Anatoly Zertsalov

Anatoly Zertsalov, venerated in the Russian Orthodox Church as Venerable Anatoly the Elder of Optina, was born Alexei Moiseevich Zertsalov on 24 March 1824 in the village of Bobrovo, Meshchovsk district, Kaluga Governorate, in the Russian Empire. He belonged to a devout family of the clerical estate; his father Moses served as a deacon. Raised in an atmosphere of church piety, the future elder showed from childhood a love of prayer and the divine services. He received a theological education in the schools of the Kaluga eparchy in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In his late twenties he resolved to embrace monasticism and, like many Russians of his generation who sought authentic spiritual life, he turned to Optina Pustyn, the monastery near Kozelsk that had become the foremost center of the institution of eldership (starchestvo) in the Russian Church.

Received as a novice at Optina in 1853, Alexei placed himself under the guidance of Elder Macarius, one of the great startsy of the monastery. After Macarius’s death in 1860 he became a devoted disciple of Elder Ambrose of Optina. He was tonsured a monk with the name Anatoly in the 1860s and was ordained successively hierodeacon and hieromonk. In the 1870s he was entrusted with the superiorship of the St. John the Baptist Skete of Optina and with the office of brotherhood confessor. Although he possessed evident spiritual gifts, he consistently deferred to Elder Ambrose during the latter’s lifetime, sending visitors to the senior elder and regarding himself as unworthy of the title of starets. His own counsel was characterized by extreme humility, gentleness, and a reluctance to impose heavy burdens.

Following the repose of St. Ambrose in 1891, Anatoly became one of the leading spiritual fathers of Optina. Monks, nuns, parish clergy, and lay pilgrims sought him out for confession and direction. Those who knew him described a man of deep compassion who often wept with the suffering and who had the ability to console the despondent and to expose hidden thoughts with love rather than severity. A body of his letters of spiritual advice has survived, showing a practical, evangelical approach to the passions, prayer, and daily Christian life in the late imperial Russian context. In his final years he bore illness without complaint. He died at Optina on 25 January 1894 and was buried on the grounds of the monastery he had served for four decades.

After the suppression of Optina in the Soviet period and its restoration at the end of the twentieth century, the relics of the Optina Elders, including those of Anatoly, were recovered and placed in the monastery churches for veneration. He was glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church together with the other venerable elders of Optina, first for diocesan veneration in the 1990s and then for general veneration by the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of 2000 under Patriarch Alexy II. The Church commemorates him on 25 January, the day of his repose, and on 11 October, the Synaxis of the Venerable Elders of Optina Pustyn. He is remembered as a representative of the Optina school of spiritual guidance that shaped Russian Orthodox piety in the nineteenth century.