The Soldier and the Conversion

The Lives tell Pachomius’s beginnings as a conversion story. Born a pagan in the Thebaid (c. 292), pressed into Roman military service as a young conscript (c. 312/313), he was held with other recruits in a prison at Thebes, where local Christians came of their own accord to feed and comfort the prisoners. Astonished that men should love strangers so, the young Pachomius vowed to serve the God of these Christians; discharged after the campaign, he was catechized and baptized, and then placed himself under the old hermit Palamon, in whose cell he learned the ascetic craft before the call came to found something new.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of cenobitic monasticism)

A Pagan of the Thebaid

The Lives agree that Pachomius was born of pagan parents in the Thebaid of Upper Egypt — the Bohairic Life and the First Greek Life both stress that he grew up “in the midst of idolaters” and worshipped the gods of the Egyptians as a child (Bohairic Life [Bo] 3; First Greek Life [G1] 2; trans. Veilleux 1980). The detail is not incidental: it sets Pachomius apart from the many monks who came from Christian families, and it gives his story the shape of a true conversion — a turning from idols to the living God — rather than a deepening of an inherited faith. A traditional birth-date of about 292 is reconstructed by working back from the better-fixed dates of his later life and death (c. 348), and is given as an approximation in the modern literature (Rousseau 1985, ch. 3; Chitty 1966, ch. 1).

The Lives preserve a few vivid anecdotes of his pagan childhood — most famously that, taken by his parents to a sacrifice, the boy was driven from the temple by the priests, who saw in him “an enemy of the gods” (Bo 3; G1 4; Veilleux 1980). Such stories belong to the conventions of hagiography (the future saint marked out from infancy as set apart for God), and they are reported here as what the Lives say of him, not as independently verifiable biography (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

The Conscription and the Charity at Thebes

The hinge of the conversion narrative is Pachomius’s forced conscription. The Lives recount that, as a young man of about twenty, he was seized along with other youths to serve in the army — the context is usually taken to be the levy raised during the civil wars of the early 310s, in which the rival emperors contended for the Roman world, and the campaign is most often connected with the war that ended at the Battle of Cibalae or with Licinius’s eastern levies, c. 312/313 (Rousseau 1985, ch. 3; Chitty 1966, ch. 1). [Disputed: the Lives do not name the campaign, and modern reconstructions differ on which levy of the 310s Pachomius was caught up in — Chitty (1966) and Rousseau (1985) note the uncertainty and offer c. 312/313 as the most probable window without claiming precision.]

The recruits, the Lives say, were transported downriver under guard and confined for a time in a prison at Thebes (Diospolis). There the decisive event occurred. While the conscripts sat in the prison, hungry and frightened, certain Christians of the city came of their own accord in the evening to bring them food and drink and to comfort them, as was their custom toward those in distress (Bo 7; G1 4–5; trans. Veilleux 1980). Pachomius, knowing nothing of these people, asked who they were and why they should treat unknown prisoners so kindly, and was told that they were Christians, who “are merciful to everyone, including strangers,” for the sake of the God of heaven (G1 5; Veilleux 1980). The Lives report that the young man was deeply moved — that he withdrew and prayed to that God whom he did not yet know, vowing that, if he were delivered, he would serve Him and serve all men all the days of his life (Bo 8; G1 5; Veilleux 1980). This experience of unmotivated Christian charity toward strangers is presented by every branch of the dossier as the seed of his whole vocation; it is striking that the founder of the common life dates his conversion to an act of communal love.

Baptism and the First Years of Asceticism

Released from service when the campaign ended (the Lives say the recruits were dismissed and Pachomius made his way back up the Nile), he came to the village of Šeneset — Chenoboskion, in the region of the later-famous Nag Hammadi — where he sought out the Christians, was instructed in the faith, and was baptized (Bo 8; G1 5; trans. Veilleux 1980). The Lives add a baptismal vision (a dew from heaven, gathered in his hand, becoming honey that spread over the earth — read as a sign of his future fatherhood of multitudes), reported here as the Life’s own testimony (Bo 8; G1 5; Veilleux 1980; cf. Visions and Miracles).

