Theodore the Fool for Christ

Blessed Theodore the Fool for Christ is commemorated on 25 February (new style). His name appears in the Synaxarion of Constantinople without any biographical information.

A fresco of 1317 in the Serbian church of Saint George at Staro Nagoricane shows him with other saints commemorated on 25 February, with the inscription Saint Theodore the Fool for Christ. He seems to be the same Theodore whose life survives only in Georgian translation: a Greek who lived in Serbia (now called Bulgaria), near the town called in the text Saras, so simple that he had never entered a church. One day, hearing in church the Gospel call to take up the cross, he cut down two trees, bound them in the form of a cross, and set out to seek the kingdom of heaven. A monk sent him to Athos, and Theodore walked across Macedonia in three weeks and reached Hilandar. The abbot told him to work as a sweeper in the church. The story relates that Christ came down to the fool and that he shared his meal with Him, and Christ promised to take him to the Father. The abbot was taken as well, for Theodore's sake, and both died in the same moment. The narrative has not yet been published in scholarly studies and remains little known. A verse of the synaxarion says that he willingly changed his mind, like David.