"the miracle"

Draft Research Notes

It will be argued that later christian ecclesiatical "historians" forged into the record that Pachomius was a christian in the sense that EUsebius of Caesarea was a christian. It will be argued that Jerome, and others, who preserved and translated the literature of Pachomius, fashioned Pachomius as an authodox christian "ascetic hermit".

It will also be argued that Life of Anthony by Anathausius is simply a romantic fiction that has served to establish an historical link and correspondence between the early fourth century desert dwelling ascetic movement (such as Pachomius', and a number of others) and the history of early christianity. Pachomius is the historical figure, and was a non-christian. Anthony was the subject matter of the biography of a saint, and represents nothing but propaganda. It was an expedient means to "christianise" the great movement of the ascetic monks into their remote monasteries.

Aristocracy, subject to torture and excessive taxation at the hands of the christian emperors of the fourth century, found it a reasonable option to give away their lands and possessions, and flee to the refuge of the desert communities, far from ] the roving spies (Bishops) of the emperor and his state.

Pachomius forsaw this. Perhaps he witnessed Constantine's destruction of the oblelisk of Karnack in 324 CE? Perhaps in the same year Constantine's utter destruction of the ancient major temples of Asclepius, in Aegae and elsewhere, and the public executions of his chief priesthood.

The possibility that Pachomius was this known as "A Prophet" is presented first. It is by no means sure. But the question is at least supported ...

****************
Armarnd Veilleux

Coptic fragment:
Letter by a certain Paphnoute to a certain Pachomius.
Pahpnoute(d.346 CE), brother of Theodore, many years the steward
of the "KOINONIA" residing in Pbbow, and of Pachomius.

Address is via the title:
"my prophet and father Pachomius"



******
Says:
Pachomius and Theodore anathematised the writings of Origen?





*****************
PALAMON

The Letter of Ammon and Pachomian Monasticism
By James E. Goehring

Numbers of Pachomians......

Ammon reports 600 at Pabau 352 CE.
Ammon reports easter gathering of 2000
Palladius lists 1300 at Pabau
Palladius also 200-300 in each of other monasteries
with a total around 7000.

Numbers did increase after 346 CE (Pachomius died)
Cassian (Institutes 4.1) numbers 5000

Jerome (Reg. Pach, Praefatio 7) 
suggests 50,000 at Pabau for easter




SOURCE

While St Anthony stressed solitary life, 
St Pachomius (292-348) emphasied cenobitic life, 
that is communal monastic life.

Pachomius was born to pagan parents in Thebaid (Upper Egypt). 
There he received an excellent secular education. At the age 
of either 20 or 21, he was called to serve in the Roman army. 
It was then that he stayed in a prison, used to house the new 
conscripts, which was run by Christians. He was so impressed 
by their love of their neighbor that he vowed to become a 
Christian after his military service ended.

Thus in 314 Pachomius was baptized and began to practice the 
ascetic life. Three years later he withdrew to the desert under 
the guidance of the elder Palamon. 


    According to tradition, 
    after ten years with Palamon 
    he heard a Voice telling him 
    to found a monastic community 
    at Tabbenisi (also Tabenna, Tabbenisiot). 

    He and Palamon traveled there, 
    and subsequently Pachomius had a vision 
    in which an angel came to him, 
    clothed in a schema (a type of monastic garment), 
    and gave him a rule for the cenobitic life. 

    This is significant because up until this time 
    ascetics had for the most part lived alone as hermits, 
    not together in a community. 
    Pachomius’ rule balanced the communal life 
    with the solitary life; monks live in individual 
    cells but work together for the common good.

The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International 



"Pachomius certainly laid claim to visions
of heavenly mysteries (hence his troubles 
with the synod of Latopolis), and in 
correspondence with the superiors of his
monastic houses he used an alphabetic
cryptography which the recent discoveries
of Dr Quecke have much illuminated, while
still leaving the cipher unbroken. [12]

[12=H Quecke, Die Briefe Pachoms (Regensburg, 1975)]


The cipher is partly paralleled by the 
alchemist Zosimus who entitled each of
the 28 books of his magnum opus with a 
letter of the Greek alphabet plus four 
Coptic letters, each letter representing
a god.  The parallel with Pachomius was
already evident to Reitzenstein. So the
hypothesis of a gnostic sympathiser among
Pachomonius' monks is not rediculous.

