Stylites
Encyclopedia
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
ascetic who in the early days of the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
stood on pillars preaching, fasting and praying. They believed that the mortification of their bodies would help ensure the salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
of their souls. The first stylite was probably Simeon Stylites the Elder
Simeon Stylites
Saint Simeon Stylites or Symeon the Stylite was a Christian ascetic saint who achieved fame because he lived for 39 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in Syria. Several other stylites later followed his model...
who climbed on a pillar in Syria in 423 and remained there until his death 37 years later.
Ascetic precedents
Palladius of GalatiaPalladius of Galatia
Palladius of Galatia was bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, and a devoted disciple of Saint John Chrysostom. He is best remembered for his work, the Lausiac History; he was also, in all probability, the author of the Dialogue on the Life of Chrysostom....
(chapter 48) tells us of a hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain and who for the space of twenty-five years never turned his face to the west so that the sun never set on his face. St. Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory of Nazianzus was a 4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople. He is widely considered the most accomplished rhetorical stylist of the patristic age...
(Patrologia Graeca
Patrologia Graeca
The Patrologia Graeca is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the ancient Koine or medieval variants of the Greek language. It consists of 161 volumes produced in 1857–1866 by J. P. Migne's Imprimerie Catholique...
37, 1456) speaks of a solitary who stood upright for many years together, absorbed in contemplation
Contemplation
The word contemplation comes from the Latin word contemplatio. Its root is also that of the Latin word templum, a piece of ground consecrated for the taking of auspices, or a building for worship, derived either from Proto-Indo-European base *tem- "to cut", and so a "place reserved or cut out" or...
, without ever lying down. Theodoret
Theodoret
Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus was an influential author, theologian, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus, Syria . He played a pivotal role in many early Byzantine church controversies that led to various ecumenical acts and schisms...
assures us that he had seen a hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
who had passed ten years in a tub suspended in midair from poles (Philotheus, chapter 28).
Simeon Stylites and his contemporaries
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
and which in 423 led Simeon Stylites the Elder first of all to take up his abode on the top of a pillar. Critics have recalled a passage in Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
(De Syria Dea, chapters 28 and 29) which speaks of a high column at Hierapolis Bambyce to the top of which a man ascended twice a year and spent a week in converse with the gods, but the Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...
argues that it is unlikely that Simeon had derived any suggestion from this pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
custom. In any case Simeon had a continuous series of imitators, particularly in Syria and Palestine. Daniel the Stylite
Daniel the Stylite
Saint Daniel the Stylite is a saint of the Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic Churches. He was born in a village by the name of Maratha in upper Mesopotamia near Samosata, in today what is now a region of Turkey. He entered a monastery at the age of twelve and lived there...
may have been the first of these, for he had been a disciple of Simeon and began his rigorous way of life shortly after his master died. Daniel was a Syrian by birth but he established himself near Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, where he was visited by both the Emperor Leo
Leo II (emperor)
Leo II was Byzantine Emperor for less than a year in 474. He was the son of Zeno and Ariadne, and maternal grandson of Leo I and Verina. As Leo's closest male relative, he was named successor upon his grandfather's death. After taking his father as colleague, he died of an unknown disease about 10...
and the Emperor Zeno
Zeno (emperor)
Zeno , originally named Tarasis, was Byzantine Emperor from 474 to 475 and again from 476 to 491. Domestic revolts and religious dissension plagued his reign, which nevertheless succeeded to some extent in foreign issues...
. Simeon the Younger, like his namesake, lived near Antioch
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...
; he died in 596, and had for a contemporary a hardly less famous Stylite, Saint Alypius, whose pillar had been erected near Hadrianopolis in Paphlagonia
Paphlagonia
Paphlagonia was an ancient area on the Black Sea coast of north central Anatolia, situated between Bithynia to the west and Pontus to the east, and separated from Phrygia by a prolongation to the east of the Bithynian Olympus...
. Alypius, after standing upright for 53 years, found his feet no longer able to support him, but instead of descending from his pillar lay down on his side and spent the remaining fourteen years of his life in that position. Roger Collins
Roger Collins
Roger J. H. Collins is an English medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh.Collins studied at the University of Oxford under Peter Brown and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill. He then taught ancient and medieval history at the universities of Liverpool and...
