7. Symeon in Emesa, Jesus in Jerusalem

In the Life of Symeon the Fool Leontius of Neapolis is concerned to instill moral virtues in a lay audience through hagiographical narrative. He also invites his readers to engage in theological reflection. In pursuit of these goals, Leontius constructs Symeon to reenact the life of Jesus. The previous chapter demonstrated that Leontius makes allusion to traditions about Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic philosopher. At the same time, in adherence to a pattern common in the composition of saints’ lives, Leontius models his protagonist on the Christ. An exploration of Leontius’s use of Jesus as a model for Symeon sheds light on various concerns which Leontius addresses in his work, particularly the moral problems raised by urban life and economic structures.

Students of hagiography have long recognized the use of biblical typology in the literary production of saints’ lives, although the phenomenon as a whole has yet to receive a comprehensive treatment.^[1] Late Antique authors employ what Patlagean has called the “scriptural model” in their compositions, such that the hagiographical narrative closely follows the characters and events of the Gospels. As she writes, “The scriptural model shows the similarity between the saint and Christ. . . . [T]he series of miraculous actions is chosen according to a rigorous criterion of scriptural reference.”^[2] In many Lives, the hagiographer uses Jesus or a figure in the Old Testament such as Moses or one of the prophets as a model for presenting the saint.

The invocation of Old Testament prophets can serve an apologetic function in hagiography. Perhaps the most striking instances of this are the various lives of Symeon the Stylite. In defense of his portrait of the man who stood for many years on a pillar, Theodoret of Cyrrhus invokes a number of Old Testament figures who behaved strangely. He mentions Isaiah walking naked (Is 20:2) and Jeremiah preaching first in a loincloth, then in a wooden collar, and finally in an iron one (Jer 13:1, 27:2, 28:13). He refers to Hosea’s marriage with a harlot (Hos 1:2) and to the most peculiar details of Ezekiel’s asceticism.^[3] These biblical prototypes serve to place the stylite’s outlandish behavior within a biblical pattern and thereby justify it in the face of critics. Theodoret’s point is that holy people do the strangest things, that they are sui generis. In the Life of Symeon the Fool, the relationship between the saint and the Old Testament models for peculiar behavior remains implicit, although the biblical parallels are clearly in the air. One thinks not only of those types already mentioned but also of David dancing in the streets (2 Sm 6:20). More striking in the text, however, are the references to Jesus.

For early Christians, the use of Jesus as a prototype was a key to interpreting the experience of martyrdom and eventually ascetic practice.^[4] Christian authors presented their subjects engaged in the “imitation of Christ.” In the second-century Martyrdom of Polycarp, the protagonist is portrayed suffering and dying according to Christ’s example. Depicting what he calls a “martyrdom in accord with the gospel,” the anonymous author constructs his narrative to include many details which allude to the life of Jesus: Polycarp has foreknowledge of his impending death; he is betrayed by a servant who is explicitly compared to Judas; he enjoys a last supper with his followers, after which he goes off to pray by himself for two hours; eventually, on the funeral pyre, where he is not burned, but appears “like bread that is baked,” his side is pierced, and his blood flows forth.^[5] Similarly, the rigorous life of the Christian ascetic was interpreted in literature as well as in practice as a daily reenactment either of Christ’s temptation in the desert or of Christ’s passion. Athanasius constructs his portrait of Antony, “the daily martyr,” to depict the saint successfully battling demons and performing Christ-like miracles of healing.^[6] The comparison of a saint to Christ, standard in Late Antique hagiography, was often achieved through literary allusion.^[7] By fashioning his work in conformity with the gospel narrative, the author of a hagiographical text could attest to the saint’s holiness and render the saint meaningful within a Christian framework. But this conscious modeling is more than a mere echoing of the life of Jesus in order to portray a saint. Modeling the saint on Jesus had several purposes. It allowed the hagiographer to highlight an aspect of the gospel which was particularly relevant to his audience. For instance, by identifying Polycarp with the Christ, the author implicitly interprets the Christ as a model martyr; by fashioning Antony in accord with the gospel, Athanasius presents Jesus as a healer and a resister of temptation. Thus, a saint’s life is an implicit commentary on the Christ, a mode of exegesis by which an author addresses the significance of the Christ for his audience. Hagiography is, if you will, a Christological genre.^[8]

