# Curiosities of Olden Times/Chapter 11

SOME CRAZY SAINTS
Among the ignorant there is always admiration for the not-understood, and in former times nothing was less understood than hysteria. The original source of a thousand superstitions, and of most idolatries, lies in the sense of surprise, wonder, into which the mind is thrown by seeing that which it cannot explain. A remarkable rock, a queer shell, peculiar eyes in a man or woman, a curious fruit, like the coco-de-mer, awaken admiration, perplex the untaught mind, and superinduce religious reverence. What strikes the imagination thenceforth provokes the instinctive awe felt for the supernatural. Now nothing is more calculated to astonish those who know naught of nervous disorder than the phenomena attending hysteria and its allied maladies. Consequently, not only have hysteric patients been for a long period regarded as specially allied with the spiritual powers, but so also have the insane, because insanity is particularly amazing to the man with his wits about him. To the present day in the East epilepsy is regarded as something sacred, and idiocy ​and madness as divine possession. It is not marvellous that some men and women in rude times, who were subject to fits, were scrofulous, hysterical, and lived out of the ordinary mode of life, should have been given a character for sanctity that scarcely perhaps was their due. Hysterical persons have a strange craving after sympathy, a hunger after notoriety, and will endure much self-imposed torture to obtain that which to their vanity is dearer than bodily ease.
Motives in this world are much mixed, and nowhere more mixed than in hysterical saints, where the glory of God and the glorification of self are inextricably involved.
It is not in the least surprising that some of the crazy saints we shall now consider should have been canonised by the popular voice; what is extraordinary is that they should have been accepted and inserted in the lists of those who are recognised by the Church as models of holiness, and that in a later and more critical age they have not been kicked out of the association to which they were ill qualified to belong. We will begin with the story of St. Symeon the Fool.
I
ST. SYMEON SALOS
The life of this saintly personage comes to us on excellent authority. The patron of Symeon in ​Edessa, and the witness of his acts, was a certain simple-minded John the Deacon. Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus, whose Apology for Sacred Images was accepted and approved by the Second Council of Nicæa, was acquainted with this John the Deacon, and from his account of the doings of Symeon wrote the life, in Greek, which has come down to us entire. It is one of the most curious and instructive of early Christian biographies.
Evagrius, the historian, also a contemporary of Symeon, makes mention of him in his Church History (lib. iv. c. 34).
The story of Symeon is as follows:—
In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, two young Syrians came to Jerusalem to assist at the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The name of one was John, and the name of the other was Symeon. John, a young man of two-and-twenty, was accompanied by his bride, a beautiful and wealthy girl, to whom he had been very lately married, and by his old father. With Symeon was his widowed mother, aged eighty.
The festival having terminated, the pilgrims started on their return to Edessa, and had reached Jericho, when John, reining in his horse, bade the caravan proceed, whilst he and his comrade Symeon tarried behind. The two young men flung themselves from their horses on the coarse grass. In the distance, near Jordan, glimmered the white walls of ​a monastery, and a track led towards it from the main road followed by the caravan.
"What place is that?" asked Symeon.
"It is the home of angels."
"Are the angels visible?" Symeon inquired.
"Only to those who elect to follow their manner of life," answered John, and descanted to his companion on the charms of a monastic life. "Let us cast lots," he said, "whether we shall follow the road to the convent, or that which the caravan has pursued." They cast lots, and the decision was for the life of angels.
So they turned into the road that led to Jordan and the monastery, and as they went they encouraged each other. For, we are told, John feared lest the love Symeon bore to his old widowed mother would draw him back, and Symeon dreaded the effects of the remembrance of the fair young bride on John.
On reaching the monastery, which was that of St. Gerasimus, the abbot, named Nicon, received them cordially, and gave them a long address on the duties and excellences of the monastic life. Then both fell at his feet and besought him at once to shear off their hair. The abbot hesitated, and spoke to each in private, urging a delay of a year, but Symeon boldly said, "My companion may wait, but I cannot. If you will not shear my head at once, I will go to some other monastery where they are less scrupulous." Then he added, "Father, I pray thee, ​ask the Lord to be gracious to and strengthen my comrade John, that the remembrance of his young wife, to whom he has been only lately married, draw him not back."
