Theophilus and Mary.
About the year 530 there appeared in the streets of Amid a merry-andrew (mimus) and his female companion, who seemed to be a prostitute. People of the kind were no rarities even in the pious East, but this couple attracted special attention by their youth and beauty. The public witnessed their performances with pleasure, but treated them, as was also the custom, with brutality; the poor creatures received many little presents, doubtless, but not without kicks and cuffs. With nightfall they regularly disappeared, and no one could find out where they had gone. Some men of influence, whose carnal passions had been inflamed, now procured from the governor an order that the woman should be given over to prostitution; but a God-fearing lady named Cosmo rescued her, took her to be with herself, and exhorted her to a better life. She listened to the advice with penitential mien, but forthwith returned to her companion. Now, however, a pious man named John, an acquaintance of John of Ephesus, began to suspect something extraordinary about the pair. With much trouble he discovered the retreat where their nights were spent, and saw them engaged in long-continued prayer. He now came up to them and asked an explanation. With great reluctance they consented, but only after he had solemnly promised upon oath to tell no one as long as they continued in Amid, and even to treat them with the usual contumely wherever he should see them in public. Their story, which they told the following night, was that their names were Theophilus and Mary, and that each was an only child of noble and prosperous Antiochenes. When Theophilus was fifteen years of age, he went on to say, he one night discovered, in a stall of his father’s stables, a poor man, who had hidden himself there in the litter against the cold; his mouth and hands emitted a halo, which Theophilus alone could see, and which disappeared whenever the servants entered. The holy man, at his urgent entreaty, confessed to him (but only on condition of secrecy) that his name was Procopius, a Roman, who had fled from home to escape his approaching marriage. He predicted to Theophilus the approaching death in that year of his parents, and of those of his affianced bride, and exhorted him on this event to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, and himself to live a consecrated life in disguise; the lady also was to do the same. They actually did as they had been bidden, and lived in virginity together, while in the eyes of the world they appeared to be living in shameful immorality. For a whole year John held regular communication with this saintly pair; at the end of that time they disappeared, and for seven years he sought for them in vain; but John of Ephesus once afterwards met them near Tella (south of Amid, towards Edessa).
The author says that his informant had assured him upon his solemn oath of the truth of this story; and though one might be tempted to suspect that the pious man had simply been the victim of a couple of impostors, I, for my part, believe the narrative to be accurate in its main features. The light that proceeded from the holy beggar, and his prophecy, need not mislead us. The story, which comes to us through two intermediaries, may unintentionally have received various touches of the marvellous, and, above all, some account must be taken of the religiously excited fancy of the young man himself, which perhaps was full of such figures as that of the Roman “man of God”[[102]] fleeing from his nuptials, whose double the Procopius of our narrative is. It is indeed the very height of unnatural self-abnegation when a virtuous maiden of even excessive spirituality ventures to assume the disguise of a common prostitute so as to bear the full shame of sin for the glory of God.
“Opfer fallen hier
Weder Lamm noch Stier
Aber Menschenopfer unerhört.”[[103]]
These Syrians were too apt to hold everything natural for wickedness; and yet unbridled sensuality was by no means unknown in their circle.
| [89] | For the pagan world compare Jacob Burckhardt, Constantin (2nd ed.), p. 218. |
| [90] | I am told by one who knows, that most Indian ascetics, who in self-mortification in other respects, as a rule, go far beyond the Christian, pay strict attention to cleanliness. There are, however (or have been), ascetics in India, also, who have abjured washing. |