᾷ σὴ χρηστὀτης,   Χριστέ, κακίαν ἄμετρον, ἀπ᾽ἐμοι νῦν φανείτω. Ζ῀ῆν οὕτως ἁμαρτάνοντι τὸ θανεῖν πὀσῳ κρεῖττον!   ῷ καὶ μᾶλλον συνέφερεν ὅλως μὴ γεννηθῆναι. Ἦρα πρὸς σὲ τὰ ὄμματα, Δέσποτα, τῆς καρδίας·   κράζω πικρῶς «ἐλἐησον»· ἐξέλιπον ἐλπίδες. Θάνατε, τὸ μνημόσυν πικρόν σου τοῖς ἀνθρὠποις   ἐμὲ τοῦ τέλοῦς πλέον δὲ τὰ μετὰ τέλος τήκει.

(Lauxtermann (ed. and trans.), Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres, vol.  2, pp. 178–9.)

22 H. Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers (Leiden, 2004).

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This is perhaps the earliest of these penitential alphabets to survive, and intriguingly it is one of the earliest texts to use the fifteen-syllable verse for a significant number of consecutive lines. That statement conceals a lengthy philological controversy;23 all that is relevant here is that this is an important moment in medieval and modern Greek metrics, with the birth of what became the dominant metre for verse in Greek right up until the latter years of the twentieth century. It is a metre that follows the natural stresses of the modern language and is infinitely easier to manipulate than the elegiac couplets used by Geometres, Symeon’s contemporary. What lessons can be drawn from the contrast in metrical choices by Geometres and the Metaphrast? Modern commentators attribute connotations of sincerity to the fifteen-syllable line, as I suggested earlier. Whether that was the view of its medieval exponents is a moot point. I am sure that Geometres was as sincere in his praises and compunction as Symeon was in his repentance. It is surely a matter of context: Geometres was composing for a city confraternity and drawing on his rhetorical training,24 Symeon was focusing on a less erudite congregation. Note that it is possible that these alphabets were set to music, in which they would have been appropriate for congregational use as well as by individuals. More or less contemporaneous with Metaphrastes’ alphabet, but using sets of three lines rather than two, is the alphabet by Nikephoros Ouranos (d. 1007). Like Geometres, Ouranos was a successful general in the Bulgarian wars of the second half of the tenth century, though he also held the office of kanikleios, or imperial secretary (literally, keeper of the inkwell). He is the author of a manual of military tactics as well as of several saints’ lives though he did not function at the same elevated literary level as Geometres.25 Interestingly, he also served as a lay guardian of the Great Lavra monastery on Athos. His alphabet was widely copied and much used.

Summed up in M. Lauxtermann, The Spring of Rhythm: An Essay on the Political Verse and Other Byzantine Metres (Vienna, 1999). 24 E. Jeffreys, ‘Byzantine Poetry and Rhetoric’, in Hörandner, Rhoby and Zagklas, Companion to Byzantine Poetry, pp. 92–112. 2 5 Ouranos appears frequently in C. Holmes, Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025) (Oxford, 2003). 23

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It opens as follows: What words shall I offer you from my lips, Word? How shall I cast my eyes to the heights of heaven when I am besmirched by my deeds and am utterly filthy? I know, Lord, that I am a burden on the earth, I pollute the air, but why does a chasm not gape open, why is there no thunderbolt from above? Your patience, your forbearance is so great. The perversity of my mind, the lusts of my soul cannot be numbered by the stars above nor the grains on the sea-shore as I stand self-condemned before the judgement seat. Dreadful are the torments on that day but not equal to my trespasses; wherefore, my Christ, I stand in fear and trembling before that doom. I, my Saviour, have betrayed you treacherously to your enemies, I have set you my benevolent Lord on the cross, I have been more cruel to you than Judas. Life’s harvest draws near, for the land is white, and Death has already prepared the sickle; but you, dissolute soul, what will you do, unrepentant as you are? The days which I wasted, that I spent in sin, no one will restore them to me so that I may correct my ways; so what fountains of tears can suffice for me?26 26 Ἀπὸ χειλέων λόγους σοι ποίους προσοίσω, Λόγε;

  ὄμματα πῶς πετάσω δὲ πρὸς οὐρανοῦ τὸ ὕψος,   ὅλος ἐξ ἔργων βόρβορος ὅλος ὑπάρχων ῥύπος; Βαρῶ γῆν, οἶδα, δέσποτα· μιαίνω τὸν ἀέρα   καὶ πῶς οὐ χάσμα κάτωθεν; πῶς οὐ σκηπτὸς ἐξ ὕψος;   σῆς τοῦτο πἀντως ἀνοχῆς, σῆς ἀνεξικακίας. Γνὠμης έμῆς στρεβλότητας, ψυχῆς φιληδονίας,   οὐ φθάσει ἄστρων ἀριθμὸς οὐδὲ θαλάσσης ψάμμος·   ὅθεν αὐτοκατἀκριτος εἰμι καὶ πρὸ τῆς δίκης. Δεινὰ τὰ κολαστήρια τῆς ἐκεῖθεν ἡμέρας,   ἀλλ᾽ ἐμῶν οὐκ ἀντἀξια δοκῶ πλημμελημάτων·   διό, Χριστἐ μου, δέδοικα καὶ τρέμω πρὸ τοῦ τέλους. Ἐγὼ σε, σῶτερ, τοῖς ἐχθροῖς προδέδωκα δολίως·   ἐγῶ σε τὸν φιλάνθρωπον ἐσταύρωσε δεσπότην,   ἀγνωμονέστερος εἰς σὲ φανεὶς καὶ τὸν Ἰούδα. Ζωῆς τὸ θέρος ἤγγικεν (λευκαίνει γὰρ ἡ χώρα)   καὶ Θάνατος τὸ δρέπανον ἤδη προετοιμάζει·   σὺ δὲ τἰ πρἀξεις, ἄσωτε ψυχή, μὴ μεταγνοῦσα; Ἡμέρας, ἃς ἀνἀλωσα, αἷς κακῶς ἐχρησἀμην,   οὐδεὶς ἀντισηκώσει με τοῦ πάλιν ἐπιστρέψαι·   διὸ μοι ποῖαι νῦν πηγαὶ ἀρκέσουσι δακρύων;



(A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ed., ‘Βυζαντινὰ ἀνάλεκτα’, Byzantinische Zeitshrift 8 (1899), 68; my translation.)

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The speaker is in fear and trembling as he contemplates his sins and his unworthiness and releases floods of tears. But whereas in the Metaphrast’s penitential alphabet the communal identity is referenced, for Ouranos the individual is dominant. The poet’s ‘I’, the first person, is only enhanced by his apostrophizing of his dissolute soul, ‘but you, dissolute soul, what will you do?’ A version of this text is found in an Athonite manuscript, Dionysiou 65, a mid-twelfth-century manuscript which contains a Psalter, followed by a selection of theological material including works of Basil of Caesarea and Maximos the Confessor. It was made for a certain Sabas, a monk from a town in the Bay of Nikomedeia. The book opens with a series of images of the stages in a monk’s progress through life, the concluding ones of which are accompanied by selected strophes (I, m, k, o, y, x) from Ouranos’ penitential alphabet. The first image shows the beginning of the monk’s final hours as the angel receives his soul which is then led to Hades; a black-clad figure is assumed to be Sabas himself.27 But what is also striking about this manuscript is that its images were made by the most renowned book illuminator working in Constantinople in the middle years of the twelfth century, referred to currently as the Kokkinobaphos master.28 So this was a costly book, which seems to have had a complex history. At what stage in his life Sabas commissioned it is not clear, nor is it known how it came to the monastery of Dionysiou. It is a demonstration of the ease with which manuscripts can relocate, and the difficulty of drawing conclusions from the current presence or absence of texts from a given location. Let me now turn to the figure who perhaps comes most immediately to mind when considering prayer and poetry in a monastic context – Symeon the New Theologian.29 Born in 949 and coming like Geometres S. Pelekanides et al., Οἱ Θησαυροὶ τοῦ Ἁγίου Ὅρους, τομ. 1: Εἰκονoγραφημένα Χειρόγραφα (Athens, 1973), p. 117. 28 A. Cataladi Palau, ‘Deux manuscrits de Ménées du monastère du Prodrome de Pétra et le groupe de Kokkinobaphos’, in A. Bravo Garcia et al. (eds), The Legacy of Bernard Montfaucon (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 107–32 and 735–43, at 128. 2 9 J. A.  McGuckin, ‘Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022)  and Byzantine Monasticism’, in A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (eds), Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 17–35. 27

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from an elite family and receiving a better education than his later pleas of illiterate ignorance would suggest, Symeon turned away from a place at court and entered the Stoudios monastery. He was subsequently appointed abbot of the monastery of St Mamas (on the Golden Horn) but fell out with his monks, perhaps for the strict discipline he exercised, perhaps for his continued veneration of his spiritual father, Symeon Eulabes. He was exiled but was later recalled and allowed to build a monastery. The corpus of his writings in both prose and verse that survives is extensive – homilies, theological discourses of many kinds, and of course his hymns: the Loves of Divine Hymns (Τῶν θειῶν ὕμνων οἱ ἔρωτες). His writings have been hugely influential, though not it would seem in his lifetime.30 They appear not to have circulated widely, even in Constantinople itself and even when his disciple Niketas Stethatos had collected and prepared them for a wider group: Niketas seems to have retained a sense that much that Symeon wrote was too daring for those who had not been inducted into his thought world. Nevertheless his teachings stimulated the hesychast movement of the fourteenth century which Palamas initiated in his early years in Athonite monasteries, and Symeon’s works were behind the hesychast revival of the late eighteenth century, of which the Philokalia compiled by Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain is emblematic. Three points about Symeon’s poetry are relevant here. It is mystical, revealing his rapturous encounters with the divine light; it is penitential, lamenting his great unworthiness as a recipient of divine love; and it is at times shocking in its blending of the physical with the spiritual, for example, with its use of erotic terms (often derived from the Song of Songs) and gender reversal. One might suggest that these themes can all be perceived in the following brief extract from Hymn 16. But in the hour of my distress, when I begin to weep, then He shows Himself and sees me, He who sees all. I wonder and marvel at the splendour of His beauty and how He, my Creator, opened the heavens, leant out and showed me His glory, ineffable and wondrous. ‘Who can get closer to Him, and how can one be lifted up to such a height?’ Yet in the midst of these thoughts, there He is, within me, radiating

30

J. A. McGuckin, ‘Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros: A Neglected Masterpiece of Christian Mystical Tradition’, Spiritus, 5 (2005), 182–202.

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Elizabeth Jeffreys from within my miserable heart, shining all around me with divine luminosity and suffusing my whole body with His rays of light. He embraces me wholly, He kisses me all over, He gives Himself fully to me although I am not worthy. I am filled with His love and His beauty, I am full of pleasure and divine sweetness, I share in His light, I partake of His glory, my face shines like that of my loved one, and all my members become luminous.31

Symeon weeps in penitential sorrow, he is irradiated by the Creator’s divine luminosity, and he is embraced and kissed all over, ‘filled with his love and beauty’. He partakes in the divine glory. It is passages like this that Stethatos must have felt were not appropriate for those beyond the mystic’s immediate circle.32 In the context of the sub-theme of communal or individual identity it is not surprising that, while he may subsume his sinfulness within the failings of all humankind, Symeon uses the first person singular of his experiences

31



Ὅτε δὲ ἄρξομαι θρηνεῖν ὡς ἀπελπίσας, τότε

ὁρᾶταί μοι καὶ βλέπει με ὁ καθορῶν τὰ πάντα· θαυμάζων καταπλήττομαι κάλλους τὴν εὐμορφίαν καὶ πῶς ἀνοίξας οὐρανοὺς διέκυψεν ὁ κτίστης καὶ δόξαν μοι παρέδειξε τὴν ἄφραστον καὶ ξένην· καὶ τίς ἆρα ἐγγύτερον γενήσεται ἐκείνου ἢ πῶς ἀνενεχθήσεται εἰς ἀμέτρητον ὕψος; λογιζομένου μου αὐτὸς εὑρίσκεται ἐντός μου, ἔνδον ἐν τῇ ταλαίνῃ μου καρδίᾳ ἀπαστράπτων, πάντοθεν περιλάμπων με τῇ ἀθανάτῳ αἴγλῃ, ἅπαντα δὲ τὰ μέλη μου ἀκτῖσι καταυγάζων, ὅλος περιπλεκόμενος ὅλον καταφιλεῖ με ὅλον τε δίδωσιν αὐτὸν ἐμοὶ τῷ ἀναξίῳ, καὶ ἐμφοροῦμαι τῆς αὐτοῦ ἀγάπης καὶ τοῦ κάλλους, καὶ ἡδονῆς καὶ γλυκασμοῦ ἐμπίπλαμαι τοῦ θείου· μεταλαμβάνω τοῦ φωτός, μετέχω καὶ τῆς δόξης καὶ λάμπει μου τὸ πρόσωπον ὡς καὶ τοῦ ποθητοῦ μου καὶ ἅπαντα τὰ μέλη μου γίνονται φωτοφόρα. ( J. Koder (ed.), Syméon le Nouveau Théologien, Hymnes, vol.  2 (Paris, 1972), Hymn 16, lines 16–33; trans. Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres, vol. 2, p. 190.)

32 D. Krueger, ‘Homoerotic Spectacle and the Monastic Body in Symeon the New Theologian’, in V. Burrus and C. Keller (eds), Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (New York, 2007), pp. 99–118.

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of the divine. The intensity of his outpourings of prayers of praise and penitence can never be viewed as a generic expression of group emotion. That is a totally inadequate summing-up of Symeon and his work: his poetry is of a completely different order to the rest of the texts that are presented in this paper. These, even Geometres’, are the daily bread of prayerful discourse, or prayerful discourse in monastic life, whereas Symeon the New Theologian offers a rich and abundant feast, and one that is perhaps for many rather indigestible. This is poetry, and not verse. From the sublime to something else, from poetry to verse, and the last set of examples. These present two dedicatory epigrams on holy objects where the nature of the speaking ‘I’ of the verse is problematical. The first takes us away from the monastic sphere to a worldly environment but represents a phenomenon which is widespread in both contexts, when cult objects are dedicated to a holy personage. It reads thus: If there exists a river and rushing streams, then these are here and so too is God’s golden city; for your womb is the city of God who became man, and the river likewise is the living, indwelling Spirit and an onset of streams, a flood of delights. So I have found you to be God’s golden city, a precinct which gives protection from death; for if your right hand had not protected my branch of the porphyrogennetos tree, badly wounded as he was by a spear in his eye and approaching the gates of death, the chill of death would perhaps now have held him; thus I have been filled with your benefactions. I make supplication again on behalf of my absent son: grant to my emperor breadth of rule and give him power over the barbarians; and for my grapes which now have flourished increase still more the sovereign’s warmth. Eirene pleads with you for this petition, wife of the sebastokrator Andronikos.33

33

Ἕτεροι εἰς ἅγιον ἐγχείριον τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου τῆς ἐν τοῖς Κύρου, γεγονὸς παρὰ τῆς σεβαστοκρατορίσσης

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This text, entitled ‘Other verses on a holy encheirion of the most holy Theotokos in Ta Kyrou, produced by the sevastokratorissa’, is a prayer made to the Holy Virgin in about 1149 by Eirene, the widowed sister-in-law of the emperor Manuel I Komnenos, at a time when she had fallen under imperial disfavour.34 In fact it brings us back to an environment we encountered at the outset of this paper and is one of the texts that demonstrate the potential continuity of the literary confraternity of the church which gave Geometres his epithet Kyriotes. The sevastokratorissa is presenting a veil to cover an icon of the Virgin in the church of Ta Kyrou in Constantinople. This action is a token of devotion and gratitude for the Virgin’s past protection of Eirene’s son who had been gravely wounded in battle – it is he who is the ‘branch of the porphyrogennetos tree’, his Ἄν τις ποταμὸς καὶ ῥύμη τῶν ῥευμάτων, ἐνταῦθα ταῦτα καὶ Θεοῦ χρυσῆ πόλις· γαστὴρ γὰρ ἡ σὴ τοῦ θεανθρώπου πόλις, ὁ δ᾿ αὖ ποταμὸς Πνεῦμα τὸ ζῶν καὶ μένον, καὶ ῥευμάτων ὅρμημα, ῥοῦς χαρισμάτων. Εὗρον σε τοίνυν τὴν θεοῦ χρυσῆν πόλιν, περιοχὴν σώζουσαν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου· εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐσκέπασεν ἡ δεξιά σου τὸν ἀπὸ δένδρου πορφυρανθοῦς μοι κλάδον τρωθέντα δεινῶς ἐν δόρατι τὴν κόρην καὶ τοῦ θανάτου ταῖς πύλαις ἠγγικότα, τάχ᾿ ἂν κατέσχε ψύξις αὐτὸν θανάτου· τῶν σῶν ἐπλήσθην τοιγαροῦν δωρημάτων. ῾Υπὲρ δὲ τοῦ λείποντος αἰτῶ καὶ πάλιν, κύρωσον ἀρχῆς τῷ βασιλεῖ μου πλάτος καὶ κῦρος αὐτῷ κατὰ βαρβάρων δίδου· καὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς βότρυσι τοῖς ἠνθηκόσι τὴν τοῦ κρατοῦντος θάλψιν αὐξήσαις ἔτι. Ταύτην δυσωπεῖ τὴν δέησιν Εἰρήνη, σεβαστοκρατοῦς Ἀνδρονίκου σύζυγος.

