ABSTRACT:
The aim of this article is to draw attention to certain theological and liturgical factors that enter into the composition process of hagiography, and in particular, in the depiction of the death scenes of Muscovite monks. The monks who wrote the major portion of medieval Russian literature did so from a particular cultural context in which theological and liturgical texts played a prominent role. The article looks for evidence of this monastic culture in the memorials written to honour deceased members of monastic communities. It outlines some features of the monastic culture that produced the vitae, rehearses previous investigations into the production of Russian medieval hagiography and offers a detailed analysis of four texts from the Muscovite period. The Dormition and Transfiguration are important foundational motifs underlying death scenes in particular. Attention to liturgical and theological principles in other saints' lives and biographical sketches will enhance our appreciation for the artistry of medieval Russian authors, who appropriate a lengthy Christian tradition in the production of their texts.
The literary depiction of the death of Muscovite monks can better be appreciated by attending to the living context in which the written text was created, monastic culture. That culture owes much of its character to the normative texts and ritual actions around which the daily life of a monk and monastery revolve. The lengthy and complex liturgical services of the Orthodox Church, supplemented by private devotions in one's cell that included meditation on sacred texts along with physical forms of asceticism, played an incalculable role in the reshaping of ordinary human lives into "vessel(s) of the Holy Spirit," as one Muscovite vita puts it. Monastic authors have left traces of their liturgical, ritual and prayer life throughout medieval Russian literature. A prime example is offered by death scenes in literary works commemorating the lives of saintly monks.
Over a decade ago Daniel E. Collins examined the literary treatment of death in medieval Russian literature. He demonstrated that the recurrence of certain topoi in the death scenes in biographical literature was not solely a literary convention but reflected actual social customs observed and lived by the authors of the texts. ' He identified six such elements that recur in the death scenes of prominent lay persons, bishops and monks spanning the Kyivan and Muscovite eras: presentiment of death, last rites, transfer of power, convocation and admonition, obedience and the testament, parting forgiveness and blessings.2 Although he was aware of the particular influence of religious ritual texts on the literary depiction of death, his article did not explore this in any depth.3 What follows is an attempt to do just that.
This study focuses on three texts from the fifteenth century, the vitae for Sergii of Radonezh, Kirill Belozerskii, and a tale about Pafnutii Borovskii, and one text from the sixteenth century, the vita for Antonii Siiskii.4 The authors of these texts used not only standard rhetorical and literary devices inherited from the Byzantine cultural sphere but also applied theological or spiritual motifs drawn from the liturgical and biblical texts to which they, as monks, devoted lengthy periods of attention in their daily life.
Before proceeding with the analysis of those texts some preliminary comments on the monastic culture that produced them are in order. Eastern Orthodoxy has elaborated a complex protocol for dealing with the death of one of its adherents. A striking feature of Orthodox funerary ritual is its dialogic nature: the appointed prayers create the impression that the deceased person remains in living contact not only with those left behind but more importantly with God and the saints into whose company he or she has hoped to be welcomed.5 As a community that would attend to the burial of its own members and a circle of lay and clerical associates, as well as commemorating the deceased on their anniversaries, a monastery and its monks would be very familiar with these liturgical texts and accompanying actions. It would be strange if nothing of that powerful religious ritual found its way into the written recollections of the death of significant members of their community.
When reflecting on death, Orthodox monks could call upon two models in which to frame those reflections: the Crucifixion of Christ and the Dormition of Mary the Theotokos.6 Although conformity to Christ is the aim of all Christians-an idea perpetuated in the Russian word prepodobnyi (most similar) as a title for monastic saints-his violent death is imitated normally by the exceptional Christians known as martyrs; however, in some instances, for example, the death of St. Antonii Siiskii,7 it is the suffering and solitude of Christ's death rather than the physical violence that impress themselves on the artistic imagination when a death scene is created.
The model for the good Christian death is the peaceful passing away of the Virgin Mary, her Dormition. The legend of the Dormition and the icons that depict it uniformly show the body of the Virgin Mary stretched out on a bier, with the apostles gathered around her and Christ standing in their midst holding her soul. In the earliest Greek version, the Virgin Mary learns about her death in advance and is able to make suitable preparations, including the summoning of the apostles and devotion to prayer. An intense sweet fragrance fills the chamber in which she dies, and her soul shines with an exceptional whiteness.8 These details often recur in the death scene of a given monk where the author inevitably places the monk in a communal setting, surrounded by his brother monks. While the communal setting may be no more than an attempt to capture a core value of coenobitism, one cannot dismiss out of hand a conscious mimesis of the Dormition icon itself, which offers a rich and consoling template for the Christian experience of death.9 In this connection, it is interesting to note how often the Dormition (and the Transfiguration) was chosen as a palladium for Russian monasteries.10 The coenobitic life of a dying monk attains its full earthly realization when the Dormition icon is incarnated in the actions of the monastic community gathered around one of its own one final time.
