more than a hundred years old in our
monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos,
it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in
ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook
Russia--the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East
after the destruction of Constantinople--this institution fell into
oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one
of the great "ascetics," as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his
disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has
sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished
especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was
introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three
such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of
weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question
for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished
by anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints,
nor wonder-working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical
exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its
elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles
from all parts.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will,
into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your
own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete
self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is
undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in
order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from
self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without
finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not
founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a
thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary
"obedience" which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The
obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted
themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.

The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity
one such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his
elder, left his monastery in