The Issue of the Observance of the Liturgical Rule in Byzantium in the 14th-Century and on Mount Athos in the 18th Century (Based on the Writings of Kallistos Angelikoudes and Paisius Velichkovsky)

The article focuses on the discussion concerning the observance of the liturgical rule in Byzantium during the second half of the 14th century and on Mount Athos in the mid-18th century. Kallistos Angelikoudes, a hesychast monk who headed a small monastic community in Macedonia during the 1360s and 1370s, addresses this issue in his texts from the collection known as “Hesychast Consolation”. These works reflect the Byzantine monastic interest in liturgical practice. A similar discussion is in evidence, as to the 18th-century Athonite context, in the “Polemic with Athanasius the Moldavian”, Paisius Velichkovsky’s earliest composition written ca. 1757 during his stay on Mount Athos. Both authors highlight the fundamental distinction between the “prayer rule” observed in coenobitic monasteries and that followed by hermit monks devoted to “hesychia”. Both Kallistos and Paisius had to deal with attempts by contemporaries to impose coenobitic practices on small ascetic communities, as well as with suspicions or even hostility toward the reading of Scripture and patristic literature. Their works articulate a clear defense of the hermit rule’s distinctiveness from the general church rule and offer a robust apology for reading as an essential monastic practice. The similarity in their approaches to these issues, polemical strategies, and reliance on shared authoritative sources underscores the enduring unity of the cultural space within the “Byzantine Commonwealth” even in the post-Byzantine era.