Simeon Stylites the Younger

Simeon Stylites the Younger, also known as Simeon of the Admirable Mountain (, Arabic: مار سمعان العمودي الأصغر mār semʻān l-ʻamūdī l-asghar; 521 – 596/597), is a saint in the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church.

Life Stylites were solitaries who, taking up their abode upon the tops of a pillar (stylos), chose to spend their days amid the restraints thus entailed and in the exercise of other forms of asceticism.

Simeon was born at Antioch in 521. His father, John, was a native of Edessa, and his mother, named Martha was afterward revered as a saint. When Simeon was six years of age, his father was killed in an earthquake, after which he and his mother moved to the outskirts of the city.

Like his namesake, Simeon seems to have been drawn very young to a life of austerity. He attached himself to a community of ascetics living within the mandra or enclosure of another pillar-hermit, named John, who acted as their spiritual director. Simeon while still only a boy had a pillar erected for himself close to that of John. In a letter to Thomas, guardian of the True Cross at Jerusalem, Simeon states that he was living upon a pillar when he lost his first teeth. In the course of this period, however, he several times moved to a new pillar, and on the occasion of the first of these exchanges, the Patriarch of Antioch and the Bishop of Seleucia ordained him deacon during the short space of time he spent upon the ground. For his efforts, Simeon is said to have received from God the gift of healing. Simeon maintained this kind of life for 68 years. Towards the close of his life the saint occupied a column upon a mountainside near Antioch called the "Hill of Wonders" (due to his miracles), also known as the "Wondrous Mountain" or the "Admirable Mountain" (, Ṭūrā d-ṯeḏmūrtā; Greek: Θαυματόν Ὄρος, Thaumaton Oros); this mountain is known today in Turkish as Samandağı (modern Arabic name: جبل سمعان, Jabal Simʻān or جبل ليلون, Jabal Laylūn) and is located near the town of Samandağ, Turkey. It was here that he died in 596. The sick people he had healed built a church in gratitude. Until the thirteenth century, the place was a pilgrimage destination.

The Wellcome Collection has a tempera on wood painting by an unknown artist of Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger.

St. Simeon of the Wonderful Mountain Church, a Russian Orthodox church in Dresden, Germany, is named after him.