Pachomius the Great
Approx. 292 AD — May 9, 348 AD
Born pagan near Luxor around 292, Pachomius was conscripted into Rome's army at twenty-one, where Christians' unprompted kindness to soldiers changed him. Baptized in 314, he withdrew to the desert under the hermit Palamon, then founded the first cenobitic monastery at Tabennisi around 318–323. By his death in 348 — contracting plague while nursing the sick — he had built eleven monasteries sheltering over 7,000 monks and nuns.