PART I

In the name of the holy Trinity. The ordinance which the angel of the Lord commanded to Abba Pachomius.

In a place whose name is Tabennesis, in the province of Thebes, there was a man whose name was Pachomius, who was of those that lived a clean life, and there was given to him knowledge and also vision of angels. And this man was a great lover of men and a lover of brethren. And as he was sitting in his cave, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him: “With regard to thyself thou hast become perfect and a superfluous abidance dost thou now live in the cave: and now go forth, and collect together the less perfect young men, and dwell and be with them; and as I give to thee an ordinance, thus teach them.” And he handed him a tablet of iron, upon which was written as follows:

“Suffer each one to eat and to drink, and according to the measure of their eating give them their work. And prohibit neither fasting nor eating; but only as the food for the strong is powerful, and is weak for the weak, give them also the food of their works. And make a dwelling in one enclosed place, and three shall dwell in one house. And their eating shall be in one. And they shall sleep not by lying down, but like a chair of brickwork let them make inclining places for the back, and upon this they shall spread out their garments and they shall sleep sitting. And they shall clothe themselves with a sleeveless linen undergarment and a leather girdle, [From the Greek: And let each one of them have a wooly blanket made of a white goat skin], and without this they shall not eat. And when they go to the sacrifice on the Sabbath of the Christians, they shall loosen their girdles and shall lay aside their skin garments [and enter alone] with their hoods. And ordain for them hoods without shaggy hair, like those of children, and command thereon the stigma-sign of the cross in purple. And they each shall consist of twenty-four associations, and each of the associations thou shalt call according to the Greek letters, from Alpha and Beta and Gamma and Delta, in their order. And whenever in an association a first asks a second, he will say: ‘How is the association of Gamma? and how is the association of Beta? Greet Rho.’ And each shall be known by his order and by his sign. And the gentle ones call Iota, and the perverse call Xi, and thus according to their order and their kind and their arrangement and the life of each association in its character, call them by name. And only those that are spiritual know what the writing says that is on this tablet.—And when a stranger comes from another cloister, where there is not such an order, let him neither eat nor drink with them, and let him not enter their cloister, unless they have met on the public highway. But he that comes to dwell with them, let them not receive him into the association before he has completed three years, but they shall employ him only as a servant; and after his completion of three years, let him enter.—And while they eat they shall cover their heads with their hoods, so that one brother does not see the other chewing. And there shall be no conversation while they eat. And not without and not upon another away from the table and the vessel shall they turn their eyes.—And command, that they shall each day pray twelve times, at evening twelve times, and in the night twelve times, and at the ninth hour [i.e., 3 P.M.] three times. And when the associations eat, then a psalm shall be repeated before the prayer; this command.”

And Pachomius answered the angel, saying: “Few are these prayers.” And the angel said to him: “This I have commanded that also the weak may be able to attain and to do this ordinance without grieving themselves; but the perfect do not desire for themselves an ordinance, for they themselves in their dwellings have resigned their whole lives to the Lord who sees it; but these things I have ordained for those who have no advisers, so that they may be able at least to do as a service what has been commanded them, and may come to the sacred rites openly with shining countenance.”

And many are the cloisters of this ordinance, and they amount to five thousand men. The first great cloister, where Pachomius himself lived and which produced also other cloisters, had three hundred men. And among these is Aphthonius, who is an old friend to me [i.e., Palladius], and is now the second to Pachomius in the cloister, and his life is without scandal or offence, and they send him to the region of Alexandria, that he sell things for them and buy for them what they desire. And there are other cloisters of this association of two hundred and three hundred. And to the region of Aspenos [i.e., Penapolis near Thebes], which belongs to them, I came and saw cloisters and found three hundred men of the association. And they worked at every art, and with the work of their hands they worked for the cloisters of women and for the prison house. And they whose turn it was arose early in the morning; some of them are in the kitchen at cooking, others at preparing the table, and they prepare and put in order, until their proper time comes, on this table bread, vegetables, prepared olive-fruit, and cheese from the cow and things plucked in the garden. And there are some that enter at the sixth hour [noon] to eat, and some enter at the seventh hour, and others again enter at the eighth hour, and some enter at the ninth hour, and some at the eleventh hour, and some late in the evening, and some at the second watch; each sign of the letters knows its own hour. And thus is their work: one works the land and ploughs it; another the garden; another the vegetable plot; another acts as carpenter; another belongs in the bake-house; another chisels; another makes large baskets; another makes nets; another sews leather; another writes; another weaves fruit-baskets, which are small baskets; and they all repeat the Gospel books from memory.

And to these belongs a cloister [for women], to the number of four hundred, who live according to this ordinance except with regard to the shaggy clothing. And the female monks among them live on the other side of the river [Nile], and the men among them, opposite them on this side. And when a nun dies, her sisters, the nuns, wrap her in linen; and having wrapped her in, they bring her to the bank of the river, and the brethren cross over on a raft with palm branches and olive boughs, and bring her across with psalm-singing to themselves, and bury her in their burial-place. With the exception of priest and deacon alone, nobody crosses over into the women cloister, and this takes place on each Sabbath of the Christians.