Published by the printing house of V. D. Smirnov.S. – St. Petersburg, Ekaterininsky Canal, No. 45. Preface. The purpose of this work is to answer the question: what is the true meaning of the feats of “foolishness” and “pillarism”? These exploits during the life of St. holy fools and stylites aroused surprise in some, censure in others. And at the present time, when a reassessment of values is being carried out, much of the life of these ascetics is incomprehensible to some, and positively aimless for others. In order to popularize the highest moral significance of the above-mentioned feats, the publisher took upon himself the printing of this work. By publishing this book, the publisher flatters himself with the hope of satisfying the theological curiosity of all those who are interested in issues of asceticism. Publisher

The text was received in the result of recognizing a djvu file. There may be errors in the text that arose during recognition and went unnoticed during processing. Some of the quotations in the old spelling were replaced with text from modern sources, the original text of the quotations was moved to footnotes. Links to sources are formatted in Roman numerals. There is a modern monograph on this topic, “Blessed Obscenities” by Sergei Arkadyevich Ivanov.