Father Sergius (Tolstoy)
Short summary
Russian Empire, 1840s. Prince Stepán Kasátsky, a brilliant Guards officer destined for greatness, broke off his engagement after discovering his fiancée had been Emperor Nicholas I's mistress. Devastated by this betrayal, he renounced worldly life and entered a monastery, becoming Father Sergius.
For years, Sergius struggled with pride, vanity, and religious doubts. After seven years in the monastery, he moved to a hermitage seeking greater solitude. One winter night, a beautiful divorcee named Makóvkina visited his cell, pretending to be lost and frozen. Tempted by overwhelming lust, Sergius desperately sought a way to resist.
Taking up the axe with his right hand he laid the forefinger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and struck with it below the second joint. The finger flew off more lightly than a stick.
Shocked by his sacrifice, Makóvkina fled and later became a nun. Sergius's fame as a holy healer grew, and crowds sought his blessing. However, he increasingly felt his spiritual life replaced by vanity and desire for human praise. After thirteen years as a hermit, a merchant brought his mentally ill daughter to be healed. Left alone with the girl, Sergius succumbed to temptation and slept with her.
Horrified by his fall, he fled dressed as a peasant. Contemplating suicide, he remembered his childhood friend Páshenka. Finding her living in poverty, teaching music to support her family, he realized she truly lived for God while he had lived for human approval. Sergius became a wandering pilgrim, finally finding God through humility. Arrested without a passport, he was sent to Siberia, where he worked as a hired man, teaching children and caring for the sick.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Prince Kasátskys disillusionment and calling to monasticism
In the 1840s Petersburg, a surprising event occurred when a handsome officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards left the service, broke his engagement, and entered a monastery to become a monk. This officer was Prince Stepán Kasátsky, who found his decision entirely natural despite its seeming inexplicable to others.
Kasátsky had been raised for military service after his father's death when he was twelve. At Military College, he distinguished himself through brilliant ability and immense self-esteem, excelling in studies, drill, and riding. However, his quick temper marred his conduct, leading to violent outbursts that nearly resulted in his expulsion. Despite these flaws, he received a commission as lieutenant in an aristocratic Guards regiment.
The young officer had been noticed by Emperor Nicholas I since his college days, and people predicted his appointment as aide-de-camp.
Kasátsky desired this position not merely from ambition but from passionate devotion to the Emperor, whom he adored with rapture. His striving for perfection and distinction filled his life, whether in military service, French conversation, chess, or social dancing. He sought to belong to the highest society circles and chose to court Countess Korotkóva, a beauty of the Court whose friendship was coveted by the most established people.
He proposed and was accepted with surprising ease, though he failed to realize what the whole town knew.
Chapter 2. Becoming Father Sergius: monastic life and the path to hermitage
Two weeks before their wedding, while at his fiancée's country place, Kasátsky learned the devastating truth. During an intimate conversation in a shady linden alley, Mary confessed that she had been the Emperor's mistress the previous year. The revelation shattered Kasátsky's idealized view of her angelic purity. Remembering how the Emperor had congratulated him on the Névsky, he realized he had been used to shield the imperial affair. In his rage and despair, he confronted Mary's mother before fleeing.
By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important to others...he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had formerly envied.
Kasátsky applied for discharge and entered a monastery, becoming a monk. His sister understood his motivation - he sought to rise above those who considered themselves his superiors. But deeper religious feeling also guided him, intertwined with pride and the desire for preeminence. His disillusionment and sense of injury led him to despair, and despair led him back to his childhood faith.
At the monastery, Kasátsky submitted to the Abbot, a learned starets in the succession of monks originating in Walachia.
In monastic life, Kasátsky found satisfaction in attaining perfection both outwardly and inwardly. Obedience made life easier for him, silencing all possibility of doubt. He lived not by his own will but by that of the starets, finding special tranquillity in this submission. After seven years, he received the tonsure and was ordained to the priesthood by the name of Sergius. However, by his seventh year at the monastery, spiritual drowsiness increased as he had learned and attained all there was.
Chapter 3. The temptation of Makóvkina and spiritual trial
Father Sergius was transferred to a metropolitan monastery where he encountered greater temptations. A lady known for frivolous behaviour sought his favour, causing him alarm at the definiteness of his desire. He wrote to the starets about this weakness and confessed to a young novice, asking him to keep watch. Additionally, he struggled with extreme antipathy toward his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man making a career in the Church.
During a Vigil service on the eve of the Intercession feast, the Abbot summoned Father Sergius to meet a general from his former regiment. Revolted by this worldly display and the Abbot's satisfaction in showing him off, Father Sergius rebuked the Abbot for exposing him to temptation during prayers in God's house. The next day, he asked pardon but wrote to the starets requesting permission to return. The starets replied that Sergius's pride was the cause of his troubles and directed him to the Tambóv hermitage to take the place of the deceased anchorite Hilary.
At the hermitage, Father Sergius lived in a dual cave dug into the hillside. In the sixth year of his hermit life, during Carnival time, a merry company of rich people made a troika-party from a neighbouring town. Among them was a beautiful, rich, and eccentric divorcee who amazed the town with her escapades.
