Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/363

 STUHLWEXSSENBURQ

317

STYLITES

influence. The Studites gave the first proof of their devotion to the Faith and the Church during the schism of Acacius (4S4-519); they also remained loyal during the storms of Iconoclastic dispute in the eighth and ninth centuries. They were driven from the monastery of Studion and the city by Emperor Constantine Copronymus; after his death (775), how- ever, some of them returned. Abbot Sabbas zeal- ously defended the Catholic doctrine against the Icon- oclasts at the Seventh CEcumenical Council of Nica?a (787). His successor was St. Theodore of Studion to whom the monastery owes the most of its fame; and who especially fostered study. During St. Theodore's administration also the monks were harassed and driven away several times, some of them being put to death. Theodore's pupil Naucratius re-established discipline after the Iconoclastic dispute had come to an end. Abbot Nicholas (848-51 and 855-58) refused to recog- nize the Patriarch Photius and was on this account imprisoned in the Studion. He was succeeded by five abbots who recognized the patriarch. The brilliant period of the Studion came to an end at this time. In the middle of the eleventh ccntiu'y. during the admin- istration of .\bbot Simeon, a monk named Nicetas Pectoratus (Stcthatos) made a violent attack on the Latins in a book which he wrote on unleavened bread, the Sabbath, and the m.arriage of priests. In 1054 he was obliged to recant in the presence of the em- peror and of the papal legates and to throw his book into the fire, but he began the dispute again later. As regards the intellectual life of the monastery in other directions it is especially celebrated for its famous school of caligraphy which was established by St. Theodore. In the eighth and eleventh centuries the monastery was the centre of Byzantine religious poetry ; a number of the hymns arc still used in the Greek Church. Besides St. Theodore and Nicetas, a num- ber of other theological writers are known. In 1204 the monastery was destroyed by the Crusaders and was not rebuilt until 1290; the greater part of it was again destroyed when the Turks captured Con.stantinople (1453). The only part now in exist- ence is the Church of St. John Baptist, probably the oldest remaining church in Constantinople, a basilica which still preserves from the early period two stories of columns on the sides and a wooden ceiling, and which is now the mo.sque Imrachor-Dschamissi.

Mt'LLER. Studium coEnobium Conslanlinopolilanum (Leipzig, 17-1); Salzenbero, Altchrislt. Bawlenkmdler von Konstantinopel (Berlin, 1854), 3(>-41, plates II-IV; Marin, De Studio cacnobio ConstarUinopolitano (Paris. 1897).

Klemens Loffler.

Stuhlweissenburg (Sz6KES-FEHfiRvA.R) Diocese OP (Ai.B.E REG.\LEXSis), in Hungary, and Suffra- gan of Gran. It was formed in 1777 from the Dioceses of Gyor and Vcszprem. In earlier times there was here a collegiate chapter of the Dio- cese of Veszprem, founded in 1006 by King St. Stephen; it was under a provost and was endowed with great privileges, the provost being chosen by the chapter, and the members of the chapter by the provost. Provost, chapter, and church were exempt from the jurisdiction of the bi.shop and directly sub- ject to the pope. The chapter members were re- cruited from the chief families, and were once about forty, but in 1543, during the inv:isions of the Turks, the chapter became extinct, though the provosts and canons were j-et nominated. The Provost of Stuhl- wei.ssenburg, according to the laws of the thirteenth century, was royal chancellor. The archives of the chapter were the most important in Hungary, and preserved a copy of the Golden Bull of 1222, the Magna Charta of Hungary. During the inva,sion of the Turks these archives were destroyed. The cathedral, in which the royal insignia were preserved, was later enlarged by the kings of Hungary and richly decorated. In 1601 it was destroyed by the Turks.

From 1380 to 1527 Stuhlweissenburg was both coronation and burial place for the Hungarian kings. The diocese includes the entire County of Fej6r and a part of the ancient County of Pilis, also the Island of Csepel in the Danube. Budapest, the capital of Hungary, though territorially within this diocese, is subject to the Archbishop of Gran.

The first Bishop of Stuhlweissenburg was Ignatius Nagy (1777-1789). Among his successors are Joseph Kopdcsy (1821-1825), afterwards Archbishop of Gran; Vinc.-nt Jekelfalus.sy (1866-1874), the first Hungarian bishop to promulgate the dogma of the infallibility without previously asking the royal con- sent (placet regium), and for which he was rebuked. In 1901 Bishop Julius Vdrosy was appointed Arch- bishop of Kalocsa. At present the see is ruled by Ottokar Prohaszka, a famous preacher and leader of the Hungarian Catholic movement. The diocese is divided into arch-deaconries ; the parish priests num- ber 92, and the clergy 152. In the diocese are 8 abbeys and 5 provostships, 4 monasteries for men and 12 for women, in all 109 members. Right of patronage belongs to 46 persons. Since 1841 the cathedral chapter, at the head of which is a chief provost, con- sists of 8 canons; the Catholic faithful are 230,305.

Das katholische Ungarn (Budapest. 1902) in Hungarian: Schema- tismus of the Diocese for tOtO; KArolt, Hist, of the County of Fejfr (Sz^kes-Feh^rvir, 1886-1901), in Hungarian.

A. AldXsy.

Stylites (Pill.^r Saints) were solitaries who, tak- ing up their abode upon the top of a pillar (crxCXos), chose to spend their days amid the restraints thus en- tailed and in the exercise of other forms of asceticism. This practice may be regarded as the climax of a ten- dency which became very pronounced in Eastern lands in the latter part of the fourth century. The duration and severity of the fasts then practised al- most pass belief, but the evidence is overwhelming (Butler; Palladius, I, 188, 240-1), and the general cor- rectness of the accounts preserved to us is now hardly disputed. Besides the mortification of the appetite, submission to restraints of all kinds became at this period an end in itself. Palladius tells us (eh. xlviii) of a hermit in Palestine who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain and who for the space of twenty-five years never turned his face to the West. St. Gregory of Nazianzus (P. G., XXXVII, 1456) speaks of a soli- tary who stood upright for many years together, ab- sorbed in contemplation, without ever lying down. Theodoret assures us that he had seen a hermit who had passed ten years in a tub suspended in mid air from poles (Philotheus, ch. xxviii).

There seems no reason to doubt that it was the as- cetical spirit manifested in such examples as these which spurred men on to devise new and more in- genious forms of self-crucifixion and which in 423 led Simeon Stylites the Elder (q. v.) first of all to take up his abode upon the top of a pillar. Critics, it is true, have recalled a passage in Lucian (De Syria Dea, cc. xxviii-xxix) which speaks of a high cohinm at Hier- apolis to the top of which a man ascended twice a year and spent a week in converse with the gods, but even such an authority as Noldeke thinks it unlikelj that Simeon hail derived any suggestioti from this pa- gan custom, which certainly had died out before his time. In any case Simeon had a continuous series ot imitators, more particularly in Syria and Palestine. St. Daniel Stylites may have been the first of these, for he had been a disciple of St. Simeon and began his rigorous way of life shortly after his master died. Daniel was a Syrian by birth but he established him- self near Constantinople, where he was visited by both the Emperor Leo and the Emperor Zeno. Simeon the Younger (q. v.), like his namesake, lived near Anti- och; he died in 596, and had for a contemporarj' a hardly less famous Stylites in St. Alypius, whose pil- lar had been erected near Adrianople in Paphlagonia.