SORSKII, NIL (1433–1508), also known as Nilus of Sora. Russian hesychast and saint. Nil became a monk early in life and served his novitiate at the important northern monastery of Saint Cyril at Beloye Ozero. After a journey to the monastic communities of Mount Athos and Constantinople, he returned to Beloye Ozero with a commitment to hesychast spirituality. In the 1470s or 1480s Nil made his way to the deserted banks of the river Sora. His intention was to establish a monastic community that differed from the strict and complex pattern of life at his monastery of origin and was based, instead, on the pattern of the Athonite skete: loosely structured, sparsely populated, with silence at its core, and with no one superior.

In Nil's community the flexibility of the monastics' everyday arrangements corresponded to the flexibility with which their inner life was to be regulated. Hours...