Of considerable importance for Orthodox monastic life is the Transfiguration of Christ," particularly as the phenomenon of light, which is at the centre of the event, figures prominently in the hesychast tradition. Because of the relevance of the Transfiguration for the depiction of monastic death scenes, a brief discussion of its interpretation is called for.
The Transfiguration looms large in late Byzantine religious experience and theological debate owing to a controversy that erupted on Mount Athos in the fourteenth century involving monks who claimed to experience the uncreated light, which Christ himself radiated and in which the disciples were bathed on Mount Tabor, the traditional location for the Transfiguration. The monks in question are identified as hesychasts, a name which itself enjoys a lengthy pedigree in the Byzantine monastic tradition. The resolution of the controversy in a series of church councils and the theological championing of the hesychasts by Gregory Palamas has been well studied12 and requires no further elaboration here except to indicate that the hesychast approach to monastic life would find adherents among the East Slavs and eventually in the monasteries of Muscovy.13 For the purposes of this article, however, it will be helpful to rehearse two points: the interpretation of the Transfiguration in theological literature, and some of the details of hesychast religious experience, in particular the phenomenon of uncreated light.
As John A. McGuckin suggests, the patristic tradition overwhelmingly understood the Transfiguration of Christ as a proleptic revelation of the glory of Resurrection.14 It was taken as a hopeful sign that all who died in Christ would share in that same glory. A further dimension of the patristic exegesis of the Transfiguration is, as McGuckin says, its value as "an ascetical symbol." By this he means the ability to discern glory in Christ's self-emptying or kenosis, and to see there the truth about human nature. The one who has this ability becomes like Christ.15 Medieval Russian hagiographers, no less than their Byzantine counterparts, make use of that inherited tradition of exegesis in the vitae they compose.
The hesychast monk hoped to experience the uncreated light of Mount Tabor at some point during his earthly life, usually in conjunction with an arduous regimen of spiritual exercises, often but not necessarily including the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, the employment of breathing techniques and the assumption of special posture during prayer. These details are associated with Gregory the Sinaite (c. 1275-c. 1346) who spent four years on Mount Athos (1307-10, 1328) and instructed the monks in what comes to be known as the Athonite hesychast method of prayer. His works were translated very early into Slavonic and found wide dissemination into the East Slav monastic world.16 The light that the monks claimed to see was not a natural light, though metaphorically it would be described as such. Rather, through a special faculty granted by God, so they believed, the monks could see with the spiritual eyes of their soul the uncreated light, God's glory, which permitted a real experience of God in this world. What they perceived by the special gift of grace in their souls during prayer they sensed in their bodies. Since the hesychast monk hoped to enjoy the experience of uncreated light while he was still alive, the phenomenon of a glowing face that often but not always manifests itself in the death scenes of monks is not necessarily an indication of hesychast spirituality.17 More likely, such details in the death scenes point to the attempt by the author to assimilate the vita's central character to Christ. It is, in other words, a verbal attestation of the deceased monk's complete transfiguration and a hopeful sign of the monk's eternal destiny. Eastern Orthodoxy names this spiritual process theosis or divinization.
In addition to the theological background, some consideration of the literary features of death scenes is called for. Russian hagiography builds on a lengthy Christian literary tradition and shares with both Byzantine and Latin hagiography in its treatment of the death of a saint.18 As a rule, the hagiographer writes that the saint enjoyed foreknowledge of his or her approaching death and was able to prepare personally for this ultimate moment as well as help his or her disciples understand the change about to befall them. Knowledge of impending death was imparted through dreams, premonitions and an awareness of a steady deterioration in physical strength. The immediate precursor to death was the sudden arrival of illness; however, the hagiographer wasted few words on the nature of the illness itself, being content to have the hero utter words such as "I have fallen sick, and this heralds nothing but my death and passing into the other world,"19 or more commonly, simply to announce that the saint was growing weak and death was near. After the proximity of death has been established, the final moments of the saint's life follow. Surrounded by disciples, the saint gives final words of encouragement and instruction, typically including the vocal expression of the testament by which the monastery is to be governed, before breathing the final breath, a moment almost always remarked upon.20 Once the saint is dead, the hagiographer may remark on angels escorting the soul to heaven or a place of rest. Thereupon, the assembled disciples burst into lamentations. The funeral scene is sometimes described in great detail.21 Posthumous miracles and thaumaturgies complete the death scene.
