Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt: PACHOMIUS is the father of monastic institutions. He was born in 292 in the district of Thebes in Egypt, and died in 348. He lived accordingly in that memorable period, when, through Constantine the Greek, the ecclesia pressa became the recognized religion of the empire. This great change in the external status of the Church naturally had a powerful influence on many of her internal features. Not the least was this the case with reference to the anachoritic life, which just then was beginning to stand so high in the favor of Christians. Already at an earlier date the practice of withdrawing from the world, in order to serve God alone, had found many followers, principally, as is quite natural, in Egypt, the land of Philo, the Gnostics and the Therapeutics, of Clemens and Origen.* The father of this separation of the individual from the world and the Church is the holy Antonius. When the ascetic impulses, so powerful in the early Church, could not find expression any longer in martyrdom, they followed the leadership of an Antonius, and the result was that in the degree that external peace became the possession of the Church, the number of monks increased, and soon numbered tens of thousands.
