Saint Paul of Thebes

Overview

Saint Paul of Thebes, also known as Paul the Great and Anba Bula, is commemorated in the Coptic tradition as the first hermit of the Eastern Desert, with a feast on 2 Amshir.¹ His principal literary witness is Saint Jerome’s Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit, a short Latin work generally dated in the supplied encyclopedia account to about 375–376.² The narrative presents a man whose long, hidden life in the desert became known through an encounter with Saint Antony shortly before his death.²

Paul’s remembrance has both literary and material expressions: Jerome’s narrative circulated in several languages, while the monastery bearing Paul’s name preserves a cave church, a tomb inscription, and the veneration of his relics.³⁴ These forms of testimony should be distinguished: the saint’s literary biography, the variants preserved in later commemorative texts, and the traditions attached to the monastery do not always give identical information about his origins or chronology.²³⁴

History and origins

Flight from persecution

According to Jerome’s biography, as summarized in The Coptic Encyclopedia, Paul came from the Lower Thebaid and withdrew into the Arabian desert during the persecution of Decius, about 250, when he was fifteen years old.² The fuller narrative places his flight within a family crisis: Paul and his married sister had lost their parents, and his brother-in-law sought to obtain Paul’s inheritance by betraying him to the persecutors.⁵ His departure therefore begins as an escape from persecution and threatened betrayal, rather than as admission to an established monastic community.⁵

Paul settled in a cave near the Red Sea, traditionally identified with the site of the later monastery of Anba Bula.² The cave was shaded by a palm tree and supplied with a spring; the palm provided food and clothing, and the spring provided fresh water.⁵ In Jerome’s presentation, this setting made possible a life removed from ordinary human society, sustained by the resources of the desert and by miraculous provision.²⁵

The encyclopedia’s account of anchorites explicitly distinguishes Paul from hermits who first trained in communal monasteries: it explains that he had never belonged to a monastery because monasticism had not yet been established.⁶ His place in this tradition is consequently that of an originating figure, rather than a monk who later withdrew from an existing brotherhood.⁶

Differences in birthplace, age, and dates

The supplied sources preserve several chronological and geographical variants.²³⁴⁷ Jerome’s account identifies Paul with the Lower Thebaid, but the two Arabic-Jacobite Synaxarion recensions discussed by the encyclopedia make him a native of Alexandria and give somewhat different circumstances for his conversion.²³ The inscription reported at his tomb likewise states: “Born in Alexandria in A.D. 228, died in the year A.D. 343.”⁴

The monastery’s chronological account says that Paul fled at sixteen, during the Decian persecution in the middle of the third century, and died in 343; the biographical article instead reports withdrawal at fifteen, about 250, and death about 340–341.²⁷ The duration of his seclusion also varies: the biographical article describes almost ninety years, whereas the account of anchoritic history gives eighty years before Antony’s visit.²⁸ These figures are best retained as differing statements within the tradition rather than combined into a single, apparently certain chronology.²⁴⁷⁸

The encounter with Saint Antony

Antony’s journey

In Jerome’s narrative, Paul had reached the age of 113 when Antony, then ninety, received a revelation that a monk more perfect than himself lived in the inner desert and should be visited.⁵ Antony’s journey contains several marvelous episodes: a centaur showed him the way, a satyr brought him food and spoke with him, and a she-wolf eventually led him to the cave where Paul lived.⁵

Paul welcomed Antony, and the two conversed before being miraculously fed by a raven.⁵ The account of anchoritic life supplies a related detail, saying that Paul’s ordinary ration was half a loaf daily, reportedly brought by a raven.⁶ Together these accounts portray the meeting as the disclosure of a previously hidden ascetic life, not the beginning of Paul’s vocation.²⁵⁶

Death, burial, and the palm-leaf tunic

After a night spent in vigil, Paul told Antony that he was about to die and asked him to undertake his burial.⁵ He directed Antony to fetch the cloak that Athanasius had given him, so that it could be used to wrap Paul’s body.⁵ Antony returned for the cloak and then made the difficult journey back to Paul’s cave.⁵

Before arriving, Antony saw a vision of Paul’s ascent to heaven; on entering the cave, he found the saint’s body in the attitude of prayer.⁵ Two lions appeared to help dig the grave, and Antony buried Paul before returning to his own hermitage with Paul’s tunic.⁹ Elsewhere, the garment is described as woven from palm leaves and fibers, and the monastery’s chronology says that Paul bestowed his palm-leaf tunic on Antony.⁷¹⁰

