PAPHNUTIUS the Great, St. — Bishop, d. ca. 360. The Copts celebrated his memory on 9 Feb. and 10 May. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on 11 Sept.
Rufinus (Hist. eccl., X, 4) writes that P. was an Egyptian, without specifying his native country. Nothing certain is known about the period of his youth. During the persecution of Maximinus, he was condemned to the mines (ca. 308); historians disagree on other details of the punishments to which he was allegedly subjected. When he was freed (ca. 311), he retired to the monastic life under the discipline of St. Anthony on the so-called “Outer Mountain.” His status as a “confessor” earned him great esteem both from Constantine the Great and from the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea (325), as attested by various historians (cf., e.g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl., I, 4). At this Council he upheld the thesis that clerical marriage should be forbidden only after priestly ordination (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., I, 23; Socrates’ version, Hist. eccl., I, 11, is scarcely credible, if not tendentious). In 335 he also took part in the famous Council of Tyre, where he succeeded in detaching St. Maximus from the party of the Meletians and Arians against St. Athanasius (Rufinus, Hist. eccl., X, 18 and Sozomen, Hist. eccl., II, 25). Among the Egyptian bishops who subscribed to the Council of Sardica, three are named Paphnutius; since this is a fairly common name and no certain details are available, there is insufficient reason to believe that our subject also attended this Council in 347.