Book excerpt: the story of the Copts: the true story of christianity in Egypt

[61. While Abba Dionysius was so engaged in encouraging the people to face the fierce tempest of persecution raging about them, a solitary figure detached himself and turned his face toward the desert, trudging on and on toward the fastnesses of its inner depth in search of peace through payer and fasting in its vast solitude. It was St. Paul [230-341 CE], who became the first Egyptian hermit. When he first set out into the desert, no one knew about his intentions, not even the man who sat on the Chair of St. Mark. At the outset of the persecutions of the Emperor Decius, he was a young man of twenty, very wealthy and well-educated in both the Coptic and the Greek literatures. He was of a gentle spirit and a strong lover of God. He had an only sister who was married. Her husband, coveting his wealth, went to the authorities and denounced his wife's beloved brother as a Christian. Hearing of it, Paul's sister went weeping to him, and entreated him to go into hiding. Thereupon, he fled into the desert. His idea at first was to hide temporarily, but the life of solitude both attracted him and appealed to him, and what had been his necessity became his free choice. He journeyed on, further and further, into that vast ocean of desert solitude, until he came to a cave beyond which were a fount of clear water and some palm trees. There he made his abode, from the time of his arrival, at the age of twenty, and there did he abide till he died, ninety years later, at the age of a hundred and ten. All these long years he spent in utter solitariness, unknown and unheard of by man, but in complete communion with God.]