ON ST. JOHN CASSIAN, ABBOT
OF MARSEILLES IN GAUL.
BEFORE THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTH CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
John Cassian, abbot, of Marseilles in Gaul (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
§ I. His worship among the Latins and Greeks, his relics, miracles, and Acts.
Marseilles, a most well-known city of Gaul in Provence, concerning which in the preliminary Commentary
preliminary to the Acts of St. Victor the martyr on the 21st of July we treated again, on this day solemnly venerates St. John Cassian, once its inhabitant, with a proper Office with an Octave. The title of saint is vindicated for Cassian, On the same day the church of Riez in Gaul prescribes the common Office of a confessor not a pontiff on the feast of St. Cassian the abbot, patron of the parish church of Tavernes, as is read in the Rubrics. Our Guesnay in his "Cassian Illustrated" from p. 294 enumerates several Breviaries in which the memory of that Saint is celebrated. It is not easy to say at what time that worship began: yet it seems to be very ancient, since Gregory the Great honors Cassian with the title of saint: for in the month of November, in the 15th Indiction, that is in the year of Christ 597, writing to Respecta, abbess of Marseilles, he grants certain privileges to her monastery, which is consecrated in honor of St. Cassian. Nor does it matter that the shameless apostate from the faith and from his Order, who lately published a Commentary on ecclesiastical writers, in volume 1 supposes that for "of St. Cassian" one should read "of St. Saviour," because forsooth this convent of virgins is wont to be called by the name of St. Saviour. A frivolous argument indeed of a heretical man, that we should believe an error crept into the epistle of Gregory the Great! As though that monastery could not lose or change its appellation, as in the latest edition of the Gallia Christiana, volume 1, col. 695, Dionysius Sammarthanus shows, who in the following column, reviewing the various vicissitudes of that convent, there has these things: "But after that monastery with the Victorine was destroyed, not indeed by the Vandals, but rather by the Normans in an uncertain year, perhaps 867, those virgins migrated into the city, and there founded for themselves the monastery of St. Saviour." Hence the fraud of the apostate is plain, who so cites Gennadius, as if he called that convent of virgins by the name of St. Saviour.
[2] Andreas Saussay in his Gallican Martyrology, volume 2 from p. 1247, from an ancient parchment manuscript, which he asserts was written five hundred years ago, whom now for many ages published a certain Martyrology, in which at the 23rd day of July it is expressly read: "At the city of Marseilles, the birthday of St. Cassian the abbot." Whence I marvel that Saussay was, contrary to custom, so scrupulous, that he omitted Cassian in his Martyrology, and in the supplement p. 1149 announced him in smaller type thus timidly: "At Marseilles, the deposition of the venerable John Cassian, father of many monks, and author of distinguished little works, illustrious in doctrine and holiness." Then he weaves a compendium of the Acts, in which some uncertain things are related, and at the end of which nevertheless he thus testifies concerning his worship: "This Father is worshipped in many places with the full honor of sanctity, and indeed everywhere in the district of Marseilles, but especially in the very famous monastery of St. Victor, where, enrolled in the sacred calendars, he today has an anniversary birthday." I know not why Saussay did not give Cassian the title of saint, since he knew that he was so called five hundred years ago, and today so worshipped in many places. Did the Semi-Pelagian doctrine of Cassian deter him? But in his long eulogy of him he makes no word about the heterodoxy of his doctrine, concerning which we shall afterward say some things. Moreover he could have known that Cassian by Rabanus (some ascribe this little work to Abbot Smaragdus), chap. 38 on the rule of St. Benedict, is distinguished with the title of blessed.
