Russian Mystics

A panorama of Russian Christian spirituality, richly illustrated with passages from formative works.

"The author of this unusual book has given it much too modest a title. It is in fact not only an introduction to the lives, the spirituality and the writings of the great mystics, many of whom are unknown in the West, but it is also at the same time a clear and practical outline of Russian monastic history. The journey which the reader now begins is not without excitement, for it takes him into new territory, the silence of the great Russian forests. . ."                ~Thomas Meron, in the Preface

Sergius (Serge) Bolshakoff (1901-1990), both the author and the translator of Russian Mystics, was born in Saint Petersburg in 1901 and died in retirement at the Cistercian abbey of Hauterive, Switzerland, in 1990. His life spanned not only the Russian Revolution and the fall of Communism, but also the Christian Ecumenical Movement, in which he took an active role. Dedicated to the cause of Christian unity throughout his life and intimately familiar with the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Anglican traditions and their monastic expressions, he was personally acquainted with the great leaders of the ecumenical movement: Pope John XXIII, the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury, and the abbé Paul Couturier. Exiled from his homeland for most of his life, he lived in England—where he received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford —or France and traveled and wrote extensively.