Together with the holy fools, the new order of lay holiness has entered the Russian Church approximately from the beginning of the 14th century. Its heyday falls on the 16th century, somewhat lagging in relation to monastic holiness: the 17th century is still writing new pages in the history of Russian foolishness. For centuries, the honored Russian holy fools are distributed as follows: XIV century - 4; XV-11; XVI - 14; XVII - 7. The appearance of the holy fool coincides in time with the extinction of princely holiness. And this coincidence is not accidental. The new century demanded a new asceticism from the Christian laity. The holy fool became the successor of the holy prince in social service. On the other hand, it is hardly accidental that the holy trampling of everyday life in foolishness coincides with the triumph of Orthodoxy. Holy fools restore disturbed spiritual balance.

It is customary to think that the feat of foolishness is the exclusive vocation of the Russian Church. This opinion contains an exaggeration of the truth. The Greek Church honors the six holy fools (!!!Greek!!!). Of these, two, St. Simeon (VI century) and St. Andrei (perhaps, the 9th century), received extensive and very interesting lives, known in ancient Russia. Our ancestors especially loved the life of St. Andrew, who was considered among us a Slav, for the eschatological revelations that it contains. Yes, and the beloved feast of the Intercession made the Constantinople saint close to everyone in Russia. It is the Greek lives that provide in their rich material the key to understanding foolishness. It would be in vain for us to look in Russian hagiographies for the key to heroism. And this poses a difficult problem for the researcher of Russian foolishness.

Rarely do we find hagiographic biographies for Russian holy fools, even more rarely do we find modern biographies. Almost everywhere, an unskilful hand, accustomed to literary patterns, has erased the originality of the personality. Apparently, religious reverence also prevented the hagiographers from depicting the paradox of achievement. Many holy fools in Russia went naked, but the hagiographers strove to cover their nakedness with a veil of ecclesiastical splendor. Reading the lives of the Greek holy fool Simeon, we see that the paradox of foolishness covers not only the rational, but also the moral sphere of the individual. Here Christian holiness is disguised as not only madness, but also immorality. The saint does reprehensible deeds all the time: commits outrage in the temple, eats sausage on Good Friday, dances with public women, destroys goods in the market, etc. Russian hagiographers prefer to borrow from the life of St. Andrew, in which there is no element of immorality. Only folk traditions about St. Basil the Blessed and meager references in the chronicles show that the Russian holy fools were not alien to the affectation of immoralism. Their lives chastely cover all this side of their feat with the stereotyped phrase: "You are doing something dirty." "Yurod" and "obscene" - epithets used indifferently in Ancient Russia - apparently express two sides of the abuse of "normal" human nature: rational and moral. We could easily refer as evidence to modern Russian foolishness, but this would be methodologically incorrect. Deprived of ecclesiastical recognition and blessing since the 18th century, Russian foolishness could not but degenerate, although we are deprived of the opportunity to determine the degree of its deviation from ancient models.

The unusual abundance of “Christ for the sake of the holy fools”, or “blessed ones” in the calendar of the Russian Church and the high popular veneration of foolishness until recently, indeed, gives this form of Christian asceticism a national Russian character. The holy fool is just as necessary for the Russian Church as his secularized reflection, Ivan the Fool is for the Russian fairy tale. Ivan the Fool undoubtedly reflects the influence of the holy fool, just as Ivan the Tsarevich reflects the influence of the holy prince.

This is not the place to dwell on the very difficult spiritual phenomenology of Russian foolishness. Let us point out, quite schematically, the following points that are connected in this paradoxical feat.

1 . Ascetic trampling on vanity, which is always dangerous for monastic asceticism. In this sense, foolishness is feigned madness or immorality for the purpose of reproach from people.

2 . Revealing the contradiction between deep Christian truth and superficial common sense and moral law in order to ridicule the world ().

3 . Serving the world in a kind of preaching, which is done not in word and not in deed, but by the power of the Spirit, the spiritual power of a person, often clothed in prophecy.

The gift of prophecy is attributed to almost all holy fools. The insight of spiritual eyes, the higher mind and meaning are the reward for trampling the human mind, just as the gift of healing is almost always associated with asceticism of the body, with power over the matter of one's own flesh.

Only the first and third sides of foolishness are a feat, service, labor, have a spiritual and practical meaning. The second serves as a direct expression of religious need. Between the first and third there is a vital contradiction. The ascetic suppression of one's own vanity is bought at the price of introducing one's neighbor into temptation and condemnation, and even cruelty. St. Andrew of Constantinople prayed to God for forgiveness of the people to whom he had given a reason to persecute him. And every act of saving people causes gratitude, respect, destroys the ascetic meaning of foolishness. That is why the life of a holy fool is a constant swing between acts of moral salvation and acts of immoral mockery of them.

In Russian foolishness, at first the first, ascetic side prevails, in the 16th century it is already undoubtedly the third: social service.

In Kievan Rus, we do not meet holy fools in the proper sense of the word. But we hear about some of the monks that they are temporary fools: Isaac, the recluse of the Caves, and Abraham of Smolensk. However, with regard to Abraham, there is no certainty whether his biographer calls the foolishness of the impoverished, wandering life of the saint. Social humiliation, the "thin robes" of St. Theodosius, too, after all, border on the foolishness of humility. Temporarily bore the heavy burden of foolishness and St. Cyril of Belozersky. Like Isaac, his foolishness is motivated by a desire to avoid fame. That it had a moral (immoral) character - at least a violation of discipline - is evident from the punishments imposed on him by the abbot. However, in the holy foolishness of the monks, we should not look for sharp features of the classical type: for them, a distant approximation to it is enough. This is not a special form of service, but an incidental moment of asceticism.

The first real holy fool in Russia was Procopius of Ustyug. Unfortunately, his life was compiled (XVI century) many generations after his death, which it itself refers to 1302, placing individual events of it either in the 12th or in the 15th century. This life brings Procopius to Ustyug from Novgorod and, what is most striking, makes him a German. From a young age he was a wealthy merchant "from the Western countries, from the Latin language, from the German land." In Novgorod, he learned the true faith in "church decoration", icons, ringing and singing. Having been baptized by Saint Varlaam of Khutyn (an anachronism) and distributing his estate, he “accepts the foolishness of Christ for the sake of life and is converted into violence,” according to the Apostle. What his rampage consisted of is not indicated. When “bliss” began in Novgorod (the author should have said about “bliss” before accepting foolishness), he asks Varlaam to go to the “eastern countries” and goes through towns and villages, impenetrable forests and swamps, “searching for the ancient lost fatherland”. His foolishness brings on him from people "vexation and reproach and beating and panting", but he prays for his offenders. The city of Ustyug, "great and glorious", he also chose to live for "church decoration". He leads a cruel life, with which the most severe monastic deeds could not be compared: he does not have a roof over his head, he sleeps naked “on the pus”, after that - on the porch of the cathedral church. Prays secretly, at night, asking for "useful hail and people." He accepts little food from pious people, but never anything from the rich.

The first Russian holy fool apparently succeeded in misleading the Ustyug residents. The imaginary "fool" did not enjoy authority, as can be seen from the episode about the fiery cloud. One day, Procopius, entering the church, proclaims God's wrath on the city of Ustyug: "For unlawful unsimilar deeds, evil will perish with fire and water." No one listens to his calls to repentance, and he alone cries for days on end on the porch. Only when a terrible cloud came over the city, and the earth shook, did everyone run to the church. Prayers before the icon of the Mother of God averted God's wrath, and stone hail erupted twenty miles from Ustyug, where centuries later one could still see fallen forest.

The prophetic gift, inalienable from foolishness, Procopius also shows in the second episode of his life, from which we learn that he also had friends in Ustyug. In a terrible frost, which Ustyugians will not remember, when people and cattle froze, the blessed one could not stand being on the porch in his “torn chasuble” and went to ask for shelter from Simeon, the father of the future St. Stephen. In this house, he predicts to Mary about the birth of a holy son from her. The way his appearance is drawn here in communication with people, there is nothing harsh and gloomy in him. He is "bright vision and sweet laughter." The owner, who hugs and kisses him, he greets with the words: "Brother Simeon, from now on, have fun and do not lose heart."

In this Ustyug story, traces of the influence of the Greek life of Andrei the Holy Fool are clear, especially in the description of the frosty patience of the saint.

No wonder the Ustyug tradition brings the first Russian holy fool from Veliky Novgorod. Novgorod was the birthplace of Russian foolishness. All known Russian holy fools of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century are connected with Novgorod. Here Nikola (Kochanov) and Fedor raged in the 14th century, parodying the bloody clashes of the Novgorod parties with their fights. Nikola lived on the Sofia side, Fedor - on the Torgovaya side. They quarreled and threw themselves across the Volkhov. When one of them tried to cross the river on the bridge, the other drove him back: "Don't go to my side, live on yours." The legend adds that after such battles, the blessed happened to return not over the bridge, but directly over the water, as if on dry land.

Fifteen versts from Novgorod, in the Klopsky Trinity Monastery, St. Michael († 1453), called the holy fool (or Salos), although in his lives (three editions are known) we do not see foolishness in the proper sense of the word. St. Michael is a seer, and his life is a collection of "prophecies", probably recorded in the monastery. Only the whimsical form, the symbolic theatricality of gestures, with which some of his prophecies are associated, could be interpreted as foolishness. The most important thing about foolishness is the beginning of his life, which depicts his extraordinary appearance in the Klopsky Monastery.

On the night of Ivanov's Day (1409), during the vigil, an old man who had come from nowhere found himself in the cell of one of the monks. “Before him, a candle burns, and sit down and write the Acts of the Apostles.” The unknown person answers all the questions of the abbot with a literal repetition of his words. They took him for a demon, they began to incense with "temyan", but the elder, although "it closes from the topic", repeats prayers and creates a cross. In the church and the refectory, he behaves "according to order" and discovers a special art of sweet-voiced reading. He does not want to just reveal his name. The abbot fell in love with him and left him to live in a monastery. It is not said whether he was tonsured or where. He was an exemplary monk, obedient to the abbot in everything, being in fasting and prayer. But his life was "very cruel." He had neither a bed nor a headboard in his cell, but he lay "on the sand", and he heated the cell "on the ground and with horse feces" and ate bread and water.

His name and noble origin was discovered during a visit to the monastery by Prince Konstantin Dmitrievich, the son of Donskoy. In the refectory, the prince took a closer look at the old man, who was reading the book of Job, and said: “And behold Mikhailo Maximov, the son of a princely family.” The saint did not deny, but did not confirm, and the prince, leaving, asked the hegumen: “Take care, fathers, of this elder, that man is our own.” Since then, Michael lived in the monastery, surrounded by universal respect. Under hegumen Theodosius, he is portrayed next to him as if he were the ruler of a monastery... He breaks his silence for the enigmatic prophecies that make up the entire content of his life. Now he indicates the place where to dig a well, then he predicts famine and teaches to feed the hungry with monastery rye. Severe to the powerful of this world, he predicts illness to the posadnik who offended the monastery, and death to Prince Shemyaka and Archbishop Euthymius I. There is a lot of politics in these prophecies of Mikhail, and, moreover, democratic and Moscow, which puts him and the abbot in opposition to the Novgorod boyars. Later legends attribute to him the providence of the birth of Ivan III and the prediction of the death of Novgorod freedom.

In all this there is no real foolishness, but there is a bizarre form that boggles the imagination. Predicting the death of Shemyaka, he pats him on the head, and promising Vladyka Euthymius consecration in Lithuania, he takes his "fly" from his hands and places it on his head. The abbot goes behind the coffin, accompanied by a monastery deer, which he lures with moss from his hands. It could be said that only the general respect for the holy fool in Novgorod of the 15th century communicates the nimbus of the holy fool to the stern ascetic and seer.

The life of the Rostov holy fool Isidore († 1474) is compiled to a large extent according to the Ustyug and Novgorod legends. He lives in a "bush", in a swamp, plays the fool during the day, and prays at night. He is persecuted and laughed at, despite the miracles and predictions, the fulfillment of which earned him his nickname Tverdislov. And this holy fool "from the countries of the West, the Roman family, the German language." These words - a direct borrowing from the life of Procopius - are not reliable evidence. The removal of the holy fools from the German land could be an expression of their alienness to the surrounding life, their wandering on earth. Rejection of the motherland is an ascetic feat, especially associated with foolishness. But for another Rostov holy fool, John Vlasaty (or Merciful, † 1581), his non-Russian origin seems likely. On his tomb in the church of St. Blasius until recently preserved the Psalter in Latin, according to legend, it belonged to him. In the inscription on the sheets, relating to the time of St. Dmitry of Rostov (1702–1709), it reads: “From the time of the repose of Blessed John the Hairy and Merciful, even until now, this little book was on his grave, very dilapidated, the Davydov psalter, in the Latin dialect, south of that saint of God, praying to God reverently.” It is known that the Catholic West did not know foolishness. No matter how strange the choice of this feat by a German who converted to Orthodoxy seems, the experience of our time shows that Orthodox Germans often reveal the maximum of Russianness: both in Slavophilism and in religious zeal. But the foreign origin of the first Russian holy fool, St. Procopius is doubtful.

A number of Moscow holy fools begin with Maxim († 1433), canonized at the Council of 1547. His life has not been preserved. The 16th century gave Moscow St. Basil the Blessed and John, nicknamed the Big Cap. The verbose and ornate life of St. Basil does not give any idea of ​​​​his feat. His image is preserved in the Moscow folk legend, known in later records. It is full of historical fables, chronological inconsistencies, in places direct borrowings from the Greek life of St. Simeon. But this is the only source for acquaintance with the Russian folk ideal of the “blessed”. We do not know only to what extent it corresponds to the Moscow saint of the 16th century.

According to a folk legend, Vasily was given to a shoemaker as a child and then already showed his perspicacity, laughing and crying over a merchant who ordered boots for himself: a quick death awaited the merchant. Having abandoned the shoemaker, Vasily began to lead a wandering life, walking naked (like St. Maxim) around Moscow, spending the night with a boyar widow. Like a Syrian holy fool, he destroys goods in the market, bread and kvass, punishing unscrupulous merchants. All his paradoxical actions have a hidden wise meaning associated with an objective vision of the truth: they are not committed for the ascetic motive of foolish self-humiliation. Vasily throws stones at the houses of virtuous people and kisses the walls (“corners”) of houses where “blasphemers” were happening: the former have exiled demons hanging outside, the latter cry angels. He gives the gold given by the king not to the beggars, but to the merchant in clean clothes, because the merchant has lost all his fortune and, starving, does not dare to beg. He pours the drink given by the tsar into the window to put out the distant fire in Novgorod. The worst thing is that he breaks the miraculous image of the Mother of God at the Barbarian Gate, on the board of which a devil was drawn under the holy image. He always knows how to reveal the Devil in every form and pursues him everywhere. So, he recognized him as a beggar who collected a lot of money from people, sending “temporary happiness” as a reward for alms. There is a morality in the reprisal against the beggar-demon, the edge of which is directed against pious greed: "You gather Christian souls with happiness, you catch them in avarice-loving disposition."

