Nilus Sorsky was born in Russia in 1443 AD. At an early age Nilus, named after an early church father, joined the famous Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Cyril of Belozersk at White Lake. Very sincere about his faith, Nilus quickly became disillusioned with the corruption in the White Lake monastery. So, as an able scholar, he obtained permission to study at the revered Russian Orthodox monastery on the Holy Mountain of Athos in Greece. Nilus made the most of this time at Mount Athos. He was particularly

interested in the traditional practice of Christ-centred contemplative prayer as a discipline of the heart. Nilus also studied the early church fathers. He wrote: ‘I lived like a bee flitting from one fine flower to another in order to know the garden of life’. Nilus was particularly drawn to the writings of Basil of Caesarea and his ideas about intentional Christian community. He took every opportunity he could to visit other monasteries round the Mediterranean, looking for communities based on the ideas of the early church fathers.

On his return to Russia, he had to stay at the White Lake monastery for a while, but as soon as he could, he moved as far away as possible. He found a place in a swampy region of wilderness near the River Sora, where he established his own simple, unpretentious Christian community. His ‘Christian community’ stood in stark contrast with the ‘Christian civilization’ of the day. By the end of the fifteenth century, the church in general, and monasteries in particular, had become very large, powerful institutions. The political power of the feudal state was reinforced by the church hierarchy. As much as one-third of all the available arable land in Russia was controlled by the church, mainly through large monasteries. One monastery — the St. Sergius Monastery of the Trinity — had 100,000 peasants cultivating estates in fifteen provinces.

Nilus set up his monastery as the antithesis of this. He and his monks deliberately set aside any quest for power or acquisition of property. They lived as simply as possible, owned no large tracts of land and employed no peasants as labour. They worked humbly with their own hands to support themselves. For most of the time, Nilus lived his life quietly with his monks at Sora. But from time to time, as a respected scholar, Nilus was asked to attend church synods and speak on the issues under consideration. When he did, Nilus strongly critiqued the church hierarchy’s lust for power and the trappings of power. He called on the church to give up its Machiavellian political ambitions, and give away its large monastic landholdings, its jeweled icons and its gold and silver sacramental chalices. Nilus challenged his listeners to remember that ‘the primary responsibility of a Christian is to be…as kind as possible.’ Nilus’ community was organized to encourage personal liberty in the context of communal responsibility. Nilus didn’t set himself up as an authority figure in the monastery, but simply made himself available to the other monks as a fellow traveler on the holy journey. Each monk was encouraged to seek God’s will in their own way as part of a company dedicated to following the scriptures. Nilus always pointed to Jesus as the example ‘for us all to follow’, individually and collectively.

In 1490, Nilus was asked to attend a council convened by the church to decide the fate of a group of heretics known as the ‘Judaizers’ — a group of people seeking to re-establish the practice of Jewish rites in the Christian church. They were also critical of the growing wealth of the church, and called for the church to repent, empty itself of its pretentious-ness and return to a spirituality of simple, dedicated service. Joseph, the abbot of the monastery at Volokolamsk, advocated that the Judaizers be condemned as heretics, arrested and burned alive. He justified his appeal on the grounds that Russia was a Christian state and, in so doing, would be defending Christian civilisation. Nilus publicly opposed Joseph, arguing that only God was in a position to judge a person’s relationship with him, and that no-one else, be they an archbishop or an abbot, had a right to judge. Nilus said that if anyone was concerned for their souls, they should admonish them by their own example. He steadfastly refused to condone the use of corporal punishment, torture and execution by ecclesiastical or civil authorities under any circumstances, advocating clemency and charity as ‘more becoming to Christians’. It was only after Nilus’ death in 1508 AD that Joseph was able to begin his persecution of the Judaizers again — burning their leaders alive and throwing their followers into prison. As a result of his courageous stand, Nilus had been able to restrain the reactionary forces of the church and state for nearly twenty years.[i]