Paphnutius was an Egyptian, born in the latter half of the third century, in the age when the Nile valley was filling with hermits and the Church was still under the sword. His Coptic name means "the one who belongs to God," and his life bore out the meaning. According to the tradition preserved by the historians, he was raised among a community of ascetics, and he embraced the life of the solitaries of the desert as a disciple of Saint Anthony the Great, learning from that master the long apprenticeship of prayer, fasting, silence and combat with the demons.
About the year 308, during the persecution unleashed under the emperor Maximinus Daia, Paphnutius was arrested for the Faith. His torturers put out his right eye and severed the sinews behind his left knee, so that he limped for the rest of his days; then he was sent down into the mines as a condemned labourer, where he spent some three years among the chains and the dust. The sufferings of the Egyptian confessors exiled and maimed in those years are described by Eusebius, and Paphnutius bore their common wounds in his own flesh. When peace came to the Church about 311 he was set free, still living, and the Church henceforth called him "Confessor" — one who had confessed Christ under torture and had not died.
Returning to Egypt, he lived as a monk, it is said in the neighbourhood of Anthony, and after some years he was chosen bishop of a city of the Upper Thebaid, whose name is now lost. He was extraordinarily beloved by the people. Rufinus of Aquileia, who is one of the earliest witnesses to his life, records that through Paphnutius God worked many wonders — exorcisms and healings of every kind — so that he was reverenced throughout Egypt as a man in whom the power of Christ visibly dwelt.
In 325 Paphnutius took his place among the bishops gathered by Constantine at Nicaea for the First Ecumenical Council. There he was a zealous defender of the orthodox faith against the Arian heresy, which denied the true divinity of the Son. Rufinus relates that the emperor held him in singular esteem: whenever Paphnutius came to the palace, Constantine embraced him and kissed the empty socket of the eye that the persecutors had torn out, honouring in that wound the price of Christian fidelity.
The most famous act ascribed to him at Nicaea is reported by Socrates Scholasticus and repeated by Sozomen. It seemed that most of the assembled bishops were inclined to follow the precedent of the Council of Elvira and forbid conjugal life to bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons who had been married before ordination. Paphnutius rose and earnestly entreated his brethren not to lay this burden upon them. Marriage, he said, is honourable, and the union of chaste spouses undefiled; not all are able to bear the asceticism of perfect continence; let the Church keep to her ancient discipline, whereby those celibate at ordination remain celibate, while "none should be separated from her to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united." The words carried the more weight because everyone knew that Paphnutius himself had kept the strictest chastity his whole life long and was asking nothing for himself. The council, moved by his authority, left the matter to the conscience of the married clergy. Later writers — Baronius, the Bollandists, Cardinal Stickler and others — have questioned whether the speech is historical, since Rufinus and Eusebius do not mention it; others of equal learning, among them Hefele, Funk, Vacandard and Leclercq, have defended it, and Alban Butler judged that "there is, however, nothing repugnant in the narration." The Church has kept the memory of the one-eyed confessor who pleaded for mercy toward his brethren.
Paphnutius did not desert the cause of orthodoxy when it became dangerous. In 335 he went with Saint Athanasius, together with Potamon of Heraclea and some forty-seven other Egyptian bishops, to the Synod of Tyre, where Athanasius stood accused by his enemies. Rufinus tells how Paphnutius there took aside Maximus, bishop of Jerusalem, who had shared his confession and his sufferings, and drew him away from the party arrayed against Athanasius, reminding him that men who had lost their eyes for Christ ought not to sit in the councils of the wicked. Maximus thereafter stood with the defenders of the Nicene faith.
Tradition adds tender legends to this austere life. It is told that Paphnutius once received Holy Communion from the hand of an angel, and begged to be allowed to remain in the desert until the end of his days; but the angel answered that God had chosen another path for him — that he must return to Egypt and tell the Christians how the dwellers in the desert live. He is also remembered in later legend as the monk who converted the courtesan Saint Thaïs, a story dramatized about 965 by the Benedictine nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in her play "Paphnutius," and taken up again in modern literature. John Cassian, in his Conferences with the Fathers, preserves many episodes from the life and teaching of a Paphnutius of the Egyptian desert.
He died in the fourth century, traditionally about the year 360, full of years and of honour, and the place of his burial is not recorded. His memory is kept on 11 September in the Roman and Byzantine calendars, on 12 June in some Eastern usages, and on 9 February and 1 May among the Copts; miners invoke him as their patron, remembering the years he spent underground in chains for the name of Jesus.
Let us ask Saint Paphnutius the Confessor to obtain for us today his twofold grace: the courage to suffer rather than betray the truth, and the gentleness to lay no burden on our neighbour that we would not carry ourselves.