More than once the blessed one appears as a detractor - albeit meek - of the Terrible Tsar. So, he reproaches the king for the fact that, standing in the church, his thoughts were on Sparrow Hills, where the royal chambers were built. Deceased in the 50s. 16th century, St. Vasily was not a witness to Grozny's oprichnina terror. But the legend makes him travel to Novgorod during the executions and the pogrom of the city (1570). Once under the bridge near Volkhov in some cave, Vasily invites John to him and treats him to raw blood and meat. In response to the tsar's refusals, embracing him with one arm, with the other he shows the ascending souls of innocent martyrs in heaven. The tsar waves his handkerchief in horror, ordering the executions to stop, and the terrible food turns into wine and sweet watermelon.

About the veneration of St. Basil, canonized in 1588, says the dedication of temples to him as early as the 16th century and the very renaming by the people of the Intercession (and Trinity) Cathedral, in which he was buried, into the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed.

Under Tsar Theodore Ivanovich, another holy fool labored in Moscow, nicknamed Big Kolpak. In Moscow, he was a stranger. Originally from the Vologda region, he worked at the northern saltworks as a water carrier. Having moved to Rostov (he is actually a Rostov saint), John built himself a cell near the church and escaped in it, hanging his body with chains and heavy rings. Going out into the street, he put on his cap, that is, clothes with a hood, as is clearly explained in his life and depicted on ancient icons. Almost Pushkin was the first to call this cap iron in Boris Godunov. As a special feat of John, it is said that he loved to look at the sun for a long time, thinking about the "righteous sun." Children and insane people laughed at him (weak echoes of real foolishness), but he did not punish them, as St. Basil the Blessed did, and predicted the future with a smile. Before his death, the blessed one moved to Moscow, but we do not know anything about his life here. He died in a movnitsa (in a bathhouse), and during his burial in the same Pokrovsky Cathedral, where Vasily was buried, a “sign” occurred: a terrible thunderstorm, from which many suffered. We read from the Englishman Fletcher that in his time "a naked holy fool walked the streets and set everyone against the Godunovs, who are revered as the rulers of the state." This holy fool is usually identified with John, although his nakedness seems to contradict Kolpak's clothes.

But the denunciation of kings and the mighty of the world in the 16th century had already become an integral part of the foolishness. The most striking evidence is given by the chronicle in the story of the conversation of the Pskov holy fool St. Nicholas with Ivan the Terrible. In 1570, Pskov was threatened with the fate of Novgorod, when the holy fool, together with the governor, Prince Yuri Tokmakov, was ordered to set up tables with bread and salt along the streets and greet the tsar with a bow. When, after the prayer service, the tsar came to him to be blessed, Nikola taught him "terrible words to stop the great bloodshed." When Ivan, despite the warning, ordered to remove the bell from the Holy Trinity, then at the same hour his best horse fell, "according to the prophecy of the saint." So writes the Pskov chronicler. A well-known legend adds that Nikola set raw meat before the king, despite the great fast, and in response to John's refusal: “I am a Christian and do not eat meat during fasting,” he objected: “Do you drink Christian blood?” This bloody treat of the Pskov holy fool, of course, was reflected in the folk legend of the Moscow Vasily.

For obvious reasons, foreign travelers pay more attention to the political service of holy fools than Russian hagiographers. Fletcher writes (1588): “Besides monks, the Russian people especially honor the blessed (holy fools), and this is why: the blessed, like lampoons, point out the shortcomings of the nobles, about which no one else dares to speak. But sometimes it happens that for such a daring freedom that they allow themselves, they also get rid of them, as was the case with one or two in the previous reign, because they already too boldly denounced the reign of the king. Fletcher also reports about St. Basil the Blessed that "he decided to reproach the late tsar for cruelty." As far back as the beginning of the 16th century, Herberstein writes about the great respect Russians had for the holy fools: “The holy fools went naked, the middle of their body was covered with a rag, with wildly flowing hair, an iron chain around their necks. They were also revered as prophets - those who were clearly denounced by them said: "This is according to my sins." If they took something in the shop, the merchants also thanked.

From these descriptions of foreigners, we conclude, firstly, that the holy fools in Moscow were numerous, constituted a special class, and that the Church canonized very few of them (However, in view of the predominantly popular veneration of the blessed, establishing an exact list of canonized saints of this rank encounters many difficulties.) Secondly, the general respect for them, which did not exclude, of course, individual cases of ridicule on the part of children or mischievous people, the very chains worn for show, completely changed the meaning of ancient Christian foolishness in Russia. Least of all is this a feat of humility. In this era, foolishness is a form of prophetic, in the Hebrew sense, service, combined with extreme asceticism. The specifically holy fool lies only in ridiculing the world. It is no longer the world that swears at the blessed, but they swear at the world.

It is no coincidence that the prophetic ministry of the holy fools acquires social and even political meaning in the 16th century. In this epoch, the Osifian hierarchy is weakening in its duty of mourning for the disgraced and denouncing untruth. Holy fools take on the service of the ancient saints and ascetics. On the other hand, this lay rite of holiness occupies a place in the Church that has been empty since the time of the holy princes. The difference in the conditions of state life causes completely opposite forms of national service. The holy princes built the state and strove for the realization of truth in it. The Moscow princes built this state firmly and firmly. It exists by force of coercion, by the duty of service, and does not require holy sacrifice. The church hands over state building entirely to the tsar. But the untruth that triumphs in the world and in the state requires a correction of the Christian conscience. And this conscience passes its judgment the more freely and more authoritatively, the less it is connected with the world, the more radically it denies the world. The holy fool, together with the prince, entered the Church as champions of Christ's truth in social life.

The general decline in spiritual life since the middle of the 16th century could not but affect the foolishness. In the 16th century, the holy fools are less common, the Moscow ones are no longer canonized by the church. Foolishness - like monastic holiness - is localized in the north, returning to its Novgorod homeland. Vologda, Totma, Kargopol, Arkhangelsk, Vyatka are the cities of the last holy fools. In Moscow, the authorities, both state and church, begin to be suspicious of the blessed. She notices the presence among them of false fools, naturally insane or deceivers. There is also a diminution of church festivities by already canonized saints (Basil the Blessed). The Synod generally ceases to canonize holy fools. Deprived of the spiritual support of the church intelligentsia, persecuted by the police, foolishness descends into the people and undergoes a process of degeneration.

Foolishness arose somewhat later than monasticism (which originated at the end of the 3rd century), and also in Egypt. According to prof. Golubinsky (10, p. 656) it owes its appearance to monasticism. The description of the first holy fool, Saint Isidore, who died about 365, was made by Saint Ephraim the Syrian. Saint Isidora, who labored in the Taven convent of Men, was quiet and well-behaved. She was nicknamed the holy fool because she wore old clothes, tied her hair with a rag, and ate very poorly. This woman, unlike the Russian holy fools, did not make predictions, did not denounce power structures, did not wear a chain - all this appeared later in Russia. Initially, foolishness arose in Byzantium, the Monk Serapion Sindonite, the Monk Bessarion the Wonderworker, the Monk Thomas, Saint Simeon of Emesa, Saint Andrew of Constantinople are widely known (the last two were especially famous in Russia, thanks to translated lives). The vast majority of the Byzantine holy fools were blacks, while in Russia there were very few holy fools-monks. By the XIV century. foolishness in Byzantium is gradually disappearing, the last known Byzantine holy fool was Maxim Kavsokalivat, who died in 1367. For five centuries (VI - X) in the general month of the Orthodox Church, there are about six holy holy fools from various countries, while in Russia for three centuries (XIV -XVI) 10 holy fools were canonized. From this we can conclude that this type of asceticism is more widespread than in other Orthodox countries in the Russian state. They are also neither in Ukraine nor in Belarus (Isaac Pechersky remained the only holy fool in Kiev). This phenomenon is also alien to the Roman Catholic world. This, in particular, is proved by the fact that foreign travelers of the 16th-17th centuries wrote about Russian holy fools with considerable surprise. -- Herberstein, Horsey, Fletcher and others. To embark on the path of foolishness, a European had to move to Russia. Therefore, among the holy fools there are so many visiting foreigners. Among the Russian saints were immigrants from Western countries: Blessed Procopius of Ustyug (1303), Blessed Isidor Tverdislov of Rostov (1474), Blessed John Vlasatii of Rostov (1580).

Foolishness in Russia is no different from foolishness in Byzantium. A large number of holy fools received the approval of not only the common people, but also the church, which is confirmed by the large number of churches built in their name during their lifetime, which gives this form of Christian asceticism a national Russian character. The feat of foolishness enters the Russian Church approximately from the beginning of the XIV century. Its heyday falls on the 16th century, somewhat lagging behind monastic holiness. For centuries, the honored Russian holy fools are distributed as follows: XIV century - 4; XV - 11; XVI - 14; XVII - 7. According to Fedotov, the appearance of the holy fool coincides with the extinction of princely holiness. The holy fool becomes the successor of the holy prince in social service (53, p. 242). In Russian foolishness, at first the first, ascetic side prevails, in the 16th century it is already undoubtedly the third: social service.

In Kievan Rus, foolishness was expressed as an additional ascetic means to achieve dispassion. This was a temporary stage of monastic life (53, p. 296). In the 12th century St. Avraamy Smolensky, in his youth, distributed his property to the poor and put on thin robes. His social self-abasement in his life was attributed to foolishness. Social humiliation, the "thin robes" of St. Theodosius also border on the foolishness of humility. In the Mongolian period, temporary foolishness is attributed to St. Kirill Belozersky. He begins to commit some acts like mockery and laughter, for which the abbot puts him on bread and water. In the examples given, foolishness is motivated by the desire to avoid fame. It had an immoral character (discipline violations). In the holy foolishness of the saints there are no sharp features of the classical type. This is not a special form of service, but an incidental moment of asceticism. Isaac of the Caves (1090) is considered the first Russian holy fool (38, p. 249). At first, his foolishness manifested itself in strange deeds, he becomes the object of ridicule. Then he performs an amazing deed, the astonished brethren begin to revere him as a miracle worker. Then his foolishness takes a completely voluntary act. He was the first and last holy fool in Kiev. Canonized as a reverend.

The period of the Tatar-Mongol invasion had a negative impact on all aspects of spiritual life. During the Tatar-Mongol invasion, for almost three quarters of a century after the conquest, not a single holy ascetic was recorded, not a single new monastery was founded. During this period, only a few princes of martyrs were canonized. And only in the 2nd quarter of the 14th century did the monastic movement revive, on a scale unheard of in ancient Kievan times.

The new monastic asceticism from the second quarter of the 14th century is the asceticism of the desert dwellers, close to the classical tradition of the desert dwelling of the monks of Egypt and Syria. This could also be affected by the cultural and social shock of the Tatar-Mongol invasion, in which people saw punishment for sins. Having undertaken the most difficult feat associated with contemplative prayer, they raise spiritual life to new heights not yet reached in Russia.

Klyuchevsky writes that in the 14th century the monastic movement headed north, across the Volga - this was the most free land for desert dwellers, where there were the least clashes with landowners. In the same period, the first Russian saint appeared in Novgorod, canonized in the rank of a holy fool. The city of Novgorod was the birthplace of Russian foolishness, such famous saints as Procopius of Ustyug (1303), Nikolai and Fyodor Kochanovs (1392), Mikhail Klopsky (1456), John Borovichsky (1542), Nikolai Salos of Pskov (1570) labored in it .). All known holy fools of the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries are directly or indirectly connected with Veliky Novgorod. (53, p. 305). The historian Klyuchevsky noted that "many Rostov lives copy those of Novgorod". For 200 years it was the most cultural part of Russia. According to Klyuchevsky, V. Novgorod early freed itself from the pressure of princely power, from princely strife, and Polovtsian robberies, did not experience Tatar oppression and fear, and was the economic and political center during this period. Veliky Novgorod existed as a free city until 1478.

The first holy fool Procopius of Ustyug lived in Novgorod in the 13th-14th century. Whether he gave monastic vows is not mentioned in his life. In later times, most of the holy fools were laymen. When a rumor spread about his ascetic life, he takes upon himself the foolishness and leaves the monastery to wander. He leads a cruel life: he does not have a roof over his head, he sleeps "on a pus" naked, after that - on the porch of the cathedral church. In the life, traces of the influence of the Greek life of Andrei the Holy Fool are visible, especially in the description of the frosty patience of the saint. Prays secretly, at night, asking "useful hail and people." And just as the blessed one loved God, so God loved him and gave him a prophetic gift, so that Procopius worked marvelous miracles during his lifetime.

It can be seen from the life that, as by the middle of the 16th century, the idea of ​​the holy fools in the minds of Russian society still remained unchanged: the holy fool begins the feat, having achieved holiness and avoiding the praises of the world; suffers dishonor and prays for offenders, dies in dishonor, and after death is glorified by miracles and becomes revered as a saint of God. The case with the fiery cloud is somewhat different: different is the behavior of the world, when all people turn to God and, together with the holy fool Procopius, pray for deliverance. St. Procopius here takes off the mask of madness and appears as a holy prophet and prayer book

In Novgorod, Nikola (Kochanov) and Fedor rioted in the 14th century, parodying the bloody clashes of the Novgorod parties with their fights. The legend adds that after such battles, the blessed happened to return not on the bridge, but right on the water, “as if on dry land.”

15 versts from Novgorod, in the Klopsky Trinity Monastery, St. Michael (1453), called the holy fool, although in his lives we do not see foolishness in the proper sense of the word. Only the whimsical form, the symbolism of gestures, with which some of his prophecies are associated, could be interpreted as foolishness.

In the prophetic predictions of Michael, opposition to the Novgorod boyars and support for the Moscow authorities can be traced. Later legends attribute to him the providence of the birth of Ivan III and the prediction of the death of Novgorod freedom.

From the end of the 15th century, a number of Moscow saints appear, starting with jur. Maximus (1433). His life has not been preserved. The main features of bliss. Maxima are dispassion (expressed in the transfer of insults and "taking off the garments"), disregard for all earthly comforts; some moral lessons taught by him to the world around him.