[3] obtained among the Latins. Peter de Natalibus in his Catalogue of Saints, book 7, chap. 59, prefixes to the eulogy of Cassian this title: "Of St. Cassian, priest and confessor." Also in the Bull of Pope Urban V, which Dionysius Sammarthanus relates among the instruments pertaining to volume 1 of the Gallia Christiana, p. 118, he is expressly named saint. Finally Henry Noris, who in adorning the praises of Cassian cannot be at all suspect, in his Pelagian History, book 2, chap. 12, near the end, relates the following concerning his worship and sanctity: "Urban V ordered the head of Cassian, enclosed in a silver case, to be adorned with this inscription: The Head of St. Cassian. His memory is worshipped at Marseilles on the 23rd of July, and offices of prayers are performed to him with solemn rite, and before his tomb there stands a lamp burning day and night, on account of reverence toward his sanctity. He was a most learned man, and if in certain things he departed from the doctrine of Augustine, he did this at a time when it was permitted to dispute for either side in those matters. His Conferences most holy and most wise men have eminently commended; that among these was St. Fulgentius is established from chap. 12 of his Life; to whom nevertheless, as also to the rest, the doctrine on grace, asserted in Conference 13, was by no means approved, which also afterward the Apostolic See proscribed." These things I judge sufficient to prove the worship of St. Cassian, especially since his festival is publicly celebrated every year, the Christian world looking on, and Rome not only being silent, but even through her Pontiffs attributing to him the title of sanctity, as we have already seen. Hence gather that the Gallic hagiographer, or rather hagiomachus, erred shamefully, who in his hypercritical Legend of the Saints at the 23rd day of July, volume 2, col. 378, boldly asserts that the worship of Cassian in the West began only about the end of the sixteenth century. He who desires more testimonies of ancient veneration, let him consult our Guesnay, book 2 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 15, where he adduces various instruments of this matter.
[4] The Greeks also from time immemorial worshipped the same Saint on the last day of February: for in the Typicon of St. Sabas at the day κθ᾽, The Greeks worship St. Cassian in the month of February, that is the 29th of the month of February, it is thus announced: Τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Κασσιανοῦ τοῦ Ῥωμαίου. That is: Of our holy father Cassian the Roman. The same has the Horologion, printed in Greek in the year 1607. The printed Menaea in the Office wonderfully extol the doctrine and virtues of St. Cassian, this admonition being prefixed in the Rubrics: "It must be known, that when it is a leap year, this Office is sung at the 29th day; but if it is not a leap year, it is sung on the 28th day." Further, I would have it observed here by the curious reader, that the Greeks (because among them there is no use of Kalends) in a leap year add at the end of February one day, which the Latins insert after the 23rd day of that month; whence the year is then called by the Latins bissextile, because "the sixth before the Kalends of March" is said twice, namely the 24th and 25th of February. Hence also the Muscovites, who follow the Greek rite, in their Slavo-Russian Menology, which the most noble Baron de Sparwenfeld translated into Latin for us, on the 29th of February thus speak: "Of our most blessed father Cassian the Roman. He lived in the year 431. His memory is celebrated only every fourth year, when an excursion is made: for the year has 365 days, and 6 hours, which every fourth year make a day. Then we sing the sequence of Cassian: for the year has then three hundred sixty-six days, and eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours." This Muscovite computer or interpreter errs here, since the year contains 8784 hours when it has 366 days, as will be plain to one multiplying the number 366 by 24.
[5] But let us return to the Menaea, in which our Saint is thus commemorated: and in their Menaea him with verses, Τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ ὁμολογητοῦ Κασσιανοῦ τοῦ Ῥωμαίου. That is: Of our holy father and confessor Cassian the Roman. Everywhere among the Greeks he is called from his fatherland "the Roman," which afterward will be more fully discussed. Then in the Menaea follow these two verses:
Θείους με παστὰς Κασσιανὸς πρὸς νόας, Θείας νοητῶς κασσίας ἀποπνέει.
That is: To me Cassian is as a bridal chamber toward divine minds, Which spiritually breathes forth divine cassia's holy fragrance.
The metaphor of the word παστὰς is fetched from rather far, which signifies a bridal chamber or also a place of banquet, and by which the Greek poet, unless I am mistaken, wished to compare to a fragrant bridal chamber the doctrine handed down in Cassian's writings, which breathes into readers the heavenly odor of holiness. More manifest is the allusion between the name Κασσιανὸς and the word κασσία, which denotes an odoriferous shrub, which the Latins call cassia. St. Peter Damian in the exordium of his sermon on St. Cassian the martyr, whose feast is worshipped on the 13th of August, thus alludes to the same affinity of names: "Cassian… according to the presage of his name, when in the mortar of his passion he began to be pounded and worn by the hands of the persecutors, straightway sprinkled the fragrance of odoriferous sweetness which lay hidden in himself. For cassia is an aromatic species, which whole indeed seems to be of no odor; but bruised, it emits its natural force of sweetness."
