Curiosities of Olden Times
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
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