From the Tabennisi nunnery to Pussy Riot: female holy fools in Byzantium and Russia

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper, as the author explores the gendered aspects of the holy fool’s phenomenology, she argues that, despite the presumed egalitarianism and the fact that female holy fools appeared in Byzantine hagiography as early as the fifth century, throughout the history of holy foolishness the urban model – hagiographically established in the Byzantine vita of Simeon the Fool of Emesa – was available exclusively to males. Females, recently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as holy fools for Christ’s sake, completely lack such essential characteristics of holy foolishness as subversion, defiance, and folly, whereas the holy fool’s theatricality and rebellious ardour live on in the subversive performances of activist artists.