Content area
Full Text
5. Manjava Skete: Ukrainian Monastic Writings of the Seventeenth Century, trans. and Intro. Sophia Senyk, CS 192 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 2001), pp. 212, paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-87907-792-1.
From 1605 until 1785, the site of Manjava in the Ukrainian Carpathian mountains was a highly developed locus of Ruthenian monasticism. Here a strict asceticism much akin to the anchoritic practices of the early Church was exercised. The increasing fame of the Manjava community drew large numbers of pilgrims who fled from increasing western worldliness. Though originally meant to function as a skete (a small, removed community composed of a few brothers), Manjava steadily grew into a thriving and leading center of Ukrainian anchoritic life, owing allegiance to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Through the years this exemplary community came to influence the development of other monasteries in the Ukraine and Moldavia. Despite suffering fire and devastation brought on by invading Tartar hordes,...