1One of the most daring forms of asceticism practiced in the Christian East in late antiquity was the practice known as stylitism. From the Greek word for column (stylos), stylites were ascetics who lived atop a tall pillar, exposed to the elements as they endured long fasts and vigils, various mortifications, often standing for extremely long durations. The most famous and paradigmatic of these stylites was Symeon the Elder, who attracted «rivers of pilgrims» and inspired later generations of imitators. Early on, disciples and pilgrims traveled great distances in search of healing, a blessing, or simply to gaze upon the spectacle of extreme austerities. Over the course of the next six centuries, no less than fifty stylites would follow Symeon’s example1.

2In contrast to wandering monks or pilgrims of late antiquity2, pillar saints appear to be fixed points in the landscape, so much so, as to be mapped by contemporary scholars. If Lukas Schachner’s study of their number, locations, and column heights is any indication, the ascetic was a landmark of sorts visible to travelers for miles around. As Schachner describes this «web of sightlines», along certain roads, travelers would have to travel over 10 km (or nearly three hours) to lose sight of a holy man. And within 2.4 km, they would have seen another in the distance3. An intersecting route towards Cyrus would have exposed the traveler to another five or six hours sighting ascetics. As fixtures in the Syrian landscape, stylites became one with the scenery so much so that many images of stylites portray them as merged with their column itself4.

3To be sure, the stylite’s immobility is difficult to miss in tales about his uninterrupted stance or in pillar iconography, which frequently includes ladders as a way to contrast the mobility of others with the stylite’s immobility. More than pilgrims and portable souvenirs were mobile. As cultural geographers have noted, the dichotomy between mobile persons and immobile places risks being overstated5. And the tendency to view the stylite holy man as the quintessential outsider runs the risk of overlooking how deeply implicated stylites were, not just in local communities, but also in a host of spatial practices6. They attracted pilgrims, founded monastic communities, gave rise to vast building projects of churches, baptisteries, monastic residences, and guest houses7. However immobile they appeared, they were also catalysts of long-lasting mobility. If places, in the words of geographers Mimi Sheller and John Urry "are […] not so much fixed as implicated within complex networks by which hosts, guests, buildings, objects, and machines are contingently brought together"8, so too were stylites capable of generating such activity.

4Yet, one does not need to rely on ironic mobility to appreciate the stylite’s own movements in space. In addition to the activities surrounding the column, hagiographers provided glimpses of stylite mobility. These ascetics did not cease all motion when they ascended the column. In the course of the decades they spent atop pillars, they were known to soar, roam, and hover somewhere between the altitude of the pillar and cosmic heights above them. Moreover, stylites built and thereby transformed spaces. All these practices are spatial in nature, whether material or imagined, and provide further evidence of stylite mobility. This essay considers the varieties of spatial practices described in the vitae of stylite saints. Situated somewhere between heaven and earth, stylites challenged spatial boundaries through liturgical, ascetic, and ecstatic performances. After a brief survey of this tension between fixity and flight in the vitae of early stylite saints, we shall turn to varieties of mobility in the life of Symeon Stylites the Younger (521-592 CE), whose terrestrial and celestial journeys shaped his building activities. This essay focuses on literary representations of stylites’ fixity and flight, as a way to explore the relation between mobility and narrative. As this essay suggests, immobility served to accentuate their cosmic mobility.

Fixity and flight in fifth-century stylitism

5Among the most famous of the pillar saints was Symeon Stylites the Elder (c. 388-459 CE), a Syrian who visited ascetics before he joined the monastery at Teleda. After ten years, he left for the northern village of Telanissos/Telneshe, where he lived first on a summit in a domed hut, then in the open air. As Charles Stang notes, Symeon spent much of his early ascetic career dwelling below ground, in a variety of cisterns, wells, and pits. These descents to subterranean dwellings preceded his ascent up the pillar. Stang detects an overlooked symmetry between Symeon’s movements downward, as he draws closer to demonic forces, and his eventual movements upward within reach of angelic powers. Through these stories, Symeon’s subterranean descents and heavenward ascents render the pillar not just an object fixed in place, but something more organic, a tree of life whose roots spread deep into the soil as its branches reach for the sky9. And like Jacob’s ladder (Gen. 28:12) or the ladders frequently depicted in stylite iconography, the column served as a cosmic passage between heaven, earth, and the underworld. Seen as part of a progression from «digging and descending to […] building and ascending», as Stang puts it10, each successively taller pillar (three in all) did not necessarily result in further immobilizing Symeon. On the contrary, it extended the cosmic span of his mobility.

