By Derek Krueger
This primary English translation of Leontius of Neapolis's lifetime of Symeon the idiot brings to existence the most colourful of early Christian saints. during this examine of an important hagiographer at paintings, Krueger fleshes out a huge photograph of the non secular, highbrow, and social atmosphere in which the existence used to be created and opens a window onto the Christian spiritual mind's eye on the finish of past due Antiquity. He explores the idea that of holy folly by means of referring to Symeon's existence to the gospels, to previous hagiography, and to anecdotes approximately Diogenes the Cynic. The lifestyles is among the strangest works of the past due old hagiography. Symeon appeared a strange selection for sanctification, because it used to be via very abnormal antics that he switched over heretics and reformed sinners. Symeon acted like a idiot, walked approximately bare, ate hundreds of thousands of beans, and defecated within the streets. whilst he arrived in Emesa, Symeon tied a lifeless puppy he discovered on a dunghill to his belt and entered town gate, dragging the puppy at the back of him. Krueger provides a provocative interpretation of the way those weird and wonderful antics got here to be instructive examples to daily Christians.
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Example text
Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, introduction, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 3. 11. For details of these events, see Stratos, Byzantium in the Seventh Century, vol. 2 (634-641), pp. 62, 111; cf. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests, p. 67. Page 8 in an era proverbial for its upheaval, denigrated for its cultural decline, and bemoaned for its paucity of literary sources. The Life in turn reflects certain aspects of social and cultural life on Cyprus at the end of Late Antiquity, particularly the economy of the city and the preservation of Greco-Roman secular culture through traditional systems of education.
1; George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind II: The (Footnote continued on next page) Page 3 tron of St. 5 In fact, it was the Life of Andrew, not the Life of Symeon, which would be so important for Russian culture. Thus, those elements of the Life of Symeon the Fool which are found to have analogues in later sources have received attention while aspects of the work which do not have an afterlife in later Byzantine and Russian sources have been largely ignored. This study corrects this imbalance, seeing the Life of Symeon the Fool not as the beginning of a long, later tradition, but as the product of a Late Antique world, understanding the traditions on which it draws, and interpreting its relationship to texts which had come before.
Reading the lives of Late Ancient saints, we occasionally come across those who challenge our sometimes sanctimonious notions of early Christian piety. That such figures as holy fools were held in high regard by clergy and laity leaves us puzzled. These saints are clearly deviantsout-side the structures of society, and more importantly, outside the conventions for fleeing that society. Reading such works as the Life of Symeon the Fool one wonders whether some Late Ancient Christians sanctified deviance.