AE44: The Philokalia - Lecture 1: Introduction

you I have here in my hand a small pea green volume it is entitled the way of a pilgrim also known sometimes as the pilgrims tale it is the story of anonymous Russian pilgrim in the nineteenth century who goes from place to place staying at different monasteries he hears it a sermon the words quoted from st. Paul pray without ceasing anyone does how is this possible how is it possible to pray not just as an occasional activity but has the activity of our whole life how can prayer be he asked himself a continual state he asks many people for the answer and finally he is satisfied when an elder star it's in one of the monasteries where he goes tells him about the Jesus Prayer the short invocation Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner the elder tells him say that prayer as frequently as possible and this will be the doorway into continual prayer he follows the elders advice wandering from monastery to monastery on foot through the forest he says the prayer continually I shall come back later to the Jesus Prayer but now I want to consider particularly what the pilgrim carried with him in his knapsack he had a large volume entitled the fellow Kalia or in slavonic Dabra Tolu PA and it is about this volume that I wish to speak in these talks here in my initial talk I want to ask three questions what who and why what is the villa Kalia what is this volume that the pilgrim took with him everywhere and kept consulting secondly who are the editors of the fellow Kalia in fact the title page of the book doesn't bear any names at all of who are the authors or editors and then thirdly why did they edit the filler Kalia so let's start first with what is the filler Kalia it is a book originally published in Venice in 1782 a large folio volume double column 1200 pages all in Greek it contains 36 authors extending from the 4th to the 15th century they're all Greek writers except for one some John Cassian thus a summary of his writings translated from the Latin but this exception is apparent rather than real because John Cassian learned his monastic theology in the Christian East in the land of Egypt where he was in his youth before he travelled to the West these 36 authors are all concerned in different ways with the life of prayer in other words this is a book about inner action rather than outer activities it doesn't tell you in detail about the services of the church although as we shall see there are important references to baptism and the Eucharist it doesn't go into detail about the rules of fasting although it does emphasize that fasting plays an important part in our spiritual journey it doesn't discuss social or political action by Christians although it does it underline how love for others is fundamental to our Christianity no it is concerned basically with inner work the work of prayer searching for God in the kingdom of the heart interestingly at the end of the edition published in 1782 there is a one page not in Greek but in Italian a leach answer or authorization by the censors of the University of Padua saying that there is nothing in this book contrary to the Holy Catholic faith Walter good morals but though it has in this way a Roman Catholic imprimatur in fact the book is entirely Orthodox it was edited by Orthodox Christians and it is intended for an Orthodox Christian audience why was it printed in Venice and not in Constantinople or somewhere else in the Christian East there is an easy answer to that one until the 19th century the authorities of the Ottoman Empire the Turkish authorities did not allow Christians to have their own printing press or to issue their own books there were attempts to establish a printing press in the 17th century for the Greeks in Constantinople and another attempt in the middle of the 18th century but both of these efforts came to nothing because they were quickly closed down by the government so if the Greek Orthodox wanted to publish books they had to do so in the West and it was Venice from the 16th century onwards where most of their books were printed why Venice and not Rome or Paris the answer there is that the Venetians adopted a generous and liberal policy towards Orthodox Chris students in Rome books by Orthodox authors could not have been printed unless they pretended to be a Roman Catholic but the Venusian authorities were quite content to allow the Orthodox to have their own printing presses and to issue their own books from the late 16th century the Greek Church in Venice was not compelled to commemorate the Pope and it was able to commemorate only the e ku miracle patriarch so this is why the fill acharya was printed in the West even though it was meant for an Eastern audience and almost all the copies after the printing were shipped out to the Levant so that is what the fellow Kalia is basically a publication of spiritual texts concerned with the life of prayer with the ascetic and mystical life it is probably the most important and influential publication to appear during all the 400 years of the Turkish period of Orthodox Christianity now I come to my second question who who is responsible for this book there are two editors their names do not appear on the title page but we know who they are they've both been glorified a Saints in the Orthodox Church they are st. Macarius of Corinth and Saint Nick or Tomas of the holy mountain st. Macarius of Corinth came from a distinguished