Abraham of Minuf

Venerable Abraham of Minuf (Abraham of Egypt) was a monk and hermit of Egypt, a saint of the Coptic Church of the fourth century. The Coptic Church commemorates him on 21 May (30 Baounah by the Egyptian calendar). His veneration is not one of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, so we mention him as a saint honoured chiefly by the Coptic Church. All that is known of his life comes from the Synaxarion, and some episodes involving him entered the Sayings of the Egyptian Fathers.

He was born at Minuf, in the Delta, of Christian parents who held a high place in the world. It is not known at what age he entered monastic life. According to the old text, when he grew up he went to the land of Akhmim, to the great Pachomius, who gave him the monastic habit, and he remained there twenty-⁠three years. Another source says that at twenty-⁠three he became a disciple of Agathon the Silent and remained with the elder sixteen years. The sources do not agree: one places him with Pachomius for twenty-⁠three years and then sixteen years as a hermit in a cave, the other places him sixteen years with Agathon.

According to the first version, he then asked permission to leave and live as a hermit in a cavern, where he stayed for sixteen years, leaving it only to receive communion every two or three years. He had at his service only a secular brother who made fishing nets and sold them to buy beans for him, giving alms with the rest of the money. According to the other version, at first he did not take monastic vows; at the command of the brethren he went from the desert into the Nile valley, fished and, with the money from the sale, supplied the cenobium with beans. His fellow in the monastery was Theodore, a disciple of Pachomius the Great.

When Abraham felt that death was near, he sent for Abba Theodore, the disciple of Pachomius, then lay down facing the east. He was buried by the monks in the cemetery of the monastery. The mention of Theodore shows that Abraham lived toward the end of the fourth century.