Papyri fragment:
Published Dr. CH Roberts
Oxford collection 1939
(Memorial Vol for Carl Schmidt,
ZNW 37 for 1938)

Dated early 4th century
"Catalogue of a christian library,
including Biblical books, a 'great book'
which is evidently a gospel book, the
Shepherd of Hermas, two works of Origen
and one by 'Father Val ..."

For heretical penetration into orthodox monasteries
we have plentiful evidence during the Origenist controversies
in Egypt and during the long struggles to contain 
Messalianism in Asia Minor.  Texts of Origen could
be brought into a monastery near Gaza about 530 AD
and prompted some risky speculations that caused 
anxiety [13]

[13 = See the "Erotapokriseis of Barsanuphius and John 999"
(p.283 ed Schionas, Volos, 1960)]

In a word, the bizarre nature of Pachomius' 
cyrptographic letters, the proximity of the Nag Hammadi
find to the great Pachomian monastery together with
the now demonstrated connection of the codices
with the nearby Pachomian house, the suddenclamp-down
on the apochyphal texts resulting from Athasius' Paschal
Letter for 367 (which may be the cause of the cache), add
up to make it probably enough that until 367 CE gnostic 
material was easily infiltrated into the monastic houses
of Pachomius' foundation.

Palladius, The Lausiac History

CHAPTER XXXII. -- PACHOMIUS AND THE TABENNESIOTS

[1] TABENNISI 198 is a place, so-called, in the Thebaid, in which there lived a certain Pachomius, one of those who have lived in the straight way, so that he was counted worthy both of prophecies and angelic visions. He was exceedingly devoted both to his fellow-men and his brethren. Accordingly, to him as he sat in his cave 199 an angel 200 appeared and said: "You have successfully ordered your own life. So it is superfluous to remain sitting in your cave. Up! go out and collect all the young monks and dwell with them, and according to the model which I now give you, so legislate for them;" and he gave him a brass tablet on which this was inscribed----

[2] "Thou shalt allow each man to eat 
and drink according to his strength; 
and proportionately to the strength of the eaters 
appoint to them their labours. 

And prevent no man either from fasting or eating. 
However, appoint the tasks that need strength 
to those who are stronger and eat, and to the weaker and more ascetic 
such as the weak can manage. 
Make a number of cells within the enclosure 
and let three dwell in each cell.
But let them all go to one building for their food. 
[3] Let them sleep not lying down full length, 
but let them make sloping chairs easily constructed and put their rugs on them 
and thus sleep in a sitting posture.

And let them wear at night linen lebitons and a girdle. 
Let each of them have a worked goatskin cloak, 
without which they are not to eat. 
When they go to Communion on Saturday and Sunday, 
let them loosen their girdles and lay aside the skin cloak 
and go in with the cowl  only." 

And he prescribed for them napless cowls, as for children, 
on which he ordered an imprint, the mark of a cross, 
to be worked in dark red. 

[4] And he ordered that there should be twenty-four sections,206 
and to each order he assigned a letter of the Greek alphabet----
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on.207 

So when the Superior asked questions, or |114 busied himself with the affairs 
of the great multitude, he asked the second: 

"How is the Alpha section?" or, 
"How is the Zeta?" or again: 
"Greet the Rho," and they followed 
a private meaning assigned to the letters. 


"And to the simpler and more unworldly 
thou shalt give the Iota, and to the more difficult and perverse 
thou shalt assign the Xi." 

[5] And so, in correspondence with the nature 
of their dispositions and manners and lives, 
he fitted the letters to each section, only the spiritual knowing what was meant. 

And it was written on the tablet:

 "A stranger of another monastery 
which has a different rule is not 
to eat with them, nor drink, nor enter ]
into the monastery, unless he happens 
to be on a (genuine) journey."208 

However, the man who has come to remain with them 
they do not allow to enter into the sanctuary for three years.209 

But after a three years' probation and performance 
of the more toilsome labours, then he enters. 

[6] "As they eat let them cover their heads with their cowls 
lest one brother see another chewing. A monk is not allowed 
to talk at meals nor let his eye wander beyond his plate or the table." 

And he ordered them during the whole day to make twelve prayers, 
and twelve at the lamp-lighting, and twelve at the night-vigils, 
and three at the ninth hour. 

But when a group was about to eat he ordered a psalm 
to be sung before each prayer.210 |115  

[7] When Pachomius objected to the angel 
that the prayers were few, the angel said to him: 

"I gave this rule so as to make sure in advance 
that even the little ones keep the rule 
and are not afflicted.211 

But the perfect have no need of legislation, 
for by themselves in their cells they have surrendered 
the whole of their life to the contemplation of God. 

