16th century (reposed February 28, 1576)
A fool-for-Christ of Pskov who labored in this hard ascetic feat for over thirty years, receiving gifts of wonderworking and prophecy. He is famed for boldly rebuking Tsar Ivan the Terrible and so sparing the city of Pskov from the slaughter visited upon Novgorod. He reposed in 1576.
Blessed Nicholas of Pskov, the Fool-for-Christ
Blessed Nicholas of Pskov, known also as Mikula and by the epithet Salos, was a sixteenth-century Russian fool-for-Christ (yurodivy) who undertook this severe ascetic feat for more than three decades. The people of Pskov revered him as a saint during his own lifetime.
He is remembered above all for his fearless confrontation with Tsar Ivan the Terrible during the siege of Pskov in 1570, an act credited with sparing the city the massacre that had befallen Novgorod. He reposed on February 28, 1576, and is commemorated on that day.
Nicholas labored as a fool-for-Christ for more than thirty years. According to the synaxarion he received the gifts of wonderworking and of prophecy. The residents of Pskov called him Mikula the Fool and revered him as a saint.
In February 1570, having ravaged Novgorod on suspicion of treason, Ivan the Terrible advanced on Pskov with the same intent. During the siege Nicholas confronted the tsar. By the account of the synaxarion, when Nicholas offered him raw meat during the Lenten fast and Ivan refused it, the saint answered, 'But you drink human blood,' exposing the tsar's violence.
Tradition also relates that Nicholas ran toward the tsar astride a stick as though riding a horse, crying out that he should eat the bread and salt of the people but not the blood of Christians. The synaxarion records that Nicholas prophesied the tsar's horse would fall dead if he did not leave; when Ivan ordered the removal of a cathedral bell, the prophecy was fulfilled. Frightened by its fulfillment, Ivan ordered an end to the looting and withdrew from the city.
Nicholas was buried within the Holy Trinity Cathedral, an honor that according to tradition had previously been granted only to the princes of Pskov and later to hierarchs. Local veneration of the saint is said to have begun within a few years of his death; he is numbered among the Pskov Saints invoked during the city's later defense against Polish forces in 1581.