The Healer Who Asked to Be Possessed

“Still, I will tell you of two more extraordinary marvels. The first will be a clear warning against the swelling of wretched vanity, and the second no small safeguard against the display of a false righteousness.

“A certain saint, then, who had almost incredible power to cast demons out of the bodies of those possessed by them, was performing unheard-of miracles day after day. For not only when present, and not only by his word, but also when absent, he would now and then cure possessed bodies with some threads taken from his garment or with letters he sent. So people came to visit him from every part of the world in astonishing numbers. I say nothing of those of humbler rank; but prefects, courtiers, and judges of various ranks often lay at his door. Even most holy bishops, laying aside their priestly dignity and humbly begging him to touch and bless them, believed with good reason that they were made holy and enlightened with a divine gift as often as they touched his hand and his garment. He was said always to abstain completely from every kind of drink, and for food (I will whisper this into your ear, Sulpitius, so that our friend the Gaul does not hear it) to live on only six dried figs. [a]

“But meanwhile, just as honor came to the holy man from his excellence, so vanity began to creep up on him from the honor paid to him. When he first noticed this evil growing on him, he struggled long and hard to shake it off; but for all his efforts it could not be completely rooted out, since he was still secretly aware of being under the sway of vanity. Everywhere the demons acknowledged his name, while he could not keep away the crowds that flocked to him. Meanwhile the hidden poison was working in his breast, and he, at whose nod demons were driven out of the bodies of others, was quite unable to cleanse himself of hidden thoughts of vanity. So, turning to God with fervent pleading, he is said to have prayed that the devil might be given power over him for five months, so that he might become like those whom he himself had cured. Why should I spend many words on it? That most powerful man, famous for his miracles and virtues through all the East, at whose threshold crowds had gathered and at whose door the highest dignitaries of that age had thrown themselves down, was seized by a demon and kept fast in chains. Only after he had suffered everything the possessed usually endure was he at last set free in the fifth month, not only from the demon, but also, what was more useful and more desirable to him, from the vanity that had lived in him.