________________
ST. SIMEON STYLITES
Jain Education International
ST. SIMEON STYLITES
He
The following story of Christian asceticism is not unlikely to interest the student of religion. It is given in Lecky's History of European Morals. The saint named at the top had bound a rope around his body so that it became embedded in his flesh, which putrefied all round 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. 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 commissioned 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 worms, '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."
In Jainism the saints are not expected to subject themselves to such afflictions. If sickness or trouble come the Jaina saint will not resort to medicine to avoid it; but he is not to create or produce disease in his body to 'mortify the flesh.' It would seem that this expression has often been mistaken to mean actual physical infliction of wounds on
183
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