But I have legislated for as many 
as have not a discerning mind, 
in order that they, like house-servants 
fulfilling the duties of their station, 
may live a life of freedom." 

[8] Among them there was also the noble Aphthonius, who became my intimate friend, and is now second in the monastery. Him they send to Alexandria, since nothing can make him stumble, in order to sell their produce and buy necessaries.

[9] But there are also other monasteries two hundred or three hundred strong. One of these, with 300 monks, I found when I entered the city of Panopolis. [In the monastery I found fifteen tailors, seven smiths, four carpenters, twelve camel-drivers, and fifteen fullers.] 214 But they work at every kind of craft and with their surplus output they provide for the needs both of the women's convents and the prisons.

[10] [They keep pigs too, and when I blamed the practice, |116 they said: "In our tradition we have received this, that they are to be kept because of the chaff, and the refuse of the vegetables and other scraps that one throws away, lest they be wasted.215 And the pigs are to be killed and their meat sold, but the tit-bits are to be devoted to the sick and aged, because the neighbourhood is poor and populous; for the tribe of the Blemmyes live near.]

[11] But those who are to serve that day rise early and get to their work, some to the kitchen, others to the tables. They spend their time then until the meal-hour in arranging and preparing the tables, putting loaves on each, and charlock, preserved olives, cheese of cows' milk, [the tit-bits of the meat], and chopped herbs. Some come in at the sixth hour and eat, others at the seventh, others at the eighth, others at the ninth, others at the eleventh, others in the late evening, others every other day, so that each letter knows its own hour.216

[12] So also is it with their work. One works on the land as a labourer, another in the garden, another at the forge, another in the bakery, another in the carpenter's" shop, another in the fuller's shop, another weaving the big baskets, another in the tannery, another in the shoemaker's shop, another in the scriptorium, another weaving the young reeds. And they learn all the scriptures by heart.

Footnotes

198. 1 Near Denderah on the Nile. See Introduction, p. 23, and Ladeuze, 
     Etude sur le Cénobitisme pakhomien, passim. The error that Tabennisi 
     was an island goes back to some MSS. of Sozomen, III. 14, which have Tabe/nnh nh~soj. 

199. 2 He was with Palaemon at the time. 

200. 3 Ladeuze considers the Greek Vita Pachomii the source of the other versions, 
     and the Rule in its various recensions to be inferior in authority to the Lives. 
     The angel here seems to him legendary, since he is not mentioned in the Lives (p. 257). 
     But cf. Gennadius, de vir. illus., 7. 

201. 1 It is clear from the Lives that the brethren lived in houses, 
     within which each had a separate cell: Ladeuze, p. 263 f. 

202. 2 Pachomius himself observed neither the sleeping nor clothing regulations 
     as given here, Ladeuze, p. 264. See Cassian, Inst. Book I. 
     for the dress of the Egyptian monks. 

203. 3 The lebitw&n was a sleeveless garment, akin to or identical with the kol&bion. 

204. 4 mhlwth_n ai0gei/an ei0rgasme/nhn. 

205. 5 koukou&lion. "Un très court mantelet " (Ladeuze). A hood was attached, 
     for it was used to cover the head at meals: see below. 

206. 6 ta&gmata. 

208. 1 To exclude professional wanderers, gyrovagi. 
     In the Lives Pachomius receives visitors from other forms of monasticism freely, 
     Ladeuze, p. 264. 

209. 2 No trace of this in the Lives or Jerome: Ladeuze, p. 281. 

210. 3 See Butler, II., p. 207 f., for a discussion of these prayers. 
     Palladius' version conflicts with Cassian's. 

211. 1 Cf. the Benedictine Rule, which was intended only to be 
    "a little rule for beginners," minima inchoationis regula. 

212. 2 Cassian, Inst., IV. I, says more than 5000; Jerome, in prologue 
     to the Latin version of the Rule, 50,000. 

213. 3 Cf. XVIII. 13, where the number is given as 1400. 
     The monastery where Pachomius dwelt was Pabau, not Tabennisi; Palladius is in error. 

214. 4 The passages in square brackets are apparently genuine, though omitted in some MSS. 

215. 1 George Herbert's Country Parson keeps pigs for the same reason 
     (Priest to the Temple, Ch. X.). 

216. 2 In point of fact, says Ladeuze (p. 298 f.), they ate together
      twice a day at the same time.