Ritual Roots of Cassian's Contemplation

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
The Ritual Dimension of John Cassian's Asceticism
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of
School of Theology and Religious Studies
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Joshua W. Brockway
Washington, D.C.
2015
The Ritual Dimension of John Cassian's Asceticism
Joshua W. Brockway, Ph.D.
Director: Philip Rousseau, D.Phil.
Abstract
John Cassian's two ascetic treatises were certainly influential in the history of the
western monasticism. Scholarship on Cassian, often by necessity, focuses on Cassian’s
sources in the desert tradition or his contemplative insight. The former, exemplified in
the work of Robert Taft, approaches Cassian as a witness, albeit not wholly reliable, to
the Egyptian practices. The difficulty with such an approach is obvious. Cassian’s
account was not composed as objective history. In fact, Cassian himself noted that he
wrote his two works in order to reorient the practices of the monasteries in Gaul. The
second approach, exemplified in the work of Columba Stewart, while treating Cassian’s
literary sources, focuses specifically on Cassian’s understanding of contemplation. The se
two methodologies, understandable given that Cassian treated the topic across The
Institutes and The Conferences, has obscured the integral relationship between
liturgical and contemplative prayer. The present study explores this relationship,
especially within the frame of Cassian’s ascetic vision.
After establishing Cassian’s life and writings, this study turns to outline Cassian’s
ascetic vision. That is to say that Cassian wrote to establish an ascetic culture in which
the inner and outer life of the monk were cultivated by the performances of the monastic
community to receive the contemplative vision of God. The third chapter, then, turns
specifically to Cassian’s depiction of prayer, both liturgical and contemplative. The final
chapter explores two key themes within the discussion of Cassian’s theological
influence, grace and spiritual knowledge. While the first is more contested, the latter has
been influential in the history of biblical interpretation. Yet, both topics reveal how the
contemplative goal and experience shaped Cassian’s understanding of significant
theological topics. It is argued, then, that Cassian’s ascetic vision defied an easy
distinction between the inner and outer monk, solitary and community life, grace and
works, ritual and pure prayer.

This dissertation by Joshua W. Brockway fulfills the dissertation requirements for the
doctoral degree in Church History approved by Philip Rousseau, D.Phil., as Director,
and by Susan Wessel, Ph.D., and Dominic Serra, S.L.D. as Readers.
___________________________________
Philip Rousseau, D.Phil., Director
___________________________________
Susan Wessel, Ph.D., Reader
___________________________________
Dominic Serra, S.L.D., Reader
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One
Cassian and His Time 11
Chapter Two
An Ascetic Vision 49
Chapter Three
Liturgical and Contemplative Prayer 88
Chapter Four
Holistic Asceticism: Practice, Knowledge, and Grace 132
Epilogue 163
Bibliography 165
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Introduction
Near the end of Cassian’s life a controversy arose in Gaul regarding his
teaching on grace and will. While few others seemed concerned about Cassian’s
thirteenth conference, it was primarily Prosper of Aquitaine who found Cassian’s
theology too Pelagian. Some time following the publication of Cassian’s Conferences
in the mid-420’s, Prosper penned a stinging, though inaccurate, polemical treatise
casting Cassian’s thought as double speak at best and heretical at worst. Looking
back, it is clear that Prosper’s distaste for Cassian’s theology was primarily based in
what Prosper thought was an attack on the anti-Pelagian work of Augustine of
Hippo. Though Augustine appears to have not been too concerned with the kind of
theology Prosper characterized, Prosper set his mind to the task of refuting “The
Conferencer.”
Prosper’s fame has extended beyond the pale of this seeming conflict about
grace and will. In his later work Official Pronouncements of the Apostolic See
Prosper penned the now famous phrase among theologians and historians of the
liturgy. In chapter eight Prosper noted the various prayers of the bishop, apparently
of a particular Good Friday liturgy, that called on God to be gracious to all those
outside the church. In summary, he said that these were said “so that the rule of
supplication may establish the rule of belief.” 1 Today that subjunctive phrase has
1 “Ut legem credendi statuat supplicandi.” Prosper, “Praeteritorum episcoporum sedis apostolicae
auctoritates de gratia Dei et libero vountatis arbitrio,” Patrologia Latina 51:209-210. Translation
mine.
1
2
been distilled into the prime foundation for liturgical theologians: Lex Orandi, Lex
Credendi—the rule of prayer is the rule of belief. While Prosper did not pen those
words in direct refutation of Cassian, a similar rhetorical move also appeared in his
refutation of the monk. In Against the Conferencer, Prosper pointed to baptism as
the means of regeneration, and thus as a sign of the first and ongoing work of grace. 2
In essence, the liturgy was the confirmation of his theological position on grace.
The irony should, then, be clear. In setting up a particular theology of grace
against Cassian, Prosper pointed to the prayers and practices of the church, all the
while ignoring the very heart of Cassian’s ascetic theology, namely the practice of
prayer. Prosper rhetorically used the practices of the church to confront a monk for
whom prayer was a way of life.
To be sure, prayer was the whole of Cassian's ascetic vision. Not only was
contemplation the goal, but liturgical prayer grounded the life of the cenobium itself.
In composing the two works on the monastic life, The Institutes and The
Conferences, Cassian built from the practices of the monastic life to the ascetic goal
of contemplation. Though many conferences followed the famed discussions of
prayer in conferences nine and ten, prayer was clearly the core around which all of
the monastic life revolved. With contemplation set in the scriptural beatitude,
2 “But now that no one can escape from eternal death without the sacrament of regeneration, does not
the uniqueness of the remedy show clearly the very depth of ev il in which the nature of all mankind
has sunk because of the sin of the one in whom all have sinned and lost all that he lost?” Prosper, “On
Grace and Free Will, Against Cassian the Lecturer,” in Paul De Letter Defense of St. Augustine (New
York, NY: Newman Press, 1963), 93.
3
"Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God," 3 Cassian put liturgical prayer as
a means to puritas cordis.
This is to say that, for Cassian, praying was not a rhetorical justification of a
theological position. Praying was first and foremost formative. Cassian was obviously
concerned with the formation of the monk, especially in terms of virtue and
contemplation. What is more, Cassian's texts have been important in the modern
conversations about the formation of the self. Michel Foucault has focused on
Cassian as part of the genealogy of Western understandings of interiority. Foucault’s
Technologies of the Self attended specifically to Cassian’s emphasis on exomologēsis
as the primary means to shape the interior reflexivity of the self.4 While the practice
of giving voice to the internal wanderings of the mind and heart certainly shaped the
modern understandings of the internal reflexivity so central to modern conceptions
of the self, Foucault overlooked Cassian’s wider vision of an ascetic culture,
especially the vision of the monk as one who prays in the liturgy. This study, then, is
a venture in exploring Cassian’s vision of forming the contemplative monk.
A Holistic Methodology
3 Matthew 5:8.
4 “The self must constitute self through obedience. … Cassian gives a rather clear ex position of this
technology of the self, a principle of self-examination which he borrowed from the Sy rian and
Egy ptian monastic traditions.” Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, Luther H. Martin, Huck
Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton eds. (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 45.
Dav id Brakke also highlights Foucault’s use of Cassian as a means to discuss Evagrius’s model of
“talking back.” See Dav id Brakke, "Making public the Monastic Life: Reading the Self in Ev agrius
Ponticus' Talking Back," in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, Dav id Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and
Stev en Weitzman eds. (Bloomington, IN: I ndiana Univ ersity Press, 2005), 222-233.
4
Historians of Christianity have rightly focused on Cassian’s theology and
practice of prayer. However, due to methodological decisions and the division of
Cassian’s ascetic program into two volumes, these discussions of prayer often focus
on either liturgical or contemplative prayer. Columba Stewart has summarized
Cassian’s understanding of contemplation, drawing links to both Evagrius and
Pseudo-Marcarius while Robert Taft, on the other hand, has focused primarily on
Cassian’s description of liturgical prayer both as a source for uncovering the
Egyptian hours and for later developments in the Latin West. Exemplary in their
own rights, Taft’s and Stewart’s studies are not enough to understand Cassian’s
vision of prayer as both liturgical and contemplative. This is not to say that either
Taft or Stewart are wrong, but rather that their methodologies are incomplete for
understanding Cassian’s ascetic vision.
Other scholars have narrowed their studies of Cassian by focusing on his
contemplative theology and the role of scripture as the source and guide for pure
prayer. Burton-Christie, in particular, has shown how the Bible was central not just
to Cassian’s discussions of prayer but to the whole of Egyptian asceticism. 5 Again,
the methodological focus on scripture only treats the practices of the monastery as
examples the scriptural groundings for Christian monasticism. Here, the theological
5 “Scripture permeated the world of the desert fathers and profoundly shaped their experience of
God.” Douglas Burton-Christie, “Scripture, Self-Knowledge and Contemplation in Cassian’s
Conferences,” Studia Patristica vol 25, Elizabeth A. Liv ingstone ed. (Leuven: Peters Press, 1 993), 339.
In his study of scripture in the desert literature, Burton-Christie notes: “Of the diverse forces which
gav e rise to and defined the quest for holiness in early monasticism, Scripture stands as one of the
most fundamental and influential.” Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and
the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York, NY : Ox ford University Press,
1993), 4.
5
distinctions between Protestant and Catholic assumptions comes to the fore,
especially after Martin Luther’s critique of the monastic program in the life of the
church. By demonstrating the biblical foundations for early monasticism thought
and practice, scholars such as Burton-Christie can reclaim the rich tradition for
Protestant thinkers.6
What is lacking in these studies, as thorough they are in their own right, is the
connecting line between askesis, scripture, liturgy, and contemplation. In short, the
modern method of focusing on the pieces to develop specific knowledge and
understanding obscures a view of the whole. As Michel DeCerteau has noted, by
attending to the whole and not just the parts, we can begin to explore the practices of
monastic daily life, especially in the ways monks were formed into virtue and
contemplation. 7
By focusing on the whole of Cassian’s ascetic project we can see that liturgical
6 The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (InterVarsity Press) and the subsequent
publication of three volumes by Christopher A. Hall point to the increasing interest in Late Antiquity
among Protestant communities. In opening his discussion of patristic exegesis, Hall notes that
“Protestant readers might be particularly suspicious,” thus highlighting his assumption about the
readers of his work. Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture w ith the Fathers (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1998), 12. See also Christopher A. Hall, Worshiping w ith the Fathers (Downers
Grove, IL: InterV arsity Press, 2009). In this volume Hall p ay s particular attention to Cassian in
discussing contemplative prayer. As with Columba Stewart, Hall overlooks the continuity between the
liturgical descriptions of The Institutes and focuses almost exclusively on contemplation. See my
review Joshua Brockway, “Worshiping with the Fathers” Brethren Life and Thought 55:3-4 (2010),
89-91.
7 “The technical path to be followed consists, in a first approx imation, in bringing scientific practices
and languages back toward their native land, every day life. This re turn, which is today more and more
insistent, has the paradox ical character of also being a going into exile with respect to the disciplines
whose rigor is measured by the strict definition of its own limits. Ev er since scientific work has given
itself its own proper and appropriate places through rational projects capable of determining their
own procedures, with formal objects and specified conditions under which they are falsifiable, … this
remainder has become what we call culture.” Michel de Certeau, The Practices of Everyday Life,
Stev en Rendall trans. (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1 984), 6.
6
prayer, scripture, contemplation, practice and theoria were a seamless whole. This is
especially the case given the emphasis on interiority in modern scholarship on the
self. While Cassian did not construct a lectionary of readings for his monastery, as
did Benedict later, he was keen to show the phenomenology of the monks at prayer.
Here, Cassian demonstrated a key aspect of his ascetic vision—the intersection of
mind, soul, and body of the monk. While Cassian mentioned the famed tripartite
understanding of the human person, his overarching discussion was framed by the
outer and inner life of the monk. In the daily and outward practice of praying the
canonical hours the monk both interiorized the language of the Psalms and linked
the postures and reactions of the body to theoria. There was, then, no rigid dualism
between soul and body. In fact, Cassian shows frequently how both the body and the
soul were integral to the contemplative quest. The excessive natures of both the flesh
and the spirit were balanced by the will, allowing the monk to develop the capacity to
receive the grace of seeing God.
As Cassian frequently warned his readers, it was not the perfection of the
practice, even the practice of the liturgical hours, that was to be the monks’ goal.
Rather, all the practices were aimed toward the same goal, the contemplation of God.
The outer work of daily prayer outlined in second and third books of The Institutes
certainly found their inner culmination in conferences nine and ten, but as Pristas
has shown the contemplative orientation of Cassian’s askesis was woven all the way
7
through to the final conferences. 8
Though Foucault has highlighted the practice of confession—bringing to voice
the inner thoughts and passions of the monk—the formation of the ascetic self was
equally about bringing the scriptures to the soul. While at prayer, the monk
internalized the words of scripture and at the same time oriented the soul towards
God through the very postures inherent in the liturgy. By standing, sitting, or even
lying prostrate on the ground, the monk instructed the soul as to the right
disposition for the particular moment of prayer. In doing so, the monk habituated
the soul so that his physical comportment might more easily bring him to
supplication, thanksgiving, or praise. As Derek Kreuger notes regarding the
Byzantine church, “the monastic program of self fashioning pervaded consciousness,
bringing methods of the liturgy to all habits of mind and body.” 9 This is not to say,
however, that the movement was strictly from outer to inner. The soul also found its
expression in the body itself.
For Cassian the whole monk, body and soul, was at work in the ascetic project.
To impose questions of dualism from the modern perspective is to ask Cassian to
split what he conceived of as a two parts of a whole. While Cassian built his
anthropology on the categories of inner and outer, it is clear that he understood
contemplation to be the outgrowth of the two working together. If one was to reach
8 Lauren Pristas, “The Theological Anthropology of John Cassian” (PhD dissertation, Boston College,
1993), 109.
9 Derek Kreuger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the
Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia, PA: Univ ersity of Pennsylv ania Press, 201 4), 1 97 .
8
the ecstatic fires of contemplation, he was to begin with and return to the practice
liturgical prayer. Though words would surely pass in perfect prayer, its foundation
was laid in the words of the scriptures sung in the assembly. And though
contemplation was certainly the experience of the individual—of the soul’s gaze upon
God alone—the patterns of corporate and embodied prayer developed in the monk
the capacity to receive such perfect grace.
Clearly, the roots of seeing God were to be nourished in the hours of prayer.
As with so much of Cassian’s ascetic vision, prayer was both contemplative and
liturgical. At the same time perfection was a matter of both grace and will. The monk
was both body and soul. And the ascetic project was both communal and solitary.
The only privileged component of his ascetic vision was the goal itself. The practices
of fasting, celibacy, renunciation, and prayer were not ends in themselves but the
means to that goal. Even the most fundamental performances of the monastery had
to bend to that end. Thus, as tools for formation of the contemplative monk, the
monastic performances, especially the canonical hours, were both essential and
relative. The practices made possible the reception and understanding of perfect
prayer and were simultaneously overshadowed by it.
By privileging the goal in this way Cassian appealed to the authority of the
desert tradition while adapting the project for his Gallic readers. To objectify the
practices would be to elevate their perfection beyond their desired end. In terms of
the liturgy, then, Cassian continuously highlighted the phenomenon of the canonical
prayers while outlining their form. In reciting and meditating on the Psalms the
9
monk also responded in attentive silence. At any point in the liturgy, he noted, a
visceral utterance of ecstatic and fiery prayer could erupt. Even though perfect
prayer was to be without words, theoria and liturgy were not antithetical. For, as
David Fagerberg describes, all ascetic effort is a matter of cultivating the capacity to
see God.1 0 The forms and content of the liturgy were indeed important to the practice
insofar as they prepared the monk to receive God.
In our modern preference for the inner state of the mind, we often think of
worship in this second sense, namely the exteriorizing of an inner disposition.
Cassian reminds us that worship, in the form of the canonical hours of prayer, was
also formative of the inner life of the self. At the same time, when we think of the
Eucharistic liturgies as the primary mode of worship, Cassian’s outline of the hours
of prayer reminds us that liturgical prayer defined Christian monasticism. In these
early centuries of cenobitic formation monks spent the vast majority of their time in
corporate prayer. They thus spent more time hearing and singing scripture than they
did in the Eucharistic liturgies. While other practices such as fasts and renunciations
were certainly part of the ascetic project, it was the hours of prayer that set it apart as
Christian. First and foremost the scriptural foundations and interpretations of these
other performances were continuously recited corporately. Thus, the words of the
scriptures came to populate the imagination of the monks in the very process of
1 0 “Hopefulness is a capacity, not an activity, and capacities have to operate steadily and persistently
below the surface—they do not start and stop the way activ ities do. Our identity develops according to
how we live, and the task of our life is the acquisition of those capacities that will become a deep-
seated and controlling disposition in us.” Dav id Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), xv.
10
praying. Second, they regularly returned to the liturgical assembly to keep the mind
fixed on God. Turning to prayer nine times a day helped habituate the monks to
prayer itself. Or, as Abba Isaac said at the close of the tenth conference, the monk
should be the same outside of the times of prayer what one is while at prayer.1 1
This study of Cassian and his monastic works, then, argues that the whole of
Cassian's ascetic vision is to be understood in relation to the experiences of liturgical
and contemplative prayer. The first chapter summarizes the life and writings of
Cassian. Chapter two outlines Cassian's ascetic vision as the formation of a
contemplative culture. This vision, then, defined both Cassian's anthropology and
the role of community in the quest for purity of heart. The third chapter discusses
prayer within The Institutes and The Conferences. The final chapter closes the study
by exploring the role of the contemplative ex perience, especially its part in shaping
Cassian's hermeneutics and theology of grace.
1 1 John Cassian, The Conferences, Boniface Ramsey trans. (New York, NY : Paulist Press, 1 997 ), 387 .
Chapter One
Cassian and His Time
The biography of John Cassian is marked by just enough detail and
uncertainty to make telling his story a complicated task. Unlike his famed
contemporaries Augustine and Jerome, there are but a few sources which guide the
modern scholar through his life and journeys. What is available grants just enough
information to pinpoint Cassian’s location while still concealing the specifics to the
contemporary observer. Even the autobiographical statements within his own
writings gift the reader with enough detail to make it convincing while keeping the
narrative focused on his ascetic vision. The student of Cassian and his ascetic theory,
then, is caught between studying the man and the object of his writing—either
construct his story from the limited details culled from various sources or turn
towards his famed teachers and the ascetic theory he attributed to them.
For the present task, it is necessary to work with the former. By tracing the
limited details of the narrative it is possible not so much to arrive at a clear and
accurate biography, but to reveal the contexts within which Cassian was formed as a
monk, priest, and theologian. Thus, the construction of a sufficient biographical
portrait offers both the historian and the theologian a better understanding of
Cassian's sources and project. Our current biographical task, then, falls not far from
Cassian’s own writing style. Cassian was clear in his goal of guiding and supporting
the monasteries of Gaul. Any personal detail served that aim.
To be sure, Cassian did not write a historical narrative by modern standards.

11
12
In studying the development of the canonical hours of daily prayer Robert Taft notes
that Cassian’s account was inaccurate when compared to the other textual witnesses.
“It will become apparent,” he says, “Cassian cannot be taken as a reliable witness to
Pachomian uses.” 1 As modern readers, we must acknowledge Cassian’s own
reminders in the preface to The Institutes. “I shall temper somewhat by recourse to
the customs of the monasteries in Palestine and Mesopotamia, for, if reasonable
possibilities are offered, the same perfection of observance may exist even where
there is unequal capability.”2 Cassian’s texts were necessarily an effort to guide and
support emerging monasteries in a context far from the celebrated sands of northern
Egypt.3 As an act of translation some historical practices were reframed for a
different people and place. At the same time, this adaptation was a comprehensive
articulation of the goal and practices of ascetic Christianity. So Cassian presented his
own ascetic vision working with Egyptian tradition he so venerated.
By the end of the fourth century the monastic project was well established
within the church. Christian ascetics had settled far beyond the Egyptian desert and
dramatically shaped the collective imagination of clergy and laity alike. Not only had
people flooded the desert to witness the holiness of the monks, but the project of
1 Robert F Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its
Meaning for Today (Collegev ille, MN: Liturgical Press, 1 986), 58.
2 The Institutes Pref 9; John Cassian, The Institutes, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: Newman
Press, 2000), 14. Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from Ramsey 's translation. All following
citations for The Institutes will note book number and section, along with page location in Ramsey 's
translation.
3 Stephen D. Driv er, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2002), 6. Driv er’s thesis signifies a new approac h to the work of Cassian, particularly in
regards to the reception of tex ts and the nature of reading. Translation, then for Driver, is an act of
transporting the reader into the context of askesis. Such a reading of Egy ptian monasticism is one way
of recovering Cassian from a modern historicism which continually searches for external v erification.
13
spiritual athleticism expanded to the boarders of the Roman Empire. In the east
writers such as Basil of Caesarea spoke with admiration and conviction of the desert
monks, thus bringing the wilderness ideal to their urban communities. Yet, in the
west it took some time for monasticism to receive the same structured legislation.
Whether the barrier was language or climate, it was not until the turn of the fifth
century that monasticism gained the same literary attention. 4
By 418-420, when John Cassian began composing The Institutes, few writers
had outlined the goals and practices of Christian asceticism for the Latin speaking
world with the same attention as Basil had done some fifty years earlier. Cassian
himself made this clear in his own self-deprecating style. “Coming after these men’s
overflowing rivers of eloquence, I would not unjustifiably be considered
presumptuous for trying to produce a few drops of water.”5 Though several notable
Latin writers spoke of the ascetic ideals with admiration and had even shared the
Rule of Pachomius, few endeavored to adapt the project into the western provinces
of the empire. Even the prolific Augustine composed only a few explicitly monastic
treatises in comparison to the rest of his vast corpus. 6 Though Augustine’s theology
4 Pachomius’ Rule had been translated into Latin by Jerome just y ears before Cassian arrived in Gaul.
At the same time, monasteries had begun to populate the region, most notably Lérins. Giv en Jerome’s
tensions with the leaders of Gaul, it stands to reason that his a ttempt to bring Egy pt to the west was
not well received. What is more, Cassian’s project is more than a simple translation of texts. Columba
Stewart makes this clear: “Cassian was certainly much more than ‘merely the Latin translator’ or
popullarizer of Ev agrian spiritual theology.” Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York: Ox ford
University Press, 1999), 36. His texts stand in contrast to Jerome’s literal translation of the rule.
Cassian clearly is adapting and establishing the practice for a new contex t.
5 Institutes Pref 6; 13.
6 See George Lawless O.S.A, “Regula,” Augustine Through the Ages (Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1 999), 7 07 -7 09. O’Donnell is a little more skeptical about Augustine’s influence on the
western monastic project. “In the end Augustine proved to be nearly irrelevant to the history of ascetic
practice, and with him Ambrose and Jerome and the others.” James O'Donnell, Augustine: A New
Biography (New York: Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2006), 27 0.
14
influenced later Rules, it was Cassian whose outline of the monastic practices and
theology that would “instruct the Latins sensibly and soundly.” 7
It was Bishop Castor who, though possibly aware of the many Rules available,
enlisted Cassian in his project of guiding the emerging ascetic communities in the
province of Gaul. In the preface to The Institutes Cassian praised his patron, saying
that the bishop desired “to construct a true and spiritual temple for God not out of
unfeeling stones but out of a community of holy men.” 8 At the invitation of the
Castor Cassian took the project of structuring the monastic community as his own.
Unlike other Latin theologians, who spoke of askesis from their episcopal seat,
Cassian’s authority to organize a monastic community came from his own life
experiences.9
Cassian's Life and Times
The biographer often begins with the birth of the story's subject. Students of
Cassian are no different. Scholars have focused on identifying Cassian’s birthplace
from the limited details available in Cassian's writings and the brief commentary of
Gennadius. Though two places have emerged as possible candidates the consensus is
far from certain. 1 0 Both Dobrudja and Gaul can be supported by the details gleaned
from the sources. Several modern historians follow Gennadius’ short description of
7 O'Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography, 207 .

9 Institutes Pref 7 ; 1 3. See Richard J. Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian: Aristocrats, Asceticism,
and Reformation in Fifth Century Gaul (Ox ford University Press, USA, 2007 ), 32.
1 0 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 4.
15
Cassian as “of the Scythian people.” 1 1 Stewart leans towards this theory, albeit
obliquely, when he says the “weight of modern scholarly opinion” favors Dobrudja. 1 2
Though Cassian wrote in Latin his use of Greek demonstrates a significant facility
with the language. Was this a result of having been born in the east and later
learning Latin, or the reverse? Given that Cassian received the invitation to refute
the Nestorius many scholars assume that his facility with Greek was a result of
coming of age in the east. In the fifth book of The Institutes Cassian demonstrated
his facility with both Greek and Latin by challenging a Latin translation of Paul’s
words in I Corinthians 10:13. “There are some who, not understanding the Apostle's
testimony, have substituted the optative mood for the indicative. Thus: 'May no trial
seize you except what is common to humanity.’ What he says, however, is clearly
intended not as a wish but as a declaration or a rebuke.”1 3 Cassian's linguistic ability,
however, is not enough to establish his birthplace with any certainty. As Stewart
notes, an educated Gaul could have known easily known Greek. Either way, Cassian
obviously made his way through Egypt, Palestine, Constantinople, and Rome with
ease.1 4
More recently, however, Karl Suso Frank has revived the argument for Gaul
by pointing to the Preface of The Institutes. There Cassian compared his own project
to the construction of Solomon’s temple. For Solomon “wished to build that
1 1 Gennadius, “Cassianus,” On Illustrious Men, 62. Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
Second Series, trans Ernest Cushing Richardson (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892; Grand
Rapids: Hendrickson Publishing Inc., 1995), 3:395 -396. Here Marrou, Chadwick, and Rousseau
agree.
1 2 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 5. See the summary of arguments in Stewart's endnotes page 142 n18.
1 3 Institutes 5.1 6.2; 126-127 .
16
magnificent temple for the Lord,” and “he requested the help of the king of Tyre, a
foreigner.” 1 5 However, when Cassian described himself as Castor's Hiram,
“foreigner” was noticeably absent.1 6 Since Cassian was writing for Gallic monks and
aristocrats, Frank's argument assumes that the absence of the parallel adjective cues
the reader into placing Cassian among his fellow Gauls. Building from this textual
observation, Frank highlights several details rarely commented upon by current
scholars of Cassian. Gennadius noted in his short biography that Cassian formed two
monastic communities, one for men and the other for women. The land required for
these kinds of communities would clearly have necessitated some wealth or inherited
land. 1 7 Frank thus notes that the “founding of a monastery without property or a
secured legal status can only take place in hagiographic texts.”1 8
Throughout the short article Frank further deconstructs the argument for
Scythia as Cassian’s probable homeland. First, and foremost, Frank turns to consider
Cassian’s sister. In book eleven of The Institutes, Cassian commented on the desert
imperative to avoid bishops and women saying he “could not avoid my own sister.” 1 9
Frank connects this reference to Gennadius’s brief biography and thus prefers
1 5 Institutes Pref 1 ; 11 .
1 6 Karl Suso Frank O.F.M., “John Cassian on John Cassian,” Studia Patristica vol. 33, Elizabeth
Livingstone ed. (Louvain: Peeters Publishers, 1997 ), 422.
1 7 Basil of Caesarea demonstrates the role of family wealth in providing space for the ascetic pursuit.
After completing his formation in Athens, Basil returned around 358 to his family estate to pursue the
“philosophical life.” Even his sister Macrina and younger brother Nacrautius made the family home a
monastic community. Basil, however, took up his ascetic pursuit across the riv er. See Philip Rousseau,
Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1 994), 61 -65.
1 8 Frank, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” 424.
1 9 Institutes 11.1 8; 247 .
17
“Marseille as the origin for both sister and brother.”2 0 The assumption is clear;
Cassian’s early pilgrimages to Bethlehem, Egypt, and Constantinople would have
been considerably more difficult had his sister traveled along. Thus, reading
Cassian’s eloquent longing for his homeland in conference twenty-four as southern
Gaul, Frank assumes that Cassian returned to his home in Gaul and reunited with
his sister. The question remains, however, regarding Gennadius’s noted assertion
that Cassian of the Scythian people. 2 1 Following Gennadius’s use of terms, as well as
manuscript evidence which highlights objections to the term, Frank argues that
natione Scytha actually points to Scetis, the monastic community to the west of the
Nile delta. The biographical summary, then, speaks of Cassian's monastic homeland
and not his birthplace.
Goodrich, aware of Frank’s argument, problematizes the thesis that Cassian
hailed from Marseille. 2 2 Noting the other references to Cassian in Gennadius’s text,
Goodrich reminds contemporary biographers that Gennadius himself had a
rhetorical goal—to establish Cassian as a leader within the Gallic church. Thus,
Goodrich says: “While Cassian did not begin his career in Marseilles, he might have
ended it there.”2 3 Taking into account such a range of scholarly opinion regarding
Cassian's place of birth, locating his homeland offers very little for further study.2 4
This is especially true since his education and bilingual ability was evident within his
20 Frank, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” 423.

22 Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 226-230.
23 Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 230.
24 For as much as Frank problematizes scholarly consensus based on Cassian and other sources, he
concludes his assessment say ing that “Cassian, the zealous teacher and committed pioneer of
monastic life, disappears behind his work.” Frank, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” 433.
18
writing without needing to construct his formative years. Fortunately, little is lost by
a lack of certainty regarding Cassian’s life prior to his profession of monastic vows.
For it was his experience at a monastery in Bethlehem and sojourn in the Egyptian
desert that was definitive for his later life and legacy.
Ascertaining when Cassian took the monk's habit is a matter of constructing a
time line from what is stated plainly in his writings. The first verifiable date for
Cassian’s life places him in Scetis at the end of the fourth century. From conference
ten we know that Cassian was there in 399 when the paschal letter of Bishop
Theophilus was circulated in the region and read in Paphnutius's monastery. Though
Cassian’s account of the events of that year omitted and repurposed some of the
specifics surrounding the Origenist controversy, the details he recounted are enough
to know he was an eyewitness. All the dates of his life prior to 399, especially his
entrance into the Bethlehem monastery, are constructed from Cassian’s own
references within his writings. Frank raises significant questions about the accuracy
of these assumptions. 2 5 Chadwick, even while constructing the time line of Cassian’s
stay in Egypt, hedges his argument based on the manuscript evidence for Cassian’s
own apparent assertion that he initially remained in Egypt for seven years. 2 6 Thus,
building the time line of Cassian's life prior to 399 is an approximation.
No matter how the biography is constructed prior to 399, we know from
Cassian’s own pen that his monastic vocation began in the holy city of Bethlehem. 2 7
25 Frank, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” 427 -432.

26 Owen Chadwick, John Cassian (London, Cambridge University Press, 1 968), 15-17 . See Cassian’s
statement in Conferences 17 .30.2.
27 Institutes 3.4; Institutes 4.32; Institutes 5.24; Conferences 17 .5.
19
The most notable of references to Cassian’s initial formation in that monastery
comes in the seventeenth conference. In the opening, Germanus asked a simple
question: “What are we doing? … For our life and chosen orientation could be more
perfectly shaped by the examples of these great men except for the fact that the
obligation of what was promised compels us to return at once to the cenobium.” 2 8
The remainder of the conference dealt with the ethical questions surrounding their
vow at Bethlehem to return from their Egyptian pilgrimage. For the purposes of
constructing Cassian's biography this short reference to Bethlehem established the
events that sent Cassian and Germanus to Egypt. Cassian often referenced
Bethlehem as a rhetorical foil to the famed Egyptian fathers which had formed h im
so decisively.2 9 Even the recounting of Abba Pinufius’ flight incognito to Palestine
served as the catalyst for Cassian and Germanus to seek the blessing of their elders to
explore the Egyptian way. “This, then, was the old man whom we most eagerly
sought out afterwards in Egypt by reason of the confidence that we had in him in our
own monastery.”3 0 The full details of Cassian’s stay in Bethlehem were concealed
within the larger narrative of his praise for the abbas of Egypt. Modern biographers
must follow that lead and treat the monastery at the place of Christ’s birth as but a
way point in his travels to other monasteries.
Modern scholars often assume that no matter when the two monks arrived in
28 Conferences 17 .2.1 -2. John Cassian, The Conferences, trans Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, NJ:
Newman Press, 1 997 ), 587 . Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from Ramsey 's translation. All
following citations for The Conferences will note conference number and section, along with page
location in Ramsey 's translation.
29 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 7 . Cassian’s depiction of the Bethlehem community is skewed by his
ex altation of all things Egy ptian.
30 Institutes 4.32; 96.
20
the desert, they must have left Bethlehem before 386 when Jerome founded his own
monastic community in the holy city. Such a conjecture is based on the fact that
Cassian made no mention of Jerome’s community in any of the works. Though he
knew of and used Jerome’s work, most notably in On the Incarnation, it is argued
Cassian was not a member of Jerome's cenobium. 3 1 Stewart, however, elaborates on
this assumption. It is not Cassian’s lack of reference to the monastery that proves his
departure before 386, but rather that Cassian’s monastic formation appears to hav e
been based in a “Greek monastic milieu” and not Jerome’s Latin ascetic culture. 3 2
These assertions are complicated by the fact that Cassian and Germanus returned to
their first cenobium. At the conclusion of conference seventeen, Cassian noted that
he and Germanus returned to Bethlehem to receive the pardon of their elders and
“after the sting of our promise had been completely plucked out, we returned to the
depths of the desert of Skete, while they urged us on with joy.” 3 3 Even stating that
they had originally been in Egypt for seven years, this return to Bethlehem most
certainly would have placed Cassian in some proximity to Jerome. The standard
argument about Cassian and Jerome should, then, not pass without question. As
Frank notes, the date of 386 is fixed in scholastic opinion, yet it “may not be used as
a pivotal point in the chronology.” 3 4 It is well known that Cassian did not reference
his contemporaries, especially those with whom he had significant disagreements.
His notorious conference thirteen clearly challenged the anti-Pelagian theology of
31 Chadwick, John Cassian, 11.

