Some Crazy Saints
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
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