St. Paul the First Hermit A.D. 342
 |  |  |
Elias and St. John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ himself
was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness,
neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day,
though young, into the desert, and was to him an instructor there, but it is no less
certain that an entire solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human
society is one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to Himself and
is more worthy of our admiration than calculated for imitation and practice; it is a
state which ought only to be embraced by such as are already well experienced in
the practices of virtue and contemplation, and who can resist sloth and other
temptations, lest, instead of being a help, it prove a snare and stumbling-block in
their way to heaven.
This saint was a native of the Lower Thebais in Egypt and had lost both his
parents when he was but fifteen years of age; nevertheless, he was a great
proficient in the Greek and Egyptian learning, was mild and modest, and feared God
from his earliest youth. The bloody persecution of Decius disturbed the peace of the
church in 250; and what was most dreadful, Satan, by his ministers, sought not so
much to kill the bodies as by subtle artifices and tedious tortures to destroy the
souls of men. Two instances are sufficient to show his malice in this respect: A
soldier of Christ, who had already triumphed over the racks and tortures, had his
whole body rubbed over with honey and was then laid on his back in the sun, with
his hands tied behind him, that the flies and wasps, which are quite intolerable in
hot countries, might torment and gall him with their stings. Another was bound with
silk cords on a bed of down in a delightful garden, where a lascivious woman was
employed to entice him to sin; the martyr, sensible of his danger, bit off part of his
tongue and spit it in her face, that the horror of such an action might put her to
flight, and the smart occasioned by it be a means to prevent, in his own heart, any
manner of consent to carnal pleasure. During these times of danger, Paul kept
himself concealed in the house of another; but finding that a brother-in-law was
inclined to betray him, that he might enjoy his estate, he fled into the deserts.
There he found many spacious caverns in a rock, which were said to have been the
retreat of money-coiners in the days of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He chose for his
dwelling a cave in this place, near which were a palm-tree, * and a clear spring: the
former by its leaves furnished him with raiment, and by its fruit with food; and the
latter supplied him with water for his drink.
Paul was twenty-two years old when he entered the desert. His first intention
was to enjoy the liberty of serving God till the persecution should cease; but,
relishing the sweets of heavenly contemplation and penance and learning the
spiritual advantages of holy solitude, he resolved to return no more among men nor
to concern himself in the least with human affairs and with what passed in the
world; it was enough for him to know that there was a world and to pray that it
might be improved in goodness. The saint lived on the fruit of his tree till he was
forty-three years of age, and from that time till his death, like Elias, he was
miraculously fed with bread brought him every day by a raven. His method of life and
what he did in this place during ninety years is unknown to us, but God was pleased
to make his servant known a little before his death.
The great St. Antony, who was then ninety years of age, was tempted to
vanity, as if no one had served God so long in the wilderness as he had done,
imagining himself also to be the first example of a life so recluse from human
conversation; but the contrary was discovered to him in a dream the night following,
and the saint was at the same time commanded by Almighty God to set out
forthwith in quest of a perfect servant of his, concealed in the more remote parts of
those deserts. The holy old man set out the next morning in search of the unknown
hermit. St. Jerome relates from his authors that he met a centaur, or creature not
with the nature and properties but with something of the mixed shape of man and
horse, * and that this monster, or phantom of the devil (St. Jerome pretends not to
determine which it was), upon his making the sign of the cross, fled away, after
having pointed out the way to the saint. Our author adds, that St. Antony soon after
met a satyr, * who gave him to understand that he was an inhabitant of those
deserts, and one of that sort whom the deluded Gentiles adored for gods. St.
