St Paphnutius the Great Bishop

September 11

St Paphnutius the Great Bishop, Confessor (-c.350)

St Paphnutius was an Egyptian who spent some years under St Anthony’s direction in the desert and was then appointed to a bishopric in the Upper Thebaid. During the persecution ot the tyrant Maximinus Thrax he was, with many others, condemned to have his right eye torn off and his left knee mutilated, and then sent to work in the mines. With the return of peaceful conditions, he was able to take up again the administration of his See and proved himself an unswerving opponent of Arianism.

At the great Council of Nicaea he was conspicuously honoured by the friendship and esteem of Constantine the Great, who would often consult him in private and then, when seeing him off, would reverently kiss the place where his eye had been pulled out. It is perhaps due to his influence that the Council left to the discretion of Priests who had been married before ordination, the question of continence. It was decreed, however, that all clergy who had been celibate at ordination, would continue to observe continence. In 335 Paphnutius also attended the Synod of Tyre in the company of St Athanasius, and there defended him vigorously against his Arian adversaries.