Saint Isidore of Rostov (1474) is characterized by extreme non-acquisitiveness (lack of any everyday amenities); meekness and gentleness (in his prayer for offenders); innocence to the existing norms of behavior (in his nakedness and in being in the most unsuitable places for that); hidden unceasing prayer (all-night vigils); extreme humility (imputation to nothing, which allowed rejoicing and glorifying God when insulting). The heyday of foolishness in Russia falls on the XIV-XVII centuries, when, according to V.O. Klyuchevsky, the holy fool becomes "a walking worldly conscience, a living image of the denunciation of human vices."

The maximum number of holy fools falls on the 16th century.

In the 16th century, such famous saints as St. Basil the Blessed, John the Great Kolpak labored in Moscow. In the Moscow period, the paradigm of sanctification, the sacralization of all historical existence through the transforming action of God's power in the empirical sphere, was born. “We find a special development of this asceticism just when the passionate, utopian poem about "Moscow - the third Rome" begins, with its naive identification of Russian reality with "holy Russia". The holy fools were also inspired by the ideal of holy Russia, but with complete sobriety they saw all the lies of reality,” Zenkovsky wrote.

Political power over the specific principalities is concentrated in the hands of the Moscow Tsar Ivan III. (53, p. 372), this is the period of the triumph of Orthodoxy, when the idea of ​​"Moscow-Third Rome" dominates. It is characterized by relative stability, religion is perceived as a tradition. In this era, foolishness takes the form of prophetic ministry. During this period, the Josephite hierarchy weakens in the duty of denunciation of untruth. Holy fools take on the service of the ancient saints and ascetics. In the 16th century, the denunciation of the king and the nobility was a common phenomenon in the lives of holy fools. The clearest evidence comes from the chronicle of St. Nicholas Salos of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The general respect for ascetics during this period completely changed the meaning of ancient Christian foolishness. Least of all is this a feat of humility. In this era, foolishness is a form of prophetic service, combined with extreme asceticism. The specifically holy fool lies only in ridiculing the world.

The earliest source reporting on St. Basil the Blessed is the “Book of Power of the Royal Genealogy”. Information from it was borrowed into the life, known in three varieties: complete, abridged and special composition. The complete life was compiled by order of Patriarch St. Job, shortly after his canonization.

He lived for 88 years, 72 of them in the foolishness. He was an eyewitness to the events of the first half of the 16th century. He remained in a single capacity under three monarchs: under Ivan III, during the reign of Vasily III, during the reign of Elena Glinskaya and under Ivan the Terrible. He knew the future sovereign Theodore Ioannovich as an infant. Survived 8 metropolitans, canonized under Patriarch Job in 1589.

The place of the saint's exploits was Moscow. A favorite place to stay is Red Square and the tower at the Barbarian Gates.

Even in childhood, the blessed one had a prophetic gift. At the age of 10, the blessed one took upon himself the feat of foolishness. At first he took a vow of silence and was in unceasing mental prayer. Then, guided by the Holy Spirit, he “transformed into foolishness and laid bare his body.” (41, p.130)

The life says that the blessed one leads a harsh life, "tasting very little food and water, having neither a den, nor a stable, without a roof."

In the description of lifetime miracles, his nakedness is associated with the miracle of healing by the saint who laughed at his appearance and was punished for this with blindness. Repentant, they were healed.

The saint was also revered by foreign merchants as the patron saint of sea travelers. Bl. Vasily calmed the blizzard in the Caspian Sea and saved the merchant ships. Early accounts note his gift of foresight. According to the Book of Degrees, the saint in the Kremlin Assumption Cathedral in 1521. there was a fiery vision from the icon of the Mother of God, announcing God's wrath on the Muscovites and the imminent invasion of the Crimean Khan Mahmet Giray on Moscow. According to the Book of Degrees, he foresaw fires in Moscow in June 1547.

Later biographies of the saint give a large number of cases of his clairvoyance - the foreknowledge of events about which the blessed one spoke allegorically, the ability to see angels, demons, to guess the lies and actions of the devil under external piety, etc.

Tsar John IV Vasilievich, who often talked about him with Metr. Macarius.

In later sources, in the description of the lifetime miracles of the blessed one, there are legends about the relationship of the saint with Tsar John IV. One of the legends says that the saint once received “some kind of drink” from the king as a treat, and threw out two cups one after the other out of the window. Basil the Blessed explained to the king, enraged by this act, that he had extinguished the fire in Vel. Novgorod.

Another story is connected with the campaign of John IV to Vel. Novgorod in 1569, in the midst of the executions of Novgorodians, the blessed one invited the tsar to the "poor den" and offered him "a vial of blood and a piece of raw meat." The executions were stopped. But this plot contradicts all the dating of the life of the saint.

The burial of the holy fool took place very solemnly. The funeral was performed by the Metropolitan himself. Macarius, the king and princes carried the coffin, while a large alms were distributed from the royal treasury. According to the testimony of life during the burial of the blessed, the sick received healing. Approximately in 1587-1588. according to the chronicle, several miracles were performed from the relics of the saint, which became the reason for the canonization and the erection of a chapel in honor of the saint near the eastern wall of the Intercession Cathedral. During the 16th century, St. Vasily is referred to only as "the luminary who shone within Moscow", the saint was revered as the patron and healer of Moscow. Tradition says that he was revered by the imp. Elizabeth Petrovna. Temples of St. Basil the Blessed exist in the city of Likhvin, in Kaluga, Kashin, Penza, Penza, Volgodonsk, in the Simonov Monastery, etc.

St. Basil the Blessed is an epigraph to Russian foolishness, its kind of encyclopedia. No wonder the people dubbed the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed.

The exploits of St. Basil the Blessed very soon after his death became an example to follow. Another Moscow holy fool, St. John (1589) - also walked around the city naked, denounced the rulers (among them Boris Godunov) and bequeathed to be buried next to St. Basil the Blessed. He wore chains, heavy rings and a large iron cap.

In the 16th century, according to the testimony of foreign travelers in Moscow, the holy fools were numerous, but only a few were canonized. Since the middle of the 16th century in Russia, a general decline in the level of spiritual life has been noted. It could not but affect the foolishness.

In the 17th century, a restructuring of culture took place, the holy fools, according to Panchenko (29, p. 131), adjoin the conservative trend. They unite around Archpriest Avaakum. Foolishness becomes for the Old Believers something like a banner, which they put up in defense and use for their own purposes. Patriarch Nikon, at first sympathetic, later turns to a negative assessment of foolishness, anticipating their rejection by Peter I.

Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the 17th century. at first he favored the holy fools. But under him, palace etiquette began to change in a Western manner. According to Klyuchevsky (26), in the 17th century Russia was inferior to the West in terms of trade and industry. This caused a feeling of national impotence and distrust of one's own strength, which caused the beginning of Western influence in all spheres of life.

"> The children of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Peter and Sophia went even further along the path of Europeanization. But, despite this, in critical moments of their lives they also turned to the holy fools for help. Princess Sophia consulted with the holy fool Ivashka. Tsar Peter I had a friend of the holy fool Thaddeus. Cultural the stereotype, which provides for the closeness of the king and the holy fool, has not lost its significance even in the Europeanized court everyday life of the 80s of the 17th century.

In the 18th century Moscow holy fools are no longer canonized by the Church. Foolishness, like monastic holiness, is localized in the north, returning to its Novgorod homeland. Vologda, Totma, Kargopol, Arkhangelsk, Vyatka are the cities of the last holy fools. Deprived of the support of the state, foolishness descends into the people.

The historian of the 18th century M. Shcherbatov wrote about this: “Pre-Petrine Russia did not suddenly disappear, did not evaporate without a trace and was not transformed into a European state at the request of the reformer; for the most part, she withdrew into herself, shut herself up in cages and towers, plunged more than ever into a ossified stagnation” (43, p. 79). The old Moscow way of life was crumbling.

At the beginning of the 18th century, there were so many holy fools in the cities of Russia that the government took measures to limit them (43, p. 77). According to Ryabinin, the holy fools became the spokesmen for the mass rejection of reforms, changes and innovations. At this time, a lot of false fools appeared. Decree of the Synod of 1722. holy fools were placed in monasteries "with their use in labor until the end of their lives." And the Decree of 1732 forbids "letting the holy fools in koshun robes into churches." January 29, 1757 A decree was issued by which the poor and the crippled were forbidden to roam the streets of St. Petersburg. Russia aspired to become one of the most developed European powers. Foolishness in enlightened Europe fell only into the category of a social disease that needed to be treated. Thus, the foolishness in Russia in the 18th century loses the patronage of the state and church authorities. But, despite this, foolishness was still popular among the people. This is confirmed by the fact that the phenomenon of holy foolishness in Russian culture continued to exist until the October Revolution of 1917. The proof of this is the images of holy fools in the literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries, for example, in the works of such prominent writers as F. M. Dostoevsky ("The Brothers Karamazov ”) and L. N. Tolstoy (“Childhood”). Images of holy fools appear in painting - this is Surikov's painting "Boyar Morozova". In folk art, it was noted that Ivan the Fool in fairy tales is a secular parallel to the holy fool "for Christ's sake", as well as Ivan the Tsarevich - the holy prince. It was also noted that Ivan the Fool, who is always destined to win, has no analogues in Western European folklore.

The eighteenth century produced two canonized saints, Evdokia of Suzdal and Xenia of Petersburg.

St. Blessed Xenia was born in the first half of the 18th century from pious parents. (5, p. 100). Blessed Xenia, who labored in foolishness for 45 years, was buried at the Smolensk cemetery, where at one time she helped build a church.

Many signs of God's mercy began to take place at her tomb. After a memorial service was performed over her grave, the suffering received healing, broken peace was established in families, and those in need received good places.

Over the grave of Blessed Xenia in 1902. a chapel was built. In 1988 Blessed Xenia was canonized as a saint.

Petersburgers keep in memory the names of other ascetics. For more than 30 years, blessed Anna Ivanovna Lukasheva (1853) labored in the feat, continuing her prayerful intercession before the Lord for the city of St. Peter, begun by blessed Xenia. For many decades, Petersburgers served memorial services in the chapel over the grave of bl. Anna. At the Smolensk cemetery (5, p. 99), in addition to them, there are also blessed people of the 19th century revered by the people: Marfa, Matrona (1814-1911), Irina, Anna Ivanovna Komisarova, Olga Ivanovna, at the Shuvalovsky cemetery there is the blessed old woman Maria Makovkina (1904-1971 ) (5, p. 97). In the 19th century Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina (1846-1886), who was revered by St. John of Kronstadt. In memory of her, grateful residents erected a chapel at the Kronstadt Trinity Cemetery, similar to the one built in honor of St. blessed Xenia. Maria Lelyanova (1874-1932) was buried at the Smolensk cemetery, who in 1981. numbered among the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

In the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo convent of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, the succession of blessed elders was observed, starting from the holy blessed Pelagia Ivanovna Serebrennikova (1809 - 1884), whom the Monk Seraphim himself sent to Diveevo for the spiritual guidance of the sisters. In 1848, Blessed Natalia Dmitrievna (1900) came to pilgrimage with wanderers and remained in the monastery. In 1883, Blessed Pasha Sarovskaya settled in the monastery.

The feat of Pelageya Ivanovna is imbued with the spirit (40, p. 10), which is visible in the ancient ascetics: her extreme selflessness, deep humility, her tearful prayers for her neighbors, the gift of insight. Rejecting the human mind, she saw through the secrets of human hearts, predicted the future, healed bodily ailments by word and touch, exhortations and instructions delivered from spiritual infirmities. The call to the feat of foolishness was felt in her from a young age, but she was finally affirmed during her trip to the Sarov Monastery to the glorified Elder Seraphim. The Monk Seraphim talks with her for about 6 hours. What they talked about remained unknown. Letting her go, in front of those who came, he said: “Go, mother, go without delay to my monastery, take care of many orphans. Many will be saved by you, and you will be the light of the world, ”and at the same time he gave her a rosary. In the monastery, the blessed one led an even more difficult life compared to how she lived in the world. Here it is said about her poverty, non-acquisitiveness, vigilance all night, humility, patience, etc. There are many cases of the ascetic's insight, the effectiveness of her prayers, the gift of healing. The legend says “Pelageya Ivanovna had a wonderful gift of tears, but before that she cried in secret. And 2 years before her death, she cried non-stop. When asked about this, the blessed one replied that if they knew everything, then the whole world would be forced to cry. It was a prediction about the future troubles of Russia. For about 20 years the blessed one lived in the monastery, playing the fool and enduring all sorts of reproach. But the light of the blessed gifts that lived in it began to attract people to it. People of various ranks and positions began to gather in Diveevo. Saved many souls, according to the prediction of St. Seraphim of Sarov, mother Pelageya. Having asked all the sisters for forgiveness before her death, she went to the Lord in 1884. A monument was erected to her 2 years after her death.

Blessed Pasha Sarovskaya (in the world - Irina) she settled in the Diveevsky Monastery in the autumn of 1884. Contemporaries noted that all her oddities - allegorical conversation, strict reprimands and antics, were only external, deliberately hiding humility, meekness, love. The blessed one spent all her nights in prayer, and during the day, after the church service, she reaped the grass with a sickle, knitted stockings, and did other work, continually saying the Jesus Prayer. Exhausted in the morning, Praskovya Ivanovna lay down and dozed off.

Worshipers crowded under the windows of her house for days on end. The name of Praskovia Ivanovna was known not only among the people, but also in the highest circles of society. Almost all of the dignitaries, visiting the Diveevsky Monastery, considered it their duty to visit Praskovya Ivanovna. The blessed one more often answered thoughts than questions, and the Lord, through His faithful servant, revealed the future to them, healed mental and bodily ailments.

The writing of the Chronicle of the Diveevo Monastery was blessed by the blessed one. Archimandrite Seraphim (Chichagov) told the following about his first meeting with the blessed old woman: “Pasha, lying on the bed (she was old and sick), exclaimed:“ It’s good that you came, I I am waiting: the Monk Seraphim ordered me to tell you to report to the Sovereign that the time has come for the discovery of his relics and glorification ..». (40, p.13).

The blessed one was visited in 1903 by Emperor Nicholas II. The blessed old woman predicted the birth of an heir, warned of the impending persecution of the Church, of the death of the Romanov dynasty. After that, the Sovereign often turned to the blessed Paraskeva Ivanovna, sending the grand dukes to her for advice.

From the memoirs of Hegumen Seraphim Putyatin (21, p. 13): “The great ascetic seer, Sarovskaya Praskovya Ivanovna ... predicted a thunderstorm approaching Russia. She prayed to the portraits of the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and the Family along with the icons, crying out: “Holy Royal Martyrs, pray to God for us.” Blessed Paraskeva died on October 5, 1915.

