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It is commonly believed that Dostoevsky copied the image of the elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov from Ambrose of Optina. His meeting with him really made a strong impression on the writer. But his thoughts in the last years of his life were occupied by another spiritual authority: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk.
Not just gloomy faces
In "Demons" the elder is even called Tikhon - a bishop who retired to a monastery because of poor health. While working on the novel, Dostoevsky wrote to the editor Katkov: "Not all will be gloomy faces, there will also be bright ones. <...> For the first time, for example, I want to touch one category of persons, still little touched by literature. I take Tikhon of Zadonskiy as my ideal. This is also a saint, living in peace in a monastery. With him I compare and reduce the hero of the novel. I am very afraid, I have never tried".
Why was the image of Tikhon Zadonsky was so important to him? In one of his letters, Fyodor Mikhailovich reflects: "Perhaps it is Tikhon who makes up our Russian positive type, which our literature is looking for. <...> True, I will not create anything, I will only expose the real Tikhon, whom I took into my heart long ago with delight. But I will consider it, if it succeeds, an important feat for me. <...> Maybe they will say at last that I did not write all trifles."
"What is hell?"
In 1876, during another treatment, the doctors announced to Dostoevsky that he could hope for no more than fifteen years of life. In fact, he would not live even five. And he would also suffer the loss of his three-year-old son, who would die of an epileptic seizure. Death was coming from everywhere. And his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, was a novel about death. And resurrection.
It was very important for Dostoyevsky to find an answer to the question "What is hell?" "I do not investigate this mystery," he says in the mouth of the elder Zosima, "but I think that if there is a material flame, we would truly rejoice in it, for... in the torment of the material, at least for a moment, would be forgotten... ...the most terrible spiritual torment."
And here is what Tikhon Zadonsky wrote about it: "Conscience will awaken and rise in the unrepentant sinner... and will reproach and torment him for all eternity, because... against God and His holy law he acted.
Bishop on clogs
What do we know about Saint Tikhon? That him, the son of a village deacon, was almost handed over by his early widowed mother to a neighbor, a tax collector, due to starvation. And when his elder brother sent him to the Novgorod theological school, then, according to the memories of the saint, "my companions, the children of rich fathers, would find my clogs and would laugh at me and wave their clogs at me, saying, 'We magnify you, saintly one!
While still in his senior year at the seminary, he began to teach there - first Greek, and at the end of his studies - rhetoric and philosophy. And the decision to take monastic vows was preceded by two events, of which the saint himself recalled: a night vision after prayer, when for a time the heavens "opened up" before him, and a miraculous escape from death - on the belfry he leaned on the railing and they collapsed to the ground, but it was as if someone pushed him back. Soon there followed the tonsure, and there and the ordination - first as a hierodeacon, and then as a hieromonk - and the direction to Tver.
Archimandrite Tikhon was elevated to the rank of bishop at the age of 37: when they chose a Bishop for Novgorod, they decided to draw lots; and someone suggested that the rector of the Tver Seminary, Tikhon, be joined by seven other candidates. Three times they drew lots, and three times they got the same name - Archimandrite Tikhon.
And in 1763 he - no longer by lot, but at the request of Empress Catherine II herself - was transferred to the Voronezh cathedra. The diocese was one of the largest and most unsettled.
How do you get priests to read the Gospel?
When he got to Voronezh, it turned out that the priests did not know the Holy Scriptures. Almost no one read the Gospel at the time. And the saint set out to remedy the situation. He also began to fight mercilessly against drunkenness, including among the clergy.
He had to do everything at once: to bring order in churches, to establish education of the clergy, to persuade priests to study. He even wrote several essays for the edification of pastors and demanded that each of them have a Gospel and read it daily.
Holy Hierarch Tikhon Zadonsky: Dostoyevsky admired this man and brought out his image in "The Demons"
Unknown artist. Portrait of Tikhon Zadonsky, Bishop of Voronezh and Yelets.
There were trials of another kind. When he was appointed bishop of Voronezh, he was forced to participate in the trial of Metropolitan Arseny (Matseevich) of Rostov, who openly opposed the secularization of church lands. In other words, against the will of Empress Catherine II. This trial, which desecrated a man of holy life, made the strongest impression on Vladyka Tikhon: for some time he was unable to serve, and soon he begged to "retire".
It was a time when the sprouts of atheism, nihilism, and Voltaism were already germinating in the upper strata of society, while in the common people the echoes of paganism and a very formal attitude toward Christianity were still alive. It is no coincidence that one of the main books of Tikhon Zadonsky is called "On True Christianity".
The Invisible Struggle
But not everyone was sympathetic to him. When he was already living "at rest" in Zadonsky monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin, many - from the heads to the brethren of the monastery - mocked him. Hegumens tried through the Synod to prohibit him to conduct services, and the younger brethren, seeing that the bishop has no "administrative resources," openly laughed at him. They could even throw a log in his face. The saint endured all of this with humility. Although it was a true feat for him: a naturally short-tempered and irritable man, he initially could not get along with any of his fellow monks. But he succeeded in humbling himself and bowed at the feet of the monk himself at the slightest fit of anger.
Until the end of his life, he could not free himself from severe attacks of depression, "melancholy and hypochondria", as he himself wrote, though he would fight against them all his life. There were no remedies. He had to endure it.
It got to the point where the Bishop began to doubt whether he had done the right thing at all, having gone to such "rest." But the monastic elder Aaron said: "The Mother of God does not command him to leave the monastery." And the bishop humbled himself again.
He read, wrote spiritual works, answered letters. He bequeathed to his cell attendant after his death to give all his manuscripts to the Holy Synod. Thus several volumes of his spiritual writings appeared, including the "Spiritual Treasure to be Gathered from Peace." And a hundred years later, thanks to them - the images of the elders in Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.
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Three years before his death, St. Tikhon knew exactly how long he had left to live. He was gravely ill and kept a prearranged coffin in his closet. And shortly before his death he drew up a spiritual will: he asked to be buried directly on the road to St. Vladimir's church, so that his grave would be "trampled underfoot" all the time. But nobody dared to execute his will: he was buried under the altar of the temple, in a specially built crypt.
And in 1846, 63 years after his burial, during the construction of a new cathedral the body of the saint was discovered without trace of decay. The glorification of the saint took place in the year 1861, on the day of his death - August 26 (O.S. 13).
Source: foma.ru (Russian)