ALEKSANDR GOLOZUBOV

THEOLOGY OF LAUGHTER AND FRANCISCAN PERSPECTIVE

If we take a look at the bibliography about theology of joy and laughter at-
tached to this article, we should note some common features. Firstly, there are
several waves of publications in this field but the most crucial one relates to the
1960ths and 1970ths. Secondly, the above-mentioned topic embraces samples of
the comic spirit in various fields of the social, cultural and religious life, even in
papacy. Thirdly, it is based on the contradictions and revelations of the western
consciousness but takes into consideration various types of thinking, including
Asian laughter. Thirdly, traditional comic archetypes, like the clown, the trick-
ster and the fool, play an important role in this new paradigm. But at the same
time, some personages appear in this context seemingly unexpectedly. Saints
have been called hippies, and in this sense St. Francis of Assisi evokes more
than ordinary interest. Moreover, Franciscan periodicals (Friars, Franciscan Edu-
cational Conference, Franciscan Herald and Forum etc.) provide the mainstream of
publications not only about St Francis himself in this new context but also
about Christian joy and laughter in general. The Middle Ages evoke a special
interest in modern times and we can see signs of the so-called new medievalism
with reference to laughter in this list as well1. It is especially important that we
consider St. Francis from the point of view here and now, from the point of view
of his actuality for the modern mind. The modern western man feels the lack of
laughter in his mind and turns his attention to other types of outlook or to oth-
er periods in cultural history, first of all to medieval epoch. The western Chris-
tian culture opens itself more to non-Christian religions than to Eastern Chris-
tianity. While in the western culture the theology of laughter has been more or
less legitimized in Humanities, although it has not became a common truth, for
the Orthodox tradition, and for the culture which has been inspired by this tra-
dition, and for the Church that has supported this tradition, a similar word-

1For example, M. Bayless M. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition, Ann Arbor, 1996; C.
Billman, Grotesque humor in medieval biblical comedy. The American Benedictine review, De-
cember 1980, 406-417; T. Coletti, Naming the rose: Eco, medieval signs, and modern theory, N.Y.,
1990; Risus medievalis: Laughter in medieval literature and art, Louvain, 2003; The Medieval World
and the Modern Mind, ed. by M. Brown & S.H. Harrison, Dublin, 2000.
 2

combination has remained taboo. Asian cultures display more strong interest in
laughter and humor. Cultural diversity, the reference to traditions of the East,
including the issue of laughter, became one of the postmodern manifestations.
It was Eastern philosophy and religion that gave us samples of paradoxical hu-
mor. Western thought reinforced this paradox and added more sadness to it. As
Hermann Hesse wrote in his novel Steppenwolf (1927): “ The lone wolves who
know no peace … for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits
tough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and escape into humour … ”2 By
the way Hesse wrote about St. Francis of Assisi not once. In the internet-space
figures of St. Francis and Buddha and bodhisattva are equally popular. One of
them shows four moods of Buddha. The seller proposes us to rotate it and to
find the preferable version, although symptomatically the seller has chosen to
display a laughing Buddha. This is not an original artifact coming from the
Buddhist culture but a western version of the Buddha image. Buddhist laughter
demonstrates the balance between various forces inside a man and universe.
We suppose, the western version of this laughter wishes for a similar kind of
laughter but doesn‟t deal with it3.
Both modern and postmodern man feel the lack of laughter. Almost each
time when the western person tries to laugh, he makes a grimace of laughter.
During the last decades the comic element has been considered not simply in
correlation to the tragic, but to the comic itself revealed those features, which
traditionally had been related to tragedy. In the last century the laughter was
perceived not so much as spontaneous emotion, but as kind of outlook. [Hux-
ley, “Antic Hay”, 1923; Heinrich Böll, “The Clown”, 1963; Graham Greene,
“The Comedians”, 1966; Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”, Jack
Kerouac etc.]4 We mainly deal not with unequivocal statements, but with semi-
tones, ambivalence, and internal contradictions. Though many authors base
their analysis on comedy on the stage performance or at least on the theater
plays, nevertheless in their analysis they not only step outside the limits of the

