Allyne Smith - Philokalia--The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts: Selections Annotated & Explained

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For my parents,
who first taught me to love the beautiful

Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual TextsSelections Annotated & Explained
2010 Quality Paperback Edition, Third Printing

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Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to use material from the following sources:

THE PHILOKALIA: THE COMPLETE TEXT VOLUMES IIV compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. Translation copyright (c) 1979, 1981,

1984, 1995 by the Eling Trust. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Annotation and introductory material 2006 by Allyne Smith

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Allyne.
Philokalia : the Eastern Christian spiritual texts : annotated & explained / annotation by Allyne Smith ; translation by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware.
p. cm.(SkyLight illuminations series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59473-103-7 (quality pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-59473-103-9 (quality pbk.)
1. Philokalia. 2. Spiritual lifeOrthodox Eastern ChurchEarly works to 1800. 3. Orthodox Eastern ChurchDoctrines. I. Title. II. Series: SkyLight illuminations.
BX382.S58 2006

248.4'819dc22

2006017643

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover Design: Walter C. Bumford III. Cover Art: Matjaz Slanic, courtesy of www.istockphoto.com.

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Contents

Introduction

Virtually every spiritual tradition has an authoritative scripture or scriptures that serve as a foundational text for its beliefs, practices, and spirituality. For Christians, that collection of texts is the Holy Bible. But the fracturing of the Christian Church in the fifth century (following the Council of Chalcedon in 451), the eleventh century (the break between what came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches), and the sixteenth century (the Protestant Reformation) has produced a dizzying variety of spiritual traditions. Each of these traditions in turn has its own set of subsidiary texts that serve as spiritual classics within the particular tradition. These secondary texts give expression to each traditions appropriation of the Bible. Each spiritual tradition reflects a lived interpretation of scripture.

For the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the principal spiritual text has come to be the Philokalia, an anthology of older texts edited by Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain (17491809) and Makarios of Corinth (17311805) and published in 1782. These monks of the Greek Orthodox Church collected sayings on prayer and spirituality from Eastern, mostly monastic writers that span more than a millennium, from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. The Philokalia, more than any other text, reflects the Eastern Churchs interpretation of the Bibles meaning. In the anonymous nineteenth-century Russian classic The Way of a Pilgrim, the pilgrim asks a staretz, or spiritual father, whether the Philokalia is more exalted and holier than the Bible. The staretz answers: