SIMEONE STILITA il VECCHIO, saint. — He is commemorated on 5 January in the Latin Church and on 2 September in the Eastern Church. We have the contemporary testimony of Theodoret of Cyrus concerning him, and other accounts dating from little later (BHG, 1678–87). Born at Sis in Cilicia around 390, he died on 24 July (according to others, on 2 September) 459.
A shepherd in his youth, enthused by the doctrine of the evangelical beatitudes, he sold his possessions and withdrew to a monastery (410). But the strange penances to which he devoted himself led people to consider him incapable of continuing the communal life, and so he was dismissed (412). He then went to Tell Nešim, where he built himself a small stone hut. Three years later, he is said to have had himself chained to a rock. These austerities earned him great consideration among the surrounding populations; to escape their indiscretion, he withdrew onto a pillar. He is regarded as the founder of this new form of asceticism called stylitism, or rather stylism. Many marvelous things are related about him, but it cannot be denied that he exercised a real and beneficial spiritual influence both among Christians and among pagans, who, attracted by his fame, approached his pillar, which thus became a chair of ascetic doctrine: twice a day he preached to the crowds and then, with great kindness, concerned himself with the spiritual and material needs of each person.
At his death, his body was transported to Antioch. Toward the end of the fifth century, a magnificent basilica was erected around S.’s pillar; its imposing remains can still be admired today, and it bears the original name of Qal'at Sim'an. Letters to John and Basil, patriarchs of Antioch, and to the Byzantine emperor Leo I in favor of the Council of Chalcedon are known under his name. Other writings, prescriptions, admonitions, etc., are of doubtful authenticity (v. STILITI).