The Philokalia, Volume 5

  • Year 2023
  • Type Other
  • Genre spiritual theology
  • Tradition Eastern Orthodox
  • Original language English

For For readers already praying and reading the Fathers who want the hesychast texts themselves; dense ascetic writing meant to be read slowly. Not a first book on Orthodox prayer.

Should I read this?

For the general reader
2 of 5 worth a look
For the researcher
5 of 5 essential
Difficulty
4 of 5 hard

Primary hesychast texts on watchfulness, the passions and prayer of the heart, in a careful modern translation. Essential for the serious student; slow going for a newcomer.

How it proceeds
  • Philosophic 3 of 5
  • Scriptural 2 of 5
  • Experiential 5 of 5
  • Sociological 0 of 5
  • Historical 2 of 5

Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.

The fifth volume of the English translation of the Philokalia, the collection of Greek ascetic and mystical texts on watchfulness and inner prayer compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth and first published in Venice in 1782. The translation, made from the Greek and published by Faber and Faber, was the joint work of G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, each text with a short introduction. This volume contains the late Byzantine writers, among them Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos, Kallistos Angelikoudis, Symeon of Thessaloniki and Mark of Ephesus, with further texts on unceasing prayer. It appeared in 2023, after the deaths of all three translators (Sherrard had completed a revision of the draft before his death in 1995, Ware died in 2022), and completed the English translation begun in 1979.

Catalog IDW.QABEWG.D

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