Panagiotis A. Agapitos offers a more systematic analysis of death scenes in Byzantine hagiography. From his study of the ninth-century vitae of Michael the Synkellos and Stephen the Younger, Agapitos detected five structural elements in the construction of the death scene. A two-part formulaic frame (A) introduces the reader to the death scene and also signals its termination.22 Inside the frame are the remaining four elements: "the 'space of death' (B), where the scene is actually taking place, the 'discourse before death' (C), where a character addresses some kind of words to possible bystanders, the 'moment of death' (D), where a character actually dies, and the 'conclusion of death' (E), where the deceased is buried."23 Agapitos' interpretive technique recalls Jostein Bertnes' earlier discussion of the use of the "frame technique"24 by medieval Russian hagiographers and similar ideas about genre proposed by Frauke Seifkes,25 with the difference that what they applied to an entire vita, Agapitos applies to a specific section.
Gail Lenhoff has shown that the Russian appropriation of the Byzantine hagiographie tradition is neither a simplistic transference of ready-made templates into which the Russian hagiographer poured his raw material nor a synchronous elaboration of inherited literary models with the Russian hagiographer building, as it were, naturally and linearly on earlier types of vitae.26 When the first Russian hagiographers turned to earlier Greek saints' vitae, they "did not imitate the structure or style of Greek vitae, but viewed the lives of Greek saints as sources of spiritual enlightenment and models of Christian behavior."27 Later hagiographers who appear more conscious of literary style turned not to contemporary Byzantine models but to much earlier ones in what is generally regarded as a response to a renewed interest in ascetic ideals and monasticism.28 It is in the context of the foregoing discussion that the four vitae will now be examined.
Originally written by Epifanii Premudryi (ca. 1350-ca. 1420),29 the "Life of Sergii of Radonezh" was reworked by Pakhomii Logofet while he resided in the Trinity-St Sergius monastery between 1440 and 1443.30 The death scene occupies a relatively small space in the lengthy vita and is a well-constructed conclusion to the entire work, showing the typical characteristics of a death scene: foreknowledge of death, preparations for departure, the regulation of succession, parting words to the monks, the death itself, and posthumous miracles.31 Sergii knew of his death some six months before it occurred and was thus able to make arrangements for the smooth transition of authority and prepare himself properly. This commonplace of monastic hagiography carries a religious significance worth noting. Just as the evangelists comment on Jesus' awareness of his own approaching death, so hagiographers employ the trope of premonition of death as an indication of the saint's Christ-like qualities. A liturgical factor is also at work here. By drawing attention to the premonition, the hagiographer expresses the shared liturgical experience of Orthodox Christians familiar with the words "Inasmuch as I foresaw this day from afar, O Lady..." from the "Office at the Departure of the Soul."32 Though repeatedly in the Burial Service death is spoken of as sudden and unexpected, faithful Orthodox and especially monks would strongly desire to have advance warning of their death so that they could prepare themselves for it properly. Premonitions of death, then, are not necessarily indicative of extraordinary spiritual powers or blessedness, but rather are pointers to the faithful vigilance of the individual whose earthly life is coming to an end. Indicative of special divine favour may be those forewarnings announcing the exact time and day of one's death.
