<\/p>\n
Today we can clearly see that St. Herman came to America not merely to bring Holy Orthodoxy to the pagan Alaskan natives, but also to awaken the sense of the genuine Orthodox roots which lie deep underneath the fallen-away Christianity of the West, which is the spiritual background of America today. Even in our frightful times, when the foundations of any kind of decent life are collapsing, a chosen few are finding their way back to the Orthodoxy which, in the dim mists of history, was the patrimony of their own ancestors. Thus, this Prologue is devoted to the Orthodox patrimony of the sons of Western lands\u2014to the Orthodox saints of the West, whose proper Ortho\u2014 dox veneration was so much desired by the great 20th <\/sup>century apostle to the West, Archbishop John Maximovitch. <\/p>\n A touchstone of true Orthodoxy is the love for Christ\u2019s saints. From the earliest Christian centuries the Church has celebrated her saints\u2014first the Apostles and martyrs who died for Christ, then the desert-dwellers who crucified themselves for the love of Christ, and the hierarchs and shepherds who gave their lives for the salvation of their flocks.<\/p>\n From the beginning the Church has treasured the written Lives of these her saints and has celebrated their memory in her Divine services. These two sources\u2014the Lives and services\u2014are extremely important to us today for the preservation of the authentic Orthodox tradition of faith and piety. The false \u201cenlightenment\u201d of our modern age is so all-pervasive that it draws many Orthodox Christians into its puffed-up \u201cwisdom,\u201d and without their even knowing it they are taken away from the true spirit of Orthodoxy and left only with the shell of Orthodox rites, formulas, and customs. Almost all Orthodox seminaries today (with the notable exception of Holy Trinity Seminary at Jordanville, New York) are centers for the propagation of modernism in the Church, and even when they cry \u201cback to tradition\u201d or \u201cpatristic revival,\u201d this is seldom more than another academic fashion, usually taking its inspiration from Roman Catholic scholarship, and leading not at all back to a truly Orthodox spirit<\/em>, but only to yet more empty forms. To have a seminary education, even to have the \u201cright views\u201d about Orthodox history and theology\u2014is not enough. A typical modern \u201cOrthodox\u201d education produces, more often than not, merely Orthodox rationalists capable of debating intellectual positions with Catholic and Protestant rationalists, but lacking the true spirit and feeling of Orthodoxy<\/em>. This spirit and feeling are communicated most effectively in the Lives of saints and in similar sources which speak less of the outward side of correct dogma and rite than of the essential inward side of proper Orthodox attitude, spirit, piety. Very many of these basic Orthodox sources, already translated into English, are lying unused by Orthodox Christians because a proper Orthodox approach or introduction to them has not been given. Let us attempt here to make this approach, particularly with regard to the Orthodox saints of the West who are as yet so little known to Orthodox Christians in America, even though a number of them have been revered for centuries in the East. May this our effort be a fitting \u201cprologue\u201d (we shall see in a moment what this word means in Orthodox literature) to a whole treasure-chest of Orthodox texts! May it help us all to put off our vain modern \u201cwisdom\u201d and enter more deeply into the spirit of Orthodox antiquity and its literature.<\/p>\n The earliest Lives of saints were the Acts of the Martyrs, followed in the 4th century, when the Egyptian desert began to blossom with monks, by the Lives of ascetics, the first of this form being the Life of St. Anthony the Great by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. Later, collections of such Lives were made, and they have been handed down to the present day in such works as the Lives<\/em> of St. Demetrius of Rostov (\u20201709) in Slavonic and Russian, and the Synaxaria<\/em> of St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (\u2020l809) in Greek. A person with a modern education must be taught how to approach these works, just as a person who has been trained in classical Western painting must be re-educated in order to understand the quite different art of the icon. Hagiography, like iconography, is a sacred art and has its own laws which are quite different from those of secular art. The Life of a saint is not a mere history of him, but rather a selection of the events in his life which reveal how God has been glorified in him; and its style is devout, and often exalted and reverential, in order to give a proper spiritual tone and feeling to the narration and arouse in the reader both faith and piety. This is why a mere retelling of a saint\u2019s life can never take the place of the original hagiographical account. A \u201cLife\u201d thus differs from a \u201cbiography\u201d much as an icon differs from a naturalistic portrait.