Before her death, she blessed her successor, Blessed Maria Ivanovna. Blessed Praskovya Ivanovna, anticipating her death, said: “I am still sitting at the camp, and the other is already scurrying about, she is still walking, and then she will sit down” (40, p. 17).

On the day of her death, the nuns expelled Blessed Mary from the monastery, annoyed by her oddities. However, having heard the story of the peasant, testifying to the perspicacity of blessed Mary, they returned her back.

Maria Ivanovna (Maria Zakharovna Fedina, 1931) not only predicted, denounced, through her prayers, the Lord healed the suffering many times, about which eyewitness accounts have been preserved.

During the years of difficult revolutionary trials for Russia, the prophecies and predictions of the blessed old woman helped many people to avoid death, to find the right path in difficult circumstances. The blessed old woman said in 1926: “What a year is coming, what a difficult year! Elijah and Enoch are already walking on earth.” And when, after Easter, searches began in the monastery, she said that only three months remained of a quiet life. On September 7/20, 1927, the nuns were asked to leave the monastery. After the closing of the monastery, Maria Ivanovna lived in the homes of believers. Representatives of the authorities forbade the blessed one to receive visitors. Once she was arrested, but after interrogation, recognizing her as insane, they released her.

Blessed Maria Ivanovna also predicted to the sisters the revival of the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery. The blessed old woman died in 1931 at the age of about 70 years. Numerous testimonies have been preserved of miraculous healings through the prayers of the blessed elders, which have taken place in our days.

The holy elders Pelageya, Paraskeva and Maria Diveevsky were glorified in July 2004 during the celebrations dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the birth of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

But the majority of the blessed, having lived for about half a century before the eyes and lips of all the high society of that time in Russia, turned out to be unsolved, misunderstood and rejected by them, just as they later rejected the Orthodox faith itself. The majority of society did not accept, through blessed ascetics strong in spirit and faith, the path to salvation given to the lost. In the Moscow merchants and in aristocratic circles there were families in which nothing was done without first visiting the holy fools and following their advice. But the secular society of that time, with its lack of spirituality, was extremely greedy for all sorts of mysterious sensations and legends. Natural magnetism (hypnosis) and table-turning (spiritualism) acquired mass distribution and application at that time. Therefore, of the many people who visited the blessed, most did not know and were not interested in the ascetic and the ways of his ascetic exploits, as well as in the Orthodox faith in general, but came only to find out the future of their deeds and experience a new living curiosity - the prophets, losing their spiritual rebirth . Only a few consciously built their entire lives according to the instructions and prophecies of the holy fools, and reached certain spiritual and worldly heights in this field. During the years of persecution of the Orthodox Church, many ascetics took upon themselves the feat of foolishness, since the theomachists, not understanding such a confession of faith and mistaking them for the sick, allowed the legal existence of the blessed, who secretly preach to people about the Savior. In the 20th century, the blessed old women became especially famous, who voluntarily took upon themselves the heavy cross of foolishness in Christ, who, for their great humility, were rewarded with the great gifts of the Holy Spirit. Like the ancient ascetics, the blessed elders of the last times, “who denounced the madness of the world with imaginary madness,” were not inferior to them in the strength of feats. Blessed Pasha Sarovskaya during her wanderings through the Sarov forests before coming to the monastery "had the appearance of Mary of Egypt." Blessed Diveyevo, Maria Ivanovna, dressed in good people, a few days later "came again in everything torn and dirty ..." Her real name was Maria Zakharovna, not Ivanovna. When they asked her why she was called Ivanovna, she answered: “These are all of us, blessed, Ivanovna - according to John the Baptist” ... Blessed Matronushka-Sandals, having made a vow of foolishness for Christ's sake, for 33 years went only barefoot. Numerous canonizations (3, p. 4) that have taken place in our days testify to the power of veneration of the blessed among the people. Thus, among the blessed suckers, the Church recently glorified Matrona Nikonova in Moscow; in Ryazan - Vasily Kadomsky, Lyubov Sukhanov, Matrona Anemnyasevskaya; in Rostov - Pavel Taganrog; in Vologda, Nikolay Rynin; in Ivanovo - Alexei Voroshin; in Simbirsk, Andrei Ilyich Ogorodnikov; in the Caucasus - prep. Theodosius of the Caucasus; in Siberia, John and Cosmas of Verkhoturye; in Kiev, Paisiy Yarotsky; In Nizhny Novgorod - Diveevsky blessed; in St. Petersburg - Xenia of Petersburg. Several blessed people are buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg, who are still revered by the people.

Buffoons - traveling through the expanses of vast Russia and performing in the streets and squares, trolls of various thicknesses, liars, dancers, and playing igruns on the pipe, practicing theatrical brawls. Buffoons participated in all folk festivals, as well as in such important public events as: maternity and baptismal procedures, weddings, seeing off to the army, washing new bast shoes and funerals. Buffoons in Ancient Russia were called musicians, pipers, pipers, guslars - in a word, all those who hunted for dancing, songs, jokes, tricks. But the attitude of those in power towards them was ambiguous.

Their repertoire included: banging on all sorts of whistling-fake, theatrical performances, plays, puppet shows, witchcraft tricks and acute social satire. Not embarrassed in expressions, they loved to fool our mother, the holy Russian Orthodox Church, together with Gd, priests and the Bible, and sometimes treacherously ride on the emperor-priest, which caused joy among the simple people and the most noble buhurt at the objects of ridicule, for which, naturally , received a repressive batog on the hump, and sometimes they were referred to the monkey house, just like these rebellious vaginas of yours. By the way, buffoons, in terms of their behavior and the semantic load they produce, can be quite compared with some punk bands (and no, this is not KiSh).

Buffoons arose, most likely, back in the dense and ignorant antiquity of pre-Christian Russia, where they participated in ungodly bacchanalia and rites dedicated to conjuring spirits. It was believed that the spirits also loved to nobly hum and neigh. It is logical that after the baptism, above designated Rus, the church began to actively butt heads with the artists of the original genre - weaned from itself the darling and buffoons, and visitors to their performances. Which is also logical, because the fat, greedy and stupid pop depicted by buffoons did not at all positively influence the image of the church in the minds of the people, which negatively affected the business of God. However, the princes, boyars and other deputies did not disdain to invite noisy artists to their drinking parties. Images of Old Russian break dancers and buffoons playing on the pipes were found on the frescoes of the 11th century in the Church of St. Sophia in Kiev.

Even some epic characters tried on the role of the subject. So, for example, Sadko, before becoming a huckster and amassing capital, wandered around feasts and balls with a harp, and even managed to drink the most crap solo for the king of the sea, who liked the epic rock and roll and contributed to the acquisition of wealth. And the old Russian superman Dobrynya Nikitich, in order to get to the wedding of his mother, who did not wait for him from the army, also tried on buffoon clothes.

Patriarch Nikon.

But somewhere at the beginning of the 17th century, those in power decided to finally multiply buffoonery by zero. The secretary of the Holstein embassy, ​​Adam Olearius, wrote that the patriarch, from obscene chants, seriously bombed and banned instrumental music in taverns, and later called on security officers who searched houses, confiscated all sorts of whistles and took them out on pativevans across the Moscow River, where they gave them the devil's tools to the purifying flame.

But in addition to the rectal burning caused, the trolled princes and priests were also worried that buffoons united in bands and staged the Makhnovshchina, that is, under the guise of wandering musicians, surrounded cities and villages, traded in a gop-stop, and also practiced sabotage and reconnaissance activities. Seksot, dressed up as a traveling artist, could easily move around the necessary territories, eavesdrop on all sorts of high-ranking citizens and report where necessary. In the middle of the 17th century, the second tsar from the Romanov clan, Alyoshka, under pressure from Archbishop Nikon, nevertheless sets in motion an uncompromising banhammer. Buffoons mercilessly opizdyulivayutsya, refer to the bearish corners, hard labor and feel all the other charms of royal repression. However, folk art is not so easy to win and the baton of the bearers of folk traditions passes to booths and districts, which continued to amuse the crowd and secretly mock the powers that be.

The aforementioned Vasnetsov. Painting "Buffoons". 1904

Russian foolishness: holiness, madness and social opposition in the history of Russia

Five hundred years ago, in any ancient Russian city, we would certainly have met this character. Naked or in miserable rags, regardless of the weather, all covered with sewage or wrapped in chains, he would silently stand in the middle of the road, run without a visible goal, shout out loosely connected snippets of phrases, or throw himself at people with whatever came to hand. Meet the holy fool - one of the most striking images of the old Russian culture.

Foolishness is man-made madness. A desperate demonstration of behavior unacceptable in society, devoid of boundaries and external meaning, sometimes unpleasant or even dangerous for the holy fool himself and those around him. And necessarily with a pronounced religious component, which is both the cause and effect of his strange actions.

The main goal of the holy fool is to shock. Everything he does is outrageous beyond the understanding and imagination of his contemporaries. But this is not a simple trickery and grimacing - each gesture is logical in its own way and contains two layers of meanings at once: religious and socio-political, - and everything is presented in extreme, exaggerated forms. And the holy fool himself sees himself as a servant of two masters - society and higher powers.

His minimum task is to demonstrate to people the abyss of abomination, indecency and make his “spectators” think about whether they live in good conscience. The maximum task is to influence the authorities.

And sometimes the holy fools succeeded. If you believe the legends, even the paranoid Ivan the Terrible, who never paid attention to other people's opinions, made some of his decisions under the influence of communication with "God's people." Regardless of the external conditions, the place of action, the personality of the ruler, the words and antics of the holy fool not only went unpunished, but also made a grandiose impression on everyone: it seemed to people that this was a Divine revelation. And despite the visual code (“a naked man runs around the city and scolds the authorities”), the reason for such an attitude towards holy fools, their words and deeds lies at the sacral level. However, the same can be said about other spheres of ancient Russian life.

Foolishness as a tradition

Foolishness is the brainchild of ancient Christianity, which found the most fertile ground in Byzantium, from where it migrated to Russia. Already the first Old Testament prophets shocked their contemporaries with imposing deeds.

For example, Isaiah walked naked for three years, which was later interpreted as a prediction of the Egyptian captivity of the Jews. Ezekiel lay in front of a stone for a long time and ate only bread made from cow dung. And Hosea married a harlot - of course, a hint of Israel's apostasy from God.

Prophet Isaiah

Already here you can see that the interpretation of actions, to put it mildly, is too bold and unobvious, more associative - and this is one of the secrets of the holy fool. He never explains his antics and does not bother with interpretations at all, and sometimes he is completely silent.

Mysteriousness should increase the degree of sacredness, the taboo of actions - to make the statement as noticeable and resonant as possible. Of course, from the outside it looks like ordinary madness (as evidenced even by the internal form of the word, in which the phonetic version of the root "ugly-" is guessed).

But the most concrete ideological justification for foolishness is one of the epistles of the Apostle Paul: “Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks to be wise in this age, be foolish so that he may be wise.” The axiomatic formula “wisdom = madness” emerges with all obviousness.

The heyday of Russian foolishness

In Russia, holy fools appear almost from the moment of Baptism. However, history has preserved, at best, their names, and more often only fragmentary mentions in the chronicles.

The real heyday of Russian foolishness came in the 14th-16th centuries - and there were reasons for that. This is the time of the most vivid and authentic manifestation of the traditional religious consciousness - and at the same time the period of complex and contradictory political processes.

XIV century - the peak of the struggle against the Tatar-Mongol yoke and the beginning of the unification of Russian lands around Moscow. And if the latter has not yet given rise to at least some persistent image in the public mind that could be played out through foolishness, then the confrontation with the Horde required ideological support, including at the official level. Therefore, the transfer of the Metropolitan's chair to Moscow, and the activities of Sergius of Radonezh, came in very handy. But these processes are weakly connected with everyday religiosity, and therefore they are not reflected in foolishness.

In the 15th century, a new state actually appears - Muscovite Russia, which is no longer subject to the Tatar khans; a number of independent political players are leaving the scene. And the popular reaction is becoming more pronounced.

If the victory over the Horde is an unambiguously positive change and does not seem to require critical reflection, then the centralization around Moscow causes serious existential doubts and reflection.

Novgorod also claimed the role of the leader of the lands, and the positions of Tver, although shaken over the past hundred years, were still quite strong. It was possible to consider the political issue without consequences only through the prism of religion and madness (read: foolishness) - the main thing is to correctly combine them.

For a capacious description of the 16th century, just two words are enough: Ivan the Terrible. And do not be surprised that it was during his reign that the largest number of holy fools fell. And some of them were even destined to write their names in history.

Basil the Blessed is a superstar!

What is the name of one of the main attractions of Moscow - a huge cathedral on Red Square? The one that Le Corbusier called "the delirium of a mad confectioner"? Basil's Cathedral, right? In fact, according to the canon, it is the Intercession Cathedral, but the popular name actually replaced the official one.

Vasily is perhaps the most famous Russian holy fool. And the history of his life is extremely indicative - it is possible that many biographies of God's people of subsequent eras included borrowings from it.

He was born in the middle of the 15th century, at the very beginning of the reign of Ivan III, died - 90 years later, already under Ivan IV, that is, he caught the peak of the events mentioned above. His parents were pious Christians from the suburbs of Moscow, and from childhood he himself was distinguished by piety, a quiet character and a penchant for solitude. All this, of course, is good and commendable, but it was necessary to think about daily bread. Therefore, Vasily was apprenticed to a shoemaker quite early - and it was here that his strange talent was revealed.

Once a new client came to their workshop and ordered several pairs of boots at once. According to one version, Vasily began to laugh loudly, according to another, to cry no less loudly. When asked about the reasons for such a reaction, he replied that this order seemed strange to him, because a person would not wear a new thing anyway. No one understood anything, and everything was attributed to the strange nature of the apprentice.

The next day, the customer died - the connection between this event and Vasily's words did not cause the slightest doubt. And the seer himself, apparently, too, since he immediately left the employer and began to play the fool.

Vasily refuses to wear clothes. He has no permanent home. He wanders naked through the city streets. Each meeting with him is a huge shock for the townspeople, who experience fear and reverence at the same time.

Reverence - because the status of a "holy ascetic" (non-canonical, of course) is assigned to him immediately. Fear - because Vasily's actions are absolutely unpredictable, and their consequences can be extremely unpleasant (recall the beginning of his biography).

Sometimes he goes into trading shops and gives alms to the merchants. To the laughter of the rich and the statement that they do not need his miserable coins, he replies: "It will come in handy." The person who receives such a donation is ruined.