32 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 6.
33 Conferences 17 .30.2; 612.
21
Augustine, albeit without acknowledgement of the bishop. Even more problematic,
no contemporary scholar doubts the formative influence of Evagrius’ thought on
Cassian’s theology. Yet, such a link to the Origenist master of the ascetic project
passed without mention in Cassian’s own work. As with the obscurity of Cassian’s
place of birth, such assumptions about his proximity to Jerome must be tempered
with the rhetorical alloy of Cassian’s own pen.
Chronology aside, Cassian and Germanus clearly encountered the rich
practices of the Egyptian ascetics during Abba Pinufius' visit to Bethlehem. Cassian
told of the abba's visit in both The Institutes and The Conferences. In a story of
humility common in desert literature, Pinufius “feared in particular that the
detestable vanity of popularity might deprive him of the fruit of an eternal reward. So
he secretly fled his monastery.”3 5 His quest for the quiet pursuit of virtue eventually
brought him to the monastery of Bethlehem where he was numbered among the
novices alongside Cassian and Germanus. Virtue, however, has a way of shining
through even the most humble of disguises. Cassian and Germanus soon learned of
Pinufius's fame and achievements of their fellow monk and petitioned their own
leaders for permission to explore the way of life that had produced such a holy monk.
Though Chadwick understands this as a single narrative that has been interpolated
into one of the sources, the narrative force is clear: The ways of Egypt exemplified in
the perfection of Pinufius inaugurated the pilgrimage for the two young ascetics. 3 6
35 Conferences 20.1.2; 693.

36 Chadwick briefly suggests that the two accounts of Abba Pinufius are one story, one interpolated
into the second treatise. “If this is a taking of the story from one place into another by a later copy ist,
where did Cassian put the story ? Was it copied into The Institutes from The Conferences or vice
versa? Probably, if interpolation has occurred, this time it was not in the Institutes.” Chadwick, John
22
When Cassian and Germanus arrived in Egypt is ultimately a lacuna in the
narrative. In conference seventeen Cassian stated they remained in Egypt seven
years for their first sojourn. Given Cassian’s recounting of the Anthropomorphite
controversy which began in 399, he and Germanus had to at least been in Egypt
before 390 to allow for the two journeys. At the same time many scholars assume
Cassian left Bethlehem before 386. Thus, Chadwick has argued that even the best
estimates of when Cassian arrived in Egypt are questionable. 3 7 Two options remain,
either Cassian’s dating is true and he was in Bethlehem at the time of Jerome for a
portion of time, or as Chadwick argues, the seven year tenure should be questioned.
The later should be favored, not so much in a desire to remain committed to the
Jerome thesis, but from the manuscript tradition itself. Only one of the two earliest
manuscripts of The Conferences contains the last paragraphs in which Cassian
mentioned the seven year figure. The Corbie collection, however, omits these
sections. “Such an addition,’ Chadwick notes, “would have been natural to a scribe
with moral scruple about the Conferences.”3 8 Given these questions and the
evidence, the best estimate for their arrival in Egypt is the mid-380’s.
These some fifteen years in Egypt, then, are the heart both of Cassian’s ascetic
vision and thus his writings. Though it is well known that Cassian’s narrative served
the purposes of his theological and ascetical project, modern students of Cassian are
clear that his recollection of the abbas arose from his own experiences in the
Cassian, 48.
38 Chadwick, John Cassian, 17 .
23
Egyptian desert. Stewart notes this clearly. “Much of the information contained
within The Institutes and Conferences is unique to him and is based evidently on his
own experiences.” 3 9 Regardless of their tenure, the two companions remained with
their Egyptian teachers until 399. In their two sojourns, it is clear from The
Conferences that they stayed in the Lower Nile region, visiting the monks of Diolcos,
Panephysis, Scetis, and the Kellia. These encounters were definitive for Cassian’s
ascetic imagination. In the preface to The Institutes he made clear the need to adapt
the Egyptian practices for the Gallic climate. Yet, by the first preface to The
Conferences he warned the reader not to judge the project too quickly. “Before
anything else, we want the reader of these conferences as well as of the previous
volumes to be advised that if perhaps he thinks, by reason of his status and chosen
orientation or from the point of view of ordinary custom and way of life, that there
things in these books that are impossible or hard, he should not judge them by the
standard of his own ability but according to the dignity of the speakers.” 4 0 The reader
was to measure the whole ascetic project by these Egyptian exemplars, not Gallic
conventions. These years in Egypt, then, had defined Cassian's life time as well as the
communities of ascetics he endeavored to shape with his writings.
Cassian did not begin The Conferences with the accounts of their first journey
to Egypt in the late fourth century. Rather, the chronological beginning of their
journey came in the second book of The Conferences. After having presented ten
conferences with various holy men of Scetis and Kellia, Cassian opened the second

40 Conferences Pref 1 .6; 30.
24
book of conversations with the details of their arrival in Egypt. “Therefore, having
completed our voyage, we came to an Egyptian town named Thennesus. Its
inhabitants are so surrounded by the sea and by salt swamps that, because there is
no land, they have devoted themselves to commerce alone and get their wealth and
substance from sea trade.”4 1 In Cassian’s own style, this short introduction of
geographic details granted the story the authority of an eyewitness to the Nile delta
monks. Such a literary convention also transported any reader into the town itself, as
if they too were about to witness the wisdom of these spiritual masters. These details,
then, served as a transition from the clear theological and practical trajectory of The
Institutes and the first book of The Conferences. The change in location signaled
what was already stated plainly in the second preface, namely that the second book
would further elaborate the fruit of virtue. “Thereby,” according to Cassian, “those
things concerning perfection which were perhaps treated rather obscurely or passed
over in our previous works may be compensated for.”4 2
Invited by the bishop monk Archibeus of Panephysis, Cassian and Germanus
appear to have toured the monasteries of the northeast delta. The conferences with
Abbas Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph took place during this first journey to the
desert. The third book of conversations shift a bit further west to include Abbas
Piamun and Abraham of Diolcos. One conference with Abba Pinufius in Panephysis
again shifted the geography of the third book, but given his proximity to Diolcos it
should not be considered too much of a geographic departure. However, the three
41 Conferences 11.1 ; 409.

42 Conferences Preface 2:2; 400.
25
conferences with Theonas in Scetis return the reader to the famed Wadi al-Natrum.
By the third book of conferences Cassian's tidy geographic framework of the
conferences breaks down.
It is reasonable for scholars to assume that the two stages of their Egyptian
journey follow the geographic clusters of conferences. Stewart, however, states that
Cassian and Germanus “seem to have left from and returned to Scetis.” 4 3 Such
conjecture emerges from Cassian’s biographical statement at the conclusion of
conference seventeen, wherein he and Germanus address their concern about their
vow at Bethlehem to Abba Joseph. “Strengthened as by a divine oracle by this
instruction and teaching of the most blessed Joseph, we chose to remain in Egypt.
But although from then on we were not particularly troubled by our promise,
nonetheless we fulfilled our promise gladly at the end of seven years.” 4 4 This is, as
noted above, the passage Chadwick questions as a later scribal addition.
Unfortunately the details are, as usual, sparse. Stewart assumes they left for
Bethlehem from Scetis since the monks there prove to be the prime influence on
Cassian’s ascetic vision, even though the concerns about their vow occur in a
conference at Panephysis. As with so many historical details in Cassian’s biography,
the information is concealed within the narrative itself. That is to say the decision to
remain and later return to Bethlehem to receive the release from the elders offers a
convenient conclusion to the second book of conferences.
Scetis, even based on the most basic reading of Cassian’s monastic writings,
43 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 10. He notes that Gibson, in the NPNF introduction, assumes that he
was from the eastern monasteries. See Stewart's endnote pg 1 47 n. 7 6.
44 Conferences 17 .30.2; 612.
26
was obviously the heart of Cassian’s understanding of asceticism and contemplation.
All of the first ten conferences take place there, as do three of the last seven. Sheer
numbers alone reveals that Cassian most likely spent the balance of his time in the
desert there. Assuming that Cassian wrote the first ten conferences as the
culmination of his initial writing, Stewart states these conferences “were to
emphasize the contemplative dedication that surpassed the disciplinary focus of
cenobitic life.” 4 5 This is confirmed in Cassian’s own description of their connection to
Scetis community lead by Abba Paphnutius. “We saw the holy Paphnutius
resplendent with brilliant knowledge as if he were a large celestial body. He was the
priest of our community.”4 6 While here, Cassian and Germanus most certainly
encountered the teachings of Evagrius. Though absent in name throughout The
Conferences, Evagrius’s intricate ascetic theology looms just below Cassian’s
narrative.
The Evagrian system itself will become clear in due course. Here it is
important to trace the lineage of teachers who formed Cassian, if not in person at
least in writing. Stewart notes that Cassian mentioned Paphnutius more frequently
than any of the other abbas.4 7 Assuming that this Paphnutius was the same monk
known as the Father of Scetis, he succeeded Marcarius of Egypt as abbot. 4 8
45 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 10. Rousseau argues a similar development between The Institutes and
The Conferences, namely that Cassian moved from cenobitic to eremitic practice. Philip Rousseau,
Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Notre Dame, IN: Univ ersity of
Notre Dame Press, 2010), 17 8.
46 Conferences 3.1 .1 ; 119.
48 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 10. See Stewart's helpful summary of the scholarship regarding
Paphnutius in Cassian and Palladius, page 148 n 81 .
27
Sinkewicz further outlines the links between Evagrius and Macarius. Following
Bunge, Sinkewicz identifies a link between the two ascetic teachers in monologistic
prayer, a practice which Cassian described in conference ten through the recitation
of Psalm 70. 4 9 Interestingly, Cassian not only distanced himself from Evagrius but he
did not mention Macarius or any of the early companions of Evagrius in the first
book of The Conferences. There is a general consensus that Cassian erased their
names from the theology and the narrative in order to avoid the stigma of Origenism
and its champions, 5 0 Yet, the proximity in both time and place for Macarius,
Evagrius, Paphnutius, and Cassian make the links more than literary. Given
Cassian’s arrival in Egypt sometime in the mid-380’s, Paphnutius’s assumption of
Marcarius’ mantle around 390, and Cassian’s rhetorical summary of the festal letter
of Theolophilus in 399, it is reasonable to assume these ascetics were well
acquainted.
Cassian’s own connection to the Origenist circle is even more clear in his
recounting of the notable events of 399. In the opening of conference ten Cassian
stated that “a letter from the bishop of Alexandria is sent to all the churches of Egypt.
In it both the beginning of the Lenten season and the day of Easter are designated
not only for each town but also for all the monasteries. In accordance with this
custom, then a very few days after the previous mentioned conference with Abba
Isaac had taken place, there arrived the solemn letter of Theophilus, bishop of the
49 Robert Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Ox ford University Press, USA,
2006), xviii.
50 See Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 11. “Nowhere else does Cassian refer to Kellia or Nitria, and he
never mentions any of the famous monks of either place: not Amoun, Macarius the Alex andiran, or
Ev agrius of Pontus.”
28
aforementioned city.”5 1 Although these letters frequently addressed theological and
pastoral needs in the church, this letter was far from customary. In it Theophilus
followed the theology of Origen in condemning Anthropomorphism, the theological
assertion that God has a form akin to the human person. Cassian, steeped in the
networks and thought of Origen and Evagrius, celebrated the injunctions of the
letter. “Along with the Easter announcement he also argued extensively against the
foolish heresy of the anthropomorphites and demolished it at great length.” 5 2
Cassian, however, did not tell the subsequent story. While we know Theophilus
wrote the famed letter in early 399, Cassian’s narrative of the events stops abruptly
there. He did not recount the conflicts between other monks and the bishop, nor the
subsequent flight of Origenist monks from Egypt after Theophilus retracted his
condemnation. This is not a case of historical ignorance since Cassian left the desert,
apparently among the Origenists. Rather, for Cassian the first phase of the emerging
conflict offered the rhetorical exemplar needed for his theological description of pure
prayer that followed in the conference with Abba Isaac.
Theophilus later retracted his condemnation after a group of monks rioted in
Alexandria.5 3 What followed was a Christendom-wide conflict between the networks
of Anti-Origenists—Jerome, Theophilus, and Anastasius of Rome—and his cautious
supporters—Rufinus, Cassian, and Chrysostom. Origen’s supporters, however, were
not uncritical of his theology . Rather, as is well known, Rufinus tempered Origen’s
51 Conferences 10.2.1-2; 37 1.
29
more problematic speculations, especially in his translation of On First Principles
into Latin. 5 4 Such care, both on the part of Rufinus and Cassian, demonstrates just
how far the conflict had spread in time and distance. For Cassian, the tensions in
Egypt reached such proportions that he, Germanus, and many others fled their
beloved desert for more favorable environments.
By comparison, details of Cassian’s life after his flight from Egypt at the turn
of the century are a little more clear. More specifically, the events can be confirmed
outside of Cassian's own writings. Cassian’s texts, especially On the Incarnation,
show a debt to Chrysostom. Coupled with the references to both Germanus and
Cassian in the correspondence between Chrysostom and Rome, scholars agree that
Cassian was present in Constantinople during the famed bishop’s tenure.
Chrysostom, no stranger to controversy 5 5 yet politically astute, did not heed the
monks’ request for episcopal support, and yet did nothing to discourage their
presence. Though he did not agree completely with his Origenist visitors,
Chrysostom’s admiration of asceticism fostered a climate in Constantinople where
the fleeing monks could find refuge. Unfortunately for Chrysostom and his refugees,
tensions only escalated. By 403, the Origenist faction, Cassian among them,
contributed to Chrysostom’s downfall. 5 6 Though the conflict resulted in
Chrysostom’s removal from the bishop’s seat and sent him into exile, the events
54 G W Butterworth and P Koetschau, On First Principles (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 197 3), xxxi-
x li.
55 See Wendy Meyer, John Chrysostom (New York, NY : Routledge, 1 999) for a concise summary of
Chry sostom’s life, including the tensions in Antioch as a boy and later as a presbyter, and finally as
bishop of Constantinople.
30
moved Cassian into ecclesiastical politics and eventually sent him from the eastern
reaches of the empire to Rome. These connections would later prove important for
his life, as well as for his place in history.
Though there are few specifics in Cassian’s texts regarding his brief stay in
Constantinople, it is reasonable to assume he arrived as early as 400.5 7 References to
Cassian and Germanus in Palladius' Lausiac History and Innocent’s reply to
Chrysostom’s appeal in 404 reveal that the two monks established themselves within
the life of the Constantinopolitan church. Both men, though clearly aware of the
desert maxim to avoid bishops and women, were ordained—Cassian a deacon and
Germanus a priest.5 8 The two monks carried Chrysostom’s appeal of the Synod of
Oak (403) to Rome, and according to Pope Innocent’s letter, they carried his
response back to Constantinople. More detail of these initial years of the fifth century
are based more on conjecture but it is safe to assume that Cassian had established
himself among the Chrysostom's supporters. As Rousseau says, “it is clearly
important to recall that he came under [Chrysostom’s] influence for several years,
even if little else can be traced.”5 9
Rousseau explores further the narrative most often presented regarding
Cassian’s departure for Constantinople. The typical interpretation follows what is
assumed about Cassian's birthplace and departure from Egypt: Given the tensions
regarding the teachings of Evagrius, Cassian fled to the Constantinople to avoid

58 See Institutes 11.1 8; 247 . “A monk must by all means flee from women and bishops.”
59 Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church, 171. Chardwick states that the relationship between
bishop and monk was “rather personal than literary.” Chadwick, John Cassian, 31 .
31
persecution. Noting that Cassian appears to have longed for his homeland in
conference twenty-four, Rousseau surmises Cassian could have set off for home.
Constantinople would have then “lain en route.” 6 0 What is more, Chrysostom’s
famed interest in the practices of askesis made the imperial city an enticing stop
along the way. Here, it is important to note just how much speculation still drives the
story of Cassian’s life. The details are all present, a stay among the monks of Egypt,
clear references to Chrysostom’s tenure as bishop, and Cassian’s own ordination.
Yet, how the scholar understands Cassian’s birthplace gives shape to the later
narrative. Did he leave the desert under duress? Or was he drawn to another ascetic
master? Or still yet, did he simply pause on a return journey home? Based on the
evidence, either of the three is possible, up to that is, the first years of the fifth
century since Cassian’s travels finally took him further west. Geography again poses
a problem for the narrative. If Cassian's homeland were just north of Constantinople,
why did his journeys take him west?
It is clear from the sources that Cassian had been in Rome, but it is still
unknown for how long. Since Chrysostom was no longer bishop, the scene in
Constantinople was no longer the haven it once was. Scholars assume that after
delivering Pope Innocent’s letter, Cassian returned to Rome. This is often based on
the preface to On the Incarnation. Stating that he had hoped to finish his literary
career in silence, Cassian described the occasion for writing a third treatise.
Addressing Archdeacon Leo, Cassian stated that “you have overcome my
determination and purpose by your commendable earnestness and most urgent
60 Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church, 17 2.

32
affection, my dear Leo, my esteemed and highly regarded friend, ornament that you
are of the Roman Church and sacred ministry.”6 1 Not only was Cassian removed
from self imposed retirement by Leo’s request but he was thrust once more into the
conflict of the day. This time, however, it was the Christological debates kindled by
Nestorius, and fanned to flames by Cyril of Alexandria. What is more, the
archdeacon Leo6 2 who had requested that Cassian write the treatise became the same
Pope Leo whose letter influenced the outcome of the Council of Chalcedon (451). It is
assumed that Cassian’s brief time in Rome as part of Chrysostom’s delegation was
not enough to develop the friendship Cassian described in the preface. He must have
returned there before retiring to Gaul, and cultivated a friendship with the future
Pope.
Rousseau again presses into the lack of details, troubling the standard
narrative. Instead, he asks if Cassian could have ventured to Chrysostom’s home
town of Antioch. For, “it was at Antioch that Alexander, elected bishop in 413,
restored to the diptychs the name of Chrysostom.” What is more, Cassian often uses
the tradition of Antioch “to shame Nestorius into adherence to the teaching he had
received as a young man.” 6 3 This is not mere speculation on the part of Rousseau.
Pope Innocent, in an attempt to repair the schisms in Antioch, penned two letters
61 John Cassian, “On the Incarnation of the Lord Against Nestorius,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
series 2, trans. Edgar Gibson (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1 894: Grand Rapids, MI:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1 994), 7 :549.
62 Gennadius notes that Leo was an archdeacon at the time of the reque st. Gennadius, “On the Lives
of Illustrious Men 62,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series vol 3., Ernest Cushing
Richardson trans. (Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1 892; Grand Rapids, MI: Hedrickson
Publishing Inc., 1995).
63 Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church, 17 4.
33
that mentioned an advisor named “Cassianus.” These texts have prompted several
scholars to posit that this is the same Cassian ordained by Chrysostom. Stewart, after
presenting this argument, seems cautious. “Even were this hypothesis true, it would
leave the years between 405 and 413 unexplained; as a fervent supporter of
Chrysostom’s cause, Cassian could hardly have found Antioch an inviting place
before Alexander’s episcopate.” 6 4 Again, the shadows of history are dark enough to
prevent certainty. However, it is possible that both are true. Cassian could have
passed the time in Rome with Leo and Pope Innocent and then ventured to Antioch.
Either way, there is a nearly fifteen year gap in the narrative before it is certain that
Cassian surfaced again, this time in Gaul.
Following the thesis that he remained in Rome during the interlude, some
scholars argue that Cassian’s lack of full understanding of the Pelagian controversy
signals he left Rome before the word reached Rome in 417-418.6 5 Stewart is more
cautious, and thus less specific, noting that it may have been the sack of the city by
Alaric in 410 that caused our monk to venture into new lands yet again. 6 6 It is
enough to assume Cassian arrived with enough time to gain the trust of local leaders
and enough influence to receive the invitation to write about his Egyptian formation.
Hence, Cassian probably arrived there in the mid-410’s.6 7 Whenever he arrived,
Cassian entered a province unlike any of the others he had known prior. Even if
Frank is correct that Cassian’s homeland was indeed Gaul, decades had passed since

65 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 151 n 132.
34
he made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem.
Goodrich challenges the assumption that Gaul was a stable region of the
empire, and thus a region in which Cassian could have sought refuge. “Cassian wrote
during a time of upheaval, the point of fracture that marked Gaul's irredeemable
drift away from the Roman Empire. Although a number of modern historians have
sought to minimize the disruption that followed the Germanic invasions of 405/6,
before the fifth century closed the Western Roman Empire no longer existed, and
Gaul had been divided among Germanic kings.” 6 8 Despite the changes, the economic
prospects drew the interest of Romans a nd Germanic tribes alike. Marseille
remained a significant port city for the province. The trade that passed through this
southeastern port continued to support the aristocracy of the region, even while the
tribes crossed the borders to the north and west. Rome was keen to keep it, while the
Germanic tribes sought after its riches. Still, by the time Cassian arrived, Gaul was
far from being separated from Rome. It was, in fact, stable enough for Cassian to
establish two monastic communities. 6 9
In Marseille, Cassian’s career followed the ecclesiastical trajectory begun in
Constantinople. While he was part of Chrysostom’s delegation, Cassian took part as a
deacon. At some point after reaching the shores of Gaul, Cassian was ordained a
priest.7 0 Unlike his famed teachers, many of whom fled their monasteries to avoid a

69 Establishing the transitional state of Gaul is central to Goodrich’s thesis that Cassian wrote to
conv ince an aristocracy within a changing climate. He also problematizes Cassian’s role in the
Massilian monastic scene, including the tradition that the monastery of St. V ictor was one of the two
communities Gennadius attributes to Cassian. Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 21 2.
7 0 Stewart postulates that Cassian was ordained while in Rome. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 14. See
35
bishop’s hand, Cassian moved head long into the church matters of the region.
Considering the high praise for Egyptian practice, such a shift seems out of
character. Yet, Cassian was also one to take part in the ways of his immediate
context. In Egypt, he threw himself into the practices of the holy men around him.
Then in Constantinople he entered Chrysostom’s court, taking part in the conflict
among bishops. Now in Gaul, the expectations of monks and bishops differed from
the conventions of either Egypt or Constantinople.
Many of the bishops of the region were favorable to ascetic practice, or were
themselves formed in the monastic community on the isle of Lérins . In commenting
on Cassian’s arrival in Gaul, Stewart notes that “Marseille was a natural haven for
someone like Cassian. Its monastically inclined bishop, Proculus (who served from
381 to after 418), was praised by Jerome in a letter to the monk Rusticus (later
bishop of Narbonne) in 411/12.”7 1 Honoratus, one of the dedicatees of the second
collection of conferences, founded Lérins and also became the bishop of Arles. Many
of the monks of Lérins followed such as Hilary, who succeeded Honoratus in Arles,
and Eucherius bishop of Lyon. Still other ascetics such as Theodore, bishop of Fréjus
after Leontius, appear to have founded their own monastic communities. All of these
bishop monks, apart from Hilary, were mentioned in Cassian’s prefaces. Setting
Cassian within the Gallic milieu, especially the networks of the famed Lérins,
Rousseau states that “to such a community and to such a set of attitudes, therefore,
Cassian’s writings might have been aligned. Lérins was not a cenobium in the
Stewart’s summary of scholarship regarding the timing of Cassian's ordination pg 150 n. 119.
7 1 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 1 6.
36
Pachomian sense, and far from indifferent to the opinion and requirements of the
‘world’.” 7 2 In Eucherius’s terms, Lérins was a “nursery of churchmen.” 7 3 Without
many details, Cassian hinted at this church culture in Gaul within his writings. Or as
Stewart states plainly, “his involvement with the ecclesiastical and monastic
establishments (incredibly intertwined as they were) is mapped by the dedications in
his prefaces.” 7 4
On the surface of The Institutes and The Conferences themselves it would
appear that Cassian was writing for the monastic communities of the region. Yet, the
line between priest and monk was fluid, and even more so in terms of Gaul. Unlike
their contemporary Augustine, these bishops began their ecclesial journey in
monasteries. What is more, a monastic vocation was certainly a means of upward
mobility. As the province teetered between the pressures of the Germanic tribes and
its Roman heritage, aristocrats moved up the social ladder by means of the ecclesial
rungs. Hence, Goodrich rightly identifies at least part Cassian’s audience as those
outside of the monasteries. In due course, this will become clear. Here suffice to say,
such a thesis is not far from Cassian’s pattern of adapting to the culture of his
surroundings. Rousseau notes that Cassian’s primary antagonist, Prosper of
Aquitaine, seems to have in part objected to Cassian’s engagement outside of the
monastery walls. “What Prosper does provide is a vivid impression of how Cassian
appeared to him: 'without doubt, the most outstanding among them in his
7 2 Philip Rousseau, "Cassian: Monastery and World," The Certainty of Doubt: Tributes to Peter
Munz, eds Miles Fairburn and W.H. Oliv er (Wellington, New Zealand: V ictoria University Press,
1995), 7 2.
7 3 Eucherius, In Praise of the Desert. Quoted in Rousseau, “Cassian: Monastery and World,” 7 2.
7 4 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 1 6.
37
knowledge of the holy scriptures' and 'a man of priestly status, who excels in his
ability to engage in disputation in the company of those with whom he spends his
time. Erudition once again, is clearly implied: the 'disputation' and the 'company' are
more problematic, but seem, in both their vagueness and their context to reach
beyond the monastery.”7 5 The Conferencer, then, was both priest and monk in that
his pastoral work included the translation of ascetic theology and practice for the
wider church.
Goodrich, however, challenges this picture of Cassian as a public theologian in
Marseille alone. In his appendix on the location of Cassian within Gaul, Goodrich
points to the lack of certainty within Prosper’s texts themselves. The most significant
term in question is Prosper’s use of collatio in his letters. As a common practice of
conversation, it is possible that such gatherings were hostile to v ary degrees. For the
Massilians, who disagreed with the theology of the bishop of Hippo, such closed door
conversations may have been a frequent necessity. “Augustine’s adversaries are quite
free with their opinions when meeting in private, but taciturn in public. This was for
a good reason: if they dared to articulate their views openly, they would quickly be
overrun by the crushing weight of Augustine’s learned prose.” 7 6 Such a reading
problematizes not Cassian’s texts or theological argument, but rather his location
within the region. The practice of conversations, not necessarily the books of The
Conferences themselves, were, according to Goodrich, a practice of a number of
adversaries, not just Cassian. In other words, the narrative of Cassian in Marseille is
7 5 Rousseau, "Cassian: Monastery and World", 7 8.

7 6 Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 232.
38
a matter of reading Cassian into all of Prosper’s texts. 7 7 By 432, however, it is clear
that Prosper had Cassian square in his sights. His Against the Conferencer was
obviously a direct refutation of Cassian’s conference thirteen, which has been
heralded as the proof text for the so-called “semi-pelagian” heresy.7 8 Though
Prosper’s attack focused on this famed conference, it is not sufficient proof for
Goodrich that Cassian penned The Conferences in Marseille. Rather, since Prosper
names the author of the conference as part of the Massilians, the composition of
Against the Conferencer is certainly the terminus ante quem for Cassian’s arrival in
the city itself.7 9
Wherever we locate Cassian within Gaul, it is evident that his confrontation
with Prosper was the penultimate controversy for our traveling monk. As with many
of the theological polemics of the time, Cassian was never named directly within
Prosper’s text. However, by 432 when Prosper penned the work, we know Cassian’s
second book had gained enough recognition to receive the pointed treatment of
Prosper’s pen. As Hwang notes, the debate of the early 430’s “became eve n more
polemical, with each side caricaturing the views of the other, as well as branding one
another with the charge of heresy.”8 0 Not only had the disagreement reached

7 8 On the usefulness of the term Semi-Pelagian, Casiday states plainly that “it is unclear what v alue
the term adds to our discussion of fifth-century ecclesiastical history and theology, it is unclear what
the term means, and in fact of the few things clear about the term at all is that it originated in debates
that were twice as far removed from the time of Cassian, Augustine, Prosper, and Pelagius as those
four were from the time of Jesus Christ!” Casiday ’s deconstruction of “semi-pelagian” as a theological
category. Augustine Casiday, Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian (New York, NY: Ox ford
University Press, 2007 ), 6.
80 Alex ander Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 13.
39
polemical proportions, but it breached the boundaries of Gaul as well. With the early
treatises supporting Augustine’s theories of grace already circulating, Prosper wrote
to both Rome and Hippo for support. There is some question among historians as to
just how much Cassian’s thirteenth conference was an independent response to these
earlier treatises. Stewart, however, identifies a striking continuity between the famed
conference and the rest of the remaining conferences. 8 1 Amidst the speculation,
however, it is clear that Cassian entered another controversy of the day. This time,
however, his entrance into fray appears to have been his own decision. On the
surface the conference seems to have been a direct critique of Augustine’s theology of
grace without naming the bishop directly. Unlike traditional polemics, Cassian’s style
in conference thirteen follows his constructive aim throughout the book. “Instead of
reacting to Augustine per se, Cassian provided his own view of grace.” 8 2
This was not Cassian’s last foray into the ecclesiastical conflicts of the day. By
the time Prosper wrote Against the Conferencer, Cassian’s attention had turned to
the Christological debates sparked by Nestorius. This time the invitation to write did
not come from local bishops but from the archdeacon of Rome. Leo appears to have
passed along all the texts available to the Roman theologians with the request.
Cassian’s facility with Greek and his awareness of the east were obvious abilities to
be employed as the Latin speaking church confronted the teachings of Nestorius.
However, the texts sent from Rome were not complete, and therefore did not provide
81 “Conference 13 develops themes introduced initially in book 12 of the Institutes.” Stewart, Cassian
the Monk, 7 8. Following a discussion of book twelve, he goes on to note that “Conference 13 is a
reprise of Cassian’s earlier arguments, with more extended biblical illustration.” Ibid., 7 9.
82 Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace, 150.
40
a full understanding of Nestorius’s theology. It is well known that in 430 Cyril of
Alexandria sent a larger collection of writings to Pope Celestine by the hand of
Posidonius. 8 3 At the same time, Cassian appears to have not known of the synod of
Rome in August of 430, confirming that Cassian began writing before that year.
Given such quick response on the part of Pope Celestine, Cassian’s effort was
evidently not needed to refute the theology of Nestorius. Rather, Cassian’s acumen
with Latin and apparent recognition within Gaul was a means to deter western
Christians from falling into Nestorius’s error.8 4
Cassian appears to have died before seeing Leo elected as Pope. Gennadius’s
brief biographical sketch, however, is not clear enough to pinpoint the exact year of
Cassian’s death. Rather, Gennadius closed his narrative by stating that Cassian died
in Marseille during the reigns of Theodosius and Valentinian, the latest possible ye ar
of which would be 450.8 5 However, since there is no rebuttal to Prosper’s critique, it
is assumed that Cassian died before responding. 8 6 Given that Prosper appears to
have penned his treatise under the assumption that Cassian was still alive it can best
be determined that he passed soon thereafter. What is more, Cassian disappears
from the records until Gennadius composed his collection of lives. It is, then,
prudent to follow Stewart’s cautious timing of the early 430’s.8 7
Cassian's Writings
83 Chadwick, John Cassian, 1 40.

87 Chadwick, John Cassian, 1 67 ; Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 24.
41
The written word far outlasts its author, or as literary theorist Roland Barthes
famously observed the death of the author sends the text onto a life of its own, long
after the last drop of ink dries on the page. For Cassian, this is notably the case. Long
after his death his works influenced monks and bishops in both the west and east.
Even the father of medieval monasticism, Benedict of Nursia, clearly owed much of
his rule to the ascetic theory of Cassian. Goodrich rightly reminds students of
Cassian’s works that we should avoid reading him as a proto-Benedictine, writing for
fellow cloistered monks.8 8 This, however, is no easy task given the reach of Cassian’s
treatises beyond the needs of Gaul, and the controversies of grace and Christology.
Though Cassian’s theological polemic did not weigh as decisively as did Leo’s tome,
Cassian’s monastic writings shaped the practice and theology of generations of
monks. We need only to turn to the conclusion of Benedict's famed rule to witness
Cassian’s enshrinement in ascetic theology. “What book of the holy catholic Fathers
does not resoundingly summon us along the true way to reach the Creator? Then,
besides the Conferences of the Fathers, their Institutes and the Lives, there is also
the rule of our holy Father Basil. For observant and obedient monks, all these are
nothing less than tools for the cultivation of virtues.” 8 9 In the course of a few
centuries, Cassian’s work numbered among the great writers he so deferentially
praised in the preface to The Institutes.
As is clear in the historiography, Cassian’s literary career began in Gaul with

89 Benedict, The Rule, 7 3. Trans. Timothy Fry , The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegev ille,
Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1 981 ), 95.
42
The Institutes. Unlike The Conferences, which were formed in three distinct phases,
The Institutes were penned as a whole. That, however, has not prevented modern
readers from noting the clear break in the text between books 1-4 and 5-12, between
the more legislative books and the treatment of the eight principle vices. Goodrich
especially has challenged this trend among scholars by treating the books as a whole,
not “as a preface to the more important writings that follow.” 9 0 Such an approach to
the whole of The Institutes is not all that far-fetched given the title of the work. While
more familiar English cognates point to institutions or things having been
established, Stewart reminds us that Cassian used the term in its broader sense.
“Cassian always uses instituta in the plural as a collective term for the teachings,
customs, and structures of the monastic life.” 9 1 Cassian made the nature of the work
clear in the preface: “For the whole of it consists in experience and practice alone,
and just as such things cannot be handed on except by an experienced person, so
neither can they be grasped or understood except by someone who has striven to
learn them with like zeal and effort.” 9 2 This book, its practices and descriptions,
established the context in which theoria is nurtured and the spiritual or, as Cassian
named it, the perfect life can flourish. 9 3
It is evident from the beginnings of The Institutes that Cassian conceived of at

92 Institutes Pref 5; 12. This coincides with how Charles Taylor describes his concept of the social
imaginary. “The social imaginary is that common understanding which makes possible common
practice, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.” Charles Tay lor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harv ard University Press, 2007 ), 17 2. Here Cassian pointed to bo th the practices
and the underpinning understanding they carry, the practice and the legitimizing elements of askesis.
93 Institutes Pref 7 ; 13. Stating that he will not tell miraculous tales, Cassian informs Castor that
“apart from wonderment they contribute nothing to the reader’s instruction in a perfect life.”
43
least the first book of The Conferences as part of the initial project. 9 4 In book one
Cassian plainly stated that “after having exposed their outward appearance to view
we shall then be able to discuss, in logical sequence, their inner worship.” 9 5 While
prayer was indeed the subject of the next two books, it is not until conferences nine
and ten that Cassian finally turned toward the discussion of true interior worship.
Thus, Stewart notes that The Institutes introduced “many elements of his overall
vision of the monastic life that will be developed further in The Conferences.”9 6 The
foundation laid in the practices of the coenobium, along with the teaching on the
vices, built to the theoretical introduction in the first conference. There Cassian
outlined what had been implicit up to the conclusion of The Institutes: the daily work
of monastic formation uproots the vices making possible the goal of purity of heart.
“Our profession also has a scopos proper to itself and its own end, on behalf of which
we tirelessly and even gladly expend all our efforts. For its sake the hunger of fasting
does not weary us, the exhaustion of keeping vigil delights us, and the continual
reading and meditating on Scripture does not sate us.” 9 7 While Cassian appears to
recount his conversations with the desert monks, the style and composition of the
texts outlined a clear systematic approach to the ascetic journey towards pure
prayer.9 8 In Cassian’s own words, “the end of every monk and the perfection of his
heart direct him to constant and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer and as much

95 Institutes 1.1 .1 ; 24.
98 Conferences 10.
44
as human frailty allows, it strives after an unchanging continual tranquility of mind
and perpetual purity.”9 9
On the surface, the second and third sets of conferences appear to have been
separate treatises, each composed at the request of other ascetic leaders within Gaul.
In his introduction to the second set of conferences, Ramsey notes that the theory of
compositional stages is problematic. “By saying that the first ten conferences were
insufficient for their audience and that he was obliged to add to them, Cassian
suggested that he had not originally planned to produce more than ten. Yet, this runs
up against a statement which appears in Inst 2.18 to the effect that some things
would be explained in The Conferences—namely, certain rules for kneeling and
fasting—which are not actually explained until [conference] 21.11.”1 0 0 Ramsey then
invokes the common problem with any theory of Cassian’s observations: the preface
is a literary device to serve the ends of the whole project. This is plausible given the
many observations that the whole of The Conferences has a unified trajectory and
style. Stewart offers the conjecture that Cassian must have already planned for the
later additions even in the midst of composition of the earlier conferences. 1 0 1
In order to test this hypothesis regarding the intentional interrelationship
between the two works, it is necessary to turn again to Cassian’s preface to The
Institutes. There, discussing the practices and values of asceticism, he stated that “if
they are not continually discussed and refined by frequent conferences with spiritual
99 Conferences 9.2.1 ; 329.

1 00 Boniface Ramsey, “Translator's No te to the Second Part,” The Conferences, 397 .
45
men, they quickly slip back into oblivion due to mental neglect.” 1 0 2 The later
conferences, then, appear to offer the literary counterpart for the conversations each
monk must have in his continued formation. Without having access to the many
famed abbas of Egypt, the Gallic reader received the next best thing in the full
complement of Cassian’s conferences. Through the written word, he brought the
masters to the monasteries of the western empire. Just as each conversation with the
abbas would focus on specific theological and practical questions, the whole of The
Conferences offered a range of topics for maintaining the perseverance of mind
required by the ascetic project. This, of course, does not prove Cassian outlined the
whole of The Conferences from the start. Rather, it makes plain that, while the first
ten conferences complete the trajectory of begun in The Institutes, the remaining
fourteen conferences were not haphazardly composed.
One thing is for certain, however; Cassian’s final work on Christology was not
part of the overall plan. Not only does the topic sit outside of his ascetic interest, but
the genre, style, and tone shift dramatically. Stewart, in his own polite way, simply
states: “A great work of Christology this is not.” 1 0 3 Chadwick, a little less generous,
states that “Cassian was fierce against Nestorius. He called him many opprobrious
names. The contrast is great with his peaceable mode of arguing against
Augustine.” 1 0 4 And compared to the measured insights throughout The Institutes
and Conferences, he “‘proceeds by accumulation,’ piling up evidence from the Bible
1 02 Institutes Pref 5; 12.

1 04 Chadwick, John Cassian., 147 .
46
and the work of venerable theologians.” 1 0 5 Add these assessments to the fact that
Cassian worked with an incomplete dossier of Nestorius’ writings and the
assessment of Cassian’s third and final treatise is grim. For modern scholars, On the
Incarnation is a second class treatise among Cassian’s writings. The treatise,
however, is not to be set aside too readily. With its many autobiographical
statements, uncommon in Cassian’s monastic writings, On the Incarnation primarily
serves as a window onto his life and influences. As Rousseau notes, it is significant
for the fact that it exists.1 0 6
Taken together, Cassian’s works reveal something of the pastoral concern of
the man. Though he began his journey as a quest for ascetic perfection, his travels
took him to the significant centers of the fourth and fifth century church. Even more
striking, Cassian was witness to, and took part in, some of the more pressing
theological and political controversies of the time. The texts he penned reveal not
only a monk on a quest for perfect prayer, but a priest among a network of bishops.
He sought to guide what he considered a wayward practice of the monastic life in
Gaul and wrote to confront the equally errant theologies of the day, especially
around grace and Christology. Thus, his acumen in presenting a convincing ascetic
system and narrative was matched by his ability to be in the right place at the right
time—Egypt as the conflicts over Origen grew; Constantinople and Rome while the
bishops negotiated the fate of John Chrysostom; and Gaul as the last phase of
1 05 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 23. Quoting Marie Anne Vannier “L’Influence de Jean Chy rs ostome
sur ‘argumentation scripturaire du De Incarnatione de Jean Cassien” Revue des sciences religieuses
69 (1 995), 125.
1 06 Rousseau, "Cassian: Monastery and World," 84.
47
debates around Augustine’s theology of grace. Despite the intentions named in the
monastic texts, Cassian wrote with a wider audience in mind. Whether that audience
included the aristocracy of Gaul or the significant ecclesial leaders of the day,
Cassian’s texts reached far beyond the walls of the monastery. Despite never
reaching the episcopate, Cassian mirrored the rise of the monastic authority within
the official structures of the church that so many of his contemporaries exemplified
as bishops.
Presenting the Question
The scholarship to date has divided the narrative of Cassian’s life and work by
necessity. One field of inquiry has focused on Cassian’s depiction of the Egyptian
context. This is especially clear in the work of Robert Taft who, while not focusing
exclusively on Cassian, reads Cassian’s legislation of the canonical hours as a window
onto the practices of the Nile delta monasteries. As is evident from the discussion of
Cassian’s biography and texts, The Institutes were not composed according to
modern historiographic expectations. This is not to present The Institutes as myth,
but to highlight Cassian’s own stated goals. He did not compose a church history as
did Eusebius or Socrates. Rather, the books of The Institutes and each of the
conferences were composed to guide and encourage ascetical practices far from the
famed desert. Modern studies, intent on using Cassian’s writings to better
understand Egyptian practice, must then sort the information within the texts for
inaccuracies.
Others scholars, exemplified in Stewart’s work, focus on Cassian the monk.
Avoiding the pit falls of the historical inaccuracies, this frame establishes both the
48
practices and the intention of Cassian’s ascetic vision. In terms of time and place,
Stewart’s narrative is bracketed by Egypt at the end of the fourth century and Gaul in
the first decades of the fifth. Telling the story of his monastic project thus attends to
the way of life within Cassian’s two communities and those that later copied and read
his work. As such, it becomes clear just how his ascetic psychology guided the pursuit
of purity of heart, and as Cassian described it in scriptural terms, the vision of God.
Even still, Stewart’s study is also incomplete and one facet of Cassian’s ascetic
vision remains to be explored. Building on the important studies of Cassian as monk,
this mode of inquiry applies ascetic and cultural theory to assess the intersection of
ritual practices and the desired contemplative goal. Here, Cassian’s legislation of the
performances of the ascetic community are studied for the ways in which they form
the monk and his prayer. It is, then, the trajectory of the present study. How did the
practices established in The Institutes and the values communicated within The
Conferences make the contemplative life possible? Given that Cassian kept a foot in
both the monastic and public worlds, understanding how he shaped this
contemplative culture expands the current understanding of how asceticism shaped
an ascetic vision for the Gallic context in the remainder of fifth century.
Chapter Two
An Ascetic Vision
The sands of Egypt were just across the Mediterranean from Gaul. Yet, the
two regions were worlds apart. Though they were both part of the expansive Roman
empire, their cultures were clearly distinct. In the desert, the wilderness cells
reinforced the ascetic impulse to withdraw from the busy city centers. The way of life
in eremitic isolation confirmed aphorisms frequently cited in Cassian, especially the
warning that monks should avoid bishops and women. In Gaul, however, the urban
settings of the monasteries kept them much closer to the society the monk seemingly
fled. While neither model of Christian askesis was totally set apart from the cities of
the provinces, in Gaul the ideological boundary between monastery and city was
much more porous. 1 The Gallic monk simply did not flee the societal ways of his
surroundings as did his Egyptian counterpart. In fact, the Gallic coenobium was part
of the cultural landscape of the province. One need only look to the famed history of
the monks of Lérins to see just how integral ascetic formation was for the church in
Gaul. 2 The island community was the crucible for a number of bishops, several of
1 James Goehring cautions that the language of withdraw was primarily about the ascetics spiritual
stance to the world and not helpful so far as their stance towards social and economic interactions.
James Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism
(Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1999), 51 .
2 “Cassian was to assist, in other words, a programme already under way .” Rousseau, "Cassian:
Monastery and World," 69. This ascetic project in Gaul was also made plain in Cassian's deferential
preface to The Institutes. It was Castor's desire to better inform, and thus form, the emerging ascetic
communities within Gaul that prompted Cassian's composition of both ascetic treatises. “You request
and demand that I too, rude and wanting in word and knowledge, contribute something from my poor
intelligence to the accomplishment of your desire and lay out in order, however inex pertly, the
institutes of the monasteries that we have observed throughout Egypt and Palestine.” Institutes Pref.
3; 1 2.
49
50
whom Cassian named in the prefaces to The Institutes and The Conferences.
With the invitation of Castor to guide the monasteries of Gaul, Cassian
entered into a project of bridging those two cultures. While the ways of Egypt were
known around the empire through the accounts of pilgrims and hagiographic
portraits of notable monks, articulating the downward mobility of the monks to the
wealthy Gauls would require some sensitivity. What is more, the environment of
Gaul was significantly different from the climate of Egypt, limiting the extreme acts
of self-renunciation witnessed in the sands of the desert. Regardless if Cassian was a
Gaul by birth, his project clearly required a sensitivity to the culture and climate. As
is evident in Cassian’s biography, he easily made his way through the various
ecclesial centers of the day, and was thus uniquely suited for the task.
Cassian approached the task by offering the simple frame of describing the
inner and outer life of the monk. While clearly following the Evagrian progression
from the practical life to contemplative knowing, Cassian’s literary style took the
monastic life out of the realm of theory and set his ascetic vision within his stories of
the desert. By outlining the practices of the monastic community and interpreting
them through the rich and frequent citation of scripture he constructed a social
setting in which the pursuit of contemplation was not only nurtured but expected.
Cassian's contemplative culture was decidedly ascetic in nature. Yet, Cassian's
asceticism was not just a matter of fasting and celibacy, though those were clearly a
part of the system of practices. In adapting the Egyptian heroics to the Gallic climate
and culture Cassian shifted the emphasis from the extreme practices to the goal of
theoria itself. Yet, Cassian was clear that theoria was a matter of grace. The monk,
51
then, could only strive for a secondary goal, namely the acquisition of virtue. The
practices of the monastery were, as will be seen, the means by which the monk
eradicated the vices and supplanted them with the virtues. Cassian's ascetic vision,
then, was comprised of three aspects; the monk, the practices, and the desired
intermediate goal. Cassian's understanding of monastic anthropology and
community further illustrate how these aspects of askesis shaped the contemplative
culture.
Cassian's Ascetic Vision
Having been formed in the monasteries of Egypt, Cassian was drawn to the
emerging ascetic imagination of the fourth century. This way of life revolved around
practices prayer, clothing to be worn, and the renunciations as well as frequent
teachings that interpreted these same practices within the larger Christian narrative
of the scriptures.3 The earliest literature of the desert tradition presented the ascetics
as teachers of this new social vision. All the seekers that flooded the wilderness
sought the spiritual wisdom of the new Christian athletes. Sitting in the cells, the
pilgrims encountered a way of life that contrasted the ways of the wider Roman
world. The abbas and ammas had renounced the basic tenants of family, wealth, and
prestige for a life of prayer. Upward mobility for these ascetics simply was more
about pursuing virtue and the gift of theoria.
3 See Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, 4. “Certain key texts from the Scriptures,
especially those having to do with renunciation and detachment, stood at the beginning of desert
monasticism, serving as primary sources of inspiration for the whole movement.” Though Burton-
Christie's study is limited to the early days of Egy ptian monasticism, his thesis that scripture was
central to the theology and practice of the monks is easily applied to The Institutes and Conferences.
Scripture was definitive of his asceticism. Not only did it prov ide the necessary linguistic key to
translate Evagrian apatheia but it also gav e the stories and images to shape Cassian's ascetic vision.
52
Cassian’s own texts reflected the learning process of the desert. Clearly,
though, Cassian’s literary structure went far beyond the simple sayings of the
Apopthemata Patrum and the narrative portraits of hagiographic literature. What is
more, Cassian expanded the legislative texts by setting them within the very stories
that were to establish his own legitimacy as an eyewitness to his famed spiritual
teachers.4 His narrative style, showcased so prominently in The Conferences and
frequently employed in The Institutes, guided the reader through the formative
experiences of the desert school itself. The reader, monk or lay, learned the practices
and the theoretical underpinnings of an explicitly ascetic vision by being transported
to the desert through the narrative itself. From the first pages of The Institutes the
pilgrim reader learned the ways and expectations of that monastic milieu.
The dialogs of The Conferences continued the formative journey for the
reader. Within any culture, the meaning of the practices is carried within the
practices themselves and yet require an explicit discussion of those same
understandings. 5 Forming the monks and the ascetic culture itself required both
action and teaching, practices and interpretations. In the case of these texts, Cassian
brought the reader into cells of the desert monks to hear the explanations first hand.
The reader, then, had the unique ability to listen over the shoulders of Cassian and
4 See Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture , 2. Discussing the current
assessment of Cassian as a mediocre historian and poor autobiographer Driv er notes that Jean Claude
Guy “asserted that Cassian's choice of an autobiographical form was little more than an attempt to
inv oke the v enerated linage of desert fathers.” By telling stories of encounters with these famed
monks of Egypt, Cassian lent a tone of legitimacy to his construction of a monastery in Gaul.
5 Contemporary social philosopher Charles Taylor calls such a project of culture making the
establishment of a “social imaginary.” Unlike other theories of societies that focus on either material
practices or ideologies, Tay lor describes a social imaginary as “that common understanding which
makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.” Charles Tay lor, A Secular
Age (Cambridge, MA: Harv ard University Press, 2007 ), 17 2.
53
Germanus as they asked the questions that emerged from the practices Cassian had
outlined in The Institutes.6 While Cassian and Germanus were not neophytes to the
ascetic way of life, their questions dug beneath the mechanics of the practices to
uncover the anthropological and spiritual realities that emerged from the
experiences of monastic life. Though the reader may not have been aware of the
response of the body and mind to the frequent fasts and vigils, the explanations of
the abbas offered the theoretical background still the same. The dialogs made
explicit the metaphysical, theological, and anthropological understandings which
made sense of the whole project of Christian askesis.
Unlike other cultures, which rely on enculturation to form its members,
Cassian structured the monastery as a place of resistance to the dominant
expectations of Roman society, especially about wealth 7 and conceptions about the
philosophical life. 8 Dominant cultures rely on enculturation to make a person a part
of the society. Cassian’s asceticism, however, intended the formation of a different
6 “The real creativ ity of the Conferences lies in its ability to present Cassian’s understanding of the
monastic ideal but also to provide a means of participating in the ideal. In reading and reciting his
text Cassian’s audience ‘hears’ the patriarchs, prophets, psalms, and proverbs through the abates in
the various conferences.” Christopher J. Kelly, Cassian’s Conferences: Scriptural Interpretation and
the Monastic Ideal (Burlington, V T: Ashgate, 2012), 98.
7 See Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 155-156. Goodrich critiques the idea that Cassian's askesis
paralleled the Roman practice of otium. Rather than appropriating the aristocratic practice of otium,
as demonstrated in Augustine’s early dialogs, Cassian is clear that renunciation is a central
component to Christian asceticism “Cassian did not see asceticism as something that could simply be
worked into the ex isting lifestyle of an elite class,” 155. See also Catherine Chin, "Prayer and Otium in
Cassian's Institutes," in Studia Patristica, Elizabeth A. Livingstone ed. (Leuven: Peters
Publishing,2001), 24. “In the development of ascetic culture in Christian late antiquity traditional
aspects of Roman culture were often reinterpreted and rev alued through Christian ascetic practice.”
8 See Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, trans Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004). Hadot’s work points to the ascetic nature of Hellenistic philosophy, even as a
spiritual exercise. In discussing the way of life of Plato’s academy, Hadot observes that Socrates own
self-reflection “was, indissolubly, an askesis of the body and of thought—a divestment of the passions
in order to purify the intelligence,” 67 .
54
person, one that contrasted and even resisted the expectations of the wider culture.
Richard Valantasis, then, distinguishes cultural formation and askesis in his cultural
theory of asceticism. “The distinction here is between exercises and practices
intended to integrate a person into the dominant society (formation) and exercises
and practices intended to create a subjectivity alternative and subversive to the
dominant structure (asceticism).”9 Ascetic practices, then, take place within a given
context all the while pointing toward another way of being human. Cassian, thus,
appropriated a range of symbols, terms, images, and even myths in order to
“articulate something new and different, something alternative and transformative
of the dominant.” 1 0 More specifically, The Institutes established “the rules of the
ascetical community as a means of personal transformation.” 1 1 Such transformation,
however, was not aimless. Rather, as Valantasis notes, the monk's intention to form
a new self “demands a level of commitment to changing and transformation that
necessitates active pursuit of the ascetic goal.” 1 2
Cassian established the teleology of his ascetic culture in the transition from
The Institutes to The Conferences. “Consequently let us proceed from the external
and visible life of the monks which we have summarized in the previous books, to the
invisible character of the inner man, and from the practices of canonical prayers, let
our discourse arise to the increasing nature of that perpetual prayer which the
9 Richard V alantasis, The Making of the Self: Ancient and Modern Asceticism (Eugene, OR; Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 2008), 85.
1 0 V alantasis, The Making of the Self, 115.
55
Apostle commands.” 1 3 In the first conference Cassian then outlined the goals—
scopos and telos—of all the ascetic practices in the scriptural language of the
Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” 1 4 The biblical
imagery of puritas cordis provided the needed language to reclaim the once
questioned theology of Evagrius. For the Origenist, the achievement of apatheia was
the necessary foundation of contemplation. By linking apatheia to purity of heart
Cassian articulated the aim of all the ascetic effort within the monastery.1 5 Yet with
that aim established, the beatitude also named the contemplative gift of seeing the
divine. Thus, Cassian distinguished between the result of the monk's toil and the
desired end. 1 6
Cassian elaborated on the intersection of the practices and the goal of purity
of heart central to his ascetic vision in the remainder of the conference with Abba
Moses. The abba made this much clear: “Our profession has a scopos proper to itself
and its own end on behalf of which we tirelessly and even gladly expend all our
efforts.” 1 7 In the flesh this end of the beatific vision was both fleeting and a matter of
grace. So for Cassian's ascetic community all the practices were oriented toward the
immediate goal and not the ultimate contemplative end. “Thus, indeed, the end of
1 3 Conferences Pref 1.5; 30.

1 4 Matthew 5:8
1 5 It is generally assumed that Cassian used puritas cordis in order to avoid the controv ersy
surrounding Ev agrius’s theology. Driscoll, howev er, argues that “Cassian not only had other Latin
philosophical terminology available to him but he also had in Ev agrius himself an extensive use of
‘purity of heart’ to signify apatheia.” Jeremy Driscoll, Steps to Perfection: Studies on Spiritual
Progress in Evagrius Ponticus (New York, NY : Paulist Press, 2005), 7 8.
1 6 Conferences 1.4.3; 43. “The end of our profession, as we have said, is the kingdom of God or the
kingdom of heaven; but the goal or scoops is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone
to reach that end.”
1 7 Conferences 1.2.3; 42.
56
our chosen orientation is eternal life,” stated Moses, “but the scopos is purity of heart
which has not undeservedly been called holiness. Without this the aforesaid end will
not be able to be seized.” 1 8 In technical terms, the monk’s ultimate end was theoria—
the topic of the famed conference ten.
This contemplative telos was not possible, according to Cassian, without the
achievement of an intermediate goal of purity of heart. The discussions of the vices
within The Institutes made this clear. All the prayers and renunciations, even the
clothing of the monk, worked on the ascetic by clearing the ground of the strangling
vices so that the seeds of contemplation might take root. Abba Moses articulated this
immediate scope of ascetic practice through a metaphor of the farmer.
For the farmer, avoiding neither the torrid rays of the sun one time nor
the frost and ice another, tirelessly tills the soil and subdues the
unyielding clumps of earth with his frequent plowing, and all the while
he keeps his scopos in mind: that, once it has been cleared of all the
briers and every weed has been uprooted, by his hard work he may
break the soil into something as fine as sand. In no other way does he
believe that he will achieve his end, which is to have a rich harvest,
abundant crops. 1 9
For Cassian’s monk, the harvest was not fruits and vegetables but the vision of God
rooted in a virtuous life. “Thus, indeed, the end of our chosen orientation is eternal
life, according to the very words of the Apostle: ‘Having your reward indeed, in
holiness, but your end in eternal life.’” 2 0 Even more to the point, Cassian was clear:
1 8 Conferences 1.5.2; 44.

1 9 Conferences 1.2.1 ; 41 -42. Though Ramsey does not cite this as a scriptural allusion the metaphor
reveals just how much scripture is embedded in the Cassian’s tex ts. Here the parable of the sower of
the synoptic gospels (Mark 4:1 -20; Matthew 13:1 -23; Luke 8:1 -15) lay just beneath the surface of
Cassian's metaphor. Abba Moses’ use of the image, however, looks at th e parable from the perspective
of the farmer, asking how any ground depicted in parable might be made ready for the seed.
20 Conferences 1.5.2; 44. cf Romans 5:22.
57
"Whatever therefore can direct us to this scopos, which is purity of heart, is to be
pursued with all our strength, but whatever deters us from this is to be avoided as
dangerous and harmful. For it is for its sake that we do and endure everything, for its
sake that family, homeland, honor, wealth, the pleasures of this world, and every
enjoyment are disdained—so that perpetual purity of heart may be kept."2 1
Echoing the previous books of The Institutes, Abba Moses turned to the
ascetic practices themselves.
For the sake of this, then, everything is to be done and desired. For its
sake solitude is to be pursued; for its sake we know that we must
undertake fasts, vigils, labors, bodily deprivation, readings, and other
virtuous things, so that by them we may be able to acquire and keep a
heart untouched by any harmful passion, and so that by taking these
steps we may be able to ascend to the perfection of love. These
observances do not exist for themselves.2 2
Throughout the remaining conferences the abbas repeated a similar refrain, pointing
to these practices as the remedy for whatever may divert the monks from their
desired end. 2 3 “Fasting, vigils, and the meditation on scripture” was the short hand
for the practices Cassian defined and established in his first treatise. This is to say
that there was a foundation to which the monk was to return when the virtues
seemed beyond reach.
The Conferences, then, extended and explained the rich practices of prayer,
dress, and renunciations. The novice, newly introduced to the ways of the

22 Conferences 1.7 .1 ; 45.
23 For Ev agrius, “the ascetic life is the spiritual method for cleansing affective part of the soul.”
Praktikos 77 ; Bamberger, 36. Driscoll sets the interaction of heart, mind, and praktike in his
discussion of apatheia in Ev agrius say ing that “heart is certainly the object of purification in the work
of praktike, but it is also the instrument for contemplation.” Driscoll, Steps to Perfection, 92.
58
community, would not remain content with just the rote repetition of prayers.
Cassian was at full stretch to show just how essential the practices were for the
achievement of the contemplative goal. In other words, the ways of the community
were a means toward the end. To take part in the fasts and prayers as a goal in
themselves would contradict the very vision Cassian was outlining. 2 4 For as he made
clear, to do so would be the height of self-interest. “In vain, therefore, will a person
undertake these exercises who is satisfied with them as if they were the highest good
and who fixes his heart's attention only on them and not on attaining the end, on
account of which these other things are sought, and who makes every effort for the
sake of virtue but, while indeed possessing the tools of the discipline, is ignorant of
the end, in which all that is profitable is to be found.” 2 5 All the effort, all the prayers
and vigils, and the simple meals were the means to cultivating virtue. Just as the
farmer used the tools of his trade to work the ground so that it might yield a rich
harvest, the monk labored through the ascetic practices to remove the vices from the
field of the heart. In doing so, Cassian said, the way to theoria was made possible. 2 6
The practical life was not unique to Cassian’s ascetic vision. As Pierre Hadot
24 Discussing the intersection of liturgical studies and the social sciences, Nathan Mitchell notes that
“it comes as no surprise, therefore, that the ascetic practices of cura animae inev itably involve ritual.”
Nathan D. Mitchell, Liturgy and the Social Sciences (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1 999),
65. While ascetic practices are in some way ritualistic, it is important to note here that the ritual par
excellence was liturgical prayer.
25 Conferences 1.7 .4; 46.
26 Here Valantasis’ definition helps make clear the teleological nature of askesis in general.
“Asceticism may be defined as performances within a dominant social environment intended to
inaugurate a new subjectiv ity , different social relations, and an alternative symbolic universe.”
V alantasis, The Making of the Self, 38. It is the particular intentions of the practices that move the
definition from theory to description. In other words, to understand a particular form of asceticism,
such as Cassian’s, it is important to discern what goal is being sought. For Cassian, the goal of theoria
frames and interprets all the practices he outlined.
59
demonstrates, the ancient philosopher was not just a thinker but was himself in
pursuit of a particular way of life. In his book, aptly named Philosophy as a Way of
Life, Hadot sets out the vision of ancient philosophy. “Philosophy,” he notes, “was a
mode of existing in the world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal
of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s life.” 2 7 Hadot goes on to
argue that Christianity was a way of life parallel to the Greek philosophers, going so
far as to call it “revealed philosophy.” 2 8 The aims differed, however, between the
Greek philosopher and Cassian’s monk. By contrast, “philosophy was a way of life,
both in its exercise and effort to achieve wisdom, and in its goal, wisdom itself.” 2 9
Instead of prayers and fasts, the philosopher’s quest was based in the “disciplines of
logic, physics, and ethics.” 3 0 The monastic disciplines of prayer and fasting were the
practices which established the virtues in Cassian’s monks. In the academy, the
pursuit of wisdom was built on intricate systems of rhetoric and logic. Yet, the
Christian ascetic was to eradicate each vice through the ascetic practices and replace
them with the corresponding virtues. As Cassian stated in the preface to The
27 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 265.

28 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 237 . “If doing philosophy meant living in conformity with
Reason, then the Christians were philosophers, for they lived in conformity with the divine Logos.”
239. Stalnaker and Driscoll turn to Hadot in order to understand the formational practices of both the
philosopher and the Christian. “Philosophical theories, Hadot claims, served these deeper practices of
personal transformation and were not in themselves the primary ends of philosophy .” Aaron
Stalnaker, “Spiritual Ex ercises and the Grace of God: Paradoxes of Personal Formation in Augustine,”
Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24:2 (2004), 139. This presents a difficulty in reading tex ts
on spiritual ex ercises. “Texts promoting spiritual exercise must be evaluated with a standard different
from that by which texts involv ed in doctrinal questions are ev aluated. It is these latter that may be
ex pected to provide a reader with a clearly expressed sy stematic presentation on some given position,
but spiritual exercises do not offer this same kind of clarity.” Ev agrius, Ad Monachos, Jeremy Driscoll
O.S.B. trans. (New York, NY : Newman Press, 2003), 205.
29 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 265.
30 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 267 .
60
Institutes, his whole project was a quest for moral transformation. “For my plan is to
say a few things not about the marvelous works of God but about the improvement of
our behavior and the attainment of the perfect life.” 3 1
“For by this the rudiments of conversion,” Cassian stated, “the purgation of
vice, and the preserving of virtue are acquired by those who are being schooled for
the way of perfection.” 3 2 Unlike the philosopher, whose sources included the works
of Plato, Epicurus, and Aristotle, Cassian’s monks explored the system of vices and
virtues outlined by Evagrius. However, Cassian’s own systematizing of the vices
alongside the virtues stood out from the theology of his own teacher. Even though
Cassian first outlined the vices in the concluding books of The Institutes, his later
treatment of them in the fifth conference dealt specifically with the further
categorization of the vices and their remedies. As Stewart notes, the pursuit of purity
must be focused on the eradication of the vices: “Nonetheless, the reign of God can
be established in mind and heart after the reign of sin and the devil has ceased.” 3 3
The link between the first four books of The Institutes and the remainder
often seems tenuous. Yet, in light of the wider system of virtues and the cultivation of
the heart for the reign of God, the connections were clear. For example, the vices
presented the monk with the weeds and rocks needing to be removed from a fallow
field. As Cassian stated clearly in the opening of book five of The Institutes, the
remainder of the treatise was written “so that we may worthily investigate [the vices’]

32 Institutes 4.39.1 ; 99.
33 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 57 .
61
nature, which are so intricate, so hidden, and so obscure, then that we may
adequately lay bare their causes, … so that we may propose cures and remedies”3 4
Still later in the same book, Cassian clarified his own intentions for exploring the
passions. He, like the elders of the desert who uncovered the hidden vices, wrote the
books to explain the vices so that they may be brought to light for the reader.
“Although the causes of these passions are recognized by everyone as soon as they
have been exposed by the teachings of the elders, until they have been revealed they
are unknown to everyone, even though we are all hurt by them and they are found in
everyone.” 3 5 In the case of Cassian’s own ascetic understanding, the vices themselves
were not self-evident, but were to be recognized in the monastic habit, the
community’s prayers, and the monk’s own fasts and the teachings that revealed the
vices in the quest for virtue. Throughout his description of these practices in the first
books of The Institutes, Cassian employed images and scriptures to make evident
both what was to be practiced and renounced, and thus what was to be gained, in the
ascetic journey.
Such a revealing of the vices within the ascetic practices was most evident in
the opening of The Institutes. In the first book Cassian outlined the clothing
appropriate to the monk, including a signature leather belt. As he did with the whole
ascetic project, Cassian linked the belt to the scriptural type of Elijah, whom Cassian
described as the biblical forefather of Christian asceticism. “From his clothing, the
king at once pictured the man of God, and he said: 'It was Elijah the Tishbite.' He
34 Institutes 5.1 ; 117 .

35 Institutes 5.2.1; 117 .
62
clearly recognized the man of God by his belt and by the hairy and unkempt aspect of
his body.”3 6 A monk’s clothing, as it was with Elijah, was a sign to those around them
of the virtues they were to embody. At the same time, the habit and belt were
reminders to the monks themselves of the vices to be eradicated and the virtues for
which they were to strive. Through the scriptural references Cassian provided the
necessary explication for each of the practices. In linking outward practices such as
clothing to scriptural explanations, Cassian brought together both the practices and
their importance for the entire ascetic project. What was to be worn, then, were
constant reminders to the monks of the goals and means of their transformation.
At the same time, the outer actions such as fasting and wearing the habit and
belt, were more than mere signs. These outer practices for Cassian were aimed at the
transformation of the inner man. In discussing the role of fasting in the fifth book of
The Institutes he made clear that “it is not the corruptible flesh but rather the pure
heart that is made a dwelling for God and a temple for the Holy Spirit. While the
outer man fasts, then, it behooves the inner one as well to abstain from harmful
foods and, in particular, to make himself pure for God so that he may deserve to
welcome Christ in himself as his guest, as the blessed Apostle teaches in these words;
‘May Christ,’ he says, ‘dwell in the inner man through faith in your hearts.’”3 7 Though
Evagrius had discussed the famed eight principle thoughts prior to Cassian’s
composition of his monastic works, Cassian’s own approach was practical from start
to finish. Having laid out each vice in The Institutes, Cassian returned to them in the
36 Institutes 1.1.3; 21. cf I Kings 1 :8.

37 Institutes 5.21.5; 131. cf Ephesians 3:1 6-17 .
63
pages of conference seven. There he categorized the vices by dividing and
partitioning each one into a loose system of genus and species. First, he divided the
eight vices into two categories: “Of these vices there are two kinds. They are either
natural like gluttony or unnatural like avarice.” From there, he further distinguished
them saying, “they have four kinds of operation. Certain ones cannot be
consummated without bodily action, such as gluttony and fornication. Certain
others, however, can be completed without any bodily action whatsoever, such as
pride and vainglory. Some take their motivating causes from without, such as avarice
and anger. Others, however, are aroused from within, such as acedia and sorrow.” 3 8
From there Cassian partitioned each vice further into separate species by its origins
and functions in the person. While the natural and unnatural distinction separated
the eight vices between Fornication and Avarice, Cassian articulated a more
significant division between the first six and the later two—vainglory and pride.
These two served as the pinnacle of Cassian’s system, for they remained with the
monk long after the others had been eradicated. Such a system, while complex and
interconnected, helped clarify the vices and their effects for monks and readers alike.
Yet, like the clothing and other practices, knowing this information was essential
insofar as the monks worked on themselves to pull the vices up by their roots.
Cassian further explained the interdependent nature of the first six vices so
that the monks might begin to see how each vice built on the previous.
Although these eight vices, then, have different origins and varying
operations, yet the first six—namely, gluttony, fornication, avarice,
anger, sadness, and acedia—are connected among themselves by a
38 Institutes 5.3; 11 8.
64
certain affinity and, so to speak, interlinking, such that the overflow of

the previous one serves as the start of the next one. For from an excess
of gluttony there inevitably springs fornication; from fornication,
avarice; from avarice, anger; from anger, sadness; and from sadness,
acedia. Therefore these must be fought against in a similar way and by
the same method, and we must always attack the ones that follow by
beginning with those that come before. 3 9
“Vainglory and pride,” Cassian explained, “are linked in similar fashion, like the vices
that we have spoken of, such that growth in the first becomes the start of the second,
for an overflow of vainglory begets the beginnings of pride.” 4 0 In typical fashion,
Cassian turned to the scriptures, particularly the temptations of Jesus in the desert,
to explore and further explain the vices. Having been tempted to turn stone to bread,
Cassian noted it would not follow for the tempter to move up the ladder by the
natural steps. “For one who had conquered gluttony could not be tempted by
fornication, which proceeds from the former's repletion and from its root.” 4 1 Still
later, Cassian reiterated the connections between the vices saying that “once gluttony
was conquered [the devil] was unable to prevail over him with fornication, and so he
passed on to avarice, which he knew was the root of all evils.” 4 2 The ascending nature
of the vices, according to Cassian, was also the foundation for their remedy. That is
to say that when a monk wrestled with a vice, he was to return to the previous
passion since it clearly had not been dispatched. “Therefore these must be fought
against in a similar way and by the same method, and we must always attack the
39 Conferences 5.10.1 ; 1 89.

40 Conferences 5.10.3; 1 89.
41 Conferences 5.6.3; 1 86.
42 Conferences 5.6.6; 1 87 .
65
ones that follow by beginning with those that come before.” 4 3
Uprooting the vices, however, was not just a matter of cutting them out of the
heart through prayer, fasting, or renunciations. Each passion was to be replaced with
its corresponding virtue. In the cultivation of a pure heart the monk did not leave
open the space created by the eradicated vice. Purity of heart, then, was also an
ascent into holiness, a holiness defined by the possession of the virtues. Again, using
the imagery of the scriptures, Cassian described this cultivation of the virtues
through the metaphor of the nations of Israel.
Once the vices have been overcome by the people of Israel—that is, by
the virtues struggling against them—chastity will thenceforth seize for
itself the place in our heart which the spirit of lust and fornication used
to have; patience will lay claim to what wrath had laid hold of; a
beneficial sadness and one that is full of joy will take over from what
death dealing sadness had occupied; fortitude will begin to cultivate
what acedia was laying waste; humility will honor what pride used to
despise. And so, when all these vices have been expelled, their places in
the dispositions will be occupied by the opposing virtues.4 4
Establishing the virtues in the heart of the monk was not, for Cassian, just a matter
of replacing a virtue for a vice, Rather, the ascetic sought to restore the created
intentions for humanity. “For the will of the Lord did not assign by nature the
possession of our heart to the vices but the virtues.”4 5
All of the practices and explanations outlined in Cassian’s two treatises were
then part of a larger attempt to construct a particular ascetic culture. 4 6 As Valantasis
43 Conferences 5.10.1 ; 1 89.

44 Conferences 5.23.2; 201-202.
46 In his treatment of the structural patterns of ritual, V ictor Turner noted that “these cultural forms
prov ide men with a set of templates or models which are, at one level, periodical reclassifications of
reality and man’s relationship to society, nature, and culture. But they are more than classifications,
66
notes in his definition of asceticism, the practices and performances were
constructed to bring about a new virtuous self, new social relationships, and a new
understanding of the world. 4 7 Unlike the Roman pursuit of status and affluence and
the philosophical quest for wisdom, Cassian oriented, and thus defined, his
asceticism by the pursuit of contemplation. While The Institutes introduced the
vices, Cassian set them within the quest for such a contemplative goal in The
Conferences. The dialogs, then, focused on the specific questions that emerged from
the monks chosen way of life. Thus Cassian and Germanus served as the literary
exemplars of monks striving to understand the new vision as they were in the midst
of ascetic practice. The Conferences filled in the theoretical structure undergirding
the contemplative practices. Both works together set the “context that gives sense to
the practices. And hence the new understanding comes to be accessible to the
participants in a way it wasn’t before.”4 8 In other words, the monks understood the
human person and community “through the practices which put [them] into
effect.” 4 9 As Valantasis states in his cultural definition of askesis, these practices or
performances established a new understanding of the world and the monk's life
within it. 5 0
Cassian's Ascetic Anthropology
The transformation of the monk was central to Cassian's whole ascetic
since they incite men to action as well as thought.” V ictor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and
Anti-Structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969), 1 28-129.
47 V alantasis, The Making of the Self, 38.
48 Tay lor, A Secular Age, 17 6.
49 Tay lor, A Secular Age, 200.
50 V alantasis, The Making of the Self, 38.
67
project. Yet, contrary to modern expectations, Cassian's vision of the contemplative
monk was not of a spirit that had escaped the body, nor were his ascetic practices a
matter of self negation or hatred of the body. Rather, Cassian presented a holistic
picture of the monk as comprised of both body and soul. Theoria, as the
intermediate vision of God in this life, was not an escape from the body but was a
contemplative vision precisely in the same body that shaped the soul through as cetic
practice. This integrated understanding of the corporeal and the intelligible made
clear that the state of one was manifest in the other. Cassian's anthropology was,
then, a microcosm of the Platonic hierarchy of being, where the soul and the body
were balanced by the will.
The contemporary and pervasive trope regarding Christian askesis paints the
monk as a dualist whose only goal was to punish and escape the body. ER Dodds
describes this hatred of the body in antiquity as a disease. The sources of this
contempt, he said, can be found in the "more extreme forms in Christian and Gnostic
circles." 5 1 Of course the Christian desert ascetics were the prime example of the
dualism Dodds himself deplores. "Of continuous physical self-torture the lives of
Desert Fathers provide numerous and repulsive examples." 5 2 Though it has been
some time since Dodds penned this observation, it remains embedded in the
theological work of contemporary scholars. It is all too common to read critiques of
dualisms beginning with the ascetics of late antiquity. It seems that no matter how
often students of Christian asceticism describe the complexities of these
51 E.R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience
from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge; Cambridge Univ ersity Press, 1 965), 35.
52 Dodds, Pagans and Christians, 33-34.
68
contemplative pursuits, the core of the story remains entrenched in the perspective
exemplified in Dodds' disgust with the desert monks. The work of Peter Brown ,
especially “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man”53 and Body and Society, has
helped shift the assumptions about the late antique ascetics. As he noted in Body
and Society, “the mood prevalent among the Desert Fathers implicitly contradicts'
the common reading of the monastic literature.”5 4 While the mood of the desert
monks contradicts the story Dodds and others tell of the ascetic traditions, Cassian's
holistic anthropology explicitly challenges this modern understanding. 5 5
Unfortunately, Cassian's anthropology has largely been left unexplored. This
is in part due to the scope and style of Cassian's ascetic treatises. Since Cassian did
not expressly write a treatise on the soul his understanding of the body, soul, and will
was spread throughout The Institutes and The Conferences. Any summary of his
anthropology, then, must knit together pertinent passages from all of his treatises.
While Evagrius' system certainly runs through Cassian's system, such a discussion of
Cassian's anthropology should be constructed on his own terms. In such a form,
Cassian's debt to Platonic and Evagrian thought emerges in the contrasts and
53 Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man,” The Journal of Roman Studies 60 (197 1),
80-101.
54 Peter Brown, Body and Society (New York, NY : Columbia University Press, 1988), 222. Stalnaker
argues in his discussion of spiritual ex ercises in Augustine’s writings also challenges the modern
assumption that late antique Christians acted against the flesh. “The flesh (as body ) is not the enemy
of the spirit and comes from the same creator, although they lust against each other.” Stalnaker,
“Spiritual Ex ercises and the Grace of God,” 151.
55 This was not just a part of Cassian’s understanding but also part of a growing role of the body in
late antique culture. Patricia Cox -Miller has helpfully summarized this turn as a corporeal
imagination. “Central to the material turn was the use of the body as a tangible frame of selfhood, a
phenomenon that was most strikingly manifest in Christianity and Neoplatonism.” Patricia Cox -
Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christian ity (Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylv ania Press, 2009), 1 8.
69
differences from those same systems.
The basic categories of material and intelligible ran through both the
philosophical literature and Cassian's ascetic treatises. Yet, Cassian did not approach
this distinction as a cosmological hierarchy but as a microcosm of the monk himself.
As Cassian made clear in the prefaces to both The Institutes and the first collection of
conferences this microcosm was framed not by the language of the outer and inner
monk. Such a frame did not, however, elide the discussion of body and soul. Rather,
Cassian frequently invoked the two parts of the human person, making clear that
both the body and the soul were integral to Cassian's ascetic vision. The desires of
both the flesh and soul were opposed to one another and set in balance by the
individual's will. 5 6 Through his noted emphasis on mitigating the extremes, Cassian
guided his readers to view the harnessed movement of these desires as the guiding
momentum towards purity of heart, and thus theoria.
Cassian introduced the language of inner and outer in the first book of The
Institutes. "After having exposed their outward appearance to view we shall then be
able to discuss, in logical sequence, their inner worship." 5 7 Such a distinction was
natural given that Cassian dedicated the first book to the clothing of the monk. The
outward appearance, then, was an explicit reference to the physical comportment of
the monk. Cassian carried this framework of the outer and visible character of the
56 While Cassian mentions these three components, it differs from the anthropology of both the
Platonists and Ev agrius. Summarizing Ev agrius’s discussion of the heart, Driscoll highlights the
ty pically Platonic anthropological schema. “Perfect passionlessness means that health is established
in the two passionate parts of the soul, the concupiscible and the irascible. Then these two parts work
together to maintain the soul in this state and leave it free for its higher part, the rational, to function
for knowledge.” Driscoll, Steps to Perfection, 80.
57 Institutes 1.1.1 ; 21.
70
monk and his inner and invisible self through to the preface of The Conferences. "Let
us proceed from the external and visible life of the monks, which we have
summarized in the previous books, to the invisible character of the inner man."5 8
While The Institutes established the practices of the cenobium, the treatise was not
limited to just the outer life of the monk. The first four books of certainly focused
with the outer practices of the monastery, yet the remaining books described the
inward nature of the vices. Even then, Cassian did not limit these books to either a
discussion of the outer practices or the inner realities. Rather, he presented the outer
exercises alongside discussions of their inner realities and meanings. For example,
Cassian's discussion of the monk's clothing described both the outer materials and
the inner realities they signified. 5 9 The leather belt, Cassian told his readers, was
both functional and a spiritual reminder. "Clothed, then, in these garments, the
soldier of Christ should know first he is protected by being bound with a belt so that
he may not be only prepared for all the exercises of the monastery, but also
unimpeded by his garb itself." 6 0 At the close of the book, Cassian returned to the
58 Conferences First Preface 1.5; 30.

59 Clothing, as a part of cultural conventions, was social in nature as it signified to others one’s status
or vocation. Brown notes the cultural significance of clothing in his biography of Augustine. “Life was
liv ed in the open air. Sharp differences of wealth and status were emphasized as conspicuously as
possible: Augustine will show little interest in the plastic arts, but will emphasize the importance of
dress ‘by which the ranks of men are distinguished’ (On Christian Teaching, 2.25.39); and in an age of
ostentatious costumes, the simple black robe, the birrus, which Augustine wore as a ‘servant of God’,
would have marked him out in a particularly public manner.” Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A
Biography 2nd Edition (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 1 88. Susanna Elm
notes a similar aspect to the clothing in Macrina’s community. Yet, in this case, the meaning of her
clothing revealed her spiritual state. “Only on her death-bed, once she had (presumably ) risen to the
ev erlasting kingdom of heaven, was Macrina clad in a white robe; only then did she wear the robes of
the v irginal bride awaiting the heavenly spouse.” Susanna Elm, “V irgins of God:” The Making of
Asceticism in Late Antiquity (New York, NY : Ox ford University Press, 1994), 98.
60 Institutes 1.11.1 ; 26.
71
significance of the belt, saying that the monk
should also be aware that in this very piece of clothing—the belt—there

is no small mystery impinging upon him. For girding his loins and
encircling himself with dead skin means that he is bearing about the
mortification of his members, which contain the seeds of wantonness
and lasciviousness, and he always understands that the gospel precept
which declares 'Let your loins be girt' pertains to him by way of the
apostolic interpretation, namely; 'Put to death your members that are
on earth—fornication, impurity, wantonness, evil desire.' Hence we
read in Holy Scripture that only those in whom the seeds of sexual
intercourse were extinct were girt with a belt. 6 1
As part of a monk's outward clothing, the reminder was clear: The belt enabled the
monk to perform the tasks of the community such as daily work and the practices of
prayer. Simply put, the belt did what a belt does—hold up the monk’s robe, keeping it
from interfering with his feet. At the same time, the belt was not just a matter of
function or style. Putting on the belt was also a sign act that reminded the monk of
his ascetic vocation and its coinciding virtues, in this case chastity. In this way, the
belt was a sacramentum, a mystery that the monk wore daily. The belt was, in
Augustine's famed definition of a sacrament, an outward sign of an inward grace. 6 2
Or in this case, the simple piece of leather was an outward sign of the inner chastity
61 Institutes 1.11.2-3; 26. cf Luke 1 2:35 and Colossians 3.5. “secundo cognoscat etiam in ipso habitu
cinguli inesse non paruum quod a se expetitur sacramentum. accinctio enim lumborum et ambitus
pellis emortuae significat eum mortificationem circumferre membrorum, in quibus libidinis atque
lux uriae seminaria continentur, euangelicum illud mandatum quod dicitur sint lumbi uestri
praecincti apostolica interpretatione ingeri sibi semper intellegens: mortificate scilicet membra uestra
quae sunt super terram, fornicationem, inmunditiam, lib idinem, concupiscentiam malam.” Corpus
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 17 . Ramsey ’s rendering of sacramentum as mystery is
certainly accurate. However, Cassian also says that the belt is a sign of the gospel mandate “Let your
loins be girt.”
62 “And thereafter he ought to be told what is also signified by the form of words to which he has
listened, and what in him is seasoned by that (spiritual grace) of which this material substance
presents the emblem.” Augustine, “On the Catechising of the Uninstructed,” trans S.D.F. Salmond
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series 1 volume 3 (Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1 887 ;
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing Inc., 1994), 313. De catechizandis rudibus 26.50. To say that
the belt was a sacrament along the lines of the Eucharist or baptism would be a stretch. Yet, Cassian’s
use of both “sacramentum” and “significant” echoes Augustine’s general definition.
72
the monk sought in his vows and practices.
This interplay between the inner and outer was also true of the rest of the
monastic garb. The monk's clothing had to be simple, and yet enough to counter "the
shame of nakedness." It also had to be practical for the climate, especially in the
colder environs of Gaul. The simplicity of the garb clearly encouraged humility but
even pride can result from ostentatious repentance. Given the link between the belt
and the monk's chastity it would be reasonable to assume that Cassian followed the
scriptural example of wearing sackcloth as sign of repentance. Yet, such clothing was
even too prideful for the Egyptian monks. Thus, Cassian instructed his readers that
"the desert monks utterly rejected sackcloth as showy and conspicuous to everyone
and for that very reason as not only being unable to c onfer the benefits on the spirit
but even containing the possibility of begetting a vain pride." 6 3
In the first book of The Institutes Cassian established the interplay of inner
and outer that ran throughout the remainder of Cassian's ascetic treatises. By
outlining the clothing of the monk Cassian made clear to his readers that the body
was the sight of formation and learning. What was done to and in the flesh shaped
the state of the monk's spirit according to either the vices or the virtues. In the case
of the monastic garb the monk dressed for each day's prayer and labor. By doing so,
he would cover his body in the material reminders of his ascetic quest. Using both
the scriptures and the traditions of the desert monks Cassian connected the outward
and material things with a decidedly ascetic meaning—whether the material might
flame a vice or extinguish it through manifesting its corresponding virtue. The vices
63 Institutes 1.2.3; 23.

73
certainly played a key role in Cassian's ascetic vision.
This much has been outlined by many contemporary studies of Cassian's
theology, and is evident from even a cursory reading of Cassian's texts. The structure
of the vices in both The Institutes and the fifth conference further illustrated the
interplay of the body and the spirit. For example, Cassian's discussion of gluttony
provided the opportunity to link the immaterial with the material. More specifically,
Cassian instructed his readers that the "integrity of mind is closely connected with an
empty stomach." 6 4 Such a statement may confirm the popular narrative of the
monastic contempt for the flesh, yet fasting for Cassian was not just the limiting of
food and water. It was a practice of both the body and soul. "We should not believe
that mere fasting from visible food can suffice for the perfection of heart and purity
of body if a fasting of the soul has not also been joined to it." 6 5 Ascetic effort was, for
Cassian, something done both spiritually and corporeally.
Cassian further established the links between the body and the soul in the
discussion of fornication in the sixth book of The Institutes. In the opening sections
Cassian warned that the emphasis should not be placed "on the discipline of the body
alone." Rather, the soul should fast from the other vices, and be preoccupied with
meditation on the scriptures. "It behoves us," Cassian noted citing the Gospel of
Matthew, "to clean first, in the Lord's words, 'the inside of the cup and the dish so
that the outside may become clean as well.'" 6 6 Cassian's ascetic vision was a matter of

65 Institutes 5.21.1 ; 130.
66 Institutes 6.2; 154. cf Matt 23:26.
74
working on both the inner and outer self.
Such an emphasis on both the body and the soul was not unique to Cassian.
Like other Neo-Platonists, most notably Iamblichus, Cassian understood that the
human self was comprised of soul and body. And as in Iamblichus's On the
Mysteries the human soul in Cassian's ascetic works "stops at the boundary of divine
orders.”6 7 Yet, unlike the more speculative cosmologies of other Platonists, Cassian
focused solely on the monk. The body was the monk's context of formation, however,
it was the soul that furthered the monk in the quest for contemplation of God. 6 8 In
the fourth conference Abba Daniel clarified the unity of the body and soul, turning to
the epistle of Galatians: "We also read in the Apostle that this conflict has been set in
our members too for our advantage: 'For the desire of the flesh is against the spirit,
and that of the spirit against the flesh. But these are opposed to one another, so that
you may not do what you want to do.'" 6 9 Embodiment was not, then, a punishment
or curse. Rather, Cassian was clear that the desires of both the flesh and the spirit
were the monk's guides to theoria. Following Paul, Cassian emphasized the nature of
these desires, setting them on the fulcrum of the will. 7 0 The will, Abba Daniel
67 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, trans. Emma C. Clark, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell
(Atlanta, GA; Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), Bk 2.2; 83.
68 “Liturgy is the most suitable means for human beings to pray because it respects and reflects their
nature as enfleshed beings.” Kev in W. Irwin, Context and Text: Method in Liturgical Theology
(Collegev ille, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), 31 4.
69 Conferences 4.7 .1; 158. cf Galatians 5:17 .
7 0 Mette Sophia Bøcher Rasmussen argues that Ev agrius’s conception of apatheia is best understood
as stasis rather than sinlessness. She notes that “Ev agrius identifies passions and movement, from
which it is possible to make a negative definition of a-patheia, freedom from passion, as the opposite
of movement: immov ability .” Mette Sophia Bøcher Rasmussen, “Like a Rock or Like God? The
Concept of Apatheia in the Monastic Theology of Ev agrius of Pontus,” Studia Theologica 59 (2005),
155. For Cassian the desires of flesh and spirit pull in two directions, and are stilled by the balancing
point of the will. While he does not use the language of stillness or immobility, this balance is similar
75
continued, "occupies a somewhat blameworthy middle position and neither delights
in the disgrace of vice nor agrees to the hardships of virtue." 7 1 With the desires of the
flesh on the left and those of the spirit on the right, the will balanced the extreme s of
both for the advantage of the monk. "On the one side a fervent spirit tempers the
lukewarm inclination of our will, while on the other an even warmth pervades the
unyielding frigidity of the flesh." Abba Daniel continued, saying that "neither does
the desire of the spirit let the mind be dragged into unrestrained wickedness, nor on
the other hand does the frailty of the flesh permit the spirit to be inflated with
unreasonable desires for virtue."7 2 Unrestrained, the desires of the spirit would
consume the body. In the quest for purity beyond the capacities of the frail flesh the
spirit would lead the monk into unrealistic fasts and unreasonable acts of
mortification. At the same time, the impulses of the flesh would draw the monk
unchecked into the vices themselves. The middle position of the will, with its drive
for the most benefit with the least struggle, served as the point by which the monk
leveraged the best desires of both the flesh and the spirit. Abba Daniel summarized
this concisely, even echoing the Iamblichan language of boundaries:
And so it is that, during this struggle in which both desires fight against
one another, the soul's free will, which wishes neither to submit
completely to fleshly desires nor to expend its energy for the sake of
virtue, is somehow guided aright. As long as this contest goes on
between the two it cuts off a more dangerous willing on the part of the
soul by establishing a kind of equilibrium in the scales of our body.
This marks out the precise boundaries for spirit and flesh, and it does
to Ev agrius’ use of apatheia.

7 1 Conferences 4.12.1 ; 161 .
7 2 Conferences 4.12.5; 1 63.
76
not permit the predominance of either a mind inflamed with spiritual

ardor on the right hand or a flesh stung with sinfulness on the left. 7 3
Cassian returned to discussing the desires of the flesh and spirit in conference
six wherein Abba Theodore instructed Cassian and Germanus on the appropriate
perspective on the slaughter of some Palestinian monks. The conference itself
focused on the question of theodicy, specifically the suffering of those holy men.
Rather than treat suffering as evil, the abba guided his visitors to consider
everything, even the desires of the body and soul, indifferently. Abba Theodore
recounted the story of Ehud from the book of Judges, who was said to use "either
hand as if it were his right hand." 7 4 "We," the abba instructed, "shall also be able to
possess this quality in a spiritual way." For the monks were to "put the things which
are considered fortunate and right-handed and the things which are called
unfortunate and left-handed on the right side, so that whatever befalls may become
for us, in the words of the Apostle, 'the arms of righteousness.'" 7 5 Abba Theodore
explained further: "As for as human affairs are concerned, then, nothing should be
believed to be the chief good other than virtue of the soul alone which leads us by a
sincere faith to divine realities and makes us cling unceasingly to the unchangeable
good. On the other hand, nothing should be called bad other than sin alone which
7 3 Conferences 4.12.3; 162. In his introductory summary of Evagrius’s theology in the Ad Monachos,
Driscoll notes that health of the soul is about the correct objects of the concupiscible and irascible
parts of the soul. “The concupiscible part desires virtue and knowledge. The irascible part fights the
ev il thoughts that attack all three parts of the soul.” Ev agrius, Ad Monachos, edited and translated by
Jeremy Driscoll (New York, NY : Newman Press, 2003), 10.
7 4 Judges 5:15
7 5 Conferences 6.10.1 ; 224. cf 2 Corinthians 6:7 . “Monks, no matter how spiritually mature they may
think themselves to be, are likely to ex perience both the right and the left hand of the inner man, and
they must be prepared for it.” Kelly, Cassian’s Conferences, 52.
77
separates us from a good God and joins us to the wicked devil." 7 6 In the balance
neither events nor the body could be evil unless they drew the monk away from the
divine vision of contemplation. By balancing the desires of flesh and those of the
spirit both were leveraged, in a kind of ambidextrous posture, in the ascet ic quest.
Theoria, then, could not be found in the extremes. It was in the quest for the
promise of the beatitude that all things, including the body, were central to achieving
that goal. Cassian had noted in his preface to The Institutes that he would temper the
practices of the noted Egyptian ascetics. It was, then, the lukewarm character of the
will that kept the monk balanced between the excesses of spirit and flesh in the quest
for the only good, the virtue of the soul. His askesis was mundane in the best sense of
the word. Grand spiritual efforts were just as suspect as the self-interested care for
the flesh. Within such a vision the body, even in its frailty, was integral to developing
the capacity for contemplation. The monk could not flee the flesh in the quest for
contemplation since it was the body that guided the soul toward virtue by the
temperance of the will.
Cassian's Communal Asceticism
This same attention to balance shaped Cassian’s understanding of the context
within which the monk was to pursue contemplation. Indeed, the Egyptian monks
venerated the solitary life. The famed Antony himself continued to seek an ever
increasing isolation from the pressing crowds of pilgrims. 7 7 Even Pachomius’
7 6 Conferences 6.3.1 ; 219.

7 7 “And so now, monasteries also sprang up in the mountains and the desert was populated with
monks who left their own people and registered themselves for citizenship in heaven.” Athanasius,
78
communities were constructed so as to leverage the benefits of shared life while
maintaining solitude within each cell. Given Cassian's veneration of the Egyptian
ideal any reader could easily assume that his ascetic vision would culminate in
solitude. Yet, as Rousseau shows, such an ex pectation would not attend to Cassian’s
closing insights into the ascetic life in the final conferences. “The final aim (and this
is, after all, the climax of Cassian’s work) is not so much union with Christ as union
with one’s fellows— ‘to be loved by the brethren who share one’s ascetic task.’”7 8
Stewart also warns that Cassian's “typical exaltation of the anchoritic life is not to be
taken literally, or exclusively.”7 9 Rather, “distinctions between anchorites and
cenobites, indeed between monastic and lay Christians, are left behind. All who are
intent on practical knowledge, that is, on attaining purity of heart, have access to
contemplative knowledge of the Bible by perseverance in their chosen way of life.” 8 0
Though Cassian’s own thought could have developed in the course of his
writing, the balance of extremes was clearly a central component of his ascetic vision.
As with the distinctions between body and spirit, the expected tension between the
contemplative and the active life, the cenobitic and anchoritic, was not so tidy within
even The Institutes and the earlier conferences. This was evident in Cassian’s
discussion of vain glory and pride. While clearly the pinnacle of the vices, in the early
stages of ascetic formation these two vices were understood as both sickness and
occasional remedy. In the presence of an elder, pride could inhibit the confession of
Life of Antony, translated by Robert T. Meyer (New York, NY : Newman Press, 1950), 33.
7 8 Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church, 1 81 -1 82. cf Conferences 24.26.
7 9 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 93. cf Conferences 24.8.3.
79
inner thoughts, a clear hurdle to be overcome. At the same time, within the monastic
community the impulses of pride and the desire for praise serv ed as checks on
behavior that would exhibit the more carnal vices of gluttony and lust. Simply stated,
the monk's need for affirmation prevented a monk from giving into other desires in
case they would draw the shame of the brothers. Even still, as the monk progressed
in virtue, pride was such that the presence of others continually checked the pride of
the individual, most notably the sense that one has arrived to the heights of virtue.
Like the human person, Cassian separated the vices into two categories, those
rooted in the body and those grounded in the spirit. Vain glory, as the seventh of the
vices, was the liminal vice between the body and the spirit. Cassian explored this in
The Institutes, saying that vain glory “strikes the monk not only in his carnal parts as
the other vices do, but also in his spiritual part, pressing itself into the mind with its
subtle wickedness in such a way that persons who could not be deceived by carnal
vices are all the more brutally hurt as a result of their spiritual successes.” 8 1 As he
noted about vanity in The Institutes, the vice is complex in its effects. “When this one
has struck the mind with carnal pride, and has been turned back by defensive
resistance, it changes its previous garb and appearance like the multif orm evil that it
is, and once again attempts to stab and slay its conqueror under the guise of
virtue.”8 2
Unlike the carnal vices, the multifaceted and pernicious nature of vain glory
created a unique obstacle to Cassian’s monk. Vanity followed the monk whether he

80
pursued the cenobitic or solitary life. Vanity, Cassian stated, “penetrates the desert
along with him who is fleeing , and neither can it be excluded from a given place, nor
does it weaken if matter is taken away.”8 3 The nature of the carnal vices presented
the monk with an easy remedy. For “seductive images and matter need to be
removed from the body, lest lust attempt to break out into deeds.” Even in the
beginning stages of the practical life solitude “can be applied to the soul, lest it so
much as conceive this in thought.” 8 4 Yet, “in the case of the other vices human
companionship is of no harm and indeed it is even of great help to those who really
want to be rid of them since they are frequently rebuked by the presence of other
people.” 8 5 Interestingly, Cassian even went so far as to say that vanity, or the desire
for praise, could serve as a provisional remedy for those in community. “As long as
you are shackled by the praises of vain glory, you will never rush into the depths of
hell and sink irretrievably by the commission of deadly sins.” 8 6
Gabriel Bunge, in a study of acedia in Evagrius, reveals the reality of this ever
present battle with the passions whether in community or in solitude.
Lay people living in the world are tempted for the most part by
concrete material things; those living together in a community and the
cenobites, who live together in a narrow space, are tempted above all
by their negligent brethren. There are small and large frictions of life in
common, which one is able to avoid far less in a monastery than in the
world. The anchorites, on the other hand, who have given up not only
material things, but largely also association with others, are mostly
tempted by “thought.” 8 7

84 Conferences 5.4.6; 1 84-1 85.
85 Conferences 5.4.6; 1 85.
86 Conferences 5.12.2; 1 92.
87 Gabriel Bunge, Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Acedia (Yonkers,
81
The monk’s vocation, as a cenobite or anchorite, should not be viewed as a means to
escape the passions. More specifically, those who flee community to retreat from the
frictions of shared life only enter solitude to be met with the passions in new forms.
As Bunge states quite positively, “going into the desert with Christ does not mean to
evade all temptations, but rather, with him, to learn how to confront the tempter
‘nakedly.’”8 8 Within Cassian's ascetic system, the spiritual vices were those most
present to the monks in solitude. There, the illusions of perfection most easily lured
the monk to the pinnacle vice of pride. For it was pride, regardless of the monks
setting, “that captures the citadel of the virtues set on high like a most savage tyrant
it lays waste and overturns the whole city from its foundations.” 8 9
To be sure, Cassian did not diminish the esteem for the anchoritic way of life.
Rather, he continued to elevate it, even beyond any ability to appropriately put it into
practice except by the most holy of monks. Abba John, the interlocutor of conference
nineteen, exemplified the holy monk who had turned from the temptations of
solitary asceticism. Cassian described the abba in the opening of the conference as
one whose words and humility “surpassed all the other holy ones.” 9 0 Coming to the
abba’s cell, Cassian and Germanus inquired why John had “left the freedom of the
desert and that sublime profession.” 9 1 Their question revealed their own bias. They
clearly understood the cenobium as but a stepping stone to the more perfect form of
NY : St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012), 24.

88 Bunge, Despondency, 24.
89 Institutes 12.3.2.; 256.
90 Conferences 1 8.2.1 ; 67 0.
91 Conferences 19.2.3; 67 0.
82
anchoritic askesis. The very idea of such a holy man leaving the summit of perfection
perplexed them. With John’s initial reply to their question, the two pilgrims queried
further with “opposition, couched in petition.” 9 2 Pressed by their objection, the abba
further clarified his way of life. “I not only do not reject and deny the anchorite
discipline, which you are amazed to see that I have abandoned, but, on the contrary I
embrace and esteem it with utter veneration.” 9 3 The abba then indulged in speaking
plainly, even if it seemed boastful, in order to teach Cassian and Germanus about his
chosen vocation.
Reiterating what Cassian had already summarized in The Institutes and The
Conference on the vices, Abba John stated that spiritual pride and vain glory
accompany the monk into solitude. 9 4 Like the other famed ascetics, whose retreat
into increasing solitude drew the inquiries of more visitors seeking their holiness,
John spoke of how the needs of hospitality infringed upon his quest for
contemplation. Choosing the cenobium, the abba was at peace with the regular
patterns and expectations of that way of life. “If [contemplation] is denied to me now
that I am in a community and surrounded by multitudes, at least I do not lack a
peace of soul and a tranquility of heart free from every occupation.” 9 5 Even the
prospect of losing just a bit of the notable purity of heart was, for Abba John, a gain.
“I shall be,” he remarked, “happily compensated by the gospel precept alone, which
certainly cannot be subordinated to any of the other fruits of the desert, so that I
92 Conferences 19.2.4; 67 0.
93 Conferences 19.3.1 ; 67 0.
94 Conferences 19.6.2; 67 3.
95 Conferences 19.6.5; 67 4.
83
need have no thought for the next day.”9 6
Though Abba John challenged the dominant expectations of perfect
asceticism, it was Abba Pinufius who played the role of prime protagonist for
Cassian’s ascetic vision. It was Pinufius’ excellence, especially in humility, that
enflamed their imagination and pursuit of a more excellent way of ascetic life than
what they knew in Bethlehem. The story of Abba Pinufius echoed that of Abba John's
discussion of the pitfalls in the anchoritic life. Pinufius also challenged the standard
assumptions about the monk’s progress into perfection, and its accompanying status.
Unlike John, though, Pinufius did not find his role within the community provided
peace of mind. As abbot of the cenobium, the demands of his office hindered his
quest for humility. The praises of those around him simply served only to fuel the
temptations of vanity and pride. Though many of his peers in holiness fled such
praise by entering a cell of solitude, Pinufius did the opposite. “Having laid aside his
monk’s garb, and having put on worldly attire, he sought out the cenobium of the
Tabennesoits, which he knew was stricter than all the others, believing that in it he
would go unrecognized because of the remoteness of the region and that he could
hide himself easily.” 9 7 Once received into the community as an aging novice he
carried out his askesis “under another and younger brother, who kept him as one
who was entrusted to him.” Pinufius “so submitted to him and cultivated with such
obedience the virtue of humility.”9 8
96 Conferences 19.6.6; 67 4. See Matthew 6:34. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will
bring worries of its own.”
97 Institutes 4.30.2.; 94-95.
98 Institutes 4.30.4; 95.
84
Through the stories of these two abbas Cassian infused his ascetic vision with
the narratives to establish a way of life that did not link perfection to the assumption
that it was to be found in solitude. This should not surprise any reader of Cassian’s
works given his clear articulation of the ascetic life established not in a particular
form but on a way of life in the quest of a goal. The contemplative goal was
continually thwarted by the vices, the most pernicious of which was pride. Neither
communal nor solitary life were a guard against pride’s temptations. The only true
counter to pride was the cultivation of humility. Abba Pinufius’s story made clear
that humility was rooted in the renunciations of a beginning monk. “By being
deprived of all one’s possessions,” even the fame of contemplative holiness, “humility
is acquired.” 9 9 Pinufius’ choice of the place of a novice demonstrated that his
renunciations were the means to continually combat pride. Just as pride was the
foundation and pinnacle of all the vices, humility was its corresponding virtue. It
grounded all the other virtues and at the same time was their culmination.
Such humility could be known, according to Pinufius, in a number of ways:
“First, if a person has put to death in himself all his desires; second if he conceals
from his elder none of his thoughts; third, if he commits nothing to his own
discretion, but everything to his [elder’s] judgment and listens eagerly and willingly
to his admonitions.” 1 0 0 Context, then, mattered little. Rather, humility was to be
cultivated in certain practices. Most certainly, humility was to be learned in the
posture of submission to elders in the practice of confession. By giving voice to the
99 Institutes 4.39.1 ; 1 00.

1 00 Institutes 4.39.2; 100.
85
inward thoughts, desires, and even outward actions to an elder the monk suffocated
any spark of pride. Explaining the ways of the monastic commu nity, Cassian
established the practice of confession as a means to “arrive easily” at perfection. New
monks, then, were “taught never, through a hurtful shame, to hide any of the wanton
thoughts in their hearts but to reveal to their elder as soon as they surface, nor to
judge them in accordance with their own discretion but to credit them with badness
or goodness as the elder’s examination discloses and makes clear.” 1 0 1
Cassian returned to confession in the second conference in a discussion of
discretion with Abba Moses. In the opening of that conference the abba recounted
the stories of monks who had not developed the ability to assess their own thoughts
or who had overestimated their own progress and failed to disclose their thoughts to
another. Moses then made the imperative clear: “True discretion is not obtained
except by true humility.”1 0 2 Echoing Pinufius' markers of humility, Moses taught the
two pilgrims that “the first proof of this humility will be if not only everything that is
to be done but also everything that is thought of is offered to the inspection of the
elders, so that, not trusting in one’s own judgment, one may submit in every respect
to their understanding and may know how to judge what is good and bad.” 1 0 3 He
continued, saying that “as soon as a wicked thought has been revealed it loses its
power.” 1 0 4 As with the body and the spirit, the discretion cultivated through humble
confession prevented extremes in ascetic discipline. “With every effort, then, the
1 01 Institutes 4.9; 82.

1 02 Conferences 2.10.1 ; 90.
1 03 Conferences 2.10.1 ; 90-91.
1 04 Conferences 2.10.3; 91.
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good of discretion must be acquired by virtue of humility, which can keep both
extremes from hurting us.” 1 0 5
To cultivate humility through such a practice could hardly have been
maintained in solitude. Certainly hermits were rarely ever alone as pilgrims and
monks continued to seek out their spiritual wisdom. Yet, as the stories of overzealous
asceticism had shown, to not continue the practice of confession would offer the
opportunity for pride to derail whatever virtue had been established. The cenobium,
however, kept even the most holy of monks in relationship with others, presenting
the context within which humility was a way of life maintained by mutual
submission. Abba Abraham made this plain in the final conference. “Those who
dwell in cenobia and are ruled by the command of an elder, who never follow their
own judgment but whose will depends on the will of an abba, are the ones who
exercise this virtue in particular.” 1 0 6
Cassian’s ascetic vision countered the prevailing assumption that the height of
the ascetic life was to be found in solitude. The quest for purity of heart was to begin
and end in the practices humility. That very virtue was to be nurtured first and
finally among other monks seeking the same end. Spiritual progress, then, was to be
found in community.1 0 7 As Valantasis observes regarding asceticism, the very
practices of asceticism changed the way the monk related to others. Unlike the wider
1 05 Conferences 2.16.1 ; 99.

1 06 Conferences 23.26.14; 857 .
1 07 Turner notes that this formative community “is at once an attempt to describe the external and
v isible effects—the outward form, it might be said—of an inward experience of ex istential
communitas, and to spell out the optimal social conditions under with such ex periences might be
ex pected to flourish and multiply.” Turner, The Ritual Process, 1 32.
87
culture of Cassian’s time, monastic relationships were not defined by power over
others or status but in humble submission. Cassian's asceticism re-imagined even
the Egyptian ideal. Holiness in the desert was to be found among solitary monks
whose contemplative virtue drove them away from human interaction as much as
possible. Cassian, however, made clear that the contemplative quest was not to be
found in solitude. Rather, only humility practiced in renunciation and confession
offered the sure foundation for purity of heart. That is to say, Cassian’s ascetic
imaginary was communal from start to finish.
Conclusion
Both The Institutes and The Conferences were composed for the purpose of
guiding the monasteries of Gaul. Through stories, practices, and scriptures Cassian
established a vision of Christian asceticism oriented toward the goal of theoria. By
articulating the practices and understanding that made ascetic transformation
possible Cassian organized the virtues and vices in such a way as to place the
immediate contemplative goal and the ultimate eschatological vision of God within
reach. Cassian’s asceticism presented an understanding of the monk and his
community that stood in stark contrast to the wider ways of Roman culture. His
desire to balance the extremes— whether it be in the flesh, the spirit, the cenobia, or
the anchorite’s cell—was a matter of setting the contemplative goal above all else. So
what mattered most was the quest for perfect prayer. Everything else was good or
evil relative to that goal.

Chapter Three
Liturgical and Contemplative Prayer
Having outlined Cassian’s ascetic vision as built around the outer and inner
monk it is now necessary to turn toward Cassian’s practical and theoretical
treatment of prayer. Certainly, the inner and outer dynamic here informs the monk’s
telos of theoria. For by praying the scriptures in the outward practice of canonical
hours the monks cultivated the capacity to receive the grace of contemplation.
Following the framework of Evagrius, Cassian elucidated the interrelationship of
praktike and theoria, ascetic performance and pure prayer.1
This approach to exploring the intersection of practice and theory through
Cassian’s depiction of prayer as liturgical and contemplative moves to the heart of
his monastic treatises. As Cassian stated in the opening conference on the goal of
monastic life, his whole ascetic project was oriented toward the vision of God
described in the noted beatitude of Matthew 5:8. All the practices, though intended
to root out the vices, were but a means to the end itself. Theoria, cast in this light,
referred to both the vision of God at the end of time and a fleeting glimpse in the
flesh. Thus Cassian’s asceticism was clearly built around prayer, based in the
1 “Christianity is the dogma of Christ our Sav ior. It is composed of praktike, of contemplation of the
phy sical world and of the contemplation of God.”Ev agrius, Chapters on Prayer, 1 . Bamberger, 15. See
Robin Darling Young, “Ev agrius the Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos,” Journal of
Early Christian Studies 9:1 (2001 ), 53. “When the practiced monk, the gnostikos of the title, had
begun to receive knowledge appropriate to that status, he was able, in Evagrius' v iew, to use the
book’s fifty kephalia as counsels. Those sentences were arranged to teach him how to use a particular
monastic system of education adapted from ancient philosophy and freshly assimilated to Christian
teaching. They presuppose that the Bible sy mbolizes knowledge of all created reality, and hints at the
highest knowledge av ailable, the theoria of the Trinity.” Ev agrius' epistemology also influenced
Cassian's theory of practical and theoretical knowledge, which will be discussed in chapter four.
88
89
outward forms of the liturgy and the scriptures, reaching towards contemplation.
Exploring prayer at this intersection of the inner and outer monk, practice
and contemplation requires several steps. First, it is important to define what
Cassian meant by prayer. Given that the scriptures were central to the whole of
Cassian’s monastic vision, defining prayer distinguishes meditation from the
prayerful appropriation of the texts, specifically the Psalms. A summary of Cassian’s
discussion of liturgical prayer then follows, paying specific attention to the
interaction of the psalmody and times of silent prayer. Just as Cassian turned to
explore theoria, a summary of conferences nine and ten will show how the
foundation built in corporate prayer prepared the monk for contemplation.
Cassian's Prayer
Cassian certainly was not the first to explore the practice and theory of prayer.
Both Hebrew and Hellenist writers had done as much even before the life of Jesus.
Yet, for the Christian communities of the first centuries, the Lord’s prayer and Jesus’
instructions regarding appropriate practice provided a frame for the later synthesis
of both traditions. In the centuries following the composition of the Gospels,
significant writers outlined the uniqueness of Christian prayer, in both form and
theology. Yet, often such discussions of prayer were treated separately. Church
orders, such as The Didache and The Apostolic Tradition, were intended to form the
times of corporate prayer. Still other writers such as Tertullian and Clement of
Alexandria offered theological articulations of common practice. In these texts the
form and content served an interpretive role in defining prayer, its practices and
90
meaning. In writing both The Institutes and The Conferences, Cassian outlined the
practice of prayer as well as interpreted its meanings.
For many of these writers, Cassian included, prayer was a given. Even in
exploring the theological import of the practice, few defined it with the precision
expected in modern theological discourse. Given that prayer takes many forms,
individual and corporate, and is comprised of diverse content, extemporaneous
speech or silence, 2 a general definition is difficult to come by. Columba Stewart,
then, rightly notes that prayer for Cassian and his monastic predecessors was a
global term encompassing liturgy and contemplation. 3
What, then, was prayer within Cassian’s ascetic vision? At the very minimum ,
the mind played a role in both anthropology and in the practice of prayer itself. In
discussing the goal of contemplation, especially the ease with which the mind is
distracted from attention to the divine, Cassian reminded his readers that “the mind
in prayer is shaped by the state that it was previously in.” 4 Generally speaking, then,
prayer for Cassian was the mind’s attention to God. Whether the monk was reading
scripture in the liturgy or rehearsing the scriptures alone in his cell, his intentio n or
goal clarified whether he was praying or engaged in interpretation.
Discussing the role of scripture in Cassian’s understanding of prayer, Stewart
2 Pieter W. v an der Horst, “Silent Prayer in Antiquity,” Numen vol. 41 (1994): 1 -25. See also Brouria
Bitton-Ashkelony, “'More Interior than the Lips and the Tongue': John of Apamea and Silent Prayer
in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies20 no. 2 (2012): 303-331.
3 “For [Cassian], as for many monastic writers, 'prayer' (oratio) was both a generic and a particular
term. … Cassian uses oratio in such an inclusive sense for the 'canonical prayer' of the hours,
consisting of psalmody, intervals of silence for personal response in prayer.” Stewart, Cassian the
Monk, 100.
91
cautions that contemporary readers should not too quickly attribute the reading of
scripture to prayer. Cassian, he argues, “would not have thought the recitation of
psalms or other texts to be wholly in itself ‘prayer’”5 This reminder is laudable given
Stewart’s emphasis on how scripture informs, supports, and is to be distinguished
from prayer. The crux of the issue can be found in the multiple connotations of the
word meditatio. When engaging the Bible, the monk could approach it in two
different modes. First, and more fundamental, the monk meditated on the scriptures
as a means of learning the texts themselves. The goal of such reading was not to pray
the words but to memorize them. Thus, Stewart is right to caution against naming
the recitation of the Psalms as prayer. However, meditatio also carried the
connotation of a more prayerful posture. Killian McDonnell, in exploring prayer in
the trajectory from Cassian to Benedict, notes that meditatio also signifies the
“prayerful repetition and rumination of texts which have been learned.”6 The
distinction lies precisely along the line of intention. The monk was either learning
the scriptures or was intent on praying the words as his own. Or as Killian says
plainly, the “scriptures became one flesh with the senses.”7
Though not all reading of scripture was prayer, certainly this second form of
meditatio met the general expectation of oratio in the turning of the mind towards
God. Like the whole of the ascetic project, the outer and inner dynamic also followed
this distinction. By praying the psalms or recalling the Lord’s prayer the monk
5 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 1 01.

6 Killian McDonnell, “Prayer in Ancient Western Tradition,” Worship55 (1981 ): 154.
7 Killian, “Prayer in Ancient Western Tradition,” 154.
92
prayed in an outward manner. Vocalization of the biblical words or extemporaneous
prayers were clearly a form of outer prayer. Yet, the internalization of those same
scriptures bridged the gap between the spoken and silent prayer. Stewart’s
discussion of imageless prayer in Evagrius makes this more evident. T hough pure
prayer is the goal, words and thoughts of the mind were still to be understood as
prayer. Distinguishing between thoughts (logismoi) and depictions (noemata),
Stewart notes that some depictions were distractions and some were concerned with
God. “There are indeed noemata and images from or about God, suitable for the
kind of prayer [Evagrius] calls the ‘conversation of the mind with God.’” 8
For Cassian, as for Evagrius, this inner conversation with God was the
threshold for pure prayer. Contemplation, the seeing of God without words or
images, was however the pinnacle of the life of prayer. Just as the words of scripture
were internalized for inner and silent prayer, the monk prayed beyond words, in the
fiery silence of theoria. Both monastic teachers made clear to their readers that the
end of prayer was this attention to God unmediated by image, thought, or words.
Though fleeting in the body, theoria was prayer in the fullest sense. There was no
questioning. As such, its perfection defined all other oratio.
Even though Stewart is right that Cassian would not have considered every
instance of meditatio as prayer itself, meditation on the scriptures surely was the
foundation on which prayer itself was built. The liturgical form of psalmody and
silence built on this foundation of memorized texts, freeing the monk from reading
8 Stewart, “Imageless Prayer and the Theological V ision of Ev agrius Ponticus,” Journal of Early
Christian Studies9 no. 2 (2001 ): 191 .
93
the text for understanding in order to pray freely. 9 The subject of the scriptures,
namely God alone, formed the mind to more easily turn to God. The two components
of the synaxis, psalmody and silence, served as the pivot towards inner prayer. The
liturgy moved the monk from outer prayer through the words of scripture balanced
by silent moments of prayer to inner prayer with words. From there, the summit of
prayer was within reach, awaiting the fiat of God.
In Cassian’s ascetic vision, prayer cut across the inner and outer divide. The
goal, seeing God, as Cassian noted in the first conference required diligence in the
practices of the monastery. That certainly included the outward practice of praying
the canonical hours. That foundation of meditatio and oratio remained with the
monk throughout his life, regardless of the context of his vocation, whether in
solitude or within the monastery. Stewart notes that the hours specifically
highlighted the blurring of communal and solitary prayer since anchorites “observed
even the canonical prayers alone.” 1 0 “The difference,” he continues, “between the
canonical prayer of anchorite and cenobite would be of formality and ambience, not
of essential elements.” 1 1 The scriptures, silence, and even postures were still part of
9 Basil Studer notes that this kind of engagement with scripture was part of the exegetical practice of
the fathers. “The distinctive note of patristic interpretation of Scripture can be summarized by the
word ‘actualization.’ The major concern of early Christian ex egetes was to actualize the sacred texts by
bringing them into the daily lives of their hearers and readers.” Bas il Studer, “Liturgy and the
Fathers,” in Anscar Chupungco, Handbook for Liturgical Studies volume 1 (Collegev ille, MN: The
Liturgical Press, 1 997 ), 63.
1 0 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 101 .
1 1 Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 101 . Stewart later quotes a say ing of Abba Lot from the
Apophthegmata. “Abba Lot described his anchoritic regimen this way : 'As I am able, I do my little
sy nax is, and my little fast, and prayer (euche), and meditation (melete) and quiet, and as I am able, I
purify [my] thoughts.” Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 102. Quoting the alphabetical collection of the
Apophthegmata Patrum, Joseph of Panephysis 7 . Cassian recounted a similar story through Abba
Serenus in conference eight. “For when one of our brothers was traveling through this desert and the
day was drawing to a close, he found a certain cave and made a stop there, w ishing to celebrate the
94
the way of life. As Taft states, the organizing of the day around regular times of such
formalized prayer was rooted in the desire to fulfill the scriptural injunction t o pray
unceasingly. Stopping all other work, even the important work of meditating on
scripture, called the mind back to the single focus on God. 1 2 Getting the mind and
body into that rhythm kept the monk attuned to prayer itself, keeping the mind
turned towards God ready to receive the grace of fiery, wordless prayer. 1 3 Even when
that experience did come, the foundations of meditation and psalmody remained. To
assume that once the monk had received the gift of contemplation these outer forms
of prayer were no longer necessary would have been nonsensical for Cassian.
Through the accounts of Abbas John and Pinufius, Cassian made clear that the
cenobitic life was central to the monastic life, even for those who had seemingly
reached the pinnacle of virtue. The same was true of liturgical prayer. Even after
receiving the grace of pure prayer, the monk inevitably returned to the
evening synaxis in it. As he was singing the psalms there in his customary manner it drew past
midnight.” The Conferences 8.16.1 ; 301, emphasis mine. “nam cum unus e fratribus nostris in hac
solitudine iter ageret, aduesperante iam die antrum quoddam repperiens ibidem substitit,
uespertinam uolens in eo sy nax in celebrare: ubi dum psalmos ex more decantat, tempus mediae
noctis excessit.” Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 13 (M. Petschenig, 1 886). Ramsey
notes in the commentary that the use of sy naxis is odd “since it implies only one person and not a
group.” Ramsey, The Conferences, 319.
1 2 “[The psalmody] was an aid to the meditation of an indiv idual rather than a corporate act of praise,
more private pray er than public liturgy . For ex ample, we read of Abba John ‘that while returning from
the harvests or from meeting the elders, he devoted himself to prayer, meditation, and psalmody until
he had restored his mind to its original order.’” McKinnon, “Desert Monasticism and the Later
Fourth-Century Psalmodic Movement,” 506. McKinnon’s reference is to say 35 of John the Dwarf in
the alphabetical collection of the Apopthegmata Patrum; Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert
Fathers, 92. McKinnon draws too stark a line between public and private, however Cassian also made
clear that the monks were to maintain silence in the midst of the synaxis so as not to disturb their
fellow monks at prayer.
1 3 Discussing silent prayer in John of Apamea, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony states that “these prayers
were, in fact, new spiritual exercises or new technologies of the self in the Foucaltian sense of the
term, serving as a tool for orienting the self toward the div ine.” Bouria Bitton-Ashkelony, “‘More
Interior than the Lips and the Tongue’: John of Apamea and Silent Prayer in Late Antiquity ,” Journal
of Early Christian Studies 20:2 (2012), 304.
95
fundamentals, coming back to the habit formed in the practices of asceticism.
The Liturgical Foundation for Prayer
The outer practical life of Cassian’s monk was not just framed by the monastic
clothing and the renunciation of wealth and status. Of the four books of The
Institutes not dedicated to the vices, half focused on the communal liturgies of the
monastery. Other writers addressed the form and theology of corporate prayer, but
Cassian’s formulation of the canonical liturgies stands out. Luke Dysinger aptly
summarizes just how significant Cassian’s depiction of common prayer has been for
our contemporary understanding. In his study of psalmody and prayer in Evagrius,
Dysinger used Cassian's form and descriptions of liturgical prayer to provide the
practical backdrop to Evagrius’ theology of prayer. “While other monastic legislators
and desert fathers, Evagrius included, mention only in passing such details as bodily
posture and the duration of different intervals associated with psalmody, it is
Cassian who provides a more detailed picture.” 1 4 Certainly, Cassian’s treatment of
the hours, especially in regards to times of gathering and the specific psalms to be
prayed, was overshadowed by the systematic treatment of Benedict of Nursia. Yet,
later writers in the western regions of Christendom built on the early fifth century
writings of Cassian. 1 5
1 4 Dy singer, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (New York, NY : Ox ford
University Press, 2005), 53.
1 5 In his study of Caesarius of Arles, Klingshirn notes that “the most important consequence of using
the Rules of the Fathers, especially the statuta patrum, is that they add an 'Augustinian' element to
the 'Cassianic ' core of Lérinian spirituality. To Cassian's emphasis on obedience, the Rules of the
Fathers add Augustine's emphasis on charity; to Cassian's emphasis on the indiv idual monk's pursuit
of perfection, the Rules of the Father's add Augustine's emphasis on t he perfection of the whole
community ; and to Cassian's emphasis on the monastery as a retreat from the world, the Rules of the
96
Historians of the fifth century are not interested so much in the reception of
Cassian’s work but in pealing back the layers to better understand the liturgy of
Cassian’s monastery. Cassian’s own style of writing, however, makes this a
complicated task. Far from giving a grid of hours and psalms to be prayed in the
synaxis, Cassian wove together descriptions of Egyptian and Gallic practice with
theological and practical considerations. That is what makes the two books on the
canon of hours so unique and what makes it difficult to construct a clear picture of
the prayers of Cassian’s monks. Contemporary scholars, then, must filter the details
from the narrative to discern the various forms of prayer that Cassian established for
his monks. Taken as a whole, though, the picture is not as clear since he was both
establishing and describing the practice. All the same, the basic form and content of
the communal liturgies is discernible. In addition, Cassian’s noted attention to the
body provides an understanding of the monk at prayer beyond the structure of the
liturgy. Unlike the Rule of Benedict, Cassian’s unique discussion is a window onto
the phenomenology of canonical prayer.
Cassian’s outline for the hours of prayer throughout the day began with the
evening. Following the ancient conventions of beginning the day with sunset,
Cassian started with the prayers of evening and morning. Both of these offices took
place in the dark as the new day began. Little is known about the exact hours at
which they took place, but Cassian was clear that these liturgies were extended
longer than any of the other gatherings. Book Two, then, was occupied with the
Fathers add Augustine's emphasis on the monastery as a model for the whole world.” William
Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (New
York, NY; Cambridge Univ ersity Press, 1 994), 26.
97
content of the nighttime liturgies. Cassian stated that these offices were similar in
their content: twelve psalms accompanied with pauses for silent prayer with readings
from both testaments appended.1 6
With the rise of the sun, however, the liturgies were shortened to
accommodate the work necessary for communal life. Cassian stated that the three
traditional hours of terce, sext, and none were part of the monastery’s cursus.1 7
However, these little hours were not the only gatherings for prayer. Here Cassian
presented a new synaxis incorporated into the cursus to prevent the monks from
returning to sleep after the longer early morning vigil. This new time of prayer has
presented a number of difficulties for contemporary historians. 1 8 In an effort to stick
closely to the form of Cassian’s daily liturgies, this debate need not occupy much
1 6 Institutes 2.4; 39. “Therefore, as we were, say ing, the number of twelve psalms is maintained
throughout all of Egy pt and the Thebaid in both the ev ening and the nighttime serv ices in such a way
that, when they are finished, two readings follow, one from the Old and one from the New
Testament.”
1 7 Cassian linked each of these liturgies to the sav ing work of Christ by identify ing the time with
scriptural references to the saving work of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Institutes 3.3. Discussing the
theology of practicing morning and evening prayer, Taft notes that “the Liturgy of the Hours, then, is
a sanctification of life by turning to God at the beginning and end of each of its days, and whenever
one is able in between, to do what liturgy always does, to celebrate and manifest in ritual moments
what is and must be the constant stance of our every minute of the day, namely our unceasing priestly
offering, in Christ, of self, to the praise and glory of the Father in thanks for his sav ing gift in Christ.”
Robert Taft, “The Theology of the Liturgy of the Hours,” in Anscar Chupungco, Handbook for
Liturgical Studies vol 5: Liturgical Time and Space (Collegev ille, ,MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000),
131.
1 8 Taft notes “there are still other particular issues for which a generally agreed and satisfy ing
solution to be found. Among them is the question of the origins and interrelation of three canonical
hours that precede terce: nocturns (v igils), morning praise (lauds), and prime. This remains the
outstanding problem in the history of the formation of the Div ine Office.” Taft, The Liturgy of the
Hours in East and West, 191. More specific to Cassian, the focus falls on Institutes 3.4. There Cassian
outlines the inclusion of an office following vigils. Chadwick argues that the passage is a scribal
interpolation. Chadwick, John Cassian, 7 5-77 More recently Goodrich has tested Chadwick's thesis
through detailed discussion of the text, its problems and context, and finally a computer assessment
of word usage in the key passages and those surrounding it. Goodrich asserts, then, that “Chadwick's
'hesitation' about his theory, while judicious, seems less necessary in the face of th is new research.”
Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 27 3.
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space. Rather, we see in this new liturgy the liminal transition from night prayers
constructed around the vigil form to the prayers in the day light. The recitation of
three psalms and the accompanying times of silent prayer provided the space for
both work and prayer.
More problematic for the present study is Cassian’s own reference to the
psalmist's injunction to pray seven times a day.1 9 The hours Cassian mentioned in
the second and third books of The Institutes only totaled six. It is only in a passing
reference to Jesus’s parable of the vineyard that Cassian identified the last and final
synaxis of the day.2 0 The eleventh hour, we can assume, maintained the threefold
form of psalms and prayers practiced in the other little hours. As the last of hours it
would appear that the seventh liturgy may have been similar to what later became
Compline. However, the content of the liturgy was not clear. Guiver assumes that the
prayers said at the eleventh hour refer to the lucenarium, a cathedral practice of
vespers in the eastern church.2 1 Just as the prayers immediately after sunrise
reoriented the monk to the work of the day, the eleventh hour synaxis pointed him
to the extended night vigils.
Establishing the prayers of the monastery was for Cassian more than just
setting the hours the monks were to gather and the psalms they were to recite. While
books two and three of The Institutes focused on the liturgical form, Cassian
attended equally as much to the appropriate conduct in the assembly. His own
1 9 Institutes 3.4.3. cf. Psalm 11 9:164.

20 Institutes 3.3.11. cf Matthew 20:1 -16.
21 George Guiv er, Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1 988),
234. On the lucenarium see Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 36 -37 .
99
narrative style provided the means to outline the form and content of the liturgy, as
well as the body postures and intonations of those at prayer. 2 2 Thus, not only did
Cassian present a summary of the times of prayer, but he offered a phenomenology
of the monastic liturgies. 2 3
Discussing the evening prayers and vigils, Cassian paid special attention to
the state of the body and mind at prayer. After outlining the content of the nighttime
liturgy Cassian turned to the hurried nature of Gallic practice. The Egyptians, he
noted, “do not immediately rush to kneel down, as some of us do in this region who
hasten to go down for prayers when the psalm is not yet completely over and hurry
to get to the conclusion as quickly as possible.” The problem, he said, was that “we
think more of giving our tired bodies a rest than of pursuing the profit and the
benefit of prayer.”2 4 Still later Cassian described how the desert monks prayed before
they knelt and “while standing they pass the greater part of the time in supplication.
After this they fall on the ground for a very short time, as if only adoring the divine
mercy.” They then immediately stood “with hands outstretched as they had been
when they were standing in prayer before.” For by lying on the ground too long, the
monk was “attacked not only by distractions but even more seriously by sleep.”2 5 In
22 “The ritual logic of Christian public prayer and sacrament is primarily embodied and sensory,
imagistic and experiential, rather than cognitive or intellectual.” Mitchell, Liturgy and the Social
Sciences, 6.
23 Paul Bradshaw, in typical fashion, warns that it is “dangerous to read any source as though it is a
verbatim account of a liturgical act.” Paul Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship
2 nd edition (New York, NY : Ox ford University Press, 2002), 1 4. While Bradshaw’s warning is
important methodologically, we have already seen how Cassian’s own work was more about guiding
Gallic practice than about telling an accurate account of Egy ptian practice. Therefore, we should read
Cassian’s phenomenological account as prescriptive.
24 Institutes 2.7 .2; 41.
25 Institutes 2.7 .2; 41.
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these early sections on the night liturgies, Cassian presented his twin concern for
both the mind and the body. The ease with which the mind was pulled away from a
singular attention to God ran throughout both The Institutes and The Conferences.
At the same time the body’s fragile state was all too evident within Cassian’s
experience and the ascetic project in general.
In the synaxis these mental and corporeal factors comprised a singular hurdle
the monk had to overcome. Since, as has already been argued, Cassian worked with a
flattened anthropology in which the body and the soul were balanced by the will, the
means to overcome this obstacle was to be found in two forms. First, the monks
positioned their bodies in relation to the mode of their prayer. More simply, the
outer monk corresponded to the intended inner state. Cassian made this all the more
clear in discussing the posture of the monks during the vigils of Saturday night and
the liturgies of Pentecost. “From Saturday evening, which dawns into Sunday
morning, until the following evening,” he recounted, “the Egyptians do not kneel, nor
during all the days of Pentecost.” 2 6 During these holiest of days which recalled the
resurrection of Christ, the monks were not to take postures of petition. Just as fasts
were not to be undertaken on these days, the monk was to embody a celebration of
Christ's resurrection. 2 7
The second remedy was to be found in typical monastic obedience. During the
liturgy the monks were to follow the leadership of the cantor. “When the person who
26 Institutes 2.1 8; 48.

27 “Consequently on these days no genuflection is made during the prayer either, because bending the
knee is as it were a sign of repentance and mourning. Hence on these days too we keep in every
respect the same solemnity as on Sunday, on which our forebear s taught that, out of reverence for the
Lord's resurrection, neither fasting nor genuflecting was to be done.” Conferences 21.20.3; 7 35.
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is about to say the prayer has arisen from the ground, all stand up at the same time.
Thus no one is moved to bend the knee before he does, and no one dares to dally
once he has arisen from the ground, lest anyone give the impression that he has
made his own conclusion rather than having heeded that of the person who says the
prayer.”2 8 It takes no stretch of the imagination to recognize how the monk could
easily have been distracted by the liturgy itself. Rather than attend to the psalms, or
engage the mind in the silent prayers, the monk could just have easily been
distracted by his anticipation of what was to come next in the liturgy. Scanning the
room either to surpass the others in supplications or hoping to arrive at the
appropriate posture before any other brother, the monk could be distracted from the
task of the moment. By obeying the lead of the cantor the monk was to attend to the
prayers and psalms at hand. Paradoxically, in following another monk the monk was
free to pray.
Liturgical form, body posture, and the text of the psalms all converge in the
synaxis to keep the monk at prayer. While Stewart is right that the recitation of
scripture was not itself prayer for Cassian, the same could be said of the liturgy itself.
Yet, combined with the intention and attention of the monk, the whole of the liturgy
was prayer. In fact, the whole of the liturgy —texts, prayers, and movements—were
composed in such a way as to keep the mind and will focused on prayer. Cassian’s
phenomenological presentation of monastic prayer guided his readers to consider
not just the correct practice of the liturgy but also the goal itself—to keep the mind’s
attention fixed on God.
28 Institutes 2.7 .3; 41 -42.

