Part 11

Alban Butler, the Père Giry, and the Abbé Guérin, and indeed all Roman Catholic hagiographers, give the former part of this history with some detail, and draw a curtain of pious platitudes over the second act of the drama. They state that the saint made himself a fool for Christ, but are very careful not to give the particulars of his folly.

It is hardly necessary to point out how untrue to history, how morally dishonest, such a course is.

The Jesuit Fathers, who continued the work of Bollandus, give the original Greek _Life_ in their volume for July, but with searchings of heart. “If,” say they, “our lucubrations could be confined to such small space as would suffice to give only the lives of those men whose memory is edifying and deserves imitation, never for a moment would it have entered into our heads to give and illustrate the life of St. Symeon Salos. For towards the close of that life many things occur, silly, stupid, absurd, scandalous to the ignorant, and to the learned and better educated worthy of laughter rather than of faith.”

But the unfortunate Bollandists were not at liberty to avoid the unpleasant task, as Symeon figured among the Saints of the Roman Calendar in these words: “At Emesa (on 1st July) St. Symeon, Confessor, surnamed Salos, who became a fool for Christ. But God manifested his lofty wisdom by great miracles.” 1st July is a mistake for 21st July, the day on which St. Symeon is venerated in the East. Baronius was misled by a faulty manuscript of the _Life_, which gave α for κα, as the day on which the saint died. It is a pity that, when he was transferring the day, he did not place St. Symeon Salos on the more appropriate 1st of April.

The only way in which I can account for this insertion in the Calendar is that Baronius read the first part of the _Life_, and was pleased with it, and did not trouble himself to conclude the somewhat lengthy manuscript. He therefore placed Symeon in his new Roman Martyrology, which received the approbation and imprimatur of Pope Sixtus V. and afterwards of Benedict XIV.

But to return to St. Symeon.

On reaching the outskirts of Emesa, Symeon found on a dung-heap a dead, half-putrefied dog. He unwound his girdle and attached the dog with it to his foot, and so entered the gate of the city and passed before a boys’ school. The attention of the children was at once diverted from their books, and, in spite of the expostulation of their preceptor, they rushed out of school after Salos, like a swarm of wasps, shouting, “Heigh! here comes a crack-brained abbot!” and kicked the dog and slapped the monk.

Next day was Sunday. Symeon entered the church with a bag of nuts before him, and during the celebration of the divine mysteries threw nuts at the candles and extinguished several of them. Then, running up into the ambone, or pulpit, he threw nuts at the women in the congregation, and hit them in their faces. Laughter and outcries interrupted the sacred service, and Symeon was expelled the church, not, however, without offering a sturdy resistance.

Outside, the market-place must have resembled one on a Sunday abroad at the present day, for it was full of stalls for the sale of cakes. In rushing from the church officials, he knocked over the stalls,[4] and the sellers beat him so unmercifully for his pains that he groaned in himself: “Humble Symeon, verily, verily, they will maul the life out of you in an hour!”

A seller of sour wine[5] saw him racing round the market-place, and, being in want of a servant, hailed him, and said, “Here, fellow; if you want a job, sell pulse for me.”

“I am ready,” answered Symeon. So he gave him pulse and beans and peas to sell, but the hermit, who had eaten nothing for a week, devoured the whole amount.

“This will never do,” said the mistress of the house; “the abbot eats more than he sells. Here, fellow, what money have you taken?”

Symeon had neither money nor vegetables to show, so the woman turned him out of the house. The monk placidly seated himself on the doorstep, and proceeded to offer up his evening devotions. But these were not complete without the ritual adjunct of smoking incense. Symeon looked about for a broken pot in which to put some cinders; but finding none, he took some lighted charcoal in the palm of his hand, and strewed a few grains of incense upon it. The mistress of the house, smelling the fumes, looked out of the window, and exclaimed, “Gracious heaven! Abbot Symeon, are you making a thurible of your hand?”[6] At that moment the charcoal began to burn his palm, and he threw the ashes into the lap of his coarse goat’s-hair mantle.

