ABSTRACT
Tradition has recognised Pachomius, a native of Upper Egypt, as the founder of the first centrally regulated communal form of the ascetic life. The Pachomian dossier contains an abundance of sources pertaining to Pachomius and his immediate successors, including lives, rules, letters, instructions, a testament, a few apophthegmata, miscellaneous stories and two accounts composed by outsiders. Communal memory continuously moulded it as a source of edification and support for current monks and, in the process, aligned it more closely with the contours of an increasingly powerful and centralised church. The Rules attributed to Pachomius and his successor Horsiesius are similarly wrought with problems for the historian. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices near the centre of the Pachomian federation has challenged traditional presentations of Pachomian monasticism. The account of Pachomius prior to his entry into the monastic life quickly illustrates the difficulty in unravelling history from hagiography.
