The Byzantine tradition of contemplative spirituality is best known today through the Philokalia, an anthology of ascetic texts compiled by the eighteenth century monks St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth and first published in 1782. The anthology, drawn from manuscripts in the Mt. Athos libraries, included 62 works, ranging from the fourth to fifteenth century, by thirty-six authors, many unknown outside this collection. St. Nikodemos and St. Makarios intended their work to generate a spiritual revival at Mt. Athos through a reassertion of the Hesychast tradition of fourteenth-century Byzantium and to provide opposition to the rationalism of the European enlightenment. The Philokalia was translated early into Slavonic and reissued with additions by later writers in Greek, Russian and Romanian translations. A modern English translation from the Greek edition, still in progress, offers general and scholarly access to the collection (G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, eds. and trans., The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, vols. 1–4. [London: Faber and Faber, 1979–1998]). The Philokalia gained wide interest as the book carried by the hero in the Russian classic The Way of a Pilgrim, and in recent times, especially through the works of Kallistos Ware and other orthodox theologians, it has become a staple of contemplative practice in the orthodox world and beyond.
The Philokalia's texts are intended as a guide to mystical prayer for monks, and they emphasize the stages of inner prayer leading to theosis (“deification”), including the use of the Jesus Prayer emphasized by Byzantine Hesychasts. The anthology preserves writings from fourth to fifteenth century authors selected to show, and perhaps create, an unbroken tradition of contemplative prayer from fourth century ascetics. Until recently, surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to the Philokalia. A recent collection that includes studies by leading theologians and scholars makes important contributions to understanding the history of the anthology, some of its major authors and core concepts, and its value for contemporary spiritual practice. It also identifies fundamental issues for further research, including study of individual authors, manuscript traditions, and analysis of language and composition techniques (Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, eds. The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012]). The two books reviewed here add valuable perspectives on these issues, as well as arguments for the contemporary relevance of the Philokalia.
Christopher Cook approaches the Philokalia from the viewpoint of a scholar who is also a clergyman and a clinical psychiatrist. He focuses on mental well-being, using the metaphor of “shepherding our thoughts” and asking how the tradition can “teach us that we can control and order thoughts that are confused, difficult to control and in disorder” (xx). This central concern of monks and psychotherapists is argued through a detailed explication of the Philokalia's central themes of passions, remedies for passions, and prayer in ascetic practice. Analysis of their physiological and psychological underpinnings, Cook believes, demonstrates a perceptive understanding of the process of human thought and offers a provocative comparison between the Philokalia and contemporary psychiatric approaches to “inwardness.”
In making his case, Cook provides an exceptionally useful overview of the major themes of the Philokalia. Following an introduction to the compilation and dissemination of the work since the eighteenth century, he traces the influence of the Platonic model of the soul, the Desert Fathers, and especially the ascetic teachings of Evagrios of Pontus (345–399) on “harmful thoughts,” knowledge and contemplative prayer in the anthology. Cook's analysis shows that the passions, often described in the texts as “hostile pleasures,” are seen as powerful sources of temptation assailing the ascetic, in language that frequently suggests external demonic forces in tension with inner struggles of the mind. Authors compiled lists of the passions and their attributes and described a complex process of the stages of mental temptation. In what Cook describes as a “pharmocopoeia of remedies for the passions” (151), Philokalia authors prescribed practice of an ascetic lifestyle and virtue, nepsis (“watchfulness”—a method of mentally guarding the soul against sensory images), psalmody, and prayer, especially the Jesus Prayer, to combat passions. Cook uses the term “mental well-being” to analyze their spiritual goal of attaining union with God through contemplative prayer, described by different authors as interrelated processes of deification (theosis); perfection of the intellect; stillness (hesychia); and blessedness. A chapter on psychotherapy begins with an introduction to the fundamentals of psychiatry and an acknowledgement of the fundamental differences between the two systems, from purposes (treatment of psychological disorders vs. spiritual salvation), audiences (ascetics vs. patients), concepts and terminology (the Platonic “soul” vs. the scientific “self”). Nevertheless, Cook argues, the Philokalia offers a therapeutic program with some of the features of psychotherapy: a systematic method of combatting disturbance (passions), a healing setting in a close relationship with a spiritual master, and a focus on the inner world of thoughts and feelings. He closes with the Philokalia's concept of thoughts as both internal and external in origin, angelic or demonic, and of their powerful positive and negative roles in reaching the goal of wordless and imageless contemplative prayer.
