PAFNUZIO il GRANDE, saint. – Bishop, died ca. 360. The Copts celebrated his memory on 9 February and 1 May. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on 11 September.
Rufinus (Hist. eccl., X, 4) writes that P. was Egyptian, without indicating his native region. 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 disagree about other details of the punishments to which he is said to have been subjected. When he was released (ca. 311), he withdrew to 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 several historians attest (cf., e.g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl., I, 4). At this Council he maintained the thesis that ecclesiastics should be forbidden to marry only after priestly Ordination (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., I, 23; Socrates’ version, Hist. eccl., I, 11, is scarcely credible, if not actually 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 opposed to 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 P. are listed; since this was a fairly common name and reliable particulars are lacking, there are insufficient grounds for believing that our P. also took part in this Council in 347.