The life of St Pachomius

The life of St Pachomius by Rodolph Yanney M.D. is a free eBook on the father of communal monastic life, for everyone who wants to know how monasticism began.

St Pachomius was born in 292 in Thebes (Luxor, Egypt) to pagan parents. He was won to Christ by the kindness of the Christians he met, and in his early twenties he became a Christian and an ascetic.

He set up the first monastic enclosure in place of the scattered shelters of hermits. He drew up a shared daily programme with balanced times of work and prayer, built around a common economic and disciplinary order. For this he is called the father of the communal (cenobitic) life. His monastic rules became popular in the West and were taken into the rules of St Basil the Great and St Benedict of Nursia.

This biography is built from the various Coptic, Greek and Arabic lives of the saint, together with historical sources of the Church in the fourth century. The feast of St Pachomius is on the 14th of Bashans in the Coptic calendar (22 May).

Book details

• Author: Rodolph Yanney M.D.
• Format: eBook (free)