Simeon Stylites or Symeon the Stylite[n 1] (Greek: Συμεών ό Στυλίτης; Syriac: ܫܡܥܘܢ ܕܐܣܛܘܢܐ, romanized: Šimʕun dʼAstˁonā; Arabic: سمعان العمودي, romanized: Simʿān al-ʿAmūdī c. 390 – 2 September 459) was a Syrian Christian ascetic, who achieved notability by living 36 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo (in modern Syria).

The three sources exhibit signs of independent development; although they each follow the same rough outline, they have hardly any narrative episodes in common.

From the first day, he gave himself up to the practice of an austerity so extreme that his brethren judged him to be unsuited to any form of community life.

But crowds of pilgrims invaded the area to seek him out, asking his counsel or his prayers, and leaving him insufficient time for his own devotions.

[2] In order to get away from the ever-increasing number of people who came to him for prayers and advice, leaving him little if any time for his private austerities, Simeon discovered a pillar which had survived among ruins in nearby Telanissa (modern-day Taladah in Syria),[9][10] and formed a small platform at the top.

For sustenance, small boys from the nearby village would climb up the pillar and pass him parcels of flat bread and goats' milk.

[citation needed] When the monastic Elders living in the desert heard about Simeon, who had chosen a new and strange form of asceticism, they wanted to test him to determine whether his extreme feats were founded in humility or pride.

Edward Gibbon in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire describes Simeon's life as follows: In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers and the cold of as many winters.

Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion.

He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account.

The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column.

In contrast to the extreme austerity that he practiced, his preaching conveyed temperance and compassion and was marked with common sense and freedom from fanaticism.

In the face of the withdrawal of wealthy landowners to the large cities, holy men such as Simeon acted as impartial and necessary patrons and arbiters in disputes between peasant farmers and within the smaller towns.

They are located about 30 km northwest of Aleppo (36°20′03″N 36°50′38″E / 36.33417°N 36.84389°E / 36.33417; 36.84389) and consist of four basilicas built out from an octagonal court towards the four points of the compass to form a large cross.

On 12 May 2016, the pillar within the church reportedly took a hit from a missile, fired from what appeared to be Russian jets backing the Syrian government.

James Hamilton-Paterson's Gerontius, a work of fiction based on Sir Edward Elgar's actual voyage to Brazil in 1923, includes a dream sequence in which the acolyte Rahut charges "dreamers" a fee to be allowed to ascend to the top of the pillar for a conversation with the ascetic.

Awe mingles with horror as the visitor's "head sinks to the level of a pair of monstrous feet from whose rotting toes curl yellow nails."