102
Stewart’s reminder that meditation on scripture took many forms cautions
modern assumptions about the reading of scripture in the monastery. Certainly there
were times when the sacred text was approached with an interpretive eye. However,
the goal of such study was not to establish an objective reading of the holy texts but
to comprehend the depths of meaning. Cassian’s recounting of the four forms of
interpretation made that much clear. 2 9 In the liturgy, however, the monk was
engaged in praying the scriptures. That is to say that the words were not scrutinized
for their meanings but rather served as the words of prayer themselves. Cassian
described the nature of scripture as prayer in his discussion of the distractions
present in the liturgy. It is natural, he noted, that the mind would wander at the
slightest provocation, even from the words of scripture as the mind easily followed
the interconnections to other passages. Thus, for Cassian, the aim at prayer was to
focus on brief sections of scripture and pray each one as they arose in the liturgy. 3 0
In the psalmody the monk gave these brief passages of scripture life through
each recitation, as the first person nouns of the text became each monks’ own. 3 1 The
chanted words, then, served two functions. First, it became each monk’s prayer.
29 “Therefore, if y ou are concerned to attain to the light of spiritual knowledge not by the v ice of
empty boastfulness but by the grace of correction, you are first inflamed with the desire for that
blessedness about which it is said: 'Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God,' so that you
may also attain to that about which the ange l said to Daniel: 'Those who are learned shall shine like
the splendor of the firmament, and those who instruct many in righteousness like the stars forever.”
The Conferences 14.9.1 ; 511. cf Matthew 5:8 and Daniel 1 2:3.
30 “Hence they consider it better to sing ten v erses with a modicum of comprehension than to pour
out the whole psalm with a distracted mind, which is often what happens due to the alacrity of the one
who is singing because , when he things of the character and number of the psalms that still remain to
be sung.” Institutes 2.11.2; 44. Later in The Conferences, Abba Isaac noted that “when our mind has
understood a passage from any psalm, imperceptibly it slips away, and thoughtlessly and stupidly it
wanders off to another tex t of scripture. Conferences 10.13.1 ; 385.
31 “[The Fathers] were convinced, as Athanasius say s in his letter to Marcellinus, tha Christians must
appropriate the prayers of the Bible, especially the psalms, as their own.” Studer, “Liturgy and the
Fathers,” 64.
103
Rather than stumbling for words, the monk found just what was needed for prayer in
the range of sentiment in the Psalms themselves. Second, due to the regular and
frequent gatherings of prayer, the monks easily memorized the scriptures. Though
recited in the midst of prayer, the monks internalized the words for the rest of their
day. Just as meditation outside of the liturgy embedded the sacred text in the
memory, praying the scriptures familiarized each monk with the texts beyond the
need to interpret them. What is more, by linking the Psalms to gestures and vocal
intonations the liturgy engaged the whole of the monk—body and spirit. So outside
of the corporate prayer, at work throughout the day or inside the cell alone, the
monk could more easily recall the words themselves.
In a preliterate culture, such as Cassian’s Marseille or the Egyptian cells,
embodied memory circumvented the absence of books. For a community where all
possessions were shared and limited, the monk could then pray without the need for
a prayer book or Psalter. Through the sounds of the scriptures being given voice, and
the corresponding movements of the body, the monks internalized the words in a
way that simply reading them could not. Not only did the monk give voice to the
words in the prayerful repetition in the liturgy, they possessed them in the memory
long after the synaxis ended. Cassian’s account of the brother praying the hours
alone in a cave in the “customary manner” illustrated this kind of embodied
knowing. 3 2 Without even the leadership of a cantor or the biblical books themselves,
32 Conferences 8.16.1; 301 . McKinnon also recounts how Abba John returning from work or
conferences would devote “himself to prayer, meditation, and psalmody until he had restored his
mind to its original order.” James W. McKinnon, “Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourth-Century
Psalmodic Movement,” Music and Letters7 5 no. 4 (1 994), 506. Quoting Apophthegmata Patrum
Alphabetical Collection, John the Dwarf no. 35.
104
the elder was able to pray the liturgy with the movements and songs learned over the
years of daily practice.
Liturgical prayer, then, laid the foundation for intentional prayer. As Taft
notes, the scheduled rhythm of the canonical hours emerged from the desire to
follow the scriptural injunction to pray without ceasing. 3 3 Yet, for Cassian this
ordinance was but the immediate goal toward the ultimate telos of theoria. In The
Conferences, Cassian built on this foundation, especially the recitation of simple
phrases of scripture as a means of keeping the mind at prayer.
Towards Pure Prayer
In the opening of conference nine Cassian recounted the teaching of Abba
Isaac. “The end of every monk and the perfection of his heart direct him to constant
and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer.”3 4 The canonical hours certainly served as
a foundation for this uninterrupted prayer. Cassian and Germanus, formed in this
shared practice, noted easily the problem with a life of prayer framed only by
liturgical prayer. Once the services concluded what was a monk to do? After the
abba’s summary of the monastic project, the cultivating of an appropriate
detachment from the will of the flesh and the training of the mind itself, Germanus
voiced their concern.
If only we were able to enjoy uninterruptedly these spiritual thoughts

in the same way and with the same ease that we usually conceive their
33 “By the end of the fourth century we see that this continuous monastic prayer is Egypt has been
grouped into two daily synaxes or offices at the beginning and end of the day, and that these services
were more a quiet meditation on Scripture than a liturgical 'ceremony ' of the cathedral type. The point
was to pray at all times.” Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 7 3.
105
beginnings. For when they have been conceived in our heart through
the recollection of scripture or through recalling some spiritual deeds
or, even more, through a glimpse of the heavenly mysteries, they
immediately vanish, having as it were imperceptibly taken flight. … we
want to learn about [prayer’s] character first— that is, about what sort
of prayer should always be said, and then about how we can possess
this very thing, whatever it is, and practice it without ceasing. 3 5
The rest of the dialog in conference nine guided the reader to consider the
complexities of prayer, especially as it was reflected in the Psalms. In the tenth
conference, the abba taught Cassian and Germanu the simple prayer of Psalm 70:1 as
a monologistic prayer to keep the mind attentive to God outside of the synaxis. This
short verse—“O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me”—was a
means to fulfill Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing and was well suited for any
experience or disposition of the monk.
Following other writers on prayer such as Origen, Cassian began with the
complexities of prayer and experiences that correlate to these prayers. Abba Isaac
thus made clear that prayers differ according to the state of the monk.
For a person prays one way when he is happy and another way when he
is burdened by a weight of sadness or despair; one way when he is
enjoying spiritual successes and another way when he is oppressed by
numerous attacks; one way when he is begging pardon for sins and
another way when he is asking for grace or some virtue or, of course,
for the annihilation of some vice; one way when he is struck with
compunction by reflecting on Gehenna and by fear of future judgment
and another way when he is inflamed by the hope and desire for future
goods; one way when he is needy and in danger and another way when
he is safe and at peace; one way when he is enlightened by revelations
of heavenly mysteries and another way when he is fettered by sterility
of virtue and dryness of thought. 3 6
The implication was clear. Rather than assume that prayer has a singular form or
35 Conferences 9.7 .1; 334.

36 Conferences 9.8.2-3; 335.
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content, the monk should not tarry too long constructing that one perfect prayer.
The later introduction of Psalm 70:1, while a single prayer appropriate for any
situation, was to become so natural that the monk did not need to struggle for words
but respond nearly instinctually with it’s simple petition for grace.
Abba Isaac then turned to scripture, specifically Paul’s instructions in I
Timothy. “We must explain one by one the different kinds of prayer that the Apostle
divided in fourfold fashion when he said: 'I urge first of all that supplications,
prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made.’” 3 7 In shifting to discuss the
prayers of the monk, especially outside of the liturgy, Cassian explained how the
ascetics were to understand prayer without the words of scripture. Unlike the liturgy,
which indeed included internal prayerful responses, these prayers were not always a
recitation of the sacred text in the heart, but emerged from the disposition of the
monks themselves. Thus, as Abba Isaac turned to the four types of prayer in I
Timothy, he began linking the mental states of the monks to the kinds of prayers
uttered alone or at work between the canonical prayers.
In doing so, Cassian shifted from the consideration of meditation on the
scriptures themselves. Though the Bible continued to figure prominently in Cassian’s
instructions, he shifted the emphasis. The scriptures here provided the language to
describe and understand the quality of each monk’s prayers. Isaac thus responded to
Germanus’ inquiry by setting out the trajectory of the discussion based on Paul’s
terminology. “First, therefore, the very properties of the names and words should be
dealt with and the difference between prayer, supplication, and intercession
37 Conferences 9.9.1 ; 336. cf. I Timothy 2:1.

107
analyzed.” 3 8 By defining these types of prayer, Isaac also intended to explore the
“deeper implications” Paul had outlined in his instructions to Timothy. 3 9
Supplication, according to the abba, was the most akin to confession. “A
supplication is an imploring or a petition concerning sins, but which a person who
has been struck by compunction begs for pardon for his present or past misdeeds.” 4 0
Here, the monk’s own emotion, particularly the ever important compunct ion,
propelled the one praying to petition God for his own forgiveness. Unlike the
practice of confession, such as what a monk spoke to an elder, the monk was to seek
absolution. In the wider context of the ascetic’s rooting out of the vices, Cassian here
linked prayer with the monk’s ever-vigilant attention to the signs of the vices.
Compunction, then, was the bridge between the mental observation and the spiritual
experience of contemplation. 4 1
Turning to define prayer, Isaac highlighted a more specific sense of the
word.4 2 “Prayers are those acts by which we offer or vow something to God, which is
38 Conferences 9.10.1 ; 336.

39 Conferences 9.10.1 ; 337 .
40 Conferences 9.11 ; 337 . Ramsey notes here that Cassian diverges from Origen. Supplication for
Origen is not about sin or compunction but need in general. Prayer, then, is about seeking higher
things. Cassian’s definitions, notes Ramsey, were more reflective of those of Ev agrius. See Ramsey,
The Conferences, 359.
41 “Compunction is the turning point between desire for earthly pleasures and desire for heavenly
joy.” Thomas L. Humphries, Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the Great (Ox ford:
Ox ford University Press, 2013), 190. Stewart notes that “Cassian's conpunctio is a multiv alent term,
signify ing both state and event.” Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 1 25.
42 Origen noted this more specific sense of prayer as making a promise. Writing of Jacob’s promise in
Genesis 28:20-22, Origen informed his readers that “this is because prayer often means something
other than prayer in the usual sense.” Origen, Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and
Selected Works, trans. Rowan Greer (Mawah, NJ: Paulist Press, 197 9), 87 . Origen returned to the
distinction, this time in the case of Hannah’s vow. “One can say that if she did two things, that is
‘prayed to the Lord’ and ‘prayed a prayer.’ the ‘prayed (proseuksato) is used to refer to our ordinary
meaning of prayer, while ‘she prayed a prayer’ is used in the meaning of ‘vow.‘” Origen, Exhortation to
108
called euxe in Greek—that is, a vow.” 4 3 Such choice of a definition made sense given
the monastic context and vision Cassian sought to define. Unlike the more spe cific
vows of later monastic rules, Isaac offered the defining commitments of Cassian’s
monks as an example. “We pray when we promise that, disdaining worldly honor
and spurning earthly riches, we will cling to the Lord in complete contrition of heart
and poverty of spirit. We pray when we promise that we will always keep the most
pure chastity of body and unwavering patience, and when we vow that we will utterly
eliminate from our heart the roots of death dealing anger and sadness.” 4 4 Here again,
Cassian drew the connection to the immediate goal of purity of heart. Prayer, in this
more specific connotation, was then part of the very ascetic vocation itself. Prayer
was both the beginning and the end of Cassian’s asceticism.
The third of the Apostle’s types of prayer turned from the subjective
considerations of the one praying to a more communal awareness. “In the third place
there are intercessions, which we are also accustomed to make for others when our
spirits are fervent, beseeching on behalf of our dear ones and for the peace of the
whole world.” 4 5 Isaac’s example took the monk’s intercessions beyond the walls of
the cenobium itself. Intercessions, according to Paul and thus Isaac, were prayers
“'for kings and for all who are in authority.’”4 6
With that, the abba turned to the final form of prayer. “Finally, in the fourth
Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Writings, 89-90.

43 Conferences 9.12.1 ; 337 .
44 Conferences 9.12.2; 337 .
45 Conferences 9.13; 337 .
46 Conferences 9.13; 338. cf I Timothy 2:2.
109
place there are thanksgivings, which the mind, whether recalling God’s past benefits,
contemplating his present ones, or foreseeing what great things God has prepared
for those who love him, offers to the Lord in unspeakable ecstasies.” 4 7 Here again,
the content of Isaac’s explanation pointed the reader back to the ascetic project itself.
In addition to giving thanks for God’s good grace, the abba pointed to the more
ecstatic nature of the prayer. “And with this intensity, too, more copious prayers are
sometimes made, when our spirit gazes with most pure eyes upon the rewards of the
holy ones that are stored up for the future and is moved to pour out wordless thanks
to God with a boundless joy.” This description of thanksgiving echoed the ecstatic
utterances Cassian mentioned in The Institutes related to the silence within the
synaxis. “No sound,” he noted, “is heard other than the priest concluding the prayer,
except perhaps that which escapes by an ecstasy of the mind from the gate of the
mouth and steal up all unawares on the heart, enkindled by the extreme and
unendurable heat of the Spirit when what the mind once inflamed, cannot keep
within itself attempts to escape by a kind of ineffable groan issuing from the inmost
chambers of the breast.”4 8
As promised, Isaac turned to the meaning behind the definitions and the
arrangement of the types of prayer in particular. For the abba, this meaning was
decidedly ascetic, outlining the intended trajectory of the monastic project. 4 9
47 Conferences 9.1 4; 338.

48 Institutes 2.10.1 ; 43. “Pure prayer can only be conducted in silence,” say s van der Horst in tracing
the roots of silent prayer in antiquity. In discussing this instruction of Cassian, v an der Horst
overlooks the exception of ecstatic utterances. Pieter W. van der Horst, “Silent Prayer in Antiquity,”
Numen 41:1 (1 994), 20.
49 This ascetic interpretation of the four kinds of prayer is all the more ev ident when compared to
110
The first kind seems to pertain more especially to beginners who are
still being harassed by the stings and by the memory of their vices; the
second to those who already occupy a certain elevated position of mind
with regard to spiritual progress and virtuous disposition; the third to
those who, fulfilling their vows completely by their deeds, are moved to
intercede for others also in consideration of their frailty and out of zeal
for charity; the fourth to those who, having already torn from their
hearts the penal thorn of conscience, now, free from care, consider with
a most pure mind the kindnesses and mercies of the Lord that he has
bestowed in the past, gives in the present, and prepares for the future,
and are rapt by their fervent heart to that fiery prayer which can be
neither seized nor expressed by the mouth of man. 5 0
In this frame, the four types of prayer marked the various movements of ascetic
formation, from vows through compunction to theoria.
Abba Isaac then began to discuss Romans 8, especially the work of the Holy
Spirit in perfect, wordless prayer.
Yet sometimes the mind which advances to that true disposition of

purity and has already begun to be rooted in it, conceiving all of these
at one and the same time and rushing through them all like a kind of
ungraspable and devouring flame, pours out to God wordless prayers of
the purest vigor. These the Spirit itself makes to God as it intervenes
with unutterable groans, unbeknownst to us, conceiving at that
moment and pouring forth in wordless prayer such great things that
they not only—I would say—cannot pass through the mouth but are
unable even to be remembered by the mind later on. 5 1
This description of ecstatic prayer echoed Origen’s own discussion of the Spirit and
the mind in his noted treatise On Prayer. Turning to Romans 8:26, Origen noted
Origen’s definitions. “I think that supplication is a prayer offered with entreaty to get something a
person lacks, while prayer is something nobler offered by a person with praise and for greater objects.
And I think that intercession is a petition for certain things addressed to God by someone who has
some greater boldness, while thanksgiving is a statement of gratitude made with prayers for receiv ing
good things from God.” Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom, Praye r, and Select Writings, 109. Other
than supplication, which still had a specificity in Cassian’s text, Origen's definitions lack the ascetic
ex emplars, especially the mention of ecstatic prayer as in conference nine.
50 Conferences 9.15.1 ; 338.
111
that “our mind would not even be able to pray unless the Spirit prayed for it as if
obeying it so that we cannot even sing and hymn the Father in Christ with pr oper
rhythm, melody, measure and harmony unless the Spirit who searches everything,
even the depths of God, first praises and hymns Him whose depths He has searched
out and has understood as far as He is able.” 5 2 Here again, scripture provided the
means to understand the character of the monk’s prayer. For the intercession of the
Spirit Paul described in Romans pointed to the nature of theoria the abba would take
up in the following conference.
In conference nine, however, Cassian kept close to these scriptural
foundations for prayer by then considering the prayers of Jesus. Similar to his ascetic
reading of Paul’s four types of prayer, Abba Isaac introduced his instructions by
highlighting the necessity for ascetic progress.
As we advance in life and grow perfect in virtue, we should by

preference pursue the kinds of prayer that are poured out as a result of
contemplating future goods or from an ardent charity, or at least—to
speak in lowly fashion and in conformity with a beginner's standard—
that are produced for the sake of acquiring some virtue or destroying
some vice. For we shall be utterly unable to attain to the more sublime
types of prayer about which we have spoken if our mind has not been
slowly and gradually brought forward through the series of those
intercessions. 5 3
In a masterful transition, Cassian collected various prayers of Jesus recorded in the
gospels to show Christ’s own supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
thanksgivings. “For he used the form of supplication,” remarked the abba, “when he
52 Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Select Writings, 85.

53 Conferences 9.1 6; 339.
112
said: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” 5 4 Then quoting Jesus’s
extended and final prayer in the gospel of John, Isaac stated plainly that “it is prayer
when he says; 'I have glorified you on earth, I have finished the work that y ou gave
me to do.' Or; ‘I sanctify myself for their sake, that they themselves may also be
sanctified in the truth.’”5 5 “It is intercession,” the abba continued, “when he says;
'Father, I wish that those whom you have given me may also be with me where I am,
so that they may see my glory, which you have given me.’”5 6 Finally, “it is
thanksgiving when he says; 'I confess to you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth,
because you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and have
revealed them to little ones.’” 5 7
As with so many of Cassian’s illustrations with scriptural examples, the weight
of his instructions depended on the number of verses culled from across the
scriptures. In the words of the abba, these exemplars are clear, and yet Jesus also
prayed all four types in a single, perfect prayer. “Nonetheless he shows as well by his
own example that they can also be included together in a perfect prayer. This he does
in that prayer which we read that he poured out at great length toward the end of the
Gospel of John.” Such a comprehensive prayer, though, was not just to be found in
the gospels. The abba then turned to Paul again, this time the epistle to the
Philippians. These four types, occasionally must be “offered all at once with the
fervor of a single prayer. As he says; ‘Let your petitions be made known to God in
54 Conferences 9.17 .1; 339. cf Matt 26:39.

55 Conferences 9.17 .2; 340. cf John 17 :4 and John 17 :1 9.
56 Conferences 9.17 .2; 340. cf John 17 :24.
57 Conferences 9.17 .3; 340. cf John 11 :41-42.
113
every prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving.’”
Like the canonical prayers of the cenobium, these forms of prayer were not
the goal themselves. In fact, just as with all the ascetic practices, supplication,
prayer, intercession, and thanksgiving were to guide the monk to contemplation
itself. Though these forms could be united in a single, comprehensive prayer, the
true perfection was theoria itself. “And so a still more sublime and exalted condition
follows upon these kinds of prayer. It is fashioned by the contemplation of God
alone, by which the mind having been dissolved and flung into love of him, speaks
most familiarly and with particular devotion to God as to its own father.” Though
Cassian clearly favored the wordless and imageless prayer that Evagrius had
outlined, he turned again to the words scripture. Here the Lord’s prayer provided t he
image of holistic and intimate prayer. “The schema of the Lord’s prayer has taught us
that we must tirelessly seek this condition when it says; ‘Our Father.’” 5 8 Though
recitation of the prayer does not meet the wordless criteria for theoria, it did reveal
the intimate basis for contemplation itself. “When, therefore, we confess with our
own voice that the God and Lord of the universe is our Father, we profess that we
have in fact been admitted from our servile condition into an adopted sonship.” 5 9
In this, the most intimate of vocal prayer, Cassian ventured to explain the
import of each petition. Each request, he noted, revealed something unique about
the proper prayers of the monk. A petition for daily bread, for example, taught the
monk that he should pray only for enough bread for the day. He also connected a
58 Conferences 9.1 8.2; 340.

59 Conferences 9.1 8.2; 341 .
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spiritual meaning to the request, saying that the monk says in essence: “Give us this
bread as long as we dwell in this world. For we know that it will also be given in the
world to come to those who have deserved it from you, but we beg you to give it to us
this day, because unless a person deserves to receive it in this life he will unable to
partake of it in that life.” 6 0 In praying not to be tempted by evil, Cassian warned his
readers that such a petition was not spoken in order to be free of temptation. Rather,
in praying these words the monk asked the he not be overcome by evil in times of
trial. 6 1
Yet, from Cassian’s ascetic perspective, what was said in the prayer was
equally as important as what was not said. “In it,” Isaac noted, “there is contained no
request for riches, no allusion to honors, no demand for power and strength, no
mention of bodily health or temporal existence. For the Creator of eternal things
wishes nothing transitory, nothing base, nothing temporal to be asked for from
himself.” 6 2 Even the expression of the Lord’s Prayer, whether vocally or in the silence
of one’s mind, was a reminder of the whole ascetic project. Just as with the Psalms
and other scriptural prayers, Jesus’ prayer was essential to the monk’s progress into
contemplation.
Following on this discussion, the abba pointed toward the quality of wordless
theoria, for the Lord’s prayer guided the monks “to that condition which we
characterized previously as more sublime.” Isaac then provided Cassian’s image of
60 Conferences 9:21 .2; 343.

61 Conferences 9.23; 345.
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fiery prayer as a way to understand the ineffable quality of contemplation.
It leads them by a higher stage to that fiery and, indeed, more properly
speaking, wordless prayer which is known and experienced by v ery few.
This transcends all human understanding and is distinguished not, I
would say, by a sound of the voice or a movement of the tongue or a
pronunciation of words. Rather, the mind is aware of it when it is
illuminated by an infusion of heavenly light from it, and not by narrow
human words, and once the understanding has been suspended it
gushes forth as from a most abundant fountain and speaks ineffable to
God, producing more in that very brief moment than the self-conscious
mind is able to articulate easily or to reflect upon. 6 3
Cassian later built upon this description, especially the consciousness of prayer and
theoria, pointing to a saying of Antony. For the monk is not truly praying if he
“understands himself or what he is praying.” 6 4
Though the psalmody and recitation of these prayers for Cassian clearly built
toward contemplation, such ineffable prayer beyond the monk’s conscious ability
was clearly rooted in God’s grace. The lukewarm nature of the human will was all too
central to Cassian’s ascetic understanding. “There is no doubt that innumerable
occasions exist when, by the grace of God, the lukewarmness and sluggishness of our
minds can be aroused.” 6 5 The incursion of such fiery prayer, Cassian noted, could
arise within the synaxis itself. “Sometimes while we have been singing, the verse of
some psalm has offered the occasion for fiery prayer. Now and then the melodious
modulation of a brother's voice has excited insensible minds to intense prayer. We
know as well that the clarity and seriousness of the cantor have contributed a great
63 Conferences 9.25.1 ; 345-346.

64 Conferences 9.31 ; 349.
65 Conferences 9.26.2; 346. “atque in hunc modum nulli dubium est occasiones innumeras non
deesse, quibus per dei gratiam tepor ac somnolentia nostrarum mentium ualeat excitari.” Corpus
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 13.
116
deal to the fervor of those in attendance.” 6 6
Upon completing this description of contemplation and its root in the
condition of compunction, Germanus asked the abba just how this was possible. The
experience of compunction leading to fiery prayer was all too familiar to Germanus,
and yet the condition was not easily repeated. “For sometimes when I wish to excite
myself with all my strength to a similar tearful compunction and I place before my
eyes all my errors and sins, I am unable to achieve again such an abundance of tears,
and my eyes become as hard as the hardest flint.” 6 7 Isaac replied to Germanus’ desire
by challenging the assumption of causation. Compunction, while a necessary
condition for contemplation, was not one that could be forced. It simply described
how “the thorn of sinfulness pricks our heart.” 6 8 Theoria was not, then, a matter of
reproducing an emotional response but the result made possible in the long effort of
being formed in virtue.6 9
Cassian returned to the intimate and wordless character of contemplation
through an allegorical reading of Christ’s commandment to pray in secret in
Matthew.7 0 “Before anything else,” Abba Isaac said, “we must carefully observe the
gospel command which says that we should go into our room and pray to our Father
with the door shut.” For “we pray in our room when we withdraw our hearts
completely from the clatter of every thought and concern and disclose our prayers to
66 Conferences 9.26.1 ; 346.

67 Conferences 9.28.2; 347 .
68 Conferences 9.29.1 ; 347 .
69 Conferences 9.30.1 ; 348.
7 0 cf Matthew 6:6
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the Lord in secret and, as it were, intimately. We pray with the door shut when, with
closed lips and in total silence, we pray to the searcher not of voices but of hearts.” 7 1
Such guidance to pray within the silence of the mind seems to contradict the
importance placed on corporate liturgical prayer in Cassian’s establishment of the
cenobitic practices. Yet, Isaac did not assume that such mental prayer was always
performed when the monks were alone. “We must pray with the greatest silence,” he
instructed, “not only so that we may not disturb our brothers standing nearby with
our murmurings and outcries and distract the minds of those who are praying, but
also so that what we petition for may be hidden from our enemies who plot against
us greatly as we pray.”7 2 Such individual prayer, then, corresponded to the frequent
times of prayer within the canonical hours themselves. This quest for theoria ran
throughout all the ascetic life, whether the monk was alone or with others.
In fact, Isaac warned, these times of prayer should happen repeatedly. “For
this reason,” namely that the monk should pray silently in order to avoid the hearing
ears of the demons, “prayers should be made frequently, to be sure, but briefly, lest if
we take our time the lurking enemy be able to put something in our heart.” 7 3 For, he
said, “this is the true sacrifice, for ‘a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God.’” 7 4 To close
the conference, Isaac pulled together a number of Psalms—each of which would have
been prayed within the synaxis with regularity—to describe the prayers of the monks
7 1 Conferences 9.35.1 -2; 353.

7 2 Conferences 9.35.3; 353. V an der Horst argues that the idea that “the malevolence of some
supernatural powers” was part of the wider Greco-Roman culture. A prayer should be silent so that
this evil power might not eavesdrop on the petitioner. V an der Horst, “Silent Prayer in Antiquity ,” 3.
7 3 Conferences 9.36.1 ; 353.
7 4 Conferences 9.36.1 ; 353. cf Psalm 51:17 .
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“which are offered by contrite and humble hearts and which, thanks to this
disciplined and attentive spirit that we have spoken of, we shall be able to sing when
we have grown strong in virtue.”7 5 With this the abba united the various elements of
prayer so central to Cassian’s ascetic vision—attentive psalmody, compunction,
humility, and virtue.
Though Cassian ended the conference somewhat abruptly with this litany of
psalms describing the nature of verbal prayer, the exploration of contemplation
continued with the tenth conference. However, the introduction to the next
conference with Abba Isaac was, on the surface, a leap. Cassian returned to his
narrative style and placed the conversation within the opening event of the Origenist
controversy. The purpose of the brief historical excursus, however, was not intended
to validate the conference itself but to illustrate the necessity of wordless and
imageless prayer.
The letter from Bishop Theophilus, Cassian recounted, caused a spiritual
conflict for one monk in particular. Upon hearing his fellow monk’s defense of the
rebuke of anthropomorphic theology, Serapion was so confused “when he realized
that the anthropomorphic image of the Godhead which he had always pictured to
himself while praying had been banished from his heart, that he suddenly broke into
the bitterest tears and heavy sobbing and, throwing himself to the ground with a
loud groan, cried out: 'Woe is me, wretch that I am! They have taken my God from
me, and I have no one to lay hold of, nor do I know whom I should adore or
7 5 Conferences 9.36.1 ; 354.

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address.’”7 6 Germanus’s opening questions did not help the narrative flow between
the conferences. “Therefore we want to know, first of all, why such a serious error
crept in upon him. Then we ask to be taught how we may attain to the level of prayer
that you were discussing at great length and so magnificently.” 7 7 Nevertheless,
Stewart reminds us that the Christological question within the anthropomorphite
question played a central role in Cassian’s theology of theoria. 7 8 For his reply, Abba
Isaac pointed to the errors within other prayer traditions of Egyptian culture.7 9 “The
catholic monk—the one who understands prayer correctly —will detest this as pagan
blasphemy and will thereby attain to that purest form of prayer which will not only
mix no representation of the Godhead or bodily contour into its supplication (the
mere mention of which is wicked) but will indeed permit itself neither the memory of
any word whatsoever nor the likeness of any deed nor a shape of any kind.” 8 0
Having answered Germanus’s first question, albeit briefly, the abba turned to
discuss the ways the monk reaches the perfect prayer described in the previous
conference. In a brief summary, Isaac told the two travelers that “every mind is
7 6 Conferences 10.3.4-5; 37 3.
7 7 Conferences 10.4.2; 37 3.
7 8 “Anthropomorphic prayer brought the Arian controversy into the realm of spirituality: if the
human mind conceives of God in human form, God is thereby reduced to the human level. If Christ is
contemplated only in his earthly, pre-Resurrection humanity, he is not encountered in his glorified,
heavenly state.” Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 88.
7 9 Conferences 10.5.1 -2; 37 4. Though there is no direct connection here to the Egy ptian oracles, nor
to Iamablichus's Neo-Platonic theurgy, the similarities are worth noting. Here, the intersection
between the material and spiritual worlds echoes Cassian’s description of error — namely that prayers
are linked to phy sical, even human, objects. “For it is not pure thoughts that unites theurgists to the
gods,” Iamblichus stated. “It is the accomplishment of acts not to be div ulged and beyond all
conception, and the power of the unutterable symbols, understood solely by the gods, which
establishes theurgic union.” Iamblichus, Divine Mysteries, Book 2.11.97 ; 115. It is possible that
wordless and imageless prayer distinguished Christian Neo-Platonism from other Neo -Platonists,
especially the theurgists.
80 Conferences 10.5.3; 37 4.
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upbuilt and formed in its prayer according to the degree of its purity. To the extent
that it withdraws from the contemplation of earthly and material things, its state of
purity lets it progress and causes Jesus to be seen by the soul's inward gaze —either
as still humble and in the flesh or as glorified and coming in the glory of his
majesty.”8 1 The abba’s imagery here gave language to the beatific vision that Cassian
highlighted in the first conference. Such a vision, though, was an internal one.
Continuing the inner and outer dynamic of his anthropology, Cassian did not
describe theoria as a kind of ascent. Rather, perfect prayer involved a move to the
interior, away from the outer material world.
Even in Isaac’s appropriation of the transfiguration imagery the ascent of the
monk in prayer was not a literal one, but a standing on the virtues nurtured in the
ascetic and outer practices. Even those outside the monastery may see Jesus, but
Isaac qualified that kind of prayer saying “Jesus is also seen by those who dwell in
cities and towns and villages—that is by those who have an active way of life and its
obligations—but not with that brightness with which he appears to those who are
able to climb with him the aforesaid mount of the virtues.”8 2
Isaac went on to establish the possibility of contemplation this side of
eternity. “While sojourning in this body, we shall in some fashion be able to prepare
ourselves for the likeness as it were of that blessedness which is promised to the holy
ones in the future, and God will be 'all in all' for us.” 8 3 Even the solitary, in the
81 Conferences 10.6.1 ; 37 4.
82 Conferences 10.6.3; 37 5.
83 Conferences 10.6.4; 37 5. cf 1 Corinthians 15:28.
121
pursuit of perfection sought “to deserve to possess the image of future blessedness in
this body and as it were to begin to taste the pledge of that heavenly way of life and
glory in this vessel.” 8 4 In more trinitarian language, Isaac further grounded this
contemplative connection in God. “When that unity which the Father now has with
the Son and which the Son has with the Father, will be carried over into our
understanding and our mind, so that, just as he loves us with a sincere and pure
indissoluble love and so united with him that whatever we breathe, whatever we
understand, whatever we speak, may be God.” 8 5 There was, for Cassian, no
contemplative escape from the material life of asceticism. In fact, the trinitarian
unity involved the praying monk—body, mind, and spirit.
In order to further answer Germanus’ question regarding how the monk was
to attain to such perfect prayer, Isaac returned to the disciplines of an artist that
Cassian introduced in the first conference. “We are of the opinion that the perfection
of any art or discipline necessarily takes this course: Beginning with certain light
rudiments, it starts off easily and gently so that, having been nursed as it were with
rational milk and been brought along little by little, it may mature and thus slowly
and gradually mount from the depths to the heights.” 8 6 Just as a student learned the
alphabet and grammar in order to progress in the capacity to read, the monk
pursued the rudiments of the things of God. “Therefore I do not doubt that there are
also certain fundamental elements of instruction belonging to this most sublime
84 Conferences 10.7 .3; 37 6.

85 Conferences 10.7 .2; 37 5-37 6.
86 Conferences 10.8.2; 37 6.
122
discipline, which teaches us to cling constantly to God.” 8 7 Though the abba did not
identify particular ascetic practices, the canonical hours clearly fit this description of
learning and formation. Certainly, Isaac’s summary of the whole ascetic project
confirmed the instructions of Abba Moses. Yet, Germanus pressed Abba Isaac
further. “We want to have explained to us how this awareness of God may be
conceived in the mind and perpetually maintained there.” 8 8
Germanus, however, was incredulous. How could contemplation be
constantly maintained? For to this point in the conversation Abba Isaac had been
describing such prayer as a fleeting experience. Yet, as with any experience of an
infrequent good, the desire to reclaim what has disappeared fuels a quest. The abba
praised this desire expressed in Germanus’ query.
Your search, so meticulous and careful, foreshadows that purity is near

at hand. For a person will not be able even to ask about these things,
never mind examine and discern them, unless a diligent and thorough
effort of the mind and a vigilant concern have drawn him to scrutinize
the depths of those questions, and unless the constant striving for and
actual experience of a disciplined life have made him seek out the
threshold of this purity and knock at its portals. 8 9
Having praised the quest itself, the abba turned to outlining a particular
practice of keeping the mind at prayer. “Just as this was handed down to us by a few
of the oldest fathers who were left, so also we pass it on to none but the most
87 Conferences 10.8.3; 377 . Catherine Chin, in her book Grammar and Christianity in the Late
Roman World, argues that language work was also formative religious work. While focused on the
techniques of grammar, she could just as easily be talking about Cassian when she says “the practice
of grammar formed a technology of the imagination that allo wed its users to understand themselv es
as part of a coherent cultural system.” Catherine Chin, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman
World (Philadelphia, PA: Univ ersity of Pennsylv ania Press, 2008), 7 . For Cassian this cultural sy stem
was a decidedly ascetic one, as I argued in chapter two.
88 Conferences 10.7 .4; 377 .
89 Conferences 10.9.1 ; 37 8.
123
exceptional, who truly desire it. This, then, is the devotional formula proposed to you
as absolutely necessary for possessing the perpetual awareness of God: 'O God,
incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’” 9 0 Like the psalms of liturgical
prayer, this simple verse was not a source for meditation or interpretation. Rather, it
was to be the very prayer of the monk. Unlike the psalms prayed in the liturgy ,
however, this single verse was not tied to a particular state of mind or emotion. The
efficacy of the verse for frequent and individual prayer lay in its petition for grace.
For, as the abba observed, “it contains an invocation of God in the face of any crisis,
the humility of a devout confession, the watchfulness of concern and of constant fear,
a consciousness of one's own frailty, the assurance of being heard, and confidence in
a protection that is always present and at hand.” 9 1 At the same time the prayer was
not just suitable for ascetics. The invocation of God’s aid was something required for
all persons, monastic and lay. “For whoever desires to be helped always and in all
thing shows that he needs God as a helper not only in hard and sad affairs but also
and equally as much in favorable and joyful ones, so that just as he may be snatched
from the former he may abide in the latter, knowing that in neither instance can
human frailty endure without assistance.” 9 2
Cassian’s use of this formula echoed the Evagrian system of applying scripture
to various thoughts and situations of the monk. 9 3 Instead of a listing of scriptures
90 Conferences 10.10.2; 37 9. cf Psalm 7 0:1 .

91 Conferences 10.10.3; 37 9.
92 Conferences 10.10.5; 380.
93 Cassian focused on the nature of the mind and the ment al state where Ev agrius focused on the
demons that attack the monk. Cassian also simplified Evagrius' range of scriptures mean t to combat
the attacks of each demons. In the opening of Talking Back Ev agrius stated that “for us the entire
124
similar to Evagrius’s own, Cassian focused in on the single verse from Psalm 70.
Rather than applying the prayer to a listing of experiences or conditions, Isaac
simply turned to the vices themselves. In each case, Isaac illustrated the importance
and adaptability of the simple prayer. For example, the abba explored the various
ways the monk encountered the vice of gluttony. “If I am seized by the passion of
gluttony, look for food that is unheard of in the desert, and feel myself, in the midst
of the stark desert, drawn unwillingly to the desire for sumptuous repasts by the
aromas of such things coming upon me, then I should say; ‘O God, incline unto my
aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’” 9 4 Isaac’s account of the experience of gluttony
did not stop with the obvious attractions to food. “If a headache disturbs and hinders
when I want to attend to my reading for the sake of stability of heart, and if at the
third hour sleep causes my face to fall upon the sacred page, and if I am compelled to
prolong or to anticipate the established time of rest, and, finally, if the overwhelming
pressure of sleep is forcing me to absent myself from the canonical singing of the
psalms at the synaxis, then too I should cry out; ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord,
make haste to help me.’” 9 5
On first glance, the trials of sleep and the temptations of food appear to be
two different struggles for the ascetic and fit barely together in the category of
gluttony. Yet, gluttony for Cassian was more than just the temptations fueled by the
struggle will take place through the thoughts that approach us from each of these eight demons. But I
hav e written and quoted for each of the thoughts an answer from the Holy Scriptures that is able to
cut it off.” Evagrius, Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating De mons, trans Dav id
Brakke (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2009), 52.
94 Conferences 10.10.6; 380.
95 Conferences 10.10.8; 380.
125
enjoyment of food or an empty stomach. In the discussion of the vice in The
Institutes Cassian advised his readers that the monk should be both vigilant about
meals and the times established for sleep. In the quest for virtue the monk “should
first beware of ever allowing himself to take anything to drink or to eat, as one who is
overcome by pleasure of any sort, before the lawful station and the usual time for
eating, apart from table.” He should also “observe the canonical time for and amount
of sleep.” 9 6 Gluttony, then, encompassed temptations that satisfy the needs of the
flesh. Thus a monk should apply the virtues of abstinence and discretion acquired in
fasting to the temptations of oversleeping.
In the final conference of the first collection, Isaac continued to outline the
varieties of experiences that filled in each category of vice. Even the incursions of the
demons in the sleep of the night were to be confronted with the words of the psalm.9 7
The import of this summary of vices and experiences was clear. “This verse should be
poured out in unceasing prayer so that we may be delivered in adversity and
preserved and not puffed up in prosperity. You should, I say, meditate constantly on
this verse in your heart. You should not stop repeating it when you are doing any
kind of work or performing some service or on a journey. Meditate on it while
96 Institutes 5.20; 1 29. Ramsey notes that this discussion of sleep in the midst of a discussion of
gluttony rather than acedia is noteworthy. Ramsey, 1 46. Ev agrius also discussed sleep and eating in a
brief account of a conversation with Macarius in The Praktikos 94. “I asked him for a drink of water.
He answered me: 'Be content with the shade, for many there are who are making a journey on land or
on sea who are deprived of this.' Then as I struggled about temperance with him, wrestling with my
thoughts, he told me: 'Take courage, my son. For twenty full years I hav e not taken my fill of bread or
water or sleep. I have eaten my bread by scant weight, and drunk my water by measure, and snatched
a few winks of sleep while leaning against a wall.” Evagrius, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer,
40.
97 Conferences 10.10.13; 382.
126
sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs of nature.” 9 8
In a way, the recitation of the short verse carried the attentive prayer of the
canonical hours outside of the gathering itself. With such a simple phrase, the monk
could call his mind back to the prayerful attitude nurtured in corporate prayer. Just
as the canonical hours were structured so as to fulfill the injunction to pray without
ceasing, the verse itself met the actual criteria of ceaseless prayer. As Isaac instructed
his two seekers, “let the mind hold ceaselessly to this formula above all until it has
been strengthened by constantly using and continually meditating upon it, and until
it renounces and rejects the whole wealth and abundance of thoughts.” 9 9 In
cultivating the mind by weeding out the thoughts or vices, the recitation of the verse
cleared the way for the things of God.
Such sublime thoughts, noted Isaac could be found in the whole of the psalms.
Like the farmer metaphor of the first conference, the ascetic used the simple tool of
the psalm to prepare the ground of the heart to receive the harvest of the psalms. Or,
as Isaac said, “Thriving on the pasturage that they always offer and taking into
himself all the dispositions of the psalms, he will begin to repeat them and to treat
them in his profound compunction of heart not as if they were composed by the
prophet but as if they were his own utterances and his own prayer.” 1 0 0
The simple verse and the continuous recitation of the psalms during the
canonical hours formed the mind, nurturing a kind of capacity to see God. In other
98 Conferences 10.10.14; 382.

99 Conferences 10.11.1 ; 383.
1 00 Conferences 10.11.4; 384.
127
words, the monk formed in the Psalter was to experience the same awareness of God
as the composers of the texts themselves.
For divine scripture is clearer and its inmost organs, so to speak, are
revealed to us when our experience not only perceives but even
anticipates its thought, and the meanings of the words are disclosed to
us not by exegesis but by proof. When we have the same disposition in
our heart with which each psalm was sung or written down, then we
shall become like its author, grasping its significance beforehand rather
than afterward.1 0 1
The scriptures, then, come alive in the ascetic himself. In short, this
appropriation of the sacred text was not, for Cassian, something of the mind but
rooted in the monk who was formed by the practices of the monastery.
Understanding, in this manner, is not something learned from the text, something
committed to memory, but, as Isaac said, something seen. “Having been instructed
in this way, with our dispositions for our teachers, we shall grasp this as something
seen rather than heard, and from the inner disposition of the heart we shall bring
forth not what has been committed to memory but what is inborn in the very nature
of things. Thus we shall penetrate its meaning not through the written text but with
experience leading the way.”1 0 2
Whether recounting the stories of his travels, or warning his readers to follow
the teachers whose instructions come from experience, Cassian established
experience as a central component to his ascetic vision. In terms of contemplation,
experience signaled the knowledge of God that comes from seeing rather than
believing. This echoed clearly the root of Cassian’s ascetic instructions, namely their
1 01 Conferences 10.11.5; 384.

1 02 Conferences 10.11.6; 385.
128
central beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Germanus
aptly summarized this sublime sight, true to form, with a question. “For what could
be more perfect and what more sublime than to cling to the awareness of God by
such a short meditation, to leave behind all the limits of the visible by reflecting on a
single verse, and as it were to embrace the dispositions of every prayer in a brief
phrase? Therefore we ask that one thing which still remains be explained to us—
namely, how we can hold fast to this verse which you have given us as a formula, so
that just as by the grace of God we have been freed from the foolishness of worldly
thoughts we may likewise firmly grasp spiritual ones.” 1 0 3 Here Germanus laid the
emphasis on the kind of spiritual seeing implied in theoria. Contemplative sight was
the apprehension of the invisible as one observes the material world. For God “is also
clearly perceived in the grandeur of the things that he has created.” 1 0 4
As argued above, the aim of the monk at prayer was the orienting of the
mind’s gaze towards the things of God. Pressed by Germanus’ question, the abba
turned to consider the ways the mind slips away, distracted by other things, even the
scriptures themselves. “And so the mind, always aimlessly on the move, is distracted
by different things even at the time of the synaxis, as if it were drunk, and it never
accomplished any function proficiently. For instance, when it is praying it is recalling
a psalm or some reading. When it is chanting it is meditating on something else than
what the text of the psalm itself contains.” In short, the mind “receives and rejects
nothing in a disciplined and proper manner, and it seems to react to chance
1 03 Conferences 10.12. 385.

1 04 Conferences 1.15.1 ; 55.
129
incursions, not having the ability to hold fast to the things that please it nor to
remain in them.” 1 0 5 As with any hurdle to ascetic progress, the remedy was to be
found in the practices of the cenobium, “namely vigils, meditation, and prayer.” A
monk, “being faithful and constantly attentive to them produces a solid firmness of
soul.” 1 0 6
As with all of the ascetic practices, the aim was not perfection of the practices
of meditation or fasting. Though they were indeed a remedy for the wandering mind,
the clear goal was the cultivation of virtuous prayer. For, as Isaac warned his
listeners. “whoever is in the habit of praying only at the hour when the knees are
bent prays very little. But whoever is distracted by any sort of wandering of heart,
even on bended knee, never prays.”1 0 7
In this way, Isaac returned full circle to the canonical prayers. That is to say
that the capacity for contemplation was founded and exemplified in the mind turned
towards God. Or, as Isaac eloquently noted, “we have to be outside the hour of prayer
what we want to be when we are praying.” 1 0 8 This summarized the apostolic
injunction to pray without ceasing, that the monk should keep the mind’s attention
focused on God, within the canonical hours and in the times between. As Cassian
noted in the postscript to the conference, the abba’s “teaching on meditating on the
aforesaid verse, which he gave as a format to be maintained by beginners, we greatly
1 05 Conferences 10.12.2; 386.

1 06 Conferences 10.14.1 ; 386.
1 07 Conferences 10.14.2; 386.
1 08 Conferences 10.14.2; 386-387 . Ramsey translates Cassian references to time into matters of
space. “et idcirco quales orantes uolumus inueniri, tales nos esse oportet ante tempu s orandi.” Corpus
130
admired and firmly desired to practice, since we believed it short and easy.” 1 0 9
Conclusion
Prayer, especially the pursuit of contemplation, bridged The Institutes and
The Conferences. In fact, the central beatitude linked both the practice of asceticism
and the goal of theoria. As the previous survey of Cassian’s theory of contemplation
argues, the ritual of canonical prayers laid the foundation for keeping the mind
attentive to the things of God. In essence, it built the capacity within the monk to
extend prayer beyond the liturgy itself.
Though Stewart is certainly right that reading the scriptures was not itself
prayer, the texts, especially the Psalms, were integral to the ascetic’s life of prayer.
Even the kind of meditation on the scriptures wherein the monk was concerned with
interpretation and memorization provided a firm footing for the more prayerful
modes of meditation. As Cassian said in conference ten, the monk gradually adopted
the words of the Psalms especially as his own prayer. In interiorizing the biblical
passages, the monk could more easily reorient the mind towards God with increasing
ease.
The psalmody and prayers of liturgical hours and the frequent recitation of
Psalm 70:1 were prayers based in words. As such, they did not meet the specific
criteria for theoria, namely what was to be found in the fiery, ecstatic prayer beyond
words and images. Instead, the prayerful appropriation of the scripture texts built
1 09 Conferences 10.14.1 ; 387 . Cassian continued, setting up this simple format against Ev agrius’s
sy stem of praying various texts for any occasion. “But we have experienced that it is considerably
more difficult to observe than that practice of ours by which we used to run through the whole body of
Scripture, meditating here and there, without being b ound by any persevering application.”
131
within the monk the capacity to receive the grace of fiery prayer. That said, Cassian
avoided any sense of ritual as causation. In other words, praying in the liturgy or
reciting the psalm in adversity was not a rite by which the monk could expect
contemplation. Rather, it formed the monk so as to more easily receive the ecstatic
gift. Thus, the liturgical practices of Cassian’s asceticism worked on the monks in two
ways. First, it served as a tool for the rooting out of the vices. Second, as he noted in
the early discussions of the vices, it filled the space left by the eradicated vices with
the means to keep the mind at prayer—namely the scriptures themselves.
Yet, as grace, contemplation was clearly not something to be forced or
controlled. For Cassian noted in his closing remarks to conference ten, the model of
prayer presented by Abba Isaac was one that could be practiced by anyone. “It is
clear, then, that no one is ever excluded from perfection of heart because of illiteracy,
nor is simplicity an obstacle to attaining purity of heart and soul, which is very near
to all, if only they would, by continually mediating on this verse, keep the mind's
whole and entire attention fixed on God.” 1 1 0
1 1 0 Conferences 10.14.3; 387 .

Chapter Four
Holistic Asceticism: Practice, Knowledge, and Grace
Cassian’s ascetic vision was clear. Through the practices of the monastery, the
monk pursued the immediate goal of purity of heart in the quest for the grace of
contemplation. Employing the language of the beatitude, Cassian established the
virtues as the keystone to the various components of askesis. For instance, the
virtues were the fertile soil in which the seeds of contemplation could take root.
What is more, the virtues were the key to understanding the nature of God’s grace
and the meanings of scripture. Purity of heart, then, was more than just a convenient
way to mitigate the problems Evagrian apatheia, it highlighted the pivotal role the
virtues played within the whole of the Cassian’s ascetic program.
To be sure, Cassian’s treatment of the virtues and the theological
understandings that emerged from their pursuit were grounded in the experience of
ascetic formation. Unlike other theologians, such as Origen, who penned more
speculative theologies, Cassian’s discussions of prayer, grace, and hermeneutics were
entirely practical. That is to say that what Cassian described in The Conferences
emerged from the experience of ascetic formation. This concluding chapter will
discuss two frequently studied aspects of Cassian's work, his discussion of grace in
conference thirteen and his outline for practical and spiritual knowing in the
fourteenth. While these are two well studied aspects of Cassian's ascetic writings,
they demonstrate how practice and theology, experience and understanding were
part of the whole.

132
133
Cassian's legacy is decidedly a mixed one among theologians. For the western
church, Cassian's theological influence has been complicated by the so-called Semi-
Pelagian controversies late in his life. Thanks to Cassian’s discussion of grace in the
infamous conference thirteen and the refutations of Prosper of Aquitaine, Cassian's
challenge to Augustine's doctrine is often the example of a counter-point to dogma.
The Council of Orange (529) has served Augustinian theologians well in their
refutations of Cassian's theology of grace. However, a close study of conference
thirteen reveals that Prosper's reading was not completely accurate. 1 Clearly, Cassian
refuted the errors of Pelagius, yet his outline of the cooperation between grace and
will ran afoul of certain readings of Augustine's theology of grace.2 For Cassian,
holding grace and will together in this way was entirely appropriate. Rather than
speaking of grace objectively, or even speculatively, Cassian emphasized the
cooperation of human effort and God's grace based on the experiences of being a
monk.
Experience figured prominently within Cassian's two monastic works. As
Stephen Driver has noted, Cassian employed his personal experiences as a rhetorical
device to establish his authority within his new Gallic context. Yet, experience was
more than a literary strategy. The experiences of the practical and theoretical life, of
1 Augustine Casiday 's study of Cassian's theology demonstrates how Prosper misconstrued Cassian's
argument. While pointed, Casiday states plainly that Prosper was willing “to suppress or distort
clauses that would tend to complicate (if not simply invalidate) his portray al of Cassian's thought.”
Casiday , Theology and Tradition, 28. Pristas' methodical study of Cassian's theological anthropology
has shown both the rhetorical structure of both The Institutes and The Conferences argued for the
sy nergy between grace and will. “The doctrinal focus is not the possibility of human good will but
God's activity acting on behalf of our salv atio n.” Pristas, “The Theological Anthropology,” 282.
2 Thomas Humphries argues in his study of ascetic pneumatologies that “Prosper's pneumatology is
the first in a series of 'Augustinianisms' that came to life even as Augustine came to his death.”
Humphries, Ascetic Pneumatology, 7 4.
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cultivating the virtues and contemplation, in the Egyptian desert also defined his
theological understanding. When confronted with the predestinarian extremes of
Augustine's theology of grace, Cassian could not help but speak from the ascetic
experience and acknowledge the role of human will and effort in transformation. The
difference for Cassian, however, was that effort did not cause contemplation. Rather
ascetic performance prepared the heart to receive the ultimate grace of theoria.
For Cassian, the monk came to experience the fullness of grace in the growth
of the virtues at the intersection of the two aspects of Cassian's asceticism—the
practical and the theoretical. Cassian expressed this throughout The Conferences,
especially in descriptions of liturgical and contemplative prayer. He also made the
intersection clear in the refrain that teachers were not to instruct others in matters
they had not experienced themselves.3 In the case of both the cultivation of virtue
and quest for contemplation, Cassian repeatedly warned his readers through the
teaching of the abbas that one's authority lay with the experience of grace in the
midst of ascetic formation. To teach another monk from just a theoretical knowledge
of virtue, prayer, or grace was to lean too heavily on human effort, and thus lead the
3 Conferences 14.9.5; 513. “Nor should anyone presume to teach in words what he has not previously
done in deed.” Abba Nesteros spoke similar words to Cassian personally in the passage preceding this
instruction. “Take care first of all, then (especially you, John, who should be more heedful of
observ ing what I am going to speak of, since you are somewhat younger), that your lips maintain
strict silence, lest your pursuit of reading and the intensity of your desire come to naught because of
empty pride. This the first beginning of practical discipline —that with attentive heart and as it were
silent tongue you receiv e the institutes and words of all the elders, preserve them carefully in your
breast, strive to fulfill them rather than to teach them.” This is reminiscent of a story told about
Ev agrius, who approached an elder for a bit of wisdom. “The old man answered him: 'If you wish to
sav e your soul do not speak before you are asked a question.' Now this bit of adv ice was very
disturbing to Evagrius and he displayed some chagrin at having asked it for he thought: 'Indeed, I
hav e read many books and I cannot accept instruction of this kind.' Hav ing derived much profit from
his v isit he left the old man.'” E.A.W. Budge, The Book of Paradise: Being the Histories and Sayings
of the Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert, vol. 1 (London, 1904), 606 quoted in Ev agrius, The
Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer Introduction and translation John Eudes Bamberger (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications, 1 981), x iv.
135
monk to pride. Rather, as I argued in chapter two regarding the role of community
within Cassian’s ascetic vision, the spiritual guide was a witness to the work of God
from start to finish. Here we witness the way Cassian thought. What others divided
and distinguished, Cassian saw as parts of the whole.
Few modern scholars look to Cassian as a source for understanding grace. Y et,
to dismiss him as quasi-Pelagian is to overlook his clear assertions that the vision of
God promised in the beatitudes can only come by the unique gift of the same God
sought in prayer. In fact, nowhere did Cassian say that theoria, nor the fullness of
the beatific vision, could come by the good works of the monk. Rather, “the grace of
Christ is at hand every day,”4 and it is the monk’s task to conform to that grace. 5 So
when a monk even slightly turned towards the good works of virtue, God poured on
the grace to spur him on in virtue.6 The monk, Cassian was clear, could not fulfill the
desire for virtue by his own work. Rather, as will be argued below, it was God whose
grace met that desire with fulfillment. This was the assertion that gained the
polemical attention of Prosper. Yet, a closer reading of Cassian's conference on
perfection reveals that Prosper did not comprehend the fullness of Cassian's
theological understanding of human and divine cooperation. 7 For in focusing on
Cassian’s thirteenth conference, Prosper overlooked the contemplative goal that ran
throughout Cassian’s writings. Both contemplation and the formation of the virtues
in the monk were first and foremost matters of God’s grace.
4 Conferences 13.7 .3; 47 2.

6 Conferences 13.7 .1; 47 2.
7 Casiday , Tradition and Theology, 7 .
136
In this final chapter a summary of Cassian's discussion of chastity and
abstinence will uncover the gracious intersection of practice and theoria, an insight
revealed in the efforts of the ascetic’s will. Building from the difference between
chastity and abstinence, Cassian's schema of practical and spiritual knowledge
further demonstrates the intersection of human effort and divine grace.
Understanding Grace
In the opening of the conference eleven Cassian shifted the geography of the
next set of conferences from Scetis to the marshes of the Thebaid. In this shift of
location Cassian also began a series three conferences with Abba Chaeremon on
perfection, chastity, and grace. These topics emerged from the ascetic life itself. For
the monk, perseverance was central to the contemplative life. In cultiv ating the
virtues, the body presented the most stubborn of weeds. Though pride and vain glory
remained with even the most perfect of monks, the body often challenged any
semblance of perfection. While the two pilgrims followed the traditional form of
asking simply for a word, Abba Chaeremon made clear that his old age prevented
him from teaching with much authority. The two young monks pressed further. "We
ask that you break your silence a little and instead deign to fill us with those things
by which we may be able to embrace–more by admiration those things than by
imitation—the virtue we see in you."8 Though once reticent to instruct the two,
Chaeremon honored their request, and spoke with Cassian and Germanus for three
conferences that explored the complexities of perfection.

137
Three things restrain the monk from vice, began the abba. "namely, the fear of
Ghenna or of present laws; or hope and desire for the kingdom of heaven; or
disposition for the good itself and a love of virtue."9 Though the schema made sense
from experience itself, the abba linked these three means of restraint to the
scriptural exhortation to faith, hope, and love.
Therefore the blessed Apostle includes the entire sum of salvation in

the perfection of these three virtues, saying: “Now there abide faith,
hope, love, these three.” For it is faith, that through dread of future
judgment and punishment, makes us refrain from the contagion of
vice; hope that, calling our minds away from things present, despises
all the pleasures of the body and waits for heavenly rewards; love that,
inflaming us mentally with the love of Christ and with the fruit of
spiritual virtue, makes us utterly despise whatever is contrary to those
things. 1 0
Though the ends of these three virtues appear the same, namely the rejection of vice
for the good, they can be distinguished by "degrees of difference." 1 1
Following the Apostle Paul, Chaeremon pointed to love as the more perfect of
the virtues. "For," he said, "the first two belong properly to those who are tending
toward perfection and have not acquired a love of virtue."1 2 Though faith and hope
are indeed part of the pursuit of purity of heart, it is love alone that was the
perfection of the monk’s actions. As Chaeremon said, "only he does what is good who
is moved not by fear or by hope of reward but by a disposition for the good alone." 1 3
Just as Cassian viewed the human person as a whole, comprised of both body and

1 0 Conferences 11.6.2; 411-412. cf I Corinthians 1 3:13.
1 1 Conferences 11.6.2; 412.
1 2 Conferences 11.6.3; 412.
1 3 Conferences 11.6.3; 412.
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spirit, the quest for good and virtue was equally two parts—the act itself and the
correct disposition. In this case, the monk progressed through the stages of restraint,
from fear through hope to love. "If a person is tending to perfection, then, he will
mount from that first degree of fear—which we have properly designated as servile
and about which it is said: 'When you have done everything, say: “We are useless
slaves”’—to the higher level of hope, progressing by degree."1 4
This movement from fear to love, said Chaeremon, was the ascetic equivalent
of the prodigal son's return home, a restoration to sonship. The prodigal ascetic, he
said, "seems to strive for a reward for what is pleasing, still he is unable to attain to
the disposition of a son who trusts in the generosity of his father's indulgence and
who has no doubt that everything belongs to the father is his." 1 5 The monks, like the
prodigal son, "mounting by the indissoluble grace and love to the third degree of
sons, who believe that everything, which belongs to their father is theirs, must strive
to be worthy of receiving the image and likeness of the Heavenly Father and of being
able to proclaim in imitation of the true Son: ‘All that the Father has is mine.’" 1 6
Despite the abba's emphasis on becoming worthy of God's love, Chaeremon was
clear that the ability to love first comes from the love of the Father alone. "As it is
said, 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Since fear has
punishment, the one who fears is not perfect in love. Therefore, let us love, because
God had first loved us.'" 1 7
1 4 Conferences 11.7 .1; 412 cf Luke 17 :10.

1 5 Conferences 11.7 .1; 412.
1 6 Conferences 11.7 .3; 413.
1 7 Conferences 11.7 .5; 41 3. cf I John 4:1 8-19.
139
Monks, noted the abba, were "unable to mount to that true perfection unless,
just as he first loved us for no other reason than our salvation, we also love him for
no other reason than sheer love of him." In pursuing virtue, the monk was to
exemplify and live out of the primary love of God. By imitating Christ, the monk "has
made his own the Lord's compassion." Like the example of Christ's prayer for others
from the cross, the ascetic was to pray for others, saying "Father, forgive them, for
they do not know what they are doing." 1 8 However, Chaeremon continued, “it is clear
that the soul is not yet cleansed of the dregs of vice when [he] does not mourn over
others; sins out of a disposition of mercy but is inflexibly judgmental." 1 9 The monk's
love for others, then, was a mirror of the love of God, showing the love of God but
only as a reflection of God's first love. The foundation of perfection, then, was not the
perfection of the ascetic practices but rather the progression into love. "Whoever has
been established in the perfection of this love will certainly mount by a degree of
excellence to the more sublime fear of love, which is begotten not by dread of
punishment or by desire for rewards but by the greatness of one's love." 2 0
The two monks were not quite finished with mining the wisdom of the senior
abba. Following a meal, the three gathered for another conference and continued the
conversation on perfection, this time not of the soul but the body itself. "In a similar
fashion," began Chaeremon, "we should discuss whether the fire of lust, whose heat
this flesh senses as something inborn, can be completely extinguished." 2 1 Chaeremon
1 8 Luke 23:34
1 9 Conferences 11.10; 416-417 .
20 Conferences 11.13.1 ; 419.
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then proceeded to dividing lust into categories; fornication, impurity, wantonness,
and evil desire. The first is easily defined as that "which occurs in carnal union." The
others creep up “on those who are sleeping or awake, without even touching a
woman." Such dreams, especially when accompanied by nocturnal emissions,
presented the ascetic with the more pressing concern. Abstaining from sex was
simple given the strictures of communal asceticism. Yet, these inner flickers of lust
that do not require the physical act itself followed the monk regardless of his
vocation. Chaeremon summed this much up saying that "it is a much greater thing to
contain the desire of a wandering mind when an attractive appearance happens to
present itself. Hence, it is clearly proven that the chastity of bodily abstinence alone
is insufficient for perfect purity unless integrity of mind is also present." 2 2
By distinguishing between abstinence and chastity Abba Chaeremon
maintained the link between body and soul that ran throughout Cassian's ascetic
writings. "Therefore," the abba continued, "if we want to cast carnal desires from our
hearts, we should at once plant spiritual pleasures in their place, so that our mind,
always bound to them, might have the wherewithal to abide in them constantly and
might spurn the affirmations of present and temporal joys." 2 3 As Cassian made clear
in his earlier discussions of the vices, rooting them out was only part of the ascetic
project. In the pursuit of perfection the monk also oriented the mind towards the
things of God. The absence of vice, then, could not be left alone since another would
fill its place. Instead, the virtues had to be cultivated in the void left behind. As with
22 Conferences 12.2.4-5; 436.

141
contemplative prayer, however, these spiritual things were also part of God's
sustaining grace. This interplay, then, places the monk "at the boundaries of these
realities." 2 4
Though the topic was treated again later in the conferences, Abba Chaeremon
illustrated, through a brief discussion of nocturnal emissions, just how central to
perfection the inner and outer aspects of chastity were. When a monk wakes in the
morning and "discovers that his flesh has been polluted after a long period of time,
without his having been aware of it at all, let him then–and only then–blame the
needs of nature." The abba continued saying that the monk “has without a doubt
arrived at the state where he is the same at night as during the day; the same in
reading as at prayer; the same alone as when surrounded by crowds of people, so
that finally, he never sees himself in secret as he would blush to be seen by men." 2 5
Like prayer, then, perfection could be found when the gift remained constant
regardless of the monk’s active intention or even his physical circumstances.
Perpetual tranquility thus distinguished physical abstinence and true chastity.
"For this is the consummation of true chastity, which does not fight the movements
of carnal lusts but detests them with utter horror, maintaining a constant and
inviolable purity itself. This can be nothing else than holiness." 2 6 Such a gift was also
a sign of the goodness of God. "This, then, is the wondrous work of God—that a
fleshly human being, dwelling in flesh, would have rejected fleshly desires, would
24 Conferences 12.8.2; 444. “et ita inter illorum quodammodo terminos conlocatus.” Corpus
26 Conferences 12.11.1 ; 448.
142
hold to one state of mind in the midst of so many different affairs and assaults and
would remain changeless in every changing happenstance." 2 7 More to the point, "to
begin not to hope for [chastity] by one's own laborious efforts is a clear sign that
purity is already near."2 8
The discussion naturally progressed to the nature of grace itself. In the
introduction to the thirteenth conference, Chaeremon returned to the agricultural
metaphor that figured prominently in the first conference. "A farmer," he began,
"when he has experienced all his efforts in tilling the soil, would not then be able to
attribute the produce of his fields and his abundant yield to his own toil." 2 9 The
metaphor clarified the intersection of human effort and grace itself. "Just as the
divine goodness does not bestow an abundant yield on sluggish farmers who do not
plow their fields frequently, so neither will night long anxiety be profitable to those
who labor if it has not been smiled upon by the Lord's mercy."3 0 The very root of
both good works and "good thoughts is in God." 3 1 While God "both inspires in us the
beginnings of a holy will and grants the ability and the opportunity to fulfillment the
things that we rightly desire,”3 2 Cassian was clear that “it is up to us to conform
humbly to the grace of God that daily draws us on." 3 3
Germanus, true to form, was not convinced by the abba’s theology of grace.
27 Conferences 12.13.2; 452.

28 Conferences 12.15.3; 453.
29 Conferences 13.3.1 ; 467 .
30 Conferences 13.3.2; 467 .
143
"This tends toward the destruction of free will." T o support his critique Germanus
pointed to the conduct of the philosophers. "How can it be believed that their free
will was fettered and that those things were bestowed on them by the gift of God
when they were in fact followers of worldly wisdom and not only completely ignorant
of the grace of God but even of the true God himself, as we know from the course of
our reading and from the teaching of certain persons? They are said to have
possessed the purest chastity thanks to their own laborious efforts." 3 4 Chaeremon
warned his two visitors that such chastity reflected abstinence rather than true
chastity. "That much was clear,” he said, "from their own say so." For the
philosophers "only repressed actual immoral behavior—that is, wicked intercourse—
by main force, but that desire for and delight in this passion had not been cut out
from their hearts."3 5 So, for Cassian, chastity was a comprised of both inner and
outer virtue.
The previous two conferences built to this discussion of grace and works.
Ascetic perfection, especially chastity, revealed both the limits of human effort and
the ever present grace of God. Chaeremon illustrated this by pointing to the failures
of the will, even when the monk is able to pursue the ascetic way of life. "For we do
not keep to solitary silence or strict fasting or intense reading by our own will even
when we are able to, but even against our own will we are frequently distracted from
beneficial practices by conflicting interests, so that we are obliged to beseech the
Lord for ample space or time in which to carry out these things." It was not enough,

35 Conferences 13.5.3; 47 0.
144
he continued, "for us to have the ability unless the Lord also grants us the
opportunity of doing the things that in fact we can." 3 6
To this point in the conference, Abba Chaeremon appeared to follow the path
of Augustine. He even foreshadowed Prosper's later defense of grace based on the
statements of the church. Just as Prosper stated in his later writings on grace “that
the law of supplicating may constitute the law of believing," 3 7 Chaeremon highlighted
that the monk must "beseech the Lord" for the capacity to keep to the ordinances of
the ascetic life. Here the abba echoed the petition for grace and help in Psalm 70:1.
As Chaeremon continued, however, the differences between Augustine and Cassian
emerged. "For God's purpose," remarked the abba, "according to which he did not
make the human being to perish but live forever, abides unchanging." 3 8 Though
Cassian and Augustine diverged on the role of grace in anthropology, Cassian als o
made clear that the availability of grace was based on God's intentions for all
humanity. As Chaeremon said, "the grace of Christ is at hand every day." 3 9
The abba then pointed to I Timothy as his basis for understanding God's plan.
"When his kindness sees shining in us the slightest glimmer of good will, which he
himself has in fact sparked from the hard flint of our heart, he fosters it, stirs it up,
36 Conferences 13.6.4-5; 47 1.
37 “Ut legem credenti statuat supplicandi.” Prosper, “Paeteritorum episcoporum sedis apostolicae
auctoritates de gratia Dei et libero vountatis arbitrio,” Patrologia Latina 51:209-210. DeLetter
translates the maxim more simply : “Let the rule of prayer lay down the rule of faith.” Prosper,
“Official Pronouncement of the Apostolic See on Div ine Grace and Free Will,” trans Paul deLetter,
Defense of Saint Augustine (New York, NY: Newman Press, 1963), 1 83. However, the subjunctive
construction and word ordering could be better translated as above. See Max well Johnson, Praying
and Believing in Early Christianity, (Collegev ille, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), x.
38 Conferences 13.7 .1; 47 2.
39 Conferences 13.7 .3; 47 2.
145
and strengthens it with his inspiration, 'desiring all to be saved and to come to the
knowing of the truth.'"4 0 Here Cassian layered scriptural references in order to
further his argument. "For, he says, 'it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven
that one of these little ones should perish.' And again he says, 'God does not wish a
soul to perish, but he withdraws and reflects, lest one who has been cast down perish
utterly.'"4 1
Here Cassian ran afoul with one reading of Augustine's theology, particularly
that of his defender in Gaul. 4 2 By asserting that the initial movement towards the
good can come from human effort, Cassian had challenged the more radical theology
of grace in Augustine's later writings. For, in Prosper's reading, the objectivity of
grace was such that human effort could not begin the quest for virtue. Rather, bound
by original sin, "the only hope for this one fallen nature lies in its recreation,
according to the image of God, through the agency of grace." 4 3 In other words,
Cassian's "glimmer of good will" for Prosper was itself the result of grace. Thus,
40 Conferences 13.7 .1; 47 2. cf I Timothy 2:4. Augustine, on the other hand, read this passage in a
more limited sense. God’s desire for salv ation was for all the elect. See Rebecca Harden Weaver,
Rebecca Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian
Controversy (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1 996), 53 -54.
41 Conferences 13.7 .1; 47 2. cf Matthew 1 8:14 and 2 Samuel 1 4:14.
42 That Cassian's discussion of grace had prompted Prosper's polemic is not debated. Rather, the
question is now how normative Prosper's reading of Augustine was in the fifth century. In a
discussion of the v arious ascetic pneumatologies from Cassian to Gregory the Great Humphries has
noted that the conflict between Prosper and Cassian was not between Augustinianism and Cassian. In
fact, there were several readings of the bishop of Hippo in use at the time. “Gregory, Flugentius, and
Prosper developed three different kinds of 'Augustinianism' within a relatively short period after
Augustine's death.” Thomas Humphries, Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the
Great (New York, NY : Ox ford University Press, 2013), 201. Ev en though some modern scholarship
has assumed Prosper's reading of Augustine has been normative, Gregory sy nthesized the two. “There
is consensus among scholars that Gregory is an ascetic in the tradition of Cassian, even though he
never wrote a rule for monastic life. Gregory is also an Augustinian theologian. Like V incent of Lérins
and Julianus Pomerius, Gregory is more concerned to sy nthesize Cassian and Augustine than to force
a dichotomy between the two.” Ibid, 157 .
43 Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency, 42.
146
Cassian's emphasis on the intersection of human will and God's grace violated the
sovereignty of grace itself.
Taken on its own, Cassian's noted assertion that "when God sees us turning in
order to will what is good, he comes to us, directs us, and strengthens us" did appear
to contradict Augustine's own theology.4 4 However, Prosper overlooked the nuances
of Cassian's argument and mischaracterized what he did cite. 4 5 Simply stated, "both
the grace of God and our freedom of will are affirmed," for "by his own activity a
person can occasionally be brought to a desire for virtue, but he always needs to be
helped by the Lord." 4 6 The earlier example of the good acts of the philosophers made
this much clear. Persons can do what is good, even by the grand efforts of the will,
but they cannot progress to the heights of virtue by will alone. Abba Chaeremon
made this much clear saying that "however much human weakness may strive, then,
it will be unable to reach the level of the future reward."4 7
Careful to clarify the intersection of grace and will, Chaeremon warned that
"no one should think that we have suggested these things in an attempt to say that
the whole of salvation is entirely dependent on our faith, according to the godless
opinion of some, who ascribe everything to free will." Here Cassian clearly rejected
the perspective of Pelagius, for it was not that "the grace of God is dispensed to each
44 Conferences 13.11.5; 477 -47 8.

