I. The earliest records of the saints
“Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” (Hebrews 13:7)
Narratives and records of the lives and deeds of holy ascetics and confessors, who by various labours have pleased God, have existed in the Christian Church from the first times of her existence. The beginning of these narratives was laid by the holy Evangelist Luke, who described in the Book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles the labours and sufferings of the chief disciples of our Saviour and of His other followers. Somewhat earlier the holy Apostle Paul, in one of his epistles, gave Christians the commandment to remember their teachers who had sealed their faith in Christ by their life and martyrdom. Following the example of the inspired narrator and observing the commandment of the chief apostle, Christians have always carefully preserved information about the lives and deeds of the saints.
The martyr-acts
The first in time were the records and accounts of the holy martyrs. In the work of spreading and establishing Christianity, martyrdom had a very important significance. The firmness and unshaken steadfastness of the sufferers who courageously went to death for their faith so strongly affected the hearts of the pagans that not infrequently the tormentors themselves, seeing the uncomplaining endurance of their victims, turned to Christianity. Thus the blood of Christian martyrs was, in the expression of Tertullian, the seed of new Christians. Accurately recording the days of the death of the holy martyrs, Christians gathered on those days to celebrate their memory. “Note the days,” wrote St. Cyprian of Carthage to his clergy, “on which the confessors of Christ die, so that we may be able to celebrate their memories together with the memories of the martyrs.” For this purpose there were special scribes in the Christian Church who recorded everything that happened to Christians in prisons and courts. Such scribes, as is known, were appointed in various districts of Rome by St. Clement already during the first persecutions of Christians. Although the pagan government threatened these scribes with death, the records continued uninterruptedly throughout the time of the persecutions of Christians. These records, in which one can sometimes find detailed information about the questions of the judge-tormentors and the answers of the sufferers to them, are known under the name of martyr-acts. Among such acts there occur entire judicial cases compiled during the very trial of the martyrs. These are copies of official judicial protocols which Christians acquired from the pagans at a high price. The days of the death of the martyrs were celebrated not only in those churches to which these martyrs belonged, but in all others as well, because the Christians of each church informed the other churches about the martyrs who had suffered among them. Thus the church of Smyrna, in which St. Polycarp received a martyr’s death, sent an epistle about this to the church of Philadelphia and asked that this epistle be transmitted to other churches. Descriptions of the sufferings of the holy martyrs enjoyed great respect. They were read in church assemblies immediately after Holy Scripture. As one may conclude from the martyr-acts of St. Ignatius the God-bearer, this custom already existed in the second century. In the ancient Life of the martyr Eustratius the time of the reading of the sufferings of the saints is also indicated—namely at Matins after the singing of the psalms. And in 418 the Council of Carthage established the rule that on the days of the memory of the martyrs their sufferings should be read in church.
The first collectors of martyr narratives
When the persecutions of Christians ceased and the Church of Christ occupied a dominant position in the state, there appeared in her careful and prudent people who set themselves the goal of gathering into one all the records and narratives about the martyrs. The first of such collectors was Eusebius Pamphilus, Bishop of Caesarea. He first collected the lives of the Palestinian martyrs who suffered under the Emperor Diocletian. Then, according to tradition, he turned to Constantine the Great with a request to have the martyr-acts copied from all the judicial institutions of the Greco-Roman Empire. By imperial decree all such cases were sent to Eusebius, and on the basis of these acts he compiled the “Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms.” This collection contained accounts of martyrs, bishops, confessors, holy women and virgins in all dioceses. It consisted, according to some, of twenty books, and according to the testimony of others of sixteen. But already at the beginning of the seventh century Eusebius’s collection was such a rarity that copies of it could not be found either in the Alexandrian or in the Roman churches. It is not surprising, therefore, that Eusebius’s work in its complete form has not come down to us, and only some of its parts can be found in other writers. In all probability the book of Eusebius soon after its appearance was circulated and supplemented by subsequent collectors and compilers of lives, so that it quickly lost its original form and the name of its first compiler. Besides this, in view of the difficulty and expense of copying the whole book of Eusebius, it was divided into parts, which are encountered in later times in the literature of various countries. Besides Eusebius, St. Maruthas, Bishop of Mesopotamia, is known in the work of gathering lives of the saints into one. He described the sufferings of the martyrs who suffered in Persia with historical accuracy. “As regards,” says St. Maruthas, “the martyrs whose tortures, sentences and death I have described, I myself was an eyewitness of some of them, because they suffered in my time. The history of the earlier martyrs I wrote according to the narrative of aged bishops and truth-loving, trustworthy presbyters who themselves were eyewitnesses of the deeds of the martyrs that took place in their time.”
Lives of the later ascetics
Having spread and established His Church by the blood of the martyrs, who by courageous patience and countless sufferings bore witness to the truth of their faith, our Lord Jesus Christ also indicated other ways for the salvation and glorification of His followers. After the cruel persecutions which shook but did not destroy the Church of Christ, the Lord granted her peace and tranquillity and at that time revealed in her new saints of His. Among Christians there shone forth great ascetics who became famous—some by teaching and preaching the Word of God, some by the holiness of their life and the instruction of others in virtues, some by fasting and voluntary mortification of the body and passions, some by other various labours and deeds. Just as the sufferings of the Christian martyrs were carefully and in detail described, so the labours of these new ascetics were not left in oblivion. A new series of church narratives about the saints of God appeared. These narratives we find, besides certain church-historical works, in various more or less brief collections such as paterica, synaxaria, and the like. A series of Greek paterica, which circulated under the general names paterika, gerontika, monachika biblia, was compiled during the fourth–eleventh centuries.