2 Gesse G. Stepnoi volk. Igra v biser. Palomnichestvo v stranu Vostoka. Moscow.: Olma-
Press, 2003, p. 29.
3 Interest to the Eastern laughter: Asian laughter: an anthology of oriental satire and humor, edited

by Leonard Feinberg. New York: Weatherhill, 1971; Blyth, Reginald H. Oriental humour,
Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1959; Conrad M. Hyers. Zen and the comic spirit, Lnd.: Rider and
company, 1974.
4 In the recent movie “12” directed by Nikita Mikhalkov one of the heroes tells about his

grandmother who smiled while she was dying; the son of another character looks at him
with a smile; at the same time he holds cord in his hand intenting to hang himself.
 3

dramatic art, but even ignore it. Even if the question is about theatrical masks,
the mask is often understood not as result of agreement between us and the
comic actor but as a mask, intentionally or the under force of circumstances
worn by the spectators, who we are, whereas the comedian tries either to tear it
off our faces or to lift it. But this imperative of the fool would be proved and
justified for us to accept it. The theology of laughter gives us such substantia-
tion and justification. So, we have the intention to trace internal logic of this
phenomenon and to define place of St. Francis in this scheme.
But we have first of all to make some notes about the theology itself. To-
day western theology is rather an attitude, than a doctrine; the Divine word ra-
ther than the word about God. Bernar R.Hill supposes, “ Theology is both the
human capacity to understand and interprets religious beliefs, as well as the
recorded product of such an effort. Theology is „faith seeking understanding.‟” 5
Modern theology is opened to various new interpretations of Christian belief. It
means that various concepts can be attributed to it – theology of pleasure,
laughter, contradiction, marriage, horror, sin and suffering (Kuschel); theology
of work (Edwin J. Kaiser); theology of Cross (Mark Heim); Creation Theology
(Jose Morales, Karl Schmitz-Moorman); Theology of becoming (Catherine Kel-
ler); Theology of the New Testament (Rudolf Bultman). Today the comedy
itself, as we noted, also means the metaphysical dimension more than a dramat-
ic genre. Such definitions appear in W. Whedbee‟s book, as “comedy of hor-
ror”6, “comedy of errors”7, “comedy of liberation.”8 Joy, irony and even come-
dy have taken their due place in the modern Catholic dictionaries. Although
this attitude is not the common rule, in the newest Encyclopedia of Religion
(ed. Lindsy Jones, 2005) we can find articles about humor, irony and the comic
in western theology and philosophy as well as about humor and religion in East
Asian traditions and in Islam. Today Humanities have confidently refused to
follow the opinion about absolute inapplicability of laughter to the Christian
medieval culture that had dominated in the past. Availability of various humor-
ous forms in the medieval literature, ritual and daily routine, not only among
clergymen, but also in the religious collective consciousness and even in monas-
tic life has been proven, although the general monastic orientation towards soli-
tude and prayer has not been disputed. Nevertheless, the theology of laughter

5 Bernar R.Hill, Exploring Catholic Theology: God, Jesus, Church, and sacraments, Conn., 1995, 1.
6 Whedbee J. William, The Bible and the Comic Vision, Cambridge 1998, 164.
7 Ibid., 108.
8 Ibid., 172.
 4

