COMMEMORATED ON SEPTEMBER 12
Saint Athanasius of Serpukhov (in the world Andrew) was untutored at Obonezh Pyatina trendy the dwelling of the priest Auxentius and his next of kin Maria. He was, from junior, keen towards prayer and disavowal of the world, and he required a advantageous guide in monastic hard work.At this time, report of St Sergius of Radonezh had beforehand arrival out of the whole of Rus. The monastery of the Life-Creating Trinity at Makovets had become for anybody a shiny classic of monastic rigid. All the rage in the monastery, the cenobitic life converted "the abhorrent disturb of this world," creating an oneness of spirit in an unity of love based on the standard of the Prefigure Trinity Itself. The junior Andrew went from the outside of Novgorod to Abba Sergius at Makovets, fan in his route in search of spiritual recovery.
Named Athanasius in monasticism, in duty of St Athanasius the Great, the follower and copier of the Foundation of St Anthony the Great, the founder of Egyptian monasticism. St Athanasius in turn became a advantageous follower of the broad Igumen Sergius, the Fire up and guide of Russian monasticism.
The disciples of St Sergius, in supplement to the instinctive monastic obediences, normal the holy abba's blessing for special church services: stealing books, sculpture icons, assembly churches. This broaden a unmixed churchly flash to life, imparting churchly beauty and hymnology, a liturgical transfiguration of God's world.
The favored submission of Abba Athansios, which he imposed upon himself, was stealing books. The holy books were regarded by the Fathers as on the incredibly level as the holy icons, the utmost horrendous way to blab churchly training, frequent of theological and liturgical novelty.
The school of St Sergius, indicative to the Russian and to the General Cathedral the whole capacity of theological pragmatic knowledge of the Blessed Trinity, is straight away related with the ample of church literature, with the must of interactive building up of the Russian Cathedral by the well-read works of the Phobia Cathedral and its theologians, and by the physically powerful spiritual family of the Russian ascetics.
In the meeting 1374, the Serpukhov prince Vladimir Andreevich the Sturdy, a collaborator of Demetrius of the Don, turned to St Sergius with a warn to found a monastery on his lands. Abba Sergius came to Serpukhov with his expensive follower Athanasius, and having adjust the monastery of the Indication of the Limit Blessed Theotokos, he blessed St Athanasius to regulate it, and subsequently to be its igumen.
The monastery of St Athanasius was built award the city of Serpukhov, on the high put aside of the Stream Nara. They appropriately called it "Vysotskoi" ["of the heights"]. As a consequence equally its title, with which entered trendy Russian Cathedral history its founder and initially igumen, St Athanasius of Vysotsk.
Abba Athanasius strongly set about the rigid of the monastery entrusted to him. Numerous Russian ascetics in the sphere of during, "on the heights," for an heightened learning in monasticism.
According to the teaching of Abba Athanasius, sealed for us by Epiphanius the Careful, to be a holy woman was no easy thing. "The blame of the holy woman consists in this, that he be wary in prayer and in divine precepts until midnight, and sometimes for the whole night. He necessitate eat nil but cash and water, oil even and wine would be desolate indecorous." Unhappy the words of the saint of God, numerous came to him at the monastery on the heights, "but subsequently they slackened, and, unable to appropriate the work of stern toil, they fled."
Nation ascetics of cutting edge monastic worth remained with the holy abba. In this fashion, it was to this monastery, to his follower and fellow-ascetic Athanasius, that the God-bearing Abba Sergius of Radonezh sent his decide on child, St Nikon (November 17) for tonsure and tendency in monastic activities. St Athanasius qualified him: "Monks are called unsettled martyrs. Numerous holy martyrs suffered for a discrete hour and subsequently died, but each day monks appropriate sufferings not from torturers, but from within, from the properties of the flesh and from mental enemies. Near are struggles, and they shoulder until their dying breath."
In 1478, last the death of St Alexis, Conurbation of Moscow, the new Conurbation, St Cyprian (September 16) in the sphere of in Moscow. But Great Prince Demetrius of the Don embrace to answer his own priest and collaborator Michael [Mitaya] as metropolitan, and he would not take delivery of Conurbation Cyprian. Quite, he evicted him from Moscow.
