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Justin Martyr

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Part 14

St. Ignatius

St. Daniel the Stylite

Introduction

Ch. 1-34

Ch. 35-70

Ch. 71-102

Notes

The Life of
St. Theodore
of Sykeon

Pass. 3-10

Pass. 11-20

Pass. 21-30

Pass. 31-40

Pass. 41-50

Pass. 51-60

Pass. 61-70

Pass. 71-80

Pass. 81-90

Pass. 91-100

Pass. 101-110

Pass. 111-120

Pass. 121-130

Pass. 131-140

Pass. 141-148

Notes

A homily of
St. Gregory Palamas
on Matthew 5:1-12

St. John Chrysostom Letters to Olympias

Letter 1

Letter 2

Letter 3

Letter 4

Letter 5

ST. DANIEL THE STYLITE

A.D. 409-493

INTRODUCTION

by Norman H. Baynes

THE Emperor Marcian died early in A.D. 457 and with him the Theodosian dynasty (to which he belonged through his marriage with Pulcheria) came to an end. His successor, Leo I, owed his throne to the influence of the all-powerful master of the soldiery, the Alan Aspar and his father Ardaburius. They doubtless thought that Leo would play the part of their puppet, but the new Emperor was not prepared to accept that role and the Life of Daniel shows us how the plots of Aspar to overthrow the Augustus of his making were defeated by Zeno the Isaurian. Leo sought through the support of the hardy mountaineers of Isauria to rid himself of the dominance of the German element in the imperial army. From the Life we learn for the first time of the reason for the disgrace of Aspar and are informed of the way in which Zeno became known to Leo. We can understand why it was that the Emperor desired to engage condottieri from Gaul, and it is not surprising that he was angered when Titus, their leader, chose to abandon the life of a soldier.

The two outstanding disasters of Leo's reign were the fire in the capital (September 465) which devastated whole quarters of Constantinople, and the failure of the naval expedition against the Vandals for which both the West and the East of the Empire joined forces. Concerning that defeat the Vita is discreetly silent, for Daniel's prophecy this time had but a partial fulfilment; but from the Vita we learn that a report had reached the Emperor that Gaiseric, the Vandal king, intended to attack Alexandria. For that intention the Life is our sole authority, but at a time when the Vandal fleet was laying waste the coastlands of Greece and massacring the population of the island of Zacynthus an assault on Egypt might naturally be feared. The costly preparations for the African expedition emptied the East Roman treasury, and it is little wonder that the Emperor's subjects complained of the brutality and oppression of the imperial tax-collectors.

In 468 Leo married his daughter Ariadne to Zeno and the child of that marriage (born in 469), who was given the name of Leo, was declared Augustus in the autumn of 473 and became sole emperor on the death of Leo I in February 474. For the child-emperor Zeno acted as regent until with the consent of Leo's widow Verina he was himself created his son's colleague. But Leo II died a few months later and the Isaurian was left as ruler of the Eastern provinces. As an Isaurian he was unpopular: Verina plotted against him and hoped to make her paramour Patricius emperor. But when the revolution came and Zeno had fled to Asia it was Basiliscus, the commander in the expedition against the Vandals, and not Patricius, who was chosen in Zeno's room. Basiliscus favoured the Monophysites and of the orthodox opposition in the capital, headed by Daniel the Stylite, we possess in the Life a vivid account. After Zeno had returned to power Daniel gave him advice which may be regarded as a veiled criticism of his rule, but of Zeno as emperor Daniel's biographer has on the whole a high opinion: after his restoration to his throne the most holy churches en]oyed great happiness, the State was rendered glorious and the Roman Empire was strengthened. It is a remarkable tribute to an Isaurian emperor.

