Basilica of St Simeon (the Elder)

A parallel post to Fred's next to me. This is the Basilica of Saint Simeon (the Elder), which we visited this morning with Tom and Martin from Germany and Samir, the driver/guide. I had heard and read much about St Simeon but was unprepared for the beauty of the spot. The basilica is Byzantine in design, albeit slightly ruined, set on a hill overlooking a rubbly plain, full of olive trees stretching back towards Turkey. At the time it was the biggest church in Christendom. For me, now, it is one of the most beautiful, with the large open spaces, the rounded arches, the decoration on the columns, the honey coloured stone and the beautiful views down across the valley. A group of Syrian students was singing songs, some raucous, some beautiful and haunting. Magical moments.

St Simeon went up there sometime in the 5th century to live as a holy man away from the crowds in the village.He started off a trend of stylites, lay men who went off to live hermit lives, usually on top of hills, making life as difficult for themselves as possible, to prove how devoted they were to God. It became a bit of a competition to see just how extreme they could be. Living on top of pillars, in wells, in specially constructed cages in which they couldn't stand and so on....

This St Simeon climbed on top of a rock, after he got fed up of putting spikes in his feet and burying himself in the soil. The pillar startde off being 3 high, then it was raised to 7 m and finally to 11 m. The remains of which can be seen in the centre of the photo. The rest of the pillar was taken away by relic seekers in the 1,500 years or so since his death. Gradually as time went on the rock was raised so that he ended up living on top of a pillar, never coming down. He attracted great crowds due to the fact that he could perform miracles like healing the blind and the sick, raising the dead, curing donkeys of arthritis and so on...

A curious thing is that these stylite's magical powers increased as they neared death, such that as soon as word got out that one of them was dying everyone nearby would flock to benefit from the boost to the miracular powers. Unfortunately, the Christians were also keen on relics, as these had magical powers too, such that there was a mad scramble to get a piece of the dead man once he finally died, such that people would rip his clothes off, tear his hair out and goodness knows what else.

Fortunately this hadn't caught on by the time this St Simeon died so he was allowed to be buried in Antioch before being moved to Constantinople, at the Hagia Sofia.