And when the abbot spoke to John, "My father," said he, "pray for my comrade Symeon, who has a widowed mother of eighty years, and they have been inseparable night and day; he dearly loves her, and has been wont never to leave the old woman alone for two hours in the day. I fear me lest his love for his mother make him take his hand from the plough and look back."
So the abbot cut off their hair, and promised on the morrow to clothe them with the religious habit. Then some of the members crowding round them congratulated the neophytes that on the morrow "they would be regenerated and cleansed from all sin." The young men, unaccustomed to monastic language, were alarmed, thinking that they were about to be rebaptized, and went to the abbot to remonstrate. He allayed their apprehensions by explaining to them that the monks alluded to their putting on the "angelic habit."
John and Symeon did not long remain in the abbey before a wish came upon them to leave it. Accordingly, in the night, they made their escape, and rambled in the desert to the east of the Dead Sea, till they lighted on a cave which had once been tenanted by a hermit, but was now without inhabitant. The date-palms and vegetables in the garden grew ​untouched, and the friends settled in the cave to follow the lives of the desert solitaries.
Their peace of mind was troubled for long by thoughts of the parent and wife left behind. "O Lord, comfort my old mother," was the incessant prayer of Symeon; "O Lord, dry the tears of my young wife," was the supplication of John. At length Symeon had a dream in which he saw the death of his mother, and shortly after John was comforted by a vision which assured him that his wife was no more.
After a while Symeon informed his comrade that he could not rest in the cave, but that he was resolved to serve God in the city. He felt there were souls to be saved in the world, and that he had a call to labour for their conversion.
This announcement filled John with dismay. He wept, and entreated Symeon not to desert him. "What shall I do, alone, in this wild ocean of sand? O my brother, I thought that death alone would have separated us, and now thou tearest thyself away of thine own will. Thou knowest I have forsaken all my kindred, and I have thee only, my brother, and will my brother desert me?"
"Do thou, John, remember me in thy prayers here in the desert, whilst I struggle in the world; and I will also pray for thee. But go I must."
"Then," said John solemnly, "be on thy guard, brother Symeon, lest what thou hast acquired in the desert be lost in the world; lest what silence has ​wrought, bustle destroy. Above all, beware lest that modesty, which seclusion from women has fostered, fail thee in their society; and lest the body, wasted with fasting here, surfeit there. Beware, also, lest laughter take the place of gravity, and worldly solicitude break up the serenity of the soul."
He had good cause to give this advice, as the sequel proves; but Symeon gave no heed to the exhortation, answering, "Fear not for me, brother; I am not acting on my own impulse, but on a divine call."
Then they wept on one another's shoulders, and Symeon promised to revisit his friend before he died.
John accompanied Symeon a little way, and then again they wept and embraced, and after that John sorrowfully returned to his cell, and Symeon set his face towards the world, and came to Jerusalem.
He spent three days in the Holy City, visiting the sacred sites, and then went to Emesa.
Hitherto his life had been, if not altogether commendable, yet at least respectable. But from this point his character changes. He simulated madness, his biographer says, with the motive of drawing down on himself the ridicule of the world.
This ill-conditioned fellow is venerated by Greeks and Russians as a saint, and Cardinal Baronius with culpable negligence introduced his name into the modern Roman Martyrology.
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, 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 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?" 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?"
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. 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 innkeeper; "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."
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 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.
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. 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," 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. 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.
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, 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.
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, 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.
One day at Otranto a procession was going through the town, bearing an image of the Virgin, when Nicolas, who had walked for some time gravely in the train, suddenly started out of it to make humble obeisance to an old man who attracted his respect.
​"See! he is worshipping a Jew!" exclaimed the people; "this strange fellow is no good Christian. Bring hither the image."
