PAUL OF THEBES, Saint. - First hermit, born around 234 in the Thebaid to well-to-do parents. According to his biographer St. Jerome, during the persecution of Decius, for fear of being denounced as a Christian, he fled to the mountain, taking up residence in a cave that had once belonged to coin counterfeiters.
There he led for nearly a hundred years a completely solitary life in prayer and penance, feeding on the fruit of palm trees and covering himself with a tunic woven from their leaves. At the age of 113 he received the visit of St. Anthony, then in his nineties, who had learned of his dwelling through revelation. He died shortly after this visit, around 341, and it was St. Anthony who came to bury him, wrapping him in the cloak he had received as a gift from St. Athanasius, while he appropriated P.'s tunic, which he then wore on the solemnities of Easter and Pentecost.
This is the substance of the Vita Pauli written by St. Jerome, which, if it is a literary gem, shows that the author knew very little about his protagonist and, apart from a few characteristic notes - P. a hermit, unknown to the world, holier than Anthony - he poured into it fantastic and commonplace elements, so that even at that time the historical personality of P. was doubted. The existence of P. must not, however, be considered a pure literary invention of St. Jerome.
The question remains uncertain whether the P. who fomented the schism of Oxyrhynchus, of which mention is made in the petition addressed in 383-84 to the emperors Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius by the two Roman Luciferian priests Marcellinus and Faustinus, should be identified with our P. or whether one must posit another Paul, a hermit of Oxyrhynchus. The first hypothesis would have the advantage of showing that P. would not have been so unknown as St. Jerome describes him, but would have led an eremitic life very similar to that of Anthony, receiving some visits from disciples and admirers and occasionally concerning himself with the affairs of the Church. Chronology, however, and topography seem rather to support the distinction.
Bibliography2 works
(phot. Alinari)
PAOLO UCCELLO - Equestrian monument of the English captain
Giov. Acuto. Fresco (1436) - Florence, Cathedral.
(phot. Alinari)
F. Cavallera, Paul de Thèbes et Paul d'Oxyrhynque, in Rev. d'ascétique et de mystique, 7 (1926), pp. 302-305; H. Leclercq, Paul de Thèbes, in DACL, XIII, 2700-2706.