Antony, after two days and a night spent in the search, discovered the saint's abode
by a light that was in it, which he made up to. Having long begged admittance at
the door of his cell, St. Paul at last opened it with a smile; they embraced, called
each other by their names, which they knew by divine revelation. St. Paul then
inquired whether idolatry still reigned in the world. While they were discoursing
together, a raven flew towards them, and dropped a loaf of bread before them. Upon
which St. Paul said, "Our good God has sent us a dinner. In this manner have I
received half a loaf every day these sixty years past; now you are come to see me,
Christ has doubled his provision for his servants." Having given thanks to God they
both sat down by the fountain; but a little contest arose between them who should
break the bread; St. Antony alleged St. Paul's greater age, and St. Paul pleaded that
Antony was the stranger; both agreed at last to take up their parts together. Having
refreshed themselves at the spring, they spent the night in prayer. The next
morning, St. Paul told his guest that the time of his death approached, and that he
was sent to bury him, adding "Go and fetch the cloak given you by St. Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, in which I desire you to wrap my body." This he might say with
the intent of being left alone in prayer, while he expected to be called out of this
world; as also that he might testify his veneration for St. Athanasius and his high
regard for the faith and communion of the Catholic church, on account of which that
holy bishop was then a great sufferer. St. Antony wee surprised to hear him mention
the cloak, which he could not have known but by divine revelation. Whatever was his
motive for desiring to be buried in it. St. Anthony acquiesced to what was asked of
him; so, after mutual embraces, he hastened to his monastery to comply with St.
Paul's request. He told his monks that he, a sinner, falsely bore the name of a
servant of God, but that he had seen Elias and John the Baptist in the wilderness,
even Paul in Paradise. Having taken the cloak, he returned with it in all haste,
fearing lest the holy hermit might be dead, as it happened. While on his road, he
saw his happy soul carried up to heaven, attended by choirs of angels, prophets, and
apostles. St. Antony, though he rejoiced on St. Paul's account, could not help
lamenting on his own, for having lost a treasure so lately discovered. As soon as his
sorrow would permit, he arose, pursued his journey, and came to the cave. Going in,
he found the body kneeling and the hands stretched out. Full of joy, and supposing
him yet alive, he knelt down to pray with him, but by his silence soon perceived he
was dead. Having paid his last respects to the holy corpse, he carried it out of the
cave. While he stood perplexed how to dig a grave, two lions came up quietly and,
as it were, mourning and, tearing up the ground, made a hole large enough for the
reception of a human body. St. Antony then hurled the corpse, singing hymns and
psalms, according to what was usual and appointed by the church on that occasion.
After this he returned home praising God and related to his monks what he had seen
and done. He always kept as a great treasure, and wore himself on great festivals,
the garment of St. Paul, of palm-tree leaves patched together. St. Paul died in the
year of our Lord 342, the hundred and thirteenth year of his age and the ninetieth of
his solitude and is usually called the first hermit, to distinguish him from others of
that name. The body of this saint is said to have been conveyed to Constantinople,
by the emperor Michael Comnenus, in the twelfth century, and from thence to Venice
in 1240. * Lewis I, king of Hungary, procured it from that republic, and deposited it
at Buda, where a congregation of hermits under his name, which still subsists in
Hungary, Poland, and Austria, was instituted by blessed Eusebius of Strigonium, a
nobleman, who, having distributed his whole estate among the poor, retired into the
forests and, being followed by others, built the monastery of Pisilia, under the rule
of the regular canons of St. Austin. He died in that house, January the 20th, 1270.
St. Paul, the hermit, is commemorated in several ancient western
Martyrologies on the 10th of January, but in the Roman on the 15th, on which he is
honored in the anthologium of the Greeks.
