Little-known Archival Materials About the Time Spent by St Paisy Velichkovsky in Simonopetra Monastery
Little-known Archival Materials About the Time Spent by St Paisy Velichkovsky in Simonopetra Monastery

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines documents from Ukrainian and Athonite archives about the time St Paisy Velichkovsky spent as superior of Simonopetra Monastery on Mount Athos. The documents found by the author in Ukrainian archives are a 1763 letter by St Paisy, the 1762 deeds of the retired Patriarch Kyrillos V (Karakallos) and of the Athonite Council signed by the representatives of the twenty monasteries. The deeds state that the ‘Sacred Spiritual Council of the entire Holy Mountain’ entrusts… in perpetuity… the Monastery of Simonopetra to Spiritual Father Paisy the Ukrainian and to his ‘brotherhood from Ukraine’, as well as from ‘those coming from their lands of Zaporozh´e Sich’. This evidence sheds new light on Athonite monasticism and its spiritual and cultural ties with Ukraine, and on the saint’s life. Based on what St Paisy writes himself we are able to understand why he was forced to leave Simonopetra and the Holy Mountain, and move to the Carpathians.

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