Paul of Sinai

Saint Paul of Sinai, a hegumen and venerable martyr, is commemorated on 27 January and on 5 May (a movable date), in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Sinai, with Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, another Moses, Jeremiah, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius, Elias and others. The Azbyka page tells their common fate, not any detail of Paul in particular.

The venerable fathers killed at Sinai and Raithu struggled in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai, where God gave the ten commandments through Moses, and in the nearby desert of Raithu, on the shore of the Red Sea. They suffered at the hands of the Saracens and the Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes. The first slaughter took place around the year 312 and was described by Ammonius, an Egyptian monk, a witness of the death of forty fathers of Sinai; at the same time the Arabs killed thirty-⁠nine fathers at Raithu. The second slaughter, a hundred years later, was described also by an eyewitness who escaped by miracle, the Venerable Nilus the Faster (commemorated on 12 November).

The ascetics of Sinai and Raithu led an especially strict life: all week they stayed in their cells in silence, on Saturday they gathered for the vigil, and on Sunday they received the Holy Mysteries. They ate only dates and drank water. Many of the hermits became famous through the gift of working miracles, among them the elders Moses and Joseph. In the service of the venerable fathers are named: Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, the disciple of Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius and Elias.