Week of 2 January: Simeon Stlyites
One of my students favorite saints that I talk about in my Western Civilization classes is St. Simeon Stylites. His feast day in the Catholic Church is this week, Wednesday, 5 January, so he seemed a good topic for my weekly Sunday post.
Simeon was born in Sis, in what is today southern Turkey, around 390 CE. This was after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, and many people around the Roman Empire were embracing the new faith at the time. When Simeon was 13, he heard the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew and decided to become a monk. Monasticism was growing at this time - since Christianity was no longer illegal, many of the people who would have embraced martyrdom during the era of persecution now turned to lives of asceticism and prayer instead. Many followed the practices of desert monastics like St. Anthony, who ventured into the Eastern Desert of Egypt around 270 CE and spent the rest of his life in the wilderness.
One of the key practices of monasticism was asceticism, the abstinence from physical pleasures and the embracing lifestyles of extreme abstinence. Monks would deny themselves food, comfortable clothing, even the comfort of things like laying down. These renunciations were offered as sacrifices to God and as methods of taming sinful inner natures and desires.
Simeon, apparently, was too extreme in his asceticism for the other monks at the first monastery he travelled to. When the monks at the monastery fasted for a few days, Simeon would fast for a whole week. Famously, he tied a rough, palm cord around his waist. The chafing from the cord caused him to bleed, but he refused to remove the cord or allow the other monks to tend to his wound. His extreme asceticism was considered dangerous and he was expelled from the monastery, lest other students try to copy him and die.
He decided to live on his own, instead. First, he shut himself in a hut for a year and a half. During this time, he fasted for the entire length of Lent. When that wasn’t enough, he decided to standing continually upright until his body couldn’t hold him up any more.
The thing you have to realize, though, is that he wasn’t really alone. These monks in the desert never lived *too* far from small villages and other outposts of civilization, and many of the villagers nearby flocked to ascetics like Simeon. He became a spiritual leader, a resolver of conflicts and a symbol of holiness. And this seems to have really annoyed him.
He kept trying to into increasingly remote places, hoping to escape from the crush of popularity. He moved into a crack in Mount Simeon in northern Syria. From there, he headed to some ruins in Telanissa (modern Taladah in Syria). In the ruins he found a 10 ft. tall pillar that had survived. He climbed up the pillar and built a small 3’ x 3’ platform on the top. And then he stayed there. (Eventually, a little fence was built around the edge of the platform for safety.)
His plan didn’t work in one respect. The people kept coming, now from even further afield, seeking his advice and prayers. Eventually, a compromise was reached. A double wall was built around the pillar. Women would stay outside of the outer wall. Men could come into the space between the two walls. And then, every afternoon, some of the men could come inside the inner wall and climb a ladder to speak to Simeon. The rest of the day, they left him alone to his devotions.
Over time, the community built increasingly tall pillars for Simeon to sit on. The final pillar was supposedly 50 ft. tall! And he stayed on top of the pillars, only coming down to switch pillars every few years, for 37 years!
He was called Simeon Stylites or Simeon the Stylite because stylite means “pillar” in Greek. He had correspondence with various Roman Emperors and church leaders across the Eastern Roman Empire. A letter from him was even read at the Council of Chalcedon, helping to build support for what would become the orthodox position on the nature and persons of Christ.
He died on 2 September 459 CE, but the practice of “pillar sitting” didn’t end with him. Some of his disciples immediately built pillars for themselves and lived lives as “stylites” after his death. The practice would continue in Syria until the 12th century. Apparently some in the Russian Orthodox Church continued the practice until 1461! There’s even an Orthodox monk in Georgia (the country, not the state) who is trying to revive the practice today. There’s a documentary about him on Amazon, though I haven’t watched it so I don’t know if its any good.