Jesus as a Model for Symeon the Fool

In the Life of Symeon, in addition to his conventional Christological concerns with such issues as Origenism and Monophysitism, Leontius reflects on the meaning of the Christ for moral life through allusions to the gospel. In order to do this, Leontius uses the life of Jesus as a model for the composition of the Life of Symeon the Fool. Alexander Syrkin noted “a number of instances of parallelism (expressed either explicitly or more obliquely) between Symeon and Jesus.” Symeon and Jesus both leave their “seclusion in the desert” and return to the world to save people; they both cast out the Devil, cure demoniacs, and inflict spells; they feed people miraculously; their burials involve Jews whom they have converted; and when their tombs are opened, their bodies are not found.^[9] Far from being accidental, these parallels are the result of Leontius’s conscious efforts to draw parallels between Symeon and Jesus.^[10] In fact, Leontius’s use of gospel material goes beyond loosely conceived, episodic allusions to Jesus; Leontius uses the narrative of the life of Jesus to shape the entire narrative of the Life of Symeon, such that the parallels to Jesus strongly influence his presentation of the fool for Christ’s sake.

The Entry into Emesa

In order to illustrate Leontius’s use of the gospel narrative, we turn to Symeon’s first activities in Emesa (pp. 145–46). He enters the gate of the city dragging a dead dog. Schoolchildren see him and call out (κράζειν), “Hey, a crazy abba.” The next morning, a Sunday, he enters the church, puts out the lights, and throws nuts at the women. On the way out of the church, he overturns (έστρεψεν) the tables of the pastry chefs (πλακουντάριοι).

This sequence of events bears an obvious relationship to the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. According to the account in Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the backs of an ass and a colt.^[11] Crowds follow Jesus shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and so forth. Jesus then enters the temple, drives out those selling and buying there, and overturns (κατέστρεψεν; cf. Mk 11:15) the tables of the money changers. Jesus performs miracles, and children cry out (κράζοντας), “Hosanna to the Son of David.” Thus Symeon’s entry into Emesa echoes Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in several ways. Both enter the city with animals. Their identity is immediately proclaimed by onlookers. They proceed to the city’s center of worship and disrupt its activities by overturning tables.^[12] When the pieces of the entry into Emesa are placed together and the narrative pattern is seen as a whole, we observe that Leontius has structured this account to parallel the life of Jesus.

A slight divergence from the lectionary texts of the Gospels illuminates the way in which Leontius and his community received the gospel narrative in their lives and worship. The Gospel of Matthew does not mention the children the first time Jesus’ identity is proclaimed by the crowd with the phrase “Hosanna to the Son of David”; instead, this phrase is uttered by children only after the events in the temple. However, liturgical texts for Palm Sunday used in Leontius’s time presented the children as the ones who first proclaimed Jesus’ identity as he entered Jerusalem.^[13] Thus the gospel which Leontius follows is not the biblical text itself but rather the biblical narrative as it was reenacted in the liturgical life of the Church. Symeon’s entry into Emesa prompts the reader to draw parallels between the saint’s activities and those of the Savior.