The most famous of them are:
- 1) the Great Egyptian Limonarion, which has not come down to us, from which originated the Scetic and Alphabetical paterica (sayings of the holy elders);
- 2) the Lausiac History, relating the Egyptian ascetics whose lives were described in the fifth century by the eyewitness Bishop Palladius for the governor of Cappadocia, Lausus;
- 3) the History of the God-lovers, i.e. of the Syrian ascetics, compiled by Theodoret of Cyrrhus (†457);
- 4) the Dialogues, containing narratives of the life and miracles of the Italian ascetics, written about 593 by St. Gregory the Great, who was called the Dialogist for this work, and 165 years later translated from Latin into Greek;
- 5) the Spiritual Meadow, containing sayings, miracles and labours of the venerable fathers of Palestine, Egypt and Syria, collected by the monk John Moschus (†622).
Menologia, synaxaria and menaia
All the enumerated monuments—martyr-acts, collections of information about ascetics, and others—served as the foundation for menologia, synaxaria and menaia-chetii, i.e. readings arranged by months about the life and labours of the saints.
Of the Greek menologia and synaxaria the following are known:
- 1) the Menologion compiled by the will of the Emperor Basil (in the tenth–eleventh centuries);
- 2) Peter’s Synaxarion, older in composition than Basil’s Menologion (oldest manuscript 1249);
- 3) the Clermont Synaxarion of the eleventh–twelfth centuries, close in composition to Peter’s Synaxarion.
Besides this there were two kinds of verse synaxaria, so called because before each account there stood two or three verses in honour of the saints. The verse synaxaria were compiled in the twelfth–thirteenth centuries on the basis of the aforementioned non-verse ones. According to the testimony of Theodore the Studite, at the end of the eighth century there already existed in the Christian Church twelve books of Menaia-Chetii. Their content was varied. Besides lives, words of the most famous fathers of the Church for the great feasts began to be inserted into them. Some martyr-acts or ancient accounts of ascetics began to be recast into panegyrical orations. Besides this, some ancient lives began to be set forth in a new, more elegant and beautiful style.
Symeon Metaphrastes
In this last kind of works the well-known Symeon Metaphrastes surpassed all by his labours. By commission of the Emperor Constantine VII he was to collect, as far as possible, all the ancient lives and arrange them by months and days. Moved by great zeal for the glory of the holy ascetics, Symeon not only collected the narratives about them but reworked many of them, partly abbreviated them, and, what is most important, replaced the old, heavy and in many respects unintelligible speech with the pure and better style of his own time. Some count about five hundred lives reworked by Symeon. Besides this, one hundred and twenty-two lives were newly composed by him. To the lives of the saints Metaphrastes added panegyrical and instructive words for the feasts of the Lord, of the Theotokos and of certain saints, selected from the works of the great fathers and teachers of the Church.
II. Lives of the saints in the Russian Church
Both in the ancient Christian Church and in the Russian Church the custom of reading the lives of the saints during church services was strictly observed. The more usual reading was at Matins, after the sixth ode of the canon, immediately after the kontakion and ikos, with which the brief prologue life had a very close kinship. Consequently, in the Russian Church a prologue in Slavonic translation already existed very early. Originally it bore the name synaxarion; then, from its first article—prologos, i.e. preface—it was called the Prologue.
There were three kinds of Slavonic Prologues.
- At the base of the first lies the Greek menologion of the Emperor Basil, supplemented in the second half of the eleventh century by the Studite monk Elias (commemorations from Peter’s synaxarion) and Constantine, Metropolitan of Mocissus (65 lengthy accounts).
- The second kind of Prologue was compiled among the Slavs on the basis of the first and of the ancient Menaia-Chetii.
- The third—the verse one—was translated in the fourteenth century from the oldest kind of Greek verse prologue.
The Slavonic Menaia-Chetii
The Slavonic translation of the Menaia-Chetii must also be referred to the first centuries of Slavonic writing. True, not all twelve books of the Menaia-Chetii have been preserved from that time: namely, from the eleventh century there has come down one March book in a South-Slavonic copy, and from the twelfth century a fragment of the May book. But on the basis of fifteenth-century copies (there are none of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) which repeat very ancient ones, one must think that in the tenth–eleventh centuries the Slavs had a complete translation of the Menaia-Chetii for all twelve months. The Slavonic translation was made from Greek Menaia that had undergone slight influence from Metaphrastes’ reworkings.