(Manganeios Prodromos, no.  93:  E. Miller (ed.), ‘Poésies inédites de Theodore Prodrome’, Annuaire de l’association pour l’encouragement des études grecques en France, 17 (1883), 36; trans. E. and M. Jeffreys, forthcoming.)

34 For an overview of Eirene’s life, see E.  Jeffreys, ‘The Sevastokratorissa Eirene as Patron’, in M.  Grünbart, M.  Mullett, and L.  Theis (eds), Female Founders in Byzantium and Beyond (Vienna, 2014)  =  Wiener Jahrbuch der Kunstgeschichte, 60/61 (2011/12; published 2014), 177–94. Sevastokratorissa is the title for the wife of a sevastokrator, in the mid-twelfth century the son of a reigning emperor.

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father having been a ‘porphyrogennetos’, that is, the son of a reigning emperor. The text is also a plea for future support for Eirene and her family in Eirene’s troubled relations with the emperor: the plea to the Virgin is for her to intercede with the emperor on Eirene’s behalf. A bargain is being struck between a suppliant and a holy figure, in which the suppliant displays her piety but at the same time is demonstrating her status by making a conspicuous offering that draws attention to both the achievements and the problems of her family.35 It is a rather different case from the examples looked at so far, but the emotion that is being expressed need not be the less deeply felt, though it is the emotion of an individual and not massed humanity. This is an epigram, a short verse text in the twelve-syllable line intended to be inscribed – in this case embroidered – on the object being offered, and presents a prayer in the persona of Eirene which would be repeated on each viewing when the viewer would join audibly or silently in the prayer first uttered by Eirene. Though expressed in the first person the text is most unlikely to have been composed by Eirene herself, although she had considerable literary interests, but rather by her household poet, known as Manganeios Prodromos, who over several decades presented many similar texts in her persona. There is also a parallel question to be asked, as to whether Eirene herself was involved with embroidering these verses on the veil’s fabric. My second example returns us to the monastic environment but keeps the female element. I am referring to a fourteenth-century icon in the treasury of the Vatopedi monastery.36 This small image (measuring 25 by 22 cm) was dedicated to the Virgin of Sure Hope by Anna Palaiologina Kantakouzene Philanthropene, as recorded in a now virtually illegible inscription painted on the icon’s surface. It was legible in the eighteenth century and recorded by the monastery librarian. The icon depicts an image of the Virgin embracing the Christ-child, with a battered silver revetment on which are revealed figures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel, while plaques with figural reliefs and the dedicatory epigram are on the frame. 35 For a thought-provoking exploration of the contractual obligations implied by such bargains, see R. Frances, Donor Portraits in Byzantine Art: The Vicissitudes of Contact between Human and Divine (Cambridge, 2018). 36 Drpić, ‘The Patron’s “I”’, pp. 919–23, Figures 8–10 (cited in n. 19 above).

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On the lower edge of the wooden icon frame, scarcely visible now, Anna is depicted, prostrate in prayer. She was almost certainly the grand-daughter of Theodora Palaiologina Synadene, a niece of the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and foundress of the convent of Sure Hope (Bebaia Elpis) in Constantinople. A copy of this convent’s foundation document, with its magnificent gallery of family portraits, is to be found today in Lincoln College, Oxford.37 The text for the Vatopedi icon is contained in the silver plaques surrounding the Virgin (again these were recorded in the eighteenth century in a more complete form than their present condition); in a modern edition it reads as follows: O Maiden, sure hope of those in need, be my protection and the salvation of my soul, and wash away the dirt of my sins. I know that you [are protector] of both orphans and strangers […] Anna Philanthropene cries out this to you.38

The battered text is Anna’s prayer for salvation and her plea for the washing away of her sins. The reference to orphans must allude to the orphanage for female children attached to the family’s Constantinopolitan convent. Indeed, by use of the phrase ‘sure hope’ (Bebaia Elpis) Anna has defined herself as patroness as much as she has defined the object of her veneration. It could be said that a contract is being struck here: a gift is offered in anticipation of reciprocal blessings. But we are venturing once again into slippery territory where bargains are being struck between

37 On which see most recently, N.  Gaul, ‘Writing “with joyful and leaping soul”:  Sacralization, Scribal Hands, and Ceremonial in the Lincoln College Typikon’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 69 (2015), 243–71. 38 Βεβαία ἐλπὶς ἠπορημένων, κόρη, σκέπη γενοῦ μου καῖ ψυχῆς σωτηρία τὸν βόρβορον πλύνουσα τῶν ἁμαρτάδων. Οἰδἀ σε καὶ ὀρφανῶν τε καὶ ξένων […] Φιλανθρωπηνὴ Ἄννα ταῦτά σοι κράζει.



(Ed. Drpić, ‘The Patron’s “I”’, pp. 919–23, after A. Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme auf Ikonen und Objekten der Kleinkunst (Vienna, 2010), pp.  91–4, with abb. XIV; trans. Drpić, ibid.)

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humans and Creator, a topic to be considered on another occasion. The author of this text is presenting Anna as a repentant individual seeking salvation through the intervention of the Virgin. In conclusion, out of my limited capabilities, I have offered a range of texts from the Byzantine monastic heritage. I have tried to give an idea of some of the backgrounds out of which this poetry emerged, in particular the pressures which led to its choice of form and style. I have used the terms poetry and verse to suggest that, as literature, some of the texts are more effective, more ambitious, than others. I have attempted to suggest that the authorial persona can be complex – perhaps a generic figure representing sinful humans, perhaps an individual expressing unique experiences, perhaps a writer presenting another’s hidden aspirations. These are but some examples of the very different ways in which poetry can serve as prayer.

Aidan Hart

5  Painting Icons as Prayer

‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it’ (Genesis 28:16). This is what Jacob exclaimed when he awoke from his dream of the ladder stretching between Heaven and earth. These words encapsulate the essence of prayer, and therefore also of icons: to meet God and His saints where we are, at this moment and in this place. Such prayer can be gentle communion, more contemplation than speech, as it was for Jacob in his dream in which he simply beholds and worships. Or it can be to struggle with God, as when Jacob wrestles with the angel and will not let him go until blessed by him. I have been an iconographer for over thirty years, and experience the act of painting icons as both these forms of prayer. Sometimes the process is contemplative, at other times it is a struggle. It is work, a form of asceticism. The act of painting icons is to pray with paint rather than words. It is to listen and discover as well as to express. It is to offer transformed matter in thanksgiving. It is akin to gardening, for the artist transforms creation’s raw materials into an icon as into a garden. In short, the work of iconography is a particular expression of the three ministries to which every person is called, be they lay or clergy: it is prophetical, priestly, and royal. Or to express these three types of prayer another way: to receive and declare; to offer; to transform. I would therefore like to explore our topic of ‘Painting Icons as Prayer’ in the context of these three ministries. The main role of icons is to help the faithful commune with and venerate the holy persons whom they depict. Icons are therefore often called a door between Heaven and earth. In the Orthodox Church we kiss icons as a means of venerating the holy persons whom they depict. But the theme we shall explore in this article is more to do with the process of painting an icon as a form of prayer than the icon’s use in the liturgy. Not that the private process and the public liturgy are separate. As we shall see, the making

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of an icon in the studio is part of the larger liturgical life of the Church, just as the baking of bread at home for the eucharist is in effect part of the liturgy. Let us begin with the prophetical element of icon painting.

Icon Painting’s Prophetic Role Prayer is communion, and therefore two-way. It is to listen as well as to speak, to see as well as to act. This is exemplified in the ministry of prophecy. A prophet is one who declares only what they have heard from God, describes only what they have seen from God. This is why in the Old Testament a prophet is sometimes called a seer, someone who sees. It is largely for this reason that the Orthodox Church does not relegate the making of liturgical art to the individual artist’s imagination. The Seventh Ecumenical Council declared: ‘The making of icons does not depend upon the invention of painters, but expresses the approved legislation and tradition of the Catholic Church … The painter’s domain is limited to his art, while the content and arrangement of the icons are prescribed by the Holy Fathers.’1 The iconographer’s task is to make images of saints who exist, not to render figments of his or her imagination. Icons do not depict utopias or theories, but real persons. Icon painters must therefore live the life of the Church so that they can come to know Christ and the saints personally and not merely as historical figures. In this sense, they seek to paint from life and not from models. They need to be seers before makers, hearers before painters. This is graphically illustrated by the Book of Exodus narrative about the Tent of Meeting and how it was made. God revealed to Moses the pattern for the Tent of Meeting because it had to reflect heavenly realities. Only God knew these realities, and so He had to be the chief designer. The 1

The Seventh Ecumenical Council, Session 6, trans. Kallistos Ware, ‘The Theology of the Icon: A Short Anthology’, Eastern Churches Review, 8: 1 (Spring 1976), 7.

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tent and all its furnishings were to be an image of divine prototypes. The overall schema had therefore to come by divine revelation. Craftspeople were needed to execute the plan, but they did not originate it. As we study the texts about the craftsman named Bezalel, who was chosen to organize the construction of the Tent of Meeting, we can see how he is a model for iconographers in the New Covenant. We read in Exodus that the Lord said to Moses: See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.  (Exodus 31:2–5)

There is a subtlety here. While it is clear that Moses was the top prophet, and it was he who received from God the general schema for the Tent of Meeting, Bezalel also had to be a kind of prophet. He needed skills in order to execute the God-given plans for the Tent of Meeting, but he also needed to be ‘filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding’, so that he could understand the significance of the plans and translate Moses’ verbal descriptions into wood, metal, and cloth. Moses was given the general plan, but Bezalel had to design and construct the details. He needed spiritual insight and discernment to ensure that these details remained true to the revelation given to Moses. We could therefore say that Moses represents the whole Tradition of the Church within which the iconographer operates, while Bezalel represents the community of iconographers who need the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as well as technical skill in order to express that Tradition in visual form.

A Personal Journey Bezalel means a lot to me personally. At this point I would like to indulge in a little autobiographical detail, since it illustrates something of what I want to say about icon painting as prayer. For me, prayer and art have

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always been intertwined. They have been inseparable in my journey as a Christian. I come from an artistic family, on both my mother’s side and my father’s, so I was very inspired by Bezalel when at the age of 15 I first read about him. I had just become a Christian, and prayed fervently to the Lord that He might give me something of Bezalel’s gifts so that I could serve Him artistically. I think my eventually becoming Orthodox and an iconographer was an answer to that teenage prayer. I have even been blessed, like Bezalel, to serve the Church in a wide variety of mediums such as stone, wood, mosaic, metal, and fresco, as well as in egg tempera. But the journey has been long and convoluted, a sort of wrestling match with my angel. A few years within the Baptist communion after my conversion gave me a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, but little opportunity for art. This was followed by a move to a high Anglican parish, which affirmed the role of the material world in worship. After completing a degree in literature, I became a professional sculptor at the age of 21. My aim was to express the spiritual nature of the human person in clay and bronze. In retrospect, I think I was trying to depict saints. To this end I experimented with differing degrees of naturalism and abstraction. This artistic search was accompanied by an equally ardent desire to pray more deeply. It was a quest that eventually led me to an Orthodox monastery, in New Zealand, the country in which I had been raised. When I saw the icons at the monastery, I immediately realized that this tradition had been doing for almost two millennia what I had been trying to do in my sculpture. All the conclusions that I had reached about how to suggest the spiritual nature of the human person in sculpture were there, plus of course a lot more besides. And the tradition of the Philokalia to which the monks introduced me convinced me that I had found the detailed Ordnance Survey map of the soul for which I had also been searching. A word kept recurring in conversations with the monks: transfiguration. In this event, Christ reveals our human nature and the whole material world to be radiant with divine glory. This tallied with a formative experience that I had had ten years earlier and which had led to my becoming a believer in the first place. It was a vision of a person with a radiant face, full of love, warmth, and strength, accompanied by a community of other

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people. The frequent recollection of this person full of light and love surrounded by His community had kept drawing me ever forward in my quest. It is what directed both my sculptural quest and my search for deeper prayer. But here in the icon tradition, or rather, what it represented, was the answer: a tradition that depicted Christ and His saints, shining with the Holy Spirit in the kingdom of God.

Designing a Festal Icon: To Hear and to Speak What does this prophetic aspect of icon painting mean practically for an iconographer? How can mere pigment suggest inexpressible light and love? How, for example, might an iconographer approach the painting of a festal icon? Each icon painter has his or her particular approach, so I can only describe my own process. The first stage for me is to see and hear the Word of the Lord in the tradition, so I immerse myself in the Orthodox liturgical texts and the appointed biblical readings for the feast. Word and image go hand in hand in iconography, one interpreting the other, so they are inseparable. A study of contemporary and patristic commentaries is also helpful at this stage. I then assemble numerous existing icons of the feast. Contrary to a popular misconception, there is considerable variety within the icon tradition. Different festal icons emphasize different truths about their sacred event. The next stage is to analyse these icons and ascertain how they have interpreted the theology taught by the texts. This provides a toolkit of stylistic devices that are useful when designing the icon. There is also the basic matter of which persons are essential to the event and which are not – Nativity icons for example range from five to over twenty figures. Then there is composition. Iconographers often arrange their figures and backgrounds according to geometric shapes that evoke the event’s theology. In the illustrated icon of the Nativity, for example, the material world is contained within a square, a symbol of the created realm, while

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the heavenly realm is within a hemisphere atop this square (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2). This square surmounted by an arch is redolent of a domed church; the Incarnation is the nativity of the Church. This icon also arranges representatives of all creation – sheep, humans, and plants – within a circle, whose centre is the child Jesus. Though a child, as God He remains the Creator, Hub, and Logos of the universe.

