The superhuman intuition of Saint Pachomius the Great

Summary:

Pachomius was born in Kenobsoskion (now Nag Hammadi) in Upper Egypt, into a very modest family with a low level of education and no knowledge of the major philosophical and religious currents of the time. He spoke and wrote only Coptic: Syriac and Greek, the main languages into which the Bible had been translated in the East since the 3rd century, were unknown to him. Until adulthood, he knew virtually nothing about Christianity.

He never questioned his pagan beliefs in the early part of his life: at the age of 20, he was forcibly conscripted into Constantine's imperial army to fight the Persians. In this military setting, he never changed his beliefs and never met a Christian.

In 314, he was discharged from the army without any known resources. A providential event changed his life: he was taken in by Christians from Thebes. Housed, fed and cared for by these people, he was deeply touched by the charity of his hosts, through whom he discovered the Gospel. He converted and asked to be baptized.

Three years later, still a brand-new Christian, he left everything behind and retired to the desert. There, for the first time, he met a hermit monk (anchorite) named Palamos, with whom he spent 7 years. His vocation was thus born of fortuitous circumstances; nothing had ever prepared this former soldier to become a solitary monk and exposing his life in this way.

Then came his encounter with the other Egyptian "giant": Saint Anthony the Great (d. 356). Pachomius thus received a complete "formation", not from educational institutions (non-existent at the time), but from the concrete example of two holy monks.

The final stage of his spiritual journey was the miracle of an angel's "voice" asking him to found his own community of monks. Some might dismiss this celestial "message" as an illusion or a mental disorder brought on by asceticism and isolation. This is not the case: it was on the basis of this extraordinary experience that Pachomius invented a totally new way of life for monks, and wrote a rule that would influence the whole of Christendom: none of the Latin Fathers of monasticism ever criticized or made substantial changes to St. Pachomius' Rule.   

The first monastery, founded in Tabennesi in 323, became the center of Egyptian monasticism within a few decades. Written in Coptic, the Rule of Saint Pachomius was translated into Syriac and Greek (and thus transmitted to the Byzantine world), and then into Latin by Saint Jerome (d. 420), helping it to spread throughout the western part of the Roman Empire. Additionally, the text was translated very early on in Ethiopia, Armenia, Georgia, Palestine and Syria. The "voice" heard by the saint was certainly very effective!

Pachomius' insightful rules lay the foundations for the organization of monastic community life as we still know it today: novitiate, single garment worn by monks, communal meals taken in silence, continuous prayer during the day and night (liturgy of the hours), divine service (mass), obedience to superiors, absolute poverty and pooling of goods, probationary period for postulants, obligatory work according to individual ability, special care for the sick, duty of hospitality, and separation of male and female members (Pachomius' sister also founded, with her brother's support, a community of women on the opposite bank of the Nile).

This emergence of "cenobitism" (from the Greek koinos bios, "common life") in the 4th century is all the more incredible given that, in Egypt at the time, there was no similar form of contemplative life: "anchorites" (solitaries) and "gyrovagues" (itinerant monks) dominated until the arrival of Pachomius.

His success surpassed Pachomius' natural abilities - both intellectual and physical - and by the time of his death, 9 male and 2 female monasteries had already been established, each with at least 30 members. By the end of the 4th century, this number reached several thousand. By the 6th century, 24 monasteries made up the legacy of Pachomius on his native soil.

Pachomius' life is well known thanks to a number of reliable and wide-ranging sources, including a Life written in Greek by Symeon Metaphrastes, adapted in the 19th century by the learned society of Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum (t. 3, p. 22-43); the same Bollandists published several accounts entitled Paralipomena de SS. Pacomio et Theodoro, closely related and based on a 10th-century Greek manuscript preserved in Paris; an ancient Life of the Saint, written in Syriac by the monk Enanjesus in the 7th century, etc.

Beyond reasons to believe:

The mystery of the interior and contemplative life is a treasure that everyone, whatever their state in life, is called to discover and live off, to various degrees.

Going further:

Placide Deseille, L’esprit du monachisme pachômien, Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1968.

More information:

• Henri-Irénée Marrou, L’Église de l’Antiquité tardive (1963), Paris, Le Seuil, Points-Histoire, 1985.
• Béatrice Caseau, “Christianiser la société”, in Jean-Robert Armogathe (dir.), Histoire générale du christianisme, vol. 1, Paris, PUF, Quadrige, 2010, p. 415-478. 
• Patrick Sbalchiero, Histoire de la vie monastique, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 2008.