PAFNUTIUS THE GREAT, Saint. - Bishop, d. ca. 360. The Copts celebrated his memory on February 9 and May 1. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on September 11.

Rufinus (Hist. eccl., X, 4) writes that P. was Egyptian, without indicating his native country. Nothing is known with certainty about the period of his youth. During the persecution of Maximinus, he was condemned to the mines (ca. 308); historians do not agree on other particulars of the punishments to which he is said to have been subjected. When he was freed (ca. 311), he withdrew to monastic life under the discipline of St. Anthony, on the so-called "Outer Mountain." His status as a "confessor" won him great esteem both with Constantine the Great and with the fathers of the Council of Nicaea (325), as several historians attest (cf., e.g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl., I, 4). At this Council he maintained the thesis that marriage should be forbidden to ecclesiastics only after priestly Ordination (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., I, 23; the version of Socrates, Hist. eccl., I, 11, is scarcely credible, if not indeed tendentious). In 335 he also took part in the famous Conciliabulum of Tyre, at which he succeeded in detaching St. Maximus from the party of the Melitians and Arians against St. Athanasius (Rufinus, Hist. eccl., X, 18, and Sozomen, Hist. eccl., II, 25). Among the Egyptian bishops who subscribed at the Council of Sardica three P.s are read; since this is a fairly common name and reliable particulars are lacking, there are not sufficient grounds for believing that our P. also took part in this Council in 347.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: Acta SS. Septembris, III, Paris 1868 pp. 778-87; Anal. Ball., 40 (1922), pp. 328-43, Greek text of the passion of P. already published in Latin in the Acta SS. Septembris, VI, pp. 683-88; Mortyr. Romanum, pp. 391-92.

Martiniano Roncaglia

@incollection{ec9_pafnuzio_il_grande_santo, author = {Roncaglia, Martiniano}, title = {Pafnuzio Il Grande, santo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {552--553}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pafnuzio-il-grande-santo} }

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Pafnutius the Great, Saint

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