The Age of Faith

by Will Durant

At Kalat Seman, in northern Syria, about 422, Simeon built himself a column six feet high and lived on it. Ashamed of his moderation, he built and lived on ever taller columns, until he made his permanent abode on a pillar sixty feet high. Its circumference at the top was little more than three feet; a railing kept the saint from falling to the ground in his sleep. On this perch Simeon lived uninterruptedly for thirty years, exposed to rain and sun and cold. A ladder enabled disciples to take him food and remove his waste. He bound himself to the pillar by a rope; the rope became embedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it, stank, and teemed with worms; Simeon picked up the worms that fell from his sores, and replaced them there, saying to them, “Eat what God has given you.” From his high pulpit he preached sermons to the crowds that came to see him, converted barbarians, performed marvelous cures, played ecclesiastical politics, and shamed the moneylenders into reducing their interest charges from twelve to six per cent.43 His exalted piety created a fashion of pillar hermits, which lasted for twelve centuries, and, in a thoroughly secularized form, persists today.