goes further. Modern researchers come to the conclusion, that laughter in the
church about the church doesn‟t constitute a theology of laughter. According to
Kuschel, theology of laughter “is not about giving laughter the occasional func-
tion of letting a breath of air into the church, but about giving it a fundamental
right to a place in talk of God.”9 Kuschel asserts that “there is something
laughable in any attempt seeking to create order in the realm of laughter.”10
Nevertheless he adds his own theory to the previous ones. Our approach is not
to evaluate laughter itself, but the world as divine comedy11, where attitudes and
personages coexist in their ambiguities and contradictions.
From this point of view genesis of the theology of laughter looks in the
following way. An actualization of the joyful spirit in the Christianity can be
considered as the main precondition of the theology of laughter. The 1960s
were the golden age for publications in this field. It was an epoch of liberaliza-
tion of the public, cultural and religious life. It was the age of the hippie; the
epoch of coming back to naturalness, honesty, and pacifism. It stimulated an
optimistic outlook focused on the modern or even the postmodern man, on
the young generation of that time which wished to live in the world, free from
dictatorship, violence and injustice. H.Cox in his book “Feast of Fools” (1969)
idolized Christianity as a celebration of festivity and fantasy. Johann Baptist
Metz and Jean-Pierre Jossua define this tendency as Theology of Joy and summar-
ize its features in their book under the same title in 1974. Joy became one of
the most important topics in the papal documents.12 However, new joyful vi-
sion of Christianity opened the way to reconsider laughter as well. It provoked
an interest for concepts of play and carnival and, accordingly, for those charac-
ters who embody the humorous world of the carnival culture. M.Bakhtin in his
book about Rabelais employed the idea of Huizinga about the playful content

9 Kuschel Karl-Josef, Laughter: A Theological Reflection, Lnd., 1994, xviii.

10 Ibid., xvi.
11 Definition from Dante: “it is clear why the present work [the Commedia] is called a com-

edy. For if we examine the theme, in the beginning it is frightening and foul, because it is
hell; at the end, fortunate, desirable, and joyful, because it is paradise.”

12 See, for example, Paul VI, Pope [1975 May 9], Apostolic exhortation Gaudete in Domino to the
episcopate, to the clergy and to all the faithful of the entire world about Christian joy; Paul VI, Pope
[1975 May 21], Address to a general audience about the significance of Christian joy; Paul VI, Pope
[1975 Aug 27], Address during the general audience, to groups of pilgrims from Ghana, Uganda and
Ireland, about joy and Faith; Pope Pius XIII, Little more joy, please! In Sower, July 1952, vol.
184, 57.
 5

of culture with reference to the grotesque body of the folk laughter culture.
Truly, first of all, Rabelais' work was devoted to Rabelaisian laughter, which we
cannot identify totally with medieval laughter; secondly, Bakhtin opposed the
humorous, carnival folk culture to the official, serious, clerical one. This para-
digm later was put under doubt or even denied, but in any case it awaked an
enormous interest for medieval laughter, and indirectly for the problem of
laughter in Christianity as main paradigm of the medieval epoch. Bakhtin pro-
voked sacralization of the carnival. R. Guardini‟s early work about the liturgy,
on the contrary, became sample of the carnivalised ritual. So, comic vision of
the Bible and Christianity had emerged. On the textual level, the analysis of
irony in the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament is characteristic
manifestation of this comic vision: a word-play, exaggerations, reversals etc.
The books of Genesis, Exodus, Song of Songs, Jonah, even Job and Eccle-
siastes have been used as most common texts to justify this criticism.
However comic vision itself is neither the Divine comedy, as Dante un-
derstood it, nor a holistic world outlook. There is luck of something else, that is
ambivalence and contradiction, immeasurable combination of light and sha-
dow; and this shadow hides dangerous potential of laughter and main prota-
gonists of the comic spirit. Who are they? First of all, it is Christ Himself.
Theologians of laughter in their investigation of the laughter in Christianity,
paid attention to the Gnostic theories. The texts discovered in Nag-Hammadi
in 1945 gave a new impulse to these researchers and undermined the statement
Christ had never laughed. It is not necessary to discuss in details the contents of
Nag-Hammadi library, but at least two well-known examples are very characte-
ristic for this theological turn to laughter. We mean the passages about the
laughter of Child Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas and the laughter of Christ at
Simon, who was crucified instead of Him, in the Gospel of Peter. The Gospel
of Judas revealed the same point. Besides, reference to the logos, which is one of
the key Gnostic concepts, has been integrated in the definition of “theology”
itself. It is remarkable that the polemics about comedy in the Aristotelian aes-
thetics and the medieval understanding of laughter is the central theme of The
Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Some details of this novel are very important
in our context. First of all, Eco involved the reader in the conflict within the
Franciscan order on the issue of poverty. He chose Franciscan William as his
main protagonist. We can also mention that William is a devotee and a student
of Franciscan Occam. William seems to interpret Francis as an apologist of
laughter in the Christian culture. This question was not discussed in Franciscan
writings but for the postmodern period it became appropriate issue.
 6

