The staple food of the Fathers of the Desert, and their main energy provision, as revealed in the Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers) was the paxamatia as the word is given in the Greek version. In the original Coptic version, it is simply called ‘oik’, which stands for bread in Coptic.
What is this paxamatia? And how was it eaten? Benjamin Hansen explains:
Paxamatia, a small loaf, about twelve ounces in weight, made of wheat, barley, or even chickpeas. Baked in bulk and distributed by basket, the bread was intentionally dry. A monk could store this bread for weeks or even months and would reconstitute it by dipping the loaf into water.[1]
Lucien Regnault gives the weight of the paxamatia as half given by Hansen and explains further:
From time immemorial, as today, bread is the Egyptian’s essential food. It seems that Egypt is actually the country where the average consummation of bread per capita is the highest. With the Desert Fathers, bread was the main food, often the only one. … These were the small, round, thick loaves that are still baked in Upper Egypt and in the Coptic monasteries – loaves which can be dried and kept for months. Before eating them, one soaks them in water. They are about four and three-quarters inches in diameter and weigh a bit more than six ounces. Two loaves weigh approximately twelve ounces, that is, one Roman pound (about forty grams). Palladius[2] speaks about these six-ounce loaves. …
In Cassian’s times,[3] two loaves made up the daily ration for most anchorites. They ate one at the ninth hour and kept the other to share eventually with a visitor. The monk who had not received a visitor ate the second loaf at night. But some contented themselves with one loaf a day; they took two only when they hadn’t eaten the night before. …
In Scetis, as everywhere else, one would normally add salt to the bread. Paphnutius declared that bread without salt made one sick. Bread and salt were also on the normal menu for Pachomian ascetics. …
Some monks purchased their bread by trading baskets or mats in exchange. They kept their bread supplies in a special hutch or basket. Like Antony, Aresenius had enough for several months or even a year. In Nitria, then in Scetis, when the number of monks increased, they set up bakeries where each one came to make his bread.[4]
To compare the quantity of bread an ascetic ate, one has to compare the one or two loaves (as sized by Regnault) with what the fellah in modern Egypt eats: an average of a dozen loaves a day, over three pounds.[5]
The diet of a Coptic monk, Hansen tells us, was in most respects quite similar to that of a given Egyptian peasant: bread and salt, of course, and a stew of lentils or porridge of grain.[6] This statement is correct for as long as the portion is taken out of it. It is interesting that the staple food item of the modern Egyptian man, fûl (stew of cooked fava beans), does not appear in the diet of the Egyptian monks. I guess foul was introduced into Egypt late, but that needs another study.
At the end, it may be interesting to mention that the paxamatia has retained its name in modern Greece as it denotes the traditional Greek cookie or biscotti. It is still made of wheat, barley or chickpeas, and it is still eaten dry, but the shape, size and weight differ from that we see in the Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert. The reader can read about it here.
[1] Benjamin Hansen, Bread in the Desert: The Politics and Practicalities of Food in Early Egyptian Monasticism. Church History (2021), 90, 286-303.
[2] Palladius of Antioch, d. 390.
[3] John Cassian, d. 435.
[4] Lucien Regnault, The Day-to-Day Life of the Desert Fathers in Fourth-Century Egypt , tr. Étienne
Poirier, Jr (St. Bede’s Publications, Petersham, Massachusetts, 1998), pp. 65-69.
[5] Ibid, p. 66.
[6] Ibid, p. 67.