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Paphnutius (play)

Paphnutius
Written by Hrotsvitha
Characters Thaïs,
Paphnutius the Ascetic
Date premiered unknown
(written 10th century AD)
Original language Latin
Genre Scholastic drama
Setting Roman Egypt,
4th century AD

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.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the play begins with a somewhat scholarly dialogue between clerics regarding the harmony inherent in the created world. The subject of concord sets the stage for the drama of the disordered life of the courtesan Thaïs. "She shines forth in wondrous beauty" yet she also "threatens men with foul shame."

In the play Thaïs is presented as someone "who was always eager to accumulate wealth". The saint Pafnutius explains to his disciples that "not only frivolous youth dissipate their families' few possessions on her but even respected men waste their costly treasures by lavishing gifts on her... ." A modern writer observes: "Hrotsvit's Thaïs became a prostitute because of her love of money. The root of her immorality is avarice, which in combination with her great beauty, resulted in her choice of prostitution as a career."

After her conversion to Christianity she "destroys" 400 pounds of gold and burns other articles of treasure before her former patrons. Pafnutius exclaims to Thaïs, "O how you have changed from your prior condition when you burned with illicit passions and were inflamed with greed for possessions!"


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