Then the Madonna was brought before Nicolas, and he was told to bow before it. He refused. Then the people fell on him with their fists and sticks, and beat and kicked him into a ditch.
Papebroeck suggests that his reason for refusing to worship the image was humility, hoping to draw on himself the indignation of the multitude, and thereby acquire the merit of enduring insult and suffering wrongfully. Perhaps, as a Greek, Nicolas was unaccustomed to images other than pictures; perhaps he did not understand the language of his assailants; but probably he was actuated by no reason but a mad freak. In the Italian versions of the Life of St. Nicolas sold at Trani, this incident is omitted for obvious reasons.
Leaving Otranto, Nicolas came to Lecce, which he entered bearing a cross on his shoulders, and uttering his usual cry. He spent the alms given to him in the purchase of apples, which he carried in a pouch at his waist, and these he threw among the boys who followed him in crowds and shouted after him, "Kyrie eleison!"
The noise he made in the streets, the uproar caused by the children, were so intolerable that two brothers named John and Rumtipert seized Nicolas, and binding him hand and foot, locked him into a room of their house. But he suddenly disengaged ​himself from his bonds, and was again in the street, calling, "Kyrie eleison!"
Early in the morning he went under the windows of the bishop, and broke his slumbers by his shouts. The bishop ordered him to be severely beaten and driven out of the city. Nicolas went forth triumphantly bearing his cross, shouting, "Kyrie eleison!" followed by a train of capering boys roaring, "Kyrie eleison!" and then bursting into peals of laughter. Nicolas gravely turned, cast a handful of apples among them, and passed out of the gates.
He took up his abode outside the town, and continued to astonish and edify the peasants who came into Lecce to market.
One day an officer of the prince was issuing from the gate, followed by a troop of servants. Nicolas rushed before his horse brandishing his cross and howling, "Kyrie eleison!" The horse plunged and threw his rider, and Nicolas was well beaten for his pains.
At St. Dimitri he was locked up in the church, heavily ironed; but at midnight he broke off his chains, and entering the tower pealed the bells.
Thence he went to Tarentum, where he stationed himself outside the bishop's palace, under his bedroom window, and through the night yelled, "Kyrie eleison!" It was the duty of the bishop to watch and pray, and not to sleep, thought Nicolas. But the prelate differed from him in opinion, and sent ​his servants to dislodge Nicolas. He returned to his post, and continued his monotonous howls. The bishop could endure it no longer, and revenged his sleepless night on the back and ribs of Nicolas, already blue with the bruises received at Lecce and St. Dimitri; and he was ignominiously expelled the city.
He proceeded thence to Trani, which he entered on 26th May 1094, carrying his cross and distributing apples among the boys who crowded about him and made a chorus to his cry.
The archbishop, hearing the disturbance, had him apprehended and brought before him. He asked Nicolas what he meant by his eccentric conduct. The crazy fellow replied, "Our Lord Jesus Christ bade us take up our cross and follow after Him, and become as little children. That is precisely what I am doing."
The archbishop began a long discourse, but Nicolas impatiently shook himself free from his guards, and without waiting for the end of it, bounded out of the hall to the head of the steps leading into the street, crying, "Kyrie eleison!" which was responded to by a shout from the boys eagerly awaiting him without.
At the head of a swarm of children he rushed madly through and round the city, making the streets resound with his monotonous appeal, and bringing the wondering citizens to their doors and windows.
But the blows he had received at Tarentum had ​done him some serious internal injury, and he now fell sick at Trani. There was hardly an inhabitant of the city who did not visit his sickbed, that he might hear the poor madman howl, "Kyrie eleison!" with his fevered lips, and depart marvelling at his sanctity.
The boys who had run after him and partaken of his apples came to see him, and the dying man gave them his cross, and bade them march about the dormitory of the hospital where he lay, bearing the cross, and vociferating, "Kyrie eleison!" Night and day the dormitory was crowded, and the excitement of the fevered man kept constantly stimulated. He died on 2nd June 1094, and till his burial his body attracted ever-increasing crowds.
