St. Eustathius of Thessalonica. On the improvement of monastic life: chapters 1-32
The publication contains a Russian translation of an initial fragment of the treatise of Saint Eustathius, the Metropolitan of Thessalonica, which is known as “On the Improvement of Monastic Life”. The present fragment contains a seventh part of the whole text. The work is marked by a very thoughtful description of the monastic ideal, which involves usage of the philosophic discourses and a lot of references to antique authors. In the fragment, published here, the author considers the following subjects: his intentions and the general outline of the work, the monastic ideal, the aim of the renouncement from the world, the principate of the bishop for the monks. In the preface the subjects of the treatise are represented and an attempt to clarify its real intention is made. In the article a bright peculiarity of the text is emphasized: this spiritual writing, which was created for the improvement of the monks, contains a lot of features, which are speciﬁc for the secular literature. This peculiarity of the writing made some researchers think, that it was addressed not to monks, but to high-educated secular public and that aim of it is not so much spiritual, as worldly - to justify himself against a false accusation. In the article this hypothesis is criticized on the basis of the text of the treatise.