(1439–1515)

On the way to achievements

Before his conversion to monasticism, the Monk Joseph of Volotsky was known in the world under the name John Sanin.

He was born on October 31, 1439, in the village of Yazvische, near Volok Lamsky (now the city of Volokolamsk). His father, being a hereditary patrimonial owner, owned this village.

At one time, John's great-grandfather, Alexander Sanya, came to Rus' from Lithuania (probably among the close associates of the Lithuanian prince Svidrigailo, but perhaps a little earlier). He was granted patrimony by the Prince of Moscow for his faithful service.

John's grandfather, Gregory, was a man of deep faith and ended his earthly life as a monk, in fact, like his wife.

John's father and mother, John and Marina, also chose the Christian path of salvation for themselves.

Little is known about reliable details of the childhood and adolescence of Saint Joseph of Volotsk. It is reported that in infancy he was baptized and named John, in honor of the famous saint of God, John the Merciful.

When the future monk reached the age of seven, he was sent for training and spiritual education to the Volokolamsk monastery, to the pious elder Arseny Lezhenka. It is known that already at this age John showed an interest in book learning and obedience. According to legend, by the age of 9 he became a fully prepared reader.

It is assumed that in his childhood Ivan became friends with the future okolnichy of the Grand Duke, Boris Kutuzov.

Monastic feat

Even in his youth, John decided to subordinate his life to serving God, and at the age of twenty, having carefully considered his choice, he took monastic vows.

It is reported that he initially entered the Tver Savvina monastery. However, finding that the discipline there did not correspond to his own ascetic expectations, and having encountered gross foul language there, he did not want to indulge the local order and, with the blessing of Elder Barsanuphius Neumoi, moved to the Borovsk monastery.

Here he was tonsured a monk and given a new name, Joseph, in honor of the famous ascetic Joseph the Beautiful. In this monastery, under the guidance of the Monk Paphnutius, he acquired the foundations of spiritual experience. Fulfilling his monastic obedience, Joseph meekly and humbly worked in a cookery, a bakery, a hospital, and as a chanter in the church.

After John (Joseph) left worldly temptations and earthly vanities, his blood father fell ill. The illness constrained his strength so much that he could not turn around on his bed on his own. Feeling sincere filial love for his parent, Joseph asked the Monk Paphnutius for his blessing to take him under personal guardianship and settle him in his cell.

Elder Paphnutius heeded Joseph’s request, accepted the unfortunate man into the monastery and tonsured him as a monk. Joseph looked after his father for fifteen years, until his death.

Joseph's mother, having secured filial support, accepted monasticism in the Vlasievsky monastery of Volok Lamsky.

Joseph's brothers, Vassian and Akaki, and his nephews, Dositheus and Vassian, took monastic vows at the Paphnutian Borovsk monastery.

Serving as abbot

Before his departure to God, the Monk Paphnutius bequeathed that after his death his disciple, Joseph, would take over the abbess. And so it happened. This decision met both the will of the Grand Duke, John III, and the wishes of the brethren. It is believed that Joseph was elevated to priestly dignity by Saint Gerontius.

In 1479, due to a misunderstanding that arose between the new abbot and the Grand Duke, as well as due to the dissatisfaction of the monastery brethren with Joseph’s desire to introduce a strict communal rule, he was forced to leave the monastery.

It is alleged that seven pious elders expressed unanimity with the abbot, who supported his desire to secretly leave the monastery.

Leaving the brethren, the Monk Joseph took with him the elder Gerasim the Black. Staying in different monasteries, the wise abbot passed himself off as a simple novice, a student of Gerasim. On the whole, this looked plausible, although sometimes the features of a shepherd wise through ascetic experience emerged through Joseph’s student image.

He spent several months in the Kirillo-Belozersk monastery. There is reason to believe that it was during this period that he met with, with whom he later had a long dispute.

It is known that after Joseph left the Borovsk monastery, the brethren turned to John III with a request to elect a new abbot for them, but he refused, explaining that their abbot was Joseph. It is alleged that Father Joseph returned to the monastery for some time, but in May 1479 he retired again.

