Philokalia (original) (raw)

The Philokalia (Gk The Love of Good Things) is a collection of texts by masters of the Eastern Orthodox, hesychast tradition, writing from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries on the disciplines of Christian prayer and a life dedicated to God. Most of the authors were monks.

Although these works were widely known before their initial publication in the Greek language in 1782, they have since been published in this collection in many languages, including a seven-volume translation into Russian by St. Theophan the Recluse in the nineteenth century. Other than the Bible, and a handful of writings by early Christian fathers, the Philokalia is by far the most influential and widely admired example of Eastern Orthodox piety in print today. It is featured prominently in another much shorter well-known book called The Way of the Pilgrim, in which a Russian traveler learns to pray from various people he meets on his travels and by reading the Philokalia.