[6] After these verses in the same Menaea follows a eulogy or compendium of the Acts, and adorn him with a eulogy. which I now make Latin from the Greek, in which version I prefer to be faithful rather than elegant. Thus therefore it is there read: "This man was from the city of Rome, son of noble and illustrious parents. In the beginning of his life he much loved the studies of letters. Therefore with diligence and sharpness of intellect pursuing all Greek erudition, he profoundly searched out philosophy and astronomy. But thoroughly learning Sacred Scripture, and coming to the highest knowledge of it, he at the same time adorned his life with chastity and purity. His fatherland being left, departing into Scetis he embraced the monastic life, and, giving himself to the monastery, and exercising all obedience, thoroughly learned the whole form of the rigid discipline. But when he had grown accustomed to the discipline, and had ascended from the lowest obedience to the highest summit of discretion, he advanced to the solitude: and when he had passed very many years in it, and had led a harsh life, he passed to a greater trial and exercise. Leaving therefore the solitude, he visited all the monasteries of Egypt and the Thebaid, the mountain of Nitria, Asia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and the whole East. And the institutions, examples, and ways of living of all he so expressed in himself, that forms cannot be so impressed on wax by the fingers. This the institutions written by him show, full of all accuracy, wisdom, and utility, and other documents written and ordered by him, which if anyone will inspect and maturely peruse, he will take great profit from them, and will know the life and character of the writer. When therefore that divine Man had thus lived, and had thus conversed, hence he passed to the heavenly mansions." The same eulogy is read in Greek in the Anthologion, which Antonius Arcudius published at Rome in the year 1598. What has hitherto been said abundantly demonstrates that to this Cassian the accustomed honor of the Saints has long been paid by Latins and Greeks.
[7] His relics are preserved at Marseilles; Now let us subjoin a few things concerning his sacred relics, which are read in the Chronicles and manuscript codices of the monastery of St. Victor of Marseilles, related in our Guesnay in "Cassian Illustrated" p. 3, in this manner: "But the body of St. Cassian is kept in our monastery in various places, whole and entire, with great honor and worship indeed: for his head is wrought and adorned with gold and silver, of very famous form and structure; beneath his neck is seen and read an inscription of this kind in large characters: THE HEAD OF ST. CASSIAN. Above his head is found a mitre with gold, silver,
and precious stones in great quantity, honored and enriched. There exists also his right arm, oblong and large, of a length of about three palms, wrought and honored in the very same manner as the head. But observe that both the head and the arm are set upright, and placed in such honor, by the labor, zeal, piety, and expenses of Urban V, supreme Pontiff, abbot of this monastery. For this cause his arms are found in many parts, both on the head and on the arm. As for the rest of his body, it lies in a marble sepulcher, placed upon four columns, in the lower church; but before this sepulcher there stands a lamp always burning day and night, on account of the reverence and sanctity of his relics resting there; and therefore it is established that no portions of that body exist in other places." Behold all that I have found concerning the sacred remains of the holy Man.