Implicit Christology

Symeon’s entry into the city signals from the outset that his behavior is an “imitation of Christ.” But what are the implications of such modeling? In addition to the similarities between the accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and Symeon’s entry into Emesa, there are also striking inversions of the archetypal episode. Symeon’s adventus is hardly triumphal. His dog is dead; he drags it rather than rides it. The children acclaim him not as the “Son of David,” but as a mad monk; rather than spreading palms (a symbol of victory) before him, the children beat Symeon up. Far from cleansing the church, he merely disrupts the service in progress in a manner admittedly slapstick, pelting the parishioners with nuts. The tables of the Gospels’ evil money changers have become trivialized as the tables of Symeon’s pastry chefs. In short, Symeon does what Jesus did, but gets it all wrong. By employing a technique of narrative inversion at the beginning of Symeon’s activity in Emesa, Leontius asks his readers to reflect on Symeon’s relationship to Jesus, to consider whether Symeon’s life is but a poor parody of Jesus’. Symeon’s adventus appears the complete antithesis of Jesus’; his activity in Emesa, the life of Jesus turned upside down.

Leontius introduces similar inversions elsewhere in the text. Symeon’s encounter with the man suffering from leucoma in both eyes reworks the account in the Gospel of John in which Jesus cures a blind man by placing saliva and clay on his eyes and telling him, “Go wash” (υπαγε νίψαι) in a pool (Jn 9:1–12; cf. Mk 8:22–26). When the man with leucoma approaches Symeon, the cure backfires. Symeon anoints the man’s eyes with mustard, which burns him and aggravates his condition, making him completely blind (p. 161). Symeon then tells him to “Go wash” (υπαγε νίψαι) with vinegar and garlic, which finally cures him, restoring his sight.^[14]

When performing “miraculous feedings,” Symeon’s excesses are comic. Symeon invites ten circus fans to lunch. Five of them follow Symeon, although they are skeptical about his ability to provide them anything other than grass to graze on. Symeon, an impoverished ascetic, then sets before them a lavish feast: “wheat bread, flat cakes, meat balls, fish, excellent wine, fried cakes, jam” (p. 164). The main features of the meal are the staples which Jesus feeds the multitudes in the various gospels—bread, fish, and wine—but the opulent menu of delicacies goes far beyond Jesus’ humble provision of sustenance.^[15] And while Jesus turns water to wine (Jn 2:1–11), Symeon turns wine to vinegar, a vinegar so foul “that a person might die smelling it” (pp. 164–65). So Leontius constructs Symeon by inverting his model.

Or does he? By parodying Jesus’ activities, Leontius prompts his reader to reconsider the meaning of Jesus’ actions. Symeon, who is only loosely modeled on Jesus, comes to Emesa to behave in a fashion which appears ridiculous to the majority of the city’s inhabitants, and yet, as we shall see, reforms a great number of the inhabitants and prepares them for their salvation. In composing the Life of Symeon as he has, Leontius has, in fact, written a commentary on the life and meaning of the Christ. The Life of Symeon not only imitates the life of Jesus, it reinterprets it.

Through the fusion of the Christ and the Fool, Leontius shows that Jesus too came to the city and appeared ridiculous to the majority. Moreover, Symeon’s presence in the city is an anomaly. The ascetic “belongs” in the desert. Symeon’s shamelessness is also anomalous; holy people are supposed to behave in accord with a rigid set of norms which above all emphasize self-containment and self-control. Nevertheless, Leontius challenges his audience by mixing shamelessness and sanctity, and by placing holiness in the city. This sanctity where it does not belong, this “dislocation” of the holy, parallels the Orthodox teachings on the incarnation itself, in which the divine comes to dwell among a humanity deemed unworthy. The incarnate Christ himself is an anomaly which ennobles the creation, sanctifying it by the divine presence. Thus Symeon, dislocated from the desert, brings holiness to Emesa, just as God, dislocated from the divine realm, brings holiness to humanity.