The taverner and his wife were so moved by the piety of Symeon that they received him into the house, and employed him in selling vegetables, which duty he executed satisfactorily when his appetite was not exacting. They speedily found that Silly Symeon drew customers to their house, for Symeon laid himself out to divert them, and it became the rage for a time in Emesa for folk to visit the tavern, saying, “We must have our dinner and wine where that comical fool lives.”

One day Symeon Salos saw a serpent put its head into one of the wine pitchers in the tavern, and drink. He took a stick and broke the pitcher, thinking that the serpent had spit poison into the wine. The publican was angry with Symeon for breaking the amphora, and, catching the stick out of his hand, cudgelled the poor monk with it, without listening to his explanation. On the morrow the serpent again entered the tavern, and went to the wine jars. The host saw it this time, and rushed after it with a stick, upsetting and breaking several amphoræ. “Ha, ha!” exclaimed Symeon, peeping out from behind the door, where he had concealed himself, “who is the biggest fool to-day?”[7]

The taverner did not show much kindness to Symeon; but this is hardly to be wondered at, when we hear that, summoned to his wife’s bedroom by her cries one night, he found it invaded by the saint, who was deliberately undressing in it for bed. This he did, says Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis, in order to lower the high opinion entertained of him by his master.[8] After this, as may well be believed, the taverner told the tale over his cups with much laughter to his guests, and with confusion to his man. In Lent the saint devoured flesh, but would not touch bread. “He is possessed,” said the inn-keeper; “he insulted my wife, and he eats meat in Lent like an infidel.”

In Emesa he picked up a certain John the Deacon, who admired his proceedings. To this John, the saint related the events of his former life; and from John Leontius heard the story.

One day John the Deacon was on his way to the public baths, when he met Symeon. “You will be all the better for a wash, my friend,” said the Deacon; “come with me to the baths.”

“With all my heart,” answered the monk, and he forthwith peeled off his clothes, wrapped them in a bundle, and set them on his head.

“My brother!” exclaimed the Deacon, “put on your clothes again. I cannot walk with you in the public street in this condition.”

“Very well, friend, then I will walk first, and you can follow.” And stark naked, bearing his bundle “like a faggot” on his head, he stalked down the crowded thoroughfare.

The baths were divided into two parts, one for women, the other for men. Symeon ran towards the women’s entrance.

“Not that way!” shouted the Deacon in alarm; “the other side is for men.”

“Hot water here, hot water there,” answered Symeon; “one is as good as the other”; and throwing down his bundle, he bounded into the ladies’ compartment, and splashed in amongst the female bathers.

The women screamed, flew on him, beat, scratched, pushed him, and drove him ignominiously forth.

The biographer gravely informs us that on another occasion an unbelieving Jew saw Symeon privately bathing with two “angels,” and would have told what he had seen had not Salos silenced him. It was only after the death of the saint that the Jew related the circumstance. The Christians concluded that the two lovely forms with whom Symeon was enjoying a dip were angels. “To such a pass of purity and impassibility had the saint attained,” continues the Bishop of Neapolis, “that he often led the dance in public with an actress on each arm; he romped with actresses, and by no means infrequently allowed them to tickle his ribs and slap him.”[9]

Indeed, his biographer tells some stories of his association with very fallen angels, which are anything but edifying.

His antics in the streets and market-place became daily more outrageous. “Sometimes he pretended to hobble as if he were lame, sometimes he capered, sometimes he dragged himself along to the seats, then he tripped up the passers-by, and sent them sprawling; sometimes at the rising of the moon he would roll on the ground kicking. Sometimes he pretended to speak incoherently, for he said that this above all things suited those who were made fools for Christ. By this means he often refuted vice, or spat forth his bile against certain persons, with a view to their correction.”

A Count, living near Emesa, heard of him, and said, “I will find out whether the fellow is a hypocrite or not.”