This study provides a valuable scholarly analysis of the language and ideas of the Philokalia, including a systematic examination of the evolution of its terminology and context from classical thought and the Desert Fathers. Exhaustive charts demonstrate an extraordinary continuity of concepts and language in ascetic practice from the fourth to the fifteenth century, as well as the foundational importance of Evagrios of Pontus. Cook's use of medical metaphors to explain both the complexity and underlying human understanding of thoughts, passions and prayer in terms understandable to modern audiences is generally persuasive. Cook is cautious in drawing analogies between the Philokalia and psychotherapy, and his comparisons are admittedly very general. But they are provocative in a way that will challenge practitioners and scholars in both fields to think more deeply about their basic conceptions.
Two works of Peter of Damascus, otherwise unknown, occupy the second largest space in the Philokalia. Their survival in over a hundred manuscripts indicates their popularity, but they have received no scholarly study, with the exception of a negative assessment of Peter's theology as unsystematic and unoriginal by Jean Gouillard in 1939. In Peter of Damascus, Byzantine Monk and Theologian, Greg Peters attempts to rehabilitate this overlooked author, beginning with his identity. He finds solid evidence to place Peter as a mid-twelfth century monk, probably living in a cell affiliated with a cenobitic monastery where he did not have his own possessions, but was able to borrow books extensively from friends. Peters is convincing that the author had no demonstrable connection with Damascus, an eponym deriving from confusion with an eighth century figure. He also conjectures that Peter of Damascus may be identical with a Peter Manser, probable twelfth century author of two short texts on the Eucharist, in an argument that may be clarified by further manuscript study, and also with a monk named Peter listed in the charter of a monastery at Areia, Greece, a more speculative suggestion.
Peter of Damascus's two works, Admonition to His Own Soul and A Spiritual Alphabet do appear lengthy and disorganized to the modern reader, but they also include quite personal reflections on his own ascetic life. Greg Peters contends that Peter's work has an organization that can be understood best if approached topically and read with the literary technique of intertextuality, looking at the interaction of the writer and his sources. Peter's introductory account of his sources, Peters argues, is key: using a twofold process, Peter says that he looked through all the sources he could borrow—scriptural and a wide selection of church fathers—for answers to his questions and compiled them in some form; his thinking and writing, in turn, were shaped by what he read in the works. Professor Peters demonstrates the method by showing the interaction of Peter's sources and his own words in specific passages, including instances where the author “pushes” texts to express his own thoughts (179–180).
The bulk of the study traces arguments in the two texts that focus on common topics such as the passions, virtues, watchfulness, bodily disciplines and stages of contemplation. Professor Peters also contends that Peter's works have distinctive spiritual emphases. According to Peter, the choice between salvation and destruction hinges on the gifts of discrimination and divine grace, a concept he finds generally more prominent in western Christianity than eastern thought, though probably derived by Peter from his reading of the fifth century ascetic Mark the Solitary. He also argues that Peter of Damascus is unusual in the Philokalia in his emphasis on salvation for all, including laity, in statements like “if someone wants to be saved, no time, place or occupation can prevent him” (163), rather than limiting his focus to the quest for mystical union with God by the individual ascetic. The importance of the guidance of a spiritual director is stressed, while discussions of the final stages of contemplative prayer and hesychia are limited and impersonal. Peters suggests that this reflects the setting of Peter's twelfth century monastery and possibly his lack of direct experience of the highest level of prayer.
Peters concludes by stating that Peter's distinctive use of intertextuality, emphasis on grace and inclusion of non-monastic audiences in his spiritual program take him out of the mainstream of the dominant tradition of Evagrios of Pontus and Maximus the Confessor in ascetic literature, and create an original spiritual theology that makes Peter of Damascus a figure worthy of greater recognition. Professor Peters's study demonstrates the potential of intertextual analysis for understanding Peter's compositional technique and reading practice, and should be pursued through the additional manuscript study he proposes. His claims for Peter's originality and independence from the mainstream of the Evagrian/Maximian tradition need further evidence to be persuasive, in the form of comparisons with other authors in the Philokalia and further intertextual analysis of his relation to his sources. It may be as important to emphasize Peter's value as a voice of middle Byzantine, pre-Hesychastic spiritual theology. This work, nevertheless, does successfully revise negative views of Peter of Damascus, discovering his identity and establishing him as a significant spiritual writer. In this, Greg Peters provides a model for study of some of the other unknown writers in the anthology.
