- In the year 346 A.D. the plague decimated the whole
land, invading the very monasteries. St. Pakhom, like a good
shepherd, went about visiting the sick to comfort them,
trying to alleviate their pain and praying for them. After the
feast of the Ascension, he felt the symptoms of the disease.
So he gathered his monks together and exhorted them to live
by the law of cenobitism, and above all to keep the bond of
love. Then, he rested in the peace of his Lord after spending
a life of consecrated service and strenuous aspiration.^28 - The monastic rules of Pakhom were made known to
the West by Abba Athanasius when he was in Treves, then in
Rome during is first and second banishments. These were
translated into Latin by Jerome in A.D. 404, and thus spread
among the Italians. During the first half of the 5th century St.
John Cassianus published a book in four volumes about the
lives of the Egyptian Fathers, their regulations and their
teachings. He, then tried to put into practice those teachings
in the monasteries he founded in the south of France.
Another Western monk called Dionysius Erigenus
(who died in A.D. 556) translated into Latin the biography
Abba Pakhom togerher with his regulations. By all thes
means, the impact of St. Pakhom was felt in the West and
constituted a close link with the Coptic Church.
“Monasticism never forgot that it originated in Egypt, and
personal relations between the houses in the East and the
West were frequent in the early centures.^29
In Ireland, the earliest monastic buildings were
planned in small churches clustered round one another, thus
presenting a most striking resemblance to similar buildings in
Egypt. Irish monasticism was very active during its early
centuries: by means of its activities, it spread throughout
Western Britain and Northumbria, and penetrated into
northern France, Switzerland, South Germany and Italy.^30
elle
(Elle)
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