Saint Daniēl the Stylite of Constantinopleالقدّيس دانيال العمودي البار
Today in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of another great Eastern holy man and hermit, Saint Daniēl the Stylite. A native of Mesopotamia who lived during the fifth century, Saint Daniēl is exemplary of both the idiosyncratic personalism of Antiochian ascetic spirituality, and of the general tendency after the wave of fourth-century Roman persecutions of the Christian faith to seek higher forms of ‘training’ and escape from compromise with the world with its snares. Saint Daniēl embodies, in a literal way that is unique only to a handful of saints in the Orthodox Church, this striving after a higher spiritual perfection in Christ.
Saint Daniēl [Gk. Δανιήλ, Syr. Dānī‘êl ܕܢܝܐܝܠ, Ar. Dâniyyâl دانيال] was born in a small village outside Samosata in Mesopotamia – what is now Samsat in Turkey – in the year 409. This village may have been Marutha, a name which means ‘the caves’ and which is also the name of an earlier Mesopotamian saint. His parents were ’Ilyâs and Marṯâ (which was also the name of the mothers of each of the other holy Syrian stylites).
Marṯâ the mother of Daniēl was, for a long time, barren – and this was the cause of many unkind words of reproach toward her, both from her husband and from the others in the village. Like Saint Joachim the righteous ancestor of God, who was also berated and reviled for his childlessness, Marṯâ fled out of the house into a deserted place, raised up her hands in supplication to God, and wept and prayed to Him to remove from her the reproach. She came back into the house and lay down with her husband ’Ilyâs. That night, sleeping beside him, she received an angelic vision of two great circular lights descending from heaven and settling near her. The following morning she related her vision to her husband and her family – each of whom had a different ‘take’ on it. But Marṯâ committed her vision into God’s hands, and not long afterward conceived.
When the saint was born he was given a different name by his parents. But when he was five he went to visit a monastery together with them, and brought with him fruit as a gift for the monks in God’s name. The abbot asked the boy’s name, but when ’Ilyâs told it to him, the holy monastic became angry and berated him. ‘That is not the boy’s name!’ the holy man said. Then he turned to the child and asked him kindly in Syriac: ‘Go, young one, and fetch a book from the altar.’ The boy obediently ran in and grabbed the Old Testament book of the Righteous Prophet Daniel. Then the abbot turned to the boy’s parents and told them that this was the boy’s name, as it had been revealed by God before all. ’Ilyâs and Marṯâ asked the abbot to take the boy and teach him the knowledge of the monastics, but the abbot refused on account of the boy’s young age. Gently he told the parents to care for young Daniēl until he came of age.
When he was twelve years old, Daniēl heard his mother say that she had dedicated him to God. Hearing this he left home and sought out the abbot, fell at his feet, and begged to let him join the monastery. Again the abbot told him he was too young, but as Daniēl insisted repeatedly and with great fervour, at last the abbot relented and allowed him to stay. When his parents found out where he was, they were happy. Seeing him still going about in his sæcular clothes, though, they asked the abbot to tonsure him and to give him the garb of a monk. The abbot did so, and counselled ’Ilyâs and Marṯâ for their son’s sake not to visit him too often.
The boy made rapid progress in the spiritual life, being humble and obedient and never seeking praise for himself. Indeed, it made him uncomfortable and distressed when other monks praised him, and he sought to flee their praise. He told the abbot that he desired solitude, but the abbot forbade this, saying that in his present stage he must learn to live together with other monks. Even so, when the Church bade all the local monastic hegoumens and anchorites to attend a local sobor in the city of Antioch, the abbot took Daniēl along with him as an assistant.
