Between Heaven & Earth

To a modern eye, St. Simeon Stylites is likely to seem a kind of 5th-Century Shipwreck Kelly*--a symbol of ascetic reductio ad absurdum. To that view, his 38-year residence atop a pillar was only a Syrian sideshow that attracted the curious. The vulgar error of a vulgar age, says Father Augustin C. Wand, S.J., in the current American Ecclesiastical Review. "Simeon the Stylite is not a character about whom we Catholics need to be apologetic."

St. Simeon faced the age-old dilemma of the religious ascetic: how to gain spiritual strength by withdrawing from mankind and at the same time to minister to man's spiritual needs. Simeon's overardent followers tore at his clothes for souvenirs, played hob with his devotions by their importunate chatter. He escaped by mounting a pillar. Fellow monks fashioned for him a small but sturdy limestone column, then gradually increased the height.

Perched on the pillar's yard-square tip, 60 feet above the earth, Simeon could pray or preach as he chose. In actual fact he spent much time and energy corresponding with Christendom's leaders, settling individual and tribal disputes, dispensing personal counsel (men, but no women, might consult him privately). When he died in 459, Simeon the Stylite held an influential place in the early Christian church, and his holy example soon dotted the plains of Syria and upper Mesopotamia with anchorite-bearing pillars. ^

* Alvin ("Shipwreck") Kelly, most publicized of flagpole sitters, who lived on an Atlantic City flagpole for a mere 49 days.

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