The vita notes that once Sergii had nominated Nikon as his successor "he began to keep strict silence."33 He dies in the company of his monks, after receiving the Eucharist and having entrusted them to the care of Christ and the Mother of God. "Then a powerful and indescribable fragrance flowed from the saint's body [...] the saint's face became bright like snow and not as is customary for the dead but as for a living person or an angel of God, indicating his spiritual purity and the reward from God for his labours."34 The fragrant odour issuing from Sergii's corpse and the brightness of his face are interpreted by the author as the more mundane indicators of personal holiness and well-deserved divine recompense for a faithfully lived ascetic life. That his body is incorrupt and radiant attests to the commonplace of belief in the resurrection: he is alive-his face is like that of a living person-and more than alive, like an angel. It is interesting to observe that the imagery used by the author (and others) to indicate Sergii's triumph over death corresponds to recurrent themes and images in the Funeral Service itself. There, for example, prayers are addressed to Christ and God that divine light will illumine the departed souls, that the departed will be given a share of Christ's own dazzling light.35 Comment on the corruption of the body and its stench36 recur in the funeral texts, as does the hope for transformation: "come unto me, ye earth-born; behold the beauty of the body all turned to blackness."37 Awash in the liturgical texts, monastic authors may unconsciously incorporate imagery from those texts when penning their own tributes to deceased brethren, as is the case here. Perhaps naively, the author of Sergii's vita wants to state that the eschatological promises of Christ have become a reality in the person of Sergii. Corroboration for this comes in the following observation: "What wonders in his dying and after his death happened and continue to happen! Strength returns to weakened limbs, people are freed from wicked spirits, sight is restored to the blind, and the hunchbacked are straightened, merely by approaching his shrine."38 These miracles replicate those recounted in Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22 (drawing on Isaiah 61.1) and are meant to identify Sergii with Christ, ushering in a new age of blessing for the monastery and Russia.
The death scene ends with the demonstration of what the author set out to show in the exordium of the vita: that the grace of God became visible "in our Russian lands, in our midnight country, in our own days, in the last times and seasons" in Sergii.39 For here he claims that Sergii is no less worthy than Moses or Joshua, Jacob or Abraham as far as virtuous life, wisdom, leadership, innocence and hospitality are concerned, and that he is the equal of Sabbas of Jerusalem as a coenobitic founder.40
At roughly the same time, Pakhomii Logofet composed a life for Sergii's successor, Nikon. The death scene contains the expected structural elements but shows far less theological accomplishment than what Pakhomii created for Sergii.4' Nikon dies after receiving the Eucharist in the company of his brother monks, but there is no indication of any bodily transformation comparable to what is attested for Sergii.
The death scene penned by Pakhomii in his "Life of St. Kirill Belozerskii"42 stands out by reason of its length, detail and complexity.43 He wrote the vita around the year 1462 at the request of grand prince Vasilii II Vasilievich (1425-62) and metropolitan Feodosii (r. 1461-4), using the eyewitness testimony of numerous monks in Kirill's monastery.44 Pakhomii incorporates the typical 4 elements of a death scene in his composition, namely, foreknowledge of death, physical debility, continued devotion to prayer and liturgical duties, and the presence of the community. Pakhomii includes Kirill's testament as well as his verbal instructions relating to the brothers' conduct in the monastery after his death. After receiving the Eucharist, he dies in the company of his monks, peacefully, and is buried the same day with great solemnity. The account continues with some brief details about Kirill's successors and concludes with an impressive collection of miracles.
In his composition of the death scene, Pakhomii has paid considerable attention to the temporal space of Kirill's passing. First he comments that "when Pentecost Sunday came on which is celebrated the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, he celebrated the Divine Liturgy and received the holy mysteries. On the Monday morning of that week, on the memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, he began to grow weak in body, though he was strong in spirit."45 After Kirill dies, Pakhomii writes "After performing the funeral hymns with great dignity and with much solemnity, they covered with earth the muchsuffering and labour-loving body and vessel of the Most Holy Spirit in the year 6935 (1427) in the month of June on the 9lh day."46 Between those two markers, which refer to the same calendar day, a great number of actions transpire. In the morning Kirill apparently enters into the final stages of his life-"the strong in spirit became weak in body." The brothers come to his side and a rather lengthy conversation ensues in which Kirill consoles his monks, entrusts the monastery to Innokentii, and then spends some time in peaceful recollection. Then at the very moment of his death, all the monks gather at his side and bid him farewell, Kirill receives the Eucharist and expires, with a prayer on his lips. The monks carry his body in procession to the church where presumably the funeral liturgy was celebrated. At this point, Pakhomii inserts a short anecdote about the monk Avksentii who is cured of an illness when Kirill appears to him. Finally, the body is carried to the cemetery and committed to the earth.47
This whirlwind of events coursing through the monastery seems at odds with Pakhomii's claim that the funeral was conducted "with great dignity and with much solemnity." Rather than chronological exactitude, however, readers find here a convincing example of Pakhomii's technique as a hagiographer applying the verbal colours of his literary palette-set phrases, images, liturgical/biblical allusions-with as much expertise as a skilled iconographer who chooses the appropriate paint and physical attributes of the saint taking form on an icon. The actions performed by Kirill himself, especially his instructions to the monks and his farewell blessing, are the standard parts of a depiction of an abbot saint. The things, to which a holy monk and abbot attends in preparation for his death, Pakhomii concentrates on the symbolically rich days of Pentecost and 9 June (St. Cyril of Alexandria) when Kirill's life's work is perfected in every sense. Already in the exordium, Pakhomii has marked Kirill as one in whom the Holy Spirit is particularly active,48 and at the beginning of his ascetic journey, he is identified as a vessel of the Holy Spirit,49 the same words with which Pakhomii characterizes the deceased Kirill. For him to complete that journey on Pentecost Monday and on his name day would be taken by the medieval readers of this vita as an extraordinary proof of Kirill's sanctity.