Along the way the Mesopotamian monks stopped by the village of Galanissa, and found the monastery at which Symeōn Stylitēs had made his home and ascended his first pillar. The monks at Galanissa spoke praises of the stylite, while the Mesopotamian monks were perhaps less-than-politely sceptical. Having never heard of this discipline even among hermits, they accused the pillar-dweller of wilfulness and self-seeking vainglory. The monks of Galanissa invited the abbot and his followers to see Saint Symeōn for themselves, and they did so – Saint Daniēl among them. When they approached the pillar and saw the harsh elements to which the saint was daily exposed, and further when they heard the meek and gentle voice in which the holy man called down to them, full of love for them, the monks were amazed and ashamed. Understanding that they had shot far wide of the mark, they did not say anything further against Symeōn. Symeōn asked that a ladder be brought, so that he might kiss the holy monks from Mesopotamia who had come to visit him. But the abbot and his entourage wept for shame, and dared not ascend to kiss with their mouths the man they had just been slandering with their lips.
However, Daniēl told the elders that he was willing to go, and the abbot gave him leave. Daniēl climbed the ladder and kissed the holy Symeōn. The pillar-dwelling saint joyfully laid his hand upon Daniēl, and encouraged him to be strong and brave, for he must still endure many hardships for God’s sake. Then he gave his blessing and sent Daniēl back down the ladder among his fellows.
The monks attended the sobor in Antioch and were dismissed back to their monasteries. Soon afterward Daniēl was found worthy of being named abbot. However, taking the opportunity, he left the monastery by night and went again to see Symeōn at his pillar. Saint Daniēl stayed there two weeks and received much instruction from the holy man. Saint Symeōn begged him to stay longer, for he enjoyed discoursing on holy things with the earnest young man. But Daniēl told the elder stylite that he must go for himself to see the Holy Places and retreat into the desert of the heart, and with sad joy Saint Symeōn gave him leave and blessing to go.
Daniēl embarked on the road to Palestine, which was then experiencing great political upheavals. On the road, however, he met an elderly monk who began inquiring into his purposes in going to the Holy Places. After some discussion, the holy elder advised him not to go to Palestine, but instead turn about and go in the other direction, toward the New Rome where too he could be in the presence of the martyrs and those who had sincerely followed Christ, without the perils of brigands and political rebels. They came to a monastery and Daniēl asked the elder if he would come in with him; he was told ‘Go, I will follow.’ However, he lost sight of the elderly monk, and it was then that he began to doubt if it was not in fact an angel that had visited him.
On the road to Byzantium Daniēl came to a small chapel near what is now the Roumeli Hisar fortress on the Bosporus, associated with a Greek-speaking Orthodox church dedicated to Archangel Michael. This chapel had been abandoned and then used as a pagan temple, and there the dæmons of the wilderness had taken up abode. Daniēl heard some monks conversing in Syriac about the problem, and he asked one of them to lead him to the church. They took him there – going in upon the church ground Daniēl armed himself for battle not with weapons, but rather with the Psalms of David and with the sign of the Cross. Although the dæmons assailed him with stones and howls and nightmares, the holy man of God persevered and took up his abode in this church. Many of the simple folk, Greek and Syrian, from the nearby countryside came to visit him to receive advice or blessings.
The Greek dean of the Church of Archangel Michael, provoked by the Evil One, grew jealous of this Syriac holy man, and complained to the Patriarch of Constantinople about his presence there. This man, the dean complained, was a Syrian and the Greeks could not understand him. Further he complained that the man was a hæretic and should be expelled. But the Patriarch, Saint Anatolios of Constantinople, saw through and understood the priest’s jealousy, and mildly advised him: ‘If you do not speak his language, how do you know he is a hæretic? If he comes with the blessing of God, he will stay. If he comes with the hæresies of the Devil, then the devils in that place will drive him out. You need have no fear and bring scandal where there is none.’ Chastened, the dean put away his complaints for a time.
The dæmons continued to attack Daniēl, and again they stirred up the rage and jealousy of the Greeks against him. At length, Saint Anatolios himself was obliged to come and meet the holy man, breaking into the chapel with crowbars. By means of an interpreter, the Constantinopolitan hierarch held a discussion with the Syrian monk, and soon beheld the sincerity of his faith and the meek humility of his life. He dismissed the priests who had summoned him there, telling them that the holy man was blameless. Indeed he invited Saint Daniēl to come stay in the palace in Constantinople, and although he benefitted greatly from Daniēl’s discourse (and the holy man even healed him of an ailment that had been vexing him deeply), Daniēl wanted nothing for himself but pardon for those who had slandered him, and to be allowed to return to the place that God had showed him. Reluctantly, Saint Anatolios allowed him to return. Many supplicants flocked to the hermit’s abode, to hear his words of grace, and to receive healing and help. He spent nine years living alone in this chapel.
