Paisius Velichkovsky

Venerable Paisius of Neamț, in the world Pyotr Velichkovsky, was born on 21 December 1722 at Poltava and passed to the Lord on 15 November 1794 at Neamț Monastery. He was an Orthodox monk and theologian, renowned for renewing monastic life by honouring the writings of the Holy Fathers and by translating the Philokalia into Slavonic. He is regarded as the father of eldership in the Slavic world. He is commemorated on 15 November.

Youth and search Pyotr was the eleventh of twelve children of the priest Ivan, of the cathedral at Poltava, and of Irina his wife. His father died early, and his grandfather was the poet Ivan Velichkovsky. He studied at the theological school in Kiev, between 1735 and 1739, but gave up his studies, against his mother's wishes, to enter monastic life. After wandering among Ukrainian monasteries he was tonsured a rasophore at Medvedovka in 1741, and then worked in the printing house of the Kiev Caves Lavra. From a monk he heard of the hesychast zeal in the Romanian monasteries.

In Great Lent of 1743 he went to Moldavia and Wallachia, to the sketes of Dălhăuți, Trăisteni and Cârnu. The elder Basil of Poiana Mărului, to whom he attached himself, taught him the prayer of the heart.

Mount Athos At twenty-⁠four, in 1746, he set out for the Holy Mountain, arriving on 4 July at the Pantocrator monastery. For four years he lived in solitude and great poverty. In 1750 the elder Basil came to Athos and tonsured him into the lesser schema with the name Paisius. On his advice he gave up the life of a hermit and became the guide of a community of Romanian and Slavic disciples. In 1758 he was ordained priest by Bishop Gregory Rașca, and the growing community moved to the skete of Saint Elias.

Paisius held that spiritual life must rest on the study of the ascetic writings of the Fathers. He collected and painstakingly copied these books and translated into Slavonic many Greek works, among them the Philokalia. He remained on Athos for nearly seventeen years.

In Moldavia In 1763 or 1764, at the call of Prince Grigore III Ghica, he came to Moldavia with 64 disciples and settled at Dragomirna Monastery in Bukovina, where the community grew to about 350 monks. Both Slavonic and the Moldavian language were used in the services. After Bukovina passed under Austrian rule, he led the community for a time at Secu, and in 1779, on the vigil of the Dormition of the Mother of God, he moved with it to Neamț Monastery. There the number rose to about 700 monks, and the monastery became a place of pilgrimage and a refuge for the displaced.

At Neamț he completed the Slavonic translation of the Philokalia, printed in Russia in 1793. He also translated the writings of Saints Isaac the Syrian, Theodore the Studite, Barsanuphius and John, Gregory Palamas, Maximus the Confessor and John Chrysostom. A disciple of his, the monk Raphael, rendered part of the Philokalia into Romanian. In 1790 Bishop Ambrose of Poltava, who visited the monastery, raised him to archimandrite. More than thirty manuscripts written in his own hand are kept at Neamț.

Legacy Paisius fell asleep on 15 November 1794, aged seventy-⁠two. His disciples carried his teaching to Russia and founded hesychast monasteries there. He influenced the elders of Optina, and his Philokalia was one of the favourite books of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. The historian Georgy Fedotov called him the father of Russian eldership. His Bulgarian disciples, among them Spiridon of Rila and Manasij of Troyan, brought the fruits to the monasteries of their land. The Romanian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints in 1992, and his relics are at Neamț Monastery.