osed a
panegyric on these or grazing monks, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. viii.
p. 292.)]

[Footnote 69: The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p. 217-233)
examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion.
The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the
Christians of Abyssinia.]

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon
Stylites [70] have been immortalized by the singular invention of an
aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the
profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery.
After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved
from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about
thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a
mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a
ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised
from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. [71] In
this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat
of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise
instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear
or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures
of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his
outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar
practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to
the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and
forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The
progress of an ulcer in his thigh [72] might shorten, but it could not
disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without
descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict
such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power
of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant
victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually
destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be
presumed that the fanatics, who torment themselves, are susceptible of
any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper
has distinguiseed the monks of every age and country: their stern
indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is
inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal ha