[8] but of miracles If perchance some curious person should ask whether at these sacred remains miracles are done or have been done, I answer in the words of the same Chronicle of Marseilles, which after the text just cited thus proceeds: "Concerning the miracles of the same St. Cassian no memory is alive among us, because since this monastery was many times destroyed and overturned by the Vandals and barbarians, consequently our writings and the old documents of the monastery were snatched and stolen away." Nevertheless our Guesnay, book 2 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 16, no. 4, asserts that in a certain chapel of the diocese of Grasse, which is dedicated to St. Cassian, certain wonderful benefits are rendered by his invocation; and he proves this from letters duly sealed, and subscribed by the hand of the parish priest of Grasse, which he thus cites: "A great," he says, "concourse of people comes together there (namely at the aforesaid chapel of Tavernes) from every side every year; but especially of those who are either lame or ill-affected with the arthritic disease. I have received that at the walls of the chapel there were formerly hung about seven hundred armpit crutches by those whom, either laboring with gout, or maimed in their limbs, or plainly destitute of their use, God had restored to entire health and their first soundness; and moreover I have received from this village of Grasse that there were some inhabitants whom the articular disease so grievously exercised that they could scarcely endure a horse; who, when they touched the territory in which the sacred edifice stands, felt no little relief and slackening of their torments. Whence it came to pass that they attempted to dismount from the horse, and very often were restored to their former health before they had yet entered the sacred chapel of St. Cassian. And although no traces remain to this day of so many distinguished miracles, I believe this to have happened because that place is inhabited by very few, and is quite deserted; yet there are not wanting those who, returning to that place every year, with great and inmost feeling of piety, are relieved in a good part of their diseases." Some are of opinion that the patron of this chapel of the same name is different from our Cassian, as Guesnay relates in the mentioned Work p. 301, and therefore not a few priests there in his honor celebrate Mass of the common of a confessor pontiff, whom Guesnay contends to be mistaken. But it little concerns us whether these miracles are wrought by the intercession of the one or the other Saint of the same name, since they are not necessarily required for vindicating the fame of sanctity for our Cassian. Now some things about the Acts occur to be premised.
[9] It is indeed strange that the distinguished deeds of this most famous Man were not more copiously and distinctly written. and no or scanty memory of the Acts survives, Perhaps someone will reply that his ampler Acts, as also the ancient miracles, perished by the frequent incursion of the barbarians and the devastation of the monastery of Marseilles. Whatever be the case of this matter, the author of the aforesaid Chronicle in Guesnay p. 3 thus confesses: "There is no Life of Cassian among us, except that which is read on his feast in the Office; which feast indeed is celebrated solemnly on the 23rd day of the month of July with an Octave also solemn, not only in our monastery and places dependent on it, but also in the cathedral church of Marseilles, and in almost the whole diocese of Marseilles." You see then that nothing remains to us beyond the ecclesiastical lessons of the Office. We indeed have Acts of that Saint, taken I know not from what manuscript codex, and once transmitted to Bolland by our Silvester Petrasancta; but since they scarcely differ from the Lessons, I prefer in relating them to follow the Breviary according to the use of the monastery of St. Victor of Marseilles, printed at Lyon in the year 1508, from which our Peter Possin copied the following eight Lessons.
[10] except in the proper Lessons, Lesson I. Cassian, a most holy man and most distinguished teacher, born at Athens, there instructed in the studies of all philosophy, and first imitating the canonical function of the Apostles, there instructed many by his example, and formed them by his teachings. Lesson II. Thence, traversing the institutions of all Christians, he journeys as far as Jerusalem. At Bethlehem, by the aid of certain associates, he founded a monastery, which was not far from the cave in which our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the sacred Virgin, deigned to take up the increases of his infancy, and confirmed his tender and suckling infancy still into religion by his grace. Lesson III. In which monastery, which was established in Syria, while Cassian dwelt, and after the rudiments of the faith had begun to desire a greater grace of perfection, he resolved forthwith to seek Egypt, and, the most remote Thebaid being penetrated by the desert, to visit very many of the Saints out of zeal for knowing them, together with the holy abbot Germanus. Lesson IV. With the aforesaid Germanus, therefore, from his very novitiate and rudiments of the spiritual warfare there was so undivided a companionship both in the monastery and in the desert, that all, to signify the equality of their fellowship and purpose, declared that there was one mind and soul in two bodies. Lesson V. When therefore he saw the very great throng of the monastery bound by discipline, and instituted in the best order of monks, which is the first, wonderfully, being incited by the praises of all, he hastened with most sagacious heart to see also another order, which is held more excellent, that is, of the anchorites. Thence advancing, he returned to Athens.