He was buried at Trani with considerable ceremony, for already the notion had spread that the crazy Greek was a great saint, and the infatuated Brother Bartholomew did his utmost to fan the growing popular enthusiasm into a flame. Almost immediately after the burial highly imaginative individuals began to believe they had been miraculously healed of diseases at his tomb. He appeared in visions, cured cripples, uttered forebodings. The Archbishop of Trani made formal investigation into the miracles, after the manner of ecclesiastical investigations, and pronounced them genuine. Trani was without a patron; no blood of martyrs had reddened its soil, no saint had occupied its episcopal throne. It was discreditable to be without a patron, ​and the good people of Trani were not nice as to whom they had as patron so long as they had one whom they could claim as peculiarly their own.
A statement of the virtues, acts, and miracles of Nicolas was forwarded with gravity by the Archbishop of Trani to the Pope and Council at Rome in 1099. Urban II. with equal gravity, by special bull, canonised this pitiable fool, and hoaxed Christendom into worshipping a man in whose career no single spark of godliness appears; a man driven, to all appearance, from his own country for having led astray an innocent girl, whom he persuaded to elope with him from her home, and join him in his vagabond life.
III
ST. CHRISTINA THE WONDERFUL
The life of this extraordinary saint, so extraordinary that even those who canonised her—the vulgar and ignorant—called her "The Wonderful," comes to us on the best possible authority. Her life was written by Thomas de Chantpré, or Catimpré, born at Leuve in the Low Countries in 1201; he was canon in the abbey of Catimpré, and then entered the Dominican Order in a convent at Louvain, in 1232, and there taught theology. He was a contemporary and fellow-countryman of Christina; he had all the particulars necessary from those who had seen and ​conversed with Christina, whom he survived by many years. Indeed, she died when he was aged twenty-three. Christina the Wonderful was born at the village of Brustheim, near St. Trond in Hesbain, in the year 1150. When aged fifteen she was left an orphan, the youngest of three sisters, and spent her childhood in the fields tending sheep and cows. As now, so then, there were no hedges, and cattle sent into pasture had to be subjected to supervision lest they transgressed into the land of neighbours. Christina was employed as thousands of little girls have been employed since in Germany and Belgium. It was a solitary occupation for a child, and she was thrown much in on herself, on her own thoughts, her own imaginations.
Nothing remarkable about her was observed till she began to pass from childhood into womanhood, a critical period, and then it was that her malady first manifested itself. She fell down one day in a cataleptic fit, and was taken up as dead. Her sisters, with whom she lived, had her washed, laid out, placed on a bier, and conveyed to church, where the funeral mass was ordered to be said.
Christina had been in a cataleptic fit, or had been shamming death. All at once she scattered the funeral party and the worshippers by a leap off her bier, in winding-sheet, with a shrill cry, and then by a scramble up one of the pillars of the sacred edifice, which she managed to surmount. She then got upon one of the tie-beams of the roof, and there seated ​herself, as her biographer tells us, "like a bird." The congregation, frightened out of their wits, ran helter-skelter in all directions. One of her sisters alone had courage to remain, or possibly knew enough of Christina's eccentricities not to be alarmed. The priest at the altar faltered, stopped, turned and looked about him, and went forward headlong with the service to the end. When he had retired to the sacristy, probably, Christina's sister came to him and explained matters. Anyhow we learn that he reappeared in the church showing no signs of fear, and very peremptorily ordered the young woman down from her perch, and demanded the reason of this extraordinary freak. Christina meekly descended, and on being again asked the reason of her proceedings, condescended to inform the priest that she had scrambled aloft to escape the strong odour emitted by the peasants, which to her refined perceptions was especially repugnant. It must be admitted that it continues the same to the present day, and that to the noses of those who are not saints.