As it happened, when the Count entered the city, he found that Symeon’s housekeeper[10] had hoisted her master upon her back, whilst another young woman administered to him a severe castigation with a leather strap. The Count, we are told, went away much scandalised. Salos wriggled off his housekeeper’s back, ran after the Count, struck him on the cheek, then stripped off his own clothes, and danced in complete nudity before him up the street and down again.

Passing some girls dancing one day, and noticing that some of them had a cast in their eyes, he said, “My dears, let me kiss your pretty eyes and cure you of your squint.”

One or two of the young women permitted him to kiss them, and, we are assured, were cured; after which, all the girls who thought they had something the matter with their eyes ran after Symeon to have theirs kissed. The Deacon John invited him to dinner one day. Symeon went, and devoured raw bacon which was hanging up in the chimney, instead of what was provided for the guests. Symeon was fond of frequenting the houses of the wealthy, where, says his biographer, he sported with and kissed the maids.[11]

Two Fathers were troubled that Origen should be regarded as a heretic, and they asked the hermit John the reason. John bade them inquire of Symeon in Emesa. On reaching Emesa they found the monk in the tavern, with a bowl of boiled pulse before him, eating as voraciously “as a bear.” “What is the use of consulting this Gnostic?” said one of the Fathers; “he knows nothing but how to crunch pulse.”

“What is the matter with the pulse?” asked Symeon, starting up and boxing the hermit on the ears, so that his face bore the mark for three days. “The pulse has been soaking for forty days, and is soft enough, I warrant ye! As for your Origen, he can’t eat pulse, for he is at the bottom of the sea. And now take this for your pains!” and he flung the scalding pulse in their faces. His reason, Leontius tells us, was to prevent them from telling all men how he had read their purpose before they had spoken about Origen.

One Lord’s Day, Symeon was given a chain of sausages.[12] He hung it over his shoulders like a stole, and filled his left hand with mustard. He ate all day at the sausages, flavouring them with the mustard, and smearing his face with it. This highly amused a rustic, who mocked him. Symeon rushed at him, and threw the mustard in his eyes. The man cried with pain, and Symeon bade him wash the mustard out of his eyes with vinegar. Now it happened that this man was suffering from ophthalmia, and the mustard and vinegar applied to his eyes loosened the white film that was forming over them, and it peeled off, and thus the man was cured.

Symeon had long ago left the service of the publican, and had taken a small cottage, which was only furnished with a bundle of faggots and a housekeeper. John the Deacon supplied him with food, but somehow Symeon managed to secure a store of excellent provisions, and the beggars and tramps of the town were accustomed to assemble in his hut occasionally for a grand feast. John the Deacon unexpectedly dropped in on one of these revels, and wondered where the “white wheaten bread, cheesecakes, buns, fish, and wine of all sorts, dry and sweet, and, in short, whatsoever is to be found most dainty,”[13] had come from, which Symeon and his housekeeper were serving out to the beggars and their wives. But when Symeon assured him that these good things had come down straight from heaven in answer to prayer, the Deacon went away wondering and edified. In the same way Symeon always had his pockets full of money. We find him bribing a woman of bad character with a hundred gold pieces to be his companion.[14] Many of these ladies sought his society with eagerness, “for,” says his pious biographer, “he was always showing them large sums of money, for he had as much as he wanted, God always invisibly supplying him with funds for his purpose.” Whence came this money? For what purpose was it used? Why was the saint so continually found in the society of these women, or among the female servants of the wealthy citizens?

Early in the morning Symeon was wont to leave his hut, twine a garland of herbs, break a bough from a tree, and thus crowned and sceptred enter the city. John the Deacon asked the monk how it was that he never saw him having his hair cut, nor with his hair long. Symeon assured him that this was in answer to prayer. He had supplicated Heaven that he might be saved the trouble of having recourse to a barber, and Heaven had heard him; all which John the Deacon fully believed.

When death approached, Symeon revisited his friend John in the wilderness, who probably did not find his old comrade much improved in morals and manners by his residence in town.

He then returned to Emesa, and was found dead one morning under his bundle of faggots.

