Spiritual Elders. Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy (review)

In Spiritual Elders, Irina Paert provides a theoretically well-informed and impressively researched account of the revival, evolution, and social and cultural significance of spiritual eldership (starchestvo) in Russian Orthodoxy from the eighteenth century to the present. In the process, she perceptively discusses many of the main challenges confronting, and developments within, the Russian Orthodox Church across this time period. By structuring her analysis around the questions of the tension between charismatic and ecclesiastical—particularly episcopal—authority, authenticity and the invention of religious traditions, the adaptation of religious institutions and practices to modernizing change, and the role of gender in shaping religious sentiment and behavior, Paert also offers valuable insights into a number of important issues of interest to scholars of religion generally.

Contending that the evolution, character, and significance of spiritual eldership in Russian Orthodoxy have been influenced strongly by changing historical circumstances, Paert organizes her study chronologically. She argues that, although long a strand in Russian Orthodox monasticism, the practice of spiritual eldership had largely disappeared by the seventeenth century. The foundations for its revival paradoxically but not coincidentally were laid during the eighteenth century, at a time when monasticism in Russia was in sharp decline due to a combination of state policies, cultural Westernization, and centralizing trends within the Orthodox ecclesiastical administration. In response to these developments, some Russian monks retreated to remote regions and adopted a severely ascetic and pious mode of life while others such as Paisii Velichkovskii emigrated abroad, seeking to discover a more spiritually fulfilling form of monastic life in communities such as those on Mt. Athos. Velichkovskii eventually developed an ideal of communal monasticism that was structured on a conception of eldership based on asceticism, mystical prayer, and the guidance of younger monks by experienced spiritual fathers. This ideal was embodied in the monastic communities in Moldavia founded by Velichkovskii and was promoted by him as the authentic form of Christian monasticism both in his own writings and in the compendium of early Christian and Byzantine theological writings (the Dobrotoliubie, or Philokalia) that he produced. Hence, Paert demonstrates, when in the first half of the nineteenth century state policies toward religion became more favorable, Russian Orthodox hierarchs seeking to promote a revival of monasticism both for its own sake and as a means for religious revitalization generally adopted Velichkovskii’s ideal as a model for reform and embraced—albeit not unambiguously—isolated practitioners of spiritual eldership. At the same time, Slavophil writers fashioned spiritual eldership into a symbol of Russian cultural particularity and spiritual superiority in comparison with the Catholic and Protestant West. The result of these developments, Paert shows, was a growth in the number and the visibility of spiritual elders; an expansion under their influence particularly of female religious communities; and an increased flow of lay believers visiting elders in search of spiritual guidance, advice with their concerns, and divine intercession in their lives. This latter phenomenon grew dramatically after 1861, due both to the increased mobility and access resulting from the abolition of serf-dom and improvements in transportation and to an apparent increase in demand arising from social and economic dislocation and cultural flux. Expanded literacy and developments in publishing, moreover, enabled spiritual elders to offer guidance and advice remotely to an even wider number of believers through personal and published collections of correspondence. By the last decades of the Old Regime, Paert argues persuasively, although growing only modestly within monastic communities, not only had the practice of spiritual eldership contributed significantly to the revival of Russian Orthodox monasticism but also its reach into lay society had been extended through adoption by prominent parish priests and lay leaders of informal religious groups. Meanwhile, its image had become a medium of cultural and political discourse, serving as a symbol inter alia of Russian national character, the deep spirituality of the Russian Orthodox Church and the uncorrupted Russian peasantry, and the mystical union...