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 To the people of
Russia, Sergius is a national hero and an example of Russian spiritual life
at its best.
Sergius was born around 1314, the son of a farmer. When he was twenty, he
and his brother began to live as hermits in a forest near Moscow. Others
joined them in what became the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, a center for
the renewal of Russian Christianity. Pilgrims came from all Russia to
worship and to receive spiritual instruction, advice, and encouragement. The
Russians were at the time largely subservient to the neighboring
(non-Christian) Tatar (or Tartar) people. Sergius rallied the people behind
Prince Dimitri Donskoi, who defeated the Tatars in 1380 and established an
independent Russia.
Sergius was a gentle man, of winning personality. Stories told of him
resemble those of Francis of Assisi, including some that show that animals
tended to trust him. He had the ability to inspire in men an intense
awareness of the love of God, and a readiness to respond in love and
obedience. He remained close to his peasant roots. One contemporary said of
him, "He has about him the smell of fir forests." To this day, the effect of
his personality on Russian devotion remains considerable.
(The following material is taken with minor alterations from The Lives of
the Saints, by Sabine Baring-Gould, author of the hymn "Onward, Christian
Soldiers. The reader will note that this account was written before the
Communist Revolution, at a time when the Czar was still ruler of Russia, and
the Russian Orthodox Church was the official religion of the country.)
The name of Sergius is as dear to every Russian's heart as that of William
Tell to a Swiss, or that of Joan of Arc to a Frenchman. He was born at
Rostoff in the early part of the 14th century, and when quite young left the
house of his parents, and, together with his brother Stephen, settled
himself in the dense forests of Radonege with bears for his companions,
suffering from fierce cold in winter, often from famine. The fame of his
virtues drew disciples around him. They compelled him to go to
Peryaslavla-Zalessky, to receive priestly orders from Athanasius, Bishop of
Volhynia, who lived there. Sergius built by his own labor in the midst of
the forest a rude church of timber, by the name of the Source of LIfe, the
Ever Blessed Trinity, which has since grown into the greatest, most renowned
and wealthy monastery in all Russia--the Troitzka (=Trinity) Abbey, whose
destiny has become inseparable from the destinies of the capital.
Princes and prelates applied to Sergius not only for advice, but also for
teachers trained in his school, who might become in their realms and
dioceses the heads of similar institutions, centers whence light and wisdom
might shine. Tartar invasion had quenched the religious fervor of the
Russians: a new era of zeal opened with the foundation of the Troitzka
monastery and the labors of Sergius. At the request of Vladimir, Athanasius,
a disciple of Sergius, founded the Visotsky monastery at Serpouchoff; and
another of his pupils, Sabbas, laid the foundation of the convent of
Svenigorod, while his nephew Theodore laid that of Simonoff in Moscow.
In the terrible struggle against the Tartars, the heart of the Grand-Prince
Demetrius failed him; how could he break the power of this inexhaustible
horde which, like the locusts of the prophet Joel, had the garden of Eden
before them and left behind them a desolate wilderness? It was the
remonstrance, the prayers of Sergius, that encouraged the Prince to engage
in battle with the horde on the fields of the Don. No historical picture or
sculpture in Russia is more frequent than that which represents the youthful
warrior receiving the benediction of the aged hermit. Two of his monks,
Peresvet and Osliab, accompanied the Prince to the field, and fought in
coats of mail drawn over their monastic habit; and the battle was begun by
the single combat of Peresvet with a gigantic Tartar, champion of the Horde.
The two chief convents in the suburbs of Moscow still preserve the
recollection of that day. One is the vast fortress of the Donskoi monastery,
under the Sparrow Hills. The other is the Simonoff monastery already
mentioned, founded on the banks of the Mosqua, on a beautiful spot chosen by
the saint himself, and its earliest site was consecrated by the tomb which
covers the bodies of his two warlike monks. From that day forth he stood out
in the national recollection as the champion of Russia. It was from his
convent that the noblest patriotic inspirations were drawn, and, as he had
led the way in giving the first great repulse to the Tartar power, so the
final blow in like manner came from a successor in his place. In 1480, when
Ivan III wavered, as Demetrius had wavered before him, it was by the
remonstrance of Archbishop Bassian, formerly prior of the Troitzka
monastery, that Ivan too was driven, almost against his will, to the field.
"Dost thou fear death?" so he was addressed by the aged prelate. "Thou too
must die as well as others; death is the lot of all, man, beast, and bird
alike; none avoid it. Give these warriors into my hands, and, old as I am, I
will not spare myself, nor turn my back upon the Tartars." The Metropolitan,
we are told, added his exhortations to those of Bassian. Ivan returned to
the camp, the Khan of the Golden Horde fled without a blow, and Russia was
set free for ever. [Note: The reader will remember that Constantinople (also
called New Rome) fell to the Turks in 1453, and thus the Byzantine or
Eastern Roman Empire came to an end. This same Ivan III married the niece of
the last Byzantine Emperor, and so claimed for himself a position in the
line of Christian Emperors beginning with Constantine, and for Moscow the
position of Third Rome, the capital thenceforth of the Christian world.]
Now back to the time of Sergius.
The Metropolitan, Alexis, being eighty-four years old, perceived that his
end was approaching, and he wished to give Sergius his blessing and appoint
him as his successor. But the humble monk, in great alarm, declared that he
could not accept and wear the sacred picture of the Blessed Virgin suspended
by gold chains, which the primate had sent him from his own breast on which
it had hung. "From my youth up," said he, "I have never possessed or worn
gold, and how now can I adorn myself in my old age?"
St. Sergius died at an extremely advanced age in 1392, amidst the
lamentations of his contemporaries.
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