Slavonic paterica and panegyrica
Paterica appeared very early in Slavonic translations. In Slavonic manuscripts the name Scetic Patericon is used for the most part indiscriminately for paterica of various composition, although the Limonarion in the majority of cases is called the Sinai Patericon or the Flower-garden. Russian manuscripts of the Sinai and Scetic paterica already date from the twelfth–thirteenth centuries and were known to many writers of the thirteenth century. From the sixteenth century the paterica have been preserved in a multitude of copies and had wide use. For the first time in Rus’ the patericon—the Spiritual Meadow—was published in 1628. The Dialogues of St. Gregory the Dialogist were translated in 1671 by Symeon of Polotsk.
In deep antiquity the panegyrical collections (biblia panegyrika) were translated from Greek into Slavonic. They are divided into two kinds. The first—the Menaion kind—in the order of its articles adjoins the Monthly Menaia, namely its articles are arranged in the order of the feasts by months and days of the whole year, beginning with September. This kind contains panegyrical words for the feasts of the Lord and of the Theotokos, lives of the saints and accounts of the origin of feasts and church solemnities. The second kind of panegyrical collections—the Triodion kind—has articles arranged according to the order of the Lenten and Flower Triodia, i.e. by weeks, from the week of the Publican and Pharisee to the week of All Saints. The greater part of the articles of this kind consist of homilies adapted to the meaning of the week, and several panegyrical words. The Menaion panegyricon translated in Bulgaria passed to Rus’ very early, for there is already a Russian copy of it of the twelfth century.
The history of the changes of the Menaion panegyricon in Rus’ reduces mainly
- to a decrease of Greek lives,
- to supplementation with Russian articles,
- to fusion with the Triodion panegyricon.
In the eighteenth century, after the model of the ancient Menaion panegyrica, a new one was compiled, partly on the basis of printed Prologues and Gospels. The Triodion panegyricon was also translated in Bulgaria.
The change of this kind of panegyricon in Rus’ reduces
- to supplementation with words of Cyril, Bishop of Turov (twelfth century),
- to the insertion in the fifteenth century of words of Gregory Tsamblak (oldest manuscript in Count Uvarov’s library, 1473–1477).
The first Russian hagiographers
At the same time, with the gradual growth of the Russian Church, the lives of Russian saints also gradually multiplied. The first compilers of such were: the monk James (1074–1088), to whom belongs the Life of Saints Boris and Gleb, and the venerable Nestor, who wrote two accounts—one of Saints Boris and Gleb, and the other of the venerable Theodosius of the Caves.
The Patericon of the Caves
In the writing of the fifteenth century there appears the Patericon of the Caves, compiled in imitation of the Greek paterica. It represented a collection of brief, miracle-filled stories about the ascetics of the Caves Monastery and about the monastery itself. At the base of the patericon lie the stories of Bishop Simon of Vladimir and of the monk of the Caves Monastery Polycarp. Fourteen accounts of Simon are written in the form of an epistle to Polycarp. Nine of them narrate about the wonder-workers of the Caves and five about the miracles that accompanied the building of the chief Caves church. Polycarp supplemented the collection of Simon’s accounts according to his own stories, writing eleven tales also in the form of an epistle to the Caves Archimandrite Akindinus. To these basic parts of the patericon there were later joined, together with some later articles, works of an earlier time: placed at the head of the patericon the Life of St. Theodosius written by Nestor, and the accounts “why the Caves Monastery was so named” and about the first monks of the Caves, taken from the Primary Chronicle and attributed in the patericon to the same Nestor, but composed by some tonsured monk and disciple of St. Theodosius, probably Sylvester, who was afterwards abbot of the Michael Monastery in Kiev. The multitude of copies of the Caves Patericon that have come down to us testifies that it was a favourite book of our ancestors.
A new literary form of Russian lives
The lives of Russian saints at first had predominantly the character of a record or “memory” of the saint. This was a dry, compressed narrative, only occasionally enlivened by the speech of an acting person or by a borrowing from the Bible. But with the multiplication of translated Greek lives and especially under the influence of church-oratorical works such as panegyrical words and homilies for the feasts of the saints, from the fifteenth century the lives of Russian saints receive a new form. The first of such works was the Life of St. Peter the Metropolitan, compiled by St. Cyprian. “Praise is due to the righteous man,” says the compiler in the preface to the life, “and I, drawn by love for the pastor, wish to bring a small praise to the hierarch.” With such a view of the life of a saint as a panegyric to him, Cyprian found the former life of St. Peter too simple and dry, not answering such a task. Therefore he wrote anew a more detailed and ornate life, concluding it with a solemn panegyric to the hierarch. This new direction in the field of lives of Russian saints was still more confirmed and developed by the monk Epiphanius. In the lives of Stephen of Perm and Sergius of Radonezh compiled by him, oratorical devices are abundantly used and “good-speaking,” or eloquence, is given free scope. The most prominent worker in the composition of lives of Russian saints was Pachomius the Logothete. In the church world of contemporary Rus’ he was considered the representative of book learning, who had surpassed all in reason and wisdom. Therefore the grand prince, the metropolitan, the Novgorod hierarch and the abbot of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery all turned to Pachomius with a request to write about this or that saint. In his works Pachomius established that uniform literary form of the life which Russian “scribes” of lives afterwards greatly imitated.