, in his Early Medieval Europe, tells us that in some cases two or more pillar saints of differing theological viewpoints could find themselves within calling distance of each other, and would argue with one another from their columns.
Other stylites
Saint Luke the YoungerLuke Thaumaturgus
Luke Thaumaturgus is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox, Byzantine Catholic, and Roman Catholic Churches. He lived as a hermit and stylite from the age of 18 until his death on Mount Joannitsa near Corinth...
, another famous pillar hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
lived in the 10th century on Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...
, but he also seems to have been of Asiatic
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
parentage. Daniel the Stylite
Daniel the Stylite
Saint Daniel the Stylite is a saint of the Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic Churches. He was born in a village by the name of Maratha in upper Mesopotamia near Samosata, in today what is now a region of Turkey. He entered a monastery at the age of twelve and lived there...
lived on his pillar for 33 years after being blessed by and receiving the cowl of St. Simeon the Stylite. There were many others besides these who were not so famous and even women Stylites were known. One or two isolated attempts seem to have been made to introduce this form of asceticism into the West but it met with little favour. In the East cases were found down to the 12th century; in the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
it lasted until 1461, and among the Ruthenians
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...
even later. For the majority of the pillar hermits the extreme austerity of the lives of the Simeons and of Alypius was somewhat mitigated. Upon the summit of some of the columns a tiny hut was erected as a shelter against sun and rain, and other hermits of the same class among the Miaphysites, lived inside a hollow pillar rather than upon it; but the life was one of extraordinary endurance and privation.
In recent centuries this form of monastic asceticism has become virtually extinct. However in modern day Georgia a monk of the Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
, Fr. Maxim, is restoring with aid from local villagers a small 1200 year old monastic chapel on top of Katskhi Pillar. The pillar is a natural rock formation jutting upwards from the ground to a height of approximately one hundred forty feet. It was known to be used by stylites as late as the 15th century when foreign occupation by the Islamic Ottoman Empire brought an end to the practice. Upon completion Fr. Maxim hopes to take up residence on top of Katskhi as a stylite monk. A film documentary on the project is planned.
Popular culture
- The Vertigo stunt performed by David BlaineDavid BlaineDavid Blaine is an American illusionist and endurance artist. He is best known for his high-profile feats of endurance, and has made his name as a performer of street and close-up magic. He has set and broken several world records...
on 22 March 2002 was in part inspired by the Pillar-Saints, as he declared in the TV documentary about this stunt.
Fiction
- In Mark TwainMark TwainSamuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's CourtA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's CourtA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court...
, the title character encounters a stylite who prays by MetanoiaGenuflectionGenuflection , bending at least one knee to the ground, was from early times a gesture of deep respect for a superior. In 328 BC, Alexander the Great introduced into his court etiquette some form of genuflection already in use in Persia. In the Byzantine Empire even senators were required to...
and uses the pedal motion to sew shirts describes as "St. Stylites". - Umberto EcoUmberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's BaudolinoBaudolinoBaudolino is a 2000 novel by Umberto Eco about the adventures of a young man named Baudolino in the known and mythical Christian world of the 12th century.Baudolino was translated into English in 2001 by William Weaver...
temporarily becomes a stylite towards the end of the book. - Luis BuñuelLuis BuñuelLuis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
's Simón del desiertoSimón del desiertoSimon of the Desert is a 1965 film directed by Luis Buñuel. It is loosely based on the story of the ascetic 5th-century Syrian saint Simeon Stylites, who lived for 39 years on top of a column....
(Simon of the Desert, 1965) is a humorous film about the life of a stylite. - In Terry PratchettTerry PratchettSir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
's Small GodsSmall GodsSmall Gods is the thirteenth of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, published in 1992. It tells the origin of the god Om, and his relations with his prophet, the reformer Brutha...
, a book from the DiscworldDiscworldDiscworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....
series, a character named St. Ungulant lives on top of a pole. - In the episode Souvenirs of the TV series M*A*S*H, Cpl. Klinger sets a pole sitting record.