1 Broadly speaking, modern scholars consider the Vita Antonii to have made a major contribution to the genres of biography and hagiography. According to Karl Holl, the author of the Vita Antonii perfected the genre of biography: “Athanasius ist nicht Schöpfer einer Literaturgattung gewesen, wohl aber ihr Vollender” (quoted in Williams, Michael A., “The Life of Antony and the Domestication of Charismatic Wisdom,” JAAR Thematic Studies 48 [1982] 23–45, at 34).Google Scholar Brian Brennan identifies the Vita Antonii as the archetype to which later hagiographers aspired: “Quite aside from its propagation of asceticism and the impetus that it gave to early monasticism, the Vita Antonii, as a piece of literature, became the definitive hagiographical model.” See Brennan, Brian, “Athanasius’ Vita Antonii: A Sociological Interpretation,” VC 39 (1985) 209–27, at 209.Google Scholar Callincus’s fifth-century Life of Hypatius is said to use the Vita Antonii as a model. See Patrology: The Eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon to John of Damascus (ed. Angelo di Berardino; trans. Adrian Walford; Cambridge: Clarke, 2006) 36. A study has been published on the use of the Vita Antonii in medieval hagiography: Kinsella, Sean, “Athanasius’ Life of Anthony as Monastic Paradigm for the First Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano: A Preliminary Outline,” Anton 77 (2002) 541–56Google Scholar. I am unaware, however, of any work that systematically traces the use of the Vita Antonii in late antique and medieval hagiography.

2 Such as the prologues of Bo, G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, Ag, and Am. These sigla and the texts of the prologues are further discussed below.

3 Three of the prologues cite the vita by author (those of G1, G2, and G3). G1 99 cites both author and title (verbatim) of the vita and acknowledges it as a source.

4 Bousset, Wilhelm, Apophthegmata: Studien zur Geschichte des ältesten Mönchtums (Tübingen: Mohr, 1923) 258–60Google Scholar. See also, more recently, the following discussion of the Vita Antonii’s circulation in Egypt, which includes treatment of the Antonian pericopes in the Vita Pachomii: Choat, Malcolm, “The Life of Antony in Egypt,” in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau (ed. Leyerle, Blake and Young, Robin D.; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) 50–74Google Scholar.

5 L. Th. Lefort notes a passage in S5 (121) that seems to borrow a line from Vita Antonii 3 verbatim (see also G1 120). See Lefort, L. Th., Les Vies coptes de saint Pachôme et de ses premiers successeurs (BMus 16; Leuven: Bureaux de Muséon, 1943) 269 n. 1.Google Scholar See also Choat’s discussion of this passage in “The Life of Antony in Egypt,” 55.

6 Goehring, James E., “Withdrawing from the Desert: Pachomius and the Development of Village Monasticism in Upper Egypt,” HTR 89 (1996) 267–85, at 270Google Scholar.

7 Athanasius’s authorship of the Vita Antonii has been called into question for over a century with no conclusive results. Some scholars maintain his authorship as authentic, others refer to the author as pseudo-Athanasius. For three relatively recent contributions to the debate, see Tetz, Martin, “Athanasius und die Vita Antonii: Literarische und theologische Relationen,” ZNW 73 (1982) 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, Timothy D., “Angel of Light or Mystic Initiate? The Problem of the Life of Antony,” JTS 37 (1986) 353–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brakke, David, “The Greek and Syriac Versions of the Life of Antony,” Mus 107 (1994) 29–53Google Scholar. For analysis of how Athanasius promoted his theology, spirituality, and politics through the Vita Antonii, see Brakke, David, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).Google Scholar

8 Goehring, “Withdrawing from the Desert,” 270. See also Goehring’s “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993) 281–96, in which he traces the literary construction of the desert metaphor.

9 Lefort, L. Th., S. Pachomii Vitae, Bohairice Scriptae (CSCO 89; Leuven: Imprimerie orientaliste, 1925, reprinted 1953)Google Scholar; idem, S. Pachomii Vitae, Sahidice Scriptae (CSCO 99–100; Leuven: Imprimerie orientaliste, 1933-1934, reprinted 1952); idem, “Vies de S. Pachôme (Nouveaux fragments),” Mus 49 (1936) 219-30; idem, “Glanures Pachômiennes,” Mus 54 (1941) 114-15. For Lefort’s French translation of all the texts, see idem, Vies coptes.

10 Halkin, François, Sancti Pachomii Vitae Graecae (Subsida Hagiographica 19; Brussels: Société des Bollandists, 1932)Google Scholar; idem, “La vie abrégée de saint Pachôme dans le ménologe impérial (BHG 1401b),” AnBoll 96 (1978) 367–81; idem, Le corpus athénien de saint Pachome (Cahiers d’orientalisme 2; Geneva: Cramer, 1982).

