By Carol Miller^*

"Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still."
George Lamb

"Come in under the shadow of this rock," pleads Christian historian George Lamb, echoing St. Simeon the Elder, reputedly the first and definitely the most famous of the long succession of stylitoe, or "pillar hermits", who during more than six centuries, writes theologian Herbert Thurston, "acquired by their strange form of asceticism a great reputation for holiness throughout eastern Christendom."

According to Philip Hitti, in his book History of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, the founder of the ascetic movement was St. Anthony of Egypt, who followed his faith into life as a hermit in the desert, and who died c. 360 A.D. A Palestinian monk named Hilarion, a disciple of Anthony's, was credited with introducing asceticism into southern Syria and Gaza toward the end of the fourth century. Ascetic communities came to flourish around Antioch, says historian Shawol Sha'ath, of the National Museum of Aleppo, to such an extent that by at the beginning of the fifth century they had caught the attention, and the concern, of ecclesiastical authorities, in part because of the "troublesome controversy over the Monophysite heresy", based, says Ross Burns, "on pseudo-theological and contradictory interpretations of Christ's human and divine natures". The polemic had swelled to a backlash, in effect a revolt, of Syrian Christians against Constantinople's domination.

Yet while asceticism, even in its most austere form, continued well into the fifteenth century, Simeon the Elder was acknowledged as the first Stylite, as such, and so inspired a sequence of successors. He was followed, for example, by St. Simeon Stylites the Younger, an ordained priest from Antioch who offered communion to those among his followers who climbed a ladder to the top of his pillar and who according to Evagrius fed only on the branches of a shrub that grew near the town of Theopolis; and he was succeeded in turn by Simeon Stylites III, honored by both the Greeks and the Copts, who was said to have been struck by lightning on his pillar.

It was, in any case, Simeon the Elder whose impassioned faith, obsessive austerity, and purity of spirit, served the interests of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as a "buffer of piety", and who caught as well the "respectful attention" of the Emperor Theodosius and the Empress Eudocia, inspired the reverence of the Emperor Leo and, says Sha'ath, "aroused the wonder and admiration of Muslim Arabs and Persians, as well as the Christian sects".


John Gilmary Shea, in Lives of the Saints, tells us that: "One winter's day, about the year 401 A.D., when the snow lay thick around Sisan, a little town in Cilicia… a shepherd boy, who could not lead his sheep to the fields on account of the cold, went instead to the church to hear the eight Beatitudes being read that morning." The child was so deeply impressed he asked how these blessings could be obtained. "He was told of the monastic life, and so a thirst for perfection arose in him. And he went on to become the wonder of the world, the great Saint Simeon Stylites, given by God in spectacle to Angels and men."

The child was warned, however, that "perfection" would "cost him dear" and that it could not be attained without first conquering self. Evagrius, in Ecclesiastical History, I.13, tells us that "In these times [c. 440 A.D.], there flourished and became illustrious, Simeon, of holy and famous memory, who originated the contrivance of stationing himself on the top of a column, thereby occupying a space of scarce two cubits in circumference. This man, endeavoring to realize in the flesh the existence of the heavenly hosts, lifts himself above the concerns of the earth, and overpowering the downward tendency of man's nature, is intent on things above. He was adored by all the countryside, wrought many miracles, and the Emperor Theodosius II listened to his advice and sought his benediction."

Says English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, of St. Simeon Stylites,

"Although I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin."

William Stearns Davis, in his Readings in Ancient History, decries what he describes as "the [obsessive] practices of the monks of the Greco-Oriental church", yet Evagrius extols that fact that "Simeon prolonged his endurance of this mode of life through fifty-six years, nine of which he spent in the first monastery where he was instructed in divine knowledge, and forty-seven in the "Mandra" as it was called; namely ten in a certain nook; on shorter columns, seven; and thirty upon one of forty cubits."

From childhood, says Shea, "he bound a rope round his waist until the flesh festered. He desired solitude and spent three years as a hermit in a cabin at the base of a mountain." Says Herbert Thurston that "After this he sought a rocky eminence in the desert and compelled himself to remain a prisoner within a narrow space less than twenty yards in diameter. But crowds of pilgrims, attracted by his extreme mortifications, invaded the desert to seek him out, asking his counsel or his prayers and leaving him insufficient time for his own devotions."

This eventually obliged him to seek "a new way of life". So Simeon had a pillar erected with a small platform at the top, "and upon this he determined to take up his abode until death released him." He spent thirty-seven years exposed to the sun and the wind, to the heat and the cold, standing in prayer, never seen to lie down. During his early years on the column, says Thurston, "there was on the summit a stake to which he bound himself in order to maintain the upright position, particularly during Lent, when he fasted and was weak," but later his followers had a railing attached to the platform at the top of the column, to keep kept him from falling.

