“From his sixteenth to his twentieth year,” says Kingsley, “he was sheltered
from the heat and rain in a tiny cabin, which he had woven of rush and sedge.
Afterwards he built a little cell, four feet wide and five feet high,—that is lower
than his own stature, and somewhat longer than his small body needed,—so that
you would believe it a tomb rather than a dwelling. He cut his hair only once a
year, on Easter Day, and lay till his death on the bare ground and a layer of
rushes, never washing the sack in which he was clothed, and saying that it was
superfluous to seek for cleanliness in hair-cloth. Nor did he change his linen
until the first was utterly in rags. He knew the Scriptures by heart, and recited
them after his prayers and psalms as if GOD were present.”
Of S. Simeon Stylites we read that, having gone to the well one day to draw
water, he took the rope from the bucket, and wound it round his body from his
loins to his neck, and going in, he adventured an audacious falsehood, for he said
to his brethren, “I went out to draw water, and found no rope on the bucket.”
And they said, “Hold thy peace, brother, lest the Abbot know it, till the thing has
passed over.” But the tightness and roughness of the rope wore grievous wounds
in his body, as the brethren at last discovered. Then with great trouble they took
off the rope, and his flesh with it, and attending to his wounds, healed them.
For twenty-eight years of his life he was continually experimenting in long fasts
—forty days at a time. Custom gradually made it comparatively easy to him. For
on the first days he used to stand and praise GOD; after that, when through
emptiness he could stand no longer, he would sit and perform the divine office,
and on the last day even lie down. For when his strength failed slowly, he was
forced to lie half dead. But after he stood on the column he could not bear to lie
down, but invented another way by which he could stand. He fastened a beam to
the column, and tied himself to it by ropes, and so passed the forty days. But
afterwards, when endued with greater grace from on high, he did not need even
that assistance, but stood for the whole forty days, dispensing with food, but
strengthened by eagerness of soul and the divine help.
At length he caused a pillar to be built, first of six cubits, then of twelve, next of
twenty-two, and finally of thirty-six, and upon the top of this he took his station.
The sun beat upon his bare head in the summer, and the winter snows fell upon
him, and the pitiless rains soaked him to the skin,—but still he endured his self-
imposed penance. He bowed himself frequently, offering adoration to GOD; so
frequently that a spectator counted 1244 adorations, and then missing gave up
counting; and each time he bowed himself, he touched his feet with his forehead.
And ever in spirit he deprecated the wrath of an offended GOD, to Whom, as a