11 van Cranenburgh, H., La vie latine de saint Pachôme traduite du grec par Denys le Petit, édition critique (Subsida Hagiographica 46; Brussels: Société des Bollandists, 1969)Google Scholar.

12 Awad Wadi, Fr., “The Arabic Lives of St. Pachomius,” in Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt (ed. Gabra, Gawdat and Takla, Hany; 2 vols.; New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2010) 2:157–69Google Scholar.

13 Amélineau, E., Histoire de S. Pakhôme et de ses communautés (Paris: Leroux, 1889) 337–711Google Scholar.

14 For a summary of these efforts, see Goehring, James E., The Letter of Ammon and Pachomian Monasticism (PTS 27; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986) 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rousseau, Philip, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) 37–48Google Scholar. Goehring favors the abandonment of genealogical studies in favor of more nuanced treatment of individual narratives. See Goehring, James E., “Pachomius’ Vision of Heresy: The Development of Pachomian Tradition,” Mus 95 (1982) 241–62, at 244–46Google Scholar.

15 Veilleux, Armand, La liturgie dans le cénobitisme Pachômien au quatrième siècle (Rome: Pontificium Institutum S. Anselmi, 1968) 43.Google Scholar

16 Unfortunately, only 16 folia (32 pages) survive, i.e., 8% of the codex. See Lefort, Vies coptes, lxiv–lxv.

17 I borrow this term from Peter Schäfer; see the section in this article, “Pauline Pachomius.”

18 In the case of the other Coptic witnesses and Av, the beginning of the manuscripts does not survive, so we do not know what type of prologue they contained, if any. G6 and G7 do not introduce the vita with a prologue. Rather, G6 opens with Pachomius’s reception of rules from an angel, and G7, a much-abridged life, introduces the narrative with a brief sentence.

19 See the appendix below for English translations of three of the prologue texts.

20 It is possible that S3, known as “the great Life” or “the great compilation” (it is the longest Coptic compilation), contained both prologues (the Pauline and Antonian ones). The first surviving page of the codex, page three, begins with the last sentence of the Antonian prologue and then proceeds with the Pauline one. Lefort notes that if the first two pages were completely inscribed, then it is possible that S3 began with the entire Antonian prologue. See Lefort, Vies coptes, 54 n. 1.

21 The author/redactor may not have recognized these three genres as separate from each other, but he/she does distinguish eras within salvation history. The prologue begins with Abraham and the disciples as one era of time, and shifts to the martyrs as another era before turning to the era of monasticism.

22 The much shorter narratives of Bo 24, G1 38, G2 34, and Am 371 do not make it clear that the entire community was dissolved, but depict Pachomius as simply expelling certain wayward brothers. Lefort, L. Th., “Les sources coptes pachômiennes,” Mus 67 (1954) 217–29.Google Scholar See also idem, Vies coptes, lxxii; Veilleux, La liturgie dans le cénobitisme Pachômien, 40; and Ruppert, Fidelis, Das pachomianische Mönchtum und die Anfänge klösterlichen Gehorsams (Münsterschwarzach: Vier-Türme, 1971) 46–57Google Scholar.

23 Translation from Armand Veilleux, The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples (Cistercian Studies 45; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1980) 431.Google Scholar Text in Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 4 (S1) and 113 (S3).

24 Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 432. Text in Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 5 (S1). S3 presumably continued the story, but the manuscript is missing a folio shortly after its citation of 1 Cor 3:2

25 Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 432. Text in Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 5 (S1).

26 Black, David Alan, Paul, Apostle of Weakness: Astheneia and its Cognates in the Pauline Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1984) 147.Google Scholar

27 The following chart lists the correspondences between Ag, Am, the Coptic vitae, and Veilleux’s reconstructed vita. Page numbers for Ag refer to the manuscript’s Coptic foliation; page numbers for Am refer to the pagination of Amélineau’s edition; page and line numbers for the Coptic codices refer to Lefort’s Coptic editions; the final column contains cross-references to the paragraph numeration of Veilleux’s reconstructed vita in Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 23–295.

A fragment of S1a alludes to an ascent. Cornelius asks Pachomius to recount his ascent, but Pachomius refuses. The Coptic text with English translation was published in an appendix on the Arabic vitae by Crum, W. E., Theological Texts from Coptic Papyri (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913) 187–88Google Scholar. See Lefort, Vies coptes, 376, for a French translation. S12 may preserve an ascent narrative, since it quotes 2 Cor 12:2, but so little can be read from the folio that the matter remains uncertain. See Lefort, Vies coptes, 377.

