ELIAS and St. John the Baptist sanctified the deserts, and Jesus Christ
himself was a model of the eremitical state during his forty days' fast
in the wilderness; neither is it to be questioned but the Holy Ghost
conducted the saint of this day, though young, into the desert, and was
to him an instructor there; but it is no less certain, that an entire
solitude and total sequestration of one's self from human society, is
one of those extraordinary ways by which God leads souls to himself, and
is more worthy of our admiration, than calculated for imitation and
practice: it is a state which ought only to be embraced by such as are
already well experienced in the practices of virtue and contemplation,
and who can resist sloth and other temptations, lest, instead of being a
help, it prove a snare and stumbling-block in their way to heaven.
This saint was a native of the Lower Thebais, in Egypt, and had lost
both his parents when he was but fifteen years of age: nevertheless, he
was a great proficient in the Greek and Egyptian learning, was mild and
modest, and feared God from his earliest youth. The bloody persecution
of Decius disturbed the peace of the church in 250; and what was most
dreadful, Satan, by his ministers, sought not so much to kill the
bodies, as by subtle artifices and tedious tortures to destroy the souls
of men. Two instances are sufficient to show his malice in this respect:
A soldier of Christ, who had already triumphed over the racks and
tortures, had his whole body rubbed over with honey, and was then laid
on his back in the sun, with his hands tied behind him, that the flies
and wasps, which are quite intolerable in hot countries, might torment
and gall him with their stings. Another was bound with silk cords on a
bed of down, in a delightful garden, where a lascivious woman was
employed to entice him to sin; the martyr, sensible of his danger, bit
off part of his tongue and spit it in her face, that the horror of such
an action might put her to flight, and the smart occasioned by it be a
means to prevent, in his own heart, any manner of consent to carnal
pleasure. During these times of danger, Paul kept himself concealed in
the house of another; but finding that a brother-in-law was inclined to
betray him, that he might enjoy his estate, he fled into the deserts.
There he found many spacious caverns in a rock, which were said to have
been the retreat of money-coiners in the days of Cleopatra, queen of
Egypt. He chose for his dwelling a cat; in this place, near which were a
palm-tree[1] and a clear spring: the former by its leaves furnished him
with raiment, and by its fruit with food; and the latter supplied him
with water for his drink.
{152}
Paul was twenty-two years old when he entered the desert. His first
intention was to enjoy the liberty of serving God till the persecution
should cease; but relishing the sweets of heavenly contemplation and
penance, and learning the spiritual advantages of holy solitude, he
resolved to return no more among men, or concern himself in the least
with human affairs, and what passed in the world: it was enough for him
to know that there was a world, and to pray that it might be improved in
goodness. The saint lived on the fruit of his tree till he was
forty-three years of age, and from that time till his death, like Elias,
he was miraculously fed with bread brought him every day by a raven. His
method of life, and what he did in this place during ninety years, is
unknown to us: but God was pleased to make his servant known a little
before his death.
The great St. Antony, who was then ninety years of age, was tempted to
vanity, as if no one had served God so long in the wilderness as he had
done, imagining himself also to be the first example of a life so
recluse from human conversation: but the contrary was discovered to him
in a dream the night following, and the saint was at the same time
commanded, by Almighty God, to set out forthwith in quest of a perfect
servant of his, concealed in the more remote parts of those deserts. The
holy old man set out the next morning in search of the unknown hermit.
St. Jerom relates from his authors, that he met a centaur, or creature
not with the nature and properties, but with something of the mixed
shape of man and horse,[2] and that this monster, or phantom of the
devil, (St. Jerom pretends not to determine which it was,) upon his
making the sign of the cross, fled away, after having pointed out the
way to the saint. Our author adds, that St. Antony soon after met a
satyr,[3] who gave him to understand that he was an inhabitant of those
deserts, and one of that sort whom the deluded Gentiles adored for gods.
St. Antony, after two days and a night spent in the search, discovered
the saint's abode by a light that was in it, which he made up to. Having
long begged admittance at the door of his cell, St. Paul at last opened
it with a smile: they embraced, called each other by their names, which
they knew by divine revelation. St. Paul then inquired whether idolatry
still reigned in the world. While they were discoursing together, a
raven flew towards them, and dropped a loaf of bread before them. Upon
which St. Paul said, "Our good God has sent us a dinner. In this manner
have I received half a loaf every day these sixty years past; now you
are come to see me, Christ has doubled his provision for his servants."
