DANIEL

DANIEL, St. 1) the Stylite (ca. 409–493). Taking his name from the prophet and book of the Old Testament-which in turn was taken from the character Dan ’El of Semitic folklore-Daniel was a stylite, an ascetic who followed the unusual discipline of spending his life on a platform atop a column (stylos). As a disciple of a more famous stylite, Symeon (q.v.), Daniel’s Life holds that he was blessed by his master to be the latter’s “Elisha.” Making his home on a pillar for thirty-three years just outside the imperial capital, Constantinople (q.v.), he was indeed accorded great respect by both the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, doubtless in great part as the result of his immense popular following. He is said to have left his pillar only once (ca. 476) to rebuke Emperor Basilicus’s monophysitism (q.v.).

2) Prince of Moscow (1261–1303). Youngest son of Alexander Nevskii (q.v.), Daniel became ruler of Moscow and inaugurated its rise to power within his family, devoting himself to a peaceful Tartar appanage and expanding its borders. On the bank of the Moscow River a church with a cloister was founded in his honor, in which he took monastic vows before his death. On 30 August 1652, his relics were transferred to the famous St. Daniel’s (Danilov) Monastery in Moscow. The site has a particular contemporary importance: it was very recently renovated while the Soviets were still in power, being one of the first large-scale (trial run) ecclesiastical renovations in Russia. It houses the important Russian patriarchal Department of External Affairs (comparable to a foreign office or secretary of state).