Founding of the monastery

In June of the same year, accompanied by several elders, he arrived in the city of Ruza. The Monk Joseph decided to found a hermitage in impenetrable forests near the estates of his own father.

The Volotsk prince, Boris, approved the idea and even allocated his hunter, who was well versed in the local places, to help the saint. Soon, on the banks of the Struzya River, in a quiet, secluded place, the foundation of the temple was laid. According to some evidence, Prince Boris of Volotsk and his entourage took part in this event.

In the fall, the prince, driven by the desire to help the monastery, granted it ownership of the villages of Spirovskaya, Yartsevskaya and Rugotinskaya, and a short time later - the village of Pokrovskoye. Often he delivered food products to the monastery. In May 1483, by princely order, the village of Otchishchevo was transferred to the monastery.

The prince's wife, wanting to make her contribution, granted the village of Uspenskoye to the monastery. After the death of Prince Boris, his heir, Fyodor Borisovich, picked up the good tradition and continued to support the monastery.

In the early days of the monastery’s existence, the brethren consisted of former inhabitants of the Paphnutian monastery, former Volotsk patrimonial monasteries, commoners and runaway slaves. Around the beginning of the 16th century, the brethren included former close associates of the prince.

The monastery had a strict charter that met the requirements of the spirit of the reverend abbot. The rules of the internal life of the monks were harsh, and not everyone who came was ready to stay here forever. In addition to general monastic work, the monastery was engaged in the copying of liturgical books and patristic works. The abbot himself often did this good deed at night.

Initially, all administrative power was mainly concentrated in the hands of Joseph. At the same time, he participated in the labors of his brothers, not shying away from even the most difficult work. Subsequently, the role of the elders in the monastery increased.

At the end of his earthly life, the Monk Joseph was very ill. He was tormented by terrible headaches, his eyesight was weakened, his body was withered. The leadership of the monastery during this period was transferred to the ascetic Daniel (in the future - Metropolitan of Moscow).

Feeling his imminent death, he put on the great schema, prayed unceasingly, and regularly partook of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. When his bodily strength left him so much that he could no longer stand or even sit during worship, he was given a secluded place in the temple (so as not to embarrass the pilgrims), where he was present lying down and where his disciples brought him.

“The Enlightener” by Joseph Volotsky as a weapon against the heresy of the Judaizers

The heresy of the Judaizers, against which, according to the Providence of God, the Rev. Joseph of Volotsk fell to become a fighter, was one of the most destructive false teachings in the entire history of Rus'.

Judaizing heretics denied the trinity of God according to the Persons, the Divine dignity of Christ, and rejected the veneration of holy relics and Orthodox icons.

The internal danger of this spiritual infection was that, unlike many other errors, it undermined the very foundations of Christian doctrine. Externally, the threat was expressed in large quantities followers of this teaching, not excluding representatives of the princely authorities and the clergy.

The work "" compiled in this regard by the Monk Joseph was one of the most striking, timely and sought-after manuals, presenting well-founded and revealed Orthodox dogmas in a coherent, systematic order, in accessible theological language. Here are given irrefutable arguments exposing the false teaching of heretics.

In addition to the named work of the holy father, others have reached us: , Joseph of Volotsky, .

Troparion to St. Joseph of Volotsk, tone 5

As the fertilizer of the fasters and the beauty of the fathers, the giver of mercy, the wisdom of the lamp, all the faithfulness, having come together, let us praise the meekness of the teacher and the shamer of heresies, the wise Joseph, Russian star, praying to the Lord / to have mercy on our souls.

Kontakion to St. Joseph of Volotsk, tone 8

Lives of unrest, and worldly rebellion, and passionate leaping into nothingness, imputing the deserted citizen, you appeared, having been a mentor to many, the Reverend Joseph, a monk’s colleague and a faithful prayer book, a zealot of purity, / pray to Christ God for the salvation of our souls.