Figure 5.1.  The Nativity of Christ. Private collection. (By the author.)

Figure 5.2.  The geometrical structure that underlies the illustrated Nativity icon.

The icon’s direction of movement is also crucial. The illustrated icon of the Annunciation (Figure 5.3) directs our eye from the top left-hand corner of the icon down through the archangel’s raised wing and on through his outstretched arm and fingers to Mary. God’s word has come to her from Heaven through the archangel Gabriel. But she also looks out at us and

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thereby engages us in the event, as though to say: ‘Do you also wish to bear Christ?’ The movement thus occurs not only within the icon but also spills out to us, the praying viewers. This liturgical space in front of the icon is its fourth dimension.

Figure 5.3.  The Annunciation. Private collection. (By the author.)

Having assembled this vocabulary of stylistic devices from the tradition, it is time to design the icon. The result is the outcome of various factors. The commissioner may want a particular theological emphasis,

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or may leave it up to the painter to decide. There is also the ‘audience’. Is there a theme that is particularly suited to the commissioning community, or more generally, to its epoch and culture? Given the current importance of ecology, for example, I often try to bring out the Orthodox theology of matter and its vital role in our spiritual lives. Then there is the icon’s intended architectural home, with which the icon should harmonize. I was recently commissioned to paint an icon of St Giles for St Gabriel’s chapel in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. Since the chapel has splendid Romanesque wall-paintings, I drew on works from this same period for inspiration. More recently I was commissioned to fresco a Transfiguration scene for Lancaster University chaplaincy (Figure 5.4). The wall’s orientation was an extended landscape rather than portrait, so this demanded a horizontal arrangement of figures that departed from the more usual tiered schema.

Figure 5.4.  The Transfiguration. Lancaster University Chaplaincy. (By the author.)

After the design comes of course the actual painting of the work, the final stage of the journey. I have described this process perhaps a bit mechanically. In fact, most icon painters experience it as a struggle, a wrestle

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with the angel of truth, until blessing comes. The great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi said that simplicity is complexity resolved. The process of making an icon is a struggle to distil the essentials from the complexity of written sources and then incarnate these in a single icon. Bezalel had to make a single Tent of Meeting from the lengthy descriptions given him by Moses, and this translation of word to image is a demanding work, an asceticism.

Icon Painting’s Priestly Role We turn now to the second aspect of icon painting, as priestly prayer. A priest is someone who offers thanks on behalf of others and is a sort of mouthpiece of worshippers to call down the blessing of God. In what ways can we call the process of icon painting a priestly work? It needs first to be made clear that an icon is not a sacrament. It remains always wood and pigment. Even though there is a pious tradition of blessing icons, this blessing is not essential for an icon to become an icon. We venerate icons not because they have been transformed by a blessing to become something other than wood and paint, but because they bear the name and likeness of the holy persons whom they depict. Nevertheless, there is a priestly element to icon painting in that the icon is an offering. It is an offering of artistically transformed matter as prayer. We do not offer raw wood and pigment, but wood and pigment fashioned into an icon. Icon painting is a priestly act also in the sense that the icon invokes God’s presence. It is a material declaration that the Lord is present. It is itself a form of epiclesis, only that it is the praying viewer who is transformed rather than the icon itself. The icon painter prays that through the icon the Lord will come to all those who behold it and pray before it. The Orthodox Church’s ‘Prayer before Painting an Icon’ asks Christ to: ‘Forgive our sins and the sins of those who will venerate these icons, and who, standing devoutly before them, give homage to those they represent. Protect them from all evil and instruct them with good counsel.’ Many of us have seen roadside shrines in Christian countries, or icons in cars or buses. These icon shrines tell us that God is present in this place, and that now it is a suitable time to worship Him. Icons can thus act like a

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church bell, calling us to prayer at this moment. They are an epiclesis upon the present time and upon the present place. Jacob’s Ladder I would like to dwell a little on this theme of finding God in the here and now through a study of a triptych that I was commissioned to paint for Shrewsbury School chapel (see Figure 5.5). The subject-matter requested by the chaplain was unusual:  Jacob’s dream of the ladder to Heaven (Gen. 28:10–22) and Jacob’s wrestle with the angel (Gen. 32:22–31). As I ­researched for the icon, I began to see that these events were all to do with meeting God in a specific place and in the present, and secondly, about union with Him, about deification. After they had wrestled all night, the angel changed Jacob’s name to Israel. He changes him from ‘heel grabber’ ( Jacob) to ‘one who struggles with God’ (Israel), from a name without God to a name mingled with God. For these reasons I asked the chaplain if we might combine the two icons of Jacob with an icon of the Transfiguration, and so make a triptych.

Figure 5.5.  Triptych: Jacob wrestles with the angel; the Transfiguration; Jacob’s dream of the ladder. Shrewsbury School chapel. (By the author.)

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The account of Jacob’s dream of the ladder tells us that Jacob came to ‘a certain place’ and ‘stayed’ – that is, at the time of the inspired dream he was still, he was not rushing around. It was a certain place, not just a place. He was where he was. We might say that he was in a hesychastic state. As the account in Genesis tells us: Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to Heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.’ (Genesis 28:11–13)

When Jacob awakes he declares: ‘Surely God is in this place; and I did not know it.’ This place has become for Jacob a holy site, a temple of divine presence, and so he declares: ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of Heaven.’ Jacob then sets up as a pillar the very stone on which his head rested while he was having the dream, and pours oil on it. He calls the place Bethel, meaning God’s house. The important thing here – although perhaps Jacob does not realize it – is that it is not just the geographical place that has become holy but he himself has become the holy place, God’s house. The dream occurred within him, so he is the holy place. The ladder went into his soul. When he awakes and says, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God’, it is in fact he himself who has become this awesome place. He has become a temple of God. To become the temple of the Spirit is of course the whole aim of the monastic life, the hesychastic life, the Athonite life, and ultimately, the life of every Christian. As St Paul wrote to the faithful in Corinth: ‘Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you … God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.’2 As we shall explore below, a major reason for the particular style of icons is to help turn us, to help us repent and discover the Holy Spirit given to us at chrismation. It is not just by what the icon depicts but how 2

1 Cor. 3:16,17.

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it depicts its subject that it awakens us to the Holy Spirit’s presence in our hearts and in the place and circumstances where we now live. One could not ask for a more graphic and succinct description of icons than Jacob’s experience at Bethel. An icon is a holy place that affirms God’s descent. It is incarnational in this respect. It is also a gateway or ladder, a means of the faithful meeting those in Heaven. Although it is not a sacrament, for an icon remains wood and pigment, by bearing the name and likeness of Christ or His saints the icon becomes a temenos, a place of sacred encounter. After Jacob met God, he offers a material reminder, his stone headrest as a pillar. This is what it is to be an icon painter. It is not just to experience the Church as a ladder between earth and Heaven, as the communion of the saints, but it is also to affirm this reality in icons. Icons are like the pillar that Jacob set up to remind himself and others that God is present in this place. It is pertinent that Jacob’s pillar was not an arbitrary stone, but the very rock on which his head lay when having the dream. It was therefore intimately connected with his divine encounter as a sort of material witness. In a similar fashion an icon is a witness to and instrument of the iconographer’s own encounter with God during its painting. Though most of us iconographers fall woefully short of the ideal, it is the saintly ones like St Andrey Rublev who produce the life-changing icons because they paint from profound experience. Their icons are a pillar of remembrance of actual encounter. God provides specific places and specific sacred objects, not in order to say that everything else is profane, but to help us treat everything and every place as holy, as a temenos. A holy object is not a pond but a spring. Blessing flows out from this little object and brings blessing far beyond its place and time. It is like the river in prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the temple.3 This river began as a trickle from under the temple threshold, then flowed eastward until it became ankle deep, then knee deep, and onwards until it became ‘a river that no man could cross’. The important thing is that wherever this river went it brought life. As Ezekiel wrote of the trees on the river’s bank: ‘Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from 3

Ezekiel 47:1–12.

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the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.’ This reminds me of an experience I had while frescoing Philip and Denise Sherrard’s chapel on Evia in Greece. Denise wanted to reflect Philip’s teaching on the role of the material world in the spiritual life, so we included trees between the standing saints. I used branches from local trees as models, but as is traditional, I tried to paint them not naturalistically but in their transformed, transfigured state, as bushes aflame with God’s presence. This prolonged experience of painting trees within the chapel as paradisiacal trees helped me gradually to see and experience the trees outside the chapel in the same way. The specific led to the general. The borders of Paradise expanded beyond the chapel walls. Jacob Wrestles with the Angel What of the second icon in our triptych, Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel? The account in Genesis reads: He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob’. Then he said, ‘Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Tell me, I pray, your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peni′el, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penu′el, limping because of his thigh. (Genesis 32:23–31)

Jacob struggles all night with a man, and will not let him go until the man blesses him. Eventually this being does bless Jacob, and gives him a new name, Israel – which means, ‘he struggles with God’, or ‘may God prevail’.

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Jacob’s new name is a mixture of himself and God, while his old name denotes himself in competition with other humans, for Jacob means heel grabber. Jacob is not content just to live in the world amidst other people, to be a heel grabber, but wants to live also with God. He struggles with God because he wants to be blessed by Him, to be united to Him. And this is not just a wish. It is a need. Jacob will fight for this or die. Though the man will not tell Jacob his own name, Jacob knows he has met God. In fact, he names the place of encounter Peni′el (which means ‘face of God’), saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’ The whole point is that Jacob is not content to know God as a concept, as a distant truth. He wants to know God here and now, in this place and at this moment. And he will struggle for it. He is even wounded in the struggle. This is prayer. The Transfiguration Icon To return to our triptych, between the two images of Jacob is the Transfiguration icon, but rather unusually without Peter, James, and John. I omitted them in order to encourage viewers to take their place. We ourselves become participants in Christ’s Transfiguration. The Orthodox liturgical texts of feasts so often use the word ‘today’:  ‘Today Christ is transfigured upon Mount Tabor.’ This is not mere poetic licence, but a declaration that divine time (kairos) spills out from created time (chronos) and into the present. A divine event in history acts like a sacred place: it exists to make holy what is beyond it. Just as the two images of Jacob are about encounter and communion with God wherever we are, so too is the Transfiguration icon. But there is a difference. In Jacob’s dream of the ladder, God stood above (or in some translations, beside) him. The dream gave Jacob just a glimpse of interior union. But after Pentecost, the Holy Spirit dwells within the believer in a permanent union. At His incarnation the Logos united our human nature with His divine nature in an inseparable marriage. This is why the fundamental defence for icons is the Incarnation. It is because God by grace has become flesh and blood that we can depict Him. Conversely, this is why we

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can depict saints, for they are beings of flesh and blood who have become gods by grace. But we shall return to that great Transfiguration event a little later, for it is fundamental to the icon tradition. Icon Painting as Thanksgiving Another aspect of our priestly role is to give thanks. To give thanks is to trace the gift back to its giver. Thanksgiving puts a face to a gift. It personalizes it. This is why icons never depict created things in isolation. Trees, rocks, and animals are all depicted in the context of Christ and His saints. The act of creating an icon is to give a voice to the inanimate matter from which it is made, a voice of thanksgiving. As St Leontius of Cyprus affirms: ‘The creation does not venerate God directly by itself, but it is through me that the heavens declare the glory of God, through me the moon worships God, through me the stars glorify Him, through me the waters and showers of rain, the dew and all creation venerate God and give Him glory.’4 An icon is a sort of microcosm, for it is made from representatives of all creation: pigments from the mineral kingdom; the wooden panel from the vegetable kingdom; egg that binds the pigments from the animal kingdom. Human skill and prayer transform these God-given raw materials into something even more articulate in God’s praise. Iconographers are like hymnographers, only they use colour and form to worship instead of musical notes. The meaning of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Genesis creation story has offered much material for theological exploration. For Sts Maximos the Confessor and Ephraim the Syrian it represented the material creation. For them, when we receive God’s material creation as a revelation of His love, it brings knowledge of good. Conversely, when the material world is grabbed for its pleasure and beauty alone, it brings knowledge of evil. It is thus not the fruit itself (the created world) that is 4

St Leontius of Cyprus, Apologetic Sermon 3, ‘On the Holy Icons’ (PG 93, 1604AB). Cited by J. Chryssavgis in Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred, ed. B. McDonald (Bloomington, IN, 2004), p. 256.

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evil, but our thankless and consumerist interaction with it. If we use our power and authority to degrade creation rather than make it more articulate in God’s praise, then the tree of creation becomes for us knowledge of evil. Our secularism and our environmental problems alone prove that God’s warning is true. For both Maximos and Ephraim, the correct order was for Adam and Eve to be divinized first, through partaking of the tree of life at the right time. This life of grace would have freed them from passionate attachment to created things, and thus allowed them to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is to ‘see through created reality without danger, along with God’. As Maximos wrote: So God postponed the enjoyment of this tree, so that – as was right – man should first, by sharing in the life of grace, become aware of his own origin and should be confirmed in freedom from sensual drives and unwavering commitment by the gift of immortality and so come to share in the being of God through divinization; at that point, he could see through created reality without danger, along with God, and gain an understanding of it as a god, and not as a man. Through grace, and because of the divinizing transformation of his intellect and his senses, he would then have the same insight into the essences of things that God has: Wisdom.5

According to St Ephraim the Syrian, the asceticism of self-control should have preceded eating both fruits: [God] placed two crowns for Adam, for which he was to strive, Two trees to provide crowns if he were victorious. If only he could have conquered just for a moment, He would have eaten the one and lived, eaten the other and gained knowledge …6

I would venture a second way of interpreting the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but one that is not contradictory to the above. In this interpretation to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the right 5 6

St Maximos the Confessor, in the Prologue of Quaestiones ad Thalassium. Cited by Hans Urs von Balthasar in Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco, CA, 2003), p. 181. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise 12. 17. Cited by S.  Brock in Hymns on Paradise (Crestwood, NY, 1990), p. 167.

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way can be understood as the second stage of spiritual ascent as described by both western and eastern Fathers. In this scenario it would precede eating from the tree of life, but must be eaten with thanksgiving and in the right time. The first stage is purification (praktiki theologia in the Greek), in which we learn not to have a passionate attachment to created things. This relates to what Ephraim writes above, to ‘conquer’ or control animal desires. This leads to the second stage, which the Fathers call illumination or natural theology (physiki theologia). In the second phase, purified of attachment to created things, we see all things as a revelation of God’s love and wisdom. The Greek Fathers tended to describe this second stage as the discernment of the logos or spiritual essence of each thing. Such a life of thanksgiving brings knowledge of good, whereas a life without discerning God in creation brings knowledge of evil. This second stage of natural theology prepares us for the third stage, which is mystical theology, or union with God. This corresponds to eating of the tree of life. In this way the gifts lead us to the Giver. This threefold process teaches that matter, or rather our treatment of matter, was intended to be our preparation for deification. The way an icon is painted encourages the perception of the logoi of created things, beckons us to trace all creation back to its Creator. And this aim is not the prerogative solely of icons, for it has been the aim of many great artists. Henri Matisse for example wrote: ‘the artist or the poet possesses an interior light which transforms objects to make a new world of them – sensitive, organized, a living world which is in itself an infallible sign of divinity, a reflection of divinity.’7 Or the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi: ‘The artist should know how to dig out the being that is within matter, and be the tool that brings out its cosmic essence into an actual visible essence.’8 This leads us to the third role of the iconographer, and of all Christians: the call to be rulers and gardeners. In what ways did God intend us to use our power to rule in this world? 7 8

Henri Matisse, in Matisse on Art, ed. Jack Ham (Berkeley, CA, 1995), p. 89. In F.  Bach, M.  Rowell, and A.  Temkin, Constantine Brancusi (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), p. 23.

