But this is the practice at its worst. Where there is more time
available, there is nothing insanitary in it. In the list of cures
at Tenos, to which I have alluded, there are many cases in which the
patient spent not one night only but several months in the church. As a
typical case I may take that of a sailor who while keeping look-out on
a steamer in the harbour of Patras had some kind of paralytic seizure.
He was taken to Tenos and for four months suffered terribly. Then about
midday at Easter he had fallen asleep and heard a voice bidding him
rise. He woke up and asked those about him who had called him; they
said no one; so he slept again. This happened twice. The third time
on hearing the voice he opened his eyes and saw entering the church a
woman of unspeakable beauty and brilliance, and at the shock he rose to
his feet and began to walk; and the same day accompanied the festival
procession round the town to the astonishment of all the people.
When I was in Scyros I heard of an equally curious case of a
long-deferred cure which had recently taken place and was the talk of
the town. For seven consecutive years a man from Euboea had brought
his wife, who was mad, to the church of S. George to ‘sleep in’ for
forty days. Shortly before I arrived the last of these periods was
just drawing to a close, when one night both the man and his wife saw
a vision of S. George who came and laid his hand on her head; and in
the morning she woke sane. Of her sanity when I saw her--for they
were still in the island, paying, I think, some vow which the man had
made--I had no doubt; and the evidence of the people of the place who
for seven years previously had seen her mad seemed irrefragable.
The instances which I have cited are from the records of churches which
have succeeded to the reputation possessed by Epidaurus in antiquity.
These owing to the enthusiasm which their fame inspires are probably
the scenes of more faith-cures than humbler and less known sanctuaries.
But in every church throughout the land the observance of the custom
may occasionally be seen; for in the less civilised districts at any
rate it is among the commonest remedies for childish ailments for a
mother to pass the night with her child in the village church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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