6Greater altitude did not impede Simeon's mobility. His efforts to restrain his physical movements liberated him to pursue other types of movements. At his earliest elevation, according to one hagiographer, Theodoret of Cyrus, Symeon

ordered a circular wall to be made and had a chain twenty cubits long made out of iron. He fastened one end of it to a huge rock and attached the other to his right foot, so that even if he wanted to he could not leave the confines. He remained inside, keeping heaven always before his eye and forcing himself to contemplate what lies beyond the heavens, for the iron fetter could not hinder the flight of the mind11.

7In other words, he fixed his body in place in order to set a course for celestial and noetic wanderings.

8Perhaps the most mobile of the stylites was an imitator of Symeon, known as Daniel the Stylite (d. 493, BHG 489). After a visit to Symeon, Daniel was inspired to continue on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, only to abandon those plans when he encountered an old man (resembling Symeon), who exhorted Daniel to go to Constantinople instead. There he eventually settled on a pillar located in the outskirts of the imperial city. As the opening verse of an epigram, inscribed on his column described him: «Standing twixt earth and heaven a man you see […]»12. During the thirty-three years Daniel spent on his pillar, he sojourned in Constantinople for nine years, dispensing advice to emperors and members of the imperial court, calling out heretics and usurpers, healing the sick, and negotiating treatises13. Despite these displacements, he never came in contact with the ground; instead, he was carried on litters, through the streets of Constantinople14. Neither stylite practices nor spatial confinement prevented Daniel from departing the column to journey to political and ecclesial centers.

9It is worth pausing at this point to consider more closely the framework for these movements described thus far. Once situated on their pillars, Daniel and Symeon the Elder both remain immobile, yet they devise ways to move: for Daniel, through earthly terrain, and for Symeon, back and forth to cosmic regions. Their pillar, then, marks the transformation of place into space. What appeared a fixed backdrop for ascetic action, becomes in these narratives a space constituted through multiple movements. Or, as cultural theorist Michel de Certeau explains the distinction, place is an «indication of stability», whereas space is constituted by the «intersections of mobile elements»15. For our purposes, this dynamic conception of space can help us better appreciate the subtle relationships between stylites and the communities and visitors whose movements they inspired and even organized. As I suggest below, attending to space reveals how, despite his immobility, Symeon actually delimits, traverses, and reorganizes space.

Symeon Stylites the Younger

10Several generations after Symeon the Elder’s death, a young Syrian ascetic also named Symeon began living atop a pillar from the age of seven, first, in proximity to another stylite saint, John, then eventually establishing his own pillar and attracting a community of disciples. Over the course of the roughly 68 years he moved through a progression of ever higher columns. His final pillar stood at the Wondrous Mountain, approximately two days’ journey from Antioch, as the place became called. Eventually, he would oversee the construction of a monastery at the site. Not long after his death, an anonymous monk from this monastery composed in Greek a life of the stylite. One of the longest sacred biographies from Byzantium, the Life of Symeon Stylite the Younger (BHG 1689) comprises some 259 chapters, mainly miracle stories about Symeon’s healing of those afflicted with disease and suffering, as well as to protect cities from plague or invasion, combat Satan, and communicate with angels, until his death in 59216. Much of the vita recounts the growth of the monastic complex that surrounded Symeon’s column and the diversity of pilgrims who sought his powers. Not long after he died, a monk from Symeon’s community composed the Life, probably sometime during the first decade of the seventh century17. Nine manuscripts of the Life survive, including some versions in Georgian. That excerpts from the Life were read at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 suggests the Life was known widely beyond Syria18.

11Three types of mobility shape the Life’s portrayal of Symeon the Younger: 1) vertical mobility, as marked by a series of columns; 2) topographical mobility, as in the tales mapping the stylite’s presence well beyond the pillar; 3) place-making mobility, that is to say tales about the encounters between the stylite and other agents – human and otherwise – in the process of making of new places proximate to the column.

12Vertical mobility signals the progression of increasingly taller pillars that marked the stages of Symeon the Younger’s life. That organizational scheme is most evident in the penultimate chapter (258) of the sacred biography. Immediately following the stylite’s final discourse and death, the biographer recapitulates Symeon’s life as a series of ascents. He began his ascetic career on a pillar next to Abba John (for 6 years), then moved to a 40-foot pillar for the next 8 years. From there he went to the Wondrous Mountain (on a rocky base), where he spent the next 10 years, before spending the final 45 years on the great column. This synthesis of temporal with topographical marks the intersection of time and place19.