An eminent contemplative draws the following portraiture of this great model
of an eremitical life: * St. Paul, the hermit, not being called by God to the external
duties of an active life, remained alone, conversing only with God in a vast
wilderness, for the space of near a hundred years, ignorant of all that passed in the
world -- the progress of sciences, the establishment of religion, and the revolutions
of states and empires -- and indifferent even as to those things without which he
could not live -- the air which he breathed, the water he drank, and the miraculous
bread with which he supported life. "What did he do?" say the inhabitants of this
busy world, who think they could not live without being in a perpetual hurry of
restless projects; "What was his employment all this while?" Alas! Ought we not
rather to put these questions to them: "What are you doing while you are not taken
up in doing the will of God, which occupies the heavens and the earth in all their
motions? Do you call that doing nothing which is the great end God proposed to
Himself in giving us a being -- that is, to be employed in contemplating, adoring,
and praising Him? Is it to be idle and useless in the world to be entirely taken up in
that which is the eternal occupation of God Himself and of the blessed inhabitants of
heaven? What employment is better, more just, more sublime, or more
advantageous than this, when done in suitable circumstances? To be employed in
anything else, however great or noble, howsoever it may appear in the eyes of men,
unless it be referred to God and be the accomplishment of His holy will, Who in all
our actions demands our heart more than our hand, what is it but to turn ourselves
away from our end, to lose our time, and voluntarily to return again to that state of
nothing out of which we were formed, or rather into a far worse state?"
From his life, compiled by St. Jerome, in 365. Pope Gelasius I. in his learned Roman
council, in 494, commends this authentic history. St. Paul is also mentioned by
Cassian, St. Fulgentius, Sulpitius Severus Sidonius, Paulinus, in the life of St.
Ambrose &c. St. Jerome received this account from two disciples of St. Antony --
Amathas and Macarius. St. Athanasius says that he only wrote what he had heard
from St. Antony's own mouth or from his disciples, and desires others to add what
they know concerning his actions. On the various readings and manuscript copies of
this life, see the disquisition of F. Jer. de Prato, an oratorian of Verona, in his new
edition or the works of Sulpitius Severus, t 1, app. 2, p 403. The Greek history of St.
Paul the hermit, which Bollandus imagines St. Jerome to have followed, is evidently
posterior and borrows from him, as Jos. Assemani shows. Comm. in Calend. Univ. t.
6, p 82. See Gudij Epistolae, p. 278.
[1] Butler's Lives of the Saints – January 15.
was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast in the wilderness,
neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost conducted the saint of this day,
though young, into the desert, and was to him an instructor there, but it is no less
certain that an entire solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human
society is one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to Himself and
is more worthy of our admiration than calculated for imitation and practice; it is a
state which ought only to be embraced by such as are already well experienced in
the practices of virtue and contemplation, and who can resist sloth and other
temptations, lest, instead of being a help, it prove a snare and stumbling-block in
their way to heaven.
This saint was a native of the Lower Thebais in Egypt and had lost both his
parents when he was but fifteen years of age; nevertheless, he was a great
proficient in the Greek and Egyptian learning, was mild and modest, and feared God
from his earliest youth. The bloody persecution of Decius disturbed the peace of the
church in 250; and what was most dreadful, Satan, by his ministers, sought not so
much to kill the bodies as by subtle artifices and tedious tortures to destroy the
souls of men. Two instances are sufficient to show his malice in this respect: A
soldier of Christ, who had already triumphed over the racks and tortures, had his
whole body rubbed over with honey and was then laid on his back in the sun, with
his hands tied behind him, that the flies and wasps, which are quite intolerable in
hot countries, might torment and gall him with their stings. Another was bound with
silk cords on a bed of down in a delightful garden, where a lascivious woman was
employed to entice him to sin; the martyr, sensible of his danger, bit off part of his
tongue and spit it in her face, that the horror of such an action might put her to
flight, and the smart occasioned by it be a means to prevent, in his own heart, any
manner of consent to carnal pleasure. During these times of danger, Paul kept
himself concealed in the house of another; but finding that a brother-in-law was
inclined to betray him, that he might enjoy his estate, he fled into the deserts.
There he found many spacious caverns in a rock, which were said to have been the
retreat of money-coiners in the days of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He chose for his
dwelling a cave in this place, near which were a palm-tree, * and a clear spring: the
former by its leaves furnished him with raiment, and by its fruit with food; and the
latter supplied him with water for his drink.