Metropolitan Macarius and the Great Menaia-Chetii
A new epoch in the history of Russian hagiography is constituted by the activity of Metropolitan Macarius. His time was generally abundant in new lives of Russian saints. This abundance is explained by the canonization of many saints at the councils of 1547 and 1549. After the first of these councils the diocesan hierarchs collected the lives, canons and miracles of the new great wonder-workers, and having examined them at the council of 1549, established according to these lives and canons the celebration of many newly-appeared Russian saints. But the chief work of Macarius was his Great Menaia-Chetii. While still Archbishop of Novgorod, Macarius undertook the labour of collecting all the spiritual literature of his time or, in his own words, “all the books that are read which are found in the Russian land.” Of this labour of his Macarius himself speaks thus: “I wrote these holy great books in Great Novgorod, when I was archbishop there, and I wrote and collected and gathered them into one place for twelve years, with much property and many various scribes, not sparing silver and all honours, but still more I underwent many labours from the correction of foreign and ancient sayings, translating them into Russian speech, and as much as God granted us to understand, so much were we able to correct, but some things remain uncorrected in them to this day and these we have left after us for those who with God’s help will be able to correct them.” In Moscow Macarius supplemented his collection with a considerable quantity of works that had not entered into its original Novgorod composition.
The content of Macarius’s Menaia-Chetii is very varied. In them under each date there are placed two Prologues containing brief information about the life or martyrdom of the saint, about the day’s feast and various small articles of edifying reading not related to the day’s feast; then there are placed detailed lives of the saints, narratives of the uncovering of relics that earlier existed in numerous collections or separately, panegyrical and solemn words that were placed in special collections called panegyrica. Besides this, in Macarius’s Menaia there are placed other then-known works of spiritual literature, the greater part of the books of Holy Scripture, many works of the holy fathers, as well as of Slavonic and Russian hierarchs and spiritual writers, paterica (among them the Kiev-Caves one), and so on. In general this was a complete encyclopaedia of the then Russian spiritual education.
Later Muscovite collections
In 1600 in the Moscow Chudov Monastery the Chetii-Menaia in 13 books were finished, “because the month of November is split in two.” At the present time only 11 books have been preserved. Their content is defined thus in the introduction to each month: “and in them are written festal words and prophetic sermons, and apostolic martyrdoms and praises, and the lives of all the saints, and the martyrdoms of the holy martyrs and holy martyr-women, and the lives and labours of the venerable and God-bearing fathers, and the sufferings and labours of the holy venerable women, and with the new wonder-workers, in them also the patericon of the Kiev Caves, and of other books…” Among the latter, among other things, are placed the Sinai Patericon and the Roman Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great. From the Chetii-Menaia of Metropolitan Macarius the Chudov ones differ by the absence of Prologues and fewer borrowings from the panegyrica; there are also new articles not inserted into Macarius’s collection.
A century later than Macarius’s Menaia, in 1627–1632, the Menaia-Chetii of the monk of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery German Tulupov were compiled. Into their composition entered almost exclusively lives and accounts of Russian saints. Almost at the same time the priest of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Sergiev Posad, John Miliutin, laboured over Menaia. With his three children he copied lives of the saints for eight years (1646–1654). “I wrote,” he says in the preface, “from the monastery Menaia-Chetii,” i.e. from the Menaia of the Trinity Lavra compiled by German Tulupov. Some additions were made according to the printed Prologue of 1642–1643. John Miliutin did not simply collect articles but also reworked them. In his menaia there are not a few articles and lives of Russian saints that are not found in Macarius’s Menaia. In the afterword to each month the following quatrain is placed: “The height of heaven is unsearchable, the breadth and length of the earth unmeasurable, the depth of the sea unfathomable, and the miracles of the saints innumerable and incomprehensible.”
III. The South-Russian need for Orthodox lives
While in Northern Rus’ the monuments of ancient writing and among them the lives of the saints were preserved unharmed, the South-Russian Church, in consequence of Tatar invasions as well as Polish and Lithuanian devastations, was deprived of many precious spiritual books and together with them of the lives of the saints. Therefore lovers of soul-saving reading here had to content themselves with Western martyrologies translated into Polish and in many respects not in agreement with the spirit of Orthodoxy. Wishing to remove such grievous inconveniences, the Kiev Metropolitan Peter Mogila was very concerned about the publication of lives of the saints in the Slavonic language. For this purpose he intended to make a new translation of the Greek lives and had already ordered from Mount Athos the lives of Symeon Metaphrastes. But the premature death of the famous Kiev first-hierarch did not allow him to accomplish the intended labour. After him the Archimandrite of the Kiev-Caves Lavra Innocent Gizel cared with great zeal for the publication of lives of the saints. In addition to the materials for this labour already prepared by Peter Mogila, Innocent requested from the Moscow Patriarch Joachim the Great Menaia-Chetii of Macarius, the first three months of which were sent to him. But because of the military troubles of that time, which did not allow peaceful occupation with learned affairs, Innocent also was not destined to accomplish this great work. His successor Archimandrite Barlaam, fully sympathizing with the proposed publication of lives of the saints, applied all efforts to its realization. He did not, however, decide to take this labour upon himself, but began to look for a man more capable of it and less distracted by other affairs. His choice fell upon the monk of the Baturin Krupitsky Monastery Dimitry (in the world Daniel Tuptalo) and constituted an epoch in the history of Russian hagiography.