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Icon Painting’s Royal Role In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God blessed Adam and Eve and told them to ‘be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’9 In the next chapter, they are told to work Eden and take care of it (2:15). Our task is therefore not only to give thanks, to be priests, but also to be rulers and gardeners, to tend the world and make it into a paradise, to help seeds become plants. We are priests, but also princes and princesses. But our authority in this world is given to nurture and raise it, not to degrade it. We are called to be labouring royalty, to work as well as to rule. We are to rule from within our kingdom, to get dirty, and not to preside loftily as from a distant palace. Icon painting can be regarded as an expression in miniature of this calling to be princely gardeners or craftspeople. Envision Eden to be in the midst of a fecund but wild forest. This God-planted garden is a synergy of the divine mind with the wild, puppylike energy of the virgin forest that surrounds the garden. The garden bears the mark of its Designer and Planter even more clearly than the untrammelled forest beyond. The Divine Gardener then places Adam and Eve in this paradise as in a microcosm, and charges them to continue His work of gardening. In creating Eden, the Lord set an example for Adam and Eve, and told them to continue in the same vein, but in their own unique way. When the Lord enjoins them to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth, He is asking them to make this whole wild world into a garden. Their authority over the world is to nurture and develop it, to raise it up and not to pollute or destroy it. This is why it is only after the Lord has made Adam and Eve on the sixth day that He calls His work of creation very good, and not merely good as on previous days. I don’t know about you, but I find forests wonderful but also somewhat oppressive after a while. I much prefer those great parks that mingle nature’s fecund power with man’s craft, where meadows,

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lakes, and woodland are married with beautiful architecture, where broad pathways and fields allow you to walk side by side with friends and family. This authority over creation that God has given us can be likened to the mastery that craftspeople and artists have over our materials. We seek to be masters of our materials in order to give them a voice, not to crush them. We want to make the good very good. Wise rulers first listen to their subjects, and wise iconographers likewise first learn the characteristics of the materials they use, be they pigment, wood, or stone. Only in this way can they find the fitting place for each material within the symphony of praise that they create. It is surely because modern man has forgotten to contemplate God’s goodness in creation, and find satisfaction within this contemplation, that his power to nurture has mutated into a passion to dominate. Contemplation and wisdom make humans walk lightly in the world, while spiritual blindness makes them voracious. I mentioned earlier the transformative aspect of the icon painter’s royal function. One might assert that transformation is surely part of the priestly ministry, not the royal. This is true in that the sacraments, transmitted through priests, are a change from a merely created mode to an uncreated mode: bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. We could say that sacramental transformation is a vertical movement, its immediate end being deification. But the royal or artistic ministry of the icon painter is still transformative, but on the horizontal plane. It is a process in which created things are fashioned into a new entity that, while remaining on the created level, is nevertheless a richer image of divine realities than before. As such, this new entity creates an environment in which the vertical, transfiguring change is more likely to occur. A just and merciful ruler creates a society in which the divine virtues of love can flourish, and the liturgical artist aims to fashion matter into an icon that helps people be deified. Liturgical beauty is the humble humus from which seeds can mingle with Heaven’s water and sunlight and so become divine plants. As with all liturgical life, icons can be seen as a little paradise, as a microcosm and paradigm where all is in harmony. They can inspire us to spread their harmony into the wider world. An icon should transform the way we see the world. As mentioned earlier, the icon is not a pond but a

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spring. It is a little paradise whose purpose is to inspire people to make their own lives a little paradise. I would like to finish by describing the process of the final painting stage. In particular, I want to consider how the icon tradition uses formal or stylistic means to help transform our vision of the world. The essence of this labour is to nurture and make manifest the inner logoi of the events, people, and objects depicted by the icon. Transformation of the nous I lived for a total of two years at Iviron monastery under Archimandrite Vasileios, and over six years as a hermit in the Stiperstone Hills of Shropshire. One thing I learned from Fr Vasileios’s poetic and often enigmatic way of speaking and writing is that it is not just what is said that can transform the hearer but how it is said. I also had a number of meetings with Elder (now St) Paisios, and found that his humour, anecdotes, and original images made his words compelling and inspired you to see things in a different way. By their particular style or form icons aim to do the same. They help us see the world as a burning bush and not just as a bush, as a paradise aflame with God’s glory and not merely as a conglomeration of atoms. Although only humans are in God’s image and likeness, all things from stone to animal reflect God’s glory according to their capacity. God created each tree, but He also keeps each tree in existence and actively loves through the gift of this tree. We are called to hear these words. Icons aim to make the logoi of creation more clearly manifest to viewers. And these logoi do not stand alone, like words in a dictionary, but we find that they form a poem of love, that the Logos Himself has written these words for us like a lover’s letter. Each icon aims to be a stanza in this greater poem. Which is why everything must be arranged harmoniously within the frame, called the kivitos. Nothing is arbitrarily cut off. This is also why sometimes we see gold lines – called assist in iconographers’ parlance – on a tree or even on furniture as well as on Christ’s garments. The icon never

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depicts matter as mere matter, but matter transfigured, matter transparent to the divine. The whole basis of the icon is the Incarnation: ‘God is with us!’ Each icon is an extension of what happened 2,000 years ago in the Holy Land. The icon helps me to find God here, now, be it as a family man, with children, or as a monk in a cave on Mount Athos. As we have seen, festal icons depict an event that happened in historical time – or chronos as it is called in Greek – but also show us how divine time, kairos, is acting through the events and flowing forwards and backwards. The Pentecost icon, for example, shows St Paul present, even though the event occurred some time before his conversion. Prayer is therefore a journey, but not a journey away from ourselves but a journey to where we are. This is Hesychasm. To be where we are and to be there with God. As T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Little Gidding’, the last of his Four Quartets: With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

This need to turn and find God close, where we are, in part explains the strange systems of perspective that icons use. Inverse perspective turns things around, so that we the viewers become the vanishing point. The icon depicts the world as seen by God. It shows us contemplated by God and His saints. Multi-view perspective shows a building viewed from numerous places at once, and thus depicts it as God sees it, unbounded by place. This multiview perspective also relates to how we inwardly know something to be, rather than as it appears to the retina. Even though we can see only three sides of the box at a time, we know there are other sides, and so the icon often depicts some of these others as well. Hills and mountains express the spiritual dynamics of sacred events. The rocks in the Resurrection icon part like the jaws of Hades, and the mountain of Christ’s Nativity icon stretches upwards towards Heaven,

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earnestly desiring the Incarnation and opening its heart to receive the baby within its cave. The faces of the saints show a bright sadness. They are full of joy, but also full of compassion for our struggles here on earth. There are no excessive movements or expressions, because the saints want to help us find inner quiet, find that inner treasury of which St Isaac the Syrian speaks so eloquently: Be peaceful within yourself, and Heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Be diligent to enter into the treasury that is within you, and you will see the treasury of Heaven: for these are one and the same, and with one entry you will behold them both. The ladder of the Kingdom is within you, hidden in your soul. Plunge deeply within yourself, away from sin, and there you will find steps by which you will be able to ascend.10

When I sit before the white gesso of an icon panel, I am aware that a journey is about to begin. And I know from experience that it is not going to be an easy journey. My impossible task is to imprint as on wax the image of a living saint. The saint exists, but is invisible to my physical eyes. The icon is to be an image or likeness of the saint, and will bear their name. It needs to reflect something of their character, their gentleness, wisdom, inner prayer, and compassion. And often the saint or subjects are set within a scene, such as in festal icons, so we need to show that scene also in a Christ-centred way. There is of course the whole icon tradition to help with this task. But unless one considers icon painting to be a sort of glorified scan-and-print process, the iconographer needs to know their subject personally. I need to paint the saint from life, seen and known through the eye of the spirit. The icon tradition is not an excuse for lazy and mindless copying.

10 St Isaac the Syrian, from the Second Homily in The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian (Boston, MA, 1984), p. 11.

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Conclusion Prayer, both private and liturgical, must be at the heart of an icon painter’s life. He or she is called to bear witness, and a witness is someone who has seen for themselves. But how? The believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit, both as an individual and as a member of the Church. The path to their inner sanctuary where they can meet the Spirit is prayer, the sacraments, repentance, and love. It is there, at the altar of the heart, that they will meet Christ with His saints and angels. Before icon painters can rule over their paint they need to rule over themselves, to be master of their faculties and passions. As St Isaac affirms in the passage quoted above, the believer must plunge deeply within themselves, away from sin, before ascending the ladder to Heaven. But for iconographers only to see and know is not enough, for their ministry is to testify in paint to what they have experienced. Their ministry, like a composer of hymns, demands skill and craft to express this knowledge to others. Like the disciples who saw the uncreated light of the transfigured Lord but then descended again to daily life, the icon painter needs to return to the world to articulate this vision in material pigment. And this vision is neither of pure spirit nor of pure matter, but of matter imbued with spirit, of creation transfigured by its Creator, of humans become gods by grace because God has become human out of love for us. Gregory Palamas asserts that it is not man’s nous itself that is in God’s image, but the embodied nous.11 The icon as used in prayer is a graphic expression of this principle. This vision is also a communal vision. It is not just Christ whom we depict, but also His family: Moses, Elijah, all the Old Testament righteous, all the saints of the New Covenant, and also the angelic host for good measure.

11

James Blackstone, Knowledge and Experience in the Theology of Gregory Palamas (Oxford, 2018), p. 81.

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The rhythm of inner and outer, spirit and matter, mountaintop experience followed by labour on the plains, is of course common to every Christian. Everything described above about the specific challenges facing the iconographer is but a graphic illustration of the calling that faces every believer, be they cleric, monk, or lay. May the Lord help us to complete each of our unique pilgrimages!

Dimitri Conomos

6  Music as Prayer

To listen seriously to music, and to perform it, are among our most potent ways of learning what it is to live with and before God. — Rowan Williams1

Had you been a regular parishioner at St Paul’s Cathedral in London between 1911 and 1934, you might have heard Dean Inge remark in one of his sermons that in church ‘there is little to justify the notion that God enjoys nothing better than a serenade.’2 A similar sentiment to the singing of hymns and Psalms  – be it by choirs or congregations  – was that of C. S. Lewis. In the late 1940s he published an article entitled ‘On Church Music’. Its two opening assumptions are that first, ‘nothing should be done or sung or said in church which does not aim directly or indirectly at glorifying God or edifying the people or both’, and secondly, ‘church services may have a cultural value but this is not what they exist for.’ As for the Anglican hymns of his day, Lewis describes them as ‘those fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music’. Moreover, he abhorred the organ which he described as ‘one long roar’.3 Sixteen centuries earlier we have an opinion on church song from St Pambo, an Egyptian Desert Father and disciple of St Anthony the Great. This hermit is venerated by both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches alike. Abbot Pambo lived in the Nitrian Desert and 1 2 3

R. Williams, ‘Keeping Time’, in Open to Judgement:  Sermons and Addresses (London, 1994), p. 249. Quoted by Martin Davis, The Breaking of the Image: A Sociology of Christian Theory and Practice (Vancouver, 2000), p. 141. C. S.  Lewis, ‘On Church Music’, originally published in English Church Music, vol. 19 (April 1949); reprinted in W. Hooper (ed.), C. S. Lewis: Christian Reflections (London, 1967), pp. 120–6.

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was one of the many monks who rejected the performances of music that were customary in the large urban churches. Pambo and his followers claimed that singing tunes in the monastery church was detrimental to the soul. His views on music are quite in tune with the attitudes of our two mid-twentieth-century English sages. This is Pambo’s story. It is reported that one day Abbot Pambo sent his disciple from the monastery in the wilderness to Alexandria to sell some of the products of their manual labour. The disciple returned after sixteen days, having spent his nights in the vestibule of the Church of St Mark, where he saw the ceremonies and heard the singing of the Troparia. The abbot, observing that the disciple was troubled by something, asked for the reason. The young monk answered that he felt they wasted so many days in the desert singing neither Kanons nor Troparia such as he had heard at Alexandria. To these complaints the abbot answered in despair that he saw the time coming when the monks would abandon their rigid discipline pronounced by the Holy Spirit, and would give themselves over to songs and melodies. What kind of contrition, what kind of tears could result from the Troparia … when the monk stands in his church or his cell and raises his voice like the oxen? … ‘The monks did not emigrate into this desert in order to perform before God, and to give themselves airs, and to sing songs, and to compose tunes, and to shake their hands and move from one foot to the other’, but we should offer our prayers to God in great fear and trembling, with tears and sighings, in reverence and in the spirit of contrition with moderate voice.4

Now I am certain that Dean Inge and C. S. Lewis would heartily concur. All the same, it is reasonable to suppose that any early monastic opposition to music does not mean that the monks did not chant. In fact, what we observe instead with the early solitaries is the intoning of the Psalter – the Book of Psalms – from memory, and for a substantial part of the day and night. Their rejection was of three things: (a) worldly music, (b) musical exhibitionism, and (c)  the singing of non-scriptural refrains and plainchants. The ultimate question here is, ‘What makes sacred music sacred?’ The words, the music, or both? Does the liturgical melody independently retain its sanctity, its capability to edify and glorify? Two fundamental 4

Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961), p. 172.

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issues of church music define its style: (a) what is the correct manner of performance? and (b) what are the range and depth of the hymn writer’s sentiments that his music may seek to express? Musicological debate on the historical evolution of church music has provoked as many difficulties as it has solved. Yet all of these ‘difficulties’ deal with – or rise out of – what are perceived as fundamental categories of church music, namely, an appropriate textual and melodic repertory and an appropriate compositional and performing style. The nature of that appropriateness and the authority to determine it are the primary issues that the historical evolution has sought to address. The evidence of history provides no answers to the question of what the characteristics and features of true church music are. But academic discourse over the centuries has raised this question unremittingly and certain recognizable patterns have sporadically emerged, though none has prevailed. Thus, having reached this point of utter confusion, I thought it a sensible idea to consult a few Athonite monks, both those blessed by their abbots to sing and guide the choirs and those who attend the services silently. The responses I received are not exclusively from Greek monks; they are also Athonites from France, Australia, Russia, and Brazil. What, then, is the meaning of ‘Music as Prayer’ as understood on the Holy Mountain? Monk 1: Prayer without words – of music alone – is not prayer at all, and the introduction of music into the divine services, only for the sake of creating a mood, is simply a departure from Orthodox monastic prayerfulness and piety; indeed, from Orthodoxy itself. Orthodoxy requires unconditionally conscientious prayer; it does not permit feebleness or indecision. Orthodox hymnody must unfailingly edify. [We have echoes here of C. S. Lewis.] Monk 2: It is true that melody, when separated from the task of prayer, can evoke in us a certain disposition or mood: sadness, joy, solemnity. In these, however, our mind does not receive a single concrete image, not a definite idea which would morally edify. Only the words can do this. Therefore, all music, every hymn in church, cannot, first of all, be other than oral. Music in itself, no matter how beautiful or elevated, cannot be prayer and cannot even unite with prayer, if it does not grow organically from the text itself – just as simple meditation cannot be prayer, even though it is pious. True chant is inseparable from the text. The melody subjects itself to the words both in rhythm and melody.

