Friday, December 11

Golden Age · 409–493

St Daniel the Stylite

Pillar ascetic and counselor of emperors

Daniel was born in Mesopotamia near Samosata and entered a monastery as a boy. On a journey he visited Simeon the Stylite on his pillar and received his blessing. After years of monastic life and a period battling demons in an abandoned pagan temple, he ascended a pillar at Anaplus on the Bosphorus near Constantinople, where he stood for some thirty-three years, enduring the frosts and gales of the Thracian winters; on one occasion he was found nearly frozen, coated with ice. Emperors Leo I and Zeno revered him, climbing to his pillar for counsel, and the Patriarch ordained him priest at the pillar's foot. He came down only once, to rebuke the usurper Basiliscus for supporting heresy against the Council of Chalcedon — and the city was reconciled. He foretold his death and reposed in 493, aged eighty-four.

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