What is "paphnutius"

The Greek name Paphnutius (Παφνούτιος) takes its origin in Egyptian pa-ph-nuti ("the [man] of God" or "that who belongs to God"; see: the Coptic name "Papnoute"). The name entered Russian as Пафнутий (for example, the famous mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev).

Paphnutius is the name of different saints:

• Paphnutius of Thebes
• Paphnutius the Ascetic
• Paphnutius of Jerusalem
• Paphnutius, recluse of the Kiev Caves Monastery
• Paphnutius of Borovsk
• Paphnutius of Tentyra
• Paphnutius (play) a medieval play about the ascetic

Paphnutius or The Conversion of the Harlot Thaïs is a play originally written in Latin by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (935-1002). It concerns the relationship between Saint Thaïs, once a courtesan of Alexandria in Roman Egypt, and Paphnutius the Ascetic, the hermit who offered her conversion to Christianity. The characters of the play lived during the 4th century. Much later in Europe, beginning in the early middle ages, the story of St. Thaïs also enjoyed a wide popularity.

Evidently Hrotsvitha employed as a source for her play the Vita Thaisis, a several-centuries-old translation into Latin of the life of Saint Thaïs (the original in Greek). The playwright, a Benedictine Canoness of Saxony (northwest Germany), drawing on the tradition, apparently created a narrative line and a distinctive character for St. Thaïs appropriate to the medieval Christian worldview.