Similar stories are too numerous: we shall therefore close this subject with
The Hermit of the Pillar.
(St. Simeon Stylites, St. Telesephorus, St. Syncletia.)
We are informed by Alban Butler, that St. Simeon Stylites, the ycleped hermit of the pillar, astonished the whole Roman Empire by his mortifications. In the monastery of Heliodorus, a man 65 years of age, who had spent 62 years so abstracted from the world that he was ignorant of the most obvious things in it; the monks ate but once a day; Simeon joined the communities, and ate but once a week. Heliodorus required Simeon to be more private in his mortifications: “with this view,” says Butler, “judging the rough rope of the well, made of twisted palm tree leaves, a proper instrument of penance; Simeon tied it close about his naked body, where it remained unknown both to the community and his superior, till such time as it having ate into his flesh, what he had privately done was discovered by the effluvia proceeding from the wound.” Butler says, that it took three days to disengage the saint’s clothes, and that “the incisions of the physician, to cut the cord out of his body, were attended with such anguish and pain, that he lay for some time as dead.” After this he determined to pass the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, and retired to a hermitage for that purpose. Bassus, an abbot, left with him ten loaves and water, and coming to visit him at the end of the forty days, found both loaves and water untouched, and the saint stretched on the ground without signs of life. Bassus dipped a sponge in water, moistened his lips, gave him the eucharist, and Simeon by degrees swallowed a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. He passed twenty-six Lents in the same manner. In the first part of a Lent he prayed standing: growing weaker, he prayed sitting; and towards the end, being almost exhausted, he prayed lying on the ground. At the end of three years he left his hermitage for the top of a mountain, made an inclosure of loose stones, without a roof, and having resolved to live exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, he fixed his resolution by fastening his right leg to a rock with a great iron chain. Multitudes thronged to the mountain to receive his benediction, and many of the sick recovered their health. But as some were not satisfied unless they touched him in his enclosure, and Simeon desired retirement from the daily concourse, he projected a new and unprecedented manner of life. He erected a pillar six cubits high, (each cubit being eighteen inches,) and dwelt on it four years; on a second of twelve cubits high, he lived three years; on a third of twenty-two cubits high, ten years; and on a fourth, of forty cubits, or sixty feet high, which the people built for him, he spent the last twenty years of his life. This occasioned him to be called Stylites, from the Greek word stylos, a pillar. This pillar did not exceed three feet in diameter at the top, so that he could not lie extended on it; he had no seat with him; he only stooped or leaned to take a little rest, and bowed his body in prayer so often, that a certain person who counted these positions, found that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four reverences in one day, which if he began at four o’clock in the morning, and finished at eight o’clock at night, gives a bow to every three quarters of a minute; besides which, he exhorted the people twice a day. His garments were the skins of beasts; he wore an iron collar round his neck, and had a horrible ulcer in his foot. During his forty days’ abstinence throughout Lent, he tied himself to a pole. He treated himself as the outcast of the world and the worst of sinners, worked miracles, delivered prophecies, had the sacrament delivered to him on the pillar, and died bowing upon it, in the sixty-ninth of his age, after having lived upon pillars for six and thirty years. His corpse was carried to Antioch attended by the bishops and the whole country, and worked miracles on its way. So far this account is from Alban Butler.
Without mentioning circumstances and miracles in the Golden Legend, which are too numerous, and some not fit to be related; it may be observed, that it is there affirmed of him, that after his residence on the pillars, one of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he stood on one leg only. Near Simeon’s pillar was the dwelling of a dragon, so very venemous that nothing grew near his cave. This dragon met with an accident; he had a stake in his eye, and coming all blind to the saint’s pillar, and placing his eye upon it for three days, without doing harm to any one, Simeon ordered earth and water to be placed on the dragon’s eye, which being done, out came the stake, a cubit in length; when the people saw this miracle, they glorified God, and ran away for fear of the dragon, who arose and adored for two hours, and returned to his cave. A woman swallowed a little serpent, which tormented her for many years, till she came to Simeon, who causing earth and water to be laid on her mouth, the little serpent came out four feet and a half long. It is affirmed by the Golden Legend, that when Simeon died, Anthony smelt a precious odour proceeding from his body; that the birds cried so much, that both men and beasts cried; that an angel came down in a cloud; that the Patriarch of Antioch, taking Simeon’s beard to put among his relics, his hand withered, and remained so, till multitudes of prayers were said for him, and it was healed; and that more miracles were worked at and after Simeon’s sepulture, than he had wrought all his life.