Christina was now conducted home by her sisters, and was given something to eat. When she had fed, she told them a long and marvellous story of her having visited the regions of the dead; she said that she had been in Hell, where she recognised the familiar features of a good many acquaintances, no doubt of all such as had slighted and offended her in the past and were dead. Then she had visited Purgatory, where also she found herself among ​acquaintances. After that she ascended to Heaven, where she was offered her choice, whether she would remain there eternally, or return to earth and there perform the meritorious work of liberating, by her prayers and self-tortures, the souls of those still undergoing purification in Purgatory. With the utmost heroism and self-denial she chose the latter alternative, probably not to the satisfaction of her sisters, who seem to have regarded her as a self-willed, troublesome piece of goods, and would have preferred to have her at a distance, as an intercessor in heaven, than on earth an object of much solicitude and annoyance.
She speedily gave them cause enough to regret the choice she had made, for she took it into her head to race about the country, leaping hedges, climbing walls, as she pretended, to get away from the scent of men, which specially distressed her. She did not specify whether this odour was spiritual or carnal, but left it to be inferred that moral turpitude was the most odoriferous. She was repeatedly found on the tops of trees, or on the summit of church towers, balancing herself beside the weathercocks, gasping for wholesome air.
Naturally enough her relatives held her to be deranged; and they proceeded to have her bound, as mad folk were chained and held in bondage till comparatively recently. But one night she broke away from her prison, tore off her fetters, declaring that the "odour of men" was suffocating her, and ran ​away into the nearest forest, where she swarmed to the tops of the highest trees and there gasped for untainted air. There for a while her relatives left her, she must starve or return to them. As Thomas of Chantpré says, she lived for a while like a bird among the boughs of the trees, and though sorely in want of food, would not return to association with odoriferous human beings.
Her biographer gives us an outrageous story which accounts for the way in which she lived; but in all likelihood she fed on eggs.
After five weeks thus spent, she was recaptured and again put in chains, stronger than before.
Again she broke loose, ran to Liège, where she rushed headlong into the Church of St. Christopher, and insisted on the priest whom she found there giving her the Holy Communion. He naturally enough demurred to do so. Her wild appearance, with hair flying, her galled wrists, her flashing, frantic eyes, the condition of dirt and raggedness in which she was, made him conclude she was an escaped maniac. He made an excuse, and she was unable to force him to act against his conscience by any representation she made. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, so suddenly did she rush away again into another church, where she frightened the priest into compliance. But what was his disgust and dismay to see the communicant jump up, leave the church in flying leaps, and run as fast as she could tear down the steep hill that falls towards the Meuse. ​He hastily laid aside his surplice and stole, and ran after her. Then he came on the priest of St. Christopher, who was also in pursuit, and the two ran after her to the quay, where she made a plunge, went head foremost into the water, and swam to the farther shore. The Meuse, as any one who is acquainted with Liège knows, is no inconsiderable stream there, and the two priests watched, breathless and alarmed, till the girl had reached the farther shore. Then only did they breathe freely.
Christina's conduct became daily more outrageous. She crept into bakers' ovens, and there howled with pain at the heat, but would not come forth, till dragged out by the heels. Sometimes she would run into a fire and kick the brands about with her bare feet. When she saw water hot in large vessels for a washing, in she leaped, souse, and then shrieked with the pain. In winter she would run into the river and remain there squealing with cold, till the parish priest came and ordered her out. One of her favourite pursuits was to dive under the sluice of a miller's water-conduit, and go with the water, head over heels, over the wheel. These exploits attracted a crowd, and excited her to renewed attempts, not always most decorous, but greeted with roars of approval and encouragement to re-attempt the feat.
Another of her freaks was to frequent the places of execution, and climb the poles with wheels at top on which robbers and murderers had been broken, and to writhe her own legs and arms in and out of ​the spokes, with more dexterity than delicacy, to amuse the vulgar rabble that followed and applauded her proceedings. Or she would provide herself with a rope and hang herself between two criminals on the public gallows, with happy indifference to the savour the corpses emitted. All these proceedings were, she affirmed, eminently grateful to the souls in Purgatory, and afforded them consolation and relief.
At night it was her delight to run through the streets of St. Trond, with all the dogs of the town barking and snapping after her; she led them a chase over the country, running like the wind, they tearing her tattered garments, and also biting and wounding her limbs. She, however, seemed insensible to pain, in her enjoyment of the race. Finally, when exhausted, she went up a tree like a chased cat.