The connection is drawn as if by itself: a prophecy. However, if it were not about Russian, but about European culture, then there would rather be an accusation of witchcraft.

Vasily enters the shop and overturns a vat of freshly prepared kvass or throws freshly baked rolls into the mud - the merchant immediately admits that he was cheating customers or selling low-quality goods. A simple and insulting action, already bordering on hooliganism, makes the merchant repent - from his point of view, this happened precisely because the holy fool saw the deception and thus reproached the dishonest moneybag. Although if you dispel the visionary-prophetic veil that shrouded the incident, then what happened should be interpreted as a banal pogrom.

The holy fool roams the streets and throws stones at some houses. And he approaches others and begins to kiss their corners and walls. To a logical question about the reasons, he answers: there is no place for demons in the dwellings of the righteous, they crowd around the walls, and he drives them away with stones. And angels cannot enter the houses of the wicked - and Basil welcomes heavenly creatures so that they do not feel abandoned. The idea is the most mythological - but the attitude towards the inhabitants of the houses marked by the holy fool is changing, sometimes radically.

The real logic of these actions remains behind the scenes - who can even understand the actions of a person who has put on a mask of man-made madness?

The veneration of Basil, which began spontaneously, acquires an official character only three decades after his death. It is difficult to say what exactly caused such an “express canonization” - either the significant social status earned by Vasily during his lifetime, or the church’s attempt to come to a kind of compromise with everyday religiosity in this way.

However, this case is more an exception than a rule: a significant part of the Russian holy fools was never canonized, although they are revered as local saints.

The ups and downs of Moscow foolishness

In the era of Ivan the Terrible, in addition to Vasily, at least a dozen more people were fools (and these are only those who are reliably known). We have already mentioned one of them, Nikola Salos: according to legend, it was he who “saved” Pskov from the tsarist pogrom by offering Grozny a piece of raw meat. However, there are so many discrepancies and contradictions in this plot that it is better to leave it in the space of mythological consciousness, where it arose.

History has not preserved the names of many holy fools - they are only briefly mentioned in the reports of foreign ambassadors, who, with surprise and indignation, argue that almost every Russian city is teeming with naked madmen revered by the people, loudly scolding the tsar, and the monarch himself at the same time regularly listens with horror and awe to their criticism.

The holy fools prophesy to the sovereign showers of frogs and toads, burning earth, rain from fire, and similar textbook Old Testament misfortunes. Everyone is horrified.

The atmosphere is electrified, the feeling of the apocalypse is literally in the air.

However, despite the reverent attitude, some holy fools were still subjected to arrests and persecution. Both before Ivan the Terrible and after.

Apparently, even then there were general criteria that made it possible to distinguish a holy fool from a simply noisy fool. They did not reach us - only fragmentary annalistic mentions that the next "simulant" was exiled to repentance in a distant monastery. You could say he got off lightly.

Later, in the 18th century, when the church, in the course of Peter the Great's reforms, actually turned into a state institution, there were more false fools, and witchcraft was often added to the number of their sins. However, the criteria for sorcery in Russia were too vague and abstract, so the matter was usually limited to public repentance and exile to a monastery.

Foolishness in the Russian province

The reasons for the appearance of holy fools in the outback, far from the capitals, as well as the subject and context of their speeches, were somewhat different. For example, Procopius Vyatsky began to act like a fool after he was struck by lightning: he takes off his clothes, falls, convulses and begins to commit all kinds of socially condemned actions.

The symbolism of what is happening is obvious: a thunderstorm is a sign from above, and the chosen one receives a certain gift, a superpower. Such a close contact with the sky through electrical trauma makes a person a bearer of sacredness of such a high level that there is absolutely no need to understand his actions: they are from another world.

After that, Procopius, in addition to performing the standard program, such as harassing the townspeople and exposing vices, chooses for himself an extreme habitat - a dunghill.

For all its vileness and impressiveness, the symbolic gesture of the Vyatka holy fool seems rather banal. The most sinful and smelly place in this sinful and smelly world becomes a haven for a person who has chosen it for reasons of asceticism to emphasize the rejection of the worldly - and at the same time the utmost closeness to it.

In general, holy fools in every possible way demonstrate disdain for the body: they refuse clothes and shoes, sometimes they wear heavy chains of chains. The practice of mortification is not only becoming extreme, it is truly destructive. The reaction of others is predictably mixed: sympathy is replaced by neglect.

So, at some point, all the inhabitants of the city began to give generous alms to the Novgorod holy fool Arseny. Such behavior was caused by the need to complete the program in front of oneself or to report to higher powers: here, I gave him money!

Sometimes Arseny accepted alms and immediately gave gifts to someone else. Sometimes he threw it away. But more often than not, he just ran away, shouting something and waving his arms.

But his contemporary and colleague Nikolai Kochanov adhered to a different model of behavior: he was verbose, not embarrassed in terms of scolding the townspeople (and especially representatives of the authorities) and was at enmity with the same Arseniy.

The reasons for the mutual hostility are not clear. According to one version, the holy fools divided the city into "zones of influence", and the appearance of one of them on foreign territory inevitably led to a fight and the solemn expulsion of the "occupier". Either Arseny escorted Nicholas out of his possessions, or vice versa.

At the same time, such clashes were often provoked by the townspeople themselves: to lure one crazy person into the territory of another, and then make fun of their struggle - what could be more fun?

It turns out that the holy fools were not always revered. They were regularly subjected to humiliation, beatings and harassment by the townspeople and the authorities - there were plenty of good reasons for this.

The choice of reaction to their eccentricities depended on the worldview of the person. Aggression and condemnation is a completely logical answer from a materialistic point of view, but at the same time it runs counter to the general cultural trend. In order not to be considered a black sheep, one had to remain tolerant. But if the same Ivan the Terrible usually showed mercy to such of his subjects and endured their antics, then representatives of power with a lower rank often gave vent to anger.

So, the governor of the city of Yuryevets ordered the servants to beat the holy fool Simon when he came to his yard. According to the evidence, the mayor was Simon's longtime target of attacks, and this visit of him can be seen as an outright provocation.

The holy fool was beaten half to death and thrown to a hut in a swamp in which he lived. Here he died. This outraged and stirred up the inhabitants, and the governor was forced to flee.

On the one hand, it is an illustration of a rather consistent, exclusively religious reaction of the inhabitants. On the other hand, what happened can be interpreted as a cunning and complex multi-move of the holy fool, aimed at changing the government.

The heyday of foolishness in the 19th century

After the 16th century, holy foolish practices gradually faded away. Perhaps this was facilitated by the aggravation of the religious issue in the middle of the next century: against the backdrop of the beginning of the struggle against the Old Believers, an openly non-standard attitude towards faith could lead to absolutely unpredictable consequences and reactions from the authorities. Then Peter I ascended the throne, occupying a radically anti-clerical position, because of which the already unenviable position of the holy fools only worsened. But the idea itself has not disappeared - just the manifestations have become less vivid and frequent.

The Renaissance took place in the second half of the 19th century. At this time, several holy fools occupy a prominent place in the overall picture of everyday religiosity. Perhaps the most significant (and certainly the most famous) of them was Ivan Yakovlevich Koreysha. He began his activity in Smolensk shortly after the end of the war of 1812. Completed - in Moscow, before that he had been a patient in a psychiatric hospital for almost 50 years.

The beginning of history is quite old Russian.

The peasants find Koreysha in the forest, picking at the ground with a stick. By all indications, they take him for a pious ascetic and build a hut for Ivan.

Gradually, rumors about a new religious figure (and who else could be a person who performs actions full of deep symbolism - silently picking the ground with a stick?) Are spreading throughout the Smolensk province. Soon, Koreysha becomes the culprit of the drama - upsets someone's wedding, unambiguously declaring the groom a thief in response to a request to tell fortunes to him. But he turned out to be an influential person and decided to take revenge on the newly-minted holy fool with modern, “civilized” methods - he sent him to a madhouse. Where true fame came to Koreysha.

Ivan Yakovlevich gives advice and prophesies. Sometimes his recommendations and predictions turn out to be more than intelligible, specific and meaningful. Often they are full of theological references, which reveals in him an educated person. But sometimes it is a poorly understood set of words.

To the question: “What awaits the servant of God A.?” - Koreisha answers with a note with the text: "The world of incorruptibility." You can interpret it any way you like. He is asked about the sale of the village - and they hear some gibberish in response. Some visitors Ivan Yakovlevich kicks out, insulting and shouting rude curses after him. Others seem to be ignored. But the chosen ones - usually influential and status people or those who in the future will become the elite of Russian culture - are honored with a long audience and a detailed conversation behind closed doors.

Among its most famous visitors are Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. There is nothing surprising in this, if we remember how religious both writers were and what place the motive of seeking God occupies in their work.

And immediately after Tolstoy's visit, Ivan Yakovlevich pours pea soup over some merchant's wife. She leaves puzzled.

And she got off lightly - Koreisha can throw feces. And most importantly - nothing is clear, and it is pointless to object, to be indignant, to prove something: a holy man, after all.

Of course, Ivan Yakovlevich predicted his death. For the biography of the ascetic, this is not surprising. But the descriptions of his funeral are a separate epic. They say that they were accompanied by dozens of fights and mass hysteria of the merchants, who staged a parting performance themselves: they threw themselves on the coffin and lay under it on the road throughout the entire path of the funeral procession. It was even reported that one particularly zealous fan of the holy fool fell into the grave, but this is most likely a fiction, emphasizing the absurdity of what is happening.

The attitude of the official church towards Koreysha, unlike some other provocateurs, is twofold. He was buried in a place of honor at the cemetery in Moscow Cherkizovo, but all the talk about canonization of him as a saint quickly subsided, and this topic was not raised again. However, Ivan Yakovlevich continues to be revered - a typical reaction of the church, turning a blind eye to non-canonical behavior if it does not run counter to its interests.

Seeing common features in the message and actions of holy fools and modern actionists, they often try to draw a parallel between these phenomena: social and political statements never lose their relevance, and in a secular society and culture striving for postmodernity, an artistic statement can cause more resonance than a religious one. .

However, such logic is internally contradictory - foolishness is, in principle, impossible outside of faith, in the conditions of that very secular society with its postmodernity. And this once again proves that attempts to transfer history into the present to demonstrate the cyclical nature of its development are nothing more than metaphors.

Time is changing, conditions are changing, the cultural paradigm is changing - and phenomena disappear that once, if not its basis, then at least effectively complemented the overall picture.

This is fine. Because without such changes, humanity would have remained in the state in which it was five hundred years ago. Which hardly anyone would like.

In real life, we do not encounter holy fools, we know about them either from hagiographic literature or from fiction. Meanwhile, in recent times it has become fashionable to call foolishness any artistic or public shocking. What is the feat of foolishness in the church's understanding? Who can and who cannot be considered a holy fool? How to relate to the modern "foolishness"? We are talking about this with the Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Philology of the Moscow Theological Academy Vladimir Kirillin.

biblical roots

- Vladimir Mikhailovich, where did the concepts of “foolishness”, “holy fool” come from?

The idea of ​​foolishness appears in the Old Testament. Some prophets were fools, for example, the prophet Isaiah. Their prophecies could be dressed in a paradoxical, outrageous form unexpected for the listeners. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul speaks of foolishness in his epistles: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.(1 Cor 1 :18) and beyond: For when the world through its wisdom did not know God in the wisdom of God, it was pleasing to God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.(1 Cor 1 :21). The thought of the Apostle Paul is as follows: Christianity from the point of view of the philistine consciousness is madness, it is a rejection of the usual, “worldly” system of values. It is impossible to fit Christian hope into this system. This is not, of course, about the fact that a Christian cannot have ordinary human needs, but about the fact that these needs cannot be put at the forefront, but on the contrary, one must strive for spiritual perfection and reject everything that interferes with this, everything that " grounds” the Christian.

But the denial of worldly attachments, in other words, asceticism, is a much broader concept than foolishness. Can we say more specifically what it is - foolishness?

The most successful answer to this question was proposed by Georgy Petrovich Fedotov in the book "Saints of Ancient Russia". According to Fedotov, foolishness is “1. Ascetic trampling on vanity, which is always dangerous for monastic asceticism. In this sense, foolishness is feigned madness or immorality for the purpose of reproach from people. 2. Revealing the contradiction between deep Christian truth and superficial common sense and moral law in order to ridicule the world (I Cor. I-IV). 3. Serving the world in a kind of preaching, which is done not in word and not in deed, but by the power of the Spirit, the spiritual power of a person, often clothed with prophecy.

People who embarked on this path saw in it the only way to salvation for themselves, they saw the most adequate - again, for themselves personally! - a way to imitate Christ. After all, both from a Christian and historical point of view, the first holy fool was the Savior Himself, who completely rejected the values ​​of this world and called humanity to a different way of life in the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, let's put it this way: foolishness is a special kind of Christian work, a special Christian feat.

V.G. Perov. "Blissful". 1879

How widespread was this feat?

Not too common. G.P. Fedotov in his book cites the following statistics: The Greek Church honors six holy fools, of whom the most famous are St. Andrew the Blessed (IX century) and Simeon of Emesa (VI century). This feat was more typical for the Christian East and for Russia than for the West. In the Catholic Church, one can only speak of Francis of Assisi as a holy fool, but this is a separate case that has not given rise to any noticeable trend. There are no holy fools among the Protestants either.

As for Russia, I will quote Fedotov again: “For centuries, the honored Russian holy fools are distributed as follows: XIV century - 4; XV - 11; XVI - 14; XVII - 7". As you can see, not much at all. Of course, we are talking here only about the holy fools, canonized saints, glorified - in reality, of course, there were more of them. Nevertheless, even from these figures, we see that the feat of foolishness is not massive, that this is a unique case every time. Note that in the days of Kievan Rus there were practically no holy fools. More precisely, some ascetics of that era - for example, Isaac of the Caves or Abraham of Smolensk - at times indulged in this feat, but then switched to a different way of asceticism.

A feat understandable to the people

- Did the holy fools somehow explain their motivation to the people around them?

The only source by which we can say anything about the holy fools is their lives. These lives were written at different times, sometimes decades after the death of one or another holy fool. Of course, sometimes they are incomplete, sometimes they contain elements of folklore, sometimes they contain anachronisms. Nevertheless, in the main life they give a sufficient idea of ​​the feat of foolishness. So, according to the lives, the holy fools did not explain why they do this. However, there was no such obvious need for this. On the whole, Orthodox people understood that shocking the holy fools was not an end in itself, but a means to make society think about the meaning of life, the meaning of the teachings of Christ, and, in general, about the path of salvation.