The calling of St. Dimitry
A gifted and extraordinarily industrious and modest student of the Kiev school, forced by the military circumstances of the time to leave it before finishing the course, Dimitry in early youth accepted monasticism. Having left school early, he preserved a living connection with the religious mood of the people and keenly understood their spiritual needs. With an inclination to solitude and a contemplative direction of spirit, with a burning love for scholarly occupations, Dimitry found in the monastery sufficient leisure for the independent completion of the education begun at school and for the cultivation of his excellent gifts. When Archimandrite Barlaam turned to him with his proposal, Dimitry was already a famous preacher in Western Rus’, whom bishops and monasteries vied in inviting in order to hear his heartfelt word.
Dimitry approached the labour laid upon him as he began every important work, with self-sacrificing enthusiasm and with distrust of his own powers. “The labour-lover began,” wrote Archimandrite Barlaam of him, “although after a long humble-minded refusal, having placed his hope on the help of God and on the prayers of the Most Pure Mother of Life and of all the saints, to accomplish the work entrusted to him.” From Dimitry’s own narrative it is evident that he sometimes sat at work until Matins, work that continued even in sleep, in significant visions.
The beginning of the work and relations with Moscow
St. Dimitry began his great labour in 1684. In 1685 the final subordination of the Kiev Metropolis, which until then had been dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople, to the Moscow Patriarch took place. The latter immediately demanded that all the most important hierarchical actions and scholarly undertakings in the Kiev Metropolis should take place only with his blessing. In view of this, when St. Dimitry needed the next quarter of Macarius’s Menaia (the months of December, January and February), Archimandrite Barlaam, asking the patriarch to send these books, gave a promise to present to him for blessing and review the new lives of the saints. Soon, however, the patriarch demanded that the Menaia be sent back. Sending the required books to Moscow with a special messenger, St. Dimitry sent the patriarch the following letter (1688):
“Before your holiness, our father and archpastor, I also, a sheep of your pasture, although the last and in no way known, come with this poor writing of mine (because I could not come in person) and fall at the feet of your holy feet, that I may be deemed worthy to be known and called by name by my most holy Archpastor… Your holiness… deigned to write about the books…. Those books were until now kept in the Baturin Monastery in my unworthy hands and read with attention. Having received from them much profit and having compared them with the lives of the saints written in them, I return them to your holiness with thanksgiving and declare that in the holy obedience entrusted to me by the Little-Russian Church, having laboured with God’s help, according to my strength in the weakness that is being accomplished, copying from the great books of the blessed Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, and from other Christian historians, I have written the lives of the saints of six months, beginning from the first of September to the last of February, agreeing with those holy great books in all histories and tales and deeds performed by the saints, in their labours and sufferings. And already those written lives of the saints have for the most part been read and judged by certain noble people, and especially in the holy Caves Lavra. Now, many being well-disposed and desirous, I would wish, for the spiritual profit of Christians, to publish them in print, to which I am especially aroused by frequent writings from the most reverend Archimandrite of the Caves. For such a work, not unuseful (as I think) to the Church of God, I seek your supreme archpastoral blessing. That, being guided, instructed and assisted by that your archpastoral blessing, I may be able to accomplish well the work lying before me, submitting to church judgment and publishing in print those six written months, which when by God’s help and your archpastoral blessing they are completed and published, then (if the Lord will and we live) we shall extend ourselves to the rest and shall make obeisance to your holiness also concerning other holy books.”
The first printed quarter
No answer followed to this letter, however. Then in the following year 1689 the Kiev Lavra proceeded to the printing of the first quarter of the Menaia-Chetii and finished it in the same year, taking the expenses and responsibility upon itself. Contrary to the promise, Archimandrite Barlaam did not send the manuscripts prepared for publication to the patriarch, but left their final examination to himself and the council elders. The patriarch immediately sent a reproving gramota in which he expressed dissatisfaction at the printing of the book without his examination and blessing, pointed out several errors in the edition and ordered those sheets on which errors were found to be replaced by other corrected ones, and henceforth not to print other books of the Menaia-Chetii without his permission. These reproaches, however, referred only to the publishers. As for the compiler of the Menaia, at the end of the same year 1689 he personally received from the patriarch a blessing to continue his labour. And in the following year 1690 Barlaam, already Metropolitan of Kiev, brought Dimitry from Moscow a blessing and a laudatory gramota from the new Patriarch Adrian. In his thankful reply St. Dimitry asked the patriarch to send him again Macarius’s Menaia for December, January and February. “If your archpastorship would deign,” he wrote, “for the sake of agreement of the lives of the saints written by us, those same holy books of the three months…”
The later quarters of St. Dimitry’s Menaia
Having received the requested books, St. Dimitry soon prepared for publication the second quarter of the Menaia (December, January and February) and on 9 May 1692 himself brought it to the printing-house of the Kiev-Caves Lavra. But the book appeared only in February 1695. The reason for such slowness was probably the careful review of these books by Metropolitan Barlaam. Besides this, the compiler himself, having received from Danzig “the books of Bollandus,” wished to compare with them the text prepared for print and to work it over more carefully. In the preface to the second quarter of the Chetii-Menaia St. Dimitry corrected certain doubtful places and errors of the first.