One great source of entertainment she provided during divine service was to coil herself up into a ball, so that neither head, hands, nor feet appeared, and so roll about the church. Then all at once, when no one was expecting it—snap! out flew head, feet, and hands, and she lay flat on the floor, rigid as a log of wood, all her limbs extended and motionless. Another of her devotional vagaries was to pirouette on one toe on the top of a paling, whilst vociferously praying. All which not only edified the living, but afforded vast gratification to the souls in Purgatory.
At length her sisters could stand her vagaries no longer,—her biographer candidly admits that ​Christina put them to the blush,—and they engaged a strong man to catch her and chain her up again. He went after her, and she ran. Unable to catch her, he flung a club at her that brought her down and, as was thought, broke her thigh. As she could not walk, a cart was brought to the spot, and she was placed in it and conveyed to a surgeon, who had a bed of straw strewn for her in his cellar. He put her leg in splints, but to ensure her remaining quiet and not tearing at the bandages, bound her hands and fastened them to a ring in the cellar wall. In the night she succeeded in disengaging her hands. Then she ripped off the bandages, threw away the splints, and stood up. Her thigh was not broken. She got a stone, and with it broke a way through the wall of the cellar, and escaped into the open country once more.
After this her relatives gave up all further attempts to control her.
Finding herself unmolested, she ventured back to the haunts of men, and begged for food or whatever she required. If refused what she wanted, she became angry and took it. Few dared resist her importunities or violence. When she had a sleeve of her gown torn off she went to the first woman she encountered and asked for hers. If not at once given, she rushed at the person, and with teeth and claws tore the sleeve off the gown, and then, with crazy laughter, she slipped her own bare arm into it. Her dress was a mass of tatters and incongruous ​patches, sewn on with willow-bark thread, or pinned together with thorns. Her hair, dark, utterly uncombed, hung wildly about her head, and fell over her tanned, dirty face. Her limbs were covered with scars. One day she visited the parish church of Wellen, near St. Trond, and finding the cover off the font, and the sacred vessel pretty full, since the recent benediction of the sacred water, with one jump reached the brim, and then flopped herself down in the hallowed water. This, says her biographer solemnly, had the effect of subduing in her the more extraordinary manifestations of ecstatic devotion; and after this souse in the baptismal water, she professed herself less distressed by the odour of human beings.
She was not gracious to those who gave her food. As she ate what she had begged, she growled, "Why am I eating this nastiness? Why am I thus plagued?" and told them that what they gave her tasted like the insides of newts and toads.
Her biographer assures us that "she avoided, with the utmost solicitude, all human honour and praise," but it would be hard to find that either was shown or offered her whilst alive; for then she certainly was esteemed crazy. Only after her death did it occur to people that she was a saint.
In her old age she was often given shelter by the kind sisters of St. Catherine at St. Trond, and she returned their hospitality by her amusing antics. One day, as she was talking with them, she suddenly ​curled herself up into a ball, and began to roll round the room, "like a boy's ball, without any token of her limbs appearing." Then, all at once, she expanded flat on the floor, and ventriloquised. "No voice or breath issued from her mouth and nose, but only her breast and throat resounded with an angelic harmony." She concluded this exhibition by singing the "Te Deum" from the pit of her stomach, and then jumped up and ran away.
We can understand that at a time when hysterical disorders were completely misunderstood, such marvellous contortions and tricks were reputed to be due to spiritual agency, either divine or diabolic. Towards the close of her days she spent most of her time in the Convent of St. Catherine, and she was there when attacked by her mortal sickness.
When she was apparently insensible the Superior, Sister Beatrice, said to her, "Christina! you have always been obedient to me; return now to life, I have something I desire to ask of you."
Then Christina opened her eyes and said, "Why have you disturbed me? Be quick, I cannot tarry; tell me what you want, that I may be gone."
