It was from St. Jerome (420) that the west learnt of the life of St. Paul; the book which he devoted to the life of the first Christian hermit charmed and instructed generations of the faithful and formed the inspiration of many artists. St. Paul is said to have died in 341, in a hermitage in the region of Thebes in Egypt after having received at the age of 113 a visit from St. Antony. St. Paul of Thebes, St. Antony the Great, and others of the fathers of the desert, exerted that mysterious influence of all men of God; the strength of their attraction to the divine excludes all attachment to what is temporal and finite.