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Having heard this wisdom, we may well ask:  why were the liturgical texts sung at all? Now the answer to this question is not unique to the Christian Church. Nearly all faiths (and the Quakers are an exception) have built their services around the communal repetition of sacred texts – not silent repetition, but sounded repetition, through which the words of the prayers could be heard, mouthed and absorbed by all. And for such ‘sounded repetition’, singing has seemed more natural than speaking. Apart from the tediousness and sheer ugliness of communal speaking, the rhythm of song – even when it is a comparatively free rhythm – keeps everyone together and allows for audibility. And the melody of song assists the faithful to remember the words. The music of the monasteries helps to

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solemnize liturgical prayer and lends aesthetic substance to the religious sentiments of the monastic worshippers. During the early medieval era, churches and monasteries were not thought of as a concert hall, and the plainchants that were performed there were never merely displayed for the pleasure of the community. The katholikon was the Oikos Kyriou [House of the Lord], and its music was also the Lord’s. It remained a distant mirror of the divine inspiration. Perfect as earthly music might seem to be, it was but an echo of a more perfect music that would be heard in Heaven. In 2014 Dr Rowan Williams was interviewed by Jonathan Arnold on the subject of ‘Sacred Music in Secular Society’. His perceptions and comments on musical attitudes are pertinent to our subject and at the same time they harmonize with the views of the Athonite monks. For example, when travellers to the Holy Mountain have had the good fortune to hear Athonite choral singing ‘live’, they know at some intuitive level that something more than sound has touched them. Williams would add that there is a language of the human heart that is central to praying, whether alone in the cell or with the worshipping community. But there is also music – melody, harmony, rhythm, pace, and pitch. When the words and music combine, something remarkable is released into the stream of human life. As T. S. Eliot observed in the Four Quartets, music heard so deeply that ‘you are the music while the music lasts.’ So the pilgrims at services on the Mountain feel and come to inhabit the praise and joy, the anguish and the sorrow. Sometimes it is the ordered sound of faint tintinnabulating bell tones or the clapping of the talanto that prays for us. It may then dawn upon us that all this is prayer. At other times the fusion of language and of ordered sound in voices is our very act of praying in the listening and the singing. Collectively, these events evoke and demonstrate how music is prayer.5 The history of liturgy sung is the story of a people at prayer, expressing in worship its peculiar cultural incarnation of the common 5

‘I [ Jonathan Arnold] consider the link between music and spirituality, discuss listening to sacred music intently and seriously, explore how to live with and before God through music and how sacred has meaning for those of no faith … how music can touch one’s soul through its ineffability and its noetic quality, its transiency and its passivity.’ J. Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society (Oxford, 2016), p. 12.

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faith. For the forms of sung worship are the product of a religious culture and spirit, the unique way that a particular faith community perceives, lives, and celebrates its Christian life. Thus Athonite plainchant, when voiced solemnly, creates a sacred sound which complements the sacred space in which it is sung. While the melody is undoubtedly a means of making the sacred text audible, it does so in ways whereby the words sometimes seem almost secondary. The sacred sound is more important than the sense! Music is part of a ritual where most of what is done has symbolic significance, far removed from the mundane actions of everyday life. Chant as prayer contributes in its own special way to the quality of liturgical involvement. It is reasonable to say that these things have a stronger, cumulative impact: difficult to describe in words. Music not only enhances text but also can supply meaning where text is absent. But music also provides depth of meaning and significance by its dual temporal and timeless qualities. In his consummate book on Mount Athos, Graham Speake comments: The visual arts are the aspects of the Palaiologan renaissance that are most obvious to the Athonite pilgrim because they are all around him and strike the eye with an awesome impact. But equally striking, for those who stop to listen, is the impact on the ear during services in the katholikon.6

Similarly Archbishop Alexander Golitzin, having studied in the 1970s in Oxford for a doctorate under the aegis of Metropolitan Kallistos, after this stayed in the community at Simonopetra for two years. His cogent insights on music and prayer at the monastery, when compared with the procedures at other houses, are typical of his observations: But the monastery attracted me. Something obviously good was going on there. The first attraction was entirely aesthetic. For one of Russian background, as I am, church services simply have to be beautiful, and they were decidedly not beautiful twenty-six years ago on Athos. While the church edifices were gorgeous with brass and precious metals and ancient frescos, the services were all too often hours and hours of muttered kyrie eleisons and garbled psalms. Here [at Simonopetra], though the building itself was relatively unimpressive, the singing was crisply splendid and

6

G. Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, 2nd edn (Limni, Evia, 2014), p. 96.

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the offices celebrated with elegance and economy, mercifully shorn of the interminable add-ons common in other Athonite houses at the time.7

Archbishop Alexander refers to ‘rituals’. What is meant by monastic ‘ritual’? On the Holy Mountain it is understood as a system of traditional actions to be carried out in the presence of what is sacred, following established rules. Such systems are active in all societies where the ‘sacred’ has any meaning. They typically comprise (a) actions of symbolic significance, (b) a special form of language, and (c) a special body of texts to be recited or sung. The rituals attached to the Byzantine offices and eucharistic celebrations are particularly rich in form and content – not least in their musical components. When trying to understand the ritual – of which Athonite plainchant is a part – we should remember that music is not ritual’s only non-verbal component. There are others: architecture, icons, church furniture, the vestments of the clergy, the objects they hold and use, incense, bells, as well as the wooden planks and suspended iron bars which, when struck, resound throughout the monastery summoning the monastics to prayer. Unlike other traditions, there are certain values that monophonic chant, or plainchant, embodies which are important aspects of church music. (By monophonic plainchant I mean song without harmony or instrumental accompaniment.) Plainsong does not expect you to come up with required emotions … Because it’s repetitive, it assumes that [the monk, the nun, or the pilgrim is] prepared [to take time], and that’s significant. [The monastics] don’t necessarily think that all hymns have either a root note (a tonic or fundamental key note) or a climax – nor do they expect resolution instantly (or almost instantly). Uniquely, monastic chant does something that other styles don’t – [and this is] important for understanding the role of liturgy as something that takes time, requires a measure of attention, physical settling, patience, etc.8

7

8

A. Golitzin, ‘Topos Theou: The Monastic Elder as Theologian and as Theology. An Appreciation of Archimandrite Aimilianos’, in D. Conomos and G. Speake (eds), Mount Athos the Sacred Bridge:  The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain (Oxford, 2005), p. 236. J. Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society, p. 95.

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In one way, plainchant, especially as sung on the Mountain, can be intensely emotional. However, this is not because the aim of music is to initiate sensations or sentiments; rather, it is because, as Williams reveals, ‘the music so carries the narrative that you’re present in it and with it. It does touch things unexpectedly.’9 This is why pilgrims sometimes burst into tears when they hear plainsong. And this is because there is not the list of musical techniques and the list of emotions that correlate, as you frequently encounter in harmonized choral church music. In harmonized music, deliberate dynamics and rather obvious techniques are at work: crescendo, diminuendo, forte, piano, presto, andante, etc. ‘Here, we are meant to feel this or that emotion. I think that is something that good sacred music does not do.’10 Good Athonite sacred music (and not all of it is good) says: ‘This is the stream into which you are invited to step.’11 It may carry the pilgrim to some very disturbing emotional places, but that is because of the way it is going, because of its movement, its subject-matter, its whole context. It is not because the composer has the competence to make one weep when he wants one to weep or to make one rejoice when he wants one to rejoice.12 Good sacred music is not manipulative and does not indicate how the listener should feel at any given moment.13 Rather one is, ideally, exposed to the faith of the monk who composed the music. As to the quality of the performance, this is judged whether or not it does something to one’s soul.14 But good music is that which takes us beyond ego, drama, and entertainment. Let us now turn to the monastery of Simonopetra: its ‘Music as Prayer’. This monastery was the first to provide new and melodious settings to the Psalms of David. One example that I would like to pause on is a choral setting of Psalm 83 composed by Fr Grigorios, one of the fathers at the monastery. Its opening lines are: 9 Ibid., p. 96. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., p. 97. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 109. 14 Harry Christopher, quoted in ibid., p. 97.

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How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God.

I have chosen this Psalm because it relates to a poignant moment in the very early life of Simonopetra’s community. An increase in tourism at the Meteora (where they began their monastic life) and an unhelpful new local hierarch forced Abbot Aimilianos to search for another dwelling-place, another tabernacle. Providence would eventually lead the monks to a new pinnacle, to a place on the rock of St Simon the Athonite. Now to the first two verses of the Psalm (see Figure 6.1). Three musical phrases under square brackets are marked as A, B, and C. Phrase A, which ascends, is what I call the ‘wanderer motif ’ – the exile in search of a home in the courts of the Lord. The element of craving or yearning is also here. Phrase B is the mirror of A. Its descent represents submission, openness to the call of God, obedience to His will. Phrase C is functional; it signals the end of each verse and leads into the pendant Alleluia refrain. In the third verse, we see a different distribution of phrases A and B (see Figure 6.2). They are ubiquitous and unpredictable in this musical tapestry. The piece’s expansive lines, mellifluous flow, and songlike contours make it more aria-like than conventional chant. The rhythms show the same tendency as the pitches, being gentle and rounded in their flow. The musical leitmotifs (A, B, and C) are supple, never mechanically applied in the progression of the verses. The tune rises in ever-expanding parabolas of sonic brilliance, while the Alleluia, here integrated into the Psalm text, pulls us down to earthly realities. Simonopetra’s music constitutes tradition in the making. There is no slavish imitation of a forgotten or imagined past. Modern sensibilities are catered for since there are clear influences of western harmonic theory (made evident by the moving bass note) and an evocative lyricism.

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Figure 6.1.  Choral setting of Psalm 83, verses 1–2.

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Figure 6.2.  Choral setting of Psalm 83, verse 3.

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Elder Aimilianos clearly appreciated the salutary beauty in the texts of the entire Psalter. This beauty, more interior than exterior, harks back to sentiments expressed by the fourth-century fathers in particular. Together with them he has placed value on musical execution. The addition of music makes the message of the Psalms more alive and meaningful, and, in the words of St Basil and St John Chrysostom, it also makes the words easier to remember. With respect to the inner beauty of music, Archimandrite Aimilianos took this line of thought one step further: chant [he writes] touches the hearts of men, it reveals most expressively the meaning of the Psalter. It deeply engraves spiritual virtues, harvests grace, soothes and clarifies Christological and dogmatic meanings. The Psalter, through melody, opens up the gates of Heaven.15

At the same time, the elder, together with C. S. Lewis, clearly understands that the Psalms are lyrics with all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, all of which are proper to lyric poetry. It is important to note that the elder identifies the spiritual riches that are to be gained not by reciting but by singing the Psalms. As such, melody and words become prayer transfigured. It is significant that there has been a noticeable resistance to Simonopetra’s psalmody in many of the Athonite houses themselves by some professional musicians. Its opponents, regarding the music as simplistic, even frivolous, echo the reactions of the early Desert Fathers to the new tuneful religious songs in the city churches. It is interesting, too, that the monastery’s musical initiatives have been embraced much more enthusiastically in urban contexts, both religious and secular. Elder Aimilianos was a pace-setter both in his monastic outlook and in his sensitivity to pastoral concerns. For him, as for Dostoevsky, the beauty that saves is a matter of confrontation, not conformity; of creativity, not custom. * What of the future? I believe that on the Holy Mountain we shall observe a greater amount of choral singing as opposed to solo virtuosity, though 15

Psalterion Terpnon [The Joyful Psalter] (Mount Athos, 1991), p. 13.

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the latter will not disappear entirely for some time. Athonite music is also undergoing an observable commercialization. Some monasteries have lately been negotiating with the music industry. On the other hand, there has also been a recent tendency to examine the old music manuscripts in order to rediscover earlier traditions and vocal practices. Western musical tendencies, though perhaps never acknowledged as such, may continue to blend with the chant. After the mid-1970s, with the revival of monastic life on Mount Athos by young, educated monks, the musical emphasis began to shift from performances of virtuoso singing by a soloist to that by antiphonal choirs. For many years Simonopetra alone had employed full double choirs, but no soloists, for every service, each day of the year. This more traditional performance practice has been gaining popularity in convents and monasteries on the mainland and abroad. Moreover, use of the Book of Psalms – that ancient song book of the early monasteries – has been revived, and, as a result, new melodious settings were composed. Hitherto, Psalm verses were mostly simple declamations on a note located between the more poetic and tuneful troparia (hymns). Indeed, there are ideological connections between the perceptions of Elder Aimilianos on the Psalter as prayer on the one hand, and the melodic style and artistic message of Fr Grigorios’s musical settings of the Psalms on the other. Also the appearance of The Joyful Psalter some twenty-eight years ago and the immense appeal of its melodious Psalm settings among church and lay choirs in and beyond Greece signals a revival of the Psalter’s ancient role as a songbook for the community of the faithful with a relevance in situations both liturgical and domestic. Fr Grigorios’s musical setting to this Psalm of migration captures the images of longing, submission, and peregrination that act as leitmotifs in the elder’s masterly published discourse. The substance of his melody shows the typical rounded contours of Byzantine plainchant. There are gentle arches that billow upward to occasional peaks, then settle gracefully downward. The Athonite musical tradition has adapted over the centuries to changing cultural tastes and conditions. This identifies it as an art that is living and accommodating. Because of its prestige, not only the spiritual message

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of Athos but also its artistic creations will constitute a leading force for trends well beyond its own territory. Simonopetra’s emphasis on Psalm singing – as opposed to dry reading – and the progressive style of the music tell us much about Fr Grigorios, the composer, the musical ability of the monastery’s antiphonal choirs, the spiritual milieu within which the community lives out its life of worship, and Elder Aimilianos’s perception of music as prayer.

Archimandrite Ephraim

7  Monastic Work as Prayer

Work, into whose framework monastic tasks (diakonēmata) fall, is not merely a means of self-sustenance, but carries with it a social purpose as well, which reaches its ultimate fulfilment in the service of others. Anthony the Great would often say that he never wished to do anything that would be of greater benefit to himself than to his neighbour, because he believed that ‘the noblest work’ is the one that benefits one’s neighbour. In the same spirit, Basil the Great writes that, ‘each person should make it his duty to be of service to those in need, and not to satisfy his own needs.’1 Such is the purpose of the monastic tasks (diakonēmata). The Greek word diakonēma, applying to monastic work, has an important symbolic meaning. Diakonos, from which noun the English word ‘deacon’ derives, refers to those who are completely (dia-) covered in dust (konis). It refers to the humble, to those who work without care for themselves. It refers to the selfless worker. Correspondingly, monastic tasks (diakonēmata) involve work that is done selflessly, without any personal aim in mind or goal of self-promotion. In the context of monastic life, and in particular on the Holy Mountain, these monastic tasks, also called obediences, are assigned by the Synaxis [the holy assembly of the monastery] as needed for the purpose of achieving a functional administration of the monastery and an orderly way of life for the practising brethren, and also with a view to the accomplishment of all the other spiritual services and functions of the monastery. Essential monastic tasks, or obediences, include those of the abbot, the Epitropoi [committee members], and the representative to the Holy Community of the Holy Mountain.

1

Basil of Caesarea, The Longer Rules 42.1 (PG 31: 1025A).