The fact that the Emesans do not recognize the holiness that dwells among them is an extension of this incarnational theme. Symeon’s concealed identity draws on the secrecy motif in the Gospel of Mark. As with Jesus, those who benefited from Symeon’s actions knew him and eventually proclaimed his true identity, but most were mystified. Symeon and Jesus struggle to conceal their identity from those who witness their miracles and battles with demons. Jesus tells those whom he has cured not to tell others (Mk 1:44) and forbids the demons to speak because they know him (Mk 1:34). Similarly, Symeon forbids those whom he heals or reforms to reveal his identity: The deacon’s son, out of whom Symeon casts the demon of fornication, is unable to speak the name of the one who cured him until after the saint’s death (p. 150); the juggler whom Symeon convinces to give up the theater can say only that “[s]ome monk wearing a crown of palm branches” appeared to him in his sleep (p. 150); Symeon strikes dumb the Jewish artisan who sees him conversing with two angels at the baths (p. 154).^[16] Like Mark’s Jesus (cf. Mk 3:21–22), Symeon appears to others to be possessed by demons, although the demons themselves know better.^[17] While under such a guise Symeon and Jesus bring salvation. Moreover, Symeon’s secret work as a moral reformer is an imitation of Christ. By setting the confrontation with evils, both grave and petty, in the city of Emesa, Leontius explores the significance of the concealed Christ for an urban population.

Symeon in the City

In the Life of Symeon, Leontius implicitly locates the message of the gospel in the Christ’s significance as a moral reformer, preparing the earthly city for the new Jerusalem. Leontius addresses the problem of living a holy life in an urban environment, an environment which was by its nature profane. This focus contrasts with the themes of many classic saints’ lives. In many works composed between the fourth and the seventh centuries, the holy man lives outside the city, choosing to remain on the fringes of society. While it would be wrong to argue that these texts preclude the living of the holy life within the walls of the city, nevertheless, these texts surely problematize such an endeavor.^[18] In Athanasius’s Life of Antony, the anonymous text known to scholars as the History of the Monks of Egypt, Palladius’s Lausiac History, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History, the city is understood as a danger to the holy life, in opposition to the desert, where the holy man can achieve sanctity.^[19] In the various lives of Symeon the Stylite the populace of Antioch pours into the countryside to see the saint high atop his pillar. And in the life of his follower, Daniel the Stylite, the saint situates himself up the Bosphorus from the imperial capital, entering Constantinople only to rally its inhabitants in defense of Orthodoxy. John Moschus’s collection of saints’ lives, the Spiritual Meadow, also carries an antiurban tone. Symeon, however, leaves the desert and goes to the city, and specifically to the market. What happens when the holy man goes to the center of the city, to the marketplace, which presents a feast for all the appetites, for gluttony, avarice, and lust? Perhaps the first impression which the Life of Symeon offers is that the only way to be holy in the city is to be crazy. But Leontius’s message is more subtle than this.

Just as Symeon is a figure for Jesus, the Emesa which he visits is a figure for Jerusalem, which itself is already a figure for God’s creation, a world which God is determined to save by sending messengers to instruct its inhabitants. When early in the Life Symeon and John pray for divine guidance to help them determine whether they should take the path toward the monastery, they invoke God “who would save the whole world” (p. 125). In a clever reversal, in leaving the desert, Symeon states his intention to “mock [ἐμπαίζω] the world” (p. 142), a world which had once mocked Christ. And it is as part of God’s plan of salvation that Symeon comes to Emesa to behave as he does.

Leontius is concerned with preparing his own city for the restoration of Jerusalem. At one point in the Life of Symeon, the saint encounters ten men washing their clothes outside the city (p. 163). This scenario recalls a passage in the Book of Revelation concerning those who will enter into the new Jerusalem:

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers [φαρμακοί] and fornicators [πόρνοι] and murderers and idolaters, and every one who loves and practices falsehood. (Rv 22:14–15, trans. RSV)

This passage reads like a dramatis personae for the Life of Symeon the Fool, which includes a sorceress (p. 162), fornicators (pp. 149–50, 151), murderers (pp. 159–60), and even dogs. Through implicit comparison with the holy city, Leontius poses the question, Will the residents of Emesa ever be ready for the Kingdom of God?

