With his choice of lifestyle, Paul opened new paths for the monastic world
By Robert Wiesner
“Saints Anthony Abbot and Paul the Hermit” by Diego Velázquez, Prado Museum, Madrid.
Saint Anthony the Great is generally considered the Father of Monasticism, but he was not the first monk in the Egyptian desert. That honor seems to belong to Saint Paul of Thebes, who had been living in seclusion since around 243 A.D.
His parents had died, leaving a small fortune behind. Paul’s sister had married, evidently to a pagan; in order to obtain Paul’s share of the inheritance, this brother-in-law betrayed Paul’s Christianity to the authorities during the persecutions of Decius and Valerianus. Paul fled to the desert in fear of his life, but, once settled in a cave conveniently located near a clear spring and a fruitful date palm tree, he gave himself over to prayer and fasting.
He never returned to the world and lived totally forgotten for the next hundred years. He had water, and the palm tree provided his food; he clothed himself with its leaves, and so passed his years in intimate communion with God. When Paul was 43 years old, a raven began bringing him half a loaf of bread each day to supplement his diet.
Paul was not the first monk in Egypt itself. By this time, there were already a number of establishments loosely organized into communities. Most notable among these were the Therapeuti, who lived a common life more or less modeled after the ancient Essene communities in Palestine. But there was as yet no tradition in Egypt at all of monks living entirely as solitaries or strict hermits. In his choice of lifestyle, Paul was definitely breaking new monastic ground.
Saint Anthony ventured into the desert in about the year 270, well after Paul had begun his seclusion. Anthony knew nothing of Paul and believed himself to be the first monk to retire to a desert hermitage. However, unlike Paul, Anthony was known to live as a monk and gradually a community of like-minded men grew up around him. He continued in his solitary state until around 305, when the surrounding monks finally prevailed upon him to become their formal abbot. All this time, Paul lived in the vicinity, but his neighboring monks remained totally ignorant of him.
Around the year 342, Anthony had a dream which revealed to him the existence and location of Paul. Anthony went to find this hitherto unknown monk and finally the two ancients met. They conversed for a day and a night; they each insisted that the other bless the bread brought by the raven. Finally, they each took an end of the loaf and said a joint blessing, whereupon the loaf broke in half; they ate as they continued their holy discussion.
After their meeting, Anthony went back to his monastery, promising another visit soon. He kept his promise, bringing as a gift to Paul a cloak Patriarch Athanasius had given to Anthony some time before. Alas, by the time Anthony reached Paul’s cave, the old man had died, having attained the great age of 113. Anthony buried Paul with honor, being helped by two lions in digging the grave. Anthony himself honored Paul with the title “The First Monk.”
Saint Jerome wrote the first biography of Saint Paul around the year 375. Paul’s cult grew from that beginning, quickly spreading throughout the universal Church. His feast is celebrated by the Roman Church as well as all the Orthodox Churches. The Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit was founded in Hungary in the 13th century. The monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite still thrives in the Egyptian desert at the site of the holy man’s cave near the Red Sea.
