Venerable Pachomius the Great

Venerable Pachomius was born around 292 in the Thebaid near Latopolis (modern Esna), to pagan parents. Around 312–313 he was conscripted into the Roman army during Licinius's war against Maximinus Daza; while imprisoned with fellow recruits in Thebes, he was moved by the local Christians' charity toward the prisoners and vowed to become a Christian upon release. After his discharge he was baptized and became a disciple of the hermit Palamon, undergoing years of ascetic training under him.

By a vision/voice from above he settled at the abandoned village of Tabennisi on the Nile (c. 323–325) and began building the first monastery organized not on eremitic but on cenobitic (communal) principles. Tradition holds that an angel appeared to Pachomius in the form of a schema-monk and handed him the first rule of communal monastic life, commanding him to gather brothers under a single discipline of shared prayer, labor, meals, and obedience — thus arose the cenobitic type of monasticism, distinct from the eremitic model of St. Anthony the Great.

Pachomius founded nine men's monasteries across Upper Thebaid and (together with his sister Maria) the first women's monastery, united into a single federation under his headship, numbering thousands of monks by his death. He died during a plague epidemic that also claimed the lives of many of his monks.

His feast is kept on May 15/28.