The Philokalia is a collection of texts on prayer and the inner life, written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by spiritual teachers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The texts were gathered in the eighteenth century by two monks of Mount Athos, St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, and first printed in Greek in Venice in 1782. The Greek title means “love of the beautiful”. The writings were chosen to teach watchfulness (nepsis) — close attention to one’s own thoughts and feelings — and inner, continual prayer, above all the short repeated “Jesus Prayer”.
The collection belongs to the tradition called hesychasm, the practice of stillness and inner prayer that reaches back to the early desert monks. It was first written for monks, though its compilers held that lay people could use it as well. The standard complete English version, represented here, is the translation from the Greek by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, published by Faber and Faber in five volumes between 1979 and 2023; Volume 1, the edition cited here, covers the earliest authors. Orthodox writers have long held that the inner-prayer practices it describes are meant to be followed under the guidance of an experienced teacher.
Contents
Published in the complete English translation as five volumes (Faber and Faber, 1979–2023); Volume 1, cited here, covers authors up to the eighth century
Arranged by author, gathering texts by early teachers of the Orthodox tradition — among them Isaiah the Solitary, Evagrios, John Cassian, Mark the Ascetic, Diadochos of Photiki, and Maximos the Confessor
Later volumes add writers up to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries, including Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory of Sinai, and Gregory Palamas
Reception
The Philokalia is regarded as one of the central texts of Eastern Orthodox spirituality; the publisher of its English translation describes its influence within the Orthodox Church as greater than that of any book apart from the Bible. After the 1782 Greek printing it spread through a Church Slavonic selection by Paisius Velichkovsky (1793) and later Russian translations, and it reached a wide lay readership partly through the nineteenth-century work The Way of a Pilgrim, which features it. The complete English translation by Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware (Faber and Faber, 1979–2023) is the standard version in English. Scholars note that the texts span more than a thousand years and many authors, that the compilation reflects choices made by its eighteenth-century editors, and that the attribution of some pieces remains debated. It is read today both as a historical source for Orthodox monasticism and as a living devotional and contemplative text.
Frequently asked
What is The Philokalia?
It is a collection of texts on prayer and the inner life, written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by teachers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Two monks of Mount Athos, St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, gathered the texts and first printed them in Greek in Venice in 1782. The Greek title means “love of the beautiful”.
Who wrote The Philokalia?
There is no single author. The texts come from many writers of the Orthodox tradition, among them Maximos the Confessor and Gregory Palamas, so the index records the author as “Various”. The collection was compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, and the standard complete English translation was made by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware.
What are hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer?
Hesychasm is a tradition of inner stillness and continual prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Philokalia is its foundational text. Much of it concerns watchfulness (nepsis) over one’s thoughts and the repetition of the short “Jesus Prayer”. Orthodox writers hold that these practices are meant to be followed with the guidance of an experienced spiritual teacher.