01 — Foundations

Who St. Basil the Blessed was, and how a hidden holy fool’s name came to be spoken by millions who have never heard his story — as the popular name of Moscow’s most famous cathedral. This section establishes the person behind the cult and the strange afterlife of his name.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (glorified 1588; feast 2 August O.S. / 15 August N.S.)

Basil the Blessed — Vasily Blazhenny — is at once one of the most famous and least known of Russian saints: his name is on a cathedral recognized worldwide, yet almost nothing of his life is documented, and the anecdotes that fill his Life were written down after his 1588 canonization. This section introduces both facts. The first file gathers the traditions of his origins — the cobbler’s apprentice of Yelokhovo — and pins their dates to their attestation. The second traces how “St. Basil’s Cathedral” became the near-universal popular name for a church actually dedicated to the Intercession of the Theotokos.

Section Contents

• Who Was Basil the Blessed — the traditions of his birth (Yelokhovo, c. 1468/69), the cobbler’s apprenticeship, and his taking up the fool’s life in Moscow, each pinned to its earliest source
• The Name and the Cult — “Vasily Blazhenny,” and how the chapel over his grave gave the Cathedral of the Intercession its popular misname

See Also

• The Holy Fool in Moscow — the yurodstvo tradition Basil embodied
• Hagiography vs. History — the source-critical treatment of everything asserted here
• The Cathedral — the church that bears his name

References

• Erusalimsky, K. Yu., and A. S. Preobrazhensky. “Василий Блаженный.” In Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya, vol. 7, 123–131. Moscow, 2004. pravenc.ru/text/150789.html.
• Fletcher, Giles. Of the Russe Commonwealth (1591). Ed. Pipes and Fine. Harvard University Press, 1966.
• Ivanov, Sergey A. Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond. Trans. Simon Franklin. Oxford University Press, 2006.