and the extravagant penance of the Hermits was stimulated by applause and emulation.[1] They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves, of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous incumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguished above his kindred animals; and a numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with the common herd.[2] They often usurped the den of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried themselves in some gloomy cavern which art or nature had scooped out of the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still inscribed with the monuments of their penance.[3] The most perfect hermits are supposed to have passed many days without food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking; and glorious was the man (I abuse that name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the seasons.
Simeon Stylites. A.D. 395-451 Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon Stylites[4] have been immortalized by the singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was suc-- ↑ Theodoret, in a large volume (the Philotheus in Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 793-863), has collected the lives and miracles of thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (l. i. c. 12) more briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.
- ↑ Sozomen, l. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a panegyric on these βόσκοι, or grazing monks (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. viii. p. 292).
- ↑ The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p. 217-233) examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia.
- ↑ See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 848-854), Antony (in Vit. Patrum, l. i. p. 170-177), Cosmas (in Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental, tom. i. p. 239-253), Evagrius (l. i. c. 13, 14), and Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. xv. p. 347-392). [On Simeon and the other stylite anachorets, see the monograph of the Bollandist, M. Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Stylites, 1895.]
