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.
On one occasion, he passed the whole Lent without eating.
When some of the monks went to check upon him in his hut, they discovered him unconscious.
The Church of Saint Simeon Stylites, in Aleppo, Syria.
But the young monk wanted to escape human company, not attract it.
Simeon climbed the pillar and found the solitude high up so refreshing that he refused to come down.
The first pillar that Simeon occupied was little more than 3 meters tall.
Simeon lived on top of the pillar for 37 years.
Ruins of the Church of Saint Simeon with remains of his column, now topped with a boulder.
The church was made up of four basilicas that emanated from the sides of a central octagon.
The octagonal crossing was surmounted by a dome; at its center stood Simeons column.