<\/p>\n Apart from actual Lives of saints, there is a second kind of hagiographical literature in the Orthodox Church. This is the material which has come down to us in the Orthodox Prologues<\/em>, which include both brief Lives and edifying incidents from the lives of holy men as well as ordinary sinners. The name \u201cPrologue\u201d was given to collections of hagiographical literature as early as the 11th<\/sup> century in Byzantium; soon they appeared in Slavonic also and became greatly beloved by the Orthodox Russian people.<\/p>\n The Prologue<\/em> is actually one of the liturgical<\/em> books of the Orthodox Church. It is appointed to be read (not chanted, like the Psalms) after the Sixth Canticle of the Canon at Matins (in the Russian Church; in the Greek Church the Synaxaria<\/em> are read here). The solemn and didactic prose of this book, giving first of all brief Lives of the saints of the day, does indeed serve as a \u201cprologue\u201d to the liturgical celebration of these saints in the Church\u2019s exalted poetry, much as the Acts of the Martyrs preceded the liturgical celebration of the martyrs in ancient times; this seems to account for the origin of its name. Yet it is of quite secondary importance whether the Prologue<\/em> be read strictly \u201caccording to the Typicon\u201d at its appointed place in the Divine services. The spirit of the Church is freedom, and various adaptations of ancient practice are possible, if only these serve for the edification and piety of the faithful. The Prologue<\/em> (just like the Lives of saints) could be read at family morning or evening prayers, at mealtimes, on long winter evenings\u2014a time now lamentably usurped even in most Orthodox homes by television, which inculcates its own crude, worldly tone and feeling. The book read need not be the Prologue (which does not exist in English, in any case), but another book of similar inspiration may be used. Let us here only look briefly at the Prologue itself in order to discover something of its spirit for us who live in the soul-less, spirit-less 20th century\u2014to a discussion of books of similar inspiration in the West.<\/p>\n In the Slavonic Prologue<\/em> printed at the St. Petersburg Synodal Press in 1896<\/a> (two large folio volumes of some 800 pages each\u2014enough in itself to give us a glimpse of what our poor American Orthodoxy lacks!), under the date June 27 (chosen at random) we find the following:<\/p>\n First, \u201cthe commemoration of our holy Father Sampson the Hospitable,\u201d which gives a brief outline of the good deeds of this Saint (less than half a page). On most days there are several other similarly brief Lives, but on this day there is only the one Life, followed by a number of different edifying incidents. The first incident is a \u201cHomily on Martin the Monk who was in Turov at the church of the holy Martyrs Boris and Gleb, living alone in God.\u201d This is an account of how Sts. Boris and Gleb appeared to one holy Russian monk in his illness and gave him to drink and healed him (half a page). This is followed by a little longer incident from the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, concerning the Presbyter Severus, who delayed in visiting a dying man and found him dead on his arrival, but by his prayers brought him back to life for seven days in order that he might repent of his sins. Similar incidents are taken in other parts of the Prologue from such books as the Lausiac History of Palladius<\/a> (5th<\/sup> century), the Spiritual Meadow<\/a> of John Moschus (6th<\/sup> century), and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers<\/a>, the final entry for June 27 is a brief Homily \u201cThat it is good to visit the sick,\u201d concluding with the Scriptural words of Christ: \u201cFor I was sick, and ye visited me,\u201d and the standard conclusion of every day\u2019s readings: \u201cTo Him may there be glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.\u201d<\/p>\n It may readily be seen how foreign such readings are to the spirit and taste of our times. These are what might be called by some modern scholar \u201cpious tales\u201d or \u201cmiracle stories\u201d; he would disdain them not only for their miracles, but just as much for their \u201cmoralizing.