Holy Fools (Iurodivyi)
The phenomenon of voluntary folly in the name of Christ is attested from the 11th century in Russian culture, but also exists in Byzantium and Western Christianity. Made famous by appearances in Pushkin's play Boris Godunov and Mussorgsky's opera of the same name, in Surikov's painting of Boyarina Morozova being taken away to Siberia, and as the patron saint of St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, the “holy fool” or the “fool in Christ” has been a well-known but unexplained cultural phenomenon in Russia.
The holy fool in the Russian tradition is a person who is aware that he looks pathetic in other people's eyes and pre-empts their contempt by exaggerated self-humiliation. His behavior is staged, and its function is to disguise his superiority over his audience. The fool's audience thought him witless, drunk, possessed of a demon; they pitied him or admired him, beat him or protected him, feared him or reviled him. But, be they blind or enlightened, the audience was essential to the fool's performance.
In Russia, for reasons that remain obscure, huge numbers of holy fools emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting widespread devotion, though few were ever canonized by the church. In the history of Russian Orthodoxy the phenomenon is interpreted as the voluntary adoption of madness or folly, an ascetic feat involving self-humiliation by exposure to laughter and contempt. However, among ordinary folk in Russia, the concept was extended to include a wide range of mentally deficient or ill people (involuntary fools). Both voluntary and involuntary fools were distinguished by outrageous, even obscene behavior, which challenged the norms of society. They rejected decent clothing (or, at an earlier period, clothes of any kind), paid no attention to personal hygiene and were frequently incoherent. The treatment they received was part of a severe asceticism that denied the body in favor of the spirit. Some mortified the flesh through the wearing of heavy chains.
All saints are deemed to imitate Christ in some form or other; holy fools, it was believed, modeled themselves on the homeless self-abnegating Christ, who was reviled and unrecognized by all but the few. As saintly figures they were sometimes believed to possess powers of healing, but in the 19th century generally it was prophetic gifts that led to their widespread veneration. It was for the pious to make the transition past the fool’s appearance and behavior to the supreme example of Christian meekness and love. Among pious ordinary fools, acceptance of the fool’s blessed nature dictated that holy fools should be offered charity and their excesses be tolerated. In this context, the probable rape of Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya by Fyodor Karamazov is not only repellent because it takes advantage of an unfortunate simpleton, but also sacrilegious and symbolic of the demonic and destructive sensuality of old Karamazov.
The idea of a hidden inner saintliness masked by a deranged exterior challenged the hegemony of science and reason in the 19th century because the saintliness could not be demonstrated. It required a leap of faith to see through the repellent exterior and grotesque behavior of the fool. What lay within could not be explained in physiological terms. It is easy to see why holy foolishness should attract Dostoevsky with his emphasis on reading inner meaning and motivation rather than the mask of external behavior. It was considered an essentially Russian phenomenon and could be said to symbolize the widely held messianic view of Russia as poor and economically backward but with hidden spiritual resources which would ultimately be revealed.
Several of the stories of the Russian fools depend on their purported interactions with the tsar; this is problematic, because not only is the fool a cultural type or, possibly, a self-conscious actor, but so, too, does the tsar play a cultural role, and one at least as loaded as that of the fool. If the narrative of the fool's actions is distorted through expectations of what holy fools do, even more are accounts of the tsar's actions, even though in the stories the fools are tied to specific rulers (particularly Ivan the Terrible).
Holy fools in both antiquity and medieval Russia had a mixed fate; like other saints, their admiration and cult began locally and was sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, by central authorities, but official reception seems both particularly strong and ambivalent. In 1458, the Russian Church forbade the veneration of the fool Prokopii, tore down his chapel, and removed his icon; yet in 1588 the fool St. Vasilii (Basil) the Blessed was solemnly reburied at the fabulous church on Red Square which now bears his name. Less than a century later, the Moscow Council of the Church of 1666/67 issued a special canon condemning holy foolery. Given the fluid nature of canonization in the eastern Church, and the elastic ties between center and periphery, it is impossible to say how many fools there were, either in antiquity or in medieval Russia.
By the seventeenth century, the holy fools of Russia lived within a social institution and collective understanding of holy foolery that undermined the nature of the holy fool. If his madness is understood, then by the logic of the phenomenon the fool loses his role as provocateur and his sanctity. Tales of Russian fools then pushed beyond expected limits; in one account, the fool Prokopii of Viatka killed a sleeping infant, only to raise it from the dead when the family accepted the fool's actions meekly. In other accounts, the fool turned into a threatening prophet who brought down thunder and lightning.
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