Recognition of the religious value of laughter led to the sacralization of the

personages who symbolize it – clown, jester, joker, trickster. But Christ was the
prototype. “Enter Christ the harlequin: the personification of festivity and fan-
tasy in any age that had almost lost both. Coming now in greasepaint and halo,
this Christ is able to touch our jaded modern consciousness, as other images of
Christ cannot.”13 On the one hand, Christ was seen as the harlequin, the fool,
the clown, and the saints were proclaimed holy hippies. Even phenomenon of
clown ministry came up. “Clown ministry is a movement within the North
American churches, incorporating clowning in both liturgy and pastoral minis-
try.”14 On the other hand, the above-mentioned characters were interpreted as
mediators, as channels of the supreme knowledge, and, therefore obtained reli-
gious, sacred, metaphysical meaning because they deprived everyday life of sta-
bility, predictabilities and intelligence. The problem of a man in the absurd
world took central place in the 20th century philosophy. The tragic hero evoked
no more interest. No heroic effort helps to man to survive in the postmodern
situation but only alienation, overcoming of the existential nausea, or play with
the circumstances. But this play must be organized according to the rules of the
world around and the image, which the world imposes on a man, the role of the
clown, the harlequin, and the fool. In any case there is ambiguity, internal dis-
crepancy, an openness to both worlds at the same time, freedom from all ta-
boos and opposition to all these norms. Inevitably, a destructive or even a de-
monic element became an attribute of these characters. It should be noted that
the theme of demonic laughter deserves for the special research in the theology
of laughter context. It is useful to define the character of laughter in the situa-
tion when non-visible line has been crossed and the negative potential of the
carnival as bacchanalia has been turned into reality. The theology of laughter
tried to give an alternative to the intellectual eccentricity and grotesque buffoo-
nery of the modern culture. The basic components of this alternative are an
apology of a joyful Christian spirit in the theology itself, in the Catholic periodi-
cals, in the mass-media; appeal to the priests and the preachers not to neglect
foolishness, to be God's Fools or even clowns; reference to holy foolishness
and to the image of God‟s Fool. The theme of abnormality and madness was
reflected in the writings of romanticism but some thinkers reinterpreted it in
the 20th century (S.Freud, M.Foucault etc.). The fool became the primary focus

13Cox H, The Feast of Fools. A theological essay on festivity and fantasy, Cambridge, 1969, 209.
14. Judith B. Kerman, The clown as social healer: a study of the clown ministry movement,
in Journal of American Culture, September 1992, no. 15, 9.
 7

