ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Dunia, a composite character, a female fool for Christ, who was inspired by the deeds Vasilii Blazhennyi. The fictional life of Dunia is distantly patterned on the life of an historical nineteenth-century iurodivaia, Saint Pelageia Diveevskaia. The chapter explains the biographical portrait of an imaginary Russian fool for Christ, Dunia, whose life is set in late sixteenth-century Moscow. In Russia holy fools, traditionally called iurodivye, are persons whose assumed simplicity or insanity puts them outside the normal range of common place ethics, discourse, and etiquette. The phenomenon of holy foolery was strong in Muscovite Rus, when the growing power of the state and autocracy, not without abuses of power and principle, might leave a major gap between ideal and practice. Muscovy had quite a number of male iurodivyi figures, many of whom became glorified as saints. A special category of sainthood was established for the holy fool: such a saint was called the Blessed.