28 Bo and S7 presumably contained this pericope, but manuscript folia are missing at this point, so it is impossible to know. Veilleux considers S2, S7, and Bo to narrate the same ascent story so he weaves them together in his reconstruction.

29 My translation of Ag 201r13–17.

30 Lincoln, A. T., “‘Paul the Visionary’: The Setting and Significance of the Rapture to Paradise in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10,” NTS 25 (1979) 204–20, at 218.Google Scholar

31 The epilogue of S3 (see section 4 below) also seems to assume, like the ascent narratives, that Paul is the gatekeeper of paradise. Most Christian traditions relegate this role to Jesus’s disciple Peter on the basis of Matt 16:19. I know of no other traditions in which Paul is gatekeeper, literary or otherwise.

32 In Ag and Am, the ascents and apocalypse are presented as one narrative. In Bo, the apocalypse is separate and is presented earlier in the vita than the ascents. S4 and S5 are too fragmentary to discern the narrative sequence.

33 Martha Himmelfarb includes Pachomius’s apocalypse in her list of the “Apocalypse of Paul Family.” See Himmelfarb, Martha, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983) 28–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 The Apocalypse of Paul survives in some dozen languages and over 300 manuscripts. Its manuscript attestation and literary influence on other late antique and medieval apocalypses indicate that the work enjoyed wide circulation. Its preface purports that the work was discovered in 388, which provides a terminus post quem. Kirsti Copeland argues for Egyptian provenance and even suggests that it may have been composed by a Pachomian monk in the fourth century. See Kirsti Copeland, “Mapping the Apocalypse of Paul: Geography, Genre and History” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2001) 178. If she is correct, then depending on how early Pachomius’s apocalypse was composed, it may be the Apocalypse of Paul that resembles the Pachomian apocalypse, not vice versa.

35 Of the vitae that preserve endings, most end with the government of Theodore and Horsiesios. Three, however, end with Pachomius’s death (S3, S7, and Av). This fact is one of the considerations that spurred Veilleux’s hypothesis of two lost texts: a Vita Brevis that narrated only Pachomius’s life and a Vita Theodorii that narrated only Theodore’s life. According to Veilleux, these two (hypothetical) hagiographies were fused into one in most attestations of the Vita Pachomii. See Veilleux, La liturgie dans le cénobitisme Pachômien, 68–91. See also, however, the following rebuttal: de Vogüé, Adalbert, “La Vie arabe de saint Pachome et ses deux sources présumées,” AnBoll 91 (1973) 379–90.Google Scholar S7 contains the same ending as S3, but it does not transmit the final paragraph summarized here. Like S3 and S7, Av ends with Pachomius’s death, but I do not have access to a copy of the manuscript to examine it (my knowledge of Av is confined to the notes published by scholars about it).

36 Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 129a14–15.

37 Peter Schäfer develops the idea in his “Tradition and Redaction in Hekhalot Literature,” in Hekhalot-Studien (TSAJ 19; Tübingen: Mohr, 1988) 8–16. However, the terms “microform” and “macroform” do not appear until his later book, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (trans. Aubrey Pomerance; Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992) 6 n. 14. Paul Bradshaw considers this method of redaction to be “at the heart of many ancient compositions” (Bradshaw, P. F., Eucharistic Origins [New York: Oxford University Press, 2004] 122)Google Scholar.

38 Veilleux has nonetheless shown that several Coptic witnesses can be thought to belong to a family of recensions.

39 Indeed, according to S2, Ag, and Am, one of Pachomius’s ascents occurs as a near death experience: “And when he fell ill on another occasion and suffered almost to the point of surrendering his spirit, as his illness persisted he spent many days without speaking to anyone; for he was taken to the other age at the Lord’s command” (my translation of Ag 200v17–201r2). See Ag 542 and S2 in Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 17a16–b4.

40 For a discussion of Antony’s body in the context of Athanasius’s theology, see Brakke, David, “‘Outside the Places, within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (ed. Frankfurter, David; RGRW 134; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 445–81, at 456–58.Google Scholar

41 Translation from Gregg, Robert C., Athanasius: The Life of Antony and The Letter to Marcellinus (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980) 79Google Scholar [italics added]. Text in Bartelink, G. J. M., Athanase d’Alexandrie: Vie d’Antoine (SC 400, corrected ed.; Paris: Cerf, 2004) 306.Google Scholar

42 A shorter narrative of the synod is also found in G1 112. In the Greek version, the only charge named is that of clairvoyance (the charge of ascent is not mentioned nor does G1 include narratives of Pachomius’s ascents or apocalypse), Pachomius offers a lengthy response to the charge, and the bishops are more favorable to him.

