ABSTRACT
During the difficult post-Byzantine centuries, the Orthodox experienced sporadic moments of awakening long before the eighteenth century, particularly in the hesychast centers. In the footsteps of the influential philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, early on in the twentieth century a pleiad of Russian Orthodox intellectuals, of whom many lived in western exile, undertook to redraft the Orthodox tradition in modern idiom. What gave rise to Neopatristic movement was a sense of alienation from tradition remarked about late Medieval and modern Orthodox theology. Basil of Poiana Marului possessed a collection of Byzantine spiritual tracts translated into Slavonic, based on Romanian versions dating from the previous two centuries, currently preserved by the Romanian Academy. Through the sequential translation of the collection into Romanian, Slavonic, and Russian, the Byzantine mystical ideals, the quest for divine gnosis via ascesis, prayer, and deification, spread like a wildfire, fostering a new generation of hesychasts and the popularization of Jesus-Prayer.
