A few notes, some examples, on the "folly in Christ" from Syria to Russia

This article by Olivier Clément, drawn from a lecture delivered at the monastery of Bose in 1998, offers a panoramic study of "folly in Christ" (_salia_), from its Pauline theological foundations to its historical expressions in Syria, Byzantium, and Russia. The approach is both theological and historical, drawing on patristic and hagiographic sources as well as contemporary scholarly works. The central idea is that the folly of the _salos_ constitutes a human response to divine kenosis: by embracing social abjection, the fool in Christ extends and embodies the scandal of the Incarnation. The article highlights the prophetic and counter-cultural dimension of this tradition, particularly in sixteenth-century Russia, where the _yurodivye_ represented a form of spiritual resistance against autocratic power, illustrated by their confrontations with Ivan the Terrible.