Paraskeva Diveyevskaya or Pasha Sarovskaya (; born between 1795 and 1807 – 22 September 1915) was a Russian fool for Christ and wanderer who became widely known at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She met the Emperor Nicholas II, and, as legend has it, she predicted his abdication, tragic death, and canonization. Her meetings with Empresses Alexandra Feodorovna and Maria Feodorovna, as well as with Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich are documented. There are unconfirmed reports of an attempt by Grigory Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova to communicate with her.
Paraskeva Diveyevskaya is canonized and venerated by the Russian Orthodox Church as a blessed woman. In the Diveyevo Convent, where she spent the last part of her long life, her relics, now in the Kazan Church, are surrounded by veneration. In the house at the entrance to the monastery, where the Blessed lived, there is an exposition devoted to the history of the monastery. One of the rooms is dedicated to the memorial of Pasha Sarovskaya. Here the interior is reconstructed to the time of her life and authentic things of her belongings are kept.
Biography
Childhood, adolescence, adulthood Irina was born between 1795 and 1807 in the village of Nikolskoye, Spassky uyezd, Tambov province.Паша Саровская, юродивая: [Полное жизнеописание подвижницы] [Pasha Sarovskaya, a foolish woman: [Complete biography of the ascetic]] (in Russian). М.: Отдел. тип. И. Д. Сытина. 1904. P. 27.Юродивая Паша в Дивеевском монастыре [Foolish Pasha in the Diveyev monastery] (in Russian). СПб.: В. Максимов. 1903. P. 5. Her parents' names were known as Ivan and Darya. They had three sons and two daughters, including Irina.
Irina was a peasant serf of the Bulygin landowners. At the age of seventeen, she was given in marriage against her will to her neighbor, the peasant Fyodor. In marriage, Irina was a model wife: "gentle, obliging, respectful, and industrious". Irina devoted much time to prayer. The couple did not have any children. Fifteen years later, the Bulygins sold Irina and her husband to their neighbors, the Schmidts, landowners. The Schmidts, German by birth, owned the village of Surkot, where their new serfs settled. Irina's husband died of tuberculosis five years later. When Pasha Sarovskaya was later asked what her husband was like, she replied: "but as stupid as me".Дивеевские Христа ради юродивые Пелагия, Параскева и Мария [The Diveyev youths of Christ's sake Pelagia, Paraskeva and Maria] (in Russian). Дивеево: Дивеевский монастырь. 2009. P. 103.
The Schmidts tried to marry Irina again, but she refused. It is known that from that time on she became a court servant: the masters entrusted her with guarding the house (according to her biographer Leonid Chichagov, she became a cook and a housekeeper in the masters' house). When two of the masters' paintings disappeared, the servants, afraid of Irina's honesty, began to claim that Irina had stolen them. At the request of the gentlemen, the bailiff ordered Irina to be beaten, during which she had her ears torn off and her head pierced. A fortune-teller was called in, who reported that the paintings had indeed been stolen from a certain Irina, but from another. The kidnapper drowned the canvases in the river, where they were later found.
Irina fled from her masters to a convent in Kyiv, but was discovered by the police. She was captured and imprisoned, and then it was decided to send the fugitive to her homeland. The owners wanted to make up for the cruelty they had inflicted, so they forgave Irina's escape and made the fugitive a gardener. Irina worked for her masters for two years, but then she escaped a second time. Once again, the police found Irina in Kyiv. This time her masters "stripped her naked, half-dressed, without a piece of bread... threw her out on the street and forbade her to show her face".Паша, Саровская юродивая (полное жизнеописание подвижницы) // Нилус Л. Е. Собрание сочинений в шести томах [Pasha, Sarovskaya, foolish (complete biography of the ascetic) // Nilus L. E. Collected Works in Six Volumes] (in Russian). Vol. 1. М.: Паломник. 2005. pp. 520—521. For five years she "wandered" around the village, considered a madwoman by those around her. It is not known where she went later, before she moved to the Sarov forest. Both the author of the first complete hagiography of the Saint and Leonid Chichagov allowed her to continue living in her own village. Undoubtedly, the author of the complete hagiography considered that in Kyiv Irina took a secret tonsureHagiography of Paraskeva, published in the printing house of the Diveyevo monastery, states that she was tonsured in the Great Scheme, but in pre-revolutionary biographies such detail is absent. Acceptance of the great scheme in Kiev is accepted as a fact and candidate of philosophical sciences Alexei Ilyin.Дивеевские Христа ради юродивые Пелагия, Параскева и Мария [The Diveyev youths of Christ's sake Pelagia, Paraskeva and Maria] (in Russian). Дивеево: Дивеевский монастырь. 2009. P. 104. with the name of Paraskeva and began to call herself Pasha. He did not specify the date of this event. Leonid Chichagov, however, believed that the Kyiv monks not only performed the tonsure, but also blessed Irina for her stupidity. The author of the book about Pasha, published by the Holmushins Publishing House, attributed the tonsure to Irina's visit to Kyiv after her expulsion from the Schmidts.Саровская Паша, юродивая подвижница [Pasha of Sarov, a foolish ascetic] (in Russian). СПб.: Кн. торг. А. А. и Н. И. Холмушиных. 1906. P. 22. Another version was held by the hegumen Serafim (Kuznetsov), who knew the blessed Pasha personally: according to him, this event took place after the second escape from the Schmidts. The author of the book about her, published by the Maximov Publishing House, on the contrary, dates the reception of the tonsure of Paraskeva to the time immediately after the death of her husband, when, according to the author, she visited the Kyivo-Pechersk Lavra.