The remarks of Alban Butler are not a little amusing. “Although we are not obliged in every instance to imitate St. Symeon, and though it would be rash even to attempt it without a special call; yet his example ought to make us blush”--we should think so, indeed--“when we consider”--ah!--“with what an ill-will we suffer the least things that hurt our pride.” Symeon slipped into the Roman Martyrology by an inadvertency. Let us trust that at the next revision, he may be turned out.

II

ST. NICOLAS OF TRANI

The life of this extraordinary man is given to us with much detail by two eye-witnesses of his doings. Bartholomew, a monk, who associated himself with Nicolas, travelled with him, admired, and after his death worshipped him, wrote one of these lives. He had heard from the lips of Nicolas the account of his childhood and youth, and he faithfully recorded what he heard. Therefore Nicolas himself is our authority for all the earlier part of his history, whilst he was in Greece. For the latter part we have the testimony of Bartholomew, his companion night and day.

Secondly, we have an account of the close of his strange career by a certain Adalfert of Trani, also an eye-witness of what he describes; thus there is every reason for believing that we have an authentic history of this man.[15]

Nicolas was the child of Greek parents, near the monastery of Sterium, founded by St. Luke the Stylite. His parents were poor labouring people, and the child was sent, at the age of eight, to guard sheep. About this time he took it into his head to cry incessantly, night and day, “Kyrie eleison!” The mother scolded and beat him, thinking that she might have too much even of a good thing. But as he did not mend or vary his monotonous supplication when he had reached the age of twelve, she angrily bade him pack out of the house, and not come near her again till he had learned to keep his noisy cries to himself.

The boy then ran away to the mountains, where he turned a she-bear out of her cave, and settled himself into it, living on roots and berries; and climbing to dizzy heights, spent his days in yelling from the crags where scarce a goat could find a footing, “Kyrie eleison!”

His clothes were torn to tatters, so that scarce a shred covered his nakedness, his feet were bare, and his hair grew long and ragged.

The poor mother, becoming alarmed at his disappearance, offered a small sum of money to any one who would find the boy and bring him home. The peasants of the village scattered themselves among the mountains, caught the runaway, and at the mother’s request took him to the monks of St. Luke’s monastery to have the devil exorcised out of him, for she believed he must be mad. But Nicolas in his cave had one night seen come to him an old man of venerable aspect, with long beard and white hair, stark naked,[16] who bade him be of good cheer, and pursue his admirable course of conduct. The monks of Sterium brought him into the church and endeavoured to exorcise the demon, first with prayers, and afterwards with kicks and blows. Nicolas rushed from the gates of the church shrieking, “Kyrie eleison!” He was brought back and shut up in a tower, with a slab of stone against the door, to keep him in. During the night the sleep of the monks was broken by the muffled cries of “Kyrie eleison!” issuing from the old tower. A thunderstorm burst over the monastery at midnight, and Nicolas dashed the door open, threw down the stone, and leaped forth, shouting between the thunder crashes, “Kyrie eleison!” The monks caught him, put shackles on his wrists, and thrust him into a cell. As they sat next day at their meal in the refectory, the door flew open, and in stalked Nicolas with the chains broken in his hands; he clashed them down on the table before their eyes, and shouted “Kyrie eleison!” till the rafters and walls shook again. The monks rose from table, and thrust him forth, whilst they proceeded with their meal.

Nicolas ran to the church, scrambled up the walls--how no one knew; his biographer Bartholomew thinks he must have swarmed up a sunbeam--reached the dome, and mounting to the apex, began to shout his supplication, “Kyrie eleison!”

In the meantime the monks had retired for their nap after dinner, when the reiterated cries from the top of the church cupola roused them and made sleep impossible. They came forth in great excitement. One, by order of the hegumen, or abbot, took a stout stick, and ascending to the roof by a spiral staircase, crawled after the boy, reached him, dislodged him, and with furious blows drove him off the roof.[17]

The monks now thought the best thing they could do would be to get summarily rid of the maniac by drowning. Papebroeck, the Bollandist, at this point appends the curious note: “If amongst ourselves, better instructed, it is customary to suffocate those who have been bitten by a mad dog--an atrocious custom--lest they should bite and hurt others, and this is regarded as a rough sort of mercy, is it any wonder that these rude monks should have supposed it proper to make away with a madman upon whom exorcism had failed to produce any effect?”

