St. Daniel the Stylite (409-493)

Given to God by his parents, Daniel was in a monastery by the age of five, and as a young monk he met Simeon the Stylite on his pillar and was blessed by him. After Simeon died he settled at Anaplus on the Bosporus, above Constantinople, and in 460 went up a pillar of his own, where he stood for thirty-three years through heat and snow, praying, counselling and healing; the emperor Leo raised a taller pillar for him and a church beside it. Only once did he come down: in 476, when the usurper Basiliscus decreed against the Council of Chalcedon, Daniel went into the city, rebuked him before the people, and the decree was withdrawn. He died on his pillar in 493, aged eighty-four. Feast: December 11.