\u201d But it is just here that the searcher for the true spirit of Orthodoxy must question the \u201cobjective\u201d scholar. Why is it that Orthodox Christians for nearly two millenia have found spiritual instruction and nourishment in such stories, and only quite recently, under the strong influence of modern Western \u201cenlightenment,\u201d have our sophisticated Orthodox seminary graduates begun to disdain them? Is it because they are not true? \u2014We shall see below that this is not the case at all. Is it because our Orthodox ancestors were really naive children who needed such tales, but we ourselves, being more sophisticated and mature, can do without them? \u2014But then where do we derive our Orthodox nourishment outside of the few hours a week spent in church and church schools\u2014from television?! Or could it be that our Orthodox ancestors had something which we lack, and which we desperately need in order to remain truly Orthodox and hand down the unchanging Orthodox faith and piety to our own offspring? Could it be that our ancestors understood something that many of us have lost through acquiring the habit of false, worldly knowledge? Perhaps, indeed, we may find in these miracles and morals that so insult the \u201cmodern mind\u201d a missing dimension of the contemporary outlook, which in its elusive search for a two-dimensional \u201cobjectivity\u201d has lost the key to much more of true wisdom than it thinks to have gained. \u201cScientific objectivity\u201d has come today virtually to a dead-end, and every kind of truth has come into question. But this dead-end for worldly knowledge is perhaps the opening of a way to a higher knowledge, wherein truth and life are no longer divorced, where advance in true knowledge is impossible without a corresponding advance in moral and spiritual life. Involuntarily, the converts to Orthodoxy form Western lands\u2014and the Westernized \u201cnative Orthodox\u201d as well\u2014have been transported back to that earlier time when the proud rationalism of pagan Rome was conquered by the true wisdom of Christianity. Let us therefore turn back to that earlier time in order to find something of the freshness and power of Orthodoxy as it conquered the Western mind. There we shall find also, to our great good fortune, materials for a Western \u201cPrologue\u201d (many of them already in English) not at all inferior to that of the East, as well as keys for understanding it and entering into its spirit.<\/p>\n The lands of the West, from Italy to Britain, knew both the preaching of the Apostles and the deeds of martyrs; here the Christian seed was planted so firmly that the West responded immediately and enthusiastically when it first heard of the great ascetics of Egypt and the East. St. Athanasius\u2019 Life of St. Anthony the Great was quickly translated into Latin, and the best sons and daughters of the West went to the East to learn from the great Fathers there. Many, including Blessed Jerome and the noble Roman ladies Paula and Melania, ended their days in the Holy Land; others, such as the Presbyter Rufinus, went on pilgrimage and brought back such valuable texts as the History of the <\/em>Monks of Egypt<\/em><\/a>: one\u2014St. John Cassian the Roman<\/a>\u2014learned so thoroughly the spiritual doctrine of the Egyptian Fathers that his books (the Institutes<\/em><\/a> and Conferences<\/em><\/a>) became the chief foundation of the authentic monastic tradition of the West. The great seedbed of Orthodox monasticism in 5th<\/sup>-century Gaul\u2014Lerins <\/a>\u2014 grew up entirely under the influence of the Eastern monastic tradition.<\/p>\n And then, even as the news of the phenomenon of Egyptian monasticism was still spreading through the West, the West produced its own ascetic miracle: St. Martin of Tours<\/a>. Even before his death in 397, his manuscript Life<\/em> was being circulated in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere in the West, revealing him as a monastic Father and wonderworker in no way inferior to the desert Fathers in the East. From that time on the West had ascetic examples of its own to inspire its offspring, as well as able writers of their Lives, which to this day remain a chief primary source of the genuine Orthodoxy of the West. Among many others from the 5th to the 8th centuries, one may mention: in Gaul, the Eulogy of St. Honoratus, founder of Lerins, by St. Hilary, his successor as Bishop of Arles, and the Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius of Lyons; in Italy, the Life of St. Benedict by St. Gregory the Great (Book II of the Dialogues), and the shorter Lives and incidents from the Lives of the Italian Fathers in the same work; in England, the Life of St. Cuthbert by Venerable Bede, and the Life of the great anchorite of the moors, St. Guthlac, by the Monk Felix; in Ireland, the Life of St. Columba by the Monk Adamnan[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here let us look more closely at three Western hagiographers of the 5th and 6th centuries. Their spirit is unquestionably and powerfully Orthodox.