Then the Superior put the question, received her reply, and the next moment the poor clouded spirit fled. She died on 24th July 1224, at the age of eighty-four.
Twenty-five years after her death an old woman told the Superior, "I have come to you with a divine revelation, to say that the body of that most ​holy woman, Christina, is not receiving proper respect from you. If you neglect to give it sufficient honour it will fare ill with you."
On the strength of this vague message the body of the poor old creature was dug up, and enshrined. Miracles attended the elevation of the bones, and thenceforth St. Christina the Wonderful came to be regarded as a saint in the Low Countries. Her body is still preserved as that of one of the elect of God in the Church of St. Catherine at Milin, near St. Trond; and her name has been inserted in a good number of martyrologies—amongst others, that of France. It is not in the Roman Martyrology, where, however, she has a better right to figure than have St. Symeon Salos and St. Nicolas of Trani, who were loose fishes as well as fools.
* ↑ Ἔστρεψεν τά ταβλία τῶν πλακουνταρίων.
* ↑ Εἷς φονσκάριος.
* ↑ Εἷς θεὸς, ὰββᾶ Σνμεὼν, εἰς τὸν χεῖρα σον θνμᾷς.
* ↑ Τί ἐστιν ἔξηχε, ἴδε, οὐκ εἰμὶ ἐγὼ μόνος ἀπέργης.
* ↑ Θέλων οὖν ὁ Ὅσιος ἀναλῦσαι τὴν οἰκοδομὴν αὐτοῦ, ἵνα μὴ θριαμβεύσῃ αὐτὸν, ἐν μιᾷ κοιμωμένης τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ μόνης, κᾀκείνου προβάλλοντος οἶνον, ἐπέβη πρὸς αὐτὴν ὃ ἀββᾶς Συμεὼν, καὶ ἐχηματίσατο ἀποδύεσθαι τὸ ἱμάτιον αὐτοῦ, κ.τ.λ.
* ↑ Ὥστε ἔστιν ὅτε ἔβαλλον τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῶν τὰ ἄσεμνα γύναια εἰς τὸν κόλπον αὐτοῦ,καὶ ἐσίαινον, καὶ ἐκόπταζον, καὶ ἐγαργάλιζον αὐτόν.
* ↑ Ἐβάσταζεν αὐτὸν μία προϊσταμενὴ, καὶ ἄλλη ἑλώριζεν αὐτόν.
* ↑ Πολλάκις δὲ προσποιεῖσθαι καταφιλεῖν τὰς δούλας. No wonder if one of them said, "Ο Σαλὸς Συμεὼν ἐβιάςατό με." The maid’s mistress indignantly scolded Symeon, who replied with a smile, "Ἄφες, ἄφες, ταπεινὴ, ἄρτι γεννᾶ σοι, καὶ ἔχεις μικρὸν Συμεών."
* ↑ Σειρὰν σαλσικίων.
* ↑ Σιλίγνια, καὶ πλακοῦντας, καὶ σφαίρια, καὶ ὀψάρια, καὶ οἰνάρια διάφορα, ψαθύρια, καὶ γλυκὺ, καὶ ἁπλῶς ὅσα πάντα ἔχει ὁ βίος λιμβά.
* ↑ Ἔστι γὰρ ὅτε καὶ τοῦτο ἔλεγε πρὸς μίαν τῶν ἑταιρίδων· θέλεις ἔχο σε φίλην καὶ δίδω σοι ἑκατὸν ὁλοκοτίνα.
* ↑ Both are published in the Acta Sanctorum for June, T.I., pp. 237-260, with notes by Papebroeck, the Bollandist.
* ↑ "Monachus aspectu venerabilis, barba prolixa, corpore nudus, capillis canus." This old monk was St. Luke the Stylite, appearing in vision.
* ↑ "Unus––cum gravi baculo ascendens ad eum, ipsum graviter ac dure cædens, de ecclesiæ trullo descendere fecit, cum multa festinantia et furore."—Fr. Barth.
* ↑ The biographer thinks a dolphin must have bitten his cords, and thus freed him.