The episode of Kirill's servant Avksentii, who rises cured from his sick bed in one of the monastery's villages and runs to the monastery in order to thank Kirill for healing him, is an immediate confirmation of Kirill's sainthood and intercessory power. Since Pakhomii has depicted Kirill as a miracle-worker even during his life-in imitation of Christ-his ability to heal Avksentii at a distance is not in itself unexpected and may be an oblique reference to the healing of the centurion's servant recorded in Luke 7:1-10.
A clear theological reference by which Pakhomii conforms his hero to Christ-metaphorically transfigures him, in other words-comes in Kirill's words to his disciples: "Do not grieve over this, but rather comprehend in this manner. If I receive a measure of boldness before God and his Most Holy Mother, and if my work shall please God, not only will this holy place not become desolate but it shall even expand after my departure. Only have love for one another!"50 This scene recalls the farewell discourse recorded in John 13.3117.26, and here in particular, John 15.17. In his dying moments, Kirill resembles Christ setting out for his own death, leaving a testament for his followers and a commandment to love one another.
Pakhomii's depiction of Kirill's physical appearance in death completes the transformation of the saintly abbot: "Then his face shone and it was many times more brilliant than when he had been alive, and there was on his face no blackness or swarthiness as is customary with the deceased."" Compare this with the account of the Transfiguration in the gospel of Matthew 17.2: "and he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun and his garments became dazzling like light." The radiance emanating from the deceased Kirill's face would be understood as the fulfillment of the promise contained in the Transfiguration of Christ and a confirmation of the sanctity of the departed abbot.
The final example from the fifteenth century is one of the most unusual and interesting "hagiographie" works of Muscovite Russia, the Rasskaz � smerti Pafnutiia Borovskogo (A Tale about the Death of Pafnutii of Borovsk) by the monk Innokentii.52 The Tale is a unique literary artefact from the midMuscovite period exhibiting considerable theological and literary sophistication. Its author, Innokentii, was a monk and confidant of Pafnutii in the latter's Borovsk monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos. Besides the Rasskaz, Innokentii penned a canon in honour of Pafnutii that was officially sanctioned for liturgical use in 1531 by metropolitan Daniil. On the basis of scant internal evidence, it is generally agreed that the text of the Rasskaz was composed very shortly after Pafnutii's death on 1 May 1477 and no later than 1478.53 Innokentii makes a number of references to Iosif Sanin, successor of Pafnutii and future abbot-founder of the Dormition monastery in Volokolamsk, and calls upon him as a witness to the accuracy of his account. However, it is the immediacy of the tale, despite its literary and theological profundities, which is the best indication that it was written soon after Pafnutii's death. Although he refers to a number of other monks and laity, the principal characters developed in the account are Pafnutii and Innokentii.
The Tale first attracted the attention of V. O. Kliuchevskii, whose initial reading of the text as an eye-witness record of Pafnutii's last week of life would long influence scholarly discussion.54 D. S. Likhachev was impressed by the tale's unique style, naturalism, realism and psychological depth, and drew attention to the literary quality of the work that demonstrates outstanding artistry and skill.55 Most recently, L. A. Dmitriev has argued that the work is erroneously identified as an eyewitness account. Instead, Dmitriev points out the compositional complexities of the work and eventually argues that far from shedding light solely on Pafnutii, it is an autobiographical text that tells us a great deal about Innokentii himself. Dmitriev writes: "Essentially what stands before us from the very first to the last page is not only a narrative about the final seven days in the life of Pafnutii, but also Innokentii's narrative about himself. And the most important thing is that Innokentii's narrative about himself, as is the case in his narrative about Pafnutii, is striking in its vitality, its realistic quality, the complexity of the frames of mind, feelings and lived experiences transmitted by the author. The whole time Innokentii is either side by side with Pafnutii, or appears as the intermediary between him, closed in on himself and the external world."56 Dmitriev's conclusion that Innokentii is fully aware of the autobiographical nature of his work, and that the narrative is a carefully thought-out piece of literature, not merely the notes of an eyewitness57 is to be endorsed, and complemented by a consideration of the theological principles underlying his narrative process.
