Among the ignorant there is always admiration for the not-understood, and
in former times nothing was less understood than hysteria. The original
source of a thousand superstitions, and of most idolatries, lies in the
sense of surprise, wonder, into which the mind is thrown by seeing that
which it cannot explain. A remarkable rock, a queer shell, peculiar eyes
in a man or woman, a curious fruit, like the _coco-de-mer_, awaken
admiration, perplex the untaught mind, and superinduce religious
reverence. What strikes the imagination thenceforth provokes the
instinctive awe felt for the supernatural. Now nothing is more calculated
to astonish those who know naught of nervous disorder than the phenomena
attending hysteria and its allied maladies. Consequently, not only have
hysteric patients been for a long period regarded as specially allied with
the spiritual powers, but so also have the insane, because insanity is
particularly amazing to the man with his wits about him. To the present
day in the East epilepsy is regarded as something sacred, and idiocy and
madness as divine possession. It is not marvellous that some men and women
in rude times, who were subject to fits, were scrofulous, hysterical, and
lived out of the ordinary mode of life, should have been given a character
for sanctity that scarcely perhaps was their due. Hysterical persons have
a strange craving after sympathy, a hunger after notoriety, and will
endure much self-imposed torture to obtain that which to their vanity is
dearer than bodily ease.
Motives in this world are much mixed, and nowhere more mixed than in
hysterical saints, where the glory of God and the glorification of self
are inextricably involved.
It is not in the least surprising that some of the crazy saints we shall
now consider should have been canonised by the popular voice; what is
extraordinary is that they should have been accepted and inserted in the
lists of those who are recognised by the Church as models of holiness, and
that in a later and more critical age they have not been kicked out of the
association to which they were ill qualified to belong. We will begin with
the story of St. Symeon the Fool.
I