The life of St Paphnutius the Confessor
For his refusal to take part in the old sacrifices, he lost his right eye and had his left knee crippled beyond use, and was sent afterward to labor in the mines. When the persecution finally ended around 313 he returned to his flock, carrying those injuries for the rest of his days as their own kind of testimony, and it was as a confessor already marked in his own flesh that he stood among the fathers at the Council of Nicaea in 325, a firm voice there against the Arian party. Constantine himself, tradition holds, met with him privately at times during the council and once kissed the place where his eye had been.
A separate, more famous story credits Paphnutius with rising at that same council to defend married clergy against a proposed rule of universal celibacy, persuading the assembled bishops to leave the matter to individual conscience. That particular account, though widely repeated for centuries, has long been judged by careful historians to rest on no real documentary foundation, a legend rather than an event Nicaea itself actually recorded.