Jerusalem, both heavenly and earthly, is never far from Leontius’s mind. In addition to the events in the Life of Symeon modeled on Jesus’ activities in and around the “holy city,” Jerusalem itself figures twice in the narrative. Leontius opens the Life with Symeon and John’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Leontius tells how the “friends of Christ” come “eager to venerate Christ’s holy places in the holy city” (p. 124). From the beginning, Leontius meditates on Jesus and Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the locus of Christ’s sacred activities, activities which in turn impart holiness to the earthly city. Symeon and John’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem is the catalyst for their conversion to the holy life.

Later in the narrative, Symeon travels again to Jerusalem. After twenty-nine years in the desert practicing the ascetic life (p. 142), the same length of time which preceded Jesus’ own entry into Jerusalem, Symeon goes first to “the holy city of Christ our God.”^[20] He visits “Christ’s holy and life-giving tomb, and the holy, saving, and victorious Golgotha” (p. 144). He remains in the city for a significantly numbered three days visiting “the Lord’s all-holy places.” Here it is that Symeon prays “that his works might be hidden” until his death so that he might “escape human glory [δόξα]” (p. 144). Symeon then travels to Emesa to begin his work.

The contrast between the holiness of Jerusalem and the profanity of Emesa could not be starker, and it is further enhanced by Symeon’s transgressive and defiling behavior. In Emesa, in order to prepare the inhabitants for salvation, Symeon pretends to be crazy.

[Symeon] played all sorts of roles foolish and indecent, but language is not sufficient to paint a picture of his doings. For sometimes he pretended to have a limp, sometimes he jumped around, sometimes he dragged himself along on his buttocks, sometimes he stuck out his foot for someone running and tripped him. Other times when there was a new moon, he looked at the sky and fell down and thrashed about. (p. 155)

Symeon babbles in public, an activity which Leontius informs his reader is “most fitting and most useful to those who simulate folly for the sake of Christ” (pp. 155–56); he walks about naked (p. 149) and creates havoc in the marketplace by interfering with commerce (p. 157), eating freely without purchasing food (pp. 146, 158), giving some goods away (p. 146), and completely destroying others (pp. 146, 147, 163, 165). It is also here in the market that Symeon defecates (p. 148).

Leontius, we must remember, was an urban bishop. His tales of Sym-eon’s activities reflect the role of the market in the Late Antique city. The market was the primary public space in the smaller cities of the Later Roman Empire. Such institutions as the theater and the hippodrome, which had been so important in the Eastern Mediterranean before the fourth century, became less important with the rise of Christianity, although they did not disappear. Urban planning in Late Antiquity tended to emphasize two main foci, the church and the marketplace. (Thus the Late Antique city has more in common with the early Islamic city, whose primary organization is based on the relationship between mosque and marketplace, than with the classical Greek polis organized around a large number of public institutions.) The markets of the East Roman Empire were not centers of production; the economy in the region remained overwhelmingly agricultural. The market, however, was an important structural element of Late Antique economic life and the center of urban activity.^[21] Furthermore, in a society where a substantial portion of the population lived under constant threat of starvation,^[22] the market came to embody, at some times, wealth and prosperity; at other times, the prospects for survival.

Although some evidence suggests that by the late sixth century, both the agriculture and the cities of Syria and Egypt were in decline, scholarly debate on the topic has yet to reach a consensus.^[23] A combination of plague, earthquake, and in the early seventh century invasion (both Persian and Arab), as well as an estrangement from imperial authority (in part a result of theological differences), left many cities beleaguered and vulnerable. The degree to which the cities of Cyprus were affected by these trends is uncertain. The evidence presented in chapter 1 suggests, on the contrary, that in the first half of the seventh century the Cypriot economy was relatively prosperous. The evidence of vibrant market life in the Life of Symeon, produced on Cyprus in the 640s, strengthens an argument for general economic health. Leontius wrote the Life of Symeon the Fool in the midst of the Arab conquest: Emesa had fallen in the previous decade, in 634; Alexandria, about which Leontius wrote in his only other extant biography, the Life of John the Almsgiver, had fallen in 641. Although one might expect that Leontius’s vivid portrayal of flourishing urban life in these two cities was prompted by an element of nostalgia, neither text suggests that the economy which Leontius describes in his writings is different from the economy with which he was immediately familiar.

