other · 460–490 · Constantinople
Daniel had gone to Telanissos twice to see Simeon, and after Simeon died in 459 he was given his cloak. He took up a column at Anaplous on the European shore of the Bosphorus, a few miles from Constantinople, and stood there for thirty-three years. The location is the difference between him and his master: Simeon's pillar was in the Syrian hills and people travelled to it, while Daniel's was within reach of the capital, so the capital came to him. Emperors consulted him. He came down exactly once, in 476, when the usurper Basiliscus backed the anti-Chalcedonians — an old man on ruined feet walking into the city to face him down, which is the single most quoted scene in his Life. Leo I built him a proper column with a shelter and had him ordained where he stood, the patriarch obliged to say the words at the foot of it because Daniel would not descend.
Was the pillar one man's eccentricity or a way of life that could be handed on?
Handed on, and with the cloak to prove it.