At first the pillar was little more than three meters high, but "as he was besieged by his followers it was subsequently replaced by others, each time higher," the last in the series being apparently nearly twenty meters off the ground. "Even on the highest of his columns Simeon was not withdrawn from intercourse with his fellow men. By means of a ladder which could always be erected against the side visitors were able to ascend; and we know that he wrote letters, including suggestions to the Emperor regarding councils or reforms, and we know also that he instructed his disciples, and that he also delivered addresses to those assembled below." He had, however, an aversion to women, so would turn his back on the crowd or order women to hide their faces.

According to Theodoret, a scribe who lived during Simeon's own lifetime and who documented details of the ascetic phenomenon, "he was visited by pilgrims from near and far, from Persia, Ethiopia, Spain, even Britain. To these at times he delivered sermons. He wore on his body a heavy iron chain. In praying, he bent his body so that his forehead almost touched his feet."

A spectator, says Theodoret, once counted 1244 repetitions of this movement, and then gave up his reckoning. "Simeon took one scanty meal per week, and fasted annually through the season of Lent. It is alleged that the devil having afflicted him with an ulcer in his thigh as reward for a little self-righteousness, Simeon, as penance, never touched the afflicted leg upon the pillar again, and stood for the remaining year of his life upon one leg."

At last, says Shea, "in the year 460, those who watched from below noticed that Simeon had been motionless for three whole days. They ascended, and found the old man's body still bent in the attitude of prayer; but his soul was with God."

Both Constantinople and Antioch claimed his remains. "Against local [Monophysite] resistance to the removal of his material self, after his departure [from this life] his holy body was conveyed to Antioch, intended as a protection for the unwalled city; it was escorted by the garrison, and a great concourse guarding the venerable body, lest the inhabitants of the neighboring cities should gather and carry it off."

St. Simeon's remains were later moved to a martyrium in Constantinople. "The body," says Evagrius, "has been preserved nearly entire until my time [c. 580 A.D.] and in company with many priests I enjoyed a sight of his sacred head, in the episcopate of the famous Gregory, when Philippicus had requested that the precious relic of the saint might be sent him for the protection of the Eastern armies. The head was well preserved save for the teeth, some of which had been violently removed by the hands of the pious [for relics]."

St. Simeon's fame spread throughout the region, and the site of his column became a perennial attraction for pilgrims, while his devotees chipped off chunks of the pillar, eventually leaving only a shapeless base. The practice of the "pillar hermit" was emulated not only by his namesakes, Simeon the Younger and Simeon III in the sixth century, but by other celebrated holy men, among them St. Alibiyus of Paphlagonia in the seventh century, St. Luke of Chalcedonia in the late ninth century, and St. Aleazar on Jalisiyun mountain near Ephesus (968-1054). And there are even references that indicate at least one, or perhaps several, women Stylites. But the most significant to the cause of preserving the mystique of Simeon the Elder was St. Daniel Stylites (409-493), a merchant from Constantinople who retired to the monastic life, but retained sufficient influence to appeal for imperial patronage on behalf of the construction of a commemorative church, to be considered a cult site.

Architectural innovation and typically Syrian design elements were blended with the metropolitan influences from Constantinople, and classically Byzantine styles. The project was conceived during the reign of Leo, who died before construction began. Zenon, his successor, continued the work, beginning in 476. Fourteen years later, in 490, the magnificent edifice in a singular style forever associated with northern Syria and considered one of the greatest of Zenon's architectural achievements, was finally completed.

"The ruins of the vast edifice erected in Simeon's honor," says Thurston, "were known as Qal'at Sim'an (Qalaat Samaan), the mansion, or castle, of Simeon. They remain to the present day between Antioch and Aleppo [philosophically as well as geographically], and consisted in four basilicas built out toward the four points of the compass in the form of a cross, departing from an octagonal court. In the center of the court stands what remains of the base of Saint Simeon's column."

"This edifice," wrote architectural historian H.C. Butler in Architecture and Other Arts, "unquestionably influenced contemporary and later church building to a marked degree, while it corresponded to a supreme effort of a provincial school of architecture which had borrowed little from Constantinople."

Byzantine art, in its more conventional expression, had been essentially devoted to expounding the doctrines of Christianity while it displayed, from Constantinople's point of view, the glory of the state. It began in vestments and tapestries, in mosaics and murals, to relate the life of Christ, the sorrows of Mary, the careers of the apostles or martyrs whose bones were often enshrined in the church, and ended by presenting Christ and Mary, says historian Will Durant, as an emperor and a queen.

The Byzantine artist, in actual fact, worked as part of a team, so seldom left a signature or a name for posterity. Usually he worked with mortared brick, which lent itself to the curved forms of the eastern styles. Often, especially after the raising of Simeon's church, which was considered eminently successful, he chose the cruciform plan - a basilica crossed with a transept and prolonged to an apse - or he broke the basilica into an octagon.

"But his distinctive skill," says Durant, "in which he surpassed all artists before him or since, lay in raising a circular dome over a polygonal frame, usually by means of the pendentive, that is, he built an arch or semicircle of bricks over each side of the polygon, raised a spherical triangle of bricks upward and inward between each semicircle,and laid a dome upon the resultant circular ring. The spherical triangles were the pendentives 'hanging' from the rim of the dome to the top of the polygon. In architectural effect, the circle was squared."

