Symeon the Ancient
Our Venerable Father Symeon the Ancient
Venerable · d. c. 390
Commemorated 26 January — Commemoration of the Syrian ascetic
Symeon "the Ancient" (died c. 390) was one of the earliest and most venerable of the ascetics of the Syrian mountains, whose life the historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus recorded from living memory in his History of the Monks of Syria. He withdrew as a young man into a mountain cave and then to the wilderness of Mount Amanus, living on wild plants, given to unceasing prayer, and — the tradition loves to tell — so at peace with creation that wild beasts grew tame before him. He made the long pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, and afterward gathered disciples and founded two monasteries, ruling them as their spiritual father into a great old age. He is called "the Ancient" to mark him as one of the fathers of Syrian monasticism and to distinguish him from the later Symeons of the same land. He is commemorated on January 26.
Symeon is a saint of the fourth-century Syrian desert, the world of solitaries that produced the stylites and the grazers and that Theodoret of Cyrrhus, bishop and eyewitness, set down in his Philotheos Historia (the History of the Monks of Syria), where Symeon the Elder has his own chapter. Drawn young to the solitary life, he shut himself first in a mountain cave, where he gave himself to prayer and to the harshest fasting, taking for food only what the wilderness offered — wild herbs and roots — and living exposed to the seasons. From there he went deeper into the wilds of Mount Amanus, the range on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, continuing the same hidden warfare.
The tradition surrounds him with the tokens of a soul restored to the peace of Adam: wild beasts are said to have come to him without fear and to have grown gentle at his approach, and he to have passed unharmed among them — the sign, in the desert literature, of a man in whom the passions were stilled and the old dominion over creation in part restored. Longing to venerate the place of the giving of the Law and the vision of God, Symeon undertook the arduous pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, and after praying there returned to his own country. In his later years, no longer able to remain wholly hidden, he gathered disciples and founded two monasteries, over which he presided as abba, forming a generation of ascetics in the life he had lived alone. He reposed in great old age, about the year 390, and was numbered among the fathers of Syrian monasticism.
Feast and commemoration
Symeon the Ancient is commemorated on January 26 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 8), together with Xenophon and his household and the other saints of the day. No proper office survives; he is sung under the common of a venerable ascetic.
Iconography
Symeon is depicted as an aged Syrian hermit, long-bearded and gaunt, in the coarse tunic of the desert solitaries, often with a scroll or with his hands raised in prayer, and sometimes with the wild beasts of his legend at his feet to mark his peace with creation. No securely identified early portrait proper to him has been located for storage, and no icon image is stored here.
Disputed questions
- "Of Sinai" or "of Syria." Some calendars, and the OCA, style him Symeon "of Mount Sinai," from his celebrated pilgrimage there; the earliest witness, Theodoret, presents him rather as an ascetic of the Syrian mountains (Amanus) who journeyed to Sinai and returned. The two descriptions name the same saint; this entry follows Theodoret in placing his life and monasteries in Syria.
- Not to be confused with the great Symeon the Stylite (the Elder, †459, kept September 1), the first of the pillar-ascetics, nor with Symeon the New Theologian (†1022) — distinct and later Syrian and Byzantine saints of the same name. "The Ancient" marks this Symeon as one of the first fathers of the Syrian solitary life.