Basil the Blessed

- And why the feat of foolishness, the heyday of which falls onXVIcentury, subsequently almost disappeared?

This is a very complex question, to which hardly anyone can give an exhaustive answer. Yes, indeed, after the 16th century foolishness went to the periphery of church life. From a certain moment - more precisely, in the Synodal period - the Russian Orthodox Church begins to treat this feat with caution. The fact is that with the similarity of external manifestations, foolishness could have different causes. Firstly, this is foolishness in the strict sense of the word, that is, a feat on the basis of the fight against one's own pride in order to overcome the temptations of this world and for the sake of salvation. Secondly, this is the behavior of people who are not quite mentally healthy (the people called such people "blissful"). Thirdly, this is pseudo-folly, when people really put on the guise of madness, but not for the sake of lofty Christian goals, not for the sake of imitating the Savior, but for the sake of satisfying their own pride, for the sake of gaining some benefits - that is, here we are already talking about a spiritual illness , about the state of charm. And it was far from always easy to understand from the outside what the case was.

In what does the Church see the mission of the holy fools? That is, it is clear why this feat was needed by those who decided on it, but what benefit was it to those around them?

The feat of foolishness was more understandable to people than the feat of an ascetic monk. After all, it is one thing when a monk in the monastery fence, in the silence of his cell, achieves spiritual perfection - and quite another when a person lives in full view of the people, communicates with them, says something, shows with his “non-standard” behavior how much asceticism can be, imitating Christ, sparing neither one's beauty, nor youth, nor physical health, to live in spite of everything, in poverty, and at the same time maintain purity of spirit and heart. I'm not talking about the fact that the behavior of holy fools - the poor, in need of help, care, somehow pushed the people around them to support them, to be kind, merciful. That is, here is a kind of pedagogy. The holy fools, by the very fact of their existence, by their challenge to the values ​​of worldly life, influenced the consciousness of the people.

We do not make a diagnosis

You said that the holy fool voluntarily puts on the guise of insanity. But many rationalists believe that all holy fools were actually mentally ill or mentally retarded. Yes, maybe God spoke through these holy fools, they believe, but all the same, there are clear psychiatric diagnoses. How can you comment on this approach?

It seems very superficial to me. Firstly, such people have a rather poor knowledge of church history and are not able to see this or that case of foolishness, either in spiritual, cultural or historical aspects. This is always the view of a modern person who looks down on the life of past centuries, considering himself a priori smarter than his ancestors. Yes, if you look at everything from a materialistic standpoint, if you completely reject the existence of God, and even more so the influence of the Holy Spirit on a person, then any deviation from the standard has to be explained by mental illness. But from the point of view of a believing Christian, a holy fool can be completely mentally healthy, and his behavior is due not to medical, but to spiritual reasons.

Secondly, this approach is also incorrect from a medical point of view. As far as I know, qualified psychiatrists avoid making remote diagnoses - in order to talk about the presence of a particular disease, they need to personally examine the patient. No psychiatrists, as you understand, did not examine the holy fools glorified by the Church. Therefore, the opinion that all holy fools were mentally ill is a philistine opinion, and it does not stem from special knowledge in psychiatry, but simply from a materialistic picture of the world stuck in the head.

But indeed, the word "holy fool" in modern consciousness is synonymous with "mentally ill". We have already said that the meaning of words changes over time, and there are various reasons for this - both the laws of language development, and, which is more important in this case, sociocultural changes in society. Here, of course, the process of secularization greatly influenced. After all, secularization is not just the displacement of the Church from political and public life. It is no less important that the Christian value system - at least within the framework of European culture - began to be trampled on by other values. And the words remained - but in the new coordinate system they acquired new semantic shades. That is why modern people consider foolishness to be synonymous with mental deviations. They did not personally bring this meaning - they absorbed it from childhood.

Not buffoons, not jesters, not reformers

Let's go back to the Middle Ages. As you know, defiant, outrageous behavior then was characteristic not only of holy fools. There were jesters, and buffoons, and simply hooligans. What is the difference between them - if we talk not about deep motivation, but about external manifestations?

In the Middle Ages, buffoonery was a profession. The task of the jester was to entertain the master, to satisfy his needs, quite earthly, worldly. The buffoonery was about the same, only the target audience differed - not a boyar, not a prince, but the common people. Jesters and buffoons derived income from their craft, their extravagant behavior was a job, not a way of life. When they were "off duty", they behaved exactly like everyone else. There was also a difference in content: jesters and buffoons mostly amused the public, sometimes denounced social ulcers - but did not proclaim the truth of Christ, did not call the people to repentance. Needless to say, they, that is, jesters and buffoons, did not win, unlike the holy fools, any popular veneration. They were not taken seriously.

But why, if the holy fools were taken seriously, then they were not persecuted for exposing both the royal and church authorities? We are used to believing that those who stand for the truth are always persecuted...

Because in the period we are talking about - the 15th-17th centuries - the holy fools were not just taken seriously, they were perceived as people of God. Both in the common people and in the authorities there was an idea that it was impossible to offend a man of God, that it was the same as competing with God. Moreover, this applied not only to the holy fools in the strictly ecclesiastical sense of the word, but also to simply poor, sick people. To offend such a person was considered a sin, and a dangerous thing: after all, God could intervene. That is, both mercy and the fear of God were combined here.

But what is characteristic is that already a century later, in the Age of Enlightenment, thanks to secularization, people began to become spiritually stale, and this manifested itself, among other things, in relation to the holy fools. If earlier they were seen as messengers of the will of God, then later, when society moved away from the Church, the holy fools began to be perceived as mentally handicapped, they began to be put in asylums for insane people, which then in fact were real prisons.

In the Middle Ages, not only holy fools denounced the royal and church authorities. The same was done by heretics and all sorts of reformers. What is the difference?

I'll give you an example. During the Great Lent of 1570, Ivan the Terrible, having defeated Novgorod, came near Pskov. Among those who met him was the holy fool Nicholas Salos. Riding on a stick, he shouted: "Ivanushka, eat bread and salt, not human blood!" When the king came to his house, he handed him a piece of raw meat: they say, eat! But the king said that, as a Christian, he does not eat meat during fasting. And the saint objected: “But you drink human blood!” And he predicted that if he did not leave the city, there would be nothing for him to run back on. Grozny nevertheless ordered to deprive the Trinity Cathedral of the bell. Then the prediction came true: suddenly the beloved horse of the king fell. And the stunned tyrant retreated from Pskov.

What is the difference with the criticism of heretics or reformers? In the fact that Nicholas Salos proclaimed the truth of God to the tsar, and his word worked because he himself lived according to this truth. When we talk about rational criticism, known from the literary monuments of that era, we are faced with an exchange of opinions - opinions that belonged to more or less sinful people.

In addition, the criticism emanating from the reformers has always been rational. Certain shortcomings were denounced, ways to eliminate them were proposed - various projects, programs, some political alternatives ... that is, the dispute was conducted on a rational, this-worldly plane.

- You said, thatXVIII century - this is already the sunset of the feat of foolishness. What can be said about the last holy fools glorified in the Church? When they lived, who were they?

As far as I remember, one of the last was Blessed Xenia of Petersburg, who died at the beginning of the 19th century. This, by the way, is a very interesting case, because the popular veneration of her was so great, the faith in her involvement with God was so strong that after her death the path to her grave did not overgrow for a very long time, and not in a figurative, but in a literal sense. Here is this popular veneration is extremely important. Here we see that the Church does not evoke the veneration of the saint in the church people by some official decision - no, the sequence is reversed: the recognition of the Church is based on a deep popular faith, on the unshakable reputation of this person.

Our days

Is the feat of foolishness possible today?

I do not know. I can only say that God's participation in our lives is undeniable, and it can manifest itself in very different ways. By the way, the feat of foolishness was quite widespread in Soviet times, in the 30-50s. Whatever diocese you come to today, you will definitely be told about the local holy fools who labored in the 1930s, during and after the Great Patriotic War, and even in the Khrushchev era. Yes, there were people who told society the truth, but clothed it in a very unexpected form, sometimes even completely unacceptable from the point of view of decency.

Let's move on to our days. Now, it seems to me, a new fashion has appeared: to declare every kind of artistic or socio-political shocking as foolishness. What do you think about it?

I think that here we are faced not only with the religious illiteracy of most of our compatriots, who do not understand the meaning of the feat of foolishness, but also with someone's conscious attempts to manipulate the masses, exploiting their illiteracy.

Indeed, if people live outside the Christian value system, if they are not familiar with either the teachings of the Church or its history, then their idea of ​​foolishness will be the most primitive. Namely, they associate foolishness either with mental disorders, or with defiant, outrageous behavior in order to achieve quite earthly, this-worldly goals: to draw public attention to this or that problem, to move the authorities to this or that political concession, and so on.

But why call these things precisely foolishness, drawing parallels between the current "performances" and the actions of the ancient holy fools described in hagiographic literature? But precisely then, in order to reinforce the performance with the authority of Christianity, in order to give it a certain high spiritual meaning and thus morally justify it in the eyes of the “target audience”, to which Christianity, although not too familiar, but not completely alien. The substitution lies in the fact that the manipulators rely on mass non-church ideas about foolishness, but attribute some religious content to such foolishness. Simply put, the scheme is as follows: since foolishness is shocking, then shocking is foolishness ... and here we remember in time that foolishness is somehow connected with Christianity ... and we draw the final conclusion: our shocking is essentially deeply religious, which means that you are all obliged to perceive it with attention and reverence.

How can a modern person, not too savvy in church history, distinguish genuine foolishness from simple outrageousness?

I think there are still some points that should be noted.

First, it is an external goal-setting. If we have a real holy fool before us, he will proclaim the truth of God, and not the truth of man. That is, if, as they say now, his “message” comes down to protecting human rights, demanding political and economic reforms, exposing certain government institutions or personalities, you can be sure that this is not foolishness in the church sense of the word. Don't misunderstand me - I'm not at all saying that all the goals listed are a priori bad and cannot be fought for. Let's just call a spade a spade - this is an ordinary political struggle, and not a feat of foolishness.

The second is intrinsic motivation. Of course, it is more difficult to talk about it, because we cannot know what is going on in a person’s soul if he does not say it himself. But from church tradition, from hagiographic literature, we know that people most often went to the feat of foolishness, driven by the Holy Spirit, and not from purely rational, pragmatic considerations. Therefore, if we know that someone has begun to behave like a holy fool, based on a sober calculation, for the sake of "public good" - we have the right to doubt the authenticity of his foolishness.

Thirdly, this is an undoubted deep faith, characteristic of real holy fools. Faith, which was characteristic of them even before taking on the feat of foolishness. If someone is declared to be a holy fool who has not previously shown his faith in any way, whose way of life did not at all testify to following Christ, then we have every reason to consider this a fake.

Fourthly, a real holy fool is ready to humbly endure ridicule, indignation, and reproach. Such a person, after all, decides on the feat of foolishness, because his main goal is to save himself from pride, humbly accepting insults, bullying, and persecution. In this, the holy fool sees likeness to Christ, who voluntarily accepted the crown of thorns, beatings, spitting, ridicule and, most importantly, death on the cross - I note, according to the ideas of that time shameful death. Therefore, if a person who claims to be a holy fool is surprised at public condemnation, is indignant at this condemnation, rushes into a counterattack, defends his rights ... in a word, behaves like a fighter - this is a sure sign that there was no real foolishness. There is no foolishness without humility.

Fifthly, real holy fools, glorified by the Church, not only proclaimed the truth of Christ to those who deviated from it, but also possessed a prophetic gift, predicted some events to the society, which happened in a short time. Therefore, one should never rush to enroll someone in the holy fools - you need to wait and see what will come of all this.

And what comes out? What are the consequences? Here, perhaps, is the most obvious criterion: if the activity of the "holy fool" brings a split into society, if as a result of his outrageous antics mutual anger grows, if people do not approach God, but, on the contrary, move away from Him, then it was originally not from God.

Holy fools in RUSSIA

In the worldly view, foolishness was certainly associated with spiritual or bodily squalor. A holy fool from the point of view of the notorious common sense is an ordinary fool. This is a delusion, which Orthodox theology never tired of repeating. St. Demetrius of Rostov in his Fourth Menaia (they were a reference book for many generations of Russian intellectuals - from Lomonosov to Leo Tolstoy) explains that foolishness is "self-willed martyrdom", a mask that hides virtue. Theology teaches to distinguish between natural foolishness and voluntary foolishness, "for Christ's sake." But perhaps these instructions should be included in the category of demagogy? It accompanies all creativity, including theology. It's sad, of course, but that's how humanity works. To verify, let's look at the facts.

Among the figures of the early Old Believers was the holy fool Athanasius. Archpriest Avvakum wrote this about him, his beloved disciple, fellow countryman from Nizhny Novgorod and spiritual son: “Before monasticism, he wandered barefoot both in winter and summer ... The hunter was crying hard: he walks and cries. And with whom he prays, and his word is quiet and smooth, as if crying. In the spring of 1665, when Avvakum was in exile on Mezen, when it became clear that Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich would not return to the old faith, then the Moscow community of zealots of ancient piety needed new leaders. The choice fell on the holy fool Athanasius. Having cut his hair in some northern monastery, he became a monk Abraham - and immediately took up the pen. He wrote both prose and poetry (and book poetry was then new in Moscow). He kept an illegal handwritten library and archive of the Moscow Old Believers. All this was taken away in February 1670, when the former holy fool was taken into custody. In prison, he was kept strictly, however, in his own words, “confessed with the guards” and established ties with like-minded people. In prison, he managed to write several essays, in particular the famous petition to the king, whose irreconcilable and sharply accusatory tone sealed his fate. In Great Lent in 1672 on Bolotnaya Square - opposite the Kremlin beyond the Moscow River, where the sovereign's garden overlooked, where heretics and criminals were executed and fist fun was arranged - it was burned (according to Russian custom, in a log house without a roof: we took care of spectators, did not torment them with the contemplation of mortal torment and mortal disgrace).

So, the holy fool Athanasius, also known as the monk Abraham, belonged to the type of not only mentally healthy, but also intelligent holy fools. Intelligent foolishness is neither an oxymoron nor a paradox. Foolishness was indeed one of the forms of intellectual criticism (ancient cynics and Muslim dervishes can be cited as parallels). How does Orthodoxy interpret this “self-satisfied martyrdom”?

