Paphnutius of Thebes

Paphnutius of Thebes, also known as Paphnutius the Confessor, was a dubiously historical early Christian figure, said to be a disciple of Anthony the Great and a bishop of a city in the Upper Thebaid in the early fourth century. He is accounted by some as a prominent member of the First Council of Nicaea which took place in 325. Neither the name of his see nor the precise date of his death are known.

Life
Paphnutius, an Egyptian, was a disciple of Saint Anthony the Great and later a bishop of a city in the Upper Thebaid in the early fourth century. He had been persecuted for his Christian beliefs, and had been hamstrung on the left side and suffered the loss of his right eye for the Faith under the Emperor Maximinus, and was subsequently condemned to the mines. According to some reports, at the First Council of Nicaea he was greatly honoured by Constantine the Great.

Paphnutius was present at the First Ecumenical Council, which took up the subject of clerical celibacy. It seems that most of the bishops present were disposed to follow the precedent of the Council of Elvira prohibiting conjugal relations to those bishops, priests, deacons, and sub-deacons who were married before ordination. Paphnutius, so certain ancient authors tell us, earnestly entreated his fellow-bishops not to impose this obligation on the orders of the clergy concerned. He proposed, in accordance "with the ancient tradition of the Church", that only those who were celibates at the time of ordination should continue to observe continence, but, on the other hand, that "none should be separated from her, to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united". The great veneration in which he was held, and the well-known fact that he had himself observed the strictest chastity all his life, gave weight to his proposal, which was later unanimously adopted. The council left it to the discretion of the married clergy to continue or discontinue their marital relations. In addition, Paphnutius was a zealous defender of orthodoxy in the face of the Arian heresy.

Paphnutius, Potomon of Heraclea, and 47 other Egyptian bishops accompanied Saint Athanasius to the First Synod of Tyre in 335 A.D.

His feast day in the Catholic church is September 11. Byzantine Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate it on April 19.

Historicity
The very existence of Paphnutius is contested by the historian Friedrich Winkelmann, because he is never mentioned by Athanasius, who also battled against Arianism. Also, the Church History of Socrates Scholasticus, the earliest surviving source on Paphnutius, is one of the very few references for him in general.

His participation in the First Ecumenical Council was disputed several times, among others by Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler, a canon law historian. Stickler argues that Paphnutius' presence at the council was never mentioned by the council's historian Eusebius of Caesarea, and that Socrates, who claims to have spoken personally to a member of the council, was born too late to have done so. He also points out that the Synod of Trullo (691) failed to mention the Paphnutius story when they allowed matrimony for priests.

On the other hand, there have also been several prominent scholars who defended the veracity of the Paphnutius story. The main arguments were laid down by Karl Josef von Hefele in his Conciliengeschichte (1855), and were taken up by his successor at the Tübingen Catholic faculty of theology Franz Xaver von Funk, as well as by some other eminent historians as Elphège Vacandard in the article on celibacy in the prestigious Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (1905) and Henri Leclercq in an article in the Histoire des conciles (1908). Vacandard's position found wide acceptance among the scholars. The original argument by Hefele is available below. Conciliengeschichte, 1855, vol. I, pp.436 ff. "If this account [the Paphnutius story] be true, we must conclude that a law was proposed to the Council of Nicaea the same as one which had been carried twenty years previously at Elvira, in Spain; this coincidence would lead us to believe that it was the Spaniard Hosius who proposed the law respecting celibacy at Nicaea. The discourse ascribed to Paphnutius, and the consequent decision of the Synod, agree very well with the text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and with the whole practice of the Greek Church in respect to celibacy. The Greek Church as well as the Latin accepted the principle, that whoever had taken holy orders before marriage, ought not to be married afterwards. In the Latin Church, bishops, priests, deacons, and even subdeacons, were considered to be subject to this law, because the latter were at a very early period reckoned among the higher servants of the Church, which was not the case in the Greek Church. The Greek Church went so far as to allow deacons to marry after their ordination, if previously to it they had expressly obtained from their bishop permission to do so. The Council of Ancyra affirms this (c. 10). We see that the Greek Church wishes to leave the bishop free to decide the matter; but in reference to priests, it also prohibited them from marrying after their ordination. Therefore, whilst the Latin Church exacted of those presenting themselves for ordination, even as subdeacons, that they should not continue to live with their wives if they were married, the Greek Church gave no such prohibition; but if the wife of an ordained clergyman died, the Greek Church allowed no second marriage. The Apostolic Constitutions decided this point in the same way. To leave their wives from a pretext of piety was also forbidden to Greek priests; and the Synod of Gangra (c. 4) took up the defence of married priests against the Eustathians. Eustathius, however, was not alone among the Greeks in opposing the marriage of all clerics, and in desiring to introduce into the Greek Church the Latin discipline on this point. St. Epiphanius also inclined towards this side. The Greek Church did not, however, adopt this rigour in reference to priests, deacons, and subdeacons, but by degrees it came to be required of bishops and of the higher order of clergy in general, that they should live in celibacy. Yet this was not until after the compilation of the Apostolic Canons (c. 5) and of the Constitutions; for in those documents mention is made of bishops living in wedlock, and Church history shows that there were married bishops, for instance Synesius, in the fifth century. But it is fair to remark, even as to Synesius, that he made it an express condition of his acceptation, on his election to the episcopate, that he might continue to live the married life. Thomassin believes that Synesius did not seriously require this condition, and only spoke thus for the sake of escaping the episcopal office; which would seem to imply that in his time Greek bishops had already begun to live in celibacy. At the Trullan Synod (c. 13.) the Greek Church finally settled the question of the marriage of priests. Baronius, Valesius, and other historians, have considered the account of the part taken by Paphnutius to be apocryphal. ...But Baronius is mistaken in seeing a law upon celibacy in that third canon; he thought it to be so, because, when mentioning the women who might live in the clergyman's house--his mother, sister, etc.--the canon does not say a word about the wife. ... Natalis Alexander gives this anecdote about Paphnutius in full: he desired to refute Bellarmin, who considered it to be untrue and an invention of Socrates to please the Novatians. ...Moreover, if it may be said that Socrates had a partial sympathy with the Novatians, he certainly cannot be considered as belonging to them, still less can he be accused of falsifying history in their favour. He may sometimes have propounded erroneous opinions, but there is a great difference between that and the invention of a whole story. Rufinus ...expressly says that Bishop Paphnutius was present at the Council of Nicaea. ...Lupus and Phillips explained the words of Paphnutius in another sense. According to them, the Egyptian bishop was not speaking in a general way; he simply desired that the contemplated law should not include the subdeacons. But this explanation does not agree with the extracts quoted from Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius, who believe Paphnutius intended deacons and priests as well."

Alban Butler says, "On account of the silence of other writers, and on the testimonies of Saint Jerome, Saint Epiphanius, and others, Bellarmin and Orsi suspect that Socrates and Sozomen were misinformed in this story. There is, however, nothing repugnant in the narration; for it might seem unadvisable to make too severe a law at that time against some married men, who, in certain obscure churches, might have been ordained without such a condition."