PILLAR SAINTS, in ecclesiastical history, an appellation given to a kind of solitaries, who stood motionless upon the tops of pillars, raised for this exercise of their patience, and remained there for several years, amidst the admiration and applause of the stupid populace. Of these we find several mentioned in ancient writers, and even as low as the twelfth century, when they were totally suppressed.

The founder of the order was St Simeon Stylites, a famous anchorite in the fifth century, who first took up his abode on a column six cubits high; then on a second of twelve cubits, a third of twenty-two, a fourth of thirty-six, and on another of forty cubits, where he thus passed thirty-seven years of his life. The tops of these columns were only three feet in diameter, and were defended by a rail that reached almost to the girdle, somewhat resembling a pulpit. There was no lying down in it. The faquirs, or devout people of the East, imitate this extraordinary kind of life to this day.