Zeno's successor was chosen by his daughter-in-law, the Augusta Ariadne; her choice fell upon a Civil servant, Anastasius, who had recently been proposed as bishop for the see of Antioch. Anastasius (A.D. 49 1-5 1 8) finally banished the threat of Isaurian domination: they had performed their task, the German element in the imperial army was no longer dangerous, and thus the mountaineers could be sent back to their homes. Against the invasions of the Bulgarians, Anastasius constructed to the west of Constantinople a Long Wall, a line of fortifications stretching from the Propontis to the Black Sea at a distance of some forty miles from the capital (cf. J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire , 1923, pp. 435-6). It is apparently this fortification which the author of the Life of Daniel has in mind in ch. 65. For Anastasius Daniel s biographer has an enthusiastic admiration; in ch.9 I he gives an almost lyrical description of the Emperor's character, of his piety, of the complete absence of that love of money which in a sovereign Is in very truth for his subjects the root of all ills. Anastasius, both in peace and war, provides for the world the fullest prosperity.

Such is the historical background of this Life of Daniel, the Pillar Saint. It was Simeon the Stylite who in the fifth century set the model for this strange form of penitential asceticism, and it was his renown which led others to follow his example. Syrian asceticism was represented rather by the solitary than by the monk who shared in the common life of a monastery; when compared with the Palestinian rule of St. Sabas it adopted extremer forms in its struggle to subdue the passion of man's intractable flesh. One form which was widely practised was that of the 'station' (stasis): the ascetic took his 'stand' and thence forth remained immobile. Some would stand all the night in prayer, some stood continuously for years while others divided the day between sitting and standing in one and the same spot.

Simeon was born c. A.D. 389 on the borders of Syria and Cilicia; he became a shepherd-boy and was completely illiterate. It was the hearing of the beatitudes as they were read in church which led him to asceticism and caused him to join a monastery. Here the rigours of his mortification of the body roved incompatible with the common life of the brotherhood, so, leaving the monastery, he began his discipline as a solitary by shutting himself up in a cell not far from Antioch. Three years later he retired to a neighbouring height, and there marked out for himself a circular enclosure; to prevent himself from passing beyond this enclosure he attached himself to a large stone by a chain. After some time he ceased to use the chain, and for four years he stood within the enclosure without lying or sitting down, 'snowed upon, rained upon, and scorched'. His fame spread far and wide; pilgrims came in large numbers; the sick sought healing; all wished to touch him or to carry off some relic from the Saint. To escape the devotion of the crowds he thought of the expedient of standing upon a column and the original column was twice increased in height by the addition of a new drum. On the column in its final form-forty cubits in height-he stood for thirty years without shelter either from the frosts of winter or the scorching heat of summer. At times the glare of the sun made him completely blind. The night and the greater part of the day he spent in prayer, but twice a day he addressed the folk who thronged about the column, giving them moral counsel, settling their disputes, healing their diseases. Arabs, Persians and Armenians came on pilgrimage to the Saint; Christians came from Italy and Spain, from Gaul and from Britain. St.Genevieve of Paris wrote to him. In Rome little images of Simeon, even during his lifetime, were to be found in work- shops to secure the safety of the workers (cf. Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Kirchengeschichte II,Tubingen, 1928,pp- 388-98).

Many ascetics had their own peculiar forms of devotion: Simeon would bow so deeply in his worship that his forehead all but touched his feet. On one occasion an admirer set himself to count the number of these bowings; he had counted up to twelve hundred and forty-four and then desisted from sheer weariness: the Saint continued bowing. The crowds of his admirers had no doubts of Simeon's sanctity, but the ecclesiastical authorities frowned upon this novel form of penitential piety. It is clear that the Saint's champions developed an apologia to meet such criticism: they pointed to the strange conduct of the Jewish prophets. God, they urged, can use extraordinary means to bring home to man His messages. The apologia was successful: when Simeon died seven bishops accompanied in solemn procession the translation of the Saint's remains to Antioch

In this Byzantine world everything was fair where sacred relics were concerned: to secure a relic guile and even open theft were justified. The dead saint would even help those who sought to steal his body. When it was thought that a certain holy man was near to death there was a free fight amongst parties from rival villages. The victors in the affray carried off the body to Antioch when the Saint, recovering, asked to be taken back to the mountain from which he had been violently transported. Immediately it was known that Simeon was dead Saracens rushed up on their camels in order to gain possession of his body by force of arms, but the sacred relic was guarded by the imperial troops under the command of the master of the soldiery. In Antioch the body rested; it remained the city's pride and protection.

