Saint Symeon of Emesa, The Fool for Christ’s Sake

Publication Data: Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2014
Format: hardcover
Number of Pages: 138
Dimensions (l × w × h): 16.7 cm × 10.8 cm × 1.5 cm
Additional Information: black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 13: 978‒0‒943405‒17‒9
ISBN 10: 0‒943405‒17‒3

   
by Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis in Cyprus
Translated from the Greek by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery

“Our righteous and God-bearing Father Symeon of Emesa, after becoming a monk in his youth and spending three decades in severe asceticism in the desert around the Jordan, was called to return to the world to take up the difficult and perilous struggle of a Fool for Christ’s sake. Under the cover of ostensible madness, and apparently breaking almost every rule not of the monastic calling only but even of common propriety, he concealed an intensely sanctified life of inner prayer; and while burning with compassion for the lost, he seemed to outdo them in indecency even as he led them to salvation.”
—“Introduction”

CONTENTS

   Introduction
   Leontius’s Prologue
I Flight from the world
II John the Deacon
III How John and Symeon encouraged one another
IV The Monastery of Gerasimou
V They receive the tonsure
VI They take the holy schema
VII They withdraw from the monastery
VIII The desert
IX Symeon”s mother and John’s wife both repose
X Symeon quitteth the desert
XI He goeth to Jerusalem
XII He cometh to Emesa
XIII The tavern-keeper
XIV The women’s bath-house
XV The son of Deacon John
XVI The mime
XVII He foreseeth an earthquake
XVIII Two signs
XIX The monks’ dispute over Origen
XX The phouska-vendor’s conversion
XXI The Jewish journeyman
XXII Abba Symeon with the courtesans
XXIII The head man of the village
XXIV His abstinence
XXV He keepeth others from a demon
XXVI He maketh some girls cross-eyed
XXVII John the Deacon recogniseth his virtue
XXVIII The pious merchant of Emesa
XXIX How Abba Symeon saved Deacon John
XXX The rustic and the mustard
XXXI The rich man who whipped his slaves
XXXII His feeling for demoniacs
XXXIII He converteth a female diviner
XXXIV He converteth a Jewish glass-smelter
XXXV He converteth five hippodrome-fans
XXXVI The muleteer
XXXVII He healeth a magnate of Emesa
XXXVIII His non-possessiveness
XXXIX How his beard did not grow
XL His last exhortations to Deacon John
XLI His repose
   Epilogue