Lev Gillet

The renowned author with the distinctive pseudonym "A Monk of the Eastern Church" is none other than the French Orthodox hieromonk Lev Gillet. Lev Gillet was born in 1892 in the Isère region of France to a Catholic family. He studied philology and biology. He participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918, during which he was injured. After the war, he became an assistant to the well-known psychology professor Claparède in Geneva. During this period, he had his first encounters with the Orthodox Russians of the diaspora, who began settling in France after the October Revolution of 1917. A restless spirit and a soul thirsty for knowledge, he became a monk of the Benedictine order and studied theology in Rome, but in 1927 he embraced Orthodoxy and joined the small community of Russian Metropolitan Euloge in Paris. He also served for several years as the head of the first French-speaking Orthodox community in Paris and as a professor at the St. Sergius Theological Institute. In 1938, he moved to London as the spiritual advisor of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius. Simultaneously, through frequent travels, he developed an intense and multifaceted spiritual activity in various parts of Europe and the Middle East. This activity lasted over 40 years and continued until his death in the spring of 1980. His devotion to the person of Jesus, as he used to refer to Christ, and the spirit of love and humility accompanied him in all his quests and supported him through all the challenges of spiritual life. Lev Gillet has been described as one of the most remarkable and least conformist figures of the modern Orthodox world, a man known yet mysterious... a free spirit and a humble and obedient servant of the Gospel and the Church of Christ.