Quiz on Saints’ Lives

The Holy Fools are ascetics of the Orthodox Church who took upon themselves the feat of foolishness, i.e. external, seeming madness. For the sake of Christ the fools gave up not only all the benefits and comforts of earthly life, but also often the generally accepted norms of behavior in society. In winter and summer they went barefoot, and -many of them - without clothes at all. They often violated the requirements of morality, if we look at it as the fulfilment of certain ethical norms. Many of the holy fools, having the gift of clairvoyance, took the feat of foolishness out of a sense of deeply developed humility, so that people attributed their clairvoyance not to them, but to God. Therefore, they often spoke, using outwardly incoherent form, hints, allegories. Others were foolish to suffer humiliation and ignominy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The feat of foolishness is one of the hardest feats that individuals undertook in the name of Christ for the salvation of their souls and service to their nearest and dearest for the purpose of their moral awakening. In Kievan Rus' there was not yet the feat of foolishness for Christ's sake as such. Although individual saints in a certain sense and fooled some certain time, but it was rather asceticism, taking at times forms very similar to foolishness. The first fool in the full sense of the word was in Russia Procopius of Ustyuga (d. 1302). Procopius, according to his hagiography, was a rich merchant ‘from western countries, with the Latin language, from the German land’. In Novgorod he was captivated by the beauty of Orthodox worship. Having accepted Orthodoxy, he gave away his possessions to the poor, ‘he accepted the life of a young man of Christ for the sake of Christ, and became a rebel’. When he began to be worshipped in Novgorod, he left Novgorod, went ‘to the eastern countries’, walked through towns and villages, impassable forests and swamps, received beatings and insults due to his foolishness, but prayed for his offenders. Righteous Procopius, a fool for Christ's sake, chose for his residence the city of Ustyug. His life was so severe that it could not be compared with the extremely ascetic monastic exploits.