I recall my first encounter, about a quarter century ago, with the Life of the Blessed Hermit Paul of Thebes by St. Jerome. I was not impressed. From the titillating opening persecution scenes through the encounters with strange creatures in the desert to the grave-digging lions, the work struck me as a blatant piece of self-promotion. Here was St. Jerome, I thought, seeking not only to plug into some of the excitement stirred up throughout the Christian world by St. Athanasius’s Life of Antony, but to one-up St. Athanasius with his fabrication (I assumed) of an older and holier saint. I tossed the volume aside.
A few years later, memories of that text surfaced when I had the privilege of spending some days at the Monastery of St. Paul, Dayr al-Anbā Būlā, in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. I fell in love with the place. While my studies at the time had more to do with the medieval and early modern history of the Monastery than with its origins, through two monks who generously conversed with me I learned that their Paul the Hermit, their Anbā Būlā, was Paul of Alexandria, whose life had been written by St. Athanasius. I think this was a point at which my historical critical skepticism cracked: there was far more going on here than what questions of textual origins and dependence, or of historicity, could explore. The Anbā Būlā of the monks was a mysterious saint, celebrated in a monastery long at the edge of the Egyptian Christian world, remembered in a Life by no means identical with anything I had previously read. Seeking to learn more about this Anbā Būlā, I purchased a booklet about him at the Monastery gift shop. Its title, fittingly, was al-Sirr al-maktūm … The Hidden Mystery.
The volume you hold in your hands does not dissipate the mystery that is St. Paul the First Hermit and the texts and traditions concerning him; rather, it leads us into it. We are passed along from one deeply knowledgeable guide to another, through texts and traditions in Latin, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Armenian, Copto-Arabic, Slavonic, and Ethiopic. Marsha Dutton sets us in motion; she convinced me to pay some attention to St. Jerome’s Latin composition, to appreciate his artistry, and to respond to an invitation to identify with Jerome’s Antony, “the one who having bragged, limped, struggled, stumbled, and misunderstood has also learned and become able to teach others.”1
Successive guides point out subtle details that show how different communities interpreted the story. Tim Vivian points out how the vocabulary of the Coptic version stresses the theme of journeying.2 Thea Gomelauri notes that the word used for Paul’s garment in the Georgian version normally “refers exclusively to the Holy Robe worn by the Lord Jesus Christ on the day of Crucifixion” which was “one of the holiest relics of the Georgian Orthodox Church.”3 Andy Hilkens’ presentation of two Armenian versions show us the Life being employed for a monastic audience, which in Life I is exhorted to “Listen and be astonished!”4 while Life II makes it plain that St. Paul is to be a model for all types of ascetics, not just the hermits.5 Nebojsa Tumara points out the remarkable ways in which the figure of St. Paul was deployed in Serbian culture to connect new monastic centers to monasticism’s origins, to support iconodule and hesychast positions, and even to bolster the sanctity of the princely Lazarević family.6
The Lives mentioned above, along with the Greek Lives presented by Tim Vivian and the Syriac Life presented by Robert Kitchen, can be plausibly arranged in a family tree or stemma—even as there is a debate about the relative places of the Latin Life and the Shorter Greek Life in that stemma (to a discussion of which Tim Vivian invites us, imagining a conversation around a bottle of fine wine.)7 With the Copto-Arabic Life, however, we have a “rewrite” rather than a version. Lisa Agaiby gives us a long-needed edition and translation of the story that my friends at the Monastery of St. Paul knew, the Copto-Arabic Life of Anbā Būlā, which reclaimed not only the textual tradition (including authorship) but even the saint’s body for the Egyptian Church.8 And as the Latin and Greek Lives traveled to the east and west, the Copto-Arabic Life traveled south, to Ethiopia, as Robert Kitchen shows us.9
The volume is about Paul the First Hermit in text and tradition. If a particular set of texts, the Lives of St. Paul the First Hermit, provide the scaffolding for the volume, we also learn about churches and monasteries and libraries; about books and relics; about the place of St. Paul in the liturgies of various Churches (including a special section by Antonia St. Demiana and Hany N. Takla on “Paul in Coptic Liturgical Tradition”);10 and about monastic orders. A unique feature of this volume is that we learn about St. Paul the Hermit in art and iconography—as seen in the carefully chosen images that adorn it.
What is the best way to approach this volume? Given the decision to include editions of the Lives in their original languages, there is only a handful of people in the entire world who can read every word of it! I think that gives the rest of us permission to read as we like, spending time with those parts that are meaningful to us, skipping some, postponing some to later. There are places where I marveled at the depth of scholarship being displayed—and was content to marvel, saving a deep dive for later. But while there is some very detailed scholarship on display, intermingled with sections full of fine detail, one finds essays and passages of great clarity, insight, and edification. I commend Lisa Agaiby’s Introduction and William Lyster’s orienting chapter, and later Katherin Papadopoulos’s brilliant Epilogue, for bracketing the book in a way that is hospitable to a wide audience.
St. Paul the Hermit and his story remain full of mystery. This volume, however, invites us to a journey into that mystery, from which we (perhaps like St. Antony) will learn and be able to share with others.
Mark N. Swanson
Feast of St. Paul the First Hermit
2 Amshīr 1740 A.M. = 10 February 2024