of this scheme. The rest of personages represent mainly variations of this arc-
hetype. Some of them concentrate potential of the evil and oppose to both
God and a man. In the medieval discourse it is possible to find any theological
justification only for the fool among all these images. It is said about foolish-
ness in the Bible not once; but the Bible defenses foolishness only when it is
estimated as hidden wisdom. concept of Fool incorporates many opportunities
and he is subdued to various interpretations. Holy fools like sacred clowns sti-
mulate people to think about common things in new ways. Giving impulse to
laugh, they enlighten human mind and make people able to see higher truth.
They teach by God‟s example. They mock the order of the ritual, prayer, songs,
holy beings and sacred objects. They joke, satirize, and demonstrate a beha-
viour contrary to the norm. They do things that are forbidden and unspeakable
within a ritual framework. They create imbalance and disorder in the world in
the midst of ritualized social order. Without the clowning disorder, order would
not be so obvious and so justified. The holy fool also reveals that there is more
to God than those holy rituals can reveal. God‟s Fool is Fool for the sake of
Christ and at the same time for the sake of a man. He tries through some kind
of cultural shock and through the neglecting of all social norms to stir him up,
to awaken thought, belief and dignity inside him. God‟s Fool has various faces,
but we believe, that exactly in St Francis, and not in the Byzantine yurodstvo this
image has found its fullest expression and completion. Probably God‟s Fool
like his prototype Jesus Christ does not laugh often, but he is filled with play,
irony and joy and he fills the world and other people with them. In the Euro-
pean philosophy joy and laughter had been considered as phenomena of the
different nature for a long time, and probably only the postmodern religious
discourse offered the unique chance to combine them in the new Divine come-
dy. “It is only in the light of a theology of joy in God and human beings that a
Christian theology of laughter is justified, it can indeed be unmistakably defined
first in the ambivalent human laughter: if laughter does not have the character
of mockery, of malice, of contempt or exclusion, but has the character of libe-
rated and redeemed joy which breaks down barriers and brings integration.”15
So, the laughter that both proceeds from God and addresses Him is the
laughter of sympathy; and a joy accompanies this laughter. The joy can be un-
derstood an kind of outlook and then laughter is its manifestation, which is not
profanation or debasement of the original, but its continuation and natural ex-
pression. But the laughter can be sneer as well, even irony can express sneer as

15 Kuschel, 92.
 8

in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. We suppose, that the primary
position of laughter with or at determine both the character of that person to
whom it is attributed, his place in the Divine comedy and the character of the
deity itself. Each of the carnival personages is ambivalent16, he hides the con-
tradiction inside him, as well as any human being, but the fool does not pre-
tend, that he doesn‟t know about it. On the contrary, he enjoys his own duality
and his superiority over the spectators, who do not want to admit this duality.
He exposes the nakedness of both the world and a man. We understand the
fool as the archetypical character who contains actually or potentially a huge set
of masks, and versions. From this point of view the negative or positive posi-
tion depends on his attitude to God. His Lord is God as a ruler of the Divine
Comedy or “Lord of Disorder” as the devil was called in medieval literature.
God, about whom the Christ talks in the parables, is not that Old Testa-
ment God whose laughter divides, separates and condemns. On the contrary,
joy, which Jesus feels before people and especially before children, is based on
His own joy and joy he finds in God and joy God Himself feels. It is not laugh-
ter at human beings, but joy, which not necessarily expresses itself in laughter
but to which laughter is not alien. “Jesus' laughter is the expression of a free-
dom for God which bursts bounds and breaks taboos.”17 God shares such
laughter with the clown, trickster, the foolish and the righteous man. A shift
can be recognized in the story of Abraham and Sarah: from skeptical laughter at
God to everyone‟s liberating laughter with God. Such laughter is creative; it is
the laughter of the creator at creation of the world, the laughter of human joy at
the results of creativity. Such creativity expresses a comic vision of the created
world and such creativity produces the new world, filled with optimism, and
redemption. It is the world of an Utopia18 and the world of a carnival, embo-
diment of the spirit of festivity and fantasy about which Cox talked. But the
laughter of God can be directed at the cheater, the fool and the sinner as well if
they neglect Him or sneer at Him. At the Book of Ecclesiastes the fool is op-

16 See the images of clowns in some horror movies; in the serial Ghost in the Shell; in the story
Laughing Man by J.D. Salinger.
17 Kuschel, 79.
18 The utopian ideal and reality merged in this carnival experience, unique of its

kind…Carnival imagery was used by Erasmus, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Guevara, and
Quevedo, by the German 'literature of fools'. “Without an understanding of it, therefore, a
full appreciation of Renaissance and grotesque literature is impossible. Not only belles let-
tres but the utopias of the Renaissance and its conception of the universe itself were deeply
penetrated by the carnival spirit and often adopted its forms and symbols” (Bakhtin, Rabe-
lais…, p. 11).
 9

