other · 250 · Thebaid
Jerome wrote the Life of Paul the First Hermit early, and wrote it with a purpose: to establish that the solitary life began before Antony. The story is that Paul was a young educated man of Thebes whose sister's husband intended to inform on him for his inheritance, that he fled into the desert of Upper Egypt during the Decian persecution, and that he stayed there until he was a hundred and thirteen, fed by a raven and clothed in woven palm leaves. Whether he existed at all has been disputed since antiquity, and the objection is not modern scepticism — Jerome's own contemporaries asked where the evidence was, and he answered by appealing to two disciples of Antony whom nobody else names. This dataset keeps him and marks him. The event carries the withdrawal, which is the substance of the claim; the year is the Decian persecution, which is the only anchor the story provides for itself.
To escape a brother-in-law who meant to denounce him for the property, during the Decian persecution.
On Jerome's account, the first Christian hermit — and a claim that has been argued about ever since.