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The Medieval Church · c. 10th century
The Life of Andrew the Fool
Attributed to Nicephorus
What it is
A slave who feigns madness, sleeps with the dogs, is beaten in the street, and sees what nobody else does. The central episode is a vision in the Blachernae church of the Mother of God spreading her veil over the congregation.
Why it lasted
The founding text of holy folly as a vocation, which the Russian church took up more enthusiastically than the Greek. Its veil vision created the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos, one of the great Slavic feasts.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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