Saint Pachomius

Pachomius was born around 292 to pagan parents in Upper Egypt. Conscripted into the Roman army as a young man, he was held with other recruits at Thebes, where local Christians came to bring them food and comfort. Moved by their charity toward strangers, he promised God that if he were released he would serve others all his life. After his discharge he was baptized and became the disciple of a hermit named Palaemon.

Around 320 Pachomius founded a monastery at Tabennisi, by the Nile, where monks lived not as solitary hermits but as a community, sharing prayer, work, meals and obedience to a superior. His rule, the first written rule for community monastic life, influenced Basil, Jerome, Benedict and the whole later tradition. By his death there were nine monasteries for men and two for women, led by his sister Mary. He died of plague on May 9, 348.

Pachomius is especially honored by the Coptic Church and by monks of East and West, who see him as the father of cenobitic, or community, monastic life. In the Byzantine calendar his feast falls on May 15.