(in the past) an ascetic who lived on top of a pillar.
Example sentencesExamples
There were the pillarists, like Simeon Stylites, who displayed his asceticism, his privations and penitences high above the market place for all eyes to see.
One might have supposed that the column and colossus of St. Carlo Borromeo had been suggested by these Pillarists.
It delights and illuminates like the words of a pillarist hermit depositing wisdom from a secluded scenic mountaintop.
Here dwelt the Pillarists as in the Monastery of St. Simeon Stylites.
The starting points were all the mad men in the sun, those desert fathers and pillarists, the strange, demented visionaries who were laughed at.