At length, Saint Daniēl received a vision of Saint Symeōn atop his pillar, bidding him come up to him. Shortly after this vision, Saint Symeōn’s disciple Sergios came to Constantinople, bearing with him the leather garment of the saint, who had reposed in the Lord. He brought it to Saint Daniēl. Sergios led Daniēl out into a desert place in Thrace where he saw a dove ascending and descending from heaven, and here Daniēl, with the help of Sergios and an Imperial guardsman named Markos (who had been a friend to the holy Syrian monastic from the beginning), made plans to set up a pillar in that place.
However, that land belonged to Gelanios, the steward of the holy table to Emperor Saint Leōn. Gelanios – as well as the villagers and shepherds who used the land on which they were building the pillar – were angry with Saint Daniēl for having made such use of their land without permission. And although the Emperor had not given them permission to do so, they first tried to destroy the pillar, but the same wedge and lever which they tried to use to topple it, were the very implements which the man of God used to ascend the pillar, which remained fixed. Then Gelanios berated the saint, and tried to have him fetched down, but a hailstorm arose which began to destroy the vineyards and the grazelands around them, and Gelanios was prevailed upon to withdraw.
Gelanios then called up to the saint in his own Syriac language to come down and explain himself, and he did so mildly this time, and with promises that his feet need not touch the ground, such that the saint was obliged to obey. But when Saint Daniēl began descending the ladder, the heels and ankles of Gelanios began to break out in sores and welters. And so Gelanios ran to the holy man and entreated him to ascend the column again, and to forgive his sin against him. Saint Daniēl ascended the column again, and Gelanios was healed. From that time on Gelanios believed in the holy man’s sanctity, and even offered to build the saint a higher column at his own expense. Sergios and Markos both made hermit-dwellings for themselves near the pillar, and lived as his first disciples.
Living as he did near the Second Rome, many eminent people from the City came to visit Saint Daniēl. Among them were Kyrrhos, a former prætorian præfect, whose daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit – she the Saint exorcised. The princess and empress Eudoxia also visited Saint Daniēl and was deeply edified by his teachings. Even Saint Leōn himself benefitted from the Stylite’s blessings, as after one visit to the pillar he returned to his wife Verinē and she conceived for him a son.
Some of the jealous detractors of the saint hatched a plot whereby they conscripted the services of a notable courtezan of Constantinople, Vassianē, to feign illness, mount the column and seduce the holy man. They offered her payment of 100 gold pieces if she could do this. She tried for many weeks to achieve her aim, but despite her evident beauty and subtle allures, Daniēl did not give into the temptation. Later, a dæmon took possession of Vassianē and dragged her into the streets, causing her to shout out and reveal the whole of the plot in the public square, along with the names of all the conspirators. In this way, Saint Daniēl’s good name was further established. However, some people took pity upon Vassianē and brought her to Saint Daniēl for healing. The meek hermit bore the woman no ill-will, for all she had tried to cause him to stumble, and so he earnestly entreated God for several days to forgive Vassianē her sins and to expel the dæmon from which she was suffering, and made her to drink holy oil. God was merciful upon Vassianē – and, having been freed from the dæmon by Saint Daniēl’s prayers, she praised God and Saint Daniēl, went down from the pillar, and reformed her way of living.
