A farmer who left his unfaithful wife to become a disciple of Saint Anthony the Great, known for a simplicity of heart Palladius called childlike.

Paul the Simple was an elderly Egyptian farmer who, on discovering his wife’s infidelity, sought out Saint Anthony the Great in the desert and asked to become his disciple, despite his advanced age. Anthony tested him with demanding obediences before accepting him, and Paul’s later reputation for humility, simplicity, and, in tradition, a gift for discerning spirits comes down through Palladius’s Lausiac History. He is said to have died around 339 at about 114 years of age.

Quick Facts

• Born: c. 225, Egypt
• Died: c. 339, Egypt
• Feast Day: March 7
• Venerated as: Hermit, disciple of Saint Anthony the Great

Who Was Saint Paul the Simple?

Paul the Simple was, by tradition, a farmer well advanced in years when he discovered his wife’s unfaithfulness and, rather than seeking retribution, walked into the desert to find Anthony the Great and ask to be made a monk. Anthony, doubting so old a man could adapt to monastic discipline, subjected him to a series of demanding tests of obedience before finally accepting him as a disciple, and Paul’s patient endurance of these trials became the foundation of his later reputation for simplicity of heart.

Historical Setting

Paul’s story unfolds within the earliest generation of organized Egyptian desert monasticism, the movement that grew up around Anthony the Great in the late third and early fourth centuries in the region near the Nile. This was the formative period in which the practices and spiritual vocabulary of Christian monastic life were first being worked out, largely through lived example rather than written rule, and Paul’s place as one of Anthony’s own disciples situates him at the very origin of that tradition.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Paul the Simple

Palladius’s Lausiac History preserves Paul the Simple’s memory in some of the most affectionate detail given to any of the early desert fathers, describing his complete, almost childlike obedience to Anthony and, in later tradition, a gift for perceiving the spiritual state of others and healing the possessed. The Church remembers him as proof that sanctity in the desert tradition was not reserved for the naturally brilliant or the young, but was fully open to a simple, elderly convert willing to obey without reservation.

Canonization and Feast Day

No pope ever formally canonized Paul the Simple, whose veneration, like that of the other early desert fathers, rests on the ancient monastic tradition and its liturgical commemoration rather than on any later formal process. His feast is generally kept on March 7.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Paul the Simple’s whole reputation rests not on intellectual achievement or visible leadership but on total, patient obedience, offered late in life after a painful personal betrayal. His example encourages anyone who feels it is too late, or that they are too ordinary, to begin a serious spiritual life, since sanctity found him not in youth or talent but in humble willingness.

A Prayer to Saint Paul the Simple

Saint Paul the Simple, who came to holiness late in life through humble obedience rather than natural gifts, help us set aside pride and impatience in our own spiritual growth. Teach us that simplicity of heart, offered fully to God, is worth more than any cleverness of mind. Amen.

Sources

• Palladius, The Lausiac History
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints, entry on Saint Paul the Simple
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, entry on Saint Anthony the Great