How Those Who Renounce the World Are Received

From the canonical order of Psalms and prayers that ought to be kept in the daily services throughout the monasteries, we pass, in the proper course of our account, to the training of one who renounces this world. We will try first, as well as we can, to set out in a short account the terms on which those who wish to turn to the Lord can be received into the monasteries. We will add some things from the rule of the Egyptians, and some from that of the monks of Tabenna. Their monastery in the Thebaid is better filled in numbers than any other, as it is also stricter in the rigor of its system: there are more than five thousand brothers in it under the rule of one abbot. And the obedience with which that whole number of monks is at all times subject to one elder is something no one among us would render to another even for a short time, or would ask of him. [a]