As we have seen, Symeon’s activity in Emesa is modeled on Jesus’ activities in Jerusalem. Just as Jesus enters the city to perform certain deeds which will lead to the salvation of the city’s inhabitants, Leontius’s Symeon enters Emesa to save souls (pp. 142, 157). Although, as Leontius informs his audience, some of Symeon’s deeds were merely intended to conceal his sanctity, “Some of the deeds the righteous [Symeon] did out of compassion for the salvation of humans” (p. 149). Like Jesus in Jerusalem, Symeon in Emesa has a specific mission, preparing the inhabitants for salvation. But how is this salvation to be effected? What are the urban laity to do? Leontius’s evocation of the city and Symeon’s interactions with those who populate it focus on two themes: namely, concerns for the poor and for religious conformity.

Symeon and the Poor

On his way out of the churchyard and into the market, Symeon overturns the tables of the pastry chefs, a deed which recalls Jesus’ activities in the temple. The casting out of those buying and selling and the overturning of the tables of the money changers were interpreted by some allegorizing biblical commentators, Origen among them, to refer not merely to trade in the temple but to Christians who, in Origen’s words, were “inclined to merchandize,” those whose business activities were considered unworthy of the Kingdom of God.^[24] Leontius uses Symeon’s overturning of tables full of pastry, slapstick though it is, to introduce his concerns about the place of commerce and the “love of money” in the Christian community.

Leontius sets much of Symeon’s activity in the marketplace and in other venues where commercial activity takes place. Demons reside in Emesa’s stores (pp. 147, 153–54) and in its market (p. 157); and these are among the demons which Leontius’s Symeon seeks to drive out. Once in the market, Symeon is offered a job by the owner of a phouska-stand. Leontius writes, “When they set him up one day, Symeon began to give everything away to people and to eat, himself, insatiably” (p. 146). In fact, Symeon gives all the food away to the poor and to other monks, so that at the end of the day, the food is gone and the cash box is empty. The phouska-seller and his wife, who are (not incidently) Monophysite heretics, are furious; they beat Symeon and pull his beard. Symeon’s behavior is both comic—the deeds of a madman—and saintly, since he feeds the hungry, donating to the poor food which the phouska-seller intends to sell at a profit to those who are able to pay.

As we saw above, on two other occasions, Symeon performs miraculous feedings, going far beyond Jesus’ wine, loaves, and fishes (Mk 6:32– 44 and parallels, Jn 2:1–11), adding jams, meatballs, and cakes for dessert (pp. 159, 163–64). He provides five former circus fans with a miraculously replenishing supply of bread (p. 164). In the world of Late Antiquity feeding the poor and hungry was a miracle in itself, a meritorious act of saintly compassion.

In Symeon’s second job, he is employed carrying buckets of hot water in a tavern. But, as Leontius narrates,

The tavern keeper was heartless, and he often gave Symeon no food at all, although he had great business, thanks to the Fool. For when the townspeople were ready for a diversion, they said to each other, “Let’s go have a drink where the Fool is.” (p. 147)

Symeon perceives that the Devil has come to reside in the heartless tavern keeper’s shop and proceeds to smash all the jars of wine until the Devil is rooted out, at which point the tavern keeper is reformed, literally “edified” (οἰκοδομήθη). The tavern keeper’s heartlessness is exemplified by the fact that he does not feed the poor monk; presumably the tavern keeper’s edification involves learning to use his food and his profits to assist the poor.

