1. D. S. Likhachev and A. M. Panchenko, “Smekhovoi mir” drevnei Rusi (Leningrad, 1976), pp. 120-21.

2. The Greek text of Isidore's vita may be found in Butler, D. C., The Lausiac History of Palladius, vol. 2 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1904), pp. 98–100 Google Scholar. For sources on Isaakii, see our article “Divine Folly in Old Kievan Literature: the Tale of Isaac the Cave-Dweller,” Slavic and East European Journal, 22, no. 23 (Fall 1978): 255-64. Prokopii, 's life appears in Zhitiia Sviatykh na mesiats Iulii (Kiev, 1885), p. 94–104.Google Scholar

3. I. U. Budovnits objected to Mikhail's status as a holy fool because he was “a representative of the aristocracy, a relative of the Muscovite Grand Princes.” “Iurodivye drevnei Rusi,” Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma, 12 (1964): 183.

4. Panchenko argues that there was nothing mirth-provoking about Mikhail; Mikhail also lacked the anarchic individuality of most holy fools. Likhachev and Panchenko, “Smekhovoi mir“ drevnei Rusi, p. 95. Compare Fedotov, G. P., The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 336.Google Scholar

5. Dmitriev, L. A., ed., Povesti o Zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1958), p. 32 Google Scholar. This study of the vita's redactions definitely supersedes that written by Kliuchevskii, V. O., Drevnerusskiia zhitiia sviatykh kak istoricheskii istochnik (Moscow, 1871), pp. 209-10, 232-35,373-74, 381.Google Scholar One variant of the first redaction, in English translation, may be found in Zenkovsky, S. A., comp. and ed., Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales (New York: Dutton, 1974), pp. 301–10.Google Scholar

6. The phrase is George Vernadsky's; see his summary of Novgorod's dilemma in The Mongols and Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 328-29, and Russia at the Dawn of the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 31-32. See also J. L. I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 29-60.

7. For the “first redaction” we have variant copies of an earlier text; Dmitriev, Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, pp. 16-18, 22-23, 48-49. A limited linguistic analysis of the various redactions was made by G. I. Belozertsev in “O stilisticheskikh osobennostiakh redaktsii zhitiia Mikhaila Klopskogo,” Pamiatniki russkogo iazyka. Issledovaniia i publikatsii (Moscow, 1979), pp. 177-85.

8. See Dmitriev's analysis in Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, pp. 48-86.

9. We have summarized the account which appears in variant B of the first redaction: Dmitriev, Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, pp. 102-103.

10. See, for example, Likhachev and Panchenko, “Smekhovoi mir” drevnei Rusi, pp. 140-41, 158-59, 180-83; I., Kovalevskii, lurodstvo o Khriste i Khrista radi iurodivye vostochnoi i russkoi tserkvi, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1903)Google Scholar, pp. 2-3; Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, 2:322, and Čiževskij, D., History of Russian Literature from the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (The Hague: Mouton, 1960), pp. 244–48.Google Scholar

11. Dmitriev, Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, pp. 33-35, 58-60. Dmitriev even suggests the possibility that the vita was written in the monastery “at Moscow's direct bidding” (po priamomu ukazaniiu Moskvy): ibid., p. 60.

12. For specific data on Russian monastic contacts with Mount Athos, Constantinople, and the Holy Land in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, see Archbishop Filaret Gumilevskii's monumental study Obzor russkoi dukhovnoi literatury 862-1863, 3d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1884), pp. 73, 75, 82, 86, 88, 95, 97-99, 105, 111, 126-27. See also Shmidt, S. O., “Skazaniia ob Afonskikh monastyriakh v novgorodskoi rukopisi XVI veka,” Drevnerusskaia literatura i ee sviazi s novym vremenem (Moscow, 1967), pp. 355–63 Google Scholar. It is believed that Russia's future metropolitan Aleksei was in Constantinople at the height of the Hesychast controversy (1351): N., Smirnov, Zlataia tsep' sviatosti na Rusi (Buenos Aires, 1958), pp. 68–69 Google Scholar. For other sources on Hesychasm and its spread to Russia, see n. 23.

13. One finds some Byzantine parallels to Novgorod's situation in N. H. Baynes and H. St. L. B. Moss, Byzantium. An Introduction to East Roman Civilization (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 43, 115.

14. A. A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 324-1453, vol. 2 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1958), pp. 667-68; Baynes and Moss, Byzantium, pp. 158, 379-80; Fedotov, G. P., A Treasury of Russian Spirituality (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 100, 102, 104Google Scholar (English translation of Nil Sorskii's monastic rule, with exposition of the Hesychastic method); T., Ware, The Orthodox Church (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), pp. 74–75.Google Scholar

15. The relevant passage in Sergei's vita may be found in L. Mueller, ed., Die Legenden des heiligen Sergij von Radonei (Munich: Fink, 1967), p. 25.

16. J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine. II. The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 260-61.

17. For its characterization as the Hesychast prayer, see, for example, Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 2:668.

18. “Izbornik” (Sbornik proizvedenii literatury drevnei Rusi) (Moscow, 1969), p. 414.

19. See, for instance, S. W. Carlson and L. Soroka, Faith of Our Fathers. The Eastern Orthodox Religion, 4th ed. (Minneapolis: Olympia Press, n.d.), p. 66.

20. We have summarized the account in variant A, Dmitriev, Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, pp. 91-92.

21. Text in ibid., p. 93.

22. D. S. Likhachev, Poetika drevnerusskoi literatury (Leningrad, 1967), p. 160.

23. We should not confuse Hesychasm with divine folly. One discerns some overlapping between the two, but they were distinct forms of asceticism, involving very different conduct: Hesychasm emphasized silence and quiescence (bezmolvie, tishina), solitary contemplation and inner prayer, while divine folly was characterized by “foolish” and provocative action among “onlookers” in a city (at least during the daytime). For additional information on Hesychasm we recommend two recent studies: G. M., Prokhorov, “Isikhazm i obshchestvennaia mysl’ v Vostochnoi Evrope v XIV v.” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, 23 (1968): 86–108Google Scholar, and I. F., Meiendorf, “O vizantiiskom isikhasme i ego roli v kul'turnom i istoricheskom razvitii Vostochnoi Evropy v XIV v.” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, 29 (1974): 291–305Google Scholar. Probably the two best surveys of Russian iurodstvo appear in the monographs by I. Kovalevskii and Likhachev and Panchenko (nn. 1 and 10).

24. For a discussion of the vita as a work of narrative art, see Ia. S. Lur'e, ed., Istoki russkoi belletristiki (Leningrad, 1970), pp. 238-44, 420-22.

25. Čiževskij, History of Russian Literature, p. 244.

26. Of the sixty-eight known copies, fifty-two are of the Tuchkov redaction. Dmitriev, Povesti o zhitii Mikhaila Klopskogo, p. 6.

27. We have described some of these iurodivye (Nikolai of Pskov, Vasilii of Moscow and the role of divine folly in the raskol) in “The Blessed Fools of Old Russia,” Jahrbucher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 22, no. 1 (1974): 6-9.