The books were sent to Moscow to the patriarch, to whom St. Dimitry among other things wrote that he brings the book as a sign of thanksgiving for the lofty mercy of the archpastor who had deigned by written blessing to encourage the “unworthy” compiler, that he might strive to fulfil the obedience laid upon him, labouring according to his strength over the writing of the lives of the saints and “submitting what I write to church judgment, and especially to the God-wise hierarch the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Kiev Barlaam. That your archpastoral blessing,” St. Dimitry wrote further, “I have dared to insert also into this new book for its better adornment and the undoubted credibility of the miraculous deeds of the saints read in it, gathered from St. Symeon Metaphrastes and many other historiographers.” St. Dimitry asked the same blessing of the patriarch also for the following third part of the book, so that Metropolitan of Kiev Barlaam “might read judiciously those things which I the sinful one, the Lord helping, by your archpastoral blessing, am to write, as he has read the first two three-monthly books, and concerning this deign your holiness to write separately to his reverence. And for the work lying before me I greatly need the Great Menaia-Chetii of the blessed Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, that are found in the cathedral church of your holiness, of the three months of March, April and May; I humbly pray, command your holiness to send them to me for a time, as the first months were sent to me, for the sake of agreement of the lives of the saints that are being written.”
After this St. Dimitry received a new approving gramota from Patriarch Adrian, who wrote: “We pray the Lord that He assist also the remaining six months of your sonly love, labouring in whatever form by good consideration to complete and to bring this God-pleasing and Church-useful work to an end; therefore we give blessing for this again and again. And you, as a son of the Church and of our measure, for the common profit of Christians and at our request strive… unto eternal glory and eternal memory of those who first began them, for we desire that in health and well-pleasing and prosperity… you live complete years and be deemed worthy in heaven in the God-appointed choir of the saints to stand before the Lord.” Gladdened and encouraged, Dimitry began to prepare for publication the third quarter of the Menaia-Chetii, which was printed in 1700. The last quarter was finished already in Rostov, amid great archpastoral labours, and in September 1705 appeared in the world.
Sources and method of St. Dimitry
Into the composition of the Menaia-Chetii of St. Dimitry, besides the lives of the saints, there entered synaxaria for the feasts of the Lord and of the Theotokos, for celebrations on the occasion of the translation of relics, as well as instructive words whose content is borrowed from the history of the feast; these words belong either to one of the ancient fathers of the Church or to St. Dimitry himself. As is seen from the two lists of “teachers, scribes, historians and narrators” placed before the first and second quarters of the Menaia-Chetii, St. Dimitry used many and various sources. In these lists a long series of the most famous fathers and teachers of the Church is given, whose writings have come down to us in Greek or Latin, ancient church historians and many contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the events described. Besides this, St. Dimitry at the lives themselves indicates the sources which he used. In these particular indications the name of Symeon Metaphrastes occurs most frequently of all. As regards the lives of Russian and Slavonic saints, St. Dimitry borrowed them from Macarius’s Menaia-Chetii, the Prologues, the Patericon of the Caves and various collections of the Kiev-Caves Lavra and other Russian monasteries. Besides the enumerated aids, St. Dimitry had at hand the “Lives of the Saints” of Surius and the “Acts of the Saints” published by the Bollandists. The first of these works was important in that in it were printed the lives known under the name of Metaphrastes, and in the second, which appeared considerably later than the first, the Greek originals of the narratives about the saints are placed.
Compiling his Menaia-Chetii, St. Dimitry often literally translated the original narratives into Slavonic or corrected the old Slavonic speech with the aim of making it intelligible, without any changes in the content. But for the most part he had to compile accounts from various sources. In such cases, bringing various materials into one whole, St. Dimitry either supplemented what was lacking in one source from another, or changed the form of the original, turning, for example, a funeral or panegyrical oration into a simple historical narrative, or cited in confirmation of the narrative the testimonies of other historians or only indicated them. Very often St. Dimitry abbreviated the original text. The abbreviations consisted in the omission of prefaces and conclusions, and sometimes also of certain details in the description of events and circumstances of the saint’s life. Recognizing these abbreviations as necessary, Dimitry speaks of this thus in the preface to the second quarter of his Menaia-Chetii:
“Everything written in this book, as also in the first, is written briefly, and as from great overflowing rivers, from the very many church histories, is drawn by this book as by a small vessel. For if anyone wished to write all the deeds of the saints, and the narratives and miracles, in one extended speech, then the whole time of his life would not suffice him, as happened also to the ancient church writers. Besides this, also because of human weakness everything here is written briefly, so that the life of each saint might be read on his memory without sloth. For if weakened people neglect to honour or listen to a short word, how much more are they wearied by long readings. There are also lives of many saints so lengthy in the Great Chetii and in other manuscript books, written with excess of words, that it is scarcely possible to read any one of them in two or three days, even if reading diligently. For this reason they have been abbreviated in this book, describing the single action of the saints and leaving the excess of words and the prolongation of speech.”
