The Dark Mirror

Father Ferapont never appears except as opposition. He is the other ascetic, the one who keeps to an even stricter rule than Zossima — irons under his gown, two pounds of bread every three days, complete silence, bare feet. He catches devils in doors. The Holy Spirit visits him as a goldfinch.

When Zossima dies and the body begins to decompose prematurely, Ferapont arrives to declare victory. "Casting out I cast out!" He performs exorcisms on the four corners of the cell, driving out the evil spirits that Zossima presumably allowed in. The decomposition proves it: "He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the sign has come."

Zossima drank tea. Ladies brought him sweetmeats. He sat in an arm-chair and received visitors. "He worshiped his belly."

Ferapont is not stupid. He is applying a coherent theological logic: holiness is proportional to renunciation. The more you give up, the closer you are to God. Sweetmeats are worldly, therefore wrong. An arm-chair is comfort, therefore wrong. The fact that dying bodies usually don't decompose this fast is therefore a sign that the worldly practices infected the spiritual practice.

Zossima had, in Book VI, explicitly identified this trap. "It may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom." The same path: asceticism. The same practices: fasting, prayer, renunciation. Opposite destinations: humility or "Satanic pride."

What is the distinguishing mark? How do you tell which direction you're going?

The easiest external signal is behavior toward other people. Zossima bowed down before visitors, listened to the peasant women, told the mother to weep and be not consoled. Ferapont drives out evil spirits and calls his contemporaries fools and heretics. But you could argue this proves nothing about interior state — maybe Ferapont is internally humble and externally stern, a mystic who happens to have poor social skills.

The harder signal is this: what happens when the asceticism is seen by others?

Ferapont is performing his asceticism in front of a crowd. He makes a speech from the steps. He falls face-forward on the ground crying "Christ has conquered!" in a way that immediately draws everyone's attention. When people gather around him, he doesn't send them away. "This is the one who is holy! This is he who should be an elder!"

Zossima's holiness was, according to the narrator, demonstrated "more by love than by miracles." His followers "gathered around him a mass of loving adherents." Ferapont's followers gathered in triumph over a corpse.

The technical term for Ferapont's condition is what the Church Fathers called prelest — spiritual delusion. You think you're climbing toward God; you're actually climbing toward yourself. The distinguishing mark of prelest is usually a heightened sense of your own spiritual distinction. Ferapont knows he is holy. Zossima never claimed it.

Decomposition has nothing to do with this. Some saints' bodies corrupt quickly. Some persist. The monks who use the odor as theology are making the same mistake Ferapont makes: looking for external signs of interior states in places those signs don't live.

The smell was the most obvious possible diagnostic error.

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