[11] which disagree among themselves. Lesson VI. But when at Constantinople he had been ordained deacon by John the Great, the bishop, he went to Rome, and there was raised to the grade of the priesthood; and setting out thence, using a prosperous conveyance, he arrived at Marseilles, where, according to those things which he had learned from the fathers or had acquired by his own study, the brethren being gathered there, he founded a monastery, in which he was father of up to five thousand monks. Lesson VII. There also he composed twelve books in one volume, which is called the Mirror of Monks, and transmitted it to Castor, bishop of the city of Apt: in which he set forth with brief and luminous speech all the zeal and discipline of the habit and food of monks. Another distinguished volume also he composed after the death of Castor, addressed to the fathers Leontius and Helladius, which he entitled the Conferences of the Fathers. Lesson VIII. Finally, being asked by Leo the archdeacon, afterward bishop of the city of Rome, he wrote against Nestorius Nestorem * seven books on the incarnation of the Lord. At last, worn out by long old age, ninety-seven years being completed, the athlete of Christ rested in peace on the 10th of the Kalends of August. He was buried in the monastery of St. Peter and St. Victor, which is near Marseilles, and which he himself built, adorned with many bright virtues and distinguished wisdom, Theodosius and Valentinian reigning.
These same Acts, afterward divided into three lessons, and a little more correctly and briefly, were printed in the supplement to the proper Offices of the church of St. Victor of Marseilles. But from both these lessons there differ much three other lessons, which among the proper Offices of the church of Marseilles were printed at Marseilles in the year 1662, as in the following paragraphs we shall sometimes observe. For the rest, what in these lessons is omitted or obscure, from the very writings of St. Cassian, as far as it can be done, in the course I shall endeavor to draw out and illustrate. Further, that in weaving this Life historically and critically I might proceed more safely, I have perused all the works of St. Cassian from beginning to end. Wherefore if anything shall have been omitted, let it be ascribed not to negligence, but to the weakness of my memory.
Notes* that is, Nestorius.
§ II. The disputed fatherland of St. Cassian.
As many cities of Greece once contended over the birthplace of Homer, so about as many regions of the world today contend over the fatherland of St. Cassian. Cassian is said by Gennadius to be a Scythian by nation, Gennadius, priest of Marseilles, in his book on ecclesiastical writers, in Miraeus chap. 61, affirms that he was a Scythian by nation. Doubtless this author, who lived at Marseilles near the time of Cassian, would deserve great credit in this matter, if his certain opinion were established. But by Honorius of Autun, who is wont to abridge Gennadius, and from him copied that eulogy of Cassian word for word, in the same Miraeus chap. 60, Cassian is called an African by nation. Wherefore I suspect that the manuscript copies of Gennadius are much diverse among themselves. My suspicion is increased by the parchment booklet of Gennadius, which is preserved in our Museum, and in which chap. 59 it is clearly read: "Cassian, born at Constantinople," etc. Moreover Mabillon in volume 2 of the ancient Analecta, p. 44, testifies that the aforesaid little work of Gennadius, in the Corbie codex written nine hundred years ago in Lombardic character, differs very much from the printed editions. John Martianay, a Benedictine monk, who at the beginning of this century published the Works of St. Jerome at Paris, inserted the Gennadian Catalogue of illustrious men, taken from that very ancient Corbie codex, in the fifth volume of the same Works, where col. 39 Cassian also is said to be a Scythian by nation. This reading is favored by Ado, who is more ancient than Honorius of Autun and than our parchment codex, and who in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 425 expressly calls him a Scythian. It is therefore more probable that the Scythian fatherland of Cassian was handed down by Gennadius.
