St. Paisius Velichkovsky (1722-1794)

A priest’s son from Poltava who left the Kiev Academy because it taught him nothing he wanted to know, wandered the monasteries of Moldavia and came to the Holy Mountain, where he began collecting and correcting the Greek texts on the prayer of the heart. He gathered a brotherhood that grew to several hundred and moved it across the Danube to Moldavia, to Dragomirna, Secu and finally Neamt, where the brothers served in Slavonic and Romanian and copied and translated day and night. His Slavonic Philokalia, printed in Moscow in 1793, carried hesychasm north into Russia, and through his disciples the eldership of Optina and the Russian startsy began. He died at Neamt in 1794. Glorified by the Russian Church in 1988 and by the Romanian Church in 1992. Feast: November 15.