The biographical article interprets Antony’s role in the burial as significant within Jerome’s literary design: burial was a service normally performed by a disciple, and Antony’s performance of it reinforces Paul’s presentation as the earlier and greater solitary.¹¹ The narrative thus connects the two saints while preserving a deliberate distinction between Paul as inaugurator of the solitary life and Antony as the figure who subsequently adorned it.¹¹

Theology and meaning

Solitude, asceticism, and communion with God

The encyclopedia’s history of anchorites describes them as ascetic hermits who withdrew into the Egyptian desert for complete seclusion and self-mortification, and it calls Anba Bula the hermit “par excellence.”⁸ His sparse food, palm-fiber clothing, and prolonged isolation illustrate the bodily austerity associated with this form of life.⁶¹⁰

The same account explains the purpose of anchoritic withdrawal in spiritual rather than merely geographical terms: anchorites lived in constant communion with God, immersed in prayer and meditation.¹⁰ Read within that framework, Paul’s desert solitude signifies an intensified dedication to God, while the practical details of bread, clothing, and water keep the narrative concerned with the conditions of embodied life.⁶¹⁰

The raven’s provision is explicitly compared with the prophet Elijah’s support near the brook Cherith in 1 Kings 17:2–6.⁶ This comparison places Paul’s sustenance within a biblical pattern of divine care for a person living apart from ordinary society.⁶ Jerome’s conclusion likewise gives the story an exemplary purpose: it ends with an encomium on Paul and exhortations that readers follow his example.⁹

The first hermit and the place of Antony

The sources do not present the language of monastic beginnings in an entirely uniform way: Paul is called the first hermit, but the history of anchorites also acknowledges that Antony is credited with instituting anchoritic life.¹⁸ That article distinguishes their patterns of withdrawal by noting that Antony received supplies every six months and, after twenty years, welcomed numerous visitors whom he guided toward ascetic life.⁸

The contrast concerns different models of monastic eminence: Paul represents extreme hiddenness and sustained solitude, while Antony’s withdrawal also developed into instruction of others.⁸¹¹ The biographical article regards Jerome’s assertion of Paul’s priority as part of the work’s literary intention, composed almost twenty years after Athanasius’s Life of Antony.¹¹

Anchoritic ideals and popular belief

The encyclopedia gives the Arabic term sa’ih, plural suwwah, meaning “wanderer,” for an anchorite; its folklore discussion describes membership among the suwwah as the highest spiritual rank of a monk.¹² This terminology helps explain the calendar’s designation of Paul as “first of the wanderer saints.”¹³

The folklore account also records beliefs that a sa’ih feels no bodily pain, hunger, thirst, or lust, and is invisible unless he chooses to reveal himself.¹² These are identified as popular beliefs, not as a uniform description of historical hermits: the accompanying history cautions against treating anchorites as phantasmal beings and notes that some suffered bodily illness.⁶ This distinction is important when reading the miraculous features of Paul’s story alongside the broader tradition of desert asceticism.⁶¹²

Texts, terminology, and historical interpretation

Jerome and the transmission of the Life

The biographical article identifies Jerome’s work as the only historical document concerning Paul and states that references in John Cassian’s Collationes XVIII.6 and Sulpicius Severus’s Dialogi I.17 depend on it.¹⁴ The Latin title Vita Pauli is therefore not evidence for an additional independent biography, but another designation of the work known in English as the Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit.¹⁵

A Coptic Life of Abba Paul, the Holy Anchorite was published by E. Amélineau, who argued that it was an original text adapted into Latin by Jerome.¹⁴ The encyclopedia’s biographical article rejects that direction of dependence, describing the Coptic work as a free translation of the Latin and noting that its closing text bears Jerome’s signature.¹⁴ It nevertheless recognizes distinctive features in the Arabic Synaxarion notices, while judging their substance dependent on the Coptic version of Jerome’s book.³¹⁴

Two Greek versions were edited by J. Bidez.³ F. Nau proposed that the older Greek version might represent an original subsequently adapted by Jerome; he also connected the Life with Egyptian accounts in which a monk journeys into the desert to discover exceptionally holy anchorites, including the story of Onophrius and narratives in the Apophthegmata Patrum.³ A related comparison in the article on Timotheus notes that his cave, spring, and date palm also occur in Paul’s Life, identifying shared narrative elements without establishing that every such story has the same origin.¹⁶

