Simeon Stylites spent 37 years of his life on top of a pillar near the city of Aleppo, Syria, during the 5th century AD. In a lecture from 2017, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at why anyone would do such a thing in its historical context. What was the appeal of the extreme ascetic life and how did it yield the impressive "spiritual power" that allowed Simeon and his fellow ascetics to overturn and destroy reverence for the old pagan gods, whose traditions and shrines had existed for centuries and millennia?

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