To a modern eye, St. Simeon Stylites is likely to seem a kind of 5th-Century Shipwreck Kelly*—a symbol of ascetic reductio ad absurdum. To that view, his 38-year residence atop a pillar was only ...

How are good are you with heights? Clearly they weren’t a problem for Syrian Christian Saint Simeon Stylites the Elder, who spent around 37 years living on top of a pillar. Born in around AD390 ...