Alistair critique family he was briefly bishop of Corinth but he was removed from office because he was accused of sympathy with the Russians during the russo-turkish war after that he spent of wandering existence and in the year 1777 he came to the holy mountain of Athos and there he met a monk on the mountain called McCarthy boss Nicodemus came from the Greek island of Naxos he was born in 1749 as a child he showed high intelligence he also felt attracted to a service in the church now it would have been normal for someone of high intelligence a young Greek who wished to serve the church to go to the West and study there in some Institute of higher learning Roman Catholic or Protestant and then probably he would have come back to teach in one of the schools the different important schools in the ottoman empire which the greeks maintained usually they bore the title school of the nation and then probably after directing one such school for a time the person in question would become a bishop Nicodemus did not follow that path instead of going to the West instead of seeking a higher education from non-orthodox sources he chose to go and become a monk on the holy mountain and there he lived for most of his life up to his death in eighteen nine Nicodemus was in many ways a remarkable person among other things he had a photographic memory the story is told that one day on Holy Saturday he was attending a service in one of the Hermitage --es on the mountain of Athos the service on Holy Saturday morning has 15 Old Testament lessons and suddenly they found they hadn't got the book with these lessons in them no matter Nicodemus so the story goes recited all 15 lessons without hesitation from memory his works are full of quotations from the father's I doubt if he looked them all up in the sources he probably was quoting from memory and Nicodemus was author of a whole series of different books the book about Nicodemus by Constantine Kavanaugh's for example in the bibliography lists a hundred and nine works that Nicodemus wrote translated or edited and some of those works amount to about a thousand pages he didn't waste time actually he lived not in one of the main monasteries on Athos but in various of the small Hermitage is the main monasteries have lengthy services and would allow a monk little time for scholarly writing the core demos probably practiced the Jesus Prayer rather than reciting the whole Divine Office and this would have given him more time for his study and his editorial and authorial work a hundred and nine texts sometimes lives of the saints editions of the church services but most important of all the Filioque elia in fact it seems that the part of Macarius in the filo Kalia was more important than that of nicodemus though he's often regarded as the only editor it was Macarius apparently who made the original selection of what works to include in the Philip Elia and then he brought the texts to Athos then Makarios wrote a general introduction and he wrote particular introductions to each author or collection of texts and he edited the book as a whole when Macarius had received back from Nicodemus the edited version of the texts he went to Smyrna raised money for the printing of the book and sent it off to Venice now why was the filler Kenya prepared and edited what is its purpose here we have to take into account that the late 18th century was a turning point for Greek orthodoxy up until then the general spirit prevailing in Orthodox theology and spirituality was that of Byzantium we can say that the Byzantine period did not end in 1453 with the fall of the city of Constantinople to the Turks but it continues through until the late 18th century it's significant that the Greeks didn't call themselves Greeks or Halen's they usually call themselves Romans or romaine they saw themselves as heirs to the Roman Empire which had become Christian in the 4th century it's true that in the 17th century orthodox theology was very heavily influenced by the West but the underlying spirit still continued to be Byzantine the Greeks of that period still looked back to Constantinople as their ideal they looked back to the Greek father's as their guides and mentors from the second half of the 18th century a new spirit enters into Greek orthodoxy a spirit influenced by the Enlightenment the earth Clairol a kind of outlook that prevailed among Ian's french encyclopaedists who's a spokesman in particular is Voltaire there's a story told of a monk on Patmos who went down one day to the harbor found a French ship had just arrived and encountering one of the members of the ship he immediately asked him tell me I must know give me the answer is Voltaire still alive is that great benefactor of the human race still active I suspect that story is apocryphal but there's no doubt that there were in the later 18th century many Greek Orthodox who while still remaining loyal to their church admired the secular spirit of people like Voltaire and so there now comes in a new spirit into Greek orthodoxy many Greeks no longer look back to Christian Constantinople as their ideal they look behind that to pre-christian Athens the Athens of the fifth century before Christ the Athens of Pericles their ideal is not the Church of the Holy wisdom at Constantinople but the Parthenon on the Acropolis their admiration is given not so much through the Greek fathers as to the Hellenic authors of an earlier period Socrates Plato