Corrections after the first edition
Even at the time when the hierarch was occupied with the last book of the Menaia-Chetii, the Archimandrite of the Kiev-Caves Lavra Joasaph Krokovsky asked him to take upon himself a new labour. Of this the hierarch himself wrote to his friend Theologus the following. “I inform your honour, the Archimandrite of the Caves wrote to my unworthiness, desiring that the first three-monthly book of September, October and November be begun again to be corrected for a second printing, more fully than before, with the addition of the lives of those saints who were omitted.” In consequence of such a request the hierarch did not cease until his very death to care for the perfection of his labour and made certain corrections in it. These corrections were introduced into the second edition of the Menaia-Chetii, to which the Kiev Lavra proceeded a year after the hierarch’s death. The first quarter was printed in 1711, and the second in 1714—both under Archimandrite Athanasius Mislavsky; the third was issued in 1716 under Archimandrite Joannicius Senyutovich. As for the fourth, it, not yet being finished in printing, became a victim of the flame during the fire that completely destroyed the Kiev printing-house and library in 1718.
For two hundred years literate Rus’ of all estates devoutly read, and the illiterate listened to, the Chetii-Menaia of St. Dimitry of Rostov, finding in them an inexhaustible source of moral edification and church-historical knowledge and pronouncing with reverence the name of their compiler.
IV. Later editions and the Synodal revision
In 1741 the Kiev-Caves Lavra intended again to proceed to the printing of the Menaia-Chetii of St. Dimitry of Rostov. Not long before that the Lavra had received from the Most Holy Synod a ukase that “henceforth no books except the former church books are to be printed; and those old church books are to be collated before printing with the same church books of the Great-Russian printings, so that there be no difference and particular dialect in them; and no other books, neither of former nor of new editions, without announcing them in the Spiritual Collegium and without taking permission from it, are to be printed, so that in such books no opposition to the Eastern Church and disagreement with the Great-Russian print may arise.” In consequence of such an order the Kiev-Caves Archimandrite Timothy Shcherbatsky turned to the Holy Synod with a request to permit the Lavra to print a third edition of the Menaia. Permission was given, but with the condition that “those books the Lives of the Holy Fathers, before publication in print, the archimandrite with other learned men skilled in Holy Scripture and church histories is to examine with all careful attention and reliably testify, and if anything in them contrary to Holy Scripture, the Spiritual Regulation and ukases is found, as well as unreliable and not confirmed by church teachers and historians worthy of faith, but quite doubtful, then to note it at the end of the life of the saint of whom the history treats, or if possible to correct it. As for prosody and dialect, in all that to agree unfailingly with the Great-Russian books.” Having received such a ukase, the archimandrite replied that he had neither a sufficient number of capable people to whom this work could be entrusted, nor all the ancient books with which the lives of the saints needed to be compared, because the library of the Lavra in 1718 had burned completely without remainder. The Holy Synod ordered the archimandrite to compile and send a register of these books, having in view that they would be found in Moscow either in the Synodal or in the Typographical libraries. The register, however, was not compiled. Meanwhile the Most Holy Synod and the Collegium of Foreign Affairs received from the Metropolitan of Montenegro a request to hasten the publication of the Menaia-Chetii, “because,” wrote the metropolitan, “the Serbian, Bulgarian, Dalmatian and Croatian peoples all soulfully desire to obtain such books, only they have nowhere from which.” In order to satisfy this desire the Most Holy Synod decided itself to publish the Menaia-Chetii and entrusted their review to the then living in St. Petersburg rector of the Novgorod Seminary Archimandrite Joasaph Mitkevich (afterwards Bishop of Belgorod) and the rector of the Alexander Nevsky Seminary Hierodeacon Nicodemus Puchenkov. As an aid to them, besides various instructional and historical books, there were given the Annotations on the Prologues of Hieromonk Stephen Pribylovich, extracts sent from the Kiev Lavra, and the remarks of the Rostov Metropolitan Arseny, to whom at the same time it was entrusted to write the life of St. Dimitry. Joasaph and Nicodemus began the fulfilment of the commission laid upon them on 6 November 1755 and finished their labour by October of the following year 1756. Their corrections consisted in the fact that instead of Little-Russian words they introduced Slavo-Russian ones, replaced simple speech with a more elevated style, and completely excluded certain expressions and even entire narratives. Besides these corrections it was recognized as necessary to make in the Menaia-Chetii a correction “according to Great-Russian grammar—according to the nature of the Slavonic dialect, changing the order of words and endings.” This labour was entirely laid upon the typographical correctors. On 31 December 1756 printing was begun in the Moscow typography and in 1759 there appeared the synodal edition of the Menaia-Chetii, which without changes is repeated to the present time.
By commission of the Most Holy Synod Joasaph and Nicodemus compiled for the new edition of the Menaia-Chetii a special preface which is also printed to this day. In this preface among other things the question on the part of readers is anticipated: “is it possible for anyone after St. Dimitry, a man great in reason and learning, in holiness of life, and finally glorified by incorruption and miracles, to correct anything?” In answer to this it is explained in detail “for what reason those Menaia-Chetii were corrected by the Most Holy Synod.” Having pointed to the labours of Eusebius of Caesarea, Symeon Metaphrastes, Metropolitan Macarius, the compilers of the preface say: “And St. Dimitry of Christ with all humble-mindedness acknowledges his oversights and errors made in the first book, and having himself corrected them, gives others that may be found in his books to church examination and correction, knowing that any historical truths can surpass one another by more reliable proofs.”
