Manjava Skete (Cistercian Studies Series)

Manjava Skete (Cistercian Studies Series) - Sophia Senyk

Manjava Skete: Ukrainian Monastic Writings of the XVII Century by Sophia Senyk Anchoretism—a life of solitude and stillness—flowered in the deserts of Egypt in the fourth century and has provided a perennial model for christian monasticism. Revived in the sixteenth century the anchoretic life flourished in Ruthenian lands—present-day Ukraine and Belarus—until the social utility of worship and prayer was brought into question by Enlightenment monarchs. Even then it provided a link in the living tradition which saw further revival in the Ukrainian and Russian startzi of the nineteenth century. Manjava Skete was such a centre of spiritual force from about 1605 until 1785. The monks' way of life and spirit is described in three seventeenth-century works translated in this volume: The Life of the founder, Jov Knjahynyc'ky, who conveyed a renewed anchoretic