According to the testimony of the nuns of the Diveyevo Convent, preserved by the authors of two prerevolutionary biographies of Pasha Sarovskaya, she was blessed by Seraphim of Sarov himself for her wandering life in the dense forests.Юродивая Паша в Дивеевском монастыре [Foolish Pasha in the Diveyev monastery] (in Russian). СПб.: В. Максимов. 1903. pp. 7-8."II. Юродивая Паша Саровская". Юродивая Паша Саровская, старица и подвижница Серафимо-Дивеевского женского монастыря [Foolish Pasha Sarovskaya, an old woman and ascetic of the Serafimo-Diveyevo Monastery] (in Russian). М.: Тип. И. Я. Полякова. 1904. P. 28. The local historian and Nizhny Novgorod Prize laureate Olga Bukova, after analyzing both Leonid Chichagov's Chronicle and his notes on the motives of its composition, came to the conclusion that Pasha Sarovskaya and Seraphim of Sarov never met. The researcher's point of view caused a storm of indignation among the readers of the magazine Blagodatniy Ogon, where Bukova's article was published. The editorial board of the magazine supported the researcher.По поводу статьи О.Буковой «Правда и вымыслы о жизни схиигумена Серафима». От редакции [Regarding O. Bukova's article “Truth and Fictions about the Life of St. Seraphim”. From the editors] (in Russian). Благодатный огонь: Журнал. 2006.
Paraskeva stayed in the Sarov forest for about 30 years. She lived in "caves" that she "dug" for herself. Sometimes she visited Sarov and Diveyevo, and was often seen at the Sarov monastery mill, where she came to work. Paraskeva endured hardships without complaint. Local peasants and travelers who came to Sarov surrounded the ascetic with veneration, bringing her food and money, which she immediately distributed to the poor. One day robbers demanded money from Paraskeva, which she did not have, and they beat her. For a year after that she was between life and death, but she managed to recover. After that she was tormented by headaches (the severe head injury Pasha received from the robbers was mentioned by Leonid Chichagov) and a tumor formed under the spoon.
Diveyevo Convent
Paraskeva appeared at the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent in the fall of 1884. It is believed that she discovered the gift of clairvoyance there. Approaching the gates of the monastery, Pasha struck a pillar and said: "As soon as I smash this pillar, they will begin to die, you will only have time to dig graves". Then the nun Pelagia Ivanovna, the priest of the convent and several nuns died. The locals took the jester's words as a fulfilled prophecy. The author of the first complete biography of Paraskeva noted that she had "a desire to move constantly from place to place. For a long time she refused to settle down in a monastery, explaining as follows: "No, it is impossible for me, this is my way, I must always move from place to place! Even when she was old, she moved "from one cell to another, from the cloister to the monastery farms, 'on distant obedience', in Sarov, to his former favorite places". During her wanderings, Pasha held in her hand a simple stick "which she calls a cane, a knot with various things, a sickle on her shoulder, and several dolls behind her sinews. This appearance of the Blessed Pasha, with her curly gray hair and wonderful blue eyes, now in her old age, involuntarily attracts the attention of everyone. She sometimes beat people she met with a cane, exposing them as cheats or thieves. In the knot in disorder were crusts, peeled peas, cucumbers, grass, children's knitted mittens, "in the first finger of which money is tied", rags, wooden crosses, a large number of handkerchiefs.
Leonid Chichagov connected the permanent settlement of Pasha Sarovskaya in the Diveyevo Convent with the death of another blessed Pelagia Ivanovna. Before that, according to him, relying on the testimony of the nun Anna Gerasimovna, who knew both fools well, Pasha only stopped by the Diveyevsky Convent and stayed here only for a short time. For a time Pasha settled in the clergy building, but after a week she began to complain about the cold at the door where she had to sleep.
Paraskeva changed her residence several times, until she finally settled in a house located near the monastery gates. In this separate house-keeper Paraskeva and settled in Diveyevo. She lived here for a long time together with the nun Anna Ivanovna, who was in charge of the convent shop. According to the description of one of her contemporaries, in the house there was a big wooden bed with big pillows on which dolls lay. "She takes care of them with tenderness, feeds them, washes them, sews them and dresses them. There is one doll whose entire head has come off from frequent washing," he wrote. It was believed that when it was time for someone in the convent to die, Paraskeva would take out her favorite doll and start dressing it up as the deceased. Leonid Chichagov added that among the Blessed's dolls there were not only favorite dolls (which she carefully surrounded and played with), but also unloved ones. She demonstrated some of her prophecies to visitors with the help of dolls. The doll was also the most precious gift for Pasha Sarovskaya. According to Chichagov, there was a bed, a chest of drawers, a table and a chest in the cell. The nuns hung icons in the rooms, a lamp, gave her a pillow, a blanket, a samovar, tea, sugar, a cup and everything that was necessary for life.