43 My translation of Ag 226r5–6 [italics added]. See also Am 593.

44 I am grateful to Adela Yarbro Collins for this suggestion.

45 For a discussion of how asceticism reorders the relationship between the soul and body in the Vita Antonii and in Athanasius’s theology more broadly, see Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, 239–44.

46 My translation. Text in Bartelink, Vie d’Antoine, 152.

47 It is interesting to note that, in contrast to Antony’s consistent bodily health in the Vita Antonii, Antony is reported to be “lying ill” (ⲉ ϥ ⲛ̄ⲕⲟⲧⲕ̄ ⲉ ϥϣ ⲱⲛⲉ) when Theodore and some of the brothers visit him after Petronius’s death, according to S5 16 (Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 177) and G1 120a. See also Rubenson, Samuel, The Letters of St. Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition, and the Making of a Saint (Lund: Lund University Press, 1990) 167.Google Scholar

48 Pachomius’s trial at the Synod of Latopolis is interpreted as a martyrdom in Ag and Am.

49 G1 53. Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 333. Text in Halkin, Vitae Graecae, 34.

50 By “Antonian asceticism” here and throughout, I mean only the asceticism attributed to Antony in the Vita Antonii. Perhaps (and I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this) the asceticism of the Antony of the Letters aligns more closely with the Pachomian asceticism I highlight in this piece than with the Antonian asceticism of the Vita. As Samuel Rubenson has shown, (1) the Vita Antonii underscores the importance of controlling the passions of the body, whereas the Letters focus on the passions of the soul, and (2) the Letters recognize that the practice of ascesis involves weakness, struggle, and suffering, while the Vita Antonii stresses the strength and invincibility that results from ascesis. See the comparison between the Vita and the Letters in Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 132–41, especially 137 and 139.

51 For a study of views on the (non-)relationship between illness and ascetic merit, see Crislip, Andrew, “Illness and Ascetic Merit: The Moral Signification of Health and Sickness in Early Egyptian Monasticism,” ARC, The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill 33 (2005) 151–82Google Scholar. Crislip shows that Melitian and Pachomian monasticism did not use health/sickness as an indicator of ascetic merit. The correlation between health and ascetic merit in the Vita Antonii becomes a principle and trope in Byzantine monastic literature.

52 Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 311.

53 Wilhelm Bousset notes especially passages on whether demons have foresight and passages that emphasize alliance with ecclesial authorities. See Bousset, Apophthegmata, 258–60. See also a discussion of Antonian influence in Choat, “The Life of Antony in Egypt.”

54 Goehring, “Pachomius’ Vision of Heresy,” 257. See also Goehring, James E., “New Frontiers in Pachomian Studies,” in The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Pearson, Birger A. and Goehring, James E.; SAC; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 236–57Google Scholar.

55 Choat, “The Life of Antony in Egypt,” 62.

56 Alternatively, the redactor of G1 may have been aware of stories about Pachomius’s many illnesses and attempted to incorporate them without denying the principles set forth in the Vita Antonii.

57 Choat and Rousseau have noted the improbability that references to Antony and the Vita Antonii would have been deleted in later recensions of the Vita Pachomii. Rousseau even posited that written accounts of Pachomius’s life may have predated the composition of the Vita Antonii. I argue that the Pauline stratum I have collected and analyzed here was composed during this very period of Pachomian hagiography to which Choat and Rousseau allude (the period that predated the image of Antony as model ascetic par excellence and the redaction of such an image into existing accounts of Pachomius’s life). According to Choat, “The Life of Antony in Egypt,” 57, “It is difficult… to see why details about Antony and his Life would have been excised from earlier Coptic versions, and I submit that they were in fact never there.” According to Rousseau, Pachomius, 47–48, the first biographies of Pachomius may have been composed around 350, eight years before the Vita Antonii would appear.

58 Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 425 [italics added]. Text in Lefort, Sahidice Scriptae, 204 (S8) and 253 (S3).

59 The translations cited in this appendix are copyrighted 1980 by Cistercian Publications, Inc., and 2008 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. Used with permission.

60 Translation from Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 425–27. S8 does not contain all the text translated here, but breaks off with the citation of Phil 4:8–9.

61 Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 23–25. Bo does not contain the entire prologue. The first surviving manuscript page begins with the mention of Antony.

62 Veilleux, Life of Saint Pachomius, 297–99.

63 The text of S3 breaks off here.