Historical questions and differing assessments

The encyclopedia’s biographical article explains that the highly idealized desert setting and marvelous incidents—especially the lions assisting at the grave—have prompted doubts about the narrative’s historical value and even about Paul’s historicity.¹¹ This is a report of scholarly criticism of the biography, distinct from the passages documenting Paul’s ecclesiastical commemoration and the veneration of his relics.¹⁴¹¹

An attempt by H. Delehaye to strengthen the historical case by identifying Paul of Thebes with a separately known Paul of Oxyrhynchus is reported as having encountered substantial criticism from F. Cavallera.³ The supplied evidence does not settle that identification.³

There is also a difference in how authorship is described: the history of anchorites says that Antony buried Paul and wrote his life, while the dedicated biographical article identifies Jerome as the author of the extant foundational work.⁸¹⁴ These statements should remain distinct rather than being silently harmonized into an otherwise undocumented account of literary transmission.⁸¹⁴

Monastery and historical remembrance

Foundation and relationship with Saint Antony’s monastery

The Monastery of Saint Paul, or Dayr Anba Bula, is situated southwest of the Red Sea lighthouse station of Ras Za‘faranah; the supplied account gives the distance as 26 miles (39 km).⁷ It was founded in Paul’s memory in the latter fourth or fifth century, and Antoninus Martyr visited between 560 and 570.⁷

An Ethiopian reference reported in the monastery’s history says that Gabriel II ibn Turayk, the seventieth patriarch, was banished there for three years.¹⁷ Abu al-Makarim described the monastery as entirely dependent on the Monastery of Saint Antony, while Ogier de Saint-Chéron counted sixty monks in 1395, describing them as having the same habit, rite, and piety as Antony’s brotherhood.¹⁷ Administration by the abbot of Saint Antony’s continued for several centuries, until the nineteenth century.¹⁸

In the first half of the fifteenth century, al-Maqrizi placed Saint Paul’s seventh in a list of eighty-six monasteries and called it Dayr al-Numurah, “Monastery of the Tigers.”¹⁷ This is an alternative name for the monastery, rather than an additional personal name of the saint.¹⁷

Restoration, estates, and patriarchs

During the patriarchate of Gabriel VII (1525–1568), Saint Paul’s was among the Eastern Desert monasteries restored, alongside Saint Antony’s and Dayr al-Maymun.¹⁹ The refurbished monastery was again destroyed by Bedouins during Gabriel’s lifetime.¹⁹ The supplied index also records restoration of Dayr Anba Bula under John XVI, although it provides no account of the work itself.²⁰

The monastery’s desert setting was supported by estates near Bush, a town on the Nile’s left bank about four miles north of Bani Suef.²¹ These estates supplied food to the monasteries of Saints Antony and Paul; the encyclopedia suggests that Bush replaced the earlier role of Dayr al-Maymun toward the end of the sixteenth century.²¹ A separate account identifies Bush as the location of their central office, while explicitly stating that the medieval churchman Bulus al-Bushi, despite being from Bush, did not become a monk in either institution.²²

Several later patriarchs came from Saint Paul’s monastery.^20212324 In 1718, according to the History of the Patriarchs as cited in the Bush article, a delegation seized a monk of Dayr Anba Bula at Bush and took him in chains to Cairo for consecration as Peter VI.²¹ John XVII, originally named ‘Abd-al-Sayyid and a native of Mallawi, took monastic vows at Saint Paul’s and was made presbyter by Peter VI.²³ Mark VII (1745–1769), originally Sam‘an of Qulusana in the district of Samalut, also entered Saint Paul’s as a young man and frequented the neighboring monastery of Saint Antony for years before his patriarchal election.²⁴

Travelers and documentation

The monastery’s history records a long succession of travelers who described it or its monks, beginning with Ogier de Saint-Chéron in 1395 and Ghillebert de Lannoy in 1421.²⁵ Later visitors included Coppin (1638), Gerard (1639), De Maillet (1692), C. Sicard and J. S. Assemani (1716), Granger (1730), R. Pococke (1737), N. Savary (1777), and P. Bruns (1791).²⁵

