Thus, unwashed, clothed in rags, their hair uncut, their faces unshaven, they lived for years.  No wonder that to their disordered fancy the desert was filled with devils, the animals spake and Heaven sent angels to minister unto them.

The Pillar Saint

But the strangest of all strange narratives yet remains.  We turn from Egypt to Asia Minor to make the acquaintance of that saint whom Tennyson has immortalized,—­the idol of monarchs and the pride of the East,—­Saint Simeon Stylites.  Stories grow rank around him like the luxuriant products of a tropical soil.  How shall I briefly tell of this man, whom Theodoret, in his zeal, declares all who obey the Roman rule know—­the man who may be compared with Moses the Legislator, David the King and Micah the Prophet?  He lived between the years 390 and 459 A.D.  He was a shepherd’s son, but at an early age entered a monastery.  Here he soon distinguished himself by his excessive austerities.  One day he went to the well, removed the rope from the bucket and bound it tightly around his body underneath his clothes.  A few weeks later, the abbot, being angry with him because of his extreme self-torture, bade his companions strip him.  What was his astonishment to find the rope from the well sunk deeply into his flesh.  “Whence,” he cried, “has this man come to us, wanting to destroy the rule of this monastery?  I pray thee depart hence.”

With great trouble they unwound the rope and the flesh with it, and taking care of him until he was well, they sent him forth to commence a life of austerities that was to render him famous.  He adopted various styles of existence, but his miracles and piety attracted such crowds that he determined to invent a mode of life which would deliver him from the pressing multitudes.  It is curious that he did not hide himself altogether if he really wished to escape notoriety; but, no, he would still be within the gaze of admiring throngs.  His holy and fanciful genius hit upon a scheme that gave him his peculiar name.  He took up his abode on the top of a column which was at first about twelve feet high, but was gradually elevated until it measured sixty-four feet.  Hence, he is called Simeon Stylites, or Simeon the Pillar Saint.

On this lofty column, betwixt earth and heaven, the hermit braved the heat and cold of thirty years.  At its base, from morning to night, prayed the admiring worshipers.  Kings kneeled in crowds of peasants to do him homage and ask his blessing.  Theodoret says, “The Ishmaelites, coming by tribes of two hundred and three hundred at a time, and sometimes even a thousand, deny, with shouts, the error of their fathers, and breaking in pieces before that great illuminator, the images which they had worshiped, and renouncing the orgies of Venus, they received the Divine sacrament.”  Rude barbarians confessed their sins in tears.  Persians, Greeks, Romans and Saracens, forgetting their mutual hatred, united in praise and prayer at the feet of this strange character.