I think there had to be more to it than what is portrayed in the image; otherwise, how did they clean themselves, eat, or go to the bathroom?
It sounds wonderful to “live in pure contemplation” for 50 some years, but they would have starved to death pretty quickly if they didn’t have some way to get food and water up the pillar, and waste materials down from it to a sanitary disposal site.
Also, how did they go to Mass?
I don’t believe the Desert Fathers went to Mass, but priests would travel out into the desert and bring Holy Communion to the hermits and ascetics.
Here’s from the wikipedia on Simeon Stylies:
Simeon was the son of a shepherd. He was born at Sis, now the Turkish town of Kozan in Adana Province. Sis was in the Roman province of Cilicia, and after the western Roman Empire fell in 395 it remained part of the eastern Roman Empire and Christianity grew quickly there.
According to Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, Simeon developed a zeal for Christianity at the age of 13, following a reading of the Beatitudes. He subjected himself to ever-increasing bodily austerities from an early age, especially fasting, and entered a monastery before the age of 16.
On one occasion, moving nearby, he commenced a severe regimen of fasting for Lent and was visited by the head of the monastery, who left him some water and loaves. A number of days later, Simeon was discovered unconscious, with the water and loaves untouched. When he was brought back to the monastery, it was discovered that he had bound his waist with a girdle made of palm fronds so tightly that days of soaking were required to remove the fibres from the wound formed. At this, Simeon was requested to leave the monastery.
He then shut himself up for one and a half years in a hut, where he passed the whole of Lent without eating or drinking. When he emerged from the hut, his achievement was hailed as a miracle.He later took to standing continually upright so long as his limbs would sustain him.
After one and a half years in his hut, Simeon sought a rocky eminence on the slopes of what is now the Sheik Barakat Mountain and compelled himself to remain a prisoner within a narrow space, less than 20 meters in diameter. But crowds of pilgrims invaded the area to seek him out, asking his counsel or his prayers, and leaving him insufficient time for his own devotions. This at last led him to adopt a new way of life.
Atop the pillar
In order to get away from the ever increasing number of people who frequently came to him for prayers and advice, leaving him little if any time for his private austerities, Simeon discovered a pillar which had survived amongst ruins, formed a small platform at the top, and upon this determined to live out his life. It has been stated that, as he seemed to be unable to avoid escaping the world horizontally, he may have thought it an attempt to try to escape it vertically. For sustenance small boys from the village would climb up the pillar and pass him small parcels of flat bread and goats’ milk.
. . .
This first pillar was little more than four meters high, but his well-wishers subsequently replaced it with others, the last in the series being apparently over 15 meters from the ground. At the top of the pillar was a platform, with a baluster, which is believed to have been about one square meter.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Stylites
