The Rule of Pachomius, in Jerome’s Latin translation
The regulations of the Pachomian monasteries, translated into Latin by Jerome about 404 for monks who knew neither Coptic nor Greek. His preface describes how the houses were organised; the rules go under the names of Pachomius and his first successors.
Read the text at documentacatholicaomnia.eu ↗Notes on the text and its manuscripts (Fourth Century Christianity, Wisconsin Lutheran College) ↗
The rules are a collection of short precepts on admission, prayer, meals, work, dress and discipline. They grew up in the monasteries over time and carry the names of Pachomius and of his successors Theodore and Horsiesius. They were written in Coptic. Jerome says in his preface that the priest Silvanus forwarded to him a Greek version sent from Alexandria, and that he dictated a Latin translation for the many Latin-speaking monks in the monasteries of the Thebaid and at the monastery of Metanoia at Canopus. He wrote soon after the death of his friend Paula, which he mentions in the first lines; that puts the work about 404.
Jerome does not say that he had seen the houses himself. His preface, which describes houses of forty monks under a housemaster, monasteries of thirty or forty houses, the grouping of monks by trade and the general gatherings at Easter and in August, is drawn from the documents and from what he was told. It is evidence for the federation as it was about sixty years after its founder’s death.
Cited in
- about AD 320, estimated date