The nineteenth-century list includes A. Norov (1834), G. Wilkinson (1837), H. Tattam (1839), J. Bonomi (1840), P. Uspensky (1847), G. Schweinfurth (1878), and M. Jullien (1883).²⁵ Twentieth-century reports are associated with A. S. Lewis (1904), F. Vignozzi da Seano (1908), Johann Georg, Duke of Saxony (1930), J. Doresse (1951), G. Giamberardini and V. Taeckholm (1956), and J. Leroy (1957).²⁵¹⁸

Liturgical and practical use

Feast and cave church

The Coptic Synaxarion commemorates Paul on 2 Amshir, a date also given in the encyclopedia’s list of saints.¹⁸ The supplied calendar calls him “Saint Paul the Great, first of the wanderer saints” and places Saint Longinus, abbot of the Enaton, on the same day.¹³

The Church of Saint Paul of Thebes is described as the monastery’s spiritual center and occupies the cave where he is believed to have lived; his relics are venerated there.⁴ Its three altars are dedicated to the Twenty-four Elders on the north, Saint Antony the Great in the center, and Saint Paul of Thebes on the south.²⁶ The encyclopedia records celebration of the divine liturgy there during January, February, and March.²⁶

These arrangements bring Paul’s remembrance into a setting of corporate worship: the cave associated with solitary withdrawal became a church with several altar dedications and a specified liturgical season.⁴²⁶ The account documents the practice described by its author, rather than independently establishing the monastery’s present-day timetable.²⁶

Other churches and daily infrastructure

The monastery is described as having four churches, three in its ancient part.²⁶ Near and almost above Paul’s cave church stands the Church of Abu Sayfayn, or Saint Mercurius, built in the latter eighteenth century and used once annually during the week before Lent.²⁶ The Church of the Holy Virgin Mary occupies the third floor of the keep.²⁶

The Church of Saint Michael, southwest of Paul’s church, is the largest and principal church.²⁷ Its northern altar is dedicated to the Archangel Michael and its southern altar to Saint John the Baptist.²⁷ An icon of the Virgin is traditionally attributed to Saint Luke the Evangelist and dated by that tradition to A.D. 40; this is an attribution reported by the source, not an independently established date for the object.²⁷

The sanctuary screen depicts the Twelve Apostles wearing the robes of Coptic desert fathers, while a small room on the church’s north side houses the library.²⁷ The monastery is described as containing thirty-two cells, with water supplied by the Spring of Saint Paul in its western part and the Pool of Miriam, approximately 300 feet south of the monastery.²⁷

Art and the expression of remembrance

The cave church’s walls bear eighteenth-century paintings executed by a monk of the monastery, together with fifteenth-century Gothic graffiti.⁴ A separate discussion identifies an eighteenth-century mural of the Twenty-four Elders in the subterranean Church of Saint Paul, complementing the northern altar’s dedication to them.²⁶²⁸

An eighteenth-century painting at Dayr Anba Bula depicts the three Hebrews in the furnace according to an older iconographic pattern: the young men stand as praying figures while an angel at their right shelters them with his left wing and holds the rod with which he has stilled the fire.²⁹ His folded right wing closes the composition.²⁹

The art-historical account interprets this pattern as emphasizing miraculous deliverance through steadfast faith, rather than merely the youths’ refusal to worship or their punishment.²⁹ It also compares the painting with an older representation at Saint Antony’s monastery, illustrating continuity of a biblical theme across the two related institutions.²⁹ O. Meinardus’s study, “The XVIIIth Century Wall-Paintings in the Church of St. Paul, The Theban. Dair Anba Bula,” is specifically listed in the accompanying bibliography.³⁰

Significance in Coptic Orthodox life

Within the supplied evidence, Paul’s significance rests on three connected expressions of remembrance: his standing as an exemplary solitary, his annual commemoration, and the monastery that preserves worship and relic veneration at his traditional dwelling place.¹⁴⁸ His story links extreme withdrawal with recognition by another saint, while the monastery’s later history shows how remembrance of a solitary could be sustained by a community, agricultural estates, churches, and successive generations of monks.^5182126

The historical questions surrounding Jerome’s narrative do not erase the distinctions between these kinds of evidence: uncertainty about biography coexists in the sources with explicit documentation of feast, shrine, and monastic tradition.¹⁴¹¹ A careful account therefore preserves both the devotional importance of Saint Paul of Thebes and the unresolved questions concerning his birthplace, chronology, and the literary formation of his Life.²³⁴¹¹