Its passive part, turned on itself, is extreme asceticism, self-humiliation, imaginary madness, insult and mortification of the flesh, based on a literal interpretation of the New Testament. “Then Jesus said to His disciples: If anyone wants to follow Me, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me; for whoever wants to save his soul will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it; What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26). Foolishness is a voluntarily accepted feat from the category of the so-called "super-legal", not provided for by monastic charters.

The active side of foolishness lies in the obligation to "swear to the world", exposing the sins of the strong and the weak and not paying attention to public decency. Moreover: contempt for public decency is something like a privilege and an indispensable condition for foolishness, and the holy fool does not take into account the place and time, "swearing at the world" even in God's temple. The two sides of foolishness, active and passive, seem to balance and condition one another: voluntary asceticism, homelessness, poverty and nakedness give the holy fool the right to denounce the “proud and vain world.” "Grace will rest on the worst" - that's what the holy fool means. From this principle follows the peculiarity of his behavior.

A holy fool is an actor, because he does not play the fool when he is alone. During the day he is always on the street, in public, in the crowd - on the stage. For the viewer, he puts on the guise of madness, "sneers" like a buffoon, "plays pranks." If the Church affirms good manners and good manners, then foolishness demonstratively opposes itself to this. There is too much material, carnal beauty in the Church - deliberate disgrace reigns in foolishness. The church also made death beautiful, renaming it “dormition”, falling asleep. The holy fool dies no one knows where and when. He either freezes in the cold, like St. Procopius of Ustyug, or simply hiding from human eyes.

The Church appeals not so much to the mind as to the soul. Thought in the church rite gives way to emotion. However, from a hundredfold repetition, the eternal truths on which the rite rests grow dim, the emotion cools down and turns into everyday life. The spectacle of foolishness, as it were, renews eternal truths, enlivens passion. It is against routine.

The holy fool is the main, but not the only person of the performance that was played out in the squares and streets of ancient Russian cities. The holy fool needs a spectator who is destined for an active role. After all, the holy fool is not only an actor, but also a director. He leads the crowd and turns it into a puppet, into a kind of collective character. The crowd from an observer becomes a participant in the action, reacts directly and passionately. Thus, a kind of game is born.

The ideal costume of the holy fool is nudity. When he undresses, he puts on "the white robes of imperishable life." The naked body suffers most from the winter cold and summer heat and clearly testifies to contempt for corruptible flesh (it is by no means accidental that the action in the Lives of the Russian holy fools takes place mostly in winter). Indicative in this sense is the iconography of St. Basil the Blessed, or Basil the Naked. He is usually depicted naked, as prescribed by icon-painting manuals: "Naked all over, curly beard, headscarf in his left hand, prayer service on the right." They also tried to express the moral idea of ​​nudity in paints - on the images Vasily was “swarmed in body from solar grief”.

However, nudity is ambiguous. This is both an “angelic” symbol of the soul, and temptation, immorality, the personification of evil will and demonism (in Gothic art, the devil is always depicted naked). This "suit" of the actor, like his actions, gave the opportunity to choose, for some it was a temptation, for others - salvation. To reconcile nakedness "for Christ's sake" and the sin of contemplating the flesh, holy fools use palliatives, for example, wear a loincloth. Among palliatives, the most common is a shirt. This is a corporate sign, according to which the holy fool was immediately identified as a jester by a cap with donkey ears, as a buffoon by a sniffle. What the shirt looked like can be judged at least from the Life of the Novgorod holy fool Arseny. She is “obscene” and “multi-sewing”, patchwork. This detail resembles the costume of ancient mimes, sewn from multi-colored rags (cf. the clothes of the Italian harlequin). The holy fool is really a kind of mime, because he plays silently, his performance is a pantomime.

The ideal language of the holy fool is silence. However, silence does not allow (or makes it difficult) to perform the functions of public service, and this is another contradiction of foolishness. Among those who laid upon themselves the chains of this feat were convinced, stubborn silencers, but in general this is a rarity. Usually holy fools somehow communicate with the viewer - on especially important occasions, denouncing or prophesying. Their statements are either clear or unintelligible, but always short, these are cries, interjections, aphoristic phrases. Speaking about the holy fool Elena, who predicted the death of False Dmitry, the Dutchman Isaac Massa in his “Brief News of Muscovy” noted: “The speeches that she spoke against the tsar were small, and they can be conveyed by the words of the poet: decides your fate." It is remarkable that in the maxims of holy fools, as in proverbs, consonances are frequent. “You are not a prince, but dirt,” said St. Mikhail Klopsky. The rhyme was supposed to emphasize the peculiarity of the statements of the holy fools, their difference from the inert speech of the crowd, the mystical nature of the prophecies and reproaches.

The development of the principle of silence can be considered glossolalia, tongue-tied mumbling, "flour words" that Andrei Tsaregradsky uttered. His translated Life has been popular in Russia since pre-Mongolian times - in particular, for the reason that in the Church Slavonic text he is called a Slav, although in the original Greek he is called a Scythian. These "words" are akin to children's language, and children's "nonsense" of old was considered a means of communication with God. This is a prophetic tradition going back to the Book of Jeremiah: “And I said, ah-ah-ah, Lord! I, like a child, cannot speak. But the Lord told me: do not say “I am a child”, go where I send, and say whatever I command” (I quote from the Vulgate). By the way, the extended interjection "a" as a sign indicating the peculiarity of the language was also used in the latest Russian literature. Khlebnikov, a word-creator and a kind of holy fool (It is by no means accidental that Aseev called him “Dostoevsky’s Idiot” in the poem “Mayakovsky Begins”) signed his early prose experiments with the pseudonym “AAAA”.

Holy fools borrow a lot from folklore - after all, they are the flesh of the flesh of folk culture. The paradoxical nature inherent in them is also characteristic of the characters of fairy tales about fools. Ivan the Fool is similar to the holy fool in that he is the smartest of fairy-tale characters, and also in that his wisdom is hidden. If in the initial episodes of the tale, his opposition to the world looks like a conflict between stupidity and common sense, then as the plot progresses, it turns out that this stupidity is feigned or imaginary, and common sense is akin to flatness or meanness. It was noted that Ivan the Fool is a secular parallel to the holy fool for Christ's sake, as well as Ivan the Tsarevich is a holy prince. It was also noted that Ivan the Fool, who is always destined to win, has no analogues in Western European folklore. Likewise, the Catholic world did not know the holy fools.

One of the forms of protest in foolishness is the ridicule of vice and evil. Laughter is again a “super-legal” means, because in Orthodoxy it was considered sinful. Even John Chrysostom, the most revered of the holy fathers in Russia, noted that in the Gospel Christ never laughs. At confession, our ancestors were asked questions about “laughter to tears,” and penance was imposed on those guilty of this. Accordingly, hagiographic heroes do not laugh. An exception to this rule is rarely made; but it is always done for the holy fools. Here are two consecutive episodes from the Life of St. Basil the Blessed.

One day, passers-by girls laughed at the nakedness of the holy fool - and immediately went blind. One of them stumbled along after the blessed one and fell at his feet, begging for forgiveness and healing. Vasily asked: “From now on, will you still laugh ignorantly?” The girl swore that she would not, and Vasily healed her, and after her the rest. Another scene has been moved to a Moscow tavern. Its owner was angry and "murmuring": "He said to everyone with his demonic custom:" Damn it! There were a great many people, just hurry up to bring, and the owner brushed off the drunkard. He did not lag behind, and the kisser poured him a glass: “Take it, drunkard, to hell with you!” With these words, an imminent demon jumped into the cup (of course, only the seer-holy fool noticed this). The drunkard raised the cup with his left hand, and crossed himself with his right. Here the demon, "burned by the power of the cross," jumped out of the flask and rushed out of the tavern. Basil the Blessed laughed out loud, puzzled the drunken brethren: “Why is he clapping his hands and laughing?” I had to tell him about what was “revealed” to him.

These stories are of low artistic quality. But the inclusion of them in the fabric of the narrative can not be considered either a mistake or a whim of the author. He was attracted by the theme of laughter common to both stories. The first episode begins with laughter, the second ends with laughter. It turns out a chain construction inserted into a kind of frame. All this carries an ideological load: sinful girls cannot laugh, they destroy the soul with laughter, but the holy fool can, because grace rests on him.

Ridicule of the world is first of all tomfoolery, buffoonery. Indeed, foolishness is closely related to the institution of jesters - both in behavior and in philosophy. The main postulate of the jester's philosophy is the thesis that all are fools, and the biggest fool is the one who does not know that he is a fool. Whoever recognized himself as a fool ceases to be such. In other words, the world is completely populated by fools, and the only genuine sage is the holy fool pretending to be a fool. His "wise folly" always triumphed, ridiculing the "foolish wisdom" of the philistine world.

Protesting, the holy fool performs the duties of an accuser and a public intercessor. Naturally, he needs popular recognition: in Russia, from time immemorial, they looked askance at self-proclaimed teachers (although, unfortunately, they often deceived themselves with them, often entrusted themselves to rogues). From the Orthodox point of view, the most evil person who has nothing to hope for heavenly bliss is not a murderer and not a highway robber, but the one who keeps saying: "I know everything, I am always right." You can’t communicate with such a person, you need to turn your back on him - and run away.

But after all, the holy fool, in essence, becomes in the same pose of omniscience. He must prove the right to it; absolute disinterestedness is put forward as an argument. The holy fool casts himself out of the world, breaks all ties with it. The dog becomes a social and corporate sign of the holy fool - a symbolic sign of alienation, known at least since the time of the Cynics, who led a truly "dog" life (it can be imagined from the jokes about Diogenes of Sinop, the most famous of the Cynics).

Here is the first appearance in the field of holy foolishness of the Palestinian monk Abba Simeon (his Life, according to which Russian ascetics "learned holy foolishness", was well known to our ancestors in the Church Slavonic translation; in the middle of the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius included it in the "Great Menaion of the Chetya" under 21 July, when the memory of Simeon is celebrated; I quote the Life in translation from Greek, performed by S. V. Polyakova - for a better understanding). Here is the first public performance of this ascetic: “Honest Simeon, seeing a dead dog on the pus in front of the walls, took off his rope belt and, tying it to his paw, ran, dragging the dog behind him, and entered the city through the gate located near the school. The children, noticing him, shouted: “Here comes the abba the fool!” - and rushed to run after him, and beat him.

Andrey Tsaregradsky, preparing to rest, looked for a place where stray dogs lay, and immediately went to bed, driving away one of them. “You are dogs, and slept with dogs,” he said in the morning. In the Life of Procopius of Ustyug this motif is repeated and strengthened. It was a cold winter, the birds froze in flight, many people froze to death, and it became unbearably hard for Procopius on the church porch. Then he went to seek shelter for the night. “I came to an empty building, and there were dogs lying in the corner. And I lay down among them to keep warm. They jumped up and ran out. But I thought to myself that not only God and people have abandoned me, but that even dogs abhor me. If the holy fool condescended to stray dogs, then they did not condescend to the holy fool.

In the culture of Orthodox Russia, the dog symbolized foolishness. In the culture of Roman Catholic Europe, she was a sign of buffoonery, a sign of shame. Among the medieval punishments, one of the most humiliating was beating with a dead dog. The holy fool became in the pose of an outcast; the jester was untouchable By city law, the jester was equated with the executioner, and he was forbidden to settle among respectable citizens.

Alienating himself from society, the ascetic, as it were, acquires the right to denounce. But he does not call for social change; his protest has nothing to do with rebellion, radicalism or reformism. The holy fool does not encroach on the state order, he denounces people, not circumstances. This is, in essence, a reasoner, a conservative moralist. However, foolishness, like any cultural phenomenon, does not remain in an unchanging, once and for all definite state. According to the sources, it is easy to see that the social role of foolishness increases in times of crisis for the Church. There is nothing surprising in the fact that foolishness flourishes under Ivan the Terrible, when the Church lost its independence, bowing before the tyrant, and then in the era of schism, the Classical holy fool is a protesting loner. This type of accuser is generally characteristic of the Middle Ages, for a conservative, slowly changing society. But as soon as in the XVII century. dynamism began to take over the minds, as soon as the reorientation of Russia began - to the West, novelty, change - the holy fool ceased to be a loner, he turned into a man of the party, joining, of course, the conservative trend. This happened under Patriarch Nikon. Not a single more or less noticeable and active holy fool accepted his church reform. All of them united around Archpriest Avvakum and his associates. Loneliness was no longer absolute: a small community of holy fools lived in the mansions of the noblewoman Morozova. When the noblewoman was arrested, the authorities blamed her for this. In this regard, it is significant how dramatically Nikon's attitude towards the holy fools changed. In May 1652, Nikon, then Metropolitan of Novgorod, himself performed the funeral of the holy fool? Vasily, a favorite of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Three years later, at a ceremonial dinner at the patriarch's, foreigners of the same faith could still observe the holy fool Cyprian (later executed in Pustozersk, where he was an intermediary between the "will" and Avvakum imprisoned here). But soon the reformer Nikon began to deny the holy fools as an institution, anticipating the rationalist rejection of them by the reformer Peter I. In one of the Old Believer writings, this is directly indicated: “He, Nikon, called the holy fools mad and did not order to write their faces on the icons.”

The reproach to “God-marker Nikon” concerning the blasphemy against the foolishness of Christ for the sake of it is not accidental. In the stream of denunciations of the patriarch hated by the Old Believers, this is not a trifle, recalled according to the saying "All fault is to blame." From the point of view of the accusers, such a reproach is extremely important: in standing up for foolishness, they defended the national type of culture undermined by the church reform. Moreover, foolishness has become for them something like a folk banner, which they now and then put on public display.

When Avvakum was tried at the council of 1667 (it was attended by two ecumenical patriarchs, Paisius of Alexandria and Macarius of Antioch), he resorted to foolish tomfoolery. Avvakum recalls: “And I went to the door and fell sideways:“ You sit, and I will lie down, ”I tell them. So they laugh: “Fool de archpriest! And he doesn’t honor the patriarchs!” In order for the reader to understand this scene correctly, Habakkuk further quotes the First Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians: “And I say: we deform for Christ’s sake; you are glorious, we are dishonorable, you are strong, we are weak.” This is one of those New Testament phrases with which Orthodox theology substantiates the feat of foolishness.

We are able to imagine what exactly the archpriest had in mind when he “fell on his side”, what he wanted to say to his persecutors. This gesture is deciphered using the Old Testament. Habakkuk imitated the prophet Ezekiel: “Lie down on your left side and put on it the iniquity of the house of Israel… Lie down on your right side for the second time, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days.” By command from above, Ezekiel denounced the Jews mired in crimes, predicted their death from pestilence, hunger and the sword. This prediction was repeated by Avvakum. Avvakum wrote to the tsar as far back as 1664, in his first petition, about the "pestilence" (the plague experienced by Moscow) and the "Agaryan sword" as a punishment for Nikon's tricks. He returned to this topic more than once in the Pustozero prison: “Isn’t it obvious that it was poor in our Russia: Razovshchina is indignation for the sake of sin, and before that in Moscow the Kolomna disaster, and pestilence, and war, and many other things. Turn away your face, Vladyka, from which Nikon began the orthodoxy of Kaziti, from which all evil has befallen us to this day.