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Another essential task, or obedience, is that of the Protepistatēs, the chief executive officer of the Holy Community, a privilege that belongs to the five monasteries which come first in the hierarchy of the Holy Mountain. Every five years, each one of these monasteries in turn supplies the Protepistatēs for a period of one year. Also necessary are the obediences of the secretary, the skevofylax, or sacristan, the librarian, the regulators of the liturgical services, the cooks, the refectory staff, the gardeners, the ekklesiastikoi (who attend to the katholikon), the archontarēs, or guest master (who attends to the visitors), and so on. Especially worthy of note and of historical importance, particularly in the case of the Vatopedi monastery, are the obediences of the archivist, of those responsible for the restoration of buildings, and of those whose duties include the preservation and display of the monastery’s manuscripts, heirlooms, and works of art. Many monastic tasks occupy, by their very nature, a key position in the life of the monastery, which may involve several responsibilities. However, when the monk fulfils his task in the spirit of obedience, following his elder’s instructions and not his own will, then he experiences a small miracle, what is known as ‘carefree care’ (‘a simple life, danger faced without worry’).2 Then, his obedience leads him to true prayer. As the blessed Elder (now St) Ephraim of Katounakia would say, prayer comes from obedience, and not obedience from prayer. It is noteworthy that the obediences at the cenobitic monasteries are not chosen by the monks themselves, nor do they necessarily correspond to their particular preferences. If the holy Synaxis judges that an individual monk, due to his particular qualifications or abilities, is especially suited for a specific monastic task, then the Synaxis assigns that task to him for the benefit of the community. Nevertheless, even in such a case, the task is assigned as a means of suppressing ‘self-love’ (philautia), and of avoiding the condition of listlessness and despondency known as akēdia. In the life of St Anthony the Great we see that, when the saint experienced akēdia in his cell, he asked God what he should do. Then he saw a 2

See St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 4, trans. C. Luibheid and N. Russell (Mahwah, NJ, 1982), p. 91 (PG 88: 680A).

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holy angel, who had the saint’s appearance, sitting and working and then rising up and praying. Then he saw him again, sitting down and continuing his handiwork for a while, and afterwards standing up and starting to pray once more.3 In this way, God clearly wished to teach that ‘desert professor’ the way of combining prayer with the work of one’s hands. This way is deemed necessary, not only for the proper functioning of a human being in mind and body, but also for maintaining a lasting and resolute ascetic practice, through which a monk can also avoid akēdia. St Isaac the Syrian addresses to monks the following exhortation: ‘Engage in a little work, so as to drive akēdia away from you, but take care not to let that work disturb your mind. If again you wish to work more than that, for reasons of charity, you should know that prayer is higher in order than charity.’4 Likewise, St. John Climacus says: ‘If you find yourself getting sleepy, turn to manual work, but keep away from that if you happen not to be sleepy.’5 The monk is called upon to incorporate his monastic task into the perspective of his perfection in Christ, and to practise it as working for the Lord. In this way he places his work within the framework of love and prayer, thus making possible a symbolic understanding of these monastic tasks or obediences. St Basil the Great observes that the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, includes hunters, builders, farmers, and shepherds … You are a hunter … Be attentive lest the prey escape you Let the builder watch what he builds on the foundation; not wood, not hay, not straw, but gold, silver, and precious stones. Shepherd, be attentive lest any of your duties as a shepherd escape your notice.6

Through his monastic task, the monk makes manifest his personal vocation from ‘the Father of Lights’,7 as well as his spiritual dependence on the Heavenly Father: ‘You did not choose Me, but I chose you’,8 and 3 4 5 6 7 8

Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. B.  Ward (Kalamazoo, MI, 1984), p.  2:  Abba Anthony 1 (PG 65: 76AB). Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homily, 33. St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 14, p. 168 (PG 88: 868B). Basil of Caesarea, Be Attentive to Yourself 4 (PG 31: 205B-208A). Jas. 1:17. John 15:16.

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‘no one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him.’9 The responsibility of the monk is to remain faithful to the gift of his vocation. The teacher–student framework, which the Lord Himself actively employed during His early life, is applied by analogy to the elder–disciple framework. ‘He who hears you hears Me and he who rejects you rejects Me’,10 is what the Lord told His disciples, who themselves took on the role of teacher after His Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In monastic life the ideal elder has traditionally been understood as a type of the teacher. The elder–disciple framework constitutes a mostly unbroken rule in Orthodox monasticism. The elder’s comportment towards his disciples is one of love. The active expression of that love is necessary and constitutes humility. The elder becomes a paradigm of humility and love, while his disciple emulates his teacher’s personal example. In monasticism, work (diakonēma) and prayer may, at first glance, appear to be unrelated, or even to be opposed to one another, but in fact they become harmonized through the grace of God and the blessing of the Holy Fathers who established the rules and regulations of ascetic life. The main task of the monk is prayer. The tasks of the monk in the form of work would thus seem to be situated on a lower level. However, even such work is an essential part of the monk’s path to perfection both as a person and as a part of the monastic community. St Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia emphasized that what keeps [the monk] in the monastery along with prayer is his work and his handicraft. Work is not one thing and prayer another. Work does not prevent prayer, on the contrary, it reinforces it and makes it better. It’s a matter of love. Work, indeed, is like praying, like making prostrations. Work is a blessing. That’s why we see that Christ called his disciples and indeed his prophets while they were working, for example, while one was fishing and another was tending his sheep.11

With every work we must ultimately look to God. Elder (now St) Sophrony writes that, ‘whether we are engaged in manual labour, 9 10 11

John 6:44. Luke 10:16. Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios, eds Sisters of the Holy Convent of Chrysopigi (Limni, Evia, 2005), p. 159.

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performing routine tasks, or celebrating the Divine Liturgy, our thoughts should always remain with God – and … our thoughts will sanctify the whole of our life and work.’12 In the monastic community, every undertaking, through obedience, transports the monks to another spiritual sphere – the sphere of virtues in accordance with God’s commandments. Through monastic tasks, this saying of Jesus is fulfilled: ‘whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.’13 Our blessed Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, following the teaching of the Holy Fathers, would emphasize that, the foundation, especially for the monk, is obedience; for obedience is two-fold. It is at once humility and love. The two are united. Obedience is humility, because I leave behind my own concerns and attend to what the other tells me. Since I am putting what he has told me into practice, doing so constitutes active love. Thus, since obedience combines the two highest virtues, it is when obedience is practised that the Holy Spirit comes; it is then that divine grace approaches and it is divine grace alone that will rebuild us.14 When we hold fast to obedience, then we are automatically practising the highest virtues: humility and love. On the one hand, to suppress my own self, and to do what the other wants rather than what I want, that is humility. On the other hand, when I act upon the command that has been given to me, this constitutes the absolute practice of love. Therefore, with one act of obedience, I effortlessly achieve the fullness of all virtue.15

The monk Parthenios, in an encomiastic address to the Athonite fathers, which is found in the book Lives of the Athonites of the Nineteenth Century, writes about the monks: 12 Elder Sophrony, Building the Temple of God Within Us and in Our Brothers (Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, 2013), p. 317. 13 Matt. 20:26–8. 14 Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, address to the brotherhood of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi on 24 January 2005. 15 Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, address to the brotherhood of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi on 2 September 2002.

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Archimandrite Ephraim These men, the living dead, are buried, as if into a tomb by the cutting-off of their own will and judgement. With their bodies they serve, being obedient both to their superior and to others. With their minds and their hearts, however, they are in constant conversation with God, unceasingly saying, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!’16

It is now common practice, as has been established by the elders, and specifically by those of the spiritual generation of the blessed Elder (now St) Joseph the Hesychast, that while such monastic tasks are being performed, the Jesus Prayer should be said aloud, especially while performing manual tasks which do not require a great deal of mental effort. Even in tasks that involve the participation of all members of the community, including the laity, the so-called pankoinies, it is common practice at monasteries for this prayer to be said aloud by all participants in turn. While working, our Elder Joseph was often visited by divine grace. When he was at the New Skete, at times when he was doing his handicraft (specifically, the production of wood-carved seals for the prosphora) – for the sake of obedience and not for remuneration – he often received much grace, as he himself would tell us. While carving the seals, the sweetness of grace frequently visited him in his heart, along with many tears. Similarly, when St Silouan the Athonite was a novice, he was visited by the grace of the Holy Spirit, while he was serving at the monastery refectory.17 The Athonite monk does not abandon the world. He renounces the world not because he hates it, but for the sake of his love of God, that divine eros that consumes his heart. On the Holy Mountain he finds the ideal conditions, far from the commotion of the world, where he might come to know and to love Christ even more. In loving Christ, he truly loves his fellow man as well. True love of God leads to the love of one’s fellows. Also the monk’s love for others does not only find its expression in his service of others through work, but also in his prayer for them. He desires that all come to know and love Christ; that all be saved. He prays for the salvation of the world, neglecting his own self. The monk works and prays for Hieromonk Anthony, Lives of the Athonites of the Nineteenth Century, in Greek as Βίοι Ἀθωνιτῶν τοῦ ΙΘ΄ αἰῶνος, vol. 2 (Ormylia, 1995), p. 306. 17 See Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite (Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, 1991), p. 35. 16

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the salvation of his fellow man selflessly and with perfect self-denial. The sacrifice that is offered through his obediences and prayer rises as fragrant incense before the throne of God. The prayer that pours out of the monk’s pure service (diakonia) carries very great power. The grace of the prayers of these saintly monks preserves the whole world. Let us pray that we will never be without such monks, who have such great power of prayer.

Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia

8  The Invocation of the Holy Name: A Prayer for All Seasons

In the Presence of the Burning Bush ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is,’ says St Paul, ‘there is freedom’ (2 Cor. 3:17). His words apply, among other things, to inner, contemplative prayer of the heart. Yet, while there are many forms of such inner prayer, in the tradition of the Orthodox Church there is one form in particular which is pre-eminent, and that is the Jesus Prayer, the invocation of the Holy Name, most frequently in the words ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’1 What precisely is meant by prayer of the heart? The account of Moses before the Burning Bush (Exod. 3:1–6) provides us with a double indication. God begins by saying two things to Moses: ‘Take off your shoes’, and ‘The place where you are standing is holy ground.’ ‘Take off your shoes’: usually shoes are made from leather, from the skins of dead animals; and so the Greek Fathers interpret shoes to signify symbolically the deadness of boredom and monotony. Here exactly is the difficulty that confronts all of us. Perhaps our problem is not primarily that we are deliberately malicious – even though most of us are, at any rate some of the time – but all 1

On the practice of the Jesus Prayer, I have written two brief accounts: The Power of the Name:  The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality, Fairacres Publication 43, new edn (Oxford, 1986); The Jesus Prayer, Catholic Truth Society (London, 2014). Both of these contain suggestions for further reading. On the history of the Jesus Prayer, see also ‘A Monk of the Eastern Church’ (Lev Gillet), The Jesus Prayer, rev. edn by Kallistos Ware (Crestwood, NY, 1987). The more detailed study by Irénée Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, Cistercian Studies Series 44 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1978), while learned, is reductionist in its approach, and should be used with caution.

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too often we are bored, and so we become apathetic, unfocused, inattentive. We run in low gear, using only a small part of our inner resources. We are not fully present in the ‘here’ and ‘now’. We are not gathered dynamically in the kairos, the moment of breakthrough and opportunity. On a spiritual level, then, ‘Take off your shoes’ means: shake off the deadness of the banal, the tedium of over-familiarity. Free yourself from what is lifeless, from enslavement to the impersonal, the trivial, the superficial. Wake up! Cleanse the doors of your perception, look and see, attend and listen. We are to acquire what in Greek ascetic theology is termed nepsis, meaning vigilance, alertness, noetic clarity.2 And what happens next, after we have taken off our shoes? At once we begin to appreciate the meaning of God’s second word to Moses, ‘The place where you are standing is holy ground.’ Walking barefoot, we feel the texture of the grass, the ‘isness’ of the grains of dust under our feet. We become sensitive, in a good way; vulnerable, in a positive fashion. The earth beneath us comes alive, and we begin to experience our environment as intense and vibrant. All this applies equally to our practice of prayer. Removing our figurative shoes, we enter into direct contact with our inner self. At the same time we begin to appreciate that the world around us is a ‘thin’ place, filled with holiness. We renew our sense of wonder. Each object and each person acquires sacramental value, becoming a mediator of the divine presence, a means of communion with the living God. In this manner, to pray ‘in spirit and in truth’ ( John 4:23) is to become like Moses standing before the Burning Bush. It is to take off our shoes, to wake up, to come to ourselves, and to know that God is present before us and within us. It is, in the light of that knowledge, to view all things as fresh and new. Yet at this point we may well ask ourselves ‘How?’ In what way can we acquire this inner awareness? What is the key that opens the door to living prayer of this kind? What is the first step? Where shall we begin? To this there is no single answer. As a realm of freedom, inner prayer takes a wide diversity of forms. It might even be said that there are as many different 2

For the importance of nepsis, note the Greek title of the classic collection of Orthodox ascetic and mystical texts: Philokalia ton Ieron Neptikon, Philokalia of the holy ‘neptic’ Fathers.

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ways of praying as there are different persons. While prayer unites us to others, it also expresses our own uniqueness. There is, however, one response to the question ‘Where shall we begin?’ that is commonly given in the Orthodox tradition, and that is to practise the Jesus Prayer. To those that ask ‘How?’ it may be said: ‘Simply begin’.

‘Ah! that wonderful Name!’ The Jesus Prayer, then, is a short invocation, frequently repeated, that is addressed to Christ using the name given to Him by Mary His Mother and Joseph His foster-father at His human birth in Bethlehem (Matt. 1:25). As regards its outward form, the Jesus Prayer has a number of variants. As well as what may be termed the ‘standard’ formula, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me’, it is also possible to say ‘have mercy on us’, in this way underlining our solidarity with our fellow humans; for no one is saved alone. The words ‘a sinner’ may be added at the end: ‘have mercy on me, a sinner’. The Holy Virgin, the saints, or the angels may sometimes be included: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, at the prayers of the Mother of God, have mercy on me’; ‘at the prayers of St N.’ (mentioning our patron saint or perhaps one of the saints commemorated on the particular day); ‘through the protection of my guardian angel’. Some of those using the Jesus Prayer, more especially those who have been doing so over a long period, find that the formulae mentioned above are too lengthy and full of words. In that case it is legitimate to employ a shorter invocation. We may say ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ (omitting ‘Son of God’); or else ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy’, ‘Lord Jesus’ or ‘My Jesus’. It is also possible to invoke the Holy Name ‘Jesus’ on its own, without any other words. This last, although recommended by some spiritual guides,3 is not very common in the Orthodox east. To many of us it seems that the Holy Name on its own is somehow too potent, too highly 3

For example, by ‘A Monk of the Eastern Church’ (see note 1).

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charged; if recited on its own, it may become obsessive, and so we prefer to accompany it with other words. Whatever the form of words that we adopt, it is wise to adhere to it consistently for most of the time, and not to keep changing from one form to another. Shrubs that are often transplanted do not put down roots! Incidentally, the invocation of the Holy Name is not limited to the Orthodox east. It was also a widespread devotion in the west during the Middle Ages; and in this case it was in fact customary to say the Name ‘Jesus’ on its own. A fervent love for the Holy Name is found most notably in Richard Rolle, the fourteenth-century hermit of Hampole in Yorkshire (England). ‘Ah! that wonderful Name!’ he exclaims. ‘Ah! that delectable Name! … Truly the Name of Jesus is in my mind a joyous song, in mine ear a heavenly sound, in my mouth honey-full sweetness. Wheresoever I be, wheresoever I sit, whatsoever I do, the remembrance of the Name of Jesus departs not from my mind. I have set it as a token upon my heart.’4 While the specific form of words whereby our Lord is invoked may vary, what is constantly present in the different forms is the actual use of the Name ‘Jesus’. This is the one root under the many branches, the centre point of unity among the numerous variants. In a broad sense any short prayer that includes the Name ‘Jesus’ may rightly be termed a Jesus Prayer. Two features in particular characterize the practice of the Jesus Prayer. The first is the discipline of repetition. This can prove highly powerful as an aid to inner recollection. Indeed, if misused – if pursued in a tense and strained manner – it can even prove harmful. For this and other reasons it is desirable when embarking on the Jesus Prayer to find an experienced guide, an ‘elder’ or starets, who can direct us on the true path. This does not contradict what was said earlier about freedom in prayer; for the purpose of obedience to a spiritual father or mother is not to negate our free

4

Quoted in Rama Coomaraswamy, The Invocation of the Name of Jesus As Practiced in the Western Church (Louisville, KT, 1999), pp. 132–3 (translation modified). See also Kallistos Ware, ‘The Holy Name of Jesus in East and West: The Hesychasts and Richard Rolle’, Sobornost incorporating Eastern Churches Review, 4:2 (1982), 163–84.

