Note 32 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.
Elizabeth Juliana Sabine translation
p. 16.—“An American Stylites.”
The founder of the sect of the Stylites, the fanatical pillar-saint Simeon Sisanites, the son of a Syrian herdsman, is said to have passed thirty-seven years in religious contemplation on the summits of five successive pillars, each higher than the preceding. The last pillar was 40 ells high. He died in the year 461. For seven hundred years there continued to be men who imitated this manner of life, and were called “sancti columnares” (pillar saints). Even in Germany, in the Diocese of Treves, it was proposed to erect such aerial cloisters, but the Bishops opposed the undertaking (Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. 1755, p. 215.)