[13] The Breviaries of Marseilles in the proper lessons everywhere will have Cassian born at Athens, in the Breviary of Marseilles born at Athens, as we saw above. But I do not understand how in the hymns of the same Offices he is said to be a Scythian by nation, and in the lessons born at Athens, unless perhaps the authors of the proper Office thought the city of the Athenians to be situated in Scythia. Our Guesnay in another manner tried to compose this discrepancy: for in book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 1, he says that the father of Cassian, sent from the chief city of Scythia to Athens for the sake of studies, fell in love there with a noble young girl, contracted matrimony with her after the Christian manner, and afterward begot our Cassian, who was born at Athens of a Scythian father and a native mother. In this way indeed it is plain that Cassian can be called Athenian by nativity, and Scythian by race or origin; but Noris in book 2 of the Pelagian History, chap. 1, sharply inveighs against Guesnay, because he feigned these and similar things out of his own brain, and asserted them without any witnesses or documents. I do not wish here to defend Guesnay, whose vindication Bruno Neusser in his "Prodromus velitaris," part
2, chap. 3, has not sluggishly undertaken. For the rest, I do not judge the laborious man worthy of so severe a reprehension, because with pious simplicity he devised a certain system by which he might reconcile the proper Office of Marseilles with itself, and with Gennadius. Yet we do not make so much of the authority of those lessons as to prefer it to the testimony of Gennadius. Wherefore much more prudently seem to have acted those who in the year 1662 took care to have the proper Offices of the Saints of the church of Marseilles, recognized and emended, printed, in which there is no mention of an Athenian fatherland, but at the beginning of lesson IV it is thus read: "Blessed John Cassian, surnamed the Conferencer, was born in Scythia."
[14] by another he is wrongly supposed to be a Scythopolitan in Palestine, Louis Bulteau of the Congregation of St. Maur, who is said to have published at Paris in the year 1687 a monastic history of the East in French, book 1, chap. 10, no. 1, relating the various opinions about Cassian's fatherland, says that it can be doubted whether he was not born at Scythopolis in Palestine, because from boyhood he was educated in a certain monastery of Palestine. But that conjecture, plainly devised gratuitously, is convicted of manifest falsity: for the author of that monastic history, book 2, chap. 3 and following, shows that in the time of Cassian there were very many monks in Palestine, whereas Cassian himself, Conference 24, chap. 18, testifies that he and his companion Germanus were tempted to seek again their fatherland, because in Egypt they were sometimes interrupted by brethren coming upon them; "which without doubt," he says, "we by no means believe would happen in our province, in which either no man of this profession, or certainly a very rare one, can possibly be found." Therefore Palestine, frequented with monasteries and monks, could not have been Cassian's fatherland, in which no men of this profession, or very rare, were found. Equally rash is the conjecture of those who suspect that Cassian is called a Scythian because for some time he dwelt in the solitude which is called Scitis or Scetis, and concerning which in the preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Arsenius, volume IV of July, p. 605, many things have been said: for if he only dwelt there for a while, how did Gennadius call him a Scythian by nation? And what prudent man, on account of a slight suspicion or a certain affinity of the word, would accuse Gennadius of a gross error, as if he had confused Scythia with Scitis or Sceti?
[15] and by others finally a Gaul, Lucas Holstenius, or whoever is the author of the preface to the codex of Rules, in chap. 3 of the said preface contends that Cassian was born in Gaul Narbonensis. Noris, book 2 of the Pelagian History, chap. 1, embraces this opinion of Holstenius with both arms, as they say, and strives to prove it by certain conjectures, which Bruno Neusser in the place just cited so solidly refuted, that I think a fair arbiter of this controversy, the arguments on both sides being weighed, would plainly go over to Neusser's side. Antonius Pagi in his Historico-chronological Criticism of Baronius, at the year of Christ 404 from no. 22, follows the opinion of Holstenius and Noris, and rejects the opinion of Lambecius, who assigns Rome to Cassian as his fatherland, as a little later we shall see.
