Biography of the Athos ascetics of piety of the XIX century

The Blessed Virgin Mary of Athos dawned on eternal blessing in eternal times, which rises in the northeast of Greece, on the eastern ledge of the Chalcedon Peninsula, washed by the warm waters of the Aegean Sea. The fertile cover was prompted by the Queen of Heaven over all the inhabitants of the Athos monollers, and the Athos Svetimennaya Mountain forever became her lot. The Russian writer Boris Zaitsev wrote remarkably in 1928: "The millennium monastic kingdom ... Athos is power, and the power is protective, its meaning is" stay", not the movement, Athos contemplates, and does not boil, this is - this is right. But he is full of Christian fragrance, that is, mercy, not law, love, not threat. Athos is not gloomy, he is bright, for it is oath, spiritualized. Athos is very solitary and not much busy with external. This is a kind of prayer island. The place of the continuous source of goodwill. Afoncas know little about the colorful deeds of the "world" and do not always judge them successfully. But they do not get tired of praying for the world, as they pray for themselves. They, relatively, are not much engaged in science, philosophy, theology. But they constantly serve God - in the church, in cells. This gives them a special shade. The “world” rightly believes the sinful, but I did not notice their pride or arrogance to him. On the contrary, sympathy, desire to help. Simplicity and kindness, and not a gloomy alienation, - this is the style of Athos, and it was not for nothing that thousands of pilgrims ("fans") were in these friendly places." On Athos for many centuries, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian monastic monastery coexists prayerfully. The most ancients on Athos are Russian monasteries. Already in 1016, a year after the death of the Holy Prince Vladimir, the presence of Russians in the Athos of Athos of Monastic Self -Governing "was witnessed in the documents. Orthodox Russia with many spiritual, artistic, even economic ties has always been closely connected with Afon. The glorious names of Russian spiritual history talk about this - from the epic Svyatogor, from the Anthony of the Pechersky, the initiator of the Kyiv monasticism, from Maxim Greek (from the Athos monastery Vatoped) to the elders Arseny and Siluan - holy ascetics of our times ... In the attention of the spiritual reading of the book of Hieromonk Anthony, the biographies of some of the ascetics of the Holy Athos Mountain, who were working there in the 19th century, are collected. The first edition of the book was published by Jordanville in 1988, and therefore these "biographies" were almost inaccessible to the domestic reader. Shortly before death, in 1991, about. Anthony transferred publishing rights to this book to the Athos Compound, which issued the second, Russian edition, and now it also carries out the third