Jaina Gazette 1928

SR No.: 034890
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ajitprasad, C S Mallinath
Publisher: Jaina Gazettee Office
Publication Year: 1928
Total Pages: 502
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 33 MB

Page 263

St. SIMEON STYLITES.
THE
HE following story of Christian asceticism is not unlikely to interest the reader of the Jaina Gazette. It is given in Lecky's History of European morals. The saint named at the the top had bound a rope around him so that it became embedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it. "A horrible stench, intolerable to the by-standers, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed. Sometimes he left the monastery and slept in a dry well, inhabited, it is said, by demons. He built successively three pillars, the last being sixty feet high and scarcely two cubits in circumference; and on this pillar, during thirty years, he remained exposed to every change of climate, ceaselessly and rapidly bending his body in prayer almost to the level of his feet. A spectator attempted to number these rapid motions, but desisted from weariness when he had counted 1,244. For a whole year, we are told, St. Simeon stood upon one leg, the other being covered with hideous ulcers, while his biographer was commissioner to stand by his side, to pick up the worms that fell from his body and to replace them in the sores, the saint saying to the worm, 'Eat what God has given you.' From every quarter pilgrims of every degree thronged to do him homage. A crowd of prelates followed him to the grave;......the general voice of mankind pronounced him to be the highest model of a Christian saint; and several other anchorites imitated or emulated his penances."
-C. R. JAIN.