posed to a wise man. What does characterize a fool? Among other features it is
laughter, which reveals his frivolity and poor mind. His laughter is the sign of
his frivolity and lack of thought. For the rabbis of Israel the laughter of the fool
is not just the expression of his frivolity and lack of thought, but also an ex-
pression of his sinful pleasure. In our opinion, public executions demonstrated
a disgusting sample of vicious pleasure but at the same time they were part of a
carnival event19. To put it in another way, a destructive carnival spirit often re-
veals itself in revolution, revolt, rebellion20. Then the negative carnival is a trag-
ic, eschatological vision, the triumph of anti-Utopia and violence. Carnival turns
to destruction, revelry, and bacchanalia, which destroy God‟s trust in man, and
then God Himself destroys the rebellious world (Babel tower) and the rebel-
lious peoples who rise against Israel and prophets. Then God seems incompre-
hensible, mysterious, and severe. It will be not surprising to think of God as the
severe and mocking tyrant. Already ancient gods were capable of derisive laugh-
ter. The laughter of the Gnostic god and antique gods was at and with at the
same time but in any case this laughter is deprived by the true humanity. There
is no dialogue between God and a man here. On the contrary, in Christianity
the nature of laughter depends on these relations.
So, what place does St Francis occupy in this system?
It is the above-outlined context in which Saint Francis of Assisi and the
Franciscans appear in H.Cox's “Feast of fools” and articles of the 1960s as
apostles of joy, festivity and imagination. Harvey Cox attributed to Franciscans
a crucial role in the revival of vital elements in the modern culture. From an
article about St Francis we quote: “He was instrument of celebration. He cele-
brated creatures, himself, and his God.”21 There is irony in Saint Francis; there
is a joyful spirit of Christianity in him; finally, there is Christocentric idea in his
preaching and in Franciscan writings on the whole. Naturally, in the 1960s St.
Francis was depicted as hippie, reformer, peacemaker and even movie star22, he

19 See, for example,The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn by William Hogart.

20 Remember description of Dochino‟s rebellion in The Name of the Rose by U. Eco. Really
any carnival hides dangerous potential and provocation. During the last Brazilian carnival
the school of samba Viradurro made a platform of carnival procession as a pyramid of ex-
hausted bodies.
21 Wesolowski, Lorraine, Sister, O.S.F., in The hippie from Assisi, Sisters, Oct 1982, no. 54,

72.
22 Michael Curtiz, “Francis of Assisi”; Roberto Rosselini “The Flowers of Saint Francis”

(1950); Franko Zeffirelli, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” (1973). Zeffirelli stresses his youth
and simplicity, Rosselini joy through humorous way of communication with his compa-
nions, especially Brother Giovanni and Brother Juniper.
 10

was compared to Karl Marx, etc. He can be considered in the context of liberal
theology and liberalism in public life on the whole, as well as in the context of
pacifism and ecological ethics. Nathan A.Scott thinks that healthy materialism,
which is common in both comedy and Christianity, can explain the Christian
sympathy for the witness of the comedian. The Christian belief in creation and
incarnation leads to deep respect for nature.23 The interrelations of a man and
nature and especially animals are widely represented at the Old and the New
Testament texts. Adam gives names to the animals; Noah gathers all animals in
the ark; God addresses the whale before Jonas; we see animals as permanent
companions of certain saints24 and sometimes we see them together in extreme-
ly dangerous situations (Daniel and the lions). St. Francis perceived animals and
nature not simply as some kind of background to humans, but as participants
of creation. We remember his preaching to the birds and the wolf of Gubbio as
well as his Canticle where he addresses Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother
Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, and Mother Earth. It seems, in the following
centuries this tradition was not preserved. On the contrary, the opposite ten-
dency prevailed. Animals were considered as beings subordinated to a man or
as natural objects which can be skinned, cut and offered as a tasty dish either to
an artist for inspiration or to a hungry man to assuage his hunger; animals as
nature morte, as meat for sale. Only in the 20th century animals became a subject
of steadfast and sympathetic attention like children25. In postmodernity child-
hood began to be mainly understood as this period of human life, which is to
the greatest degree open to play and imagination. Don Bosco understood it and
used it in this way for his activities. Christ hardly understood childhood in such
terms when he wanted us to be like children. More likely, the child at those
times was understood as being free from nonsense and sin, as tabula rasa, not
yet holy fool, but not a fool at all. The theme of childhood was almost not ex-
plored in the literature and art of past centuries. Our knowledge about Christ –
child is very poor. He is portrayed like he has possessed whole wisdom, attri-