Leontius is not opposed to commercial activity. Throughout the text, either through his folly or his miracles, Symeon brings prosperity to the citizens of Emesa. The tavern keeper’s sales increase thanks to Symeon’s presence (p. 147). Later Symeon advises a mule driver to open a tavern, which Symeon presages will turn a profit. Leontius says, “And when [the mule driver] opened it, God blessed him” (p. 165), that is, with good business. Symeon befriends the wealthy citizens of Emesa, whom he also reforms (pp. 151, 162–62). Leontius’s point, however, is that those who benefit from commerce must support the poor.

Leontius’s concern for the poor is made most explicit through Symeon’s relationship with John, the deacon of the church in Emesa, the only person in Emesa with whom Symeon does not play the fool (cf. p. 160). At one point, Symeon saves John from execution when he has been framed for a murder and falsely convicted (pp. 159–60). Symeon explains to John the reason for his misfortune:

The trial came to pass because yesterday two beggars came to you, and although you were quite able to give to them, you turned them away. The things which you give, are they yours, brother? Or do you not believe in Him who said that you will receive a hundredfold in this age and eternal life in the age to come? If you believe, give. And if you don’t give, it will be manifest that you don’t believe in the Lord. (p. 160)

Symeon expresses a similar message in the sermon he preaches to John shortly before his death.

I beg you, never disregard a single soul, especially when it happens to be a monk or a beggar. For Your Charity knows that His place is among the beggars, especially among the blind, people made as pure as the sun through their patience and distress. . . . [S]how love of your neighbor through almsgiving. For this virtue, above all, will help us on [the Day of Judgment]. (pp. 166–67)

Here Symeon drops his persona of folly and obscurity and speaks plainly. Here too, we must imagine, Leontius momentarily abandons his role as a storyteller and speaks directly to his audience, an audience which must have had the means to donate to the poor. Here Leontius addresses the same concern he had addressed earlier and in more explicit detail in the Life of John the Almsgiver: the role of the poor in the salvation of the wealthy.

For Leontius, almsgiving, above all, will help on the Day of Judgment. While such an act does not overturn the social structure implied by the market, it does counteract some of its imbalances. At the same time, it allows those who benefit from the economic system to contribute to their own salvation. Complete detachment from the workings of the market, by leaving the city completely and retiring to the desert, was not an option for the urban laity. So Leontius instructs his congregants that concern for the poor is a crucial component in the Christian’s effort to meet the challenge of living the moral life in an urban setting.

Symeon and Religious Conformity

Leontius’s interest in religious uniformity echoes the imperial project which had been intensified during Heraclius’s reign, calling for the holiness of Byzantine society in the face of external Persian and Arab threats. Many of the people whose conversion Symeon effects represent the intractable nonconformists of Leontius’s early Byzantine world. Jews and heretics resisted joining the Orthodox community, and as such, Leontius’s narrative represents a “wish fulfillment.” Mid-seventh-century Cyprus had both Jewish and Monophysite populations,^[25] who no doubt remained problematic in the eyes of a local bishop such as Leontius. Symeon achieves a degree of religious conformity in Emesa which Leontius could portray only as the work of a holy man. In fact, Symeon’s successes in converting those generally regarded as intractable should be counted among the deeds attesting to his sanctity: for Leontius and his audience, such achievements were truly miraculous.