Learning of Father Sergius's hermitage, she bet she could spend the night with him. The party drove to the forest where his cell was located, and she had them leave her there alone. Father Sergius was in his cell, struggling with doubts and lust when he heard a woman's voice asking to be let in. Despite recognizing the temptation, he was moved by her apparent distress and opened the door.
The woman entered his cell, claiming to be lost and frozen. She began undressing to dry herself, calling to him seductively. Father Sergius prayed desperately, feeling his weakness and that he might be lost at any moment. When she cried out that she was dying and begged him to come to her, he attempted to burn his finger in the lamp flame to resist temptation, but could not bear the pain.
Instead, he went to the porch, took up an axe, and chopped off his left forefinger at the second joint. With his hand wrapped in his cassock, he returned to the woman, pale and trembling. Seeing the blood dripping from his hand and finding the severed finger, she was overcome with shame and horror.
Dear sister, why did you wish to ruin your immortal soul? Temptations must come into the world, but woe to him by whom temptation comes. Pray that God may forgive us!
She begged his forgiveness and blessing before leaving with the returning sledge party. A year later, she entered a convent as a novice and lived a strict life under the direction of the hermit Arsény, who wrote letters to her at long intervals.
Chapter 4. Growing fame as a miracle worker
Father Sergius lived as a recluse for another seven years. The episode with the woman became widely known, along with her transformation and entry into a convent. His fame increased dramatically, and more visitors came seeking his blessing and healing. His first cure occurred in the eighth year when he healed a fourteen-year-old boy brought by his desperate mother. After this, not a week passed without sick people coming to him, and many recovered, spreading his fame further.
Chapter 5. The fall from grace and search for true humility
After thirteen years in his hermit's cell, Father Sergius had the appearance of an old man with long grey beard and thin but still black curly hair. He lived with one persistent thought: whether he was right in accepting his position. The authorities arranged matters to make maximum use of him as a means of attracting visitors and contributions to the monastery.
He felt that he was a means of attracting visitors and contributions to the monastery...the more he gave himself up to such a life the more he felt that what was internal became external.
Father Sergius felt the fount of living water within him drying up, and what he did was done more for men and less for God. He could not help being pleased by the praise and influence he exerted, thinking himself a shining light while conscious of the weakening divine light within him. During a particularly difficult day, after meeting with an important official and a sceptical young professor, he felt especially troubled.
That evening, a merchant arrived with his afflicted daughter, a girl of twenty-two who had fallen ill two years earlier.
Despite his spiritual struggles, Father Sergius agreed to see the girl that evening. When she arrived, he was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her feminine figure. She was sensual and feebleminded, and when he tried to pray for her, she took his hand and pressed it to her breast, saying she had seen him in a dream. Unable to resist, he yielded to temptation and spent the night with her.
At dawn, filled with horror and self-loathing, Father Sergius considered ending his life with the same axe he had used to chop off his finger. Instead, he put on peasant clothes, cut off his long hair, and fled the hermitage. He walked until noon, then lay in a field of rye, approaching a village by evening but sleeping by the river cliff instead.
In despair, he contemplated suicide but fell asleep and dreamed of his childhood. He remembered a girl named Páshenka, a thin, timid child with large mild eyes whom the boys had mocked. He recalled seeing her later as an unhappy married woman, then as a poor widow. In his dream, an angel told him to go to Páshenka and learn from her what he had to do, what his sin was, and wherein lay his salvation. He awoke, decided this was a vision from God, and set out to walk the three hundred versts to find her.
Chapter 6. Redemption through Páshenka and life as a pilgrim
Páshenka had become old, withered Praskóvya Mikháylovna, supporting her daughter's family by giving music lessons to tradesmen's daughters, earning about sixty rubles a month.
When Sergius appeared at her door as a beggar, she eventually recognized him despite his transformation. He confessed to her that he was not a holy man but a great sinner, asking her to teach him how to live. She told him about her difficult life - her unhappy marriage, her jealousy that tormented her husband, her poverty, and her struggles to support her family. She admitted her failings in religious observance but acknowledged knowing how bad she was.
I am not a holy man, I am not even as good as a simple ordinary man; I am a loathsome, vile, and proud sinner who has gone astray, and who...is at least worse than most very bad people.
After spending time with Páshenka, Sergius realized his error.
Páshenka is what I ought to have been but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men.
Yes, one good deed—a cup of water given without thought of reward—is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people.
He began walking from village to village as a pilgrim, asking for bread and shelter in Christ's name. His noble bearing disposed some people in his favour, while others seemed pleased at seeing a gentleman reduced to beggary. When he helped people with advice or by settling quarrels, he left immediately without waiting for gratitude. Gradually, God began to reveal Himself within him.
The less importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the presence of God within him.
For eight months Kasátsky tramped in this manner until he was arrested for not having a passport. When asked who he was, he replied that he had no passport and was a servant of God. He was sentenced and sent to Siberia, where he settled as a hired man of a well-to-do peasant, working in the kitchen-garden, teaching children, and attending to the sick.