Unlike the 3rd c. North African bishops from yesterday, Paphnutius of Thebes, an Egyptian hermit who’d re-entered the world, actually survived his enslavement in the Roman mines — but not without great cost: he lost his right eye, and his captors severed his left hamstring. This was during the reign of Maximinus II, one of the last emperors (the last?) to officially persecute Christians. In fact, when Constantine the Great took power, he recognized Paphnutius’s own eminence. The two met at the First Council of Nicaea, which Constantine, a recent convert, initiated in an attempt to establish a single, imperially approved interpretation of the Christian faith. There, the emperor kissed Paphnutius’s empty eye socket.
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