St. Pachomius of Tabenna

  Posted on May 9, 2020  by admin  No comments

Born: c.290 at Upper Thebaid, Egypt 

Died: c.346 of natural causes, buried in an unknown location by Saint Theodore of Tabennísi 

Soldier in the imperial Roman army. Convert in 313. He left the army in 314 and became a spiritual student of Saint Palaemon. Lived as a hermit from 316. During a retreat into the deep desert, he received a vision telling him to build a monastery on the spot and leave the life of a hermit for that of a monk in community. He did in 320, and devised a Rule that let fellow hermits ease from solitary to communal living; legend says that the Rule was dictated to him by an angel. 

Abbot. His first house expanded to eleven monasteries and convents with over 7,000 monks and nuns in religous life by the time of Pachomius’s death. Spiritual teacher of Saint Abraham the Poor and Saint Theodore of Tabennísi. Considered the founder of Christian cenobitic (communal) monasticism, whose rule for monks is the earliest extant.