Schenoudi
A word must be said about Schenoudi, or Schnoudi, or Senuti. Shortly after the middle of the fourth century, two monks, Pgol and Pschais, changed their eremitical monasteries into cenobitical ones. Of the latter we know scarcely anything. Schenoudi, when a boy of about nine years old, came under the care of his uncle Pgol. Both Pgol and Schenoudi were reformers - the Pachomian Rule was not strict enough for them.
Schenoudi succeeded his uncle Pgol as head of the White Monastery of Athribis, and, till his death (about 453), was not only the greatest monastic leader, but one of the most important men, in Egypt. He waged war against heretics; he took a prominent part in the rooting out of paganism; he championed the cause of the poor against the rich. He once went in person to Constantinople to complain of the tyranny of government officials. On one occasion 20,000 men, women, and children took refuge in the White Monastery during an invasion of the Blemmyes of Ethiopia, and Schenoudi maintained all the fugitives for three months, providing them with food and medical aid. On another occasion he ransomed a hundred captives and sent them home with food, clothing, and money for their journey. Schenoudi's importance for the history of monasticism is small, for his influence, great as it was in his own country, did not make itself felt elsewhere. There were two barriers: Upper Egypt was a difficult and dangerous country for travellers, and such as did penetrate there would not be likely to visit a monastery where hardly anything but Coptic was spoken. According to Abbot Butler, "Schenoudi is never named by any Greek or Latin writer" (op. cit., II,204). He has been rediscovered in our own time in Coptic manuscripts.
Read more about this topic: Christian Monasticism Before 451