It was in sixteenth-century Russia. Several peasants from the village of Elnat on the Volga River encountered a wild man in the forest who was wandering around in a tattered knee-length shirt. When the savage saw the people, he was scared and tried to escape, but the peasants did not let him leave; they wondered who he was and where he came from. “Simon, Simon, Simon!” the man repeated, as madmen usually do. It was Blessed Simon of Yuryevets,1 the “Fool-for-Christ”, whose memory is celebrated today along with his patron-saint, the Apostle Simon the Zealot, or Canaanite.
Blessed Simon of Yuryevets
St. Simon was born in the village of Odelevo in Kostroma province (now in Ivanovo region) into a peasant family. His parents, Rodion and Maria, baptized their son in the Orthodox faith and raised him in piety. When he reached adulthood, he chose the path of celibacy, devoting himself entirely to God. To avoid marriage, or attracting attention with his righteous life, he ran away from his native village in just a shirt and lived in remote places, enduring cold and inclement weather, wandering, and eating herbs.
It was then that inhabitants of Elnat encountered the strange man in the forest—St. Simon had walked over sixty miles away from home by that time. The peasants took pity on the unfortunate man, brought him to the village and gave him to the priest of St. Nicholas church so that he could try to bring the savage to reason and pray for him.
Seeing the young man’s willingness to work, Fr. Joseph (that was the priest’s name), began to give him work and various household chores to do. The saint did everything without delay and diligently—he ground grain in hand mills, chopped firewood in the forest and delivered it to the house, and carried large quantities water from the river every day.
St. Simon helped not only the priest, but also other residents of Elnat in their daily work. The ascetic did not want to remain without work and be idle, and so he took on every kind of job. He did hard work for peasants as if for hire and always came for payment, but never took it, pretending to be insane.
He tired himself out not only with physical labor, but also with strict fasting and prayer. The church was his sole solace, but even there he feigned insanity. During church services the saint stood motionless and prayed fervently—not with his outward appearance, but with his heart.
The ascetic was laughed at and mocked, often insulted, reproached for his “pretending,” pushed and even beaten. St. Simon endured everything patiently and prayed for his offenders: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge (cf. Acts 7:60).
Both in winter and summer, the saint walked barefoot with his arms folded on his chest. His “bed” was either the bare ground or the floor; and even there he did not sleep much, but often only lay down to let his exhausted body rest a little.
“You’re a Fool and a Glutton”
After fifteen years in Elnat, Blessed Simon moved to the nearby town of Yuryevets-Povolsky. God wanted His faithful servant to live in a more populous place. As before, he lived on the street. In the summer, without hiding in the shade, he bore the heat of the sun, with his body turning black from sunburn and his skin coming off his bones.
On long and cold winter nights, he walked barefoot through the town squares, on the ice on the Volga River and other places near the town. People would often find his footprints in the snow. Many people tried to help him, giving him clothes, high boots, and mittens. But, leaving his benefactors, the ascetic would either take off his warm clothes and leave them on the town streets for the poor, or, well-dressed, would show up at the tavern, where local drunkards would take off his good clothes and shoes and kick him out barefoot.
The town of Yuryevets-Povolsky. Vintage photo
He often went to church during the day and was especially fond of the Theophany Monastery.2 He not only attended services in it, but also tearfully prayed alone on the porch in front of the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos.
The saint did not care at all about food and clothing, and whenever anyone gave him bread to eat, he would only eat a little, leaving some of it and saying, “Simon, you are a fool and a glutton!” With such a righteous and ascetic life, he got closer to God, from Whom, already in his lifetime, he received the gift of performing wonderful deeds and predicting future events.
Miracles of Blessed Simon
One day Joseph Zubarev, a resident of Yuryevets, was crossing on a small boat from the opposite bank. In the middle of the journey, he was caught in a tempest: waves rose, and the boat filled with water and began to sink. Zubarev didn’t hope to survive when he suddenly saw Blessed Simon on the bank and prayed to God to rescue him. He also mentally asked for St. Simon’s prayers. The man vowed to give the saint a new shirt and boots if he survived. The storm suddenly subsided, and the traveler reached the bank safely.
Soon they met and Zubarev offered his hand to the man of God, but the saint did not do the same in response, saying in quite a sane tone: “Is it good to do this, friend? You forgot your promise. Remember, when you were drowning in the Volga and were on the brink of death, seeing me on the bank, you mentally asked me to pray for you to the Lord to save you from imminent death, and vowed to give me a shirt and boots for it.”
Joseph apologized and pledged to give the promised presents to Blessed Simon soon. However, the ascetic only called on him to repent of not fulfilling His vow, to thank God for His benefactions and give alms to those in need: “Stretch out your hand to beggars if you want God’s blessing to rest on you. And don’t tell anyone about what happened to you on the Volga and that I’m absolutely sane (as you’ve now learned) until I die. And don’t prepare any shirt or boots for me—I don’t need them.”
Theophany Church in Yuryevets-Povolsky
Once during the meal, Priest Alipy, who served at the Cathedral Church of Greatmartyr George in Yuryevets, swallowed a large fishbone and it got stuck in his throat. It caused Fr. Alypy unbearable pain, his throat was swollen, he could neither drink nor eat, and he believed that he was going to die.