The monks accordingly tied the hands and feet of Nicolas, drew him down to the shore, threw him into a boat, rowed some way out to sea, and flung him overboard.

But Nicolas broke his bonds,[18] as he had shivered the shackles, and swimming ashore, reached land before the monks, and mounting a rock, roared to them as his greeting, “Kyrie eleison!”

The monks despaired of doing anything to him, and abandoned him to follow his own devices. He ran wild among the mountains, and constructed a little hut of logs and wattled branches for his residence. One day he descended to his mother’s house and carried off a hatchet, a knife, and a saw, and amused himself fashioning crosses out of the wood of the cedars he cut down, and erecting them on the summit of rocks inaccessible to every one else.

On another occasion he carried off his brother; but the boy was so frightened at the wild gestures and cries of Nicolas, that he refused to remain more than a night in his cell and ran away home, to the inexpressible relief of his mother.

Nicolas rambled over the country, dirty, dishevelled, and naked, asking and enforcing alms. He was well known to the monks of the monasteries throughout the neighbourhood as an importunate beggar at their doors. The lonely traveller hastily flung him an offering, glad to escape so easily. On one occasion Nicolas waylaid the steward of the monastery of Sterium, and arresting the horse he rode, reproached him with stinginess. The monk, who was armed with a cudgel, bounded from his saddle, fell on Nicolas, and beat him unmercifully, then mounted and joyfully pursued his road.

Nicolas picked himself up, and followed him at a distance with aching bones to the village where the steward slept that night. Then, stealing to his bedside in the dark, he roared into his ear, “Kyrie eleison!” and woke him with a start of terror.

The monk jumped out of bed, called up the house; the watch-dogs were let loose, and Nicolas fled from their fangs up a tree, where he crouched till daylight.

On the Feast of SS. Cosmas and Damian, Nicolas went to the monastery of Sterisca to receive the Holy Communion, but was repulsed as being in an unsound state of mind, and driven out of the church, where his religious emotions found noisy vent, to the confusion of the singers and the distraction of the congregation. Nicolas was much distressed at the treatment he had received; he cried bitterly, and then resolved, as he was despised in the Greek Church, to secede to the Roman obedience; and according to his own account this excommunication was the reason of his flying from his native land to visit Italy.

But he makes an admission which gives this pilgrimage West quite another complexion. He started on his journey with a very pretty girl as his companion, whom he seduced from her home, whose hair he cut short with his own hands, and whom he disguised in male costume. But the parents of the damsel, anxious at her loss, made search for her, and found her, to their dismay and disgust, in company with Nicolas, dressed as a boy, sharing his bed and board, yelling “Kyrie eleison!” with him through the Greek villages, and making the best of their way to the sea to escape to Italy.

It is not difficult to see through this incident as it comes to us with Nicolas’s own explanation. The motive which Nicolas gave afterwards to Bartholomew to account for his running away from his native land was an afterthought. He had formed this discreditable connection, and the couple were escaping when caught by the parents and brought before the magistrates. Nicolas was tried for the seduction of the young girl. According to the young man’s own account, the girl took all the blame on herself, and Nicolas was allowed to depart unpunished. How far this is true we cannot say.

Greece was now too hot for Nicolas, and he hurried to Lepanto, to take ship for Italy. There he met Brother Bartholomew, who was so edified by his frantic piety and the odour of sanctity which pervaded the vagrant, that he attached himself to the young pilgrim as an ardent disciple.

Nicolas and Bartholomew took ship and crossed over to Otranto. Before entering the port, however, Nicolas cried, “Kyrie eleison!” and jumped overboard. Every one on board ship supposed he would be drowned, and Brother Bartholomew tore his beard with dismay.

But Nicolas was not born to be drowned. He came ashore safely, and declared that he had seen a beautiful lady draw him out of the water by the hair of his head.