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sulpicius Severus (363-420) is an excellent example of the proud Roman mind conquered by Christianity. Well educated, a successful lawyer, happily married, a writer of Latin prose (as even the critical historian Gibbon notes) in \u201ca style not unworthy of the Augustan age\u201d \u2014 he possessed all the characteristics needful for prosperity and success in the decadent Roman world at the turn of the 5th century. And yet, not only was he converted to the still- new religion of Christianity, he even abandoned the world and became the disciple of a wonderworking bishop and the writer of a Life of him that astonished the West by its miracles. Modern scholars, whether agnostic or \u201cChristian,\u201d find him to be \u201cone of the puzzles of history,\u201d because \u201cno biographer of his period was better qualified to write a truthful life of a contemporary saint and no biographer of his period \u2014 we may almost say, of any period \u2014 has written a life more full of astounding prodigies.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n This \u201cpuzzle\u201d remains unsolved for modern scholars; but how simple the answer to it is for someone unprejudiced by modern opinions of what is \u00ab\u00a0possible\u2019 or \u201cimpossible.\u201d Sulpicius, both by his own experience and by the words of eyewitnesses he knew and trusted\u2014discovered that the miracles of St. Martin were true<\/em>, and he wrote of these \u201castounding prodigies\u201d only because they were true<\/em>. Sulpicius himself writes in the conclusion to his Life<\/em>: \u201cI am clear in my own conscience that my motives for writing were the certainty of the facts and the love of Christ, and that I have only related what is well known, only said what is true.\u201d<\/p>\n We who, even in these decadent latter times, have known Archbishop John Maximovitch<\/a> (\u20201966), a wonderworker very similar in many respects to St. Martin, have no difficulty in believing the words of Sulpicius; they ring true to our own Orthodox Christian experience. It is only those who do not know the power of Orthodoxy in practice who find the Life of St. Martin<\/em> a \u201cpuzzle.\u201d\u2019 It is quite natural, in the Christian understanding, for the virtue of a man entirely dedicated to God and living already on earth an Angelic life, to result in manifestations which astound mere earthly logic, whether these be revelations of other-worldly humility and meekness, or outright miracles. The very word virtus in Latin signifies both \u201cvirtue\u201d and \u201cpower,\u201d which in the Lives of saints is often \u201cmiraculous power,\u201d often translated simply \u201cmiracles.\u201d<\/p>\n The Orthodox tradition is by no means credulous in its acceptance of the miracles of saints. Great care is always taken to assure that the Lives of saints contain true accounts and not fables; for it is indeed true that, in the age of \u201cromance\u201d that began in the Western Middle Ages just after Rome\u2019s final separation from the Church of Christ (1054), such fables were<\/em> introduced into many Lives of saints, rendering all later Latin sources especially suspect. Orthodox hagiographers, on the other hand, have always taken as their principle the maxim that St. Demetrius of Rostov placed on the first page of his Lives<\/em>: MAY I TELL NO LIE ABOUT A SAINT. This is also why, in the Orthodox Church, great care is taken to transmit the original sources<\/em> that tell of the saints: those Lives which are based on the author\u2019s immediate experience and the testimony of witnesses known to him personally. Thus the freshness and marvel of one who personally knew the saint is preserved, and there is transmitted to us directly, \u201cbetween the lines\u201d as it were, the authentic \u201ctone\u201d of a holy life.<\/p>\n Several years after the death of St. Martin, Sulpicius Severus composed two (sometimes divided into three) \u201cDialogues\u201d on St. Martin[3]<\/a>. This work, again, is greatly criticized by rationalist scholars, not merely for its miracles, but even more for its \u201canecdotal\u201d character. One critic writes of it that by it \u201cSulpicius fixed for centuries a hagiographical tradition that rates the anecdotes of wonderworking above spiritual portraiture\u201d (Hoare, The Western Fathers<\/em><\/a>, p. 7). For Orthodox Christians precisely this \u201canecdotal\u201d character is a source of immediate delight and makes the Dialogues<\/em> of Sulpicius very close in spirit to the Prologue<\/em>. Rationalist scholars are offended by these \u201canecdotes\u201d because they have lost the whole picture<\/em> into which these fragments fit. Orthodox Christians by no means see in such \u201canecdotes\u201d the essence of a saint\u2019s life and character; but of course we take delight in the miracles of our saints and do not weary of them, knowing that in these true stories<\/em> we can already see the breaking into this world of the entirely different laws of the spiritual, heavenly world, which at the end of time will entirely triumph over the laws of this fallen world. For us every \u00ab\u00a0anecdote\u201d that breathes the spirit of true Christianity in practice is a part of that one Christian life<\/em>, the model for our own feeble struggle for salvation.