Sergius of Radonezh - a mysterious Christian saint

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Every self-respecting religion can boast of its saints. Usually saints are credited with various miracles, acts of self-sacrifice, severity and humility. Let's remember the biblical commandment: Thou shalt not kill! The saints were so white and fluffy. But in Orthodox Christianity there is one reverend who, if you look at it, had a very mediocre relationship to Christianity. We are talking about Sergius of Radonezh. What's wrong with him? Let's figure it out.

Sergius was not just a patriot of his land, but also an active public figure. There are suspicions that the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, where he was in charge, turned into a training center for young disciplined specialists, from where the warrior monks Peresvet with the call sign "Alexander" and Oslyabya with the call sign "Rodion" graduated. To a modern Christian, this may seem incredible … The priest turns … no, not into a ragged businessman, as is often the case in our time, but into a real mentor for the fighters, an elite unit of that time. Judging by many pieces of evidence, we can confidently conclude that Orthodox Christianity in Russia was then completely different from what we now imagine. Most likely, there were no clear boundaries between Christianity and the old pre-Christian, Vedic faith, but more on that later.

During his service in the church, Sergius of Radonezh raised many disciples, who founded up to forty monasteries; from them, in turn, came the founders of about fifty more monasteries. In them, following the example of the Sergiev Monastery, a cenobitic charter was introduced, which to some extent resembles a military charter. It turns out that the ancient Russian monastery was the prototype of modern military units, where the main motives for discipline were patriotism and self-improvement.

Sergius of Radonezh contributed not only to the development of monasticism in Russia, but also to the creation of original bases where potential warriors were brought up by strict discipline and asceticism. In case of urgent need, they were able to transform from monks into fighters.

During the period of his abbess, Sergius forbade the monks to beg for alms and made it a rule that all monks should live at the expense of their own labor, setting an example in this himself. Metropolitan Alexei, who highly respected the Radonezh abbot, before his death, persuaded him to be his successor, but Sergius refused. This suggests that he was not a careerist.

Sergius of Radonezh is credited with having a strong influence on the military-political situation in Russia at that time. High-ranking officials came to him for advice before making the most important decisions, that is, the saint acted as an adviser on domestic and foreign policy.

It was thanks to Sergius of Radonezh that the Moscow principality did not become a trading colony of the Genoese when Mamai offered the local authorities a deal with Genoa that was not very profitable for the region. Although the offer seemed beneficial to many, the Monk Sergius of Radonezh declared that "foreign merchants should not be allowed into the Holy Russian Land, for this is a sin."

It was Sergius of Radonezh who set Dmitry Donskoy to win the internecine battle on the Kulikovo field. Many chroniclers are sure that the monk instilled confidence in the prince and the squad, despite the numerical superiority of Mamai's army.

After the victory in the Battle of Kulikovo, the Grand Duke began to treat the Radonezh abbot with even greater reverence and invited him to seal a spiritual will, which for the first time legalized a new order of succession to the throne: from father to eldest son.

Despite the clear and unambiguous position of the official history, it is still not known exactly what relations Russia had with the Tatars, who fought with whom and why. The same applies to the Battle of Kulikovo, in which the graduates of the monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh took part. And the saint himself indirectly participated in it. Without his assurances of the success of the Russians, Donskoy's victory would hardly have been assured.

As the most reliable depiction of this battle, let us take an old Yaroslavl icon dating from the middle of the 17th century. It is customary to call it like this: “Sergius of Radonezh. The hagiographic icon.

Why should we believe this particular image? The fact is that almost all the icons, which were traditionally covered with linseed oil, darkened over time, and about once every 100 years they were again covered with a base and painted again. This means that there is at least one more old icon under the top image of the icon. The bottom layer is of particular interest. In 1959, they were able to remove the upper layers and thus, in the jargon of reenactors, “opened” its very first edition.