Innokentii's work is simply structured: he introduces himself and his intentions in a hagiographically typical fashion, in the context of a prayer for assistance addressed to Christ and the Mother of God. As is required by the type of literature, Innokentii professes his unworthiness to narrate Pafnutii's life and at the same time his gratitude at having known such a holy man as Pafnutii. That this is a clich�d introduction is evident from the incautious statement "even though I am unworthy to narrate his life from the beginning," since he does not in fact write a life at all.58
After the introductory remarks there follows his straightforward narration of the final week of Pafnutii's life, only occasionally interrupted with personal asides. These occur three times. The first aside occurs after a summary of Pafnutii's Sunday address to the monks, where Innokentii compares Pafnutii with saints Feodosii and Savva, presumably Theodosius the Great and Sabbas of Jerusalem. The second comes on Monday after Innokentii has elicited an answer about the management of the monastery after Pafnutii's death. Here Innokentii worries that he will be misunderstood and refers to some trouble ahead. The third time occurs on Wednesday, and Innokentii excuses his referring to himself so often in the account.
Innokentii composed his account entirely within the framework of liturgical time: as the days of the week slip by, significant moments in Pafnutii's final days are anchored to a particular prayer hour: the third hour, the Divine Liturgy, the sixth hour, vespers, compline, midnight office, vigils and orthros are the hinges on which Innokentii hangs his story. They repeat every day in the same pattern, giving the 'eyewitness' account an impressive literary solemnity. Pafnutii is bound up in a cycle of life larger than himself, which moves independently and sweeps him along with it. It is a sacred time, the brushing of eternity against the ephemeral existence of a monk and his community; profane time and events try repeatedly to interrupt the flow, but never succeed. Only after he has been buried are members of the profane world permitted access to the monk, but by this time, he is removed from their immediate grasp. The visitors can only pause at his grave, peer through this window of eternity and hope to receive spiritual consolation from one who has passed beyond. Innokentii's text permits the sensitive reader to enter a sacred space which Pafnutii's contemporaries were denied. The reader joins the monks of the Borovsk monastery and accompanies them in the passion and death of their hegumen. The ever-turning cycle of liturgical time gives a dizzying effect to the account, made all the more vertiginous by the complete calm and tranquility of the actual death and burial scene.
Innokentii chose to begin his narrative at the third hour. This was a conscious authorial decision, not a mere factual detail. The third hour precedes the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, and is as such a time of preparation for the culminating sacred event in the Orthodox worship cycle. The third hour is also a time for morning labours, and it is thus not entirely surprising that the first glimpse of Pafnutii that Innokentii grants his readers is one in which the hegumen gives instructions for a work project: repairing a breech in the monastery's pond. The reference to labour is thus not a sign that Pafnutii devoted most of his monastic life to physical toil, to the neglect of prayer. This is Pafnutii's last involvement in the mechanics of operating a large monastery; it should be noted, however, that Pafnutii puts this task in a larger perspective, aware that a much more important, spiritual, task lies ahead of him.59 The rest of the Tale shows Pafnutii entirely occupied with spiritual exercises.
It is also interesting that Innokentii chose to chronicle the last week of Pafnutii's life, which begs the question about purpose. Why not his final day or hours? Innokentii has reported eight days in the life of Pafnutii. The number eight is the perfect number, the completion of the new creation. The old creation took place in seven days, including the day of rest on the seventh; but in Christian custom, Christ rose on the eighth day, the first day of the week, the first day of the eternal present. Pafnutii dies on the eighth day of Innokentii's narrative, appropriately passing into eternity on that day. Within the narrative framework of his account, Innokentii declares Pafnutii to have attained perfection. This is then corroborated on the following day by the spiritual consolation obtained by the many visitors who pause at Pafnutii's grave.