His pious parents, John and Marina, who lived in the village of Yazvische-Pokrovskoye (near the city of Volokolamsk), sent the seven-year-old boy to study with the elder Arseny of the Volokolamsk Holy Cross Monastery. In two years, the gifted youth studied all the Holy Scriptures and became a reader in the monastery church.

At the age of twenty, John went into the desert near the Tver Savvin Monastery to the elder Barsanuphius, and then, with his blessing, to the Borovsky monastery to the Monk Paphnutius, who tonsured the young man into monasticism with the name Joseph.

The Monk Joseph spent about eighteen years under the guidance of the holy ascetic, diligently performing the harsh feats of monastic obedience. After the death of the Monk Paphnutius (May 11, 1477), the Monk Joseph was appointed abbot of the Borovsky monastery. Driven by zeal for salvation, the monk introduced a communal rule in the monastery. This caused discontent among some monks. Then the Monk Joseph, leaving the monastery, visited many Russian monasteries and, as a simple novice, entered the Kirillo-Belozersky cenobitic monastery. There he became even more convinced of his desire to found a community monastery. When the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery learned that the monk was holding the rank of abbot, he retired to the Volokolamsk region, where, at the confluence of the Struga and Sestra rivers in a dense forest, in a place miraculously cleared by a blown storm, in 1479 he founded the monastery of the Assumption Holy Mother of God.

The monk combined his personal feat of strict abstinence, unremitting work and incessant prayer with constant concern for the spiritual improvement of the monastery brethren, for whom he wrote the “Rules”.

The Monk Joseph trained a whole school of ascetic monks. Many of them entered the ranks of Russian saints and were archpastors of the Russian Church; the monastery itself became a center of spiritual enlightenment for many centuries.

Another great feat of the Monk Joseph was his struggle against the heresy of the Judaizers that arose in Russia in the 15th century. He decisively exposed heretics and wrote “The Tale of the Newly Appeared Heresy” and “11 Words”, in which he outlined Orthodox teaching about the Most Holy Trinity, about the Hypostasis of the Lord Jesus Christ, about the second coming of the Savior. Subsequently collected together and supplemented by 5 more “Words,” these works received the name “The Enlightener” and for a number of centuries served as a guide in Orthodox Theology.

Joseph Volotsky

Monk Joseph, in the world Ivan Sanin, came from a different environment than the Nile. His father owned the village of Yazvische within the Volotsk appanage principality. Ivan's father and three brothers ended their lives as monks, but before leaving the world, the brothers served at the court of the appanage prince Boris Volotsky. At the age of eight, Ivan was sent to study by Arseny, an elder of the Volotsk Holy Cross Monastery. At the age of 20, he and his peer Boris Kutuzov decided to enter a monastery. The Sanins and Kutuzovs owned estates in Volok Lamsky and belonged to the local service society.

Sanin first went to the Tver Savvin Monastery, but did not stay there long and moved to Borovsk to Abbot Paphnutius. The main feature of the monastery of Paphnutius was the tireless work of the monks.

Arriving at the monastery, 20-year-old Ivan met Paphnutius, who was busy cutting down forest. Before his death, the abbot went with his disciples to a pond, to a broken dam, and taught them “how to block the path of water.” With his severity and piety, Paphnutius earned respect in the grand ducal family. Joseph spent 18 years in labor and obedience under the leadership of Paphnutius. Following his son, Sanin the father came to the Borovsky monastery. Joseph accepted his father and for 15 years cared for a paralyzed old man who lived with him in the same cell.

Paphnutius Borovsky died in 1477, appointing Sanin as his successor. However, Joseph was in no hurry to take the reins of government into his own hands. In the company of Elder Gerasim Cherny, he wandered around Rus' for two years, moving from monastery to monastery. Joseph hid his abbess and called himself a disciple of Gerasim, and worked “in menial services.” Only once, being within the Grand Duchy of Tver, he involuntarily gave himself away. There was no one to read at the all-night vigil, and Joseph had to take books. Soon he became interested in reading, and he had “purity in his tongue, and quickness in his eyes, and sweetness in his voice, and tenderness in reading: no one in those days appeared anywhere like that.” The astonished abbot advised the Tver prince not to let the wondrous reader leave his estate, and the pilgrims had to hastily flee from Tver.