13Whereas vertical mobility charts the saint’s movements above the earth, topographical mobility follows the saint’s horizontal movements across the earth. Unlike posthumous saints’ lives, which tend to focus on bodily relics of the saint or miracles at the tomb, Symeon the Younger’s Life focuses instead on his relation to his «column cult»20. Many stories in the Life describe the miraculous healing properties of tokens made from earth at the base of the stylite’s pillar21. Although the majority of these stories are about holy dirt or tokens22, other objects serve as vessels of sacred energy: the fringe of Symeon’s garment23, holy water and the saint’s hair also effected miracles24. It mattered little whether the saint’s person came in contact with that dirt; what mattered more was that his column did25. One series of stories (ch. 230-236) includes several «off-site» miracles involving this dust: a blind man named Babylas encounters a vision of Symeon near a pharmacy; a priest returns home after a visit to Symeon only to encounter a vision of Symeon offering him a token with the assurance that the dust heals anywhere (ch. 231); a disciple Symeon sent to Constantinople carries some hair and dust of the saint and soaks them in water to dispense to the sick a draught with healing powers (ch. 232); a man whose hand was healed at the column encounters a skeptic on the way home, with the result that the saint withers the skeptic's hand and leaves it to rot, until he repents his doubt (ch. 234); and another traveling disciple, who kept dust of the saint with him, stills a storm at sea by mixing holy dust with water that he sprinkled into the sea and turned the water into barriers protecting the boat from waves (ch. 235-236). Taken together, such stories map the movement of disciples, substances, testimonials, and visions, well beyond the column, to urban as well as maritime settings.

14Unlike vertical or horizontal/topographical mobility, which tends to move in a single direction (whether upwards or outwards), the saint also has the ability to straddle a cosmic boundary and move freely across it in either direction. This interstitial movement is found in a block of chapters (esp. 15-39). Before discussing the contents of these episodes, their structure merits comment. As others have noted, the Life repeats sequences of stories. Vincent Déroche detects one such repetition between chapters 15-23 and 34-3926. Both sequences recount Symeon’s ascent up a column, his conversations with celestial beings (angels, seraphim, cherubim), his hut made of animal skins, demonic assaults in the form of phantasmata, and his ability to withstand fierce demonic efforts to topple his column. Before the doublet begins, there is a series of tales combining extreme austerity and discourses. The Life describes: the flesh-gouging cord he tied around himself and its putrid odor (ch. 26); a discourse to monks (ch. 27-28); Symeon’s vision of a series of ladders ascending to the heavens (ch. 29); exposure to winter wind and ice as a result of giving away his last garments to the poor (ch. 30); he suffers a gangrene which fused his two legs together, until he is healed by divine intervention (ch. 31); another speech – though this time while filled with the Holy Spirit – to the monks (ch. 32-33). Then the sequence resumes: the erection of a column, the hut made of skins, and demonic attacks.

15The patterning of these interstitial stories, nested between the pair of repeated episodes suggests that Symeon straddles two communities: that of monks and that of demons. Even the horrid episode of gangrene has an interstitial quality, as Symeon underscores his resolve to endure the winter elements, by invoking the example of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, who froze to death in winter by being made to stand in a lake as it froze solid, turned to «dry land» by the frost27. Like the forty martyrs, Symeon endured brutal winter conditions. Like the frozen lake that solidified into «land», winter fused Symeon’s legs into a solid mass, echoing Jacob of Sarug’s account of Symeon the Elder who became fused to his column by a decaying and exposed foot, as he sang «my foot stands straight and does not bend»28.

16From this web of echoes connecting Symeon the Younger to the forty martyrs as well as to Jacob of Sarug, it is evident that Symeon’s fusion with the column, if temporary, fixes him at the intersection of various cosmic realms. Disease and decay literally fuse him to the material, earthly world, while demons, angels, and celestial ladders swirl about him. That he is immobilized in order to foreground the celestial mobility he witnesses is a paradox of this interstitial mobility. In this way, the hagiographer has recast the pillar as a threshold between two worlds.

17That interstitial positioning also appears in the description of Symeon’s hut (ch. 23, 37). In one episode, the devil tears away Symeon’s hut in a hurricane. In its doublet, his hut is made of animal skins, evoking memories of the garments of skin Adam and Eve wore as they left Eden (Gen. 3:21). This allusion to the expulsion from Eden puts Symeon not only at the space between heaven and earth, but at the threshold between the paradise and life outside it. In narrative terms, the repetition of episodes creates a liminal space between two mirroring blocks of stories.