After his baptism Pachomius settled in the neighborhood and for some years lived a life of service and ascetic apprenticeship — the Lives describe him cultivating a garden, sharing its produce with the poor and with travelers, and caring for the sick of the village, working out in practice the vow he had made in the prison to serve all men (Bo 8–9; G1 6; Veilleux 1980).

Apprenticeship under Palamon

Seeking a more thorough formation in the ascetic life, Pachomius then placed himself under an old anchorite named Palamon, who lived as a hermit not far off (Bo 10; G1 6; trans. Veilleux 1980). The episode is important because it locates Pachomius firmly within the existing eremitic tradition: before he founded anything, he was formed as a disciple in the school of solitary asceticism (on that tradition, see Upper Egypt and the First Monks).

The Lives give Palamon a memorable role as the stern gatekeeper of the desert life. When Pachomius asked to be received, Palamon warned him off, rehearsing the severity of his rule — the long vigils, the meager and saltless diet, the unbroken prayer — to test whether the young man understood what he was asking (G1 6; Bo 10; Veilleux 1980). Pachomius persisted, was received, and spent some seven years (the figure is approximate in the tradition) under Palamon’s direction, learning the discipline of fasting, manual labor, unceasing prayer, and the vigilant warfare against the passions and the demons that was the heart of the anchoritic craft (Bo 10–14; G1 6–8; Rousseau 1985, ch. 3; Chitty 1966, ch. 1). The Lives stress the moderation within rigor that Pachomius would later carry into his own communities — Palamon teaching him to labor with his hands through the night to stay awake, and to keep the fasts without ostentation or excess.

It was while he was Palamon’s disciple, the Lives say, that Pachomius first came to the deserted village of Tabennesi, on the east bank of the Nile, and there received the call to found the new thing — the common life — that would become his life’s work (Bo 17; G1 12; Veilleux 1980; treated in The Call at Tabennesi). Palamon, according to the Lives, blessed the venture and continued to visit his former disciple until the old man’s death; the bond between the hermit-master and the cenobite-founder is one of the Lives’ ways of insisting that the new communal form grew out of the older solitary one rather than against it (Bo 17–19; Rousseau 1985, chs. 3–4).

The Historical Core and Its Limits

How much of this narrative is firm history? The broad outline — a pagan Thebaid origin, conversion in the context of military service, baptism, ascetic apprenticeship — is consistent across the whole dossier of Lives in all three languages, which gives it weight (Rousseau 1985, ch. 3; Veilleux 1980, introduction). The particular anecdotes (the temple expulsion, the baptismal vision, the precise words exchanged with Palamon) carry the marks of hagiographical convention and are reported here as the Lives’ testimony, not certified as fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5). And the specifics that the Lives leave vague — above all which military levy caught him, and therefore the exact year — remain genuinely uncertain (see the [Disputed] note above). What is not in doubt, and what matters most, is the shape the tradition gives the story: the founder of communal monasticism was converted by an experience of Christian community, and was trained in solitude before he built a fellowship.

References

Veilleux, Armand, trans. Pachomian Koinonia, Vol. 1: The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples. Cistercian Studies 45. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980. (The Bohairic Life [Bo] and First Greek Life [G1] cited by chapter: the pagan childhood at Bo 3 / G1 2–4; the conscription and the charity at Thebes at Bo 7 / G1 4–5; the vow, baptism, and baptismal vision at Bo 8 / G1 5; the service at Šeneset at Bo 8–9 / G1 6; Palamon at Bo 10–14 / G1 6–8.)
Rousseau, Philip. Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; rev. ed. 1999. (Ch. 3 on the conversion and the uncertainty of the conscription date.)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.