Afanasy Vysotsky

Afanasy Vysotsky, known in Church Slavonic and Russian sources as the Venerable Athanasius of Vysotsk (or of Serpukhov) the Elder, was a Russian Orthodox monk of the second half of the fourteenth century and the opening of the fifteenth. He belonged to the circle of disciples of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, the principal organizer of cenobitic monasticism in Muscovite Rus. Neither the year nor the place of Afanasy's birth has been preserved in surviving sources. He enters the historical record in 1374, when Prince Vladimir Andreyevich of Serpukhov, a cousin of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy, invited Saint Sergius to found a monastery near the princely town. Sergius selected a commanding site above the river Nara, from which the house took the name Vysotsky (of the heights). He dedicated it to the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos, tonsured the first brethren, and installed Afanasy as hegumen, remaining himself for several days to establish the rule.

Under Afanasy the monastery adopted the communal typikon associated with the Trinity monastery of Saint Sergius. Contemporary and near-contemporary notices present the first abbot as both an ascetic and a man of book-learning, one of the more educated members of Sergius's following. He governed the Serpukhov community for a little more than a decade. In the late 1380s he resigned the abbacy and departed for Constantinople, then still the centre of Orthodox learning and of the patriarchate to which the Russian Church was canonically subject. Dates given for the journey cluster around 1387 and 1388, though the precise circumstances of his departure are not recorded in detail.

In Constantinople Afanasy lived as a monk, studied Greek, and devoted himself to the copying and translation of liturgical, canonical, and ascetical texts, which he forwarded to Rus for the use of his former monastery and of other churches. Art historians connect with this activity the celebrated Vysotsky rank (Vysotsky chin), a set of large Deesis icons of Constantinopolitan workmanship sent to Serpukhov in the last years of the fourteenth century. Surviving panels are now held by the State Tretyakov Gallery and other collections and rank among the principal examples of late Palaiologan icon painting preserved in Russia. Through these books and images Afanasy served as a conduit of Byzantine liturgical and artistic culture to the Moscow lands in the generation after the Battle of Kulikovo.

Afanasy remained in the Byzantine capital until his death and was buried there. The year of his repose is not known with certainty; Russian hagiographical tradition commonly states that he died after 1401. He is therefore to be distinguished from his successor as hegumen, Athanasius of Vysotsk the Younger, who died at the Serpukhov monastery in 1395 and whose relics were later venerated there. Both abbots were glorified as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church. Their shared feast is kept on 12 September. Afanasy the Elder is also commemorated on 6 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh and in local synaxes of the Serpukhov region. No individual act of papal or patriarchal canonization is recorded; his cult grew from monastic and local veneration, as was usual for Russian monks of this period.

Beyond the outline preserved in hagiographical collections, princely chronicles, and the later memory of the Vysotsky Monastery, the biographical sources for Afanasy are sparse. He did not hold episcopal or patriarchal office, and there is no evidence that he married or had children; his adult life was that of a tonsured monk. His historical importance lies in his role as founder-abbot of a major Serpukhov house, as a disciple who extended the influence of Saint Sergius south of Moscow, and as a transmitter of Constantinopolitan texts and icons at a formative moment in Muscovite ecclesiastical culture.