This second Instruction of Pachomius has survived as a fragment, first published by Amelineau in 1895, and again published by Lefort in 1956. In the Pachomian tradition, the term Passover embraced the period of what may be called Holy Week. It ended with the celebration of the feast of the Resurrection, when the catechumens were baptized after a lengthy preparation. The various superiors of the Koinonia gave Instructions during this period, and this fragment is the surviving portion of one by Pachomius. These six days become for the monk a macrocosm of their monastic life. Despite its brevity, it manages to convey the uniqueness of Pachomian spirituality. Pachomius outlined the monastic way of life, which revolved around ‘silence, manual labour, manifold prayers, guard of the
238 Ibid., p. 20:19. 239 Ibid., p. 21:22. 240 Ibid., p. 39:55. 241 Ibid., p. 39:55.
mouth, purity of body and holiness of heart’.242 For Pachomius, the Passover was the most sacred part of the monastic year, and he believed it was ‘given to us each year for the redemption of our souls’.243 He saw a relationship between the six days of the creation and the six days of the Passover; reflecting the idea that the monks thus entered into a new life of prayer and sacrifice.
These two Instructions also indicate the mystic nature of his spirituality that equated the love of God with suffering. The Paralipomena described how, when Pachomius asked God to grant him mercy, he was sent a vision of the merciful Christ crowned with thorns. An angel said to him:
Since you have asked God to send you his mercy, behold this is his mercy: the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ His only begotten Son whom he sent into the world; you have crucified Him and have put a crown of thorns on His head.244
This is how Pachomius, the mystic, envisaged the way Christ achieved the salvation of the world and the way his followers should relate to Him. Whether this and other visions allegedly received by Pachomius are genuine supernatural events or hallucinations, cannot be decided by following the principles of rational thought. No matter how such experiences are judged, for Pachomius they were a reality, and he fashioned his life and that of his monks upon them.
9.10 Rule of Pachomius
242 Instruction on the Six Days of the Passover, Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. Three, 1982, p. 47:2. 243 Ibid., p. 47:1.
After Pachomius’ conversion to Christianity he embraced the anchorite way of life, and in this way prepared himself for carrying out, what he considered to be, a direct command from God. He was ‘moved by the love of God [and] sought to become a monk’.245Pachomius came to the conclusion that if any spiritual community was to be successful, its members must be governed by a set of rules that would regulate their daily activities. He was determined his first failure would never be repeated, and perhaps this explains their rather inflexible, even draconian nature. The original rule of Pachomius belonged to the oral tradition, and only later recorded in writing by members of his community in the Sahidic Coptic dialect. He understood that as circumstances changed, it would need to be modified and altered. After his death, his successors, Horsiesios and Theodore, added to the rule and adapted it to meet changing conditions, but at all times incorporated the ethos of Pachomius. Horsiesios, when he succeeded Pachomius as father superior, insisted the monks ‘keep the rules of the community, which Abba Pachomius had established for its constitution while he was still alive, as well as the decisions of the fathers, the housemasters, and the stewards of the monasteries.’246
The monastery of Metanoia, established by the patriarch Theophilos, contained a collection of Pachomian documents, which included the Rule of Pachomius together with the writings of Horsiesios and Theodore. In 404, Jerome gathered these texts and translated them into Latin, and this collection became known as his Pachomiania Latina.247 In 1919 Lefort included this rule (possibly only fragments) in his Coptic
245 G1, p. 301.6. 246 G1, p. 384:122.
247 Jerome divided the rule into four sections; Praecepta, Praecepta et Instituta, Praecepta atque Judicia
and Praecepta ac Leges. This version has been translated by Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. Two, 1981, and is the version referred to in this thesis.
Dossier. Both Greek and Ethiopic translations remain in existence, but Veilleux claimed that these translations possess only a limited value as Pachomian sources.248 With all the modifications, alterations and additions, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to discover the original rule of Pachomius. Jerome wrote in the prologue to his translation, ‘these [rules] were the first in the Thebaid and Egypt to lay the foundations of cenobitic monasticism according to the precepts of God’.249
The approach to be adopted in examining the rule of Pachomius involves discussing its structure, its goals and influence on both the spiritual and secular lives of the monks. The spirituality of Pachomius lived on in his rule, which also encapsulated his humanity. The four divisions in Jerome’s Latin translation were believed by Veilleux, not to be the result of an evolutionary process, but to have evolved at approximately the same time, but in a different context.250
a) Praecepta. (Precepts)
These discussed in detail the behaviour of the monks, in every aspect of their daily lives: how they were to walk: behave in their relationship with their fellow monks: and their attendance at their liturgical duties, including synaxis and the celebration of the Eucharist. This was an extremely legalistic document and consisted of one hundred and forty-five Precepts. They incorporated the ideas and beliefs of a spiritual leader who was determined to establish a way of life that would enable his followers to achieve a degree of spiritual perfection.