Simeon Stylites: The Ascetic Who Lived Atop a Pillar For 37 Years
Some live frugal lives. Some renounce meat and alcohol. Some live in seclusion. Some even go to extreme cases of self-torment such as fasting and self flagellation. And then, there are the pillar-dwellers that became very common during the early days of Christian monasticism. Simeon developed a passion for Christianity after hearing a sermon on the Beatitudes as an early teenager. Before he was sixteen, he had abandoned the tending of his father’s flocks and entered a monastery....