the desire to imitate Christ's body, and especially His sufferings, was closely related to the imitation both of His humanity and of His divinity, since the passion and the crucifixion were the essential preparations for the resurrection and thus set an example for all Christians. Even in the early church, when the primary concern was with the imitation of Christ's divinity, some writers expressed a sympathy (in the strict sense of the word) with His human sufferings, and some of the expressions of tenderness and endearment for the human Jesus in Syria in the fifth to seventh centuries and in Ireland in the eighth to eleventh centuries resembled those on the continent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Artemidorus in the second century described dreams about the crucifixion, and Melito of Sardis reflected a tradition of selfreproach by Christ's tormentors when he said, ‘The nails which you sharpen are bitter for you.’ Basil of Caesarea wrote in 375 to Eustathius of Sebaste that the eastern ascetics showed by their sufferings ‘what it is to sojourn here below and what to have citizenship in heaven’ and (following 2 Corinthians 4.10) ‘that they bear about their body the mortification of Jesus’. Basil meant by this, like Paul, that they suffered with Christ, like the martyrs, and would share His reward, not that they literally had the marks of the passion on their bodies. According to the Syriac Life of Simeon the Stylite, who died in 459, God used the human body of Jesus to conquer Satan, suffering, and death and Simeon himself, who loved God ‘more than himself and more than his life’, also used his body in the battle against Satan.