Having given thanks to God they both sat down by the fountain; but a
little contest arose between them who should break the bread; St. Antony
alleged St. Paul's greater age, and St. Paul pleaded that Antony was the
stranger: both agreed at last to take up their parts together. Having
refreshed themselves at the spring, they spent the night in prayer. The
next morning St. Paul told his guest that the time of his death
approached, and that he was sent to bury him; adding, "Go and fetch the
cloak given you by St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in which I
desire you to wrap my body." This he might say with the intent of being
left alone in prayer, while he expected to be called out of this world;
as also that he might testify his veneration for St. Athanasius, and his
high regard for the faith and communion of the Catholic church, on
account of which that holy bishop was then a great sufferer. St. Antony
was surprised to hear him mention the cloak, which he could not have
known but by divine revelation. Whatever was his motive for desiring to
be buried {153} in it, St. Antony acquiesced to what was asked of him:
so, after mutual embraces, he hastened to his monastery to comply with
St. Paul's request. He told his monks that he, a sinner, falsely bore
the name of a servant of God, but that he had seen Elias and John the
Baptist in the wilderness, even Paul in Paradise. Having taken the
cloak, he returned with it in all haste, fearing lest the holy hermit
might be dead, as it happened. While on his road, he saw his happy soul
carried up to heaven, attended by choirs of angels, prophets, and
apostles. St. Antony, though he rejoiced on St. Paul's account, could
not help lamenting on his own, for having lost a treasure so lately
discovered. As soon as his sorrow would permit, he arose, pursued his
journey, and came to the cave. Going in, he found the body kneeling, and
the hands stretched out. Full of joy, and supposing him yet alive, he
knelt down to pray with him, but by his silence soon perceived he was
dead. Having paid his last respects to the holy corpse, he carried it
out of the cave. While he stood perplexed how to dig a grave, two lions
came up quietly, and, as it were, mourning; and tearing up the ground,
made a hole large enough for the reception of a human body. St. Antony
then buried the corpse, singing hymns and psalms, according to what was
usual and appointed by the church on that occasion. After this he
returned home praising God, and related to his monks what he had seen
and done. He always kept as a great treasure, and wore himself on great
festivals, the garment of St. Paul, of palm-tree leaves patched
together. St. Paul died in the year of our Lord 342, the hundred and
thirteenth year of his age, and the ninetieth of his solitude, and is
usually called the _first hermit_, to distinguish him from others of
that name. The body of this saint is said to have been conveyed to
Constantinople, by the emperor Michael Comnenus, in the twelfth century,
and from thence to Venice in 1240.[4] Lewis I., king of Hungary,
procured it from that republic, and deposited it at Buda, where a
congregation of hermits under his name, which still subsists in Hungary,
Poland, and Austria, was instituted by blessed Eusebius of Strigonium, a
nobleman, who, having distributed his whole estate among the poor,
retired into the forests; and being followed by others, built the
monastery of Pisilia, under the rule of the regular canons of St.
Austin. He died in that house, January the 20th, 1270.
St. Paul, the hermit, is commemorated in several ancient western
Martyrologies on the 10th of January, but in the Roman on the 15th, on
which he is honored in the anthologium of the Greeks.
* * * * *
An eminent contemplative draws the following portraiture of this great
model of an eremitical life:[5] St. Paul, the hermit, not being called
by God to the external duties of an active life, remained alone,
conversing only with God, in a vast wilderness, for the space of near a
hundred years, ignorant of all that passed in the world, both the
progress of sciences, the establishment of religion, and the revolutions
of states and empires; indifferent even as to those things without which
he could not live, as the air which he breathed, the water he drank, and
the miraculous bread with which he supported life. What did he do? say
the inhabitants of this busy world, who think they could not live
without being in a perpetual hurry of restless projects; what was his
employment all this while? Alas! ought we not rather to put this
question to them; what are you doing while you are not taken up in doing
the will of God, which occupies the heavens and the earth in all their
motions? Do you call that doing nothing which is the great end God {154}
proposed to himself in giving us a being, that is, to be employed in
contemplating, adoring, and praising him? Is it to be idle and useless
in the world to be entirely taken up in that which is the eternal
occupation of God himself, and of the blessed inhabitants of heaven?
What employment is better, more just, more sublime, or more advantageous
than this, when done in suitable circumstances? To be employed in any
thing else, how great or noble soever it may appear in the eyes of men,
unless it be referred to God, and be the accomplishment of his holy
will, who in all our actions demands our heart more than our hand, what
is it, but to turn ourselves away from our end, to lose our time, and
voluntarily to return again to that state of nothing out of which we
were formed, or rather into a far worse state?
Footnotes:
1. Pliny recounts thirty-nine different sorts of palm-trees, and says
that the best grow in Egypt, which are ever green, have leaves thick
enough to make ropes and a fruit which serves in some places to make
bread.
2. Pliny, l. 7, c. 3, and others, assure us that such monsters have
been seen. Consult the note of Rosweide.
3. The heathens might feign their gods of the woods, from certain
monsters sometimes seen. Plutarch, in his life of Sylla, says, that
a satyr was brought to that general at Athens; and St. Jerom tells
us, that one was shown alive at Alexandria, and after its death was
salted and embalmed, and sent to Antioch that Constantine the Great
might see it.
4. See the whole history of this translation, published from an
original MS. by F. Gamans, a Jesuit, inserted by Bollandus in his
collection.
5. F. Ambrose de Lombez, Capucin, Tr. de la Paix Interieure, (Paris,
1758,) p. 372.