noun
definition
A Christian ascetic in ancient times who lived alone on top of a tall pillar.
Examples of stylite in a Sentence
Of this second division of John's History, in which he had probably incorporated the socalled Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, considerable portions are found in the British Museum MSS.
When we put aside one or two exceptionally fine pieces, like the hymn of the soul in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the highest degree of excellence in style is perhaps attained in staightforward historical narrative - such as the account of the PersoRoman War at the beginning of the 6th century by the author who passes under the name of Joshua the Stylite, or by romancers like him who wrote the romance of Julian; by biographers like some of those who have written lives of saints, martyrs and eminent divines; and by some early writers of homilies such as Philoxenus (in prose) and Isaac of Antioch (in verse).
In 586 he was at Coblenz, and on his return to Yvois (the modern Carignan) visited the stylite Wulfilaic; in 588 we hear of him at Metz and also at Chalon-sur-Saone,whither he was sent to obtain from King Guntram the ratification of the pact of Andelot; in 593 he was at Orleans, where Childebert had just succeeded his uncle Guntram.
Wright, The Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite (1882); Bayer, Historia Osrhoena et Edessena (St Petersburg, 1784), collects the references in classical authors; for the coinage see references in von Gutschmid (see below).