Isolde Thyrêt, associate professor of history at Kent State University, presents a detailed case study of how Nil Stolobenskii became a saint. Nil (died 7 December 1555 O.S.), who, as a hermit, intentionally cut himself off from society and the distractions of the world in order to achieve spiritual union with God (deification/theosis or, as the Hesychasts described it: the view of the Divine Light), spent the last twenty-seven years of his life alone on Stolobnoe island in Lake Seliger, in the remote forests between Tver΄ and Novgorod. As such, his life must be largely unknown to history. Thyrêt's study, however, looks less at what Nil did to become a saint in the eyes of God and more at how he became a saint in the eyes of the Russian Orthodox Church, how his memory grew from that of a local holy man to that of, first, the patron saint of the Nilov Monastery that sprung up around his hermitage, to that of a saint venerated in the region around Lake Seliger, and ultimately to that of an important saint commemorated by the Russian Orthodox Church and venerated by the Muscovite and imperial Russian elite.

Thyrêt's is a multi-faceted approach. She addresses the previous scholarship, taking useful concepts—such as the vital role played by “impresarios” in building nascent saints’ cults and the role played by “spiritual wanderers” in spreading the veneration of holy men and women from remote areas of Russia—while challenging ideas she finds outdated or incorrect, such as the belief that the Russian Orthodox Church created saints “from the top down.” She makes use of an impressive array of primary sources: she shows how the depiction of Nil developed over time in his saint's lives (vitae), liturgies commemorating him, and visual depictions of episodes in his life found in illustrated manuscripts and icons. She also combs through monastic donation records and inventories, commemoration lists (sinodniki), charters exempting the Nilov Monastery from certain fees and taxes, and wills bequeathing money, land, and gifts (vestments, books, chalices) to the monastery in order to show the geographic and social origins of those who venerated Nil, how that social make-up changed over the course of the seventeenth century, and how veneration of Nil spread from local peasants or churchmen to people from the local eparchy (Novgorod) to, eventually, very important people in the Muscovite administration. She also compares donation lists from the Nilov Monastery with those of other monasteries to show that the cult of Saint Nil was of greater interest or importance at the time.

Thyrêt also looks at how the life of a hermit, who, again, by his very desire for isolation would obscure that life from history, was written down by the incipient movement venerating him. The men who wrote his earliest vita and his earliest icons borrowed topoi and visual scenes from other, more familiar eremitic saints to flesh out Nil's life and sacred journey, most notably the lives of the Solovetskii saints Zosima and Savatii. By using similar themes, episodes, and scenes from the lives of these earlier saints, and even similar language, the writers of Nil's vitae and icons brought the saint to life for the faithful and conveyed the spiritual message and way of life the Christian believers were meant to emulate.

This extensive case study of how one saint rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most important in imperial Russia is a significant contribution to our understanding of the Church and religion in late Muscovite Russia, particularly the canonization process or “saint-making” in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and how it differs from the more formalized or structured process of the Catholic Church. Thyrêt's multidisciplinary approach—taking traditional historic sources and adding elements of religious studies, art history, literature, economics, and other fields—is also important in demonstrating how different fields of study can be used to gather, interpret and present historic evidence which might not be possible relying on more limited, traditional approaches to historic research.