Paul was twenty-two years old when he entered the desert. His first intention
was to enjoy the liberty of serving God till the persecution should cease; but,
relishing the sweets of heavenly contemplation and penance and learning the
spiritual advantages of holy solitude, he resolved to return no more among men nor
to concern himself in the least with human affairs and with what passed in the
world; it was enough for him to know that there was a world and to pray that it
might be improved in goodness. The saint lived on the fruit of his tree till he was
forty-three years of age, and from that time till his death, like Elias, he was
miraculously fed with bread brought him every day by a raven. His method of life and
what he did in this place during ninety years is unknown to us, but God was pleased
to make his servant known a little before his death.
The great St. Antony, who was then ninety years of age, was tempted to
vanity, as if no one had served God so long in the wilderness as he had done,
imagining himself also to be the first example of a life so recluse from human
conversation; but the contrary was discovered to him in a dream the night following,
and the saint was at the same time commanded by Almighty God to set out
forthwith in quest of a perfect servant of his, concealed in the more remote parts of
those deserts. The holy old man set out the next morning in search of the unknown
hermit. St. Jerome relates from his authors that he met a centaur, or creature not
with the nature and properties but with something of the mixed shape of man and
horse, * and that this monster, or phantom of the devil (St. Jerome pretends not to
determine which it was), upon his making the sign of the cross, fled away, after
having pointed out the way to the saint. Our author adds, that St. Antony soon after
met a satyr, * who gave him to understand that he was an inhabitant of those
deserts, and one of that sort whom the deluded Gentiles adored for gods. St.
Antony, after two days and a night spent in the search, discovered the saint's abode
by a light that was in it, which he made up to. Having long begged admittance at
the door of his cell, St. Paul at last opened it with a smile; they embraced, called
each other by their names, which they knew by divine revelation. St. Paul then
inquired whether idolatry still reigned in the world. While they were discoursing
together, a raven flew towards them, and dropped a loaf of bread before them. Upon
which St. Paul said, "Our good God has sent us a dinner. In this manner have I
received half a loaf every day these sixty years past; now you are come to see me,
Christ has doubled his provision for his servants." Having given thanks to God they
both sat down by the fountain; but a little contest arose between them who should
break the bread; St. Antony alleged St. Paul's greater age, and St. Paul pleaded that
Antony was the stranger; both agreed at last to take up their parts together. Having
refreshed themselves at the spring, they spent the night in prayer. The next
morning, St. Paul told his guest that the time of his death approached, and that he
was sent to bury him, adding "Go and fetch the cloak given you by St. Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, in which I desire you to wrap my body." This he might say with
the intent of being left alone in prayer, while he expected to be called out of this
world; as also that he might testify his veneration for St. Athanasius and his high
regard for the faith and communion of the Catholic church, on account of which that
holy bishop was then a great sufferer. St. Antony wee surprised to hear him mention
the cloak, which he could not have known but by divine revelation. Whatever was his
motive for desiring to be buried in it. St. Anthony acquiesced to what was asked of
him; so, after mutual embraces, he hastened to his monastery to comply with St.
Paul's request. He told his monks that he, a sinner, falsely bore the name of a
servant of God, but that he had seen Elias and John the Baptist in the wilderness,
even Paul in Paradise. Having taken the cloak, he returned with it in all haste,
fearing lest the holy hermit might be dead, as it happened. While on his road, he
saw his happy soul carried up to heaven, attended by choirs of angels, prophets, and
apostles. St. Antony, though he rejoiced on St. Paul's account, could not help
lamenting on his own, for having lost a treasure so lately discovered. As soon as his
sorrow would permit, he arose, pursued his journey, and came to the cave. Going in,
he found the body kneeling and the hands stretched out. Full of joy, and supposing
him yet alive, he knelt down to pray with him, but by his silence soon perceived he
was dead. Having paid his last respects to the holy corpse, he carried it out of the
cave. While he stood perplexed how to dig a grave, two lions came up quietly and,
as it were, mourning and, tearing up the ground, made a hole large enough for the
reception of a human body. St. Antony then hurled the corpse, singing hymns and
psalms, according to what was usual and appointed by the church on that occasion.
