Early Life
Before becoming a monk, Nil Sorsky worked as a scribe and was engaged in book copying. Later in his life, he took monastic vows at the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, which had been known for its hostile stance towards monastic landownership. The founder of the monastery – Saint Kirill of Beloozero – was himself known for rejecting villages that had been offered to him by devout nobles.
Kirill’s followers adopted his ways and would later become known as the startsy from out the Volga with Nil Sorsky as their leader. Soon, he went on a journey to the Holy Land and visited Palestine, Constantinople, and Mount Athos, acquainting himself with a mystical doctrine of Hesychasm and reading patristic literature. Upon his return to Russia (between 1473 and 1489), Nil Sorsky founded a cloister on the Sora River (hence, Nil Sorsky, or Nil of Sora) not far from the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, where he would settle down with his followers. He wrote extensively.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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