It was at this time as well that Saint Daniēl sent word to Saint Gennadios, Archbishop of Constantinople, and to Emperor Saint Leōn, that a very great wrath from God would be sent down upon Second Rome for its sins, and a massive fire would erupt in the city. Because it was Holy Week and the preparations for the Lord’s Pascha were well underway, Patriarch and Emperor thought it best not to disturb the people with such news. Pascha came and went and Saint Daniēl’s prophetic warning was forgotten. The fire did break out – many people were killed, and many more were injured or left homeless. They went to Saint Daniēl, who wept with them and prayed with them, and urged them to bear up under their losses and help each other. He gave comfort to those who came to him. And having seen the devastation, the Patriarch and the Emperor understood the wrong they had done. Leōn went with Verinē in repentance to Saint Daniēl, and Saint Gennadios did the same, and begged his forgiveness for having failed to heed his warnings.
Accounts of several other miracles follow in Saint Daniēl’s hagiography. He endured several vicious storms that blew ice and hail and mighty winds against his pillars, and the saint endured much suffering on their account; however, he would not accept from the Emperor an offer that an iron cage be built over his pillar to protect him from the worst of the elements, for – as he said – his holy prædecessor Symeōn had not availed himself of such amenities. Several other deceptions and complots were played upon him similar to the one in which the former prostitute Vassianē played a rôle; however, Saint Daniēl retained his innocence and simplicity throughout all of them, and in the end all of them were exposed as shams.
Saint Daniēl was active in Emperor Leōn’s foreign policy – as an impartial judge and an effective peacemaker. At that time the Roman Empire had a dispute with the independent, Georgian-speaking Christian kingdom of Lazestan in the Caucasus and northeastern Anatolia, whose prince Gubazi had been attacked by a previous Emperor, and several unjust demands placed upon him and his heirs. For this reason he had come to Constantinople, and Emperor Leōn took him to see Saint Daniēl. Upon seeing the pillar, the Lazestani prince fell upon his face and gave glory to God, for he had never before beheld or heard of such an example of living holiness. Saint Daniēl mediated the dispute between Lazestan and Rome, and Gubazi departed for his homeland, and Leōn to his palace, each satisfied that right had been done. Prince Gubazi maintained a lifelong correspondence with Saint Daniēl, and continually besought his prayers until the end of his life.
Even after the Thracian emperor’s death, Saint Daniēl continued to be active in the lives of Emperor Leōn’s son-in-law Zēnōn and grandson by Zēnōn Leōn II. During the dispute between Verinē’s brother Basiliskos and Zēnōn, Saint Daniēl firmly took Zēnōn’s side. This is possibly because of Basiliskos’s ecclesiastical policies, which favoured the moderately anti-Chalcedonian Miaphysites over the pro-Chalcedonian Orthodox. During this crisis Saint Daniēl was invited into the city by Patriarch Akakios of Constantinople in order to help settle it; a throng of people gathered around him which was so large and so enthusiastic that they nearly crushed the holy man. By the grace of God he was saved when a senatorial personage of the city, Dagalaiphos, and the servants of his household, came to the holy man’s aid. When he came into the cathedral, several people came up to him to beg him for aid, including a noblewoman named Hēraïs who was having trouble conceiving a son. In the end, Saint Daniēl managed to reconcile Basiliskos to Patriarch Akakios and make Basiliskos recant his heterodox beliefs, and the political trouble in Constantinople was temporarily quelled.
Saint Daniēl lived to the age of eighty-four, and was given to know in advance of the time that his course of life would run out. Seven days before he reposed in the Lord he gathered his disciples and the people around the base of his pillar and entreated them to be kind and merciful to one another, to love each other, to show each other hospitality, to be patient and humble to one another, and always to love first Christ and His Church. Three days before his repose he received a vision of the souls of the saints in Heaven. He reposed on the eleventh of December, 493. Many people attended him at his death and burial, and signs of his sanctity, such as luminous crosses in the sky and the flights of doves in the air, as well as wondrous healings, manifested themselves even before his interment. Holy and venerable Daniēl, ascetic and athlete of perfection, peacemaker, beloved by the faithful and feared by devils, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion for Saint Daniēl the Stylite, Tone 1:
You were a pillar of patient endurance,
Having imitated the forefathers, O Venerable One:
Job in suffering, and Joseph in temptations.
You lived like the bodiless ones while yet in the flesh, O Daniēl, our Father.
Beseech Christ God that our souls may be saved.
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