The Philokalia

The Philokalia is the Greek anthology of ascetic and hesychast texts on inner prayer compiled in the eighteenth century by Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and Makarios of Corinth, first published in 1782, and it is the principal traditional source for the practice of the Jesus Prayer within Orthodox Christian spirituality. As the compilers' own primary anthology it is the correct source for what the tradition's own core texts on prayer actually say, gathered from many earlier writers across centuries into one collection. Its limit is that it is an anthology assembled with a devotional and formational purpose, not a historical study of hesychasm's development, so a claim about the origins or later reception of the practice needs a scholarly source alongside the anthology itself.