Saint Simeon Stylites

Saint Simeon Stylites was a Syrian monk and ascetic, the first of the so-called stylites, hermits who lived on top of a pillar. For more than thirty-five years he prayed and fasted on a pillar near Antioch, and crowds of pilgrims came to him for counsel and blessing. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on July 27.

He was born at the end of the fourth century in the village of Sis, on the border between Syria and Cilicia; the exact year is not known. He came from a Christian family and as a boy tended sheep. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, who knew him personally and described his life while Simeon was still alive, relates that the boy heard in church the Gospel of the blessing promised to those who weep and mourn, and from then on sought a life given to God.

He spent about ten years in the community of monks at Teleda. His mortifications were so severe that his superiors told him to leave, so that weaker brothers would not try to imitate him. He moved to Telanissos, where he lived for three years in a small hut and for the first time spent the whole of Lent without food; from then on he did so every year. Later he settled on a rocky hill, inside an enclosed circle, and chained his foot to the rock. He took the chain off when he was persuaded that his own will was enough.

Ever larger crowds came to the hermit. People wanted to touch him and left him no time for prayer, so Simeon went to live on top of a pillar. The pillars were replaced by ever higher ones: the first was less than three meters high, the last more than fifteen. He lived on it in the open air, without shelter, but he did not cut himself off from people. Visitors climbed up to him by a ladder, and twice a day he spoke to those gathered below, settled disputes, and wrote letters to bishops and emperors. He urged Emperor Leo I to remain faithful to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon.

His fame spread far beyond Syria. Theodoret, an eyewitness, writes of whole groups of Arabs receiving baptism at the foot of the pillar, and of pilgrims from Persia and Armenia, and even from Spain, Gaul, and Britain. In Rome small images of Simeon were placed at the entrances of workshops. John Paul II, speaking in Damascus in 2001, called him a living icon of holiness in his time, a man of ceaseless prayer and of a charity open to all.

Simeon died in 459. His body was taken to Antioch under a military escort, and the inhabitants kept the relics there as a protection for their city, which had no walls. At the end of the fifth century a great church in the shape of a cross was built around the pillar; its ruins, known as Qalat Siman, survive in northern Syria. Older editions of the Roman Martyrology commemorated Simeon on January 5. He has been venerated since antiquity, without a formal canonization. The Life written by his disciples says that through the sufferings of his servant God wished to rouse the world from its deep slumber.