"The Philokalia" is an important collection of writings by Fathers of
the Eastern Church dating from the fourth to the fourteenth century. It
exists in three versions: the Greek, complied in the eighteenth century;
the Slavonic; and the Russian.
The Russian text, translated by Bishop Theophan the Recluse in the
nineteenth century, and consisting of five volumes (with which a sixth
is sometimes associated), is the most complete of all three versions. It
is the Russian text that has been used in translating into English this
selection, which presents a range of "Philokalia" writings concerning
the Jesus Prayer.