[16] by whose arguments They take the first foundation of their opinion from the words of Cassian himself, who Conference 24, chap. 1, thus writes: "Therefore to this Abraham we disclosed the assault of our thoughts with anxious confession, because to seek again our province, and to revisit our parents, we were urged by daily heats of the mind." They think that here is plainly designated Provence, which constitutes an ample part of Gaul Narbonensis, and which the inhabitants commonly call "la Provence." But "province," as Neusser answers, is a certain generic name; and it is altogether the same to seek again "one's province" and "one's fatherland": whence he says OUR PROVINCE, not indeed "Provence" simply. To these I add, that Cassian in the preface on the institutes of monasteries, writing to Castor, bishop of Apt, seems by "province" to signify a diocese: for thus he there speaks: "In thy province indeed, destitute of monasteries, wishing the institutes of the Eastern and especially the Egyptian monks to be founded… thou askest that I contribute something to the fulfillment of thy desire out of the poverty of my understanding." If Cassian here had understood by "Province" the region commonly called Provence, and had himself been born in it, why did he not say "in our province indeed," etc.? Nay in this very preface the holy Writer not obscurely intimates that he is a foreigner: for when he had proposed the example of Solomon, who in building the magnificent temple by no means disdains the counsel of a poor and foreign man, he proceeds to institute a comparison: "Rightly also thou, instructed by these examples, most blessed pope Castor, disposing to build a true and rational temple to God, not of insensible stones, but of a congregation of holy men, nor temporal and corruptible, but eternal and impregnable… dost deign to admit me, needy and in every part most poor, to the communion of so great a work. In thy province indeed," etc. Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 739, in another manner overthrows that foundation of Holstenius and Noris, and marvels that those most learned men were led by so slight a reason to defend this opinion.
[17] A greater show of difficulty has that which Noris objects from book 1 on the Institutes, chap. 6, where Cassian, describing the habit of the Egyptian monks, says: it is answered. "They wear also double little cords woven of a woolen weft, which the Greeks call ἀναβολὰς, but we can call succinctoria or redimicula, or properly rebrachiatoria." From that text this reasoning can be formed: If Cassian had been by nation a Scythian or a Greek, he would never have distinguished himself from the Greeks, or numbered himself among the Latins, as in this place he does. It is therefore more probable that his fatherland was Gaul, since other regions of the Latins cannot with so much verisimilitude vindicate him to themselves. But besides that this text no more shows Cassian to have been a Gaul than a Roman or an African, I answer that he himself, writing in Latin among the Latins and for the Latins, could so speak, even if he were by nation a Scythian or a Greek: for by this phrase he signifies nothing else than that the little cords which the Greeks call ἀναβολὰς can be properly expressed in Latin by the word rebrachiatoria. It is therefore the same as if he said: "They wear also double little cords woven of a woolen weft, which the Greeks call ἀναβολὰς, but we, who write in Latin, and ought to interpret that Greek word, can call succinctoria or redimicula, or properly rebrachiatoria." But this manner of speaking in no way stands in the way of the Scythian or Greek origin of St. Cassian. See the rest of Noris's objections solved in Neusser, who part 2 of the "Prodromus velitaris," chap. 3, no. 1, thus concludes: "The premised little reasons, therefore, utterly vanish before the express and luminous testimony of Gennadius of Marseilles, 'Cassian a Scythian by nation': for to whom could the fatherland of Cassian be more known than to Gennadius, who was scarcely fifty years younger than Cassian, and he most devoted to Cassian, whom he praised not moderately? He surely would have counted it the greatest glory that the man whom he so esteemed could be numbered among his countrymen and the people of Marseilles; yet he said that he was a Scythian by nation."
[18] Everywhere by the Greeks he is called the Roman Photius in the Bibliotheca, cod. 197, indicates his birthplace in these words: Ἀνεγνώσθη βιβλιδάριον, ἐν ᾧ Κασσιανοῦ μοναχοῦ, Ῥώμην λαχόντος πατρίδα, περιῆσαν λόγοι δύο. That is: A little book was read, in which were contained two books of Cassian the monk, who had Rome for his fatherland. Peter Lambecius in his Commentaries on the Imperial Library, book 4, pp. 166 and 167, cites two manuscript codices, in which some Works of Cassian were reduced into a Greek compendium. But in both Cassian is called ὁ Ῥωμαῖος, the Roman. From these and others Lambecius concludes that Cassian was born at Rome in Italy, and contends that Gennadius errs when he names him a Scythian by nation. But besides that Cassian himself, book 3 of the Institutes, chap. 10, mentions Rome as a stranger, and in chap. 6 of the same book, and finally book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 39, speaks of Italy as of a foreign region, he calls the people of Constantinople his own fellow-citizens through affection of fatherland, as we shall presently show from his words. A question therefore can be raised, whether those Greek writers understand old Rome, or new Rome, that is Constantinople. I am indeed not ignorant that the Greeks often add a distinctive epithet to "Rome," when they wish to designate Constantinople, as in the preliminary Commentary to the Latin Acts of St. Alexius, § I, volume IV of July, p. 239, has been shown. But I roundly deny that this is always done by them. Thus in the Greek Acts of St. John Calybita, which Cardinal Sirletus translated into Latin from a Greek manuscript of Grottaferrata, and our Elders published at the 15th of January, that Saint is said simply to have been born in the city of Rome, whereas from §2 of the preliminary Commentary it is established that he was of Constantinople. Hence also Molanus in his Annotations on Usuard, no. 7, thus speaks of the same Saint: "John, who inhabited a hut or cottage, was by fatherland a Roman, that is, as I judge, of Constantinople." But that the word Ῥωμαῖος among Greek writers not rarely signifies a Thracian, or a Constantinopolitan, or some other Greek, I will now try to show by certain examples.