We find the same hope for foolishness in the story of another Pustozero sufferer, deacon Fyodor (Abvakum's spiritual son), about the first martyr for the old faith, Bishop Pavel Kolomensky. In a letter from prison to his son, deacon Fyodor wrote that “Nikon scolded Pavel thieves, removed his dignity, and exiled him to Khutyn to the monastery of the Monk Varlaam ... Paul, the blessed bishop, began to deform for Christ’s sake; Nikon, having learned, sent his servants there to Novgorod, where he wandered as he walked. They found him in an empty place, walking and seized him like wolves the meek Christ's sheep, and killed him to death, and burned his body with fire.

Even if deacon Fyodor did not know the truth about the fate of Paul (the circumstances of his death still remain a mystery), if he passed on rumors, trusted the rumor, then all the same his message cannot be neglected. It is important because the fatherly covenants, the old faith and foolishness are woven together here. Pavel Kolomensky, the only Russian bishop, plays the fool for a double reason. This is the last opportunity to save life, for the holy fool was considered inviolable. This is the last argument in defense of national foundations: the bishop, whose pastoral word was despised, addresses the people "with a strange and wonderful sight."

In general, the holy fool is an inexorable rigorist who does not recognize extenuating circumstances. For him, immorality is always immorality, no matter who it is noticed - for the strong or the weak. Since the holy fool protests in the name of humanity, since he condemns not the vices of the social order, but offenses against Christian morality, against the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount, not orders, but persons, then in principle he does not care who to denounce - a beggar or a nobleman. Highly curious is the Moscow tradition, which at the beginning of this century was passed from mouth to mouth in the capital, about how St. Basil the Blessed recognized a demon in a beggar. Asking for alms "for Christ's sake", he muttered these words in a patter, so that it came out "a hundred for the sake of", "a hundred for the sake of", - not for the sake of God, but for the sake of money, for the sake of "a hundred" (kopecks or rubles). Here the holy fool, the true ascetic "for Christ's sake", and the beggar, the lover of money "for the sake of a hundred" are contrasted.

The antithesis of this legend can be considered a story about a merchant "in red robes", to whom Vasily poured a floor full of gold - he gave a generous royal alms. “The king doubted about the saint ... that he did not distribute it to the poor, but to the merchant, and called the saint to himself and asked about the gold given to him.” Of course, it immediately became clear that the merchant had gone bankrupt, that he only had “light merchant clothes” and that he was the real beggar. There is no doubt that the contrast of these stories is intended to emphasize the asocial nature of ugliness.

But if the holy fool does not care whom to denounce, then he must also denounce the king, for there are no exceptions in protest. Moreover, he must denounce the king more often and more severely, because the crimes of the king are both more noticeable and more terrible in their consequences. In this case, the moralistic form of the protest reaches its maximum social severity. Russian Lives and other sources record the denunciations of the kings with particular attention. Some of them belong to the sphere of pure fiction, others are quite reliable. However, both legends and facts are formed into a certain cultural stereotype, which has grown on the basis of national traditions.

One of the features of this stereotype was the idea of ​​the possibility and even the necessity of direct contact between the holy fool and the monarch. This idea is akin to the eternal peasant dream of a meeting between a commoner and a just king, vividly depicted in everyday fairy tales. How rooted it was in the minds of ancient Russian people is clear from the story of the holy fool Cyprian. “There was then the marvelous Cyprian, who before the world was a holy fool and foolish, and before God - wise and prudent; he led such a holy and ascetic life that the monarch himself knew him and loved him for his great virtue. Many times, when the king went out in his chariot to distribute alms, the marvelous Cyprian, wandering around in one shirt, hitched to the chariot and rode with the king.

This is an arrangement from "Russian Grapes", which was composed half a century after the execution of Cyprian, but we have every reason to believe that the story is not fiction. On the original of the third petition of Habakkuk, sent from Kholmogory exile, there is such a postscript of some clerk or clerk: “This petition was given to the great sovereign by Cyprian, for Christ’s sake, ugly, in 173 (1664), November 21 days.” Consequently, Avvakum was well aware of Cyprian's special relationship with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, he knew that Cyprian would find an opportunity to convey, and the sovereign would not refuse to accept, the message of the disgraced archpriest.

Apparently, Avvakum believed that the petition handed over by the holy fool expresses not only his opinion, but the opinion of the people. In addition, Alexei Mikhailovich, according to his rank, was supposed to honor "God's people"; I was hoping that this would also work.

In fact, in a special room of the palace, near the royal chambers, on the full care and maintenance of the sovereign, the riding pilgrims lived (the palace was colloquially called the Top, because it was two-story, or, in the old way, two-sling; in the second spindle, the monarch and his family stayed ). “The sovereign’s special respect for these elders extended to the point,” writes I. E. Zabelin in the wonderful book “The Home Life of the Russian Tsars in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” “that the sovereign himself often visited their burial, which was always set off with great ceremony , usually in the Epiphany Monastery in the Trinity Kremlin Compound ... Riding pilgrims were also called riding beggars, among them were the holy fools. The queen and adult princesses also had riding pilgrims and holy fools in their rooms.

This demonstrative closeness of the monarch and the holy fool goes back to the most ancient cultural archetype, which identified the king and the outcast - a slave, a leper, a beggar, a jester (there is a lot of material about this in J. Frazer's Golden Bough). Sometimes one had to pay for such identification with one's life. During the Roman Saturnalia, a slave was elected king. Everyone implicitly obeyed him, but he knew that at the end of the holiday he would have to become a bloody sacrifice. On the threshold of our era, the “king game” was cultivated by the legionnaires, and the role of the outcast king was often played by a criminal condemned to death. The echo of this cruel tradition is captured in the Gospel - in the fragment where the Roman soldiers proclaimed Christ king (I quote from Matthew): And they wove a wreath of thorns, put it on his head, and gave him a reed in his right hand; and, kneeling before Him, they mocked Him, saying: “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spat on him, and taking a reed, they struck him on the head. And when they mocked Him, they took off the purple robe from Him and put on Him in His garments, and led Him to be crucified.” In Europe, this ancient tradition was very tenacious. Until the 17th century there were some kind of buffoon festivals with an elected parody king.

Modifications of this archetype came to Russian court culture from Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor, appearing before his subjects, held in his hands not only symbols of power, but also "akakiya" - a bag of dust, reminiscent of the insignificance of a mortal person. As if imitating Christ, the emperor washed the feet of several Constantinople beggars once a year. The Patriarch of All Russia did the same (our patriarchate was established in 1589). As for the tsar, on Christmas Eve, four hours before dawn, he visited Moscow prisons and almshouses and complained to the inhabitants there. These exits were regular, their route and ritual practically did not change. The people knew where and when the sovereign communicated with the last of his subjects.

There are also echoes of the idea of ​​the identity of the tsar and the outcast in ancient Russian foolishness. The Life of Arseny of Novgorod tells a local legend, according to which Ivan the Terrible and the princes suggested that Arseny choose some village or town to feed himself. “I chose, but will you give me?” They promised to give. Then Arseny made an exorbitant demand: "Give me this Veliky Novgorod to live on, and that's enough for me." The king understood this literally and was embarrassed, not wanting to break a word or give Novgorod to Arseny. He said: "Whether you like it or not, I will accept the city." Arseny spoke allegorically; he does not need earthly goods. One thing is dear to him - to wander around Novgorod in patchwork rags, to play the fool in the squares. It is in his will and power, and no one can give it or take it away.

Arseny seems to change places with Ivan the Terrible, the holy fool becomes higher than the king. Grozny is not in a position to welcome Arseniy to Novgorod, which means that Grozny's power is not unlimited, not absolute. The true "ruler" of the city is a homeless wanderer. The reservation of the author of the Life concerning the "foolishness" of the king and the princes is important. The holy fool, the author explains, is understood only by those who have a “whole mind”. If Grozny did not understand the allegory of Arseny, then the monarch is not “chaste”, he is an imaginary sage, and a wandering fool is a real sage. All this has a direct bearing on the "change of place."

The property of subjects belongs to the king; he disposes of them as he pleases. But in the same way the property of the subjects belongs to the holy fool. “If any of them,” says the Englishman Giles Fletcher, who visited Russia in the reign of Fyodor Ivanovich, “passing by the shop, takes something from the goods, to return wherever he pleases, then the merchant, from whom he thus took something consider himself highly beloved by God and acceptable to a holy man.” The king is God's anointed, and the holy fool is a vessel of grace, God's chosen one, the only wise man in the "maddened", distraught world. Let me remind you in this connection of the famous cynic syllogism of Diogenes of Sinop: “Everything belongs to the gods. Wise men are friends of the gods, and friends have everything in common. Therefore, everything belongs to the sages."

Under Grozny, Nikola Salos lived in Pskov (in Greek, this word means “holy fool”). Russian and foreign sources unanimously assign him the role of the savior of Pskov from the royal wrath. According to some reports, Nikola predicted that Tsar Argamak would fall (it happened), according to others, he simply scolded Grozny with “cruel words”. Let us give the floor to the Englishman Jerome Horsey, who arrived in Russia in 1573, three years after the oprichnina campaign against Novgorod and Pskov.

“In Pskov there was then a holy fool, whom the local inhabitants considered a prophet. This deceiver, or sorcerer, named St. Nicholas, met the king with bold reproaches and spells, calling him a bloodsucker, a devourer of Christian meat, and swore that the king would be struck down by thunder if he or one of his soldiers touched even a single hair in anger on the head of the last child in Pskov; that the angel of God keeps Pskov for a better fate, and not for plunder, and that the tsar must leave the city before God's wrath breaks out in a fiery cloud, which, as he himself can see, hangs over his head (for at that moment there was a strong and dark storm). The king shuddered at these words and asked him to pray for his deliverance and forgiveness of his cruel plans. (I saw this worthless deceiver, or sorcerer: both in winter and summer he went naked, enduring both heat and frost. Through the magical charms of the devil, he did many wonderful things. He was feared and respected by both the sovereign and the people who followed him everywhere followed).

As you can see, Horsey sets out another version. Did you point out her legend? M. Karamzin in the "History of the Russian State": "But it was in winter, and the winter clouds are not thunderous." But in any case, Horsey's notes are extremely important. Firstly, this is the only foreign author who observed Nikola of Pskov with his own eyes. Secondly, one should pay attention to the fact that the holy fool scolded the Terrible as a bloodsucker and a devourer of Christian meat. This fleeting phrase is the source of that paradoxical gesture that popular rumor soon linked forever with Nikola Salos and Grozny.

Fletcher, who visited Moscow sixteen years after Horsey, heard and wrote down the already final, polished version of the legend. According to Fletcher, the Terrible bestowed on Nikol some kind of gift. In response, the holy fool sent the king a piece of raw meat. The king was innocently surprised: after all, there was a fast, and not a meat-eater. Then Nikola told the riddle: “Does Ivashka think ... that it is a sin to eat a piece of meat of some animal during fasting, but there is no sin in eating as many people as he has already eaten?” This paradox crowned the edifice of legend and became canonical in the paintings of the holy fool's protest. Timed to coincide with the oprichnina pogrom of Novgorod, he entered the Life of St. Basil the Blessed (although he died much earlier). Vasily allegedly called Tsar Ivan to a wretched den under the Volkhov bridge and offered the guest "a vial of blood and a piece of raw meat."

The denunciation of the king as a holy fool, apparently, cannot be considered an accident. Rather, it was a system. The people were waiting for them, and the holy fools did not deceive their expectations. Nikon's church reform and the strengthening of absolutism meant the decline of foolishness. However, the authorities still did not dare to openly speak out against this phenomenon, which had been rooted in the national self-consciousness since ancient times. Only Peter I dealt a direct blow to foolishness.

If in his early years, under the last Patriarch Adrian, the foolishness of Christ for the sake of Christ was more or less respected by the Church (for example, in 1698 the relics of Maxim of Moscow, who labored in the 15th century, were discovered), then during the period of transformation he was denied the right to Existence. Peter declared all the holy fools of his time to be "pretending to be raging." The matter did not end with a rationalistic rejection of foolishness. Repressive measures were ordered. In one of the typical documents of the era - in “the promise made by the bishops when placing them in this rank” (1716) we read: send". The repressive motive constantly sounds in the legalizations of the Petrine, and then Anninsky time. So, in 1737, the Synod ordered to find, catch and “send to the secular court” various “superstitants”, including “feigned fools and barefoot and with mats”. If in the 17th century holy fools were killed for impudent speeches, then in the 18th century. already grabbed by the tangles and nakedness, that is, for the most foolish appearance.

But foolishness was very tenacious. As soon as St. Petersburg was built, the holy fools appeared in the new capital (Xenia of Petersburg, who began to act as a fool under the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, was recently canonized). They wandered around Russian cities and towns and later - they were described by Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Bunin. They meet in our time.

In the Petersburg period, a phenomenon arose that can be called a secular version of foolishness. From him - the uncompromising conscientiousness of the Russian classics, which did not tire of denouncing the evil and falsehood that triumph in life. The judgment over them was the stricter, the more authoritative, the purer in moral terms, the more disinterested the judge was.

Baptism of Russia. Events of 1054 Literature: Meyendorff, Rome and Constantinople; Meyendorff, The Byzantine Church; Meyendorff, Imperial Unity; Meyendorff, Introduction; Runciman, The Great Schism; Runciman, The Great Church; Runciman, A History of the Crusades; Paradakis A. The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy. N.Y., 1994; Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs; Walker; Southern R.W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. middlesex,

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Chapter 13 Its heyday falls on the 16th century, somewhat lagging in relation to monastic holiness: the 17th century still enters into the history of Russian foolishness

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XII. Fools "fools for Christ's sake" constitute a special rank of canonized saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church (468). This form of asceticism, which is an extreme degree of Christian kenotism, unknown in ancient Kievan Rus, first enters Russian

THREE BAPTISMINGS OF RUSSIA SCIENTISTS argued a lot about the authenticity of the annalistic news about the "calling of the Varangians". Whether it was in reality, it is difficult to say, and this is not the point, because the very fact of the appearance in the middle of the 9th century on Russian land of new state formations is not subject to