Photius of Volokolamsk

Venerable Photius of Volokolamsk (in the world Feodor) was an elder of the Joseph Dormition Monastery of Volokolamsk, a disciple of Cassian the Barefoot and a spiritual writer of the sixteenth century. The Russian Church has numbered him among the venerable ones. Our sources do not give the date of his commemoration.

He was from the Kyiv region. Until 1500 he lived at Putivl, in the service of the last ruling prince of Putivl, Bogdan Glinsky, and was tutor of Bogdan's son Vladimir. At the conquest of Putivl by the troops of Grand Prince Ivan III (1500), Photius was taken prisoner together with Prince Bogdan and his family and came to the boyar Yuri Ivanovich Zamyatnin. After living several years with Zamyatnin in great honour, Photius withdrew from the world and settled at the Volokolamsk Monastery, where he received monasticism from the famous founder of the monastery, Joseph (died 1515).

Learning, under the guidance of one of the older monks, Cassian the Barefoot, the rule introduced by Joseph and the rules of monastic life, Photius soon became a notable figure in the monastery. He became known among the monks for his wide reading, learning, severe spiritual labours and, at the same time, a remarkable modesty, which made him always avoid seniority. Above all he is remembered as a most diligent copyist of books (there are indications of this both in his Life, written by his disciple Vassian Koshka, and in the manuscripts of the Volokolamsk monastery, now the property of the Moscow Theological Academy).

Of his writings only a few have reached us, probably only a small part of what he wrote. These are: the service to Saint Joseph of Volokolamsk, presented to Metropolitan Macarius, who blessed Elder Photius to pray by it in his cell; a teaching against foul language (Gathered from divine writings by Elder Photius, disciple of the great Elder Cassian the Barefoot, most useful, that all Orthodox Christians, and especially we monks, should not speak foully with the tongue, nor curse our brother with maternal curses); and a consolatory letter to the nun Alexandra. Photius died, according to Vassian, on 9 March 1554; the last twenty-⁠five years of his life he spent in the monastery, without leaving it. His Life was written by Vassian Koshka.