V. The spiritual profit of reading the lives
Ancient Christians in reading the lives of the saints saw the chief aim of this in their moral-edifying profit. In order to stand against all threats, against all allurements on the part of tormentors during this or that persecution, Christians edified and strengthened themselves by the high examples of patience, devotion and love for God which they found in the martyr-acts. After the end of the persecutions Christians also with great zeal occupied themselves with the reading of the lives of the saints in order to guard themselves from the temptations of the world. The spiritual-moral profit of the ancient lives of the saints is brightly depicted in the following words: “If the Church of God had not seen profit in them, she would not have received them: for they are not composed with cunning false-speaking nor with oratory of speech, but throughout they have sound and humble words able to crush the heart and to move the soul: for they are sweet and useful to those who truly wish to be saved.”
So it was in the ancient Church, so it was also with us. What the Russian reader sought in the lives, one of the writers of ancient-Russian lives tells us. “The lives of the saints,” he says, “implant the fear of God in the soul, drive away fearlessness, stop evil, introduce the reception of good: for looking at their lives they come to a feeling of their own deeds, think of stopping evil; for the lives of the saints are light and enlightenment to our souls.” In one old Russian collection we find such a prayerful address: “Tell me the unknown and secret things of Thy wisdom, for in Thee I hope, O God, that Thou enlighten my mind and thought with the light of Thy understanding not only to honour what is written but also to do it, that I may not read the teachings and lives of the saints unto sin for myself, but unto renewal and enlightenment and unto the salvation of my soul and unto leading into eternal life.” St. Dimitry noted that in his time many, having risen from sleep, considered it their duty amid prayers to the Lord to turn also with prayerful invocations to the saint of the day, trying at the same time to recall the chief events of his life, even if according to the brief extracts of the Prologues.
What the lives teach
Indeed, he who seeks spiritual instruction and edification will always find in the lives of the saints abundant food for the satisfaction of his desire. Instructive are the manifold manifestations of the power of God in the fearless courage and invincible patience of the martyrs, in the signs and miracles performed over them and through them. Instructive also is the power of conviction with which the teaching of the faith is set forth by its defenders. In the answers of the martyrs at trial is heard the living voice of one confessing the truth of the faith, with full assurance of its Divine dignity, with readiness to seal his confession with his very blood. The confessors of the faith said little in defence of the confessed truth, they spoke simply; but their answers were so sincere, so firm, that only hardened tormentors could fail to see the truth breathing in them.
Just as in the writings of the fathers and teachers of the Church, so in the lives of the saints and descriptions of martyrdoms one can find confirmation and unfolding of various dogmatic truths and refutation of false teachings. In the lives of holy hierarchs and ascetics who defended Orthodoxy from heretics and suffered for faithfulness to the teaching of the Church one can see both a clear exposition of those dogmas for which they suffered and a warning against the errors opposite to those dogmas. In this respect especially instructive are the lives and sufferings of the defenders of the veneration of icons.
In the lives of the saints one can often find grounds for the solution of various difficulties which a Christian meets in his life. Therefore the elder-ascetics always have suitable examples from the life of holy men for every exceptional case of life. Let us recall that even the Lord Himself, to resolve the question of the Pharisees whether it is permitted on the Sabbath for the hungry to rub ears of grain, pointed to the example of David. Hence it follows that by the examples of holy men it is possible to be guided in every doubt about the permissibility or impermissibility of any actions not clearly designated in the law.
In general the lives of the saints present a rich treasury from which everyone can take all that is needed for progress in the spiritual life.
—“The books of the lives of the saints,” it is said in the preface to the Menaia-Chetii, “are offered to thee, pious reader, for the profit of the soul; only zeal and desire for reading are now required, and reading them thou canst not but marvel and honour the wisdom and greatness of God. For thou wilt see how various paths He has proposed to man leading to His glory. All people of every calling and rank will find enough examples for themselves in these books: the Highest Authorities—anointed of God like themselves who governed their kingdom with mercy and truth, defended the Church of Christ and brought it to increase; pastors of the Church of Christ—great church teachers and hierarchs who well shepherded and laboured for the faith, and now rejoice with the Chief Shepherd; those who have chosen the solitary life—fasters, men of prayer, voluntary sufferers and others who by force seized the Kingdom of Heaven and now enjoy the gladness thereof; commanders and warriors—ascetics who, serving earthly kings, also served the Heavenly, and obtaining victories over bodily enemies also conquered spiritual ones, and now triumph with Christ the Author of the contest; judges and civil rulers—lovers of truth who glory in mercy in judgment, receiving neither gift nor person, but judging the orphan and the poor equally; merchants—not usurers and desirers of filthy gain, but those who by righteous acquisition bought the Kingdom of Heaven; common people—those like themselves who passed their life in uprightness of soul, in innocent labours and Christian virtues and reached thither whither many with all their glory and magnificence do not reach. It remains only for each to imitate his example and to walk the proposed path.”