Among Russian monasteries, Kirillo-Belozersky enjoyed special fame. Joseph visited him when the Nile apparently left Beloozero. Explaining his departure, Sorsky briefly mentioned that he did it “for the sake of the soul, and not for anything else.” Joseph described his impressions of visiting the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery in harsh and frank terms: “The oldest and greatest elders all ran away from the monastery, impatient to see St. Cyril, the tradition was trampled and swept aside.”

After wandering through monasteries, Joseph Sanin returned to the Pafnutiev Borovsky Monastery. The brethren greeted him with restraint.

The abbot left the monastery for two years and did not give any news about himself. The monks turned to Ivan III, asking for another abbot. The Emperor refused them. The Pafnutev Monastery was the family monastery of the Grand Duke, which opened up great prospects for the abbot, but Joseph left the Pafnutev Monastery. The decision was related to his religious beliefs, as well as clearly defined political sympathies.

Having become acquainted with monastic practice in various principalities and lands of Russia, Sanin came to the conclusion that only strict measures could save the shaken ancient piety. Not hoping to correct morals in ancient monasteries with a long-established way of life, Sanin came to the idea of ​​​​the need to found new monastery, which would become a model of purification monastic life from the vices that were eating away at her. For this purpose, Joseph decided to retire to his native land - the Volotsk inheritance, where Boris Vasilyevich, brother of Ivan III, reigned.

On June 1, 1479, Sanin came to his appanage “fatherland”, and a few days later he founded a hermitage in the middle of a pine forest, at the confluence of the Sestra and Struga rivers. Sanin and his seven monks, according to the legend, did not have to waste energy clearing the forest. As soon as the travelers reached Sister, a miracle happened: a hurricane, without causing harm to people, knocked down mighty trees and opened before their eyes a valley with the silver surface of a lake in the east. If Sergius of Radonezh himself built the first church and the first cells in the appanage domains, then Joseph from the first days received help from the appanage prince. Boris Vasilyevich, the chronicler says, “sent enough craftsmen to create a church and cells.” The first wooden church was founded on June 6 and consecrated on August 15. Five or six years passed, and thanks to the generous subsidies of the Volotsk prince, a majestic stone temple was erected on the site of the wooden church, which Joseph commissioned to paint the “cunning painter” Dionysius, the most famous of the artists of Rus'.

In church splendor, music and painting there was a power that had the deepest impact on the soul of the people. Sanin was an artistically gifted person and made the best examples of art of his time available to the monastery. Among the few things brought by Sanin from the Borovsky Monastery were the Gospels, the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, psalters, the Books of Basil the Great and Peter of Damascus, the “ABC Patericon” and, finally, “four icons, three of Rublev’s letters to Andreev.”

Joseph cared about the beauty and decorum of the church service. In the church, he taught, “let everything happen in order and in order.” External decorum, the abbot believed, opens the way to internal beauty: “First, let’s take care of bodily decorum and decorum, and then about internal preservation.” In the statutory instructions on prayer, even the posture of the person praying is not forgotten: “Clench your hands, and connect your nose, and close your eyes, and collect your mind.” Joseph addresses even more detailed instructions of this kind to the laity in his main work entitled “The Enlightener”: “Have a gentle step, a moderate voice, an orderly speech, food and nutrition calmly, see what is needed, speak what is needed, be sweet in your answers, do not be excessive in conversation, May your conversation be in a bright face, may it give joy to those who talk to you.”

No monastery had a stricter charter than the Joseph Monastery. A detailed set of all kinds of prohibitions served as a kind of support for a solid monastic life. Sanin believed in the formidable judge Christ the Pantocrator, punishing world evil. In his monastery, the authority of the abbot reigned; strict discipline and unconditional obedience were required from the brethren. Sanin inspired everyone together and each individually that no one would escape punishment even for a minor violation Holy Scripture: “Our souls,” he wrote, “let us rest on the one line of God’s commandments.”