45 Casiday , Tradition and Theology, 27 -28. “A second key feature of Prosper's polemic that is
immediately apparent is his willingness to suppress or distort clauses that would tend to complicate
(if not simply invalidate) his portray al of Cassian's thoughts.”
46 Conferences 13.9.4; 47 5.
47 Conferences 13.13.4; 482.
147
person in conformity with his desserts."4 8 In other words, grace is not a reward for
good conduct, but rather the means by which all may be lifted to the rewards of the
beatific vision. As such, Chaeremon continued, the Catholic fathers "taught
perfection of heart not by idle disposition but in fact and in deed." Each person,
having true free will, "faces each alternative fully." At the same time, noted the abba,
the practices of asceticism in pursuit of virtue must bear fruit in such a way that “the
possibility of choice is not extinguished." 4 9 At the same time, such fruit of virtue
could not be the result of a "submissive freedom" held captive. 5 0
The Virtues and Spiritual Knowledge
Though the conferences with Abba Chaeremon concluded with a note about
the freedom in the virtues5 1 the idea carried through into the next conference with
Abba Nesteros. Though Cassian's theology of grace was suspect in later centuries, his
discussion of the meanings of scripture was influential into the Middle Ages. 5 2 In
that discussion Cassian simplified Evagrius' own forms of knowledge 5 3 while
48 Conferences 13.16.1 ; 487 .

49 Conferences 13.18.4; 490.
50 Conferences 13.18.4; 490.
51 Conferences 13.18.4; 490.
52 Robert Grant and Dav id Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 1 984), 85. See also an ex tended discussion of the legacy of Cassian's hermeneutic
in Rebecca Harden-Weaver, “Access to Scripture: Experiencing the Text,” Intepretation 52:4 (1 998),
37 6-377 .
53 In the Kephalaia Gnostikos, Ev agrius defined two types of knowing theoria physike (knowledge of
created things) and theoria (knowledge of the Trinity). See Robin Darling Young, “Ev agrius the
Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos,” Journal of Early Christianity 9:1 (2001 ), 57 -58.
Cassian used Evagrius’s frame to further structure Origen’s three senses of scripture. Like Ev agrius,
Cassian’s monk had to progress in the v irtues in order to access the spiritual meanings described by
Origen. Ev agrius briefly summed up this progress in Ad Monachos 118-1 20. “Flesh of Christ: v irtues
of praktike; he who eats it, passionless he shall be. Blood of Christ: contemplation of created things;
he who drinks it, by it becomes wise. Breast of the Lord: knowledge of God; he who rests against it, a
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combining it with Origen's well recognized modes of interpreting scripture. 5 4 By
linking both formation in virtue and the types of interpretation, Cassian highlighted
how ascetic effort and graced knowing were integrated, just as Chaeremon had
described the intersection of grace and will in the preceding conference.
Knowing that Cassian and Germanus had committed parts of scripture to
memory, Nesteros introduced the division between praktike and theoretike,
practical and contemplative knowledge, by recalling the discussion of the ascetic
disciplines and their end Abba Moses had outlined in the first conference. "If
therefore these arts are established by the dissemination of proper rules, how much
greater the discipline and profession of our religion, which tends to the
contemplation of invisible mysteries and not to present gain but expects eternal
recompense and rewards, stands on fixed order and reason.” 5 5 This method, the abba
noted, is divided into two ways of knowing. "The first kind is praktike, or practical,
theologian shall he be.” Evagrius, Ad Monachos, 62. The word theologian in Ad Monachos echoes
Ev agrius’s noted description of the theologian as one who prays in Chapters on Prayer 60. “If you are
a theologian you truly pray. If you truly pray you are a theologian.” Ev agrius, The Praktikos and
Chapters on Prayer, 65.
54 “And so it happens that even in [the scriptural narratives] the Spirit has mingled not a few things
by which the historical order of the narrative is interrupted and broken, with the object of turning and
calling the attention of the reader, by the impossibility of the literal sense, to an examination of the
inner meaning.” Origen, On First Principles, 287 . Elizabeth Clark notes that ascetic readings of
scripture were “not usually engaged v ia allegory : the Fathers dev ised many other ways to produce
ascetic meaning. Yet, recent scholars rarely hint that ‘monastic exegesis’ sometimes appears
puzzlingly similar to ‘rabbinic exegesis.’” Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and
Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 999), 68. She then notes
that in one particular instance, an essay by Jacques Biarne entitled “La Bible dans la vie monastique,”
Cassian’s exegesis is marshaled as ev idence of this similarity with rabbinic techniques. Yet, Clark
cautions, “we might add that such attention probably reflects Cassian’s (hidden) debt to Origen.” Ibid,
68 n 147 .
55 Conferences 14.1.3. Translation mine. “si ergo illae artes ad insinuationem sui certis ac propriis
lineis diriguntur, quanto magis religionis nostrae disciplina atque professio, quae ad contemplanda
inuisibilium sacramentorum tendit arcana nec praesentes quaestus, sed aeternorum retributionem
ex petit praemiorum, certo ordine ac ratione subsistit.”
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which reaches its fulfillment in correction of behavior and in cleansing from vice.
The other is theoretike, which consists in contemplation of divine things and in the
understanding of the most sacred meanings." 5 6
As the abba noted, there was an order to the forms of knowing. "Whoever,
therefore, wishes to attain to the theoretike must first pursue practical knowledge
with all his strength and power." 5 7 Echoing Chaeremon's discussion of the
philosopher's limited progress, Nesteros told his listeners that " praktike can be
possessed without the theoretical, but the theoretical can never be seized without the
practical." 5 8 As Cassian had outlined in the preceding books of The Institutes and
first ten conferences, Nesteros divided practical knowledge into two categories: "Its
first mode is that of knowing the nature of all the vices and the method of remedying
them. The second is that of discerning the sequence of the virtues and forming our
mind by their perfection in such a way that it is obedient to them not as if it were
coerced and subjected to an arbitrary rule.” This latter part of practical knowledge,
Nesteros said, was akin to “taking pleasure in and enjoying what is so to say a natural
good." 5 9 Without these foundational forms of knowing, the abba instructed, the
monk “cannot progress to the heights, and much less will he grasp things that are
within himself.” Thus, the monks had to work "twice as hard to expel vice as to

57 Conferences 14.2.1 ; 505.
58 Conferences 14.2.1 ; 505.
59 Conferences 14.3.1 ; 506. This echoes Augustine's noted distinction of use and enjoy ment in book
one of On Christian Teaching. “There are some things which are to be enjoyed, some which are to be
used, and some whose function is both to enjoy and use.” Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans.
R.P.H Green (New York, NY : Ox ford University Press, 1 997 ), 9.
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acquire virtue."6 0
As Cassian had outlined in The Institutes, such knowledge of the vices and
virtues was the foundation for theoretike. This knowledge of the mysteries of God
found its source in the scriptures themselves, and could be divided into two
categories similar to practical knowledge. "The theoretike," Abba Nesteros
continued, "is divided into two parts—that is, into historical interpretation and
spiritual understanding." 6 1 Unlike Origen's own tripartite framework of the
meanings of scripture, Cassian's model included four meanings. The first, as
Nesteros said, was the historical, or "the knowledge of past or visible things." 6 2 The
spiritual meanings, then, could be further divided into three forms—the allegorical,
the anagogical, and the tropological. These three meanings were concealed beneath
the visible signs of both word and the past. Echoing the guiding beatitude of
Cassian's asceticism, these meanings were revealed to the heart formed in the ascetic
life. Here Abba Nesteros recalled the scriptural words of Proverbs. "But you describe
those things for yourself in threefold fashion according to the largeness of your
heart."6 3
Nesteros further guided his listeners into the nature of these spiritual
meanings. Allegory, he said, is the meaning "said to have prefigured the form of
another mystery."6 4 Anagogy, then, "mounts from spiritual mysteries to certain more

63 Conferences 14.8.1; 509. cf. Prov erbs 22.20 LXX.
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sublime and sacred heavenly secrets."6 5 Yet, unlike these two spiritual meanings, the
tropological meaning was "a moral explanation pertaining to correction of life and to
practical instruction." 6 6 In order to further illustrate this spiritual multivalency of the
scriptures, the abba turned to the meanings of Jerusalem.
The four figures that have been mentioned converge in such a way that,
if we want, one and the same Jerusalem can be understood in a
fourfold manner. According to history it is the city of the Jews.
According to allegory it is the Church of Christ. According to anagogy it
is that heavenly city of God “which is the mother of us all.” According
to tropology it is the soul of the human being, which under this name is
frequently either reproached or praised by The Lord. Of these four
kinds of interpretation the blessed Apostle says thus: “Now, brothers, if
I come to you speaking in tongues, what use will it be to you unless I
speak to you by revelation or by knowledge or by prophecy or by
instruction.” 6 7
Accessing this breadth of meaning was the result of a way of life. As Harden-
Weaver notes, “a person who approached a text with the intent of identifying its
fourfold senses had missed the point.” To be sure, “one approached scripture rightly
not by seeking to dissect it and thus presumably gain power over it, but by entering
into it with the entire heart and mind, and ultimately with the whole life.” 6 8 Nesteros
made this evident for his guests, saying that a monk could only experience theoria
"after the expenditure of much toil and labor." Those monks who received such

67 Conferences 14.8.4; 510. cf. Galatians 4:26 and I Corinthians 14:6. Origen also discussed the
meanings of Jerusalem in book four chapter three in On First Principles. Origen, On First Principles,
297 -302.
68 Rebecca Harden-Weaver, “Access to Scripture: Ex periencing the Tex t,” Interpretation 52:4, 37 2.
Young notes that Ev agrius concealed passages of scripture within the sayings of the Gnostikos in
order “to shape the reader’s actions and mind. He did this in order to make the point that only by
acting in the way that Scripture specifics will the reader come to know what the Scripture means.”
Young, “Ev agrius the Iconographer,” 61.
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grace, he said, were "those who have found perfection not in the words of other
teachers but in the virtuousness of their own acts." 6 9 The prayerful singing of the
psalms provided the key example for this access to meaning. "For the one who is
singing the psalm, who is moving forward in the undefiled way with the stride of a
pure heart, will understand what is sung." 7 0 Here Cassian highlighted again the
formational act of praying the Psalms. Coupled with the other disciplines, the monks
were seeking first the scopos the ascetic life, purity of heart. Yet, the liturgical
assembly was the meeting point of praktike and theoretike. Recalling the metaphor
of the spiritual temple in the first preface of The Conferences, Nesteros reminded
Cassian and Germanus that "if you wish to prepare a sacred tabernacle of spiritual
knowledge in your heart, cleanse yourself from the contagion of every vice." 7 1
Thus, the monks grew in purity of heart and theoria in the experience of the
ascetic life. As Cassian made clear in the introductions of his monastic teachers,
one's authority came not from learning, but in the process of discipline. Nesteros
reminded his two listeners that “this is the first beginning of practical discipline—
that with attentive heart and as it were silent tongue you receive the institutes and
words of elders, preserve them carefully in your breast, and strive to fulfill them

7 0 Conferences 14.9.3; 512. “ille enim psallens intelleget quae canuntur, qui in uia inmaculata gressu
puri cordis innititur.” Ramsey shifts the resultant clause (ille enim psallens intelleget) from the
present tense to the future. Following Cassian’s own word order, and thus emphas is, and the present
tense of the verbs highlights the link between understanding and ongoing discipline. “For he who
understands the psalms being sung is he who is striv ing on the undefiled way to purity of heart.”
Translation mine.
7 1 Conferences 14.9.3; 512.
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rather than to teach them.”7 2 In striving to teach what has been learned, rather than
practicing what is taught, the monk was tempted by the spirit of vainglory. For,
Nesteros warned, "it is impossible for a person who pursues reading persistently
with the intention of winning human praise to deserve the gift of spiritual
knowledge.” 7 3
This spiritual knowledge was the whole aim. Even while the desert monks
were sought out for their wise guidance, it was not their rhetorical ability that
mattered. "For it is one thing to speak with ease and beauty and another to enter
deeply into heavenly sayings and to contemplate profound and hidden mysteries
with the most pure eye of the heart, because certainly neither human teaching nor
worldly learning but only purity of mind will possess this, through the enlightenment
of the Holy Spirit." 7 4 The spiritual masters were, then, those whose knowledge was
an outgrowth of contemplative experience. Thus, Nesteros warned that no monk
should "presume to teach in words what he has not previously done in deed." 7 5
The wisdom gained in the experience of the ascetic life was obviously not a
kind of anti-intellectualism. Rather it was based in the prayerful performance of
scripture in the hours and made the moral life of the monk an explicit condition for
any knowledge of the mysteries. Just as the philosopher could gain a bit of virtue by
shear effort, he could also gain a bit of knowledge. However, it was the gracious act
of the Holy Spirit in the growth of virtue that completed the circle. As Nesteros
7 2 Conferences 14.9.4; 512.

7 3 Conferences 14.9.5; 513.
7 4 Conferences 14.9.7 ; 513.
7 5 Conferences 14.9.5; 513.
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noted, the monk's mind was renewed by the study of the holy texts “the face of
scripture will also begin to be renewed, and the beauty of a more sacred
understanding will somehow grow with the person who is making progress." 7 6 While
Cassian clearly utilized the ideas of philosophical schools such as Neoplatonism and
Stoicism, he frequently cautioned against excess reliance on those same schools. 7 7
True knowledge, then, was a matter of ascetic formation. For Cassian, what was
learned in the academy education should be replaced with the scriptures themselves.
"For your mind will inevitably be taken up with those poems until it harvests for
itself other things within itself, pursues them with similar zeal and interest, and
bears spiritual and divine realities in place of those fruitless and earthly ones.”7 8 "The
human mind," the abba continued, "cannot be open to every thought, and therefore
as long as it is not occupied with spiritual pursuits it will inevitably be wrapped up in
7 6 Conferences 14.11.1 ; 515.

7 7 While the four sense of scripture stand out in the fourteenth conference, Cassian was clearly
outlining an ascetic epistemology. Given this guiding question a reader could easily ex pect strong
criticism of Greek philosophy . However, Cassian tempered such criticism. “The only people,” he said,
“who attain to [theoretical purity], possessing it as a reward after the ex penditure of much toil and
labor, are those who have found perfection not in the words of other teachers but in the v irtuousness
of their own acts.” Conferences 1 4.9.2; 512. Later in Conference fifteen Cassian was more clear that
philosophy, like miracles, too easily led the monk to the temptations of pride. In recounting a story of
Abba Marcius, Nesteros described a “certain heretic who followed the perfidy of Eunomius” who was
“trying to subvert the purity of the Catholic faith by dialectical arts.” Conferences 15.3.1 ; 539. The
interplay of philosophy and Christian theology was always a live question. In the desert, philosophical
learning was often the antithesis to the formation in the v irtues. Yet, the reality was much more
complex, as is ev ident in the erudite systems of both Cassian and Evagrius. See Jeremy Driscoll's
concise assessment of Evagrius' use and ultimately transformation of philosophical categories in
Ev agrius, Ad Monachos, trans and notes by Jeremy Driscoll O.S.B. (New York, NY: Newman Press,
2003), 196-21 4.
7 8 Conferences 14.13.1 ; 517 . See Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 60. “One of the chief differences
between the quest for holiness in the desert and the quest for holiness among pagan philosophers was
the text which formed the basis of its paideia. The centrality of Scripture in the desert implied a
reversal of ex pectations regarding the cultural requirements for seeking holiness.” Burton -Christie,
however, takes the statements of the Egy ptian writers about the rejection of philosophical learning at
face value, overlooking the clear influences of Neoplatonic and Stoic categories.
155
those that it had learned some time before." 7 9
Through the repeated engagement with scripture, both in prayer and in
solitary meditation, the mind "will be strengthened by the knowledge that has been
gained instead of being bored by frequent conferences." 8 0 Such understanding was
not a knowledge of the world or the stars, nor was it a facility with rhetoric or logic.
Rather, it was a beautiful knowledge of the mysteries that undergirded the very
cosmos itself, known in the virtuous heart of the monk before the scriptures.
If, then, these things have been diligently listened to, stored in the
recesses of the mind, and sealed by deep silence, afterward, like certain
sweet smelling wines that “rejoice the heart of man,” when they have
been warmed by reverent thoughts and by long-standing patience and
have been brought forth from the vessel of your breast with a strong
aroma they will bubble up like and unceasing fountain out of the
springs of experience and the watercourses of virtue, and they will pour
forth continual streams as it were from the abyss of the heart.8 1
Such beautiful knowledge was not the wisdom of the philosophers who "only have
skill in disposition and an ornate style" and who "are unable to penetrate the depths
of Scripture and the secrets of spiritual knowledge." Rather, "true knowledge is
possessed only by true worshipers of God." 8 2
Conclusion
Cassian's discussions of both grace and the meanings of scripture revolved
around the virtues. Though Pristas has shown that Conferences thirteen and
fourteen were part of different rhetorical units, thirteen the conclusion of the first set
7 9 Conferences 14.13.2; 517 .

80 Conferences 14.13.5; 51 8.
81 Conferences 14.13.5; 51 8.
82 Conferences 14.16.1 ; 520.
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and fourteen the beginning of the next, the two shared an emphasis on the virtues. In
conference thirteen, the virtues were ultimately perfected by God's grace. Concluding
a discussion of King David, Cassian noted that the "seeds of virtue exist in every
soul." However, Cassian was clear that "unless they have been germinated by the
help of God they will not be able to increase in perfection, because, according to the
blessed Apostle, 'neither is the one who plants anything, nor the one who waters, but
God who gives the increase.’"8 3 While the virtues provided the cornerstone upon
which all of Cassian's ascetic vision was built, Cassian was clear that summits of
virtues, especially humility, were maintained through the grace of God. Though the
practices of the monastic life were key to the monks' cultivation of the virtues, their
fullness, like contemplation, was ultimately the result of grace.
The grace nurtured virtues were, then, the key to the hermeneutics of
conference fourteen. In order to peel back the layers of meaning, the monk had to
progress through the virtues. Growing in virtue was to also grow in understanding of
the mysteries in the scriptures. Just as grace perfected the virtues, grace opened the
scriptures. Yet, as Cassian made clear, neither virtue nor the meanings of the text
were accessible without the practices of asceticism. For "the praktike can be
possessed without the theoretical, but the theoretical can never be seized without the
practical." 8 4 Though Cassian avoided asserting that the practices themselves revealed
the meanings of scripture, he was clear that the mysteries lay just beyond reach
without them. The same was true of grace and human will. Though one could be
83 Conferences 13.12.7 ; 47 9-480. Casiday argues that Prosper used this section to paint Cassian into
the Pelagian corner. Casiday , Tradition and Theology, 26.
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good by effort, true virtue was unreachable without grace. Cassian brought his
ascetic program full circle. The practices of the monastery, especially the hours of
prayer in community or in solitude, were the foundation for the cultivation of the
virtues and thus for access to the meanings of scripture.
Cassian's ascetic program defied dichotomies. The monk was body and soul;
askesis was communal and solitary; virtue was the outgrowth of effort and grace. In
presenting his ascetic vision Cassian developed an integrated project that also linked
practice and theology. Just as the monk was both inner and outer, prayer was both
liturgical and contemplative. In fact, the project as a whole was designed to cultivate
the capacity for theoria. 8 5 To pull out a theological or theoretical tenant such as
Cassian's theology of grace from this guiding principle was to lift it out of the very
way of life itself. Grace could not be known, therefore, outside of the desire to
experience God. To that end, any attempt to objectify grace was to shatter the very
integration Cassian outlined throughout both The Institutes and The Conferences.
What is more, to lift contemplation itself out of the quest for virtue was to cut the
fruit from its very roots. The monk could no more experience theoria apart from the
ascetic life than could a farmer reap a harvest without tilling the soil. 8 6 In setting up
experience as both the rhetorical setting and practical ground for his ascetic program
Cassian made clear to his readers that the life of following Christ was a complete
whole.
For Cassian, to teach this way of following Christ required that the teacher
85 “The whole aim of asceticism is to capacitate a person for prayer.” Dav id W. Fagerberg, On
Liturgical Asceticism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 201 3), 113.
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experience the whole of the ascetic life. The holy abba was not one who taught as an
objective observer but one whose credentials were to be found in his formation in the
virtues themselves. As Cassian stated several times, a monk was not to teach what he
had not himself had experienced.8 7 Cassian opened many of the conferences by
introducing the abba about to converse with the two seekers. In a way, these
summaries served as a true curriculum vitae of the elder about to instruct the two
pilgrims. 8 8 In the case of Abba Chaeremon, the ascetic curriculum was inscribed on
his body. "For since he was more than a hundred years old, active only in spirit, his
back was so bent with age and with constant prayer that he went about with his
hands down and touching the ground, as if he had returned to his earliest infancy." 8 9
Such deformation was not a sign of weakness but of a lifetime spent in the quest of
virtue. The ascetic teacher bore the marks of his virtue thus manifesting to those
around him the very experience that qualified him to guide others in the ascetic
project.
At the same time, the abba spoke from his own experience of the monastic
life. In the case of Chaeremon and Pinufius, this experience taught them humility in
87 Conferences 14.9; 512-513.

88 In the first conference Cassian say s that Abba Moses “gave off a particularly sweet odor because of
both his practical and his contemplative v irtue.” Conferences 1.1 ; 41. Cassian then introduced Abba
Paphnutius in terms of light, for he was “resplendent with brilliant knowledge as if he were a celestial
body.” Conferences 3.1 ; 119. Both Abba Daniel and Serapion wore their v irtues as if they were clothed
in humility (Daniel, 4.1 ) and discretion (Serapion, 5.1). Abba Serenus, in the opening of conference
seven, both carried his virtues in his way of life so that his very face shown the “gift of chastity.”
Conferences 7 .1; 247 .
89 Conferences 10.4.1 : 410. “Remarkably, the ascetic 'image' reflected a strict attention to certain
canons of beauty .” Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987 ), 24. Gavin Flood calls this phenomenon of
asceticism the “entextualisation of the body.” Gav in Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory,
and Tradition (New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2004), 211.
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the light of grace. In the opening of the Chaeremon's conference he deflected the
queries of Cassian and Germanus saying that the "authority of the instructor will be
valueless unless he has fastened it in his hearer's heart by what he has himself
achieved." 9 0 Despite his obvious credentials, the abba humbly dismissed his
achievements. Instead of pressing the abba to describe the heights of contemplation
Cassian and Germanus asked Chaeremon to simply instruct them so that they may
admire and imitate his virtues.9 1
Abba Pinufius also embodied the very humility learned in the life of askesis.
The story of Pinufius's pursuit of humility was certainly a key element of Cassian's
own biography. Despite Chawick's assertion that one account was interpolated into
either The Institutes or The Conferences, Pinufius exemplified a humility nurtured in
the quest for that very virtue. Yet, Pinifius's humble virtue was evident in his
teaching as well as his comportment. In book four of The Institutes Cassian gave over
the conclusion of the discussion of renunciation to Pinufius. There, the abba
summarized the monastic project and concluded by pointing to purity of heart.
According to the Scriptures, 'the beginning' of our salvation and 'of

wisdom is the fear of the Lord.' From compunction of heart there
proceeds renunciations—that is, the being deprived of and contempt of
all possessions. From this deprivation humility is begotten. From
humility is generated the dying of desire. When desire has died all the
vices are uprooted and wither away. Once the vices have been expelled
the virtues bear fruit and grow. When virtue abounds purity of heart is
acquired. With purity of heart the perfection of apostolic love is
possessed.9 2

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Cassian's descriptions of the abbas and accounts of their teaching were
composed as a means to encourage imitation of the monastic life to which the abbas
bore witness. Cassian and Germanus pressed the holy Chaeremon to speak with
them so that they might admire his virtue and humility. Cassian also said the same in
his introduction of Pinufius in The Institutes. Acknowledging the oddity of
combining rule like statements with the monologue of Pinufius, Cassian said that
"mingling two things in due proportion by yielding to brevity as well as to the desires
and needs of the eager, we shall offer one further example of humility that, coming
not from a beginner but from one who was perfect and an abba, will be capable not
only of instructing the younger men but even of enticing the elders to the perfect
virtue of humility once they read it."9 3 In short, Cassian's project was an invitation to
practice the ascetic life. Though Cassian outlined significant theological perspectives,
they were embedded within frame of the monastic experience.
In taking on the task of Bishop Castor, Cassian ventured into the domain of
teaching what was to be experienced. That was both the subtly of his narrative and
the brilliance of his two ascetic works. Though he had to venture from Bethlehem to
learn from the elders who had grown in purity of heart and had seen God, his texts
brought the wisdom and experience to those seekers on another shore. Though
Cassian did not record an account of his own contemplative experience, the very
composition of his ascetic works asked the readers to assume Cassian was not
violating that simple instruction of the elders to not teach what he had not
experienced. Yet, by purporting to recount the teachings of those wise abbas, Cassian
93 Institutes 4.30.1 ; 94.

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also legitimized his vision through the words of the holy monks.
Through this literary style Cassian followed through with exactly what he had
cautioned about the ascetic practices themselves. The ascetic goal was contemplation
itself, not the perfection of the practice, nor was it to be found the virtue of the writer
or the eloquence of the text. Each reader was not to count on the experience of
Cassian himself, but on the very vision of God made possible in the practicing of the
ascetic's craft. Even the glimpses of theoria within the texts could not bring about the
gift of the beatitude. Rather, the reader was invited into the very quest for virtue.
Though the writings brought the wisdom of the desert to the reader, each one had to
take on the way of life in order to experience, and thus understand, the riches of true
prayer.
Therein lay the ironic insight Cassian summarized in both The Institutes and
The Conferences. Theoria could not be separated from practice. Human will could
not be separated from divine grace. There was no magic oracle or prayer that could
bring about contemplation. Simply put, Cassian’s ascetic vision integrated human
effort and divine grace, with the clear priority placed on grace. Cassian recorded the
practices and understandings of the ascetic life in his two works in order to prepare
the reader to receive the goal and end of his quest. For in the fire of contemplation all
effort and formation vanished in the brilliance of pure prayer. Cassian, thus,
constructed the foundation on which the ascetic Christian could stand ready to
receive the grace of God in the flesh.
Experience in the ascetic life was, then, both a rhetorical strategy to legitimize
Cassian's authority and the unifying frame that linked the theological categories and
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the practices of the monastery. Two topics within the middle book of conferences
highlighted the unifying role of experience within Cassian's ascetic program. First,
Cassian's discussion of grace and perfection highlight that grace, as it is experienced
within ascetic formation, does not elide human effort but is present with the monk
from start to finish. Second, Cassian's hermeneutic was based in the monk's
experience of the text. By progressing in the virtues through the ascetic
performances, the ascetic encountered the layers of meaning within the scriptures
themselves.
Epilogue
At the end, Cassian’s story is a quest for prayer. Leaving his home for the
monastery at Bethlehem, venturing into the Egyptian desert inspired by the humility
of Pinufius, and finally arriving in Gaul to compose two works that summed all he
had learned of this ascetic quest, Cassian offered the world a profound summary of
the body and soul at prayer. Even despite questions of his orthodoxy regarding grace,
his vision of the monk at prayer set his Conferences and Institutes as the text on
prayer for the Latin speaking church through the hands of Gregory the Great and
Benedict. His insights into the contemplative life, so familiar in the Greek church,
influenced western spiritual writers up through the Middle Ages. We need only
imagine Benedictine monks, gathered around the meal table or at the feet of their
elders, listening to Cassian’s vision of fiery prayer to see the breadth of his influence.
The written word, like many texts, is not just for those readers of the past, but
speaks beyond the life of its author. For modern readers, Cassian’s lack of
extraordinary accounts of miraculous or heroic ascetic feats endears his work to a
people often skeptical of the mythology of early Christian theology. What is more, his
psychological insight about the inner and outer life makes his vision of ascetic
contemplation seem within reach for those who do not share his cosmology. In short,
the goal for both Cassian and his readers remains the desire to see God in the flesh.
In a time when simplistic dualisms seem to question the interaction of flesh and
spirit, Cassian challenges us to recall that what is done in the body reaches to the
inner most parts of our soul. As more people seem comfortable with a spiritualized
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164
understanding of faith, Cassian’s ascetic vision calls us back to the core of
Christianity, namely that the body matters. Though Cassian’s askesis seems worlds
away in both distance and time, his words have reached well beyond the fifth
century.
From the pages of The Institutes and Conferences, Cassian offers the simplest
of reminders—Christianity is a way of life. As such, it defies easy binaries of body and
soul, solitude and community, liturgy and contemplation. That is the way Cassian’s
mind worked, everything is set under the desire to pray. Contemplation, the supreme
form of all prayer, is both a gift from God and an experience made possible through
our daily efforts. Through his words, especially in his conversations with the spiritual
heroes of Egypt, Cassian did exactly what he had hoped—guide the contemplative
quest and translate the wisdom of asceticism beyond the boundaries of time and
space. Now, some 1600 years later, his vision still inspires. Yet, even inspired by
Cassian’s vision, his readers past and present are reminded to turn understanding
back into practice.

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Ritual Roots of Cassian's Contemplation

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

The Ritual Dimension of John Cassian's Asceticism

Submitted to the Faculty of

School of Theology and Religious Studies

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Joshua W. Brockway, Ph.D.

Director: Philip Rousseau, D.Phil.

western monasticism. Scholarship on Cassian, often by necessity, focuses on Cassian’s

literary sources, focuses specifically on Cassian’s understanding of contemplation. The se

especially within the frame of Cassian’s ascetic vision.

contemplative goal and experience shaped Cassian’s understanding of significant

works, ritual and pure prayer.

thirteenth conference, it was primarily Prosper of Aquitaine who found Cassian’s

in the mid-420’s, Prosper penned a stinging, though inaccurate, polemical treatise

what Prosper thought was an attack on the anti-Pelagian work of Augustine of

refutation of the monk. In Against the Conferencer, Prosper pointed to baptism as

The irony should, then, be clear. In setting up a particular theology of grace

whom prayer was a way of life.

of contemplation. Though many conferences followed the famed discussions of

a means to puritas cordis.

Cassian as part of the genealogy of Western understandings of interiority. Foucault’s

Technologies of the Self attended specifically to Cassian’s emphasis on exomologēsis

modern understandings of the internal reflexivity so central to modern conceptions

of the self, Foucault overlooked Cassian’s wider vision of an ascetic culture,

a venture in exploring Cassian’s vision of forming the contemplative monk.

Historians of Christianity have rightly focused on Cassian’s theology and

practice of prayer. However, due to methodological decisions and the division of

on either liturgical or contemplative prayer. Columba Stewart has summarized

Cassian’s understanding of contemplation, drawing links to both Evagrius and

Cassian’s description of liturgical prayer both as a source for uncovering the

understanding Cassian’s ascetic vision.

Other scholars have narrowed their studies of Cassian by focusing on his

to Cassian’s discussions of prayer but to the whole of Egyptian asceticism. 5 Again,

distinctions between Protestant and Catholic assumptions comes to the fore,

church. By demonstrating the biblical foundations for early monasticism thought

modern method of focusing on the pieces to develop specific knowledge and

understanding obscures a view of the whole. As Michel DeCerteau has noted, by

Here, Cassian demonstrated a key aspect of his ascetic vision—the intersection of

receive the grace of seeing God.

through to the final conferences. 8

Though Foucault has highlighted the practice of confession—bringing to voice

supplication, thanksgiving, or praise. As Derek Kreuger notes regarding the

Byzantine church, “the monastic program of self fashioning pervaded consciousness,

expression in the body itself.

To impose questions of dualism from the modern perspective is to ask Cassian to

anthropology on the categories of inner and outer, it is clear that he understood

the capacity to receive such perfect grace.

prayer and were simultaneously overshadowed by it.

insofar as they prepared the monk to receive God.

worship in this second sense, namely the exteriorizing of an inner disposition.

of prayer reminds us that liturgical prayer defined Christian monasticism. In these

Cassian's ascetic vision is to be understood in relation to the experiences of liturgical

Cassian. Chapter two outlines Cassian's ascetic vision as the formation of a

Cassian's hermeneutics and theology of grace.

Cassian and His Time

The biography of John Cassian is marked by just enough detail and

contemporary observer. Even the autobiographical statements within his own

monk, priest, and theologian. Thus, the construction of a sufficient biographical

the monasteries of Gaul. Any personal detail served that aim.

To be sure, Cassian did not write a historical narrative by modern standards.