who also battled against Arianism. Also, the Church History of Socrates Scholasticus, our earliest source on Paphnutius, is one of the very few references for him in general. His participation in the First Ecumenical Council was disputed several times, among others by such a respected canon law historian as Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler. Stickler's objection is that Paphutius' presence at the council was never mentioned by the council's historian Eusebius of Caesarea, and he also disproves Socrates' statement that he personally spoke to a participant of the council as Socrates was supposedly born too late to know personally anyone who had taken part in it. Stickler's main argument against Paphnutius' story is that the Synod of Trullo (691) failed to mention the Paphnutius story when they allowed matrimony for priests, which was done, as Stickler claims, under the emperor's pressure. The Council of Trullo, rather erroneously, referred only to the decrees of the Council of Carthage. However, Eusebius does not mention many things that certainly did happen, we are not sure when Socrates of Constantinople was born, and the Council of Trullo might have invoked several other canons from the past, though it did not. On the other hand, there have also been several prominent scholars who defended the veracity of the Paphnutius story. The main arguments were laid down by Karl Josef von Hefele in his Conciliengeschichte (1855), and were taken up by his successor at the Tübingen Catholic faculty of theology Franz Xaver von Funk, as well as by some other eminent historians as Elphège Vacandard in the article on celibacy in the prestigious Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (1905) and Henri Leclercq in an article in the Histoire des conciles (1908). Vacandard's position found wide acceptance among the scholars. The original argument by Hefele is available below. Alban Butler says, "On account of the silence of other writers, and on the testimonies of Saint Jerome, Saint Epiphanius, and others, Bellarmin and Orsi suspect that Socrates and Sozomen were misinformed in this story. There is, however, nothing repugnant in the narration; for it might seem unadvisable to make too severe a law at that time against some married men, who, in certain obscure churches, might have been ordained without such a condition." Notes References Saints from Roman Egypt 4th-century Christian saints