The life of St Pachomius

St Pachomius was born in 292 in Thebes (Luxor, Egypt) to pagan parents. He was converted to Christianity by the kindness of Christians he had contact with. In his early twenties he became a Christian and an ascetic.

He established the first monastic enclosure, replacing the scattered hermits’ shelters, and he put together a common daily program providing for balanced periods of work and prayer patterned about a cooperative economic and disciplinary program. He is considered to be the father of the communal (Cenobitic) life. These monastic rules became popular in the west and were used and incorporated in the rules of St Basil the Great and St Benedict of Nursia.

This biography of Saint Pachomius is constructed here from the various Coptic, Greek, and Arabic lives of the saint, together with historical sources of the Church in the fourth century. The Feast Day of Saint Pachomius is the fourteenth of Bashan in the Coptic calendar (May 22).

By: Rodolph Yanney M.D.