The Life of Abbot Paphnutius

In that choir of saints who shine like brilliant stars in the night of this world, we saw the holy Paphnutius shining like some great light with the brightness of knowledge. He was a presbyter of our company, I mean of those who lived in the desert of Scete. He lived there to extreme old age without ever moving from the cell he had taken possession of while still young, five miles from the church, even to a place nearer to it. Even when he was worn out with years, the distance did not keep him from going to church on Saturday or Sunday. But not wanting to return from there empty-handed, he would put on his shoulders a bucket of water to last him all week and carry it back to his cell. Even when he was past ninety he would not allow it to be fetched by the labor of younger men. [a]

From his earliest youth he threw himself into the monastic discipline with such fervor that after only a short time in it he was endowed with the virtue of submission as well as the knowledge of all good qualities. By the practice of humility and obedience he put to death all his desires, and by this he stamped out all his faults and gained every virtue that the monastic system and the teaching of the ancient fathers produce. Burning with desire for still further progress, he was eager to go deep into the recesses of the desert, so that, with no human companions to disturb him, he might more readily be united to the Lord, to whom he longed to be inseparably joined even while he still lived in the company of the brothers. And there once more, in his excessive fervor, he outstripped the virtues of the anchorites, and in his eager desire for continual meditation on divine things he avoided even the sight of them. He plunged into solitary places still wilder and harder to reach, and hid himself in them for a long time. The anchorites themselves caught sight of him only every now and then, and with great difficulty, so the belief grew that he enjoyed and delighted in the daily company of angels. Because of this remarkable trait of his, they gave him the surname of the Buffalo.