Stylite

Palladius of Galatia tells of Elpidius, a hermit from Cappadocia who dwelt in a mountaintop cave outside of Jericho for 25 years until his death, eating only on Saturdays and Sundays and standing up worshiping throughout the night.

Critics have recalled a passage in Lucian (De Syria Dea, chapters 28 and 29) which speaks of a high column at Hierapolis Bambyce to the top of which a man ascended twice a year and spent a week in converse with the gods, but according to Herbert Thurston, an English priest of the Roman Catholic Church, scholars think it unlikely that Simeon had derived any suggestion from this pagan custom, which had died out before his time.

Simeon the Younger, like his namesake, lived near Antioch; he died in 596 and had for a contemporary a hardly less famous Stylite, Saint Alypius, whose pillar had been erected near Hadrianopolis in Paphlagonia.

[3] Roger Collins, in his Early Medieval Europe, tells that, in some cases, two or more pillar saints of differing theological viewpoints could find themselves within calling distance of each other and would argue with one another from their columns.

Wulflaich was a Lombard deacon who, according to Gregory of Tours, chose to live as a stylite in the diocese of Trier during the episcopate of Magneric (before 587) and the reign of King Childebert II (576–596).

Upon the summit of some of the columns, a tiny hut was erected as a shelter against sun and rain, and other hermits of the same class among the Miaphysites lived inside a hollow pillar rather than upon it.