HOLY RELIQUE-MANIA.
On the first introduction of the relics of saints, the mania became universal; they were bought and sold, and, like other collectors, made no scruple to steal them. It is not a little amusing to remark the singular ardour and grasping avidity of some to enrich themselves with religious morsels; their little discernment, the curious impositions and resources of the vender to impose on the good faith and sincerity of the purchaser. It was not uncommon for the prelate of the place to ordain a fast, in order to implore God that they might not be cheated with the relics of saints, which he sometimes purchased for the holy benefit of the village or town. Guibert de Nogen wrote a treatise on the relics of saints: acknowledging that there were many false ones, as well as false legends, he reprobates the inventors of those lying miracles. It was on the occasion of one of our Saviour’s teeth, that De Nogen took up his pen on this subject, by which the monks of St. Medard de Soissons pretended to work miracles; a pretension which he asserted to be as chimerical as that of several persons who believed they possessed the navel, and other parts less comely, of the body of Christ.
There is a history of the translation of Saint Lewin, a virgin and a martyr, by a monk of Bergavinck; her relics were brought from England to Bergs. The facts were collected from her brethren with religious care, especially from the conductor of these relics from England. After the history of the translation, and a panegyric on the saint, he relates the miracles performed in Flanders since the arrival of her relics. The prevailing passion of the times to possess fragments of saints is well marked, when the author particularises, with a certain complacency, all the knavish modes they resorted to, to carry off those in question. None then objected to this sort of robbery, because the gratification of the ruling passion had made it worth while to supply the market.
There is a history, by a monk of Cluny, of the translation of the body of St. Indalece, one of the earliest Spanish bishops; written by order of the Abbot of St. Juan de la Penna; wherein the author protests to advance nothing but facts; having himself seen, or learnt from other witnesses, all he relates. It was not difficult for him to gain his information, since it was to the monastery of St. Juan de la Penna that the holy relics were transported, and those who brought them were two monks of that house. His minute detail of circumstances, he has authenticated by giving the names of persons and places; and the account was written for the great festival immediately instituted in honour of this translation. He informs us of the miraculous manner by which they were so fortunate as to discover the body of this bishop, and the different plans that were concerted to carry it off; with the itinerary of the two monks who accompanied the holy remains; during which they were not a little cheered in their long and hazardous journey by visions and miracles.
Another has written a history of what he terms the translation of the relics of St. Majean to the monastery of Villemagne. Translation is, in fact, only a softened expression for the robbery committed on the relics of the saints, by two monks who carried them off secretly, to enrich their monastery; and they did not stick at any artifice, or lie, to achieve their undertaking. They imagined every thing was permitted to get possession of these fragments of mortality, which now had become such an important branch of commerce. They even regarded their possessors with a hostile eye. Such was the religious opinion from the ninth to the twelfth century. Our Canute commissioned his agent at Rome to purchase St. Augustine’s arm for one hundred talents of silver and one of gold! a much greater sum, observes Granger, than the finest statue of antiquity would then have sold for. Another monk describes a strange act of devotion, attested by several contemporary writers. When the saints did not readily comply with the prayers of their votaries, they flogged their relics with rods, in a spirit of impatience, which they conceived necessary to enforce obedience. To raise our admiration, Theofroy, abbot of Epternac, relates the daily miracles performed by the relics of saints—their ashes, their clothes, or other mortal spoils, and even by the instruments of their martyrdom. He inveighs against that luxury of ornaments which was indulged in under a religious pretext. “It is not to be supposed that the saints are desirous of such a profusion of gold and silver. They wish not that we should raise to them magnificent churches, to exhibit that ingenious order of pillars, which shine with gold; nor those rich ceilings, nor those altars sparkling with jewels. They desire not the purple parchment for their writings, the liquid gold to decorate the letters, nor the precious stones to embellish their covers, while you have such little care for the ministers.” The pious writer has not forgotten himself, in his partnership-account with the saints.
Bayle observes, the Roman church not being able to deny that there have been false relics which have wrought miracles, they reply that the good intentions of those believers who have recourse to them, obtained from God the reward for their good faith! In the same spirit, when it was shown that three bodies of the same saint are said to exist in several places, and that therefore they could not all be authentic, it was answered, that they were all genuine! for God had multiplied and miraculously reproduced them, for the comfort of the faithful! A curious specimen of the intolerance of good sense.