23 Holy laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective, ed. by M. Conrad Hyers, New York,

1969, 65.
24 For example, a bear and lion accompanied St. Sergius and St. Jerome accordingly.
25 Mary John, sister. St Francis and the children; play for grades 2-4. Catholic Scholar Journal,

October 1950, no. 50, pp.266; James S.B. Lost. A child; a Franciscan fable. Catholic Home
Journal, October 1944, no. 44, pp.15-18; Patricia, Sr. Childlike or childish? The childlikeness
of St Francis, Cord June 1963, no. 13, pp.189-92; McCollam, Joel A. Carnival of souls; reli-
gious cults and young people. Seabury, 1979; D. Kennedy calls it “ invention of childhood”
[Kennedy D. Fools, young children, animism, and the scientific world-picture. Philosophy
Today; Winter 1989; 33; 4, pp. 374-381].
 11

buted to God Himself. He looks like adult person. It can be explained partly by
the fact that the period of the childhood was enough short in those times.
People early married and went to hunt and to war. Foolishness was not identic-
al with childhood and was understood as a vice which a man had acquired
when he was out of this period of life. It was rather manifestation of the atti-
tude to God, Truth and Other, while madness was perceived as demonic pos-
session. As Foucault proved, madness had neither a medical nor a social prob-
lem until 19th century. So, to be like child at that time did not mean to be foo-
lish, but to be wise inside, and any abnormal behaviour was directed not to-
wards the external world, but towards God. St. Paul said: “...be like children as far
as evil is concerned, but in mind be mature.” (1 Cor.14: 20) What does it mean?
How is it correlated with childish naivety or even foolishness? Franciscan theo-
logian Peter John Olivi answered to these questions in this way in the letter to
the sons of Charles II: “A trustworthy man told me that even your father the
King feared that you would be made beguines, or, to speak more properly, that
you would be made fools of in religious matter through my fine words. If he
believed that it would happen according to the way the apostle describes when
he says, “We are fools for Christ” [1 Cor. 4:10], or, “Whoever wishes to be wise
in this world must become foolish in order to be wise” [1 Cor. 3:8], or, “The
foolishness of God is wiser than men” [1 Cor. 1:25] that is, than the human
wisdom of the world, then I do not have the wisdom and power to fill you with
this supremely wise foolishness. If he spoke about the opposite kind of foo-
lishness, far be it from me to want to pour back my foolishness or that of oth-
ers into you or anyone through silly talk or advice.” 26J. Green said about St.
Francis: “He and his companions were children of God.”27 St. Francis himself
appealed to the brothers to be like children but we suppose that in this case St.
Francis meant not so much mature mind and hidden wisdom as we could see in
the numerous paintings of the child Christ as openness to the world, sincerity
and joyfulness.
We suppose St. Francis is the anthropological center of the theology of
laughter, which balances the divine one. He imitated God in His irony and
overcame the limitation and discrepancy of foolishness. Having possessed in
himself the qualities of saint, martyr and fool, he cannot nevertheless be re-

