Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger

Simeon Stylites the Younger, also known as Simeon of the Admirable Mountain (Greek: Συμεὼν ὁ νεώτερος ὁ στυλίτης, Arabic: مار سمعان العمودي الأصغر mār semʻān l-ʻamūdī l-asghar; 521 – 596/597), is a saint in the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. Stylites were solitaries who, taking up their abode upon the tops of a pillar (stylos), chose to spend their days amid the restraints thus entailed and in the exercise of other forms of asceticism. Simeon was born at Antioch in 521. His father, John, was a native of Edessa, and his mother, named Martha was afterward revered as a saint. When Simeon was six years of age, his father was killed in an earthquake, after which he and his mother moved to the outskirts of the city. Like his namesake, Simeon seems to have been drawn very young to a life of austerity. He attached himself to a community of ascetics living within the mandra or enclosure of another pillar-hermit, named John, who acted as their spiritual director. Simeon while still only a boy had a pillar erected for himself close to that of John. In a letter to Thomas, guardian of the True Cross at Jerusalem, Simeon states that he was living upon a pillar when he lost his first teeth. In the course of this period, however, he several times moved to a new pillar, and on the occasion of the first of these exchanges, the Patriarch of Antioch and the Bishop of Seleucia ordained him deacon during the short space of time he spent upon the ground. For his efforts, Simeon is said to have received from God the gift of healing. For eight years until John died, Simeon remained near his master's column, so near that they could easily converse. During this period his austerities were kept in some sort of check by the older hermit. After John's death, Simeon gave full rein to his ascetical practices. From the rising of the sun until mid-afternoon, he read books and copied Holy Scripture.