<\/p>\n The Dialogues<\/em> of Sulpicius are still somewhat \u201csophisticated\u201d and therefore not as offensive to rationalist critics as later Orthodox works in the West. Sulpicius was trying to communicate to the educated Romans of his day the wonders of the new Christian life and frequently has in mind the weakness of his readers \u2014 whether their difficulty in believing some of his accounts, or their incapacity to fast like the ascetics of the East. Later, the materials for the Orthodox \u201cPrologue\u201d in the West become more \u201cchildlike\u201d \u2014- not, primarily, because the level of education has decreased, but because Christianity has entered more deeply into the heart of the men of the West. Let us follow this development to see if we ourselves can learn from this childlikeness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Dialogues<\/em><\/a> of Sulpicius (400 A.D.) are an apologetic and missionary work, intended to convince men of the truth and power of Christianity, its saints, its miracles, its monastic life. The Dialogues<\/em><\/a> of St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, two centuries later (593) are a recalling to spiritual life in a West already Christianized. St. Gregory\u2019s situation, then, is also that of us today; for all but the freshest convert have experienced the waning of Christian zeal and the awareness of the need to renourish one\u2019s spiritual faculties.<\/p>\n The holy hierarch begins his Dialogues<\/em> in a melancholy frame of mind:<\/p>\n \u201cMy unhappy soul, weighed down by worldly affairs, calls now to mind in what state it was when I lived in my monastery, and how then it was superior to all earthly matters, far above everything transitory and corruptible, how it did usually think upon nothing but heavenly things.\u201d He is further saddened\u2014 but also inspired and roused to zeal \u2014 \u201cby remembering the lives of certain notable men, who with their whole soul did utterly forsake and abandon this evil world… very many of whom, in a contemplative and retired kind of life, greatly pleased God.\u201d He proceeds to \u201creport only those things which I myself have understood by the relation of virtuous and credible persons, or else learned by myself, concerning the life and miracles of perfect and holy men.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n Thus, the Dialogues<\/em> too are one of those original sources<\/em> so important for Orthodox Christians. There follow the four books of the Dialogues, which are so much in the genuine Orthodox spirit that it is no wonder that they later became one of the chief sources for the incidents of the Prologue<\/em> in the East, being very early translated into Greek, and earned for St. Gregory the name by which he is known to this day in the Orthodox Church: the Dialogist.<\/p>\n Two of the books are devoted to the saints of Italy who lived before St. Gregory \u2014 sometimes their Lives, but more often just incidents from their lives which are capable of arousing piety and zeal. The Second Book<\/em><\/a>, however, is devoted entirely to one saint who inspired St. Gregory in Italy much as St. Martin inspired Sulpicius in Gaul: St. Benedict (\u2020543), a great Holy Father of Western monasticism. This Book constitutes the earliest Life of this great Orthodox saint, who has long had his place \u2014 just like St. Gregory himself (March 12) \u2014in the Orthodox Calendars of the East (March 14).<\/p>\n The first three books of the Dialogues<\/em> of St. Gregory are, quite frankly, \u201cmiracle stories,\u201d and the great hierarch makes no apology for handing them down: these are the material of Christian hope and inspiration, and so deeply had the West become Orthodox at this time that it received them eagerly. But the Fourth Book of the Dialogues<\/em> is the crowning insult to the modern rationalist: these he would surely dismiss as \u00ab\u00a0ghost stories.\u201d The Fourth Book contains accounts \u2014 just as true and trustworthy as the \u201cmiracle stories\u201d \u2014– which demonstrate the truth of life after death. There are profitable tales of the departure of men\u2019s souls, the state of souls in heaven and hell, the return of souls to their bodies after death, various apparitions of souls after death, and the like. Very similar tales may be found in a superb Orthodox book in England over a century later: the Ecclesiastical History of the English People<\/em><\/a>, by Venerable Bede (Book V, chapters 12-14<\/a>).