26 Apocalyptic spirituality: treaties and letters of Lactantius, Adso of Motier-en-Der, Joachim of Flore, the

Franciscan spirituals, Savonarola, translation and introd. by Bernard McGinn, pref. by Marjorie
Reeves, N.Y., 1979, 179-180.
27 J. Green, God’s Fool, San Francisco, 1985, 10.
 12

duced to any of these characteristics. He is beyond social and carnival roles, and
at the same time all of them are gathered in him. St. Francis is also God‟s Fool.
“A most unusual instance of the juxtaposition of the sacred and the comic –
and one that opens further dimensions of the relationship – is to be found in
the Holy Fool tradition.”28 Hyers relates the beginning of this tradition to the
Greek Orthodox Church since the 6th century, and he supposes that it flou-
rished in the Russian Orthodox Church during the 14-16th centuries. What
Hyers is talking about is the phenomenon of “yurodstvo”. He does not refer
there about St Francis, but this is image which testifies existence of the similar
phenomenon in the Catholic West. If God‟s Fool feels humility, the spirit of
evil needs submission and humiliation. Faith and human self-consciousness
with all its weaknesses and contradictions, and understanding that a man has
not been abandoned, helps to prevent the disturbing potential of laughter from
turning to the destruction of man, God and the world.
Authors of the book St. Francis and the Foolishness of God define St Francis‟
foolishness both in negative (active participation in the poverty, nakedness,
homelessness, and humiliation in the name of Lord) and positive way (un-
bounded capacity for joy, his sense of ecstatic union with all things, his sensual
delight in the created world, his singing of the Lord‟s song to all creatures; his
sense of the comic and the absurd, his willingness to be the occasion for laugh-
ter and amusement, and his gratitude for all things)29. But we suppose, the most
important thing is that he keeps a balance between tragedy and comedy, joy and
suffering, sainthood and foolishness. It is not surprisingly that sometimes he is
compared with prominent Eastern saints and prophets30. Nevertheless, the tra-
dition founded by St. Francis, was based on the main components of the west-
ern Christocentric spirituality. The establishment and development of the
Church as a social and political body did not stimulate full realization of the
ideas, which were incorporated in the sermon of Christ and apostles. Francis-
cans and less other mendicant orders revived the spirit of joy and optimistic
spirituality although they reflected both dramatic contradictions of their epoch
and the internal ambiguity of the Catholic Christianity with its accent on the
suffering and naturalness. Unfortunately, the struggle against heresies, Black
Death, scientific revolution and positivism drawn this aspect of the Franciscan

28 Holy laughter; essays on religion in the comic perspective, ed. by M. Conrad Hyers, N.Y., 1969, 19.
29 M. Dennis, C. Moe-Lobeda, J. Nangle, St. Francis and the Foolishness of God, N.Y., 1993, 171.
30 L. Brophy, St Francis, Buddha and Confucius, in St Anthony Messenger, vol. 67 (Oct 1959),

17-19; Basetti-Sani G. Muhammad and St Francis, in Cord, March 1958, no. 8, 72-82.
 13

tradition. The Church wasted its power and authority in this fighting and it
could not resist the new social and cultural movements in the 20th century.
Church preferred to change itself. St. Francis appeared as a person who would
be able to give new shape to the Catholic Church and to become an icon for
both clergy and clerics of the new generation and at the same time a popular
figure for the postmodern culture.

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 14

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 15

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 16

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 17

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75.

RIASSUNTO: L'articolo descrive la natura e la genesi del fenomeno nella cultura occi-
dentale, che ricevuto nota come la teologia della risata, e il ruolo del Santo Francesco d'Assisi nel
processo. Nel post-percezione del santo, abbiamo visto una straordinaria influenza una serie
di fattori, tra cui la teologia, giochi e feste, un nuovo atteggiamento nei confronti della natu-
ra, l'infanzia, e la rinascita di interesse per l'effettivo Medioevo nel suo complesso e, in parti-
colare, a caratteri Smekhova recante la cultura medievale, in particolare il Buffone di Dio. Se-
condo nostro parere, il criterio determinante nella Divina Commedia è l'esistenza del rap-
porto tra Dio e l'uomo – risate, insieme con Dio o contro di lui. Antropologiche attenzione
del sistema – S. Francesco.