The exploits of the monks, encouraged by the authorities, were of a traditional nature. A special place among them was occupied by bows that did not require much mental work, but were extremely tedious. Contemporaries described the asceticism of the brethren in the Volotsk monastery: “Ov pansyr (an item very expensive in Rus' and available to some boyars) was worn on a naked body under a scroll, and in iron heavy and bows laid, ov 1000, in 2000, in 3000, and in sedya tasting sleep." The punishments established by the abbot for all kinds of offenses could not be compared with the feats voluntarily undertaken. The culprit had to make 50–100 bows. In exceptional cases, a monk was sentenced to “dry eating”; some were imprisoned “in iron”.

Joseph's innovations earned his monastery fame throughout Rus'. But the time that was going through then Russian society, was alarming. The historical drama turned into tragedy. The conquest of Novgorod destroyed the centuries-old order. A supporter of the rich church, Joseph Sanin could not regard secularization in Novgorod as anything other than sacrilege. He also did not approve of the gross interference of secular authorities in church affairs. Joseph's monastery arose on land that was subordinate to the Novgorod archbishopric. The Novgorod ruler Theophilus became his patron. In the fall of 1479, Ivan III ordered the arrest of Theophilus. In January of the following year, the disgraced hierarch was taken to Moscow and imprisoned in the Chudov Monastery.

Joseph Sanin returned to his native place at the moment when his patron, Prince Boris, and the Volotsk nobles who served him (among them the Sanins, Kutuzovs, etc.) plotted a rebellion against Ivan III. In 1480, princes Boris and Andrei Vasilyevich broke peace with Moscow and moved to the Lithuanian border.

Preparing for a long war with Ivan III, the brothers sent their families to the Polish king, and they themselves went to Velikiye Luki.

Boris Volotsky spared no expense in establishing the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery. In a dispute with his brother Ivan III, he counted on Sanin’s mediation.

As abbot of the family monastery of the Grand Duke, Joseph enjoyed authority with the widow of Vasily II and her sons. He helped to extinguish quarrels in the family circle and reconciled warring brothers. In the conflict between Ivan III and Boris, Sanin openly sided with the appanage prince.

While working on his main work, “The Enlightener,” Sanin included in its composition a theological treatise, in its original version addressed to a certain icon painter. According to the hypothesis of Ya. S. Lurie, Nil Sorsky participated in the work on this treatise in its early edition together with Joseph Sanin. There is no doubt that Nile and Joseph acted together against the heretics. But in relation to the authorities, their position was apparently different.

While in the Volotsk appanage principality, Joseph clearly formulated his view on the origin of the sovereign’s power and his relationship with his subjects. While recognizing the need for subjects to obey the authority of the monarch established by God, Joseph at the same time listed the conditions that made such obedience unacceptable. There is no need to obey the king, Sanin wrote, if the king has “passions and sins, love of money reigning over him... wickedness and untruth, pride and rage, and the worst of all is unbelief and blasphemy,” for “such a king is not God’s servant, but the devil and not the king.” there is, but a tormentor.”

Many years passed before movements of non-acquisitors (disciples of Paisiy Yaroslavov) and their opponents, the Osiphlans (followers of Joseph Sanin), arose among the Moscow clergy. But the demarcation began already at the time of the fall of Novgorod and the confiscation of Novgorod church lands. It was hardly by chance that Paisius ended up at the court of Ivan III at that time, and Sanin accused the monarch of love of money, violation of “truth,” “unbelief and blasphemy,” in other words, of actions that were detrimental to the Orthodox Church.

In an effort to unite the country and establish autocracy in it, Ivan III too often violated the law (“truth”), tradition and antiquity, encroached on the property of the clergy and interfered in purely church affairs.

2. Joseph Volotsky - one of the main characters in the fight against the heresy of Judaizers in Rus' Ivan Sanin (this was the original secular name of Joseph Volotsky) was from the Volokolamsk nobles, the son of a boyar. There are 18 monastic names known in the family of Ivan Sanin and only one