Sergius (Serge) Bolshakoff (1901-1990), both the author and the translator of Russian Mystics, was born in Saint Petersburg in 1901 and died in retirement at the Cistercian abbey of Hauterive, Switzerland, in 1990. His life spanned not only the Russian Revolution and the fall of Communism, but also the Christian Ecumenical Movement, in which he took an active role. Dedicated to the cause of Christian unity throughout his life and intimately familiar with the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Anglican traditions and their monastic expressions, he was personally acquainted with the great leaders of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII, the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury, and the abbé Paul Couturier. Exiled from his homeland for most of his life, he lived in England—where he received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford —or France and traveled and wrote extensively.  Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Catholic convert, Cistercian monk and hermit, poet, contemplative, social critic, and pioneer of interreligious dialogue, was a seminal figure of twentieth-century American Christianity.

[Bolshakoff has written] . . . essentially a history of the great personalities of Russian monasticism—a study of memorable saintly figures whose spiritual lives characteristically varied from their Western counterparts.Parabola

• ContentsPreface by Thomas Merton   ixIntroduction   xix1   Russian Monasticism to the End of the fifteenth Century   12  St Nilus of Sora   183  Russian Monasticism in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries   394  St Tikhon of Zadonsk   615  Archimandrite Paisius Velishkovsky and his Disciples   796  Russian Monasticism in the Nineteenth Century   997  St Seraphim of Sarov   1338  Bishop Ignatius Bryanchaninov   1449  The Startzy of Optino   16410  Bishop Theophane the Recluse   19611  Russian Monasticism in the Twentieth Century   22212  Russian Mystic in the Twentieth Century   244Conclusion   272Selected Bibliography   285