Saint Sergius and Russian Spirituality

by Pierre Kovalevsky

By bringing the Orthodox spiritual tradition to the forests of the north, this remarkable fourteenth-century saint made Russia's period of political recovery also a period of spiritual renewal. Few have left such a powerful impression on a nation's history.

Genres: Russia

Paperback

Published June 1, 1976

Reviews

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are three sections to this book - the history of Orthodoxy in the Slavic lands, the story of St. Sergius, and then the way that his legacy shaped Russia. I thought that it was well done and there were a lot of things about Saint Sergius' impact on monasticism and the people that I didn't know and greatly admire. This book was written in the Russian diaspora to France in the 1950s and I was intrigued by that viewpoint on this book - and in fact it is humbling to know that it couldn't have predicted the fall of Communism and Orthodoxy in 21st Century Russia. Lastly, I thought that it did a good job of showing the break between Byzantine piety and Russian piety, which was happening right at the same time as St. Sergius.

[Clifton D. Healy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful gem of a book. It is a small summary of Russian history enclosed around a center which is a life of St Sergius of Radonezh. That middle section of the book is worth the entire price of the book. The final section also was helpful to me in pulling together and contextualizing the lives of St Paisius Velichovsky, St Seraphim of Sarov and St Cyril of White Lake.

[Stephen Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any Westerner, especially converts to Orthodoxy, should pick up a copy of this book in order to understand the absolutely massive impact St. Sergius had on Russia. I stopped counting the number of saints who trained under him because there were so many. The monastery he founded literally kept Russia alive, spiritually and physically, in times of war and peace.

The only drawback to this book, which is overall quite excellent, is its ending. It offers a brief, and I am afraid somewhat naive, appraisal of the infamous Paris school of Russian Orthodox theology, going so far as to bring up the notorious Professor Bulgakov (inventor of Sophioloy, which has been long condemned as heresy but still held by ecumenists and leftist so-called Orthodox academics) without any note on his teachings being condemned. The connection between this school, with its open ecumenism and compromise with Western academia, and St. Sergius, is tenuous and forced.

Nevertheless, this is a great book and an important introduction to this prominent Russian saint.