The Federation of Monasteries

The Pachomian Koinonia was not one monastery but a federation — many houses bound into a single body under a common government, a common rule, and a common economy. At its head stood the father of the Koinonia; a general steward at the central house of Phbow administered the temporal affairs of the whole; and twice a year all the brothers of all the monasteries gathered at the center, at Pascha and in the August month of Mesore, for common worship, the rendering of accounts, and the reconciliation of all. This federal architecture is what makes Pachomius the founder of the first monastic “order.”

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

Beyond the Single Monastery

The decisive thing about the Pachomian system is that it operated at two levels. Within each monastery there was the structure of houses, housemasters, superior, and steward (see The First Cenobitic Rule). But above the individual monasteries there was a federal structure binding them all into one Koinonia — and it is this supra-local organization, found nowhere else in fourth-century monasticism, that constitutes Pachomius’s great institutional originality (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1). The hermits of Nitria and Scetis formed loose associations gathered around a church and a few senior fathers, but they were not a single governed corporation. The Pachomian houses were: they shared a rule, a head, a treasury, and a calendar, and the monk of one house was a member of the whole body (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Goehring 1999).

The Head of the Koinonia

At the summit stood the father of the Koinonia — Pachomius himself in his lifetime, and after him his successors (see The Death and the Succession). He appointed and removed the superiors of the individual monasteries, visited the houses, gave the catechetical instructions, and bore the ultimate spiritual and administrative responsibility for the whole federation (Bohairic Life 49–50, 79; First Greek Life 83; trans. Veilleux 1980; Rousseau 1985, ch. 4). His authority was personal and spiritual, but it was also genuinely constitutional: it inhered in the office, was exercised through the Rule and the appointed officers, and passed by succession — which is why the Koinonia could outlast its founder, as a purely charismatic following could not.

The General Steward

Below the head, the most distinctive office of the federation was the general (or great) steward (oikonomos), resident at the central house of Phbow, who administered the temporal affairs of the whole Koinonia. The general steward coordinated the economy of all the houses — the pooling and distribution of produce, the supply of the monasteries from the common store, the management of the boats by which goods moved on the Nile, and the sale of the monks’ handiwork (the mats, baskets, and ropes) in the markets to provision the federation and to fund its charity (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1; Goehring 1999, “The World Engaged”). Each individual monastery also had its own steward, who answered to the general steward — so that the whole formed a coordinated economic system, an unprecedented thing in the monastic world, in which the labor of thousands of hands was gathered, accounted for, and redistributed from a single center (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4).

The Twice-Yearly Gatherings

The federation was held together not only by administration but by assembly. Twice each year all the brothers of all the houses came to the central monastery at Phbow for a general gathering — the two great occasions of the Pachomian calendar (Bohairic Life 71; First Greek Life 83; trans. Veilleux 1980; Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1):

The Pascha — at which the whole Koinonia assembled at Phbow to keep the feast of the Resurrection together, the brothers of every house worshipping as one body in the great church.
The assembly of the month of Mesore (August) — the great gathering at the close of the Egyptian year (Mesore being the last month of the Coptic calendar), at which the accounts of all the houses were rendered to the head and the general steward, the superiors reported, the officers were confirmed or changed for the coming year, and — crucially — the brothers were to be reconciled with one another, forgiving all grievances so that the federation entered the new year at peace (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1; Veilleux 1980).

These assemblies are the visible expression of the Koinonia as one body. They bound the scattered houses into a single rhythm of worship, government, and reconciliation; they renewed the personal bonds among monks who lived apart; and they kept the whole accountable to the center. The combination of a common worship, a financial accounting, and a general reconciliation in a single recurring assembly is a remarkable institutional achievement, and it anticipates the chapter-meetings and general chapters of later Western monastic orders by many centuries (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; cf. The Influence on All Monasticism).

The Shared Economy and the World

The Pachomian federation was not a flight from the economy but a remarkable ordering of one. Recent scholarship, especially that of James Goehring, has emphasized how thoroughly the Koinonia was engaged with the surrounding world: it grew and traded grain, ran boats on the Nile, sold its handiwork in the towns, received and dispensed charity, and dealt with bishops, officials, and benefactors (Goehring 1999, “The World Engaged”; “Withdrawing from the Desert”). The monks’ renunciation of private property was total, but the community held and managed considerable common resources, and managed them well. This is part of the originality of the Pachomian model: it demonstrated that a large body of monks could be self-supporting through coordinated labor and trade, sustaining not only themselves but the poor of the region — an economy of charity built on the pooled work of the brotherhood (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Goehring 1999).

The Common Calendar and the Bonds of Unity

Beyond the formal institutions, the Koinonia was held together by a shared rhythm of life that bound the scattered houses into one. All observed the same Rule, kept the same fasts and feasts, followed the same horarium of work and prayer, and ordered their year toward the same two great gatherings. A monk transferred or sent from one house to another entered a life identical in its essentials to the one he had left — the same offices, the same discipline, the same authority structure — so that the federation was experienced not as a loose alliance of independent monasteries but as a single body with many members (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Veilleux 1981). This uniformity was itself an instrument of unity: it made the Koinonia portable and coherent, allowed the central authority to move monks and resources among the houses as need arose, and gave every brother, wherever he lived, the sense of belonging to one fellowship under one father. The combination of a common rule, a common calendar, a common economy, and a common government is what raises the Pachomian federation above a mere cluster of monasteries and makes it, properly, an order (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1).

The First Monastic Order

Putting the pieces together — a written rule binding on all; a single head with succession; a general steward and a pooled, coordinated economy; superiors appointed from the center; twice-yearly general assemblies for worship, accounting, and reconciliation — one sees why historians describe the Pachomian Koinonia as the first monastic order in the proper sense: not a single house, however large, but a supra-local corporation of houses under a common constitution (Rousseau 1985, ch. 4; Chitty 1966, ch. 1; Harmless 2004, ch. 5). Every later religious order in the Christian East and West that gathers many communities under one rule and one government stands, structurally, in the line that begins at Phbow. This federal architecture, more than any saying or miracle, is the substance of Pachomius’s title “father of cenobitic monasticism” (see Legacy and Assessment).

References

Veilleux, Armand, trans. Pachomian Koinonia, Vols. 1–2. Cistercian Studies 45–46. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980–1981. (The head of the Koinonia, the central house of Phbow, and the two annual gatherings at Bohairic Life 49–50, 71, 79 / First Greek Life 83.)
Rousseau, Philip. Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; rev. ed. 1999. (Ch. 4 on the federal structure, the general steward, and the assemblies.)
Goehring, James E. Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999. (On the Pachomian economy and its engagement with the world.)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.