In this brilliant and meticulously researched book, which was deservedly awarded the 2010 Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, Scott Kenworthy explores the revival of Russian monasticism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of the empire's most important monastery, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. One of four lavras—or “preeminent monasteries” (396n86)—Trinity served as the Russian Orthodox Church's spiritual center, the “heart of Russia.” Kenworthy takes this apt phrase from the gifted philosopher, mathematician, and Orthodox priest Father Pavel Aleksandrovich Florenskii (1882–1937), who coined it in an essay in 1919 as part of a desperate (and unsuccessful) effort to convince the new atheistic Soviet authorities of the cultural importance of the Trinity Monastery “and, so far as possible, to protect the Lavra's way of life” (307). Drawing on extensive personal and institutional archives as well as an impressive array of printed sources, Kenworthy draws a compelling picture of the Lavra over the last two centuries. After Catherine II secularized church property in 1764, closing well over half of Russia's monasteries, monasticism surprisingly experienced a slow but steady revival; from 1800 to 1914, the number of monasteries grew from about 450 to 1,024 and the number of monastics increased nearly tenfold to 95,629 (18). The Trinity Lavra represented the most important example of this revival, which, Kenworthy claims, transformed “the religious landscape of modern Russia precisely by becoming a mass phenomenon; the recruitment of monks and nuns was democratized, so that it drew overwhelmingly from common people” (5–6). Over the course of the nineteenth century, peasants made up a larger and larger proportion of the monastic recruits, as barriers to social and geographical mobility (such as serfdom and the poll tax) were abolished (119). Far from being opposed to modernity, monasticism was “‘closer in ethos and organization’ to mass society” (5); greater social mobility, advances in transportation technology, and increasing literacy contributed to the monastic revival by allowing ordinary people to make pilgrimages to holy sites. Moreover, the growth of contemplative monasticism popularized hesychasm (the practice of continual prayer) and the spiritual elder (starets), both of which became part of mass culture through books such as Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father (1884), translated into English by Olga Savin as The Way of a Pilgrim (Boston: Shambhala, 1996). Monasticism, in Kenworthy's view, was far more modern and democratic than it has usually been portrayed.

In his first chapter, Kenworthy outlines the Byzantine background of Russian monasticism, explains the different types of monasteries, and provides a brief history of the Lavra from its founding in the fourteenth century to the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I (r. 1825–55). Drawing especially on the voluminous correspondence between the remarkable Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov, 1782–1867) of Moscow and his handpicked prior, Archimandrite Antonii (Medvedev, 1792–1877), the second chapter provides a brief institutional history of the monastery leadership from the 1820s to 1904. Under the Lavra's aegis, Filaret and his successors created more isolated hermitages where the contemplative life of stillness (hesychia) could be more easily attained; the third chapter describes these spiritual centers, such as the Gethsemane and Zosimova sketes, that became important in their own right. In the fourth and fifth chapters, Kenworthy analyzes the characteristics of monks and pilgrims and gives an account of the “typical” monk, who usually spent several years as a novice before taking the tonsure. The sixth and seventh chapters describe the response of the Trinity Lavra to movements for ecclesiastical reform and to the 1905 revolution. Fully aware of many of the problems of monastic life, Bishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii, 1851–1918) of Vologda, who had spent many years as a monk in the Lavra before his episcopal consecration in 1904, pushed for reforms that would strengthen discipline, community, and spiritual guidance (starchestvo). At the same time, through his polemical newspaper columns and tracts, Nikon politicized the monastery by publicly attacking freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freemasons, and Jews, “who have always dreamed of ruling over the world” (266). Kenworthy skillfully ties these seven chapters together by drawing on the unpublished autobiography of the extraordinary Archimandrite Toviia (Tsymbal), a peasant who entered Trinity Lavra in 1862 and eventually rose to become its prior from 1904 to 1915. Drawing on more limited sources, the final three chapters describe the suppression of the Lavra after the 1917 revolution and then its rebirth in 1945. After Trinity was closed in the 1920s, the intrepid monks re-established their communities as agricultural cooperatives for as long as possible. Many of them suffered arrest and execution in the 1930s and paid the ultimate price for their vocation.

Skillfully weaving together a readable narrative that covers nearly two centuries, Kenworthy has written an invaluable work that examines a significant social movement, the monastic revival, through the careful study of one important monastic complex. He brings life to his story with lively references to the letters, memoirs, and tracts of the monks themselves. Although clearly sympathetic with the ascetic heroes of his narrative, he does not shy away from presenting negative information about them. The Trinity monks fight among themselves, get drunk, fornicate, follow dubious accounting practices, such as keeping two sets of books, over many years—and then cover it all up as well as they can. All the while, the best among them, through their spiritual practices, help to transform the religious and cultural landscape of Russia. This beautifully written narrative is more compelling than Kenworthy's broader theoretical arguments about the relationship of modernity to religion, which remain insufficiently developed. After all, did anyone, even the defenders of the monastic life, understand it as “modern” and “democratic”? Even so, Kenworthy's significant study of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra makes a vital contribution to church history and should be widely read by historians of Christianity.