From the account given of him by Theodoret, one of the most judicious
and most learned prelates of the church, who lived in the same country,
and often visited him; this account was written sixteen years before the
saint's death. Also from St. Simeon's life written by Antony, his
disciple, published genuine in Bollandus, and the same in Chaldaic by
Cosmas, a priest; all three contemporaries and eye-witnesses. This work
of Cosmas has been lately published by Monsignor Stephen Assemani,[1]
from a Chaldaic MS, which he proves to have been written in the year
474, fifteen years only after the death of St. Simeon. Also from the
ancient lives of SS. Euthyinius, Theodosius, Auxentius, and Daniel
Stylites. Evagrius, Theodorus Lector, and other most faithful writers of
that and the following age, mention the most wonderful actions of this
saint. The severest critics do not object to this history, in which so
many contemporary writers, several of them eye-witnesses, agree; persons
of undoubted veracity, virtue, and sagacity, who could not have
conspired in a falsehood, nor could have imposed upon the world facts,
which were of their own nature public and notorious. See Tillemont, T.
14.