After this he returned home praising God and related to his monks what he had seen
and done. He always kept as a great treasure, and wore himself on great festivals,
the garment of St. Paul, of palm-tree leaves patched together. St. Paul died in the
year of our Lord 342, the hundred and thirteenth year of his age and the ninetieth of
his solitude and is usually called the first hermit, to distinguish him from others of
that name. The body of this saint is said to have been conveyed to Constantinople,
by the emperor Michael Comnenus, in the twelfth century, and from thence to Venice
in 1240. * Lewis I, king of Hungary, procured it from that republic, and deposited it
at Buda, where a congregation of hermits under his name, which still subsists in
Hungary, Poland, and Austria, was instituted by blessed Eusebius of Strigonium, a
nobleman, who, having distributed his whole estate among the poor, retired into the
forests and, being followed by others, built the monastery of Pisilia, under the rule
of the regular canons of St. Austin. He died in that house, January the 20th, 1270.
St. Paul, the hermit, is commemorated in several ancient western
Martyrologies on the 10th of January, but in the Roman on the 15th, on which he is
honored in the anthologium of the Greeks.
An eminent contemplative draws the following portraiture of this great model
of an eremitical life: * St. Paul, the hermit, not being called by God to the external
duties of an active life, remained alone, conversing only with God in a vast
wilderness, for the space of near a hundred years, ignorant of all that passed in the
world -- the progress of sciences, the establishment of religion, and the revolutions
of states and empires -- and indifferent even as to those things without which he
could not live -- the air which he breathed, the water he drank, and the miraculous
bread with which he supported life. "What did he do?" say the inhabitants of this
busy world, who think they could not live without being in a perpetual hurry of
restless projects; "What was his employment all this while?" Alas! Ought we not
rather to put these questions to them: "What are you doing while you are not taken
up in doing the will of God, which occupies the heavens and the earth in all their
motions? Do you call that doing nothing which is the great end God proposed to
Himself in giving us a being -- that is, to be employed in contemplating, adoring,
and praising Him? Is it to be idle and useless in the world to be entirely taken up in
that which is the eternal occupation of God Himself and of the blessed inhabitants of
heaven? What employment is better, more just, more sublime, or more
advantageous than this, when done in suitable circumstances? To be employed in
anything else, however great or noble, howsoever it may appear in the eyes of men,
unless it be referred to God and be the accomplishment of His holy will, Who in all
our actions demands our heart more than our hand, what is it but to turn ourselves
away from our end, to lose our time, and voluntarily to return again to that state of
nothing out of which we were formed, or rather into a far worse state?"
From his life, compiled by St. Jerome, in 365. Pope Gelasius I. in his learned Roman
council, in 494, commends this authentic history. St. Paul is also mentioned by
Cassian, St. Fulgentius, Sulpitius Severus Sidonius, Paulinus, in the life of St.
Ambrose &c. St. Jerome received this account from two disciples of St. Antony --
Amathas and Macarius. St. Athanasius says that he only wrote what he had heard
from St. Antony's own mouth or from his disciples, and desires others to add what
they know concerning his actions. On the various readings and manuscript copies of
this life, see the disquisition of F. Jer. de Prato, an oratorian of Verona, in his new
edition or the works of Sulpitius Severus, t 1, app. 2, p 403. The Greek history of St.
Paul the hermit, which Bollandus imagines St. Jerome to have followed, is evidently
posterior and borrows from him, as Jos. Assemani shows. Comm. in Calend. Univ. t.
6, p 82. See Gudij Epistolae, p. 278.
[1] Butler's Lives of the Saints – January 15.