Eccl. Hist. Also in Gr. form stylites. [ad. Eccl. Gr. στῡλῑτης, f. στῦλ-ος pillar: see -ITE.] An ascetic who lived on the top of a pillar. Also attrib. or as adj.
α. a. 1638. Mede, Apostasy Later Times (1641), 150. Peter à Metra, a famous Stylite, or Pillar-Monk.
1753. R. Clayton, Jrnl. fr. Cairo to Mt. Sinai, 12 Sept. 1722, The second [chapel is] of St. Simon the Stylite.
1831. K. H. Digby, Mores Cath. (1845), I. II. ii. 114. St. Gregory, of Tours, relates his conversation with the monk Wulflaich, who had lived the life of a Stylite in the diocese of Trèves.
1877. Smith & Wace’s Dict. Chr. Biog., I. 14/2. In conjunction with a Stylite monk, Daniel, he placed himself at the head of the opposition to the Emperor Basiliscus.
1882–3. Schaff, Encycl. Rel. Knowl., III. 2256. Stylites are mentioned as far down as the twelfth century.
1905. Daily Chron., 5 Jan., 4/6. Many as are the various eccentric sects that have appeared in America … no one seems to have thought of reviving the Stylite mode of life.
β. 1776. R. Chandler, Trav. Greece, lxii. 250. At Patræ was one of the living statues, then not infrequent; a madman standing on a column. To this Stylites did Luke minister for ten years.
1867. Emily F. Bowden, trans. Ctess. Hahn-hahn’s Fathers of Desert, 369. Another renowned Stylites was Simeon the younger, who died in 596, after he had stood for sixty-eight years upon columns.
Hence Stylitic a., pertaining to or characteristic of the Stylites. Stylitism, the mode of life or the ascetic principles of the Stylites.
1839. D. D. Black, Hist. Brechin, 268. These anchorites were called Stelites, from their living on pillars…. The Styletic [sic] system began in the east in the year 460, and some anchorites are mentioned as late as the year 1200.
1843. Carlyle, Past & Pr., III. xv. 312. Stylitisms, eremite fanaticisms and fakeerisms.
1882. H. C. Merivale, Faucit of B., II. II. v. 207. Your little tirade just now was a disguised farewell to the stylitic life, and to roots and water. You are tired of misanthropy as a profession.