It is not easy for us to picture to ourselves the life led by the stylite saints on the pillar-top. There was, of course, a balustrade or iron trellis-work around the platform: we never hear of a saint inadvertently falling from his pillar. The saint controlled all access to himself since any visitor was of necessity compelled to wait until the order was given for the ladder to be placed against the pillar (see the Life, ch. 42). To reach Daniel's first column the ladder according to one manuscript had fourteen rungs but when a column might be sixteen or eighteen metres in height the moving of the ladder can have been no light task. The Stylite's column consisted of three parts: the steps up to the platform at the base of the column, the column itself and then the enclosure at the column's top. The column of the elder Simeon had three drums, in honour of the Trinity, says the Syriac biographer. The elder Simeon, as we have seen, had no shelter at all as he stood upon his column and St. Daniel desired to follow his master's example until he was ultimately persuaded to permit the construction of a covering. Exceptionally in Daniel's case twin columns were erected, clamped together by iron bars and a piece of masonry 'of which it is difficult to fix the position' (Delehaye) Of the extent of the space occupied by the pillar-saint on the top of the column we have no accurate knowledge; often it is not easy to decide whether visitors stood on the topmost rungs of the ladder (cf. the Life of Daniel, ch. 95) or whether they mounted on to the platform.

The Stylite soon became a magnet and drew disciples desiring to settle near the Saint; thus, as it was with St. Daniel, a monastery was formed or, it might be, as with St. Alypius a nunnery as well.

It is terrifying to contemplate the sufferings endured through whole decades by these athletes in the school of salvation: amongst those of strict observance it was not permitted to sit or to lie down: they had taken their 'stand' and might not desert it. They sought to overcome the need for sleep and, if sleep they must, they did so, still standing, leaning against the balustrade. To increase the strain upon the rebel body St. Simeon the younger forced himself for a whole year to squat upon his heels. Only in the interest of threatened Orthodoxy might they abandon, as did Daniel, their 'stance' and descend from their column. When they had established themselves in lonely places they might be forgotten and might all but perish of hunger and thirst. We may sympathize with Delehaye's comment: 'Nous comprenons difficilement que ces hommes pieux aient pu agir de la sorte sans tenter la Providence. Leur simplicite est leur grande excuse.'

And, despite everything, they were so astonishingly longlived. Newman's judgment is familiar: 'if these men so tormented their bodies as Theodoret describes, which it is difficult to doubt, and if, nevertheless, instead of killing themselves thereby, they lived to the great age which he also testifies, this fact was in itself of a miraculous character'....

And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee.

To make up what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ was no light task.

The Life of Daniel can be left to speak for itself. The author, a younger man than the Saint, writes as a disciple and eye-witness. He has consulted those who were with Daniel from the time that he came to the shores of the Bosphorus. For the 'we' accounts in the Vita see ch. 91, 95, 96 and note ch. I and ch. I2. There is no reason to think that he used written sources.

It will suffice to add a brief note on the chronology of Daniel's life as established by Pere Delehaye: the Saint was born in A.D. 409; until he was twelve years old he lived with his parents; the next twenty-five years were spent in a monastery; then during five years he visited the most famous ascetes of his time; at the age of forty-two he arrived in Constantinople; after nine years spent in what had been a pagan temple he mounted his pillar on which he passed thirty-three years and three months. He died at the age of eighty-four years and three months in A.D. 493.

 

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