St. Simeon Stylites the Elder From the Catholic EncyclopediaSt. Simeon was the first and probably the most famous of the long succession of stylitoe, or “pillar-hermitsâ€, who during more than six centuries acquired by their strange form of asceticism a great reputation for holiness throughout eastern Christendom. If it were not that our information, in the case of the first St. Simeon and some of his imitators, is based upon very reliable first-hand evidence, we should be disposed to relegate much of what history records to the domain of fable; but no modern critic now ventures to dispute the reality of the...