Saint Paisius is credited with introducing essential aspects of the Athonite Hesychastic tradition to monastic life in Romania and Moldavia, including Jesus Prayer. Previously practised by hermits, they became a part of the order of coenobitic monasteries. Benefiting from his knowledge of Greek acquired after many years on Mount Athos, he made accurate Slavic translations of the Greek Philokalia and the writings of the Church fathers. These translations are still used throughout the Slavic world, and particularly in Russia, where they facilitated an extensive spiritual renewal and the rebuilding of traditional monastic life up until the revolution in 1917.
Born in Ukraine in 1722, he studied at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Kiev but was put off by the worldliness of its atmosphere and the predominance of rationalist theology. Willing to become a monastic, he began looking for a monastery with a strict order where he would ascetise under the guidance of a wise spiritual father. With this aim, he settled in a monastery in Romania, where many Russian monks had fled after the church reforms of Peter the Great.
Unable to find a mentor, he travelled to Mount Athos, with a companion who died of infection four days after their arrival. The saint settled in an isolated skete near the Pantokrator Monastery to recover there. Afterwards, he continued to travel around the island looking for a spiritual father. A visiting elder tonsured him as a monk and blessed him to live at a coenobitic monastery before becoming a hermit. He never found an elder for himself, yet he established a monastery and accepted ordination. In 1763 the entire community left the Holy Mountain and returned to Romania. They founded a monastery where they adopted the Athonite rule of life.
His life influenced the entire Orthodox world. In Russia, his disciples started the tradition of eldership, and some themselves became known elders. The spiritual children of Saint Paisios became the teachers of Saint Herman of Alaska, who brought to America the Slavonic Philokalia in 1794.
