Life of Andrew the Fool
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The Life of Andrew the Fool is a Byzantine hagiography text concerning Andrew of Constantinople.[1] The text was very popular during the Byzantine era, with 30 manuscripts dated between the 10th to the 16th century, and in the post-Byzantine period, 82 Greek copies between the 16th to the 19th century.[2]
Over 110 complete and fragmentary Greek manuscripts containing various editions of the Life have survived, with the oldest being a fragment of a manuscript dating to the second half of the 10th century. The Life says that Andrew lived during the time of Leo I (r. 457–474). However, some historians believe he lived in the 9th to 10th centuries, during the reign of Leo VI (r. 886–912), due to anachronisms in the text and similarities to the lives of other holy fools, including Simeon the Holy Fool and Basil the Younger. The first publisher of the Life, the Bollandist K. Janning, dated its composition to the 10th century and placed Andrew's life in the reign of Leo VI.[3]