Holy Foolishness in Russia: New Perspectives

Laughter as Spectacle

Laughter as Spectacle* Holy Foolishness in Old Russia A. M. Panchenko Old Russian iurodstvo, or holy foolishness for Christ's sake,1 is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which has mainly been d escribed by Church historians . Since holy foolishness occupies an intermediate position between the world of laughter [smekhovoi mirf and the religious culture, the confines of the Church history approach are too narrow. One could say that without minstrels [skomorokhi] and jes ters [shuty], there would not h ave been holy fools. The affinity between holy foolishness and the world of lau ghter is not limited to the "inside out" [izl1allochl1yi] principle3 - it will be shown that holy foolish- * First published as "Smekh kak zrelishche," in D. S. Likhachev, A. M. Panchenko, and N. V. Ponyrko, Smekh v Drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 72-153. 1Since the English-speaking world does not have a phenomenological equivalent of iurodstvo and its practitioner, the iurodivyi (also pokhab), the English language does not have linguistic equivalents of these terms. Traditionally, the Russian term iurodstvo translates as "holy foolishness," "holy foolery," "holy folly," "foolishness in Christ," and "foolishness for Christ's sake," whereas iurodivyi can be rendered as "holy fool," "fool for Christ," or "fool for Christ's sake." For the most part, scholars use these English terms interchangeably. Other Russian terms that refer to the holy fool are bui, pokhab, and blazhwnyi. For a detailed discussion of the usage and etymology of these terms, see Sergey A. Ivanov, Holy Fools ill Byzall/iul11 alld Beyolld, trans. Simon Franklin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 245, 247-49.- Trans. 2 For a discussion of this concept and term, see D. S. Likhachev, "Smekhovoi mir Drevnei Rusi," in Likhachev, Panchenko, and Ponyrko, Smekh v Drevllei Rusi, 7-24; and H. Birnbaum, "The World of Laughter, Play and Carnival: Facets of the Sub- and Counterculture in Old Rus'," in Aspects of the Slavic Middle Ages alld Slavic Renaissance Culture (New York: Lang, 1991), 483-84.-Tralls. 3 This concept is discussed at the opening of Smekh v Drevnei Rusi, 3-6, 14- 16. Likhachev and Panchenko use it to associate holy foolishness with a humorous "anticulture " that parodies the dominant culture for social critical ends. According to their model, holy foolish behavior turns normative behavior "inside out" when it violates social norms in order to expose the hypocritical enforcement of these norms. The term "inside out" reflects their acknowledged debt to the Bakhtinian interpretation of the popular culture of laughter as an anti-authoritarian alternative to the official world. Holy Foolishness in Russia : New Perspectives. Priscilla Hunt and Svitlana Kobets, eds. Bloomington, IN: Siavica Publi shers, 201 1, 41 - 147. 42 A. M. PANCHENKO ness creates its own type of "upside-down world" [mir navyvorot]-but also includes a strong visual component. At the same time, holy foolishness could not exist without the Church: it finds its moral justification in the Gospels, and takes its characteristic didacticism from the Church. The holy fool balances on the divide between the risible and the serious, embodying a tragic aspect of the world of laughter. Holy foolishness is, in a way, a "third world" of Old Russian culture. Of the several dozen holy fools canonized by the Orthodox Church,4 Rus' inherited only six from Byzantine Christendom. These are: Isidora (feast day 10 May), Serapion the Syndonite (14 May), Vissarion the Egyptian (6 June), the Palestinian monk Simeon (21 July), Foma Kelesirskii (24 April), and, finally, Andrei of Tsargrad, otherwise known as Andrei of Constantinople (15 October), whose vita enjoyed special popularity in Rus'. Russian holy foolishness begins with Isaakii of Pechersk (14 February), whose vita is recounted among the vitae of the Fathers of the Kievan Pechersk or Caves Monastery (Isaakii died in 1090). Then, until the fourteenth century, the sources are silent about holy foolishness. The phenomenon flourished, however, from the fifteenth through the first half of the seventeenth century. Although many of the canonized Russian holy fools are secondary figures, several among them stand out in both Church and lay history, namely Avraamii of Smolensk , Prokopii of Ustiug, Vasilii Blazhennyi (the Blessed) of Moscow, Nikola Salos5 of Pskov, and Mikhail of Klopsk. By the time of its heyday, holy foolishness had become a markedly Russian national phenomenon. At that time, the Orthodox East had scarcely any holy fools. They were not to be found in Belorussia or in Ukraine (Isaakii of Pechersk remained the only holy fool from Kiev). The phenomenon was likewise foreign...