<\/p>\n It must be said that the graduates of the modernist Orthodox seminaries, and \u201csophisticated\u201d Orthodox today in general, find this part of ancient Christian literature the most difficult to accept. A few years ago a book of similar inspiration appeared in English: Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave<\/em>, subtitled \u201cOrthodox Teachings on the Existence of God, the Immortality of the soul, and Life Beyond the Grave\u201d (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N. Y., 1968). This work, the fruit of the missionary fervor of Archimandrite Panteleimon of Jordanville, consists of excerpts from the Dialogues<\/em> of St. Gregory, the Lives of Saints<\/em>, and similar standard Orthodox works, as well as Russian religious books and periodicals of the 19th century which give more recent incidents in the same spirit, together with excellent introductions to these excerpts, simple and straightforward and with just the right moral and pious tone so lacking in most Orthodox writings today. The book, while not an original source like St. Gregory\u2019s Dialogues<\/em>, is of great value for Orthodox Christians. Anyone who has tried to interest children in Orthodox reading is well aware that this book, as perhaps no other book that now exists in English, is absolutely fascinating to children; a child of ten or twelve, if he first hears some of the profitable tales in it being read aloud at a family gathering, will later quite likely take the book himself and literally devour it, so interesting is it \u2014 not merely because the tales are \u201cexciting\u201d and quite capable of competing with the banal ghost stories of our day, but even more because he knows that these stories are true and teach the truths of our Orthodox Faith<\/em>. How much energy \u201cOrthodox educators\u201d waste trying to arouse the interest of children in such inappropriate and soul-corrupting materials as cartoons and coloring books \u2014 while such a genuinely fascinating and authentic Orthodox book they overlook or disdain. Why is this? The answer to this question may clear away some of the difficulties that stand in the way of making maximum use of genuine Orthodox literature today.<\/p>\n In the 19th<\/sup> century Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov<\/a>, a great Orthodox Father of recent times, faced a similar problem when he tried to teach the Orthodox doctrine of heaven and hell, good and evil spirits, and life after death, to the Orthodox people of his time. Many \u201csophisticated\u201d Christians objected, precisely because their own ideas of these realities were based on Roman Catholic and Protestant, not Orthodox, ideas; and so Bishop Ignatius devoted one entire volume of his collected works (v. 3) to this question, giving both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic teaching. He found that the Orthodox doctrine on all these questions \u2014 even though it does not, of course, tell us everything about them \u2014 is quite precise in what it teaches, based on Patristic writings such as the Dialogues<\/em> of St. Gregory; while Roman Catholicism, under the influence especially of modern philosophy from Descartes onwards, has come to teach a doctrine in which spiritual realities become increasingly vague, corresponding to the ever greater preoccupation of modern men with material things. Most Orthodox Christians today have picked up this modernist-Papist teaching \u201cin the air\u201d of the contemporary world, and therefore if we do not consciously strive to discover the truth, we will be embarrassed when presented with the Orthodox teaching which is so definite, especially about the experiences of the soul after death. If we believe this teaching, after all, we shall certainly be considered \u201cnaive\u201d and \u201csimple\u201d even by other believers, let alone by unbelievers. Some in their embarrassment may come to think that these Orthodox teachings, which are so foreign to what \u201ceverybody thinks\u201d nowadays, are themselves somehow suspect, and they can point to Roman Catholics who claim that the Fourth Book<\/a> of St. Gregory\u2019s Dialogues teaches the Latin doctrine of Purgatory. Fortunately, however, this accusation has already been raised and answered for us. Roman Catholic scholars proclaimed this very thing at the false council of Florence in 1439, and St. Mark of Ephesus, the champion of Orthodoxy, gave the authoritative Orthodox answer: the teaching of St. Gregory in his Dialogues<\/em> is Orthodox, and in fact he clearly teaches