facilities Aristotle now there was no quick transition here indeed these two elements which we could call the Roma ik and the Hellenic continued side-by-side in Greek history and culture right up to the present time the division between the Romeo sander Helene runs through the heart of each Greek I think and each Greek draws on both traditions but thus Lilith in the later 18th century many people not only laity about members of the clergy began to admire more and more the secular outlook of the West's movements such as Freemasonry had a large influence in the Orthodox world not only Greek but Russian now this provoked a reaction people such as Macarius of Corinth and Nicodemus of the holy mountain were greatly disturbed by this new spirit this spirit which to them seemed secular seemed to be to them a betrayal of the Orthodox heritage and a movement emerges in the later 18th century known as the Kali vadas K o Double L Y V a des that title is derived from Colliver meaning the boiled wheat that is used at memorial services the Kali Fathers advocated among other things a strict obedience to the rubrics of the church therefore they held that memorial services at which Colliver is used should take place only on the correct day of the week which is Saturday and that memorial services should not be celebrated on Sunday as had become the widespread custom this led to a major dispute on the holy mountain some people said you must have memorial services on Saturday because that is the day on which Christ rested in the tomb but others argue - it's equally appropriate to have moral services on Sunday the day on which he rose from the dead the khaliv are days stuck to the strictly traditional practice of having the services only on Saturday but they were concerned with much more than simply an exact observance of the rubrics of the church they were concerned to reaffirm the value of Orthodox tradition in the face of what they saw as the corrosive influence of Western secularism of a mentality that was no longer rooted in Christian Byzantium but was returning to pagan Hellas and so they instituted a widespread program of what we might call resource small return to the sources do not trust the West they said this will prove to be a snare and delusion do not look to salvation from the Franks remain faithful to your Orthodox heritage indeed Saint Nicodemus even says that we should regard the Ottoman Empire with its domination over Greek orthodoxy as an act of God's providence because it has kept us safe from the undermining influences of Roman Catholicism the Kalevala is in a positive way instituted then a widespread program both sacramental and educational on the sacramental side they insisted in particular on the importance of frequent communion in orthodoxy at that period and indeed later it was the custom for people to receive Communion only three or four times a year and many people only receive communion once a year at Easter I can remember that this was the situation in many places in England when I first became Orthodox fifty years ago I can remember occasions at Oxford when in the divine liturgy not a single person came up for communion fortunately things have changed they call of others insisted that communion should be frequent indeed they even spoke of continual Communion and they advocated where possible that communion should be daily which is very unusual in the Orthodox Church Saint Nicodemus n st. Macarius were responsible among other things for publication on frequent communion there was one side of the renewal program of the Kalevala days return to your Eucharistic roots the church is not just a cultural association not just a way of nurturing nationalism the church is a Eucharistic communion it's his sensual activity is to celebrate the holy mysteries of communion in the body and blood of the Savior secondly the Kalevala has had an elaborate educational program to make available the true sources of Orthodox thinking which are the Holy Fathers and so they edited a series of texts of different fathers in their program in particular they emphasized the mystical writers of Byzantium such as San Simeon the new theologian in the 11th century and st. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century and the Filioque Elia this vast collection of spiritual texts formed a central element in their program of back to the sources so this is the reason why the filo Callier among other works saw the light as a witness to what the Kalevala is and in particular Macarius and Nicodemus believed was the authentic tradition of Orthodoxy now on the title page of the filo Kalia it says it is for the common use of the Orthodox and in his preface Nicodemus emphasizes that this book is not intended only for monks or clergy it is intended for all Christians he goes on to say that the command of sand Paul pray without ceasing is not addressed solely to monastics it is addressed to everyone it is a universal ideal continual prayer says Nicodemus is not to be practiced only in caves and on mountaintops and in the desert it can be practiced also in the city it is addressed the command pray without ceasing to lay people fully committed to a life of service in the world two quarters in King's palaces says Dakota moss here I think of an attractive example from the 14th century not actually mentioned by Nicodemus the Emperor was presiding over the Senate and among the Senators was the father of one of the great mystical