St. Basil told the story of a virgin living in a monastery who pretended to be an idiot possessed of a demon, and was considered by everybody to be so misguided that no-one would even eat with her. Her chosen way of life was to be found always in the kitchen, where she carried out all the duties of a servant. She was everybody’s doormat, as the saying goes. By her actions she fulfilled in herself what we read in Scripture, “If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” (1 Cor. 5:18) She wore a piece of old rag on her head, performing all her duties dressed like this, whereas the other virgins shaved their heads and wore cowls. None of the forty virgins ever saw her eating; never in her whole life did she sit down at table with them. Nobody gave her anything except a small portion of bread, but she picked up the crumbs from the tables and cleaned out the leavings in the food jars, and with this pittance she lived content. She harmed no one, no one ever heard her grumbling, she never had either too much or too little to say to anybody. She was lower than anyone else, she lived despised by everyone she was the butt of all their hard words.
Then one day the angel of the Lord appeared to a desert dweller called Pyoterius, known to all as a holy and respected man, living in a place called Porphyrites, and the angel said, “Why should you think you are somebody, a holy person, living here? Would you like to see a woman holier than you are? Go to the monastery of women in Tabennisi and you will find one there wearing a crown; know that she is greater than you. She alone battles day and night against many foes, her heart never departing from God, whereas you, even though you stay in one place, are constantly wandering in mind and spirit through all the cities of the world.”
He straightway went to the aforesaid monastery, and asked the master of the brothers if he might visit the women’s quarters. It wasn’t long before he was confidently introduced there as not only a man of exemplary life but also of respected years. When he went in he asked to see all the sisters, but he could not see among them the one on whose account he had come. To the last one he saw he said, “Bring them all; there is still someone lacking.” “There is only one more, the half-wit in the kitchen,” they said. “She is known as being one of those who are vexed with demons.” “Bring her to me as well for me to see,” he said. So they began to call her. She was very unwilling to listen, sensing that something was up, or perhaps knowing by divine revelation. But they said to her, “Holy Pyoterius wants to see you,” for he was someone well known and of a great reputation.
When she came in and he saw her with the old piece of rag on her head he threw himself on the floor before her and said, “Give me your blessing.” But she then fell at his feet and said, “No, you bless me, father.” All the sisters were shocked at this and said, “Don’t let her treat you like this, father. She’s stupid, as you can see.” And holy Pyoterius said to them all, “You are the stupid ones. She is my Amma and yours.” (For so they called spiritual women.) “I pray God that in the day of judgment I may be found as worthy as her.”
At this they too all fell at her feet and began to confess all the sins they had committed against her. One said she had poured the dirty washing up water over her, another remembered that she had often given her a box on the ear, another that she had tweaked her nose, others spoke of various kinds of injuries they had done her. The holy man poured out prayers to God for all these things and departed. The idiot, finding that she could not bear all this glory, and unwilling to be weighed down by the honour given to her by the sisters, but rather feeling that she was being hardly done by since all were asking her forgiveness, after a few days fled from the monastery secretly, and where she went, where she settled down, or how she died, nobody has ever been able to find out.