against<\/em> Purgatory[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Dialogues<\/em> of St. Gregory the Great, as well as Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave<\/em>, is excellent medicine for today\u2019s over-sophisticated Orthodox Christians. They can be a touchstone for us: if, reading them, we find them \u201cnaive,\u201d \u201ctoo realistic,\u201d or otherwise distasteful, we can know that we are still too \u201csophisticated,\u201d not childlike and simple enough in our Orthodoxy. If we are converts, we can know that we have not yet entered enough into the genuine spirit of Orthodoxy; if we are \u201cnative Orthodox,\u201d we can know that our Orthodoxy has been corrupted by false modern Roman Catholic ideas. We will have to struggle harder to approach such basic Orthodox literature like children, without all our supposed \u201cwisdom.\u201d Those who are accustomed to reading the Orthodox literature of Christian antiquity have no difficulty with such books.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No writer in Latin in the Orthodox West was more devoted to the saints of Christ\u2019s Church nor more prolific in his praises of them than St. Gregory, Bishop of Tours (538-593). Although he is chiefly known today for his History of the Franks<\/em>, he is more important to Orthodox Christians for his eight Books of Miracles<\/em>, which are usually called his \u201cminor works.\u00a0\u00bb In this 6th<\/sup>-century writer of Gaul there breathes the very spirit of the Orthodox East and the Prologue. Being especially under the influence of St. Martin, his own predecessor in the See of Tours, from whom he received miraculous healings, he devoted four of the eight books of this work to The Miracles<\/em> (or rather, Virtues<\/em>) of Blessed Martin the Bishop<\/em>. But he also took all the saints as his concern, writing one book on The Glory of the Blessed Martyrs<\/em>, another on The Passion and Miracles of St. Julian the Martyr<\/em>, another on The Life of the Fathers<\/em>, and a final one on The Glory of the Confessors<\/em>. Taken together, these books \u2014 which deal mostly with the saints of Gaul \u2014 constitute the largest hagiographical material on the Orthodox saints of any land in antiquity. His aim in writing is moral and didactic, and he consciously turns his back on pagan learning. He himself writes:<\/p>\n \u201cWe ought to pursue, to write, to speak that which edifies the Church of God and by sacred teaching enriches needy minds by the knowledge of perfect faith. For we ought not to recall the lying stories, or to follow the wisdom of the philosophers which is hostile to God, lest we fall under the judgment of eternal death by the decision of the Lord… I do not recall in my work the flight of Saturn, the wrath of Juno, the adulteries of Jupiter… Having glanced at all these events built on sand and soon to perish, we return rather to divine and evangelical miracles\u201d (The Glory of the Blessed Martyrs<\/em>, Preface).<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n \u201cMiracles,\u201d indeed, are the subject matter as well as the title of these books. If rationalistic scholars are offended at the many miracles in the History of the Franks<\/em>, they are absolutely scandalized by the Books of Miracles<\/em>, which abound in them. But the reason why he writes of them, again, is because they are true, and he is careful to point out that he writes only what he knows from personal experience (having known many of the saints himself and witnessed many miracles) or from the testimony of reliable people. Thus, these books also are invaluable original sources<\/em> of Christianity in practice.<\/p>\n Although St. Gregory is known in the East and mentioned in Orthodox Patrologies[5]<\/a>, his writings were not translated into Greek or Slavonic. His concern was too much with the West, and the East already had numerous collections on Eastern saints in exactly the same spirit[6]<\/a>. More surprising, however, is it that the Books of Miracles<\/em> (save for a few excerpts) has never been translated into English. This can only be a testimony to the rationalist superstition that has prevailed in the West in modern times, and also to the dying out of interest in the Orthodox saints of the West which has been continuing for many centuries now. Another reason why he has been disdained in the West is that his language falls short of the standards of classical Latin. He himself recognizes this and states that he undertook his Books of Miracles<\/em> only at the command of the Lord in visions. In one dream, when protesting to his mother his lack of skill in writing, he received from her this answer:<\/p>\n \u201cDo you not know that on account of the ignorance of our people the way you can speak is considered more intelligible? So do not hesitate or delay doing this, because it will be a charge against you if you pass over these deeds in silence\u201d (The Miracles of Blessed Martin the Bishop<\/em>, Preface to the First Book).