Epilogue. Amida and Constantinople: Holy Presence

Private contemplation of the divine and personal ascetic pursuits do have their place in John's presentation, but their purpose is specifically allotted and not portrayed as self-justifying. John does not disapprove of those who follow such practices, but the infrequency and the brevity of his accounts on such subjects indicate their secondary position in his scheme; they are congruous with his overall portrait only when their wider context is established. So, for example, with Thomas and Stephen, the single-minded seclusion of the first and the selfless labors of the second are juxtaposed in such a way that each is validated by the other. But an impressive statement of John's perspective on solitary practice can be found in his two accounts of holy fools.

The holy fool represented an ultimate severance from the temporal world, one so complete as to be completely internalized. Consequently, it was displayed by disguised immersion in the most debauched and cruel aspects of urban society.^[110] Where the ascetic ideal focused on life in a space apart from urban society—in desert, wilderness, monastery, or convent—the holy fool achieved the ideal condition wherever he or she might be in utter estrangement. Dead to the world, no worldly space existed for them: they inhabited only the realm of divine contemplation.

John's most elaborate account is of two holy fools, a man and a woman living in spiritual marriage, who stayed for a time in Amida.^[111] Their story is unique in the Lives for it is told secondhand, although John does claim to have seen the couple in Tella.^[112] The literary incongruity of the story has led to the view that it may be fiction, a story within a story, which John included in his Lives for its edifying value.^[113] Such a piece is

wholly uncharacteristic of John in this collection; however, the chapter's function in light of John's views remains the same in either case.

The couple masqueraded by day as mime actors, hence as harlot and pimp; they received daily abuse and humiliation. Yet by night they could not be found by those who wished to buy the woman's favors. While they were in Amida, a monk had noticed the strange matter and followed the couple secretly, only to discover that under shield of darkness their profession was not what it had seemed. By night, they prayed in a remote spot on the city walls until dawn threatened their privacy; the air around them shone with radiance. Distressed at having been discovered, and unable to convince the monk that he must publicly abuse them as the crowds did each day, they left for another city to retain their anonymous practice.

The story's actual setting and the couple's perfection offset one another. The couple had been drawn in particular to Amida: "We like being in this city which is a city of Christians."^[114] Further, their religious practices were exercised on Amida's city walls.^[115] But as John himself had recounted elsewhere, Amida's experience of tragedy in the sixth century had been overwhelming.^[116] Its walls had been the scene of treachery and slaughter; its citizens had endured a religious war within their own ranks. Yet this couple had found the city good, "a city of Christians," and had blessed by their acts of prayer the very walls that once had brought destruction.

True or not, the story provides John with a moving statement of redemption and divine favor for the city and its people, themes that are most often his central focus. The Amidan ascetics are affirmed and legitimized here by this outside witness: divine grace was thus made manifest in Amida. The ascetics' own authority could only be strengthened by such testimony.

John recounts one other appearance of a holy fool, this one taking place in Constantinople.^[117] In contrast to the romantic tones surrounding the couple in Amida, this encounter is clearly genuine; but the contextual parallels are striking. John himself had observed a certain beggar who fearfully fled any offer of charity. Thinking this poor man must in reality be "a spiritual person," John sent one of the monks from his monastery at Sycae to follow him. The monk discovered the man in the act of prayer and, finding the spectacle so powerful, fell into a state of hysteria lasting the entire day despite John's efforts to calm him. When they finally achieved a dialogue with the beggar, he expressed the same loathing of public recognition that the couple in Amida had.

He told John's monk that he was one of seven men leading a life of poverty, anonymity, and ascetic labor in Constantinople; and that the group of them met once each week for the Eucharist and for encouragement. He, too, begged to be left alone and nameless in his labors.

I have given you the information; see that you do not make yourself the cause of my moving from this city, in which I have much peacefulness, and especially the fact that I am reckoned a madman by them, and there is no one who speaks with me. And beg the abbot [John of Ephesus] that though these things are known to him, he will leave me as I am, and not show any difference toward me.^[118]

As discussed earlier, like Amida, Constantinople was caught in the hardships of war, political unrest, and Bubonic Plague. Themselves refugees from the tragedy of the Byzantine East, John and the Monophysite community labored among Constantinople's populace just as they and their comrades had done in the city of Amida. The encounter with the holy fool once again served to offer hope for salvation; grace was present even in Constantinople despite the times. Once more, John's ascetics are granted authority by contact with a practice of single-minded contemplation of God; likewise, this man could pursue his solitary practice with integrity because of its complement in the labors of John's ascetics.

In the course of his Lives , John presents several portraits of virtuous solitaries, set in the various locales of his stories. Thus he reminds his readers that he is writing in praise of lives devoted to the divine. They serve to emphasize that spiritual authority and its temporal extension are grounded in a vision of holy presence and divine grace in society's world. And nowhere does John say this more clearly than in his tributes to these holy fools.