Paphnutius

Since we promised earlier to say something about Paphnutius and Spyridon, it is time to speak of them here. Paphnutius, then, was bishop of one of the cities in Upper Thebes, a man so favored by God that extraordinary miracles were done through him. In the time of the persecution he had lost one of his eyes. The emperor honored this man greatly, often sent for him to the palace, and kissed the place where the eye had been torn out. Such was the devotion of the emperor Constantine. [a]

Let this one fact about Paphnutius be enough. I will now explain something else that came about through his advice, both for the good of the church and for the honor of the clergy. The bishops thought it right to bring a new law into the church: that those in holy orders, I mean bishops, presbyters and deacons, should have no sexual relations with the wives they had married while they were still laymen. When this was about to be debated, Paphnutius rose in the middle of the assembly of bishops and earnestly begged them not to lay so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion. He declared that “marriage itself is honorable, and the bed undefiled,” and he urged before God that they ought not to harm the church with restrictions that were too strict. He said: “Not all men can bear the practice of strict abstinence; and perhaps the chastity of each man’s wife would not be kept either.” And he called a man’s relations with his lawful wife chastity.

It would be enough, he thought, that those who had already entered their sacred calling should not marry, according to the ancient tradition of the church, but that no one should be separated from the wife he had married while not yet ordained. He expressed these views although he himself had no experience of marriage and, to speak plainly, had never known a woman. From boyhood he had been brought up in a monastery, and he was famous above all men for his chastity. The whole assembly of the clergy agreed with Paphnutius’s reasoning. So they ended all further debate on this point, leaving it to the judgment of those who were husbands to abstain from their wives if they wished. So much for Paphnutius.