Pachomius the Great was a fourth-century Egyptian ascetic, commemorated on May 15, who is venerated as the founder of cenobitic (communal) monasticism. Where the earliest Christian ascetics had withdrawn into the desert as solitary hermits, Pachomius gathered monks into an organized community living under a common rule, sharing the same food, clothing, and labor for the good of the brotherhood. The tradition records that he was the first to set down a written monastic rule.
Born in the Thebaid of Upper Egypt to pagan parents who gave him a secular education, Pachomius was conscripted as a young man into the imperial army. While he and his fellow recruits were held under guard, local Christians cared for and fed them; learning that they acted out of love for God and obedience to His commandment to love their neighbor, he resolved to become a Christian. After his release from military service he was baptized, settling at Shenesit (Chenoboskion), and sought out the desert elder Palamon, under whose guidance he was formed in the ascetic life.
By tradition, at the ruins of Tabennisi an angel appeared to Pachomius in the form of a monk and gave him a tablet inscribed with a rule for the cenobitic life. There he established the first monastery of brethren living in common, and the community grew rapidly; further houses were founded along the Nile, forming a federation under his direction. Sources report that several thousand monks eventually followed his guidance across eight monasteries. He reposed during an epidemic in the middle of the fourth century, before St Anthony the Great and St Athanasius the Great.
The Pachomian rule had an influence on later monasticism reaching well beyond Egypt. Translated into Latin by St Jerome in the early fifth century, it informed the monastic legislation of the Christian West, and it is counted among the sources behind the rule of St Benedict of Nursia. Through it, the communal pattern of life that Pachomius first organized spread across the Christian world.
