Primary source · Coptic (complete in Jerome's Latin)
The Rule of Pachomius (Praecepta)
Pachomius the Great · c. AD 330–345
What this text is
The first written rule of communal monastic life — prayer, meals, work, and the weekly order of the houses — translated into Latin by Jerome in 404 for the monks of Canopus.
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Public-domain translations
Jerome's Latin version (404) — literal gloss
Let no one eat apart from the others… When the signal is given, let him leave his cell and, meditating on some passage of Scripture, walk to the assembly. No one shall find excuse for not learning to read: the whole community shall know the scriptures by heart.
Manuscript witnesses
Jerome's Latin version
AD 404 (medieval copies)The full Rule survives through Jerome's translation for the Latin monks of Canopus; Coptic fragments confirm it.
Provenance
Tabennesi, c. AD 320–346; Latinized by Jerome in 404
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 2: Chronicles and RulesArmand Veilleux, 1981The standard English translation (Cistercian Studies).
- Pachomiana LatinaAmand Boon, 1932The critical edition of Jerome's version.
Figures named in this text (1)
No stable public-domain copy of the complete Rule is online. The Latin of Jerome is in Pachomiana Latina, ed. Amand Boon (1932); the standard English is Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, vol. 2 (Cistercian Studies 46, 1981); the Ethiopic recension was translated by George H. Schodde in Bibliotheca Sacra 42 (1885).