<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n Even Blessed Augustine, as is well known, was reproached for his shortcomings in classical Latin, and he gave a sufficient reply, which will do for an answer to the detractors of St. Gregory\u2019s Latin also: \u201cIt is better that the grammarians reproach us than that the people not understand us.\u201d<\/p>\n Archbishop John Maximovitch of blessed memory gave as his testament to the Orthodox Christians of the West his love for the saints of Western lands. In fulfillment of this testament we now offer, as a separate book, the first English translation of the whole of the seventh of St. Gregory\u2019s Books of Miracles<\/em> \u2014 The Life of the Fathers<\/strong>. No apology is necessary for presenting these twenty chapters on the monastic saints of Gaul in the 5th<\/sup> and 6th<\/sup> centuries. For the Orthodox Christian they are fascinating reading; the edifying homily that precedes each Life is most instructive for our spiritual struggle today; the spirit of the book is entirely Orthodox, and the Orthodox practices described in it have remained the inheritance of Orthodox Christians (but not of Roman Catholics) today, including the veneration of the \u201cicons of saints\u201d (the Latin text has iconicas<\/em> instead of the more to be expected imagines<\/em>) in chapter 12; and some of the incidents, just like the stories of the desert Fathers, have precise relevance for our problems today \u2014 for example, the story of the \u201ccharismatic\u201d deacon who \u201chealed in the name of Jesus\u201d until St. Friardus exposed him as being in Satanic deception (ch. 10).<\/p>\n It is our heartfelt wish that this book will take its place, together with the Dialogues <\/em>St. Gregory the Great, the Lausiac History<\/em> of Palladius, and other basic Orthodox source-books<\/strong>, as part of the daily reading of those who are struggling for their salvation on the narrow Orthodox path. May it be read silently, may it be read aloud; may it become, like the other great books of Christian antiquity, a source of piety and the true spirit of Orthodoxy which is everywhere being overpowered today by the spirit of the world. May it help us in the all-important struggle to become and remain conscious Orthodox Christians<\/em>, knowing what is the path of salvation, what is the savor of true Christianity, and how far we all fall short of these. May it be for us a beginning, a prologue, of true Christianity in practice !<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> F.\u00a0R. Hoare, The Western Fathers<\/em><\/a>, p. 4<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> English translation, together with the Life of St. Martin and Sulpicius\u2019 Letters about the Saint, in Hoare, The Western Fathers<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> St. Mark of Ephesus<\/a>, \u201cFirst Homily on Purgatorial Fire (Refutation of the Latin Chapters<\/a>),\u201d ch. 9; \u201cSecond Homily on Purgatorial Fire,\u201d ch. 23:9.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> For example, in the Patrology of Archbishop Philaret of Chernigov, St. Petersburg\u00a01882, vol.\u00a03, section\u00a0191.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> One of them, The History of the Lovers of God<\/em> by Blessed Theodoret (5th<\/sup> century)\u2014a collection of Lives of the Syrian Fathers\u2014is an exact parallel to St. Gregory\u2019s Life of the Fathers<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nThe Life of the Fathers<\/h2>\n
Introduction<\/h3>\n
1. Sulpicius Severus: The Dialogues <\/em>and Life of St. Martin<\/em><\/h3>\n
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\n <\/p>\n2. The Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great (534-604)<\/h3>\n
3. The books of miracles of St. Gregory of Tours<\/h3>\n
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\n[1]<\/a> Easily accessible collections of such original Lives in English include: The Western Fathers<\/em><\/a> (chiefly of Gaul), ed. by F.\u00a0R. Hoare, Harper Torchbooks, 1965; Lives of the Saints<\/em><\/a> (of England), tr. by J.\u00a0F.\u00a0Webb, Penguin Books, 1970; Anglo-Saxon Saints and Heroes<\/em><\/a>, tr. by Clinton Albertson, Fordham University Press. 1967; The Anglo- Saxon Missionaries in Germany<\/em><\/a>, tr. by C. H. Talbot, Sheed & Ward, N.Y., 1954.<\/p>\n
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\n\u00a0by Saint Seraphim of Platina<\/a> [\u20201982<\/strong>]<\/h3>\n
The Orthodox Word<\/em>, 1975, Vol. 11, No. 5 (64), September-October, pp. 175-83, 204-10<\/a><\/h4>\n
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