The life of John and Symeon the Fool for Christ
When Symeon had reached a settled stillness of soul, he left John to their shared desert and went instead to the city of Emesa in Syria, where he spent the rest of his life pretending to be a madman. Behind that disguise, and the beatings and scorn it brought him from people who took him for genuinely deranged, he worked quietly for the good of the city, freeing people from demons, healing the sick, and turning both unbelievers and open sinners back toward God, all while giving the appearance of folly rather than holiness. Those who sought him out in the wilderness for counsel he sent back into Emesa, telling them to find the fool there instead, since it was there, hidden in plain sight, that his true work was done. Symeon reposed in the year 570, and before long John, who had remained faithful to their desert life to the end, followed him in death.