As the week unfolds, the detailed mention of each hour diminishes until only Divine Liturgy and vespers are named. This is another sign that Innokentii is attempting to produce a literary work and not merely a protocol or chronicle of final events in Pafhutii's life. The nature of monastic life implies repetition of a daily orderly use of time, and the reader can assume that the liturgical cycle so clearly depicted for Thursday and Friday would continue uninterrupted until the final day itself. By referring to the Divine Liturgy on each day, however, Innokentii seems consciously to be drawing attention to Pafnutii's Eucharistie devotion and practice, and he thereby gives an important insight into the religious observance typical of Pafnutii's monastery.
Unlike the death scene of Kirill Belozerskii, Pafnutii dies in relative obscurity, with the presence of only three of his monks, Innokentii, an unnamed monk and a third identified only as "the elder's disciple." The other monks are kept away until Pafnutii dies, witnessing his passing through the window to his cell. The Tale has shown the gradual metaphorical transfiguration of Pafnutii with ever-increasing intensity until his final moment. The allusions to Christ's own last week are ever-present though subtle. For example, beginning on Monday Pafnutii embarks on a lengthy discourse about how the monastery is to be run after his death,60 much like the testament which Jesus left his disciples in the Johannine farewell discourse alluded to earlier. On Wednesday, Pafnutii finally agrees to eat and drink something: "Then he began to entertain the brothers, saying: 'Drink this cup, my children, drink as if it were the final benediction, for I shall henceforth neither drink nor taste of this'," a scene reminiscent of Jesus' last supper. 61 The lengthy prayers and torments accompanying Pafnutii recall the Garden of Gethsemane agony of Jesus.
In this context it is worthwhile looking at the "Life of Pafnutii of Borovsk" by Vassian Sanin.62 Since a comparison of the death scene in that text with Innokentii's Tale shows the degree to which Vassian borrowed from Innokentii, a detailed examination of the text is unnecessary. In general, Vassian follows Innokentii very closely, occasionally abbreviating some passages and inserting material from another source in other sections of the narrative. One important insertion not found in Innokentii's Tale comes immediately after Pafnutii's death: "The disciples who were gazing at the blessed man saw that his face shone like a light, for he was not dead in the usual manner and everyone thought that he was still alive."63 The reference to the light phenomenon taken from the Transfiguration of Christ assures the mourning monks that their abbot has come into the divine presence and can be reckoned as one of the saints.
The final example comes from "The Life of Antonii Siiskii," written in 1578 by the monk Iona from the Siiskii monastery. A second redaction attributed to tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich was prepared in 1579 in conjunction with the canonization of Antonii.64 Unusually, Iona structures the death scene around the painful death of Christ. Like other monastic saints, Antonii (1478-1557) had foreknowledge of his death and was able to make preparations. Iona stresses the spiritual struggle waged by Antonii in his final days. For example, when death first makes its impending arrival known, Antonii increases his already severe regimen of physical mortification: his fasting has shrivelled his body so that he appears to have no flesh left at all; his legs and joints are swollen because of his lengthy standing and genuflecting at prayers. He seems to have lost the very appearance of a human being, and instead appears as a corpse.65 In this descriptive passage of Antonii's agony, Iona has textually identified Antonii with the suffering Christ, using appropriate verses from Psalm 101 (102) and allusions to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52.13-53.12 6ft to make the identification evident. As the death scene unfolds, the author remarks several times on the gradual, remorseless deterioration of Antonii's physical form and a proportionate strengthening of his spiritual energies.