One of the artisans mentioned in the text is a Jewish glassblower (p. 163). Symeon breaks many of the drinking glasses in his shop by making the sign of the cross over them. He tells the glassblower that he will continue to break the glasses until the glassblower becomes a Christian. Eventually, in desperation, it would seem, the Jew makes the sign of the cross on his forehead and seeks baptism. This episode should surely be added to the collection of texts which suggest a rise in tensions between Jews and Christians during the first half of the seventh century.^[26] Nevertheless, the episode is in keeping with Symeon’s attempts to convert all non-Chalcedonian and immoral elements in the city. He converts the phouska-seller and his wife, both Acephalic Severian Monophysites, by sending a demon in the form of an Ethiopian to destroy their shop, “smash[ing] everything in sight” two days in a row until “in dire straits, they became Orthodox” (pp. 153–54). Another Jewish artisan, who has seen Symeon conversing with angels at the baths, is struck dumb and is threatened with being forced to beg until he is baptized together with his household (p. 154). Similarly Symeon reforms the sorceress who makes and sells amulets, since through her practices she was turning people away from God and toward herself (p. 163). In each case Symeon threatens the livelihood and economic status of those Emesans who are not members of the Chalcedonian Orthodox Christian community, conforming to the beliefs and practices which Leontius himself, as Chalcedonian bishop of Neapolis, represents.

Leontius does not limit Symeon’s activities as a religious reformer to converting those who are not Orthodox in belief; he is also concerned with those Chalcedonians who do not conform to appropriate Christian practice. Symeon’s success in reforming prostitutes belongs to the same class of miracles as his conversion of the non-Orthodox, since prostitutes were regarded as irredeemably drawn to immoral behavior.^[27] Furthermore Symeon reforms the tavern keeper’s heartlessness (p. 147), curbs the deacon’s son’s urge to fornicate (pp. 149–50), and makes the juggler abandon performing in the theater (p. 150). He bribes five circus fans into abandoning their enthusiasm for the circus (p. 164). He chastises the goat thief (p. 161). He corrects one wealthy man who beats his slaves (p. 162) and another who cheats on his wife (pp. 165–66). He reforms not only prostitutes (pp. 155, 156) but ill-behaved schoolgirls (pp. 157–58). He even scolds his confidant, the Deacon John, for neglecting the poor (pp. 159–60).

In Leontius’s narrative, Symeon achieves his goal of saving souls, a goal with obvious implications for the moral well-being of the city. Leontius writes:

While the saint was there [in Emesa], he cried out against many because of the Holy Spirit and reproached thieves and fornicators. Some he faulted, crying that they had not taken communion often, and others he reproached for perjury, so that through his inventiveness he nearly put an end to sinning in the whole city. (p. 162)

In his native Neapolis, Leontius’s flock of Chalcedonian Christians would have come into contact regularly with heretics and nonbelievers; there too his community of the faithful would have encountered sin. Purifying the city was one of Symeon’s goals. Ridding the marketplace of unbelievers and profiteers lacking in compassion was part of this purification. Through his activities, Symeon attempts to make Emesa resemble the ideal Jerusalem, the heavenly city free from sin. We must conclude that Leontius’s composition of such a narrative was intended to effect a similar change in his own community.

Symeon’s work as a moral reformer is “Christomimetic”; Leontius locates the significance of the Christ for his urban audience in Jesus’ preparation of the earthly city for salvation. It is perhaps surprising that the practical message of such a challenging work is so conventional: support the poor and live the morally upright life of a faithfully orthodox Christian. But this inverted Christ-figure is still a Christ-figure. In the end, the method of the tale may appear more remarkable than its moral. However, Symeon’s resemblance to the Christ articulates an important theological question, namely, the nature of holiness. Averil Cameron has pointed to the importance of paradox in Late Ancient Christian literature.^[28] The most important Christian paradox, of course, was the Orthodox teaching on the incarnation. In proclaiming “the Word made flesh,” Orthodox theologians preached the joining of the divine to the human and, thus, the human to the divine.^[29] This teaching blurred the distinction between the sacred and the profane, eradicating human convention through divine logic. The protagonist of the Life of Symeon embodies this paradox. The fool reenacts the work of the savior from triumphal entry to empty tomb. Through his strange tale, Leontius prompts his reader to reconsider the mystery of the Christ.

Notes