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The Church Fathers · c. 640–660
The Life of Symeon the Holy Fool
Leontius of Neapolis · 7th century
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What it is
The life of a monk who left the desert for the city and feigned madness — dragging a dead dog through the gate, upsetting market stalls — to hide his holiness and shame the respectable.
Why it lasted
The founding text of holy folly, a tradition that runs through Byzantium to the Russian yurodivye and into Dostoevsky.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
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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