The spectacular ridge, overlooking a crusty, windswept valley that descends to the Orontes, in order to accommodate the colossal structure - termed the world's largest religious construction of the fifth century - had to be leveled and reinforced. The terrace to the west still overlooks the valley, and the monastery gardens, olive groves and pomegranate orchards. By the close of the fifth century a monastery complex, with cloister and chapel, had been attached to the southeastern quadrant of the cross that was formed by the four basilicas. A mortuary chapel was raised on a rocky promontory to the north. A baptistery was added some two hundred meters to the south, followed by annexes that included two hostelries. A "Via Sacra" connected the beautiful baptistery to the monumental arch at the entrance to the pilgrimage town of Deir al-Samaan - now one of the Dead Cities-just below the ridge. A series of particularly vehement earthquakes, however, in 526 and 528, struck northern Syria and caused severe damage in Aleppo, Antioch, and Seleucia, as well as to Qalaat Samaan.

When the Arab expansion of the seventh century displaced the Byzantines in the region, the great church and monastery were nonetheless allowed to remain under Christian control. A later weakening of the Islamic state during the Abbassid era, and again under the Hamdanids, nevertheless encouraged the Byzantine reconquest in the mid-tenth century, and permitted a return of pilgrims to St. Simeon, as well as the fortification of the entire religious complex, particularly along the edges of the ridge, to the east and west. "Simeon's Citadel", for over a century, thus served as the de facto frontier between Byzantium and the Hamdanid state in Aleppo. An inscription from this period commemorates works of restoration to the church, as well as the elaborate mosaic pavement, whose construction was jointly ordered by the Emperor Basil II and his brother Constantine VIII.
In 986 the Hamdanid prince Saif al-Dawlah, after a three-day siege, was able to recapture the fortress, which was nevertheless taken again in 1017 by the Fatimids, with an army brought from Egypt, by this time in control of northern Syria. The fortress, sadly, gradually lost its strategic significance, and so was eventually abandoned.

The centuries of the citadel's ascendance, however, represented a milestone in the history of the art and architecture of northern Syria, as evidenced by the tangible remains in several among the more than one hundred -- of the estimated total of perhaps 800-of the "Dead Cities" scattered across the coarse limestone formations of the Belus Massif, between the Orontes and Afrin rivers to the west and the Aleppo-Hama highway to the east. Grooved pilasters, capitals with acanthus motifs as well as the classical Corinthian or Ionian inherited from Greece and Rome, pillars used to round off the piers that support the arches - an idiosyncrasy later employed in Resafa-and decorative friezes among other design elements, often carefully sculpted, sometimes simply rustic and ingenuous, are uniquely bound to this region, which remained for all time an aesthetic accident or happenstance, supported by centuries of cultivation of the valleys and hillsides.

Yet agriculture as a general pursuit was unfortunately abandoned after the tenth century, possibly due to invasions or persecutions, among other human disruptions, but was inevitably associated as well with ecological damage attributed to deforestation, overgrazing and erosion. Equally significant, however, were the earthquakes and related climatic changes, which surely caused alterations in the level or availability of water.

The earliest settlement is dated 250 A.D., according to a study undertaken in the 1950's by the French Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology (FAPO) in Beirut, with palpable population expansion, especially of Syriac-speaking farmers and peasants, between 340 and 550, reasonably associated, especially toward the end of this time frame, with the droves of the faithful attracted to the pillar of St. Simeon. Population estimates leveled off during the late sixth and throughout the seventh centuries, but dropped during the rather abusive Abbassid years, considered hostile to Syria, traditionally a domain of the prior Umayyad dynasty. Modest resettlement after the Muslim recapture of the region in 1164 was reversed again under the Ottomans.

Most of the architectural remains are domestic, and in the absence of readily available wood built almost entirely - including stairways, cupboards, porticoes, balconies, benches, ceilings, roofs -- of the durable regional limestone; but include as well a remarkable diversity of public buildings, among them churches, tombs, and monasteries, some of them impressively ambitious, and extending as well to baths, administrative buildings, and commemorative works such as arches, as in Sergilla; and the rough dry walls of recycled stone both dressed and natural that define the lanes inside the towns - as at Al-Bara-- or that separate villas from orchards and groves as in Deir al-Samaan; and also the ancient roads, a number of them dating from Roman days, connecting the various communities. Many of these are now paved highways, facilitating access to the disperse towns and villages, with their random scattering of architectural memorabilia.

Carol Miller, is a sculptress and writer, devoted to her avid research of ancient cultures, from Mexico where she lives, or along her travels throughout the world. "Mari" is a chapter from a forthcoming book, soon to be available at Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Among her titles are "The Winged Prophet, from Hermes to Quetzalcoatl", with Guadalupe Rivera Marin, a study in comparative mythology; and "Travels in the Maya World", "The Other Side of Yesterday, the China-Maya Connection" and "Training Juan Domingo: Mexico and Me", exerpts of which can be viewed at http://www.xlibris.com/CarolMiller.html