This assemblage of essays surveys how Sergius, a fourteenth-century Russian hermit of obscure origins, became leader of a monastic community, then (posthumously) a national saint through the creation of (visual) symbolism and (written) myth that portrayed Sergius as the hero-protector of the Russian lands and the Russian dynasty. Second, the book charts the growth of land donations to Sergius’ monastery in return for prayers. From this, the author makes the argument that the monastery that bore his name and housed his relics became an early instrument in creating a nationally integrated economy through its widespread landholdings. Finally, the book recounts in passing how, as an institution of exceptional religious, economic, and political power, Sergius's monastery became a target of the state, beginning with the secularizing reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century and extending up to its despoliation under Soviet rule.
Sergius was deemed a saint first because he led a holy life as a hermit in the forest; only later was he credited with receiving a vision in which Mary, Mother of God, promised her divine protection. Decades after his death, stories were spread that Sergius extended the protection offered by Mary and himself acted as protector and intercessor for Moscow's grand princes and the lands they claimed. By the nineteenth century, Sergius had become Russia's most famous patron saint.
Sergius himself apparently had no ambitions to serve this grand role. He was not a great organizational leader, a political operator, nor a great theologian (he left no writings at all). Yet the monastery he (reluctantly? accidentally?) founded and that bore his name became one of the richest, most politically connected, and most celebrated in Eastern Orthodoxy. David Miller answers in many aspects the how of this historical process, especially in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.
The majority of the sources Miller uses to construct this history are lists of patrons and land charters (for donations to the monastery or the monastery's land purchases)—documents that drew the sustained scholarly attention (and publishing resources) both of late-tsarist scholars and those of the Marxist Soviet Academy of Sciences from the 1920s through the 1970s.
Miller's study also builds on years of painstaking manuscript and “textological” work by Soviet scholars to establish the oldest and most reliable accounts of Sergius's life. It is frustrating, but not atypical of early Russian studies, that the manuscripts—and probably also the texts—of the most “definitive” accounts of Sergius's Life are removed from his life by at least a century, and unreliable. Miller, like other authors, is hobbled by gaps in Sergius's basic biography: Sergius became a hermit and monk around 1340 (exact date unknown); he formally established the monastery, with himself as abbot, as early as 1353 or as late as 1377. He became a candidate for Metropolitan of Russia in 1378 in a politically contested succession. He died 1390.
By the 1420s, Sergius was recognized as a saint locally. But it was in the middle of the fifteenth century, due to the compositional energies of Pakhomii the Serb in Moscow, that Sergius became famous for more significant miracles. In Pakhomii's account, Sergius appeared (posthumously) to the Grand Prince of Moscow to fortify his opposition to the merger of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches after the council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1439, and it was Pakhomii who invented the famous story of how Sergius urged Dmitrii Donskoi to battle bravely against the Tatars at Kulikovo Field in 1380: “Go against the godless, and God will help thee, thou shalt be victorious and return safely to thy patrimony with great acclaim.” Donskoi won that battle, but the Tatars continued to have military and political dominance over Muscovy for decades. (The assertion that the story of Sergius’s protection at Kulikovo Field was invented by Pakhomii decades after the event, and that the battle did not represent the victory of the Russian lands in throwing off the Tatar yoke, is still a contentious one in Russia.)
Miller excels at close reading of the detail-laden charters and philological studies, but neither of these source bodies lends itself to narrative or is very reader-friendly, especially for those outside the field of early Russian ecclesiastical history. More vivid stories emerge from the author's interpretation of visual sources, such as embroidered scenes on liturgical textiles, which also tie into the role of royal women as patrons of the monastery and recipients of its spiritual protection. Other visual sources are noted in passing, but remain to be explored—the illuminated Life of Sergius (one of the longest and most significant illuminated manuscripts of medieval Russia), illustrations from the illuminated chronicle of the later fifteenth century, and the hundreds of Sergius icons. (Miller notes, astonishingly, that already by 1641—roughly two centuries after the story of Sergius’ vision of Mary was written—over a thousand objects depicting this event were held by this monastery alone, and they included not only painted icons but also textiles and carvings.)
The book does not make its subject easily comparable with other studies of medieval Christian saints, monastic growth, or national saints. Readers will not find explanations of how Russian monasteries worked, how they differed from Catholic ones, nor of how sainthood is established in Eastern Orthodoxy and how Orthodox veneration (particularly through icons) differs from Catholic practices. Many helpful comparisons—for example, between west European monasteries with royal ties and the ties of the Trinity-Sergius monastery to Russia's ruling princes (and the difficult position this often placed it in)—could have been drawn.
Despite these limitations, the book stands out as a notable scholarly study of Russian spirituality and institutional growth before 1700, of which there are still surprisingly few.