writers of the Orthodox tradition the father of st. Gregory Palamas the Emperor turned her to him and addressed a question to him and the other did not reply the Emperor was somewhat surprised when the supreme ruler addresses a question to you you listen attentively and you answer with care you don't simply remain silent then the emperor noticed that pal Abbas his father was in fact practicing mental prayer presumably that means he was reciting the Jesus Prayer realizing this he did not insist on an answer to his question but left him alone and moved on to the next item on their agenda I like to think that in the houses of parliament here in England there are members of parliament who during the debates are reciting the Jesus Prayer I do not know how far that is actually the case but that is the kind of spirit I would like to see in our houses of Representatives and in our Senate's that to me is very revealing for the spirit that prevailed in late Byzantium mental prayer the Jesus Prayer praying without ceasing these were ideals valued also by the lady as by the clergy valued by those in the midst of all the activities of the city as much as by those in the solitude of the desert sachet any rate is the spirit that inspires the Filioque Elia Nicodemus and macario's meant it as a book for everyone whatever their status whatever their condition in life this is rather surprising in fact first because it is an extremely weighty volume the pilgrim may have carried it around in the Slavonic translation in his knapsack but most Christians would not find it a very convenient volume to have in their briefcases secondly almost all the texts in the fellow Kalia are given in the original Greek the Greek used in the patristic and Byzantine periods by the 18th century this would not have been easily understood by most Greeks just as it is not easily understood by Greeks today there have been many changes in the Greek language in other publications the cordobas used the modern Greek demotic the spoken Greek of the time he provided patristic texts in paraphrase but in the villa Kalia the texts are given in the original language except for a few texts at the end which are given in modern Greek paraphrase I suspect they were put in by the prin tine Venice to make up the volume to the requisite number of pages be that as it may even though the text of the fellow Kalia are in the ancient Greek language yet Nicodemus is quite emphatic this is for all Christians he does not imagine there is one spirituality for the clergy or for monks and nuns and another spirituality for the layout no for him there is one spiritual way shared by all Christians alike so that in outline is what the fellow Kalia is and why it was published to recall the Greek nation at the time of crisis after centuries of oppression by the Muslim authorities to the true sources of their Christian faith in the late 18th century orthodoxy was at a low ebb in the Turkish realms there were in the late 18th century massive instances of apostasy where christians abandoned their faith and became muslims this happened particularly in areas like albania today the majority of the population in albania are muslim but their ancestors were Orthodox Christians and it was in the 18th century chiefly that they abandoned their ancestral faith one way of combating this decline in Orthodox observance this danger of falling away because there were many material advantages in becoming a Muslim wouldn't have to pay so many taxes for example one way of combating that was by direct missionary work and here a notable example from the late 18th century is saint cosmos the italian a monk of mount athos who made a series of missionary journeys round the Greek world stopping from place to place setting up a great cross sermoning all the people and preaching to them the elementary elements of the Christian faith also he founded schools because he saw part of the problem was the Christian population were becoming illiterate and therefore knew nothing of what their faith amounted to he founded over 200 schools so there would be one way of trying to counteract the decline in orthodoxy after three hundred more years of Muslim rule direct missionary work Nicodemus and Macarius are missionaries of a different kind they do not preach by going round the country summoning the people and instructing them they preach through their program of publications and writings and through their teaching in particular that Christians must go regularly to communion so at the time of difficulty and discouragement for the Christian people Nicodemus said Macarius seek to renew their hope through their publications and most notably through the philocan here let me mention what the title fellow Kalia means it means love of beauty love of all things beautiful love of God as the source of beauty the title felucca Leah could mean just anthology a collection of beautiful things but I believe that the philic alia is not just an arbitrary collection of beautiful texts on diverse topics bound up within the covers of a single volume I believe that there is a unity to the Filioque alia a single purpose and in my subsequent talks I shall seek to distinguish where that unity lines

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Keywords: Philokalia (Book), Kallistos, OLTV

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Length: 41min 26sec (2486 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2015