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IN that choir of saints who shine like brilliant stars in the night of
this world, we have seen the holy. Paphnutius, like some great luminary,
shining with the brightness of knowledge. For he was a presbyter of our
company, I mean of those whose abode was in the desert of Scete, where he
lived to extreme old age, without ever moving from his cell, of which he
had taken possession when still young, and which was five miles from the
church, even to nearer districts; nor was he when worn out with years
hindered by the distance from going to Church on Saturday or Sunday. But
not wanting to return from thence empty handed he would lay on his
shoulders a bucket of water to last him all the week, and carry it back to
his cell, and even when he was past ninety would not suffer it to be
fetched by the labour of younger men. He then from his earliest youth.
threw himself into the monastic discipline with such fervour that when he
had spent only a short time in it, he was endowed with the virtue of
submission, as well as the knowledge of all good qualities. For by the
practice of humility and obedience he mortified all his desires, and by
this stamped out all his faults and acquired every virtue which the
monastic system and the teaching of the ancient fathers produces, and,
inflamed with desire for still further advances, he was eager to penetrate
into the recesses of the desert, so that, with no human companions to
disturb him, he might be more readily united to the Lord, to whom he longed
to be inseparably joined, even while he still lived in the society of the
brethren. And there once more in his excessive fervour he outstripped the
virtues of the Anchorites, and in his eager desire for continual divine
meditation avoided the sight of them: and he plunged into solitary places
yet wilder and more inaccessible, and hid himself for a long while in them,
so that, as the Anchorites themselves only with great difficulty caught a
glimpse of him every now and then, the belief was that he enjoyed and
delighted in the daily society of angels, and because of this remarkable
characteristic of his s he was surnamed by them the Buffalo.
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