St Cyprian was in a exhausting observation. But he found accept and considerate in the middle of the pillars of Russian monasticism, Sts Sergius of Radonezh and Athanasius of Vysotsk. From the very beginning, they saw the canonical validity of the Conurbation in his fight with the Great Prince and they supported him in the never-ending toil (1478-1490) for the mending of canonical order and unity in the Russian Cathedral. St Cyprian had to excursion selected get older taking part in these years to Constantinople to mess about in representatives planning happening the control of the Russian Cathedral. On one of these journeys, with the blessing of holy Abba Sergius, St Athanasius of Vysotsk went to Constantinople with his friend the Conurbation, dying his own follower, St Athanasius the Younger as the igumen of the Vysotsk monastery.
At Constantinople St Athanasius demure trendy the monastery of the holy Precursor and Baptist John (Studion), anywhere he found a detain for himself and for selected disciples who had come with him. St Athanasius complete himself with prayer and salvific theological books. The holy woman passed away about twenty years in the metropolitan area of Cathedral culture, working to understand books from the Greek oral communication and stealing Cathedral books, which he subsequently sent off to Rus. Thereby, he transmitted to the Russian Cathedral not on your own a inheritance of broad Law-abiding evidence, but equally the traditions of Constantinople's masters of book explication, with their agile penmanship and artistry of textual miniatures, achieving a amity of textbook and form. A long-term creative memory was adjust amid St Athanasius's high-quality stealing of books at Constantinople and the calligraphic and iconographic school of the Vysotsk monastery at Serpukhov.
It was not by funny turn that it was extra at the Vysotsk monastery that the holy Igumen Nikon guided the decide on iconographer St Andrew Rublev (July 4), as considering previously the God-bearing Abba Sergius had guided Nikon himself in this monastery to spiritual manhood and an understanding of the rejuvenating and transformative spirit of respectable churchly beauty.
In this sacred service of churchly beauty, in tenacious liturgical trade for the success of the Life-Originating Trinity, the life-bearing intensity of St Andrew developed. God certain him for the broad decorative portrait of the theological and liturgical inheritance of St Sergius, with the morally upright wonderworking icon of the Limit Blessed Trinity for the iconostasis of the Trinity church. In the iconographic novelty of St Andrew Rublev, correct as in the temple-building trade of St Nikon, and in the hagiographic works of Epiphanius the Careful, we find draw and synthesis of the exclusive traditions of the Phobia and Russian art.
This creative synthesis was served equally by St Athanasius of Vysotsk all his life. Successful at Constantinople, he continued to work for the Russian Cathedral, and for his community land. To meet the expense of but one standard, he sent to the Vysotsk monastery ten icons of the exclusive Greek elegance. He and his disciples translated trendy the Slavonic oral communication the "Four Hundred Chapters" of St Maximus the Confessor, the Chapters of Aim at about church services, and the Discourses of St Simeon the New Theologian.
In the meeting 1401, correct in front his death, the worthy first-class commonplace, and possibly translated himself, a Cathedral Control, rambling within the Russian Cathedral under the title, "The Eye of the Cathedral."
St Athanasius passed away his life in tenacious work with books. He died at Constantinople in old age in the meeting 1401 (or possibly a bit in imitation of). Russian chroniclers meaning him as an first-class "sound, academic, knowing the Blessed Scriptures", to which "at do his writings meet the expense of witness." His Foundation was in print in the meeting 1697 by the hieromonk Karion [Istomin] of the Moscow Chudov monastery.
St Athanasius's child and follower, St Athanasius the Younger, in effect directed the spiritual life of the brethren and gave an standard by his own God-pleasing life. St Athanasius the Younger reposed last a aspiration cave in on September 12, 1395. In the ancient manuscripts of the saints it says of him: "St Athanasius, igumen of Vysotsk Indication monastery at Serpukhov, a new wonderworker who reposed in the meeting 6904 (1395) on the twelfth day of September, a follower of St Athanasius, wondrous follower of St Sergius, who in imitation of was at Constantinople and reposed show."
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"SAINT OR Local holiday POSTED THIS Daylight 2010(with 2009's attachment during equally and far-off, 2008's, even 2007!):"
