The Christian Church has conferred sainthood on many people - but there cannot be many who were as bizarre as Simeon the Elder (Feast day - 5th. January), otherwise known as Simeon the Stylite or Simeon Stylites, the man who lived alone on the top of a tall stone pillar in the desert for more than thirty six years.
St. Simeon believed that, because the Lord had suffered, His followers should be prepared to suffer too, in fact, should invite suffering. As a young monk in his native Syria, Simeon acquired a reputation by chaining his right leg to a rock and performing miracles, mostly by healing people who flocked to visit him. Although these miracles may have been invented by later writers, it is a matter of record that Simeon had himself walled in during Lent, and that he allowed vermin to crawl over his body rather than harm them. His behaviour bordered on the fanatical, and people travelled hundreds of miles just to catch a glimpse of him. At first he welcomed the attention, but he soon began to find it a nuisance. He was a man who craved solitude, and in desperation he decided that the only way to escape the crowds while getting closer to God was to live on top of a pillar. This supreme act of self-mortification, in which Simeon was far from unique, was designed to elevate the devotee above the worldly pressures and disturbances of day-to-day living.
In AD423, at the age of thirty three, Simeon settled on one of a number of stone columns in the village of Telnishe in north Syria, having first experimented with living in a confined space by taking up residence on a rock ledge. This, his first residential column was 6 feet high, but during the following six or seven years, he moved on to higher columns, finally settling on the tallest which was over seventy feet high. For thirty years, he never came down from the top. Food was delivered by ladder, but no one was encouraged to stay and keep him company on the top of the column, which was about two feet square and probably surrounded by a railing to stop him rolling off when he was asleep. It was open to the heat of the sun in summer and the rain in winter.
Simeon lived a life of fasting and prayer. A follower once tried to count the number of prostrations Simeon made in rapid succession from his kneeling position during prayer. He gave up when he reached l,244 and Simeon was still praying. His disciples, who gathered around the base of the column, listened intently to every word he shouted down. Simeon was highly regarded as a preacher, a visionary and a settler of disputes. For example, the text of a letter still exists in which certain priests pledged, at Simeon's insistence, never to charge more than six per cent interest on money loaned, instead of the more usual twelve per cent. He also corresponded with important people, sending petitions to the Roman emperor Theodosius 11 on behalf of the Syrian bishops, or arguing theology with the Patriarch Basil of Antioch. He dictated his letters by shouting down from the pillar.
In his own day, Simeon was venerated, but his popularity owed as much to the common people's love of eccentricity as to his stature in the Church. A few people argued that his self-imposed punishment served no useful purpose and, with the possible exception of some Lebanese, he made few lasting converts. Nevertheless, when he died in AD459, his death was initially kept secret to prevent his followers from carrying off the blessed body. Even so, a few of his teeth were stolen at some point and have since become holy relics. He was buried with much ceremony in the great church of Constantine in the Syrian city of Antioch, which had recently suffered from two earthquakes. Its citizens hoped that St. Simeon would guard them against future disasters. Within a few years of his death a vast pilgrimage centre had developed around the pillar on which he had lived. The pillar was soon reduced to a stump, hacked away by relic seekers, and all that remains today is a ruined church originally erected for pilgrims.
Although Simeon was its most famous exponent, the cult of stylitism (living on a pillar) was popular among Eastern Christians as far afield as Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia. It was originally a pagan practice, but it was enthusiastically taken up by the early Christian Church in the East. It remained popular there until well into the 12th century, but it never caught on in the West, except briefly in 19th-century Russia. Some stylites with less fortitude lived in small huts on their pillars, while others lived in hollows inside them. One eccentric spent ten years hanging in a tub suspended between two poles. Stylites were fanatics, motivated by a form of religious masochism that has rarely been equalled. The most fanatical was not St Simeon, but rather St Alipius, who was said to have lost the use of his feet after standing on a pillar for fifty three years, and had to spend the next fourteen years on the pillar lying on his side.
written by Bill Hutchings
Return to the September 1999 Features page
return to Home page and main index
page last updated 22 AUGUST 1999