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will but precisely to initiate us into the realm of liberty. He or she provides not abstract rules but a personal relationship, and in this way acts as the guardian of our evangelical freedom. And what are we to do if, after persistent searching, we fail to find a spiritual guide? Should we then refrain from using the Jesus Prayer? No: surely that is not an appropriate answer. Let us rather place ourselves at the disposition of the Holy Spirit, and He will then show us the way. Let us feel free to practise the Jesus Prayer, but in a gentle and humble manner, not in a self-willed spirit, not seeking forcefully to grasp any particular experience, and not employing it at first for prolonged periods. To start with, twenty minutes at a time (or even less) is fully sufficient; in due course this can be gradually increased. At what speed, then, should we repeat the Jesus Prayer? Here, as elsewhere, there is freedom and flexibility. Among the Greeks it is usually said quickly, among the Russians more slowly. If we adopt a middle course, it may take fifteen or twenty minutes to recite the Prayer 100 times. In the second place, a fundamental feature in the tradition of the Jesus Prayer is a sense of the intrinsic holiness of the Name ‘Jesus’. This Name ‘Jesus’, as those who use the Prayer should never forget, signifies ‘Saviour’; in the words of the angel to Joseph, ‘You are to name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins’ (Matt. 1:21). And that is what all of us seek from religion: salvation. In the tradition of the Jesus Prayer, then, the Holy Name is experienced as a source of saving grace and sanctification. Without being a magic talisman, it is signum efficax, an effective sign – invested with sacramental energy, enlightening and transfiguring all who treasure it in their hearts. In the words of the Shepherd of Hermas (second century), ‘The Name of the Son of God is great and boundless, and it upholds the whole universe.’5 As St Peter testified before the High Priest in Jerusalem, ‘There is no other name under Heaven granted to humankind by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12). It is, as St Paul insisted, ‘the Name that is above every name’ (Phil. 2:9).

5

Similitudes 9. 14. 5.

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Find Christ Everywhere There are two ways in which the Jesus Prayer may be used. In the first place, it may be recited once or several times as we go about our daily tasks, during the passing moments of the twenty-four hours that might otherwise be left vacant. This may be called the ‘free’ use. Secondly, there is the ‘fixed’ use, when the Jesus Prayer forms part of our appointed times of prayer, during which we seek to pray without engaging in other activities. The ‘free’ use may be adopted without necessarily being accompanied by the ‘fixed’ use. The aim of the ‘free’ use can be expressed in the phrase ‘find Christ everywhere.’ The goal of the ‘fixed’ use is best summed up in the words ‘create silence.’ The employment of the ‘free’ form of the Jesus Prayer is well described by the French Orthodox priest Lev Gillet (1893–1980): It may be practised at all times and in any place, church, bedroom, street, office, workshop, and so on. We can repeat the Name while walking …. In time you will find that the Name of Jesus will spontaneously come to your lips and almost continually be present to your mind, though in a quiescent and latent manner. Even your sleep will be impregnated with the Name and memory of Jesus. ‘I sleep, but my heart waketh’ (Song of Songs 5:2).6

Fr Lev himself had the custom of walking alone at night through the streets of London, reciting the Jesus Prayer. A  small, poorly dressed ­figure  – not in his cassock but in a shabby suit  – he would sit unobtrusively in all-night cafés or refuges for the homeless; and all the time he would silently invoke the Holy Name on the destitute and unhappy people whom he met. I myself, in my personal experience, have often found the Jesus Prayer of value when hearing confessions or giving counsel. It sometimes happens that the dialogue between the other and myself fails to break through to

6

A Monk of the Eastern Church, The Jesus Prayer, p. 93; On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus, Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (London, 1950), p. 7.

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the level of meaning. Yet, if inwardly I repeat the Jesus Prayer once or several times, suddenly our conversation comes alive and is kindled into flame. Such is the manner in which, by God’s grace, the ‘free’ use of the Jesus Prayer bridges the gap between our prayer time and our work time, and helps to render the secular sacred. The Prayer can be said, as Fr Lev states, ‘at all times and in any place’. Recited regularly, it enables us to find Christ everywhere and to rejoice in Him. We may apply to the Jesus Prayer the familiar words of George Herbert: Teach me, my God and King, In all things thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for thee … All may of thee partake; Nothing can be so mean, Which with this tincture, ‘for thy sake’, Will not grow bright and clean.7

Create Silence In the ‘fixed’ use, the Jesus Prayer is normally recited alone, although there are monastic brotherhoods on the Holy Mountain of Athos and in certain other places8 where it is recited in community. It is usually said with the eyes closed, seated rather than kneeling or standing; but we are each free to choose the bodily posture that suits us best. On Athos it is customary for the monks to sit on a low stool, perhaps 10 inches high, with the head bowed; others who practise the Jesus Prayer may find this ‘foetal’ position difficult, and prefer to be seated on an ordinary chair with a back. The words of the Prayer may be said aloud (if we are alone), 7 8

‘The Elixir’, in F. E. Hutchinson (ed.), The Works of George Herbert (Oxford, 1941), p. 184; cf. The English Hymnal, no. 485. For example, in the monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, Essex.

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or else repeated inwardly; but in the second case they should be distinctly articulated, and not merely ‘thought’ in a generalized and diffuse manner. There may be occasions when we are moved to suspend the recitation, and simply to rest wordless in the presence of Christ. When, however, we find that our attention has begun to wander, we may then resume the actual repetition of the Prayer. To accompany the Prayer, we may use a prayer rope (in Greek, komvoschoinion; in Russian, tchotki). This is a chaplet, usually of twine or wool, with 100 knots (sometimes less or more). It may also be formed of beads, as with a western rosary (but in the Orthodox practice it is used for the invocation of Jesus, not the Virgin Mary). We move the chaplet through our fingers, reciting one Jesus Prayer at each knot or bead. While the prayer rope can be used to measure the number of times that we say the Prayer, more importantly it helps us to maintain a regular rhythm in our recitation. If we give our hands something to do, this will reduce distraction and restlessness, and will help to ‘anchor’ the Prayer. In the words of St Theophan the Recluse (1815–94), ‘The hands at work, the mind and heart with God.’9 It is also possible to co-ordinate the rhythm of the Prayer with the tempo of our breathing. There are several ways whereby this can be done, but it is best for us not to attempt these methods unless we have an experienced spiritual father or mother to guide us. The Jesus Prayer is not a form of imaginative meditation on different incidents in the life of Christ. In general we may distinguish two fundamental forms of prayer, the one imaginative and ‘iconic’, the other imageless and ‘non-iconic’. We can term them respectively ‘kataphatic’ [positive] and ‘apophatic’ [negative] prayer. The liturgical prayer of the Church, employing as it does a rich imagery and an inexhaustible variety of metaphors, constitutes par excellence what is meant by ‘iconic’ prayer. The Jesus Prayer, by contrast, seeks to be ‘non-iconic’; we may apply to it the words of Evagrius of Pontus (fourth century), ‘Prayer means the shedding of thoughts.’10 9 10

Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London, 1966), p. 92. On Prayer 71: in St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth (eds), The Philokalia: The Complete Text, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, vol. 1 (London, 1979), p. 64.

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Some of us may feel bewildered when we are instructed to empty our minds of thoughts and images. In that case, let us not concentrate negatively on what we are to avoid as we offer the Jesus Prayer, but let us rather fix our attention in a positive way on what we aim to acquire: a warm and loving (but not over-emotional) devotion to Christ Jesus as our God and Saviour. For while images and thoughts are to be set aside, the same is not true of our feelings of loving ardour towards the Lord Jesus. While so far as possible ‘non-iconic’, the invocation of the Name is certainly an expression of ‘affective’ prayer. The aim of the fixed use of the Prayer, then, is to enter into hesychia or stillness, acquiring silence of the heart. From hesychia comes the word ‘hesychast’, meaning one who practises inner prayer. Whether monastics or dwelling in the ‘world’, whether clergy or laity, we all of us have the vocation to become hesychasts. By silence in this context is meant not merely outer silence, that is to say, a pause between words and an absence of sound. What we are seeking is inner silence, by which is signified a quiet and attentive waiting upon God, and above all an attitude of listening. With the child Samuel in the temple, we say to God – not necessarily in words but in our intention – ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening’ (1 Sam. 3:9). Deep silence of this kind is not negative but positive. It is not isolation but relationship; not emptiness but fullness; not an absence but a presence. Acquiring silence in our heart, through the action of divine grace and mercy we come face to face with Jesus Himself, the incarnate Son of God. That at any rate is our objective, even though most of us only attain this at rare and precious moments. The Jesus Prayer in this way provides us with an answer to the question that troubles us when we attempt to pray inwardly: how can we cease talking and start listening? It is of little value to say ‘stop thinking’ to our ever-active mind. We cannot turn off the interior television set merely by an act of our will, any more than we can command ourselves to stop breathing. But what we can do is to provide our restless mind with a simple task that will satisfy its need for an occupation; and that simple task is to invoke the Holy Name. The Jesus Prayer is indeed a prayer in words, an oral prayer, but because the words are straightforward and few in number, and because they are regularly and faithfully repeated, we are enabled to reach out beyond the words into silence, or more exactly to discover the silence that is hidden in the words.

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The Light of the Transfiguration In the experience of the saints, the repetition of the Jesus Prayer leads through the action of the Holy Spirit to a vision of divine light. This light, so it is affirmed in the teaching of the Orthodox Church, is not just a metaphorical illumination of the intellect, and not just a created and physical light of the senses; but it is a supranatural light, non-material and uncreated. It is nothing less than the eternal energies of God Himself.11 This divine light, seen by the hesychasts in prayer, is identical with the light that shone from Christ’s person at His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Matt. 17:1–8), and equally with the glory that will surround Christ when He comes again at the end of history (Matt. 24:30). Here is a description by St Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) of the first of many visions of divine light that he received. It is significant that the vision comes to him as he is repeating the short prayer ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’ (see Luke 18:13). This, while not exactly the same as the Jesus Prayer, is certainly similar to it. He refers to himself in the third person: While he was standing one day and saying the Prayer ‘God be merciful to me a sinner’, more with his intellect than with his mouth, a divine radiance suddenly appeared in abundance from above and filled the whole room. When this happened, the young man lost all awareness of his surroundings and forgot whether he was in a house or under a roof. He saw nothing but light on every side, and did not even know if he was standing on the ground … He was wholly united to non-material light and, so it seemed, he had himself been turned into light. Oblivious of all the world, he was overwhelmed with tears and with inexpressible joy and exultation.12

While in each generation it is only a few who receive a vision of divine  light such as was bestowed upon Symeon, it is important to 11

12

A distinction has to be made here between God’s essence, which is beyond all participation, and God’s energies, in which by divine grace the hesychast may participate. See Timothy Ware (Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia), The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity, new edn (London, 2015), pp. 65–6, 203, 226. Catechesis 22, lines 88–100: ed. Basile Krivochéine, Sources Chrétiennes 104 (Paris, 1964), p. 372.

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recognize that such experiences are indeed granted to those who pray, and that this continues to happen in our own day as in the past. In the words once more of Symeon: Do not say, God does not appear to people. Do not say, People do not see the divine light, Or else, It is impossible in these present times. This is a thing never impossible, my friends, But on the contrary altogether possible for those who so desire.13

Such is the place of the Jesus Prayer in Orthodox spirituality. It is a prayer for all seasons, a prayer for every Christian, western or eastern, monastic or lay. It is never out of place. It is an uncomplicated way of praying that requires no special knowledge and no elaborate preparation. Yet, though uncomplicated, the Jesus Prayer can lead us into the hidden places of the heart and into the deepest mysteries of secret contemplation.

13

Hymn 27, lines 128–32: ed. Johannes Koder, Sources Chrétiennes 174 (Paris, 1971), p. 288.

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Tolson, Jay, ‘Minding Our Minds: A Bibliographical Essay’, The Hedgehog Review, 16 (2014), 56–61. Tugwell, Simon, ‘Evagrius and Macarius’, in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, and E. Yarnold (eds), The Study of Spirituality (Oxford, 1986), pp. 168–75. Ugolnik, Zachary, ‘Internal Liturgy:  The Transmission of the Jesus Prayer in the Philokalia and The Way of a Pilgrim’, Religion and Literature, 48 (2016), 99–133. van Opstall, E. M. (ed.), Jean Geomètre. Poèmes en hexamètres et en distiques élégiaques (Leiden, 2008). Vasileios, Archimandrite, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church, trans. E. Brière (Crestwood, NY, 1984). Veilleux, A., ‘La Liturgie dans le cénobitisme Pachômien au quatrième siècle’, Studia Anselmiana, 57 (1958). Ward, Benedicta (trans.), The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:  The Alphabetical Collection (Oxford, 1975). Ware, Kallistos (Timothy), The Power of the Name:  The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality, Fairacres Publication 43, new edn (Oxford, 1986). ——, ‘The Spirituality of the Philokalia’, Sobornost, 13: 1 (1991), 6–24. ——, ‘Prayer in Evagrius of Pontus and the Macarian Homilies’, in R. Waller and B. Ward (eds), An Introduction to Christian Spirituality (London, 1999), pp. 14–30. ——, The Inner Kingdom, Collected Works, vol. 1 (Crestwood, NY, 2000). ——, ‘The Beginnings of the Jesus Prayer’, in B. Ward and R. Waller (eds), Joy of Heaven (London, 2003), pp. 1–29. ——, ‘St Nikodimos and the Philokalia’, in D. Conomos and G. Speake (eds), Mount Athos the Sacred Bridge, pp. 69–121. ——, The Jesus Prayer, Catholic Truth Society (London, 2014). ——, The Orthodox Church:  An Introduction to Eastern Christianity, new edn (London, 2015). Wellesz, Egon, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961). Wellington, James, Christe Eleison! The Invocation of Christ in Eastern Monastic Psalmody c.350–450 (Oxford, 2014). Wood, Archimandrite Zacchaeus (ed.), A History of Icon Painting (Moscow, 2002). Zacharias, Archimandrite, Christ, Our Way and Our Life:  A Presentation of the Theology of Archimandrite Sophrony (Waymart, PA, 2003).

Notes on Contributors

dimitri conomos is a musicologist with interests in the medieval Christian chant traditions of the Greek, Slavonic, and Latin churches. He has written many books and articles in these fields and continues to lecture in universities and theological institutions throughout Europe and Australia. Lately he has turned to studies in Byzantine hymnography. His non-musical endeavours include publications on Orthodoxy and ecology and the mythology of Africa and Russia. fr maximos constas is Interim Dean and Senior Research Scholar at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, in Brookline, MA. He is the author of The Art of Seeing: Paradox and Perception in Orthodox Iconography  (Alhambra, 2014); an edition and translation of  Maximos the Confessor,  On Difficulties in the Church Fathers:  The Ambigua to Thomas and the Ambigua to John, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 2014); and a translation of the same author’s, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios (Washington, DC, 2018). He is currently writing a book on the Philokalia. fr douglas dales was, from 1984 to 2012, Chaplain of Marlborough College, Wiltshire, and is now a parish priest in the diocese of Oxford. He is the author of several studies in Anglo-Saxon church history and other areas of theology, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. archimandrite elisaios (born 1951)  was one of the first disciples of Elder Aimilianos, abbot of the Transfiguration monastery at the Meteora. In 1973, when the brotherhood moved to Simonopetra monastery on Mount Athos, he served for several years as General Secretary to the Holy Community in Karyes. In 2000, following the resignation of Elder Aimilianos, he was elected abbot of Simonopetra.

