Pachomius founds the first cenobitic monastery at Tabennisi

Pachomius, born to pagan parents in the Thebaid around 292, was swept up in an army levy as a young man; the kindness of the local Christians who brought food to the conscripts at Thebes made him seek baptism after his release, and he was baptised in 314. He then spent seven years as the disciple of the hermit Palaemon. According to his Coptic Life, while praying in the deserted village of Tabennisi he heard a voice telling him to stay and build a monastery there, for many would come to him. He founded the community between 318 and 323 (around 320, by another estimate); his elder brother John joined him, and soon more than a hundred monks lived there.

Until then Christian ascetics in Egypt had lived mostly as hermits, alone or in scattered cells, meeting only for occasional worship. Pachomius housed his monks in houses inside a walled enclosure, with property held in common, a daily round of prayer and manual work and obedience to the superior, whom they called abba, “father” — and he was the first to set down a written monastic rule. When Tabennisi grew too small he founded a second monastery at Pbow, which became the centre of the Koinonia; Athanasius of Alexandria visited the community. By Pachomius’s death in 346 or 348 it had nine monasteries for men and two for women (eight monasteries in all, by another account), and around 400 Palladius counted some 7,000 Pachomian monks. Basil of Caesarea visited the Pachomian houses and adapted their ideas; Jerome translated the rule into Latin in 404, and parts of it passed into the Rule of Saint Benedict.