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Simeon Stylites, Margery Kempe, and Philip Jacob Spener share little in the way of biographical details. Simeon, a fourth-century hermit, lived atop a pillar for 36 years, eating only one small meal per week. Margery made a deal with her husband around 1413 that if he would grant her wish of celibacy, she would grant his wish that she drink beer with him on Fridays. Spener, a seventeenth-century German divine, so impressed the ruling House of Saxony with his pious writings and pastoral effectiveness that he earned free postal privileges.

These three figures likely would not have approved of each other's methods and might not even have recognized each other as Christians. Yet all achieved fame as paragons of holiness.

Some aspects of the pursuit of holiness have remained constant throughout church history. The Shepherd of Hermas, a second-century apocalyptic book that almost made it into the canon, prescribes this lifestyle:

"Do no evil in your life, and serve the Lord with a pure heart: keep His commandments, walking in His precepts, and let no evil desire arise in your heart; and believe in God. If you do these things, and fear Him, and abstain from every evil thing, you will live unto God; and if you do these things, you will keep a great fast, and one acceptable before God."

Christians in all times and places could affirm this basic plan for drawing near to God. God's character and precepts are always the same. But holiness also entails being "set apart" from the world. As the world has changed, so have ideals of holiness.

Simeon was not the only pillar-dwelling hermit of his era. He inspired a small wave of stylites, who took their name from the Greek word for "column," stulos. And this group was just an extreme manifestation of a much larger trend in the early church: asceticism.

Antony of Egypt led the ascetic exodus from imperial cities into the provincial wilderness. Born in 251 into a prosperous family, he lived a conventional Christian life until his late teens, when both of his parents died. Soon after inheriting their estate, Antony happened into a church where he heard Jesus' directive to the rich young man: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor and follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven."

Antony obeyed. His fourth-century biographer, the theologian Athanasius, wrote, "Antony, as though God had put him in mind of the Saints, and the passage had been read on his account, went out immediately from the church, and gave the possessions of his forefathers to the villagers … that they should be no more a clog upon himself and his sister."

After settling his sister in a convent, Antony embarked on a life of discipline. He drastically reduced his bodily comforts, including food, sleep, and bathing. He shut himself up in a tomb for awhile, that he might further mortify his flesh while engaging in spiritual battle with the Devil.

Eventually, he established a monastery about 230 miles southwest of Alexandria that attracted a knot of like-minded men. His fame spread, due largely to Athanasius's biography, and other monasteries sprang up in the Egyptian desert, close enough to water and civilization to facilitate the monks' survival, but far enough away to stand as a rebuke to society.

Though asceticism had its roots in the third century, it emerged as a significant movement after Constantine's conversion to Christianity in 312 put an end to systematic persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire.

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