154

Notes on Contributors

archimandrite ephraim is the abbot of the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos. Born in Cyprus in 1956, he is a graduate of the Theological School of the University of Athens. In 1982 he was tonsured a monk in the brotherhood of Elder Joseph in New Skete on Mount Athos. This brotherhood repopulated the monastery of Vatopedi, which in 1990 reverted from the idiorrhythmic to the cenobitic way of life with the enthronement of Elder Ephraim as its abbot. aidan hart has been a professional icon painter and carver since 1984, with commissions in over twenty-five countries of the world. He lectures widely, and runs the three-year part-time Icon Painting programme for The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. His publications include Beauty, Spirit, Matter: Icons in the Modern World (2014). elizabeth jeffreys is Emeritus Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature, and Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford. She has published widely on topics in Byzantine literary studies. She is a Patron of the Friends of Mount Athos. fr stephen platt is Rector of the Russian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas the Wonderworker in Oxford. He is also General Secretary of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. graham speake is founder and Chairman of the Friends of Mount Athos and a frequent visitor to the Mountain. He is the author of Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn 2014), which won the 2002 Criticos Prize, and A History of the Athonite Commonwealth:  The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos (2018). He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. metropolitan kallistos ware is widely known for his writings on the history and worship of the Orthodox Church, and for his work in inter-Christian dialogue. He is a member of the monastic brotherhood of St John the Theologian on Patmos. From 1966 to 2001 he taught Orthodox theology in the University of Oxford. He holds six honorary doctorates and is a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens.

Index

Adam  73, 103, 105–6 Aimilianos, abbot of Simonopetra  4, 35, 36–8, 121, 124–6 Akathist Hymn  6, 33, 34 akedia  8, 27, 128–9 Alcuin  9 Alexander Akoimetos, St  29–30 Alexandria  114 Amalfitan monastery on Athos  21 Andrew of Crete, St  4, 31 angels  17, 25, 71, 73, 78, 87, 90, 96, 97–8, 129, 137, 139 Anna Palaiologina Kantakouzene Philanthropene 83–5 Annunciation, icons of  93–4 Anthologia Barberina  68 Anthony of Kiev, St  32 Anthony of Sourozh, Metropolitan  18 Anthony the Great, St  26, 27, 113. 127, 128 Apollos, Abba  27 archangels  83, 94 archontares  128 Arnold, Jonathan  117 Ascension of Christ  10, 130 Athanasios of Alexandria, St  55 Athanasios the Athonite, St  32 Augustine, St  7 Australia  115 Auxentius, St  30   baptism  42 Basil II, emperor  71 Basil of Caesarea, St  78

Basil the Great, St  28–9, 43, 48, 54, 124, 129 Long Rules  55, 127 bells  6, 35, 97, 116, 117, 119 Benedictine Orthodox community  21 Bethel 98–9 Bethlehem  137 Bezalel 89–90, 96 Bonaventure, St  10–11 Brancusi, Constantin  96, 104 Brazil  115 Bulgarian wars  70, 76 Burning Bush  9, 135–6   Cana, wedding at  18 Canterbury Cathedral  95 Cassia  65 catechisms, Catholic  13–14 catechisms, Orthodox  14–16 cenobitic monasticism  35, 36, 40, 128 Chambault, Archimandrite Denys  4, 20–2 chrismation  99 Cistercians  9 commandments  57 Compline  39 Conomos, Dimitri  7–8 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, emperor  74 Constantinople  31, 72, 78, 79 Akoimetoi monastery  29 Bebaia Elpis convent  84 fall of (1204)  32 St Mamas monastery  79

156 Sakkoudion monastery  69 Ta Kyrou church  82 see also  Stoudios monastery Constas, Fr Maximos  5, 65, 68 Crucifixion of Christ  28 Crusade, Fourth  32   Dante Alighieri  10 deification  43, 98, 103, 104, 106 Desert Fathers  4, 7, 27, 34, 40, 113, 124 Diadochos of Photiki, St  51 Dionysiou monastery  78 Dostoevsky, Fyodor  4, 22, 124 Dunstan, St  7   ecology  95 Ecumenical Council, Seventh  88 Eden  105 Egyptian tradition  30 Eirene, sevastokratorissa  81–3 Elijah  10, 110 Eliot, T. S.  8, 108, 117 Elisaios, abbot of Simonopetra  4 encomia, imperial  66 Ephraim, abbot of Vatopedi  1, 8 Ephraim, abbot of Philotheou  35 Ephraim of Katounakia, St  34, 35, 128 Ephraim the Syrian, St  47–8, 102–4 epiclesis  96, 97 Epiphanius, St  29 Euchologia  6, 31, 33, 68 Evagrios of Pontus  10, 48, 59n., 142 Eve  73, 103, 105–6 Evia  100 Exodus 88–9 Ezekiel 99–100   France  115 Franciscans  9, 10 Friends of Mount Athos  3

Index Gabriel, archangel  83, 94 Genesis  98, 100, 102, 105 George, abbot of Grigoriou  35 Giles, St, icon of  95 Gillet, Fr Lev  140–1 Golitzin, Archbishop Alexander  118–19 Great Lavra monastery  32, 33, 41, 76 Greek language  13, 67 Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian, St  43, 65 Gregory of Nyssa, St  38, 55 Gregory Palamas, St  33, 45, 63, 79, 110   Hades  78, 109 Halki, Patriarchal Library  46 Hampole, Yorkshire  138 Haralambos, abbot of Dionysiou  35 Hart, Aidan  6 Herbert, George  141 Hermas  139 Hesychasm  108 hesychast controversy  5, 51 hesychast movement  4, 32, 36, 79 hesychast revival  79 hesychasts  35, 36, 41, 45, 46, 47, 53, 63, 66, 143, 144 hesychia (stillness)  143 Holy Community  127 Horologion  29, 68 Hunt, Hannah  75 hymns, Anglican  113   icon painting  6–7 iconoclasm  31, 69 iconography, Russian  17 icons  17, 23, 32, 83–4, 87–111 idiorrhythmic monasticism  33, 35 Ignatios, St  44–5, 54, 55 Ignatius of Antioch, St  17 Incarnation  92, 101–2, 108, 109

Index Inge, William, Dean of St Paul’s  22, 113–14 Isaac the Syrian, St  3, 5, 17–18, 109, 110, 129 Isaiah  15, 16 Isidoros, Abba  27 Iviron monastery  107   Jacob’s ladder  7, 87, 97–9 wrestling match with the angel  87, 97, 100–1 Jeffreys, Elizabeth  5–6 Jerusalem  31, 139 Mount of Olives  11 Resurrection, church of the  31 Jesus Prayer  2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9–10, 34, 35, 41–63, 116, 132, 135–45 Jewish customs  28 John the Evangelist, St  18, 52 John Chrysostom, St  5, 43–8, 50–2, 62, 63, 116, 124 Letter on the Jesus Prayer, ascribed to 44–63 John Climacus, St  51, 129 John of Damascus, St  65 John Geometres  6, 68, 70–3, 76, 78–9, 81, 82 John Koukouzeles, St  4, 33 ‘John the Monk’, Rule of  48–50, 53–4, 62 John Moschos  30 Joseph, foster-father of Christ  137, 139 Joseph the Hesychast, St  1, 134 Joseph of Vatopedi, Elder  131, 132 Judgement, Last  73, 77   Kallistos, Patriarch and St  44–5, 54, 55 Karakalou monastery  41 Kiev  4 Caves monastery  32 Kokkinobaphos master  78 Kovalevsky, Fr Evgraph (Bishop Jean of St-Denis)  21

157 Kyros, prefect of Constantinople  72–3 Lancaster University chaplaincy  95 Last Supper  116 Latin empire  32 Latin language  13 Lauxtermann, Marc  72, 75 law, canon  66 Leontius of Cyprus, St  102 Lewis, C. S.  22, 113–14, 115, 124 Lincoln College, Oxford  84 Liturgy, Divine  4, 16, 20, 32, 131 London  140 St Paul’s Cathedral  113 Lord’s Prayer  18 Luke, St  10   Macarian corpus  48 Magdalino, Paul  72 Makarios, Abba  27, 40 Makarios of Corinth, St  42 Manganeios Prodromos  83 Manuel I Komnenos, emperor  83 Matins  34 Matisse, Henri  104 Matthew, St  56 Maximos the Confessor, St  60, 78, 102–3 melete (unceasing meditation)  27, 32, 39 Menologion  74 Meteora  36, 121 Transfiguration monastery  36 metrics, Byzantine  67–8, 72, 76 Michael VIII Palaiologos, emperor  84 Michael, archangel  83 Michael Synkellos  31 Moses  9, 10, 15, 88–9, 96, 110, 135–6 mountains, holy  10–11 music 7–8, 22, 33, 38, 102, 113–26   Nativity, icons of  91–3, 109 Neilos, Abba  30–1

158 Neilos of Ancyra, St  48 ‘neo-hesychast synthesis’  36 ‘Neo-Sabaitic Synthesis’  33 nepsis (vigilance)  136 New Skete  132 New Zealand  90 Nikephoros Ouranos  6, 76–8 Nikephoros Phokas, emperor  71 Nikephoros the Solitary  47 Niketas Stethatos  79, 80 Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain, St  5, 14, 42–5, 79 Handbook of Spiritual Counsel 43–4 Nikolopoulos, Panayiotis  46–7 Nikomedeia, bay of  78 Nikon of Karoulia, Fr  2 Nitrian Desert  113   organ, church  113 Ormylia, Holy Convent of the Annunciation  3 Oxford, Bodleian Library  68   Pachomios, St  29 Paisios, St  35, 107 Palestinian typikon  32, 33 Pambo, St  113–14 Paradise  74, 100 Parakletiki  31 Paris 20–1 National Library of France  47 Parthenios, monk  131–2 Paul the Apostle, St  2, 4, 23, 26, 51, 54, 55, 58, 98–9, 108, 135, 139 Pentecost  101, 108, 130 Pentocostarion  31 Persians  31 Peter the Apostle, St  139 Peter of Damascus, St  44 Philaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow, St  14–16 Philo of Alexandria  52

Index Philokalia  5, 41–4, 50n., 79, 90 Philotheos Kokkinos, St  33 Platt, Fr Stephen  3, 68 Poemen, Abba  27 poetry  5–6, 65–85, 107 Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia, St  8, 130 prayer of the heart see  Jesus Prayer prayer rope  142 pre-Philokalic collections  41–2 prophecy 88–9 Protepistates  128 Psalms  4, 13, 17, 19, 29, 30, 38 singing of  113, 116, 120–6 Psalter  26, 34, 78, 114   Quakers  116   Rapp, Claudia  68 renewal of Athonite monasticism  35, 36, 125 Resurrection, Church of the, Jerusalem  31 Resurrection, icon of  109 Revelation  7, 37 rhetoric  66 Rolle, Richard  9, 138 Romanesque painting  95 Romanos the Melode, St  65, 72–3 Romanticism  66 Rublev, St Andrey  99 Russia  115 Russian language  41, 66   St Basil’s skete  116 St Sabba, lavra of  31, 32, 33 typikon of  33 Samuel  143 Savile, Sir Henry  45–6 sculpture  90 Scupoli, Lorenzo  14 Septuagint  13 Shema  17

Index Sherrard, Philip and Denise  100 Shrewsbury School chapel  97 silence  3, 4, 9, 10, 17, 34, 116, 142–3 Silouan the Athonite, St  132 Simon the Athonite, St  121 Simonopetra monastery  8, 36–7, 118–19, 120–1, 124–6 Sinai, Mount  10, 30 St Catherine’s monastery  10 skevofylax  128 Slavonic language  13, 41 Song of Songs  6, 79 Sophia, Divine Wisdom  17 Sophronios (Patriarch of Jerusalem), St  30 Sophrony of Essex, St  130–1 Speake, Graham  118 spoudaioi (zealous) monks  31 Stiperstone Hills, Shropshire  107 Stoicism  52 Stoudios monastery  4, 31, 69 Stoudite liturgical synthesis  32 Stoudite rule  69 Symeon Eulabes  79 Symeon Metaphrastes  6, 74–6, 78 Symeon of Thessaloniki, St  45 Symeon the New Theologian, St  6, 10, 78–81, 144–5 The Three Methods of Prayer, ascribed to  47

159 synaxis (assembly)  27, 37, 127, 128 Syriac language  25, 66   Tabor, Mount  101, 144 Tent of Meeting  88–9, 96 Thebaid  29 Theodora Palaiologina Synadene  84 Theodore Graptos  31 Theodore the Stoudite, St  6, 31, 69 Theophan the Recluse, St  9, 142 Theophanes Graptos  31 Tome, Patriarchal  5, 51 Transfiguration of Christ  10–11, 102, 110, 144 icons of  90, 95, 98, 101 tree of knowledge of good and evil 102–4 Triodion  31   Vasileios, abbot of Iviron  107 Vatopedi monastery  8, 9, 41, 83–4 Vespers  13, 17, 22, 34, 39   Ware, Metropolitan Kallistos  9–10, 118 Way of a Pilgrim, The  50n. Williams, Rowan  113, 117, 120 Wisdom, book of  37 work, monastic  8–9, 127–33

Prayer is the heart of the Christian life. Here, as in a kaleidoscope, the manifold dimensions of prayer are revealed: personal, liturgical, drawing on poetry, the icon, music. And throughout: Athos’s gift to the world—the Jesus Prayer. A rich and deeply rewarding volume, to be read and pondered. – Emeritus Professor Fr Andrew Louth, Durham University. According to St Basil, the monk’s whole life should be a season of prayer, both public prayer and private prayer. That is what the monks of Mount Athos are there to do. That is the basis of their entire way of life. Athos is sometimes called ‘the mountain of silence’, but as one living Athonite has written, ‘here you can hear the hum of unceasing prayer.’ The book explores all dimensions of this mystery, beginning with the deceptively simple question ‘what is prayer?’ Subsequent papers consider various aspects of prayer as practised on Athos both in public and in private: the prayer of the church and the prayer of the cell, prayer when working, prayer when painting icons, the musical tradition of prayer and the poetic tradition, culminating in the Jesus Prayer or prayer of the heart which is the foundation of the current renewal of monasticism on Athos. Most of the papers in this book were delivered at a conference held by the Friends of Mount Athos in Cambridge in March 2019. The Revd Douglas Dales is an Anglican parish priest and a regular pilgrim to the Holy Mountain. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of several studies of Anglo-Saxon church history and Anglican theology. His publications include Glory: The Spiritual Theology of Michael Ramsey (2003), Dunstan, Saint and Statesman (2nd edn 2013), Alcuin: His Life and Legacy (2012), Alcuin: Theology and Thought (2013). He is currently completing a trilogy of studies of the spiritual theology of St Bonaventure. Graham Speake is Chairman of the Friends of Mount Athos and a regular visitor to the Mountain. His publications include Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2nd edn 2014), winner of the 2002 Criticos Prize, and A History of the Athonite Commonwealth: The Spiritual and Cultural Diaspora of Mount Athos (2018). He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and holds a doctorate in classics from the University of Oxford. He was received into Orthodoxy on Mount Athos in 2000.

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