When the end is near, Antonii receives communion and speaks consoling words to the monks, asking for and bestowing forgiveness and a blessing on them and promising to be an effective intercessor before God. His instructions for the disposal of his body are both extremely detailed and ultimately ignored by the monks: "Bind (my body) at the feet and drag it out into the thicket," he said, "and trample my sinful body in moss and marsh so that wild animals and serpents may devour it, or hang it in a snag for birds to feed on; or after wrapping chains around the shoulders drag it into the lake."67 These inadvertently humorous instructions are drawn from a number of vitae where disregard for the corpse is a final attestation of the deceased ascetic's humility, a theme which derives ultimately from The Ladder of John Climacus.68 For example, in the "Life of Aleksandr Svirskii" written in 1545 and used extensively in Antonii Siiskii's vita, Aleksandr says to his monks, "My brothers, bind my sinful body at the feet and drag it into the thickets of a marsh; dig out a hole in the moss and then trample on it with your feet. They said to him, 'No, father, we will not do that. We shall bury you near the [church of the] Trinity in the monastery.' Again he said, 'brothers, if you do not do this then bury me by the [church of the] holy and worshipful transfiguration of Christ where all the brothers are laid."69 In the fifteenth-century "Life of Savva Vysherskii" we read, '"when my soul is separated from my body, do not bother to show me any respect but simply drag me along the ground to my grave and commit me to the earth'-but they ignored his request."70
In keeping with the mounting identification of Antonii with Christ, the author has him die alone: "As the final breath of the venerable one drew near, the blessed one ordered sufficient incense to be lit. Then he ordered those two disciples of his who had stayed behind with him to leave. The venerable man himself raised his hands to heaven and offered to God his prayer with many tears. And blessing his face with the sign of the cross he folded his hands on his breast and thus surrendered his worthy and labour-loving soul into the hands of God."7' Antonii's assimilation to the death of Christ is brought out in the final sentence of this excerpt: "prekresliv zhe litse svoe krstoobrazno" literally, "having crossed his face cruciformly." It is as if his body, worn down by years of ascetic practice and the debilities of old age, has itself become configured to the cross. Made like Christ throughout his life, and particularly identified with him in his suffering at the last, Antonii also is said to share in the ultimate identification with Christ: "The body of the deceased blessed man was not like one who had died but like one is seen to be changed in sleep. He was not marked in any way by a dead appearance but rather the future radiance of the righteous; the image of his face was transfigured."72 After so much self-imposed mortification, Antonii enjoys the calm repose of the blessed. His participation in death in the effects of the Transfiguration of Christ confirms his sanctity.
The death scenes in the examples chosen for this study are the final touches applied to the verbal icon of a given monastic saint by monastic artists who could draw on a wide range of literary devices and techniques in the execution of their works. Their palette of imagery includes allusions to the rich liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church pertaining to death and burial, and the theological motifs of Dormition and Transfiguration. As the death scene unfolds in each case, readers glimpse the completion of a lengthy process of divinization undergone by the monk, a process which can be regarded as the foundational theological principle operating in any saint's vita. The narrative of the good death rounds out the didactic purposes of the hagiographer and provides a final lesson on the virtue of perseverance, which is so important to monastic life.73
It is true that not every monastic vita yields the same harvest. A case in point is the "Life and Miracles of Saints Zosima and Savvatii the Miracleworkers of Solovki."74 Whereas Savvatii's death scene is almost entirely devoid of liturgical and theological referents, Zosima's final prayer is a loosely constructed paraphrase of various parts of the Ritual for the Departure of a Soul and the Funeral Service. The vita makes no comment on the state of the corpses of either Savvatii or Zosima, though numerous posthumous miracles are recorded. The matter-of-fact style lends a certain ordinariness to the pursuit of holiness; however, coupled with the relative paucity of liturgical references, this makes the vitae of the two saints far less accessible than the vitae of monks like Sergii or Pafnutii. For someone outside the Solovki monastic community, there is very little shared experience to be enjoyed.75 It is also true that even a single author such as Pakhomii Logofet does not make the same use of the motifs available to him in each of his vitae, although such variations may simply indicate the importance of the monk whose life is being commemorated and the degree of knowledge about the monk possessed by the author.
The study has looked only at death scenes for evidence of the monastic culture that was ultimately responsible for the creation of the vitae. Similar attention to the presence of the liturgical and theological components of that culture in saints' lives and biographical sketches will enhance our appreciation for the artistry of medieval Russian authors, who appropriated a lengthy Christian tradition as they created icons in words of their beloved saintly heroes.
[Author Affiliation]
T. ALLAN SMITH is Associate Professor for the History and Theology of Eastern Christianity at the Faculty of Theology, University of St. Michael's College, and an Associate Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. His scholarly interests are monastic history and spirituality, and nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian Orthodoxy, especially the thought of Sergei N. Bulgakov. He is the translator and editor of Sergei M. Soloviev, History of Russia. Volume 12: Russian Society under Ivan the Terrible (AIP, 1996); Volume 21 : The Tsar and the Patriarch; Stenka Razin Revolts on the Don 16621675 (AIP, 200); The Pilgrim's Tale (Paulist Press, 1999) and Sergei N. Bulgakov, The Burning Bush. On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, forthcoming).