18The final form of mobility in the Life of Symeon the Younger is what I call place-making mobility, a mobility that permits the saint to transform the space surrounding the column into a monastery, including an enclosure (mandra) and various churches and monastic dwellings. Here again, these movements are captured in a sequence of episodes (ch. 94-104), which consist of four developments: the design, the construction, followed by a demonic interruption, and finally the resumption and completion of construction. Seeing the plight of the supplicants traveling to Symeon, God appears to Symeon in a vision and reveals his plan to build a center for them. The Lord’s angel soon appears to Symeon bearing a metron (measure, rule) and traces out the outline of a monastery and within it a church29. And pointing to the space, the Holy Spirit prophesies Symeon’s claim to the complex and predicts all those who will seek him out.

19With God and the Holy Spirit serving as architects, Symeon assumes the role of project manager. He recounts his vision to his disciples and instructs them to draw up the blueprints. But who will build it? God sends Isaurians, famous for their stonecutting30. They first encounter Symeon as supplicants seeking healing and exorcism. Once healed, they stay on as the builders. When their contract is about to expire, another group of builders arrives to be healed and stay on as the next team of builders. Symeon’s work continues as he tends to water systems. He has cisterns and aqueducts restored, prays for rain, and even greater crowds come. Building activity continues, until the devil brings it to a halt. The jealous and misokalos (lit. «good-hating») enemy slides into the foundations of one of the hostels, shakes them, and interrupts construction. God instructs Symeon to send a disciple with Symeon’s powerful rod and strike the foundations until the evil spirit departs. Thus the devil leaves howling. Finally, building activity resumes, with construction of mandra (enclosed space), as well as the column carved from the rock, and connected to the apse and cisterns. All this activity occurs during Holy Week, when the saint travels ecstatically by the spirit and stirs the waters with both hands to secure ample water supplies that meet monks' and pilgrims’ needs and refills their vessels for holy water.

20Place-making in effect creates conditions for the stylite’s mobility, as it reveals the saint’s collaboration with God to oversee and guide construction and remove demonic obstacles. Such detailed description of the planning, design, construction, and repair of this place underscores the role of the divine hand in this process. For instance, God endows John, an unskilled disciple of Symeon’s, with the charism of capital carving. When John’s work ends, so does his life, as God prophesies the craftsman’s death (ch. 108-109). Even the building equipment has a spiritual origin. When it is time to hoist the column drums, a pilgrim brings the very beams that will be used to mount the drums (ch. 111). And the construction concludes with a vision of the Lord with his angels, with God performing the eucharist (ch. 112). It is striking that only a few chapters after the construction of the monastery, God reveals his plans to allow Antioch to be destroyed (ch. 104). The Creator who made the stylite’s space is equally capable of destroying civic space.

21Although never once setting foot below, Symeon remains active in the building project. In addition, such intense building activity only enhances his ability to depart the very column and travel through the cosmos. As a child, he was guided by the Holy Spirit as he flew over sights (9-10). His next celestial journey occurs immediately after the building of the monastery. As an adult, he clutches the gospels to his chest and flies from Tyre to Jerusalem, to desert dwellers’ cells in the south, then heads north to Laodicaea, followed a heavenly ascent to behold the winged powers and divine throne (ch. 104). Four gospels, four cardinal points. Unlike Symeon the Elder, who tethered himself to his pillar in order to travel to celestial realms31, Symeon the Younger acquires celestial mobility through his place-making. His «view from above» situates the new construction within Christian topography. Not only can he travel without leaving his pillar to stir the waters of the cistern, but he can also journey in a similar fashion to the imperial palace in Constantinople.

Conclusion

22This essay has challenged the assumption that stylite asceticism resulted in utter immobility. As stylites ascended every higher, they were capable of vast terrestrial and celestial mobility, not only through celestial journeys, but also through building activity. For Symeon the Younger various types of mobility come into play: vertical/celestial as well as horizontal/topographical, but also what I have called interstitial and place-making, that is to say movement in the liminal spaces between regions and with divine guidance to build monastic settlements and cultic centers. Some of this mobility is paradoxical, as in the role of disease in fixing the saint to his column or his «remote» interventions in the building of the monastery, dispatching his rod to set construction back on course. In the end, however, the cultic center is ready to receive the rivers of pilgrims, as well as launch the stylite on his own celestial journeys. Thus, the paradox of place-making is that it renders the saint both destination and traveler. What the miracle collection reveals is how stylites, perched atop the pillar, can become more mobile than previously imagined. They embody a notion of space that integrates narratives, rather than stands apart from them. Stylites, in their multi-directional mobilities, become a form of space, as geographer Doreen Massey conceives it, as «a simultaneity of stories-so-far»32.