“With all my heart,” answered the monk, and he forthwith peeled off his clothes, wrapped them in a bundle, and set them on his head.
“My brother!” exclaimed the Deacon, “put on your clothes again. I cannot walk with you in the public street in this condition.”
“Very well, friend, then I will walk first, and you can follow.” And stark naked, bearing his bundle “like a faggot” on his head, he stalked down the crowded thoroughfare.
The baths were divided into two parts, one for women, the other for men. Symeon ran towards the women’s entrance.
“Not that way!” shouted the Deacon in alarm; “the other side is for men.”
“Hot water here, hot water there,” answered Symeon; “one is as good as the other”; and throwing down his bundle, he bounded into the ladies’ compartment, and splashed in amongst the female bathers.
The women screamed, flew on him, beat, scratched, pushed him, and drove him ignominiously forth.
The biographer gravely informs us that on another occasion an unbelieving Jew saw Symeon privately bathing with two “angels,” and would have told what he had seen had not Salos silenced him. It was only after the death of the saint that the Jew related the circumstance. The Christians concluded that the two lovely forms with whom Symeon was enjoying a dip were angels. “To such a pass of purity and impassibility had the saint attained,” continues the Bishop of Neapolis, “that he often led the dance in public with an actress on each arm; he romped with actresses, and by no means infrequently allowed them to tickle his ribs and slap him.”[9]
Indeed, his biographer tells some stories of his association with very fallen angels, which are anything but edifying.
His antics in the streets and market-place became daily more outrageous. “Sometimes he pretended to hobble as if he were lame, sometimes he capered, sometimes he dragged himself along to the seats, then he tripped up the passers-by, and sent them sprawling; sometimes at the rising of the moon he would roll on the ground kicking. Sometimes he pretended to speak incoherently, for he said that this above all things suited those who were made fools for Christ. By this means he often refuted vice, or spat forth his bile against certain persons, with a view to their correction.”