Laudator Temporis Acti

Miracles of Saint Thekla 7.2-3, tr. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Miracle Tales from Byzantium (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 27 (footnote omitted; angle brackets in original):

In the middle of the night, while Dexianos was seated on the privy, there stood before him a demonic creature, wild and raving mad. As soon as he perceived it standing next to him—<he knew it was there> because, even though he was sitting in pitch black darkness, <he could see> it was panting, leering, and making insane noises—he was stupefied and trembled with fear, completely overwhelmed with dread and drenched with sweat. And because of his great fright, his head and his neck slipped from their normal base and position, and the vertebrae were no longer aligned and slipped out of joint with one another, his head trembled and was shifting all around. As a result, there was common grief among those who saw him <in this state>.

What then did the martyr do? Recognizing the demon who had done this, and pitying the miserably afflicted man, <whom she knew> as a priest, an honorable man, and her own attendant, immediately she delivered him from his suffering, so that even so great an affliction as this ceased immediately and disappeared through the miracle.

Labels: noctes scatologicae