Uh... http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14317b.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14317b.htm """ Stylites were solitaries who, taking up their abode upon the top

Uh... http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14317b.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14317b.htm """ 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. This practice may be regarded as the climax of a tendency which became very pronounced in Eastern lands in the latter part of the fourth century. The duration and severity of the fasts then practised almost pass belief, but the evidence is overwhelming, and the general correctness of the accounts preserved to us is no hardly disputed. Besides the mortification of the appetite, submission to restraints of all kinds became at this period an end in itself. Palladius tells us (ch. xlviii) of a hermit in Palestine who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain and who for the space of twenty-five years never turned his face to the West. St. Gregory of Nazianzus (P.G., XXXVII, 1456) speaks of a solitary who stood upright for many years together, absorbed in contemplation, without ever lying down. Theodoret assures us that he had seen a hermit who had passed ten years in a tub suspended in midair from poles (Philotheus, ch. xxviii) .... Saint Alypius after standing upright for fifty-three years found his feet no longer able to support him, but instead of descending from his pillar lay down on his side and spent the remaining fourteen years of his life in that position. ""