With these thoughts, the priest went out for a walk to see his native town’s streets. As he passed by the tavern, he decided to drop in and ask for Blessed Simon’s prayers, since the ascetic frequented it. Once he entered, St. Simon pounced on Fr. Alypy, squeezed his throat with both hands, knocked him to the floor, and sat down in his place. The priest lay unconscious, but soon came to his senses and spat out the bone with blood. After the incident, Fr. Alipy recovered and began to feel as well as before.
Blessed Simon made many prophecies: he foresaw fires, foretold deaths and other events. But besides that, he walked on the water, like the Apostle Peter. A man named Pyotr Sutyrev lived near the Volga River with his family. One night he woke up and couldn’t fall asleep again, so he went to the window and looked out at the river. The night was bright and moonlit, but there was a storm with big waves on the Volga. Suddenly, he saw a man walking from the other bank, propping himself up with a stick.
For a long time he couldn’t believe his eyes, but the closer the figure got, the more his doubts dispelled. Sutyrev went outside quietly and stood at his gate to be closer to the river and get a better look at the mysterious man. The stranger came out of the water and walked straight to Pyotr—it was Blessed Simon. The saint exhorted him not to tell anyone about what he had seen: “In the Name of God I adjure you—don’t reveal to anyone that you saw me walking along the Volga until I depart to the Lord; otherwise, if you do it, you will receive punishment from God instead of His blessings. God has vouchsafed you to see me now, His unworthy servant, and after my death you will reveal this about me if it is God’s will.”
Sutyrev fulfilled these instructions and told about the miracle only after the saint’s demise.
Blessed Simon’s Repose
One day, Blessed Simon entered the house of the town’s mayor, Fyodor Petelin, and behaved strangely, as usual. Unable to endure it, the mayor beat Simon badly and ordered his servants to drag him by his hair and kick him. After the beatings, the saint could hardly move, his whole body covered in wounds. They dragged him to the basement and threw him, beaten all over, onto a coarse cloth. So he lay there, abandoned by everyone, suffering from his wounds, but feeling no malice towards his offenders.
Blessed Simon’s relics The saint felt the approach of death and asked through the mayor’s servant to call his father-confessor. He confessed his sins and, greatly exhausted, recieved Holy Communion. After the priest’s departure, there was no one left with Blessed Simon and he peacefully passed away. Tender emotion could be seen on the reposed man’s face, and a fragrance emanated from his body. On learning about the saint’s repose, Fyodor Petelin repented of his cruelty and wept bitterly at his body. He prepared a good coffin for Blessed Simon and placed his body into it with his own hands.
The funeral was attended by all the town’s clergy, its residents of all ranks and ages, and guests from surrounding villages. The mayor distributed much alms to the poor, widows and orphans, commanding them to pray for the forgiveness of his sin and for the repose of Blessed Simon’s soul. After the funeral, he invited the priests, deacons, monks, and all the poor to his house, prepared a sumptuous meal for them, and served them himself.
Before the arrival of the guests, Fyodor counted his silver to find out how much he had donated for charitable purposes. But when he counted it, he was astonished, because its amount had not decreased by a single penny! A miracle occurred.
Blessed Simon lived such a life—without knowing any comfort, in only a torn shirt both in the bitter cold and in the boiling heat, constantly oppressed and beaten, but without any malice; in physical labor and unceasing prayer. He was strange and poor, but unlike all the “normal” people around him, he was a saint.
The church where Blessed Simon’s relics rest
Miracles through the saint’s prayers continued after his repose. A woman named Solomonia was cured of an illness she had suffered from for two years. She prayed to the saint, and in a dream a middle-aged man appeared to her, wearing only a knee-length shirt, barefoot and with his arms folded on his chest. He said: “Get up and go to the Theophany Monastery, order a memorial service at the tomb of Blessed Simon, and through his intercessions the Lord will grant you good health.” After that dream, the woman was healed.
The peasant Ivan Mikhailov from the village of Odelevo drank heavily. Once, getting drunk on New Year’s Eve, he had frostbitten toes. He suffered terribly—his toenails came off, and pus and a pungent smell appeared. By Maslenitsa, the pain had become unbearable; the man blessed his children, took Communion and began to prepare for death.
Soon an acquaintance came to visit him, who also suffered from pain in her leg. Ivan asked her to order a prayer service to the Queen of Heaven, the same one she had ordered for herself. The woman fulfilled his request and also brought some oil from the icon-lamp before Blessed Simon’s icon for him to anoint his feet with. But the man forgot to do it and fell asleep. That night he dreamed of an unfamiliar lady who came to him and asked him, “Do you have St. Simon’s oil?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Anoint your feet with it.”
Mikhailov woke up, crawled on his knees to the oil and did what he had been ordered to. The pain vanished the same day: Ivan began to walk again and gave up drinking alcohol. There were many other miracles as well.
2025 marked the 440th anniversary of the repose of Blessed Simon, and the town of Yuryevets celebrated its 800th anniversary. The saint’s relics are kept at the Theophany Church of the town of Yuryevets to this day.