[19] by which word a Greek, In the first place the geographers agree that Thrace received the name of Romania from its metropolis, which by the command of Constantine the Great was called New Rome or Second Rome. Nay Du Cange in his Glossary, at the word Romania, proves by many testimonies of the ancients that the Byzantine empire and other parts of the East were called by this name. Whatever be the case, even now the little Greeks ambitiously claim for themselves the name of Romans, as Jacob Spon, volume 2 of his Itinerary, p. 59, testifies. Hence also the R. P. Alexius de Somavera, a Capuchin, in his Thesaurus of the vulgar Greek tongue, which in the year 1709 was published at Paris in Greek-Italian and Italian-Greek, interprets the words Ῥωμαῖος, Ῥωμηὸς, Ῥωμιὸς by the Italian word "Greco." Henry Spondanus in the continuation of the Annals of Cardinal Baronius, at the year of Christ 1205, treating of Calo-John king of the Bulgars, also to our purpose has these things, no. 5: "But concerning the same John, George says that he was called Romanicida (slayer of the Romans) on account of the most grievous evils inflicted on the Romans (that is, on the Greeks, whom they were wont to call Romans), and because he held Roman blood among his delights." The author whom Spondanus here cites is George Acropolita, who in his history, published at Paris in the year 1651 in Greek and Latin, no. 13, p. 13, narrates that this Calo-John so burned with hatred toward the Greeks that he named himself Ῥωμαιοκτόνον, that is, slayer of the Romans. In Nicetas Choniates and other Greek writers many examples occur in which Romans are taken for Greeks; but these for brevity's sake I here omit.
[20] The Hierolexicon of both the Macri, at the word Romanus, thus restricts the wider signification of this name: or a Constantinopolitan can be signified. "Romanus among Greek writers signifies a Constantinopolitan: for whom we call Roman, they call Latin." This stricter acceptation of the word is favored by the Greek inscription which Anselmus Bandurus, volume 1 of the Eastern Empire, p. 182, or rather
in part 3 of the Constantinopolitan Antiquities, book 7, no. 525, reports is read on the third Constantinopolitan tower in this manner:
ΠΑCΙ ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙC ΜΕΓΑC ΔΕCΠΟΤΗC ΕΓΕΙΡΕ ΡΩΜΑΝΟC ΝΕΟΝ ΠΑΜΜΕΓΙCΤΟΝ ΤΟΝΔΕ ΠΥΡΓΟΝ ΕΚ ΒΑΘΡΩΝ.
That is: FOR ALL THE ROMANS THE GREAT LORD ROMANUS RAISED THIS NEW AND VERY GREAT TOWER FROM THE FOUNDATIONS.
Jacob Spon, volume 2 of his Itinerary, p. 58, asserts that he read the same inscription on the walls of Constantinople, and there relates it somewhat altered. He adds, moreover, that by the word ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙC he understands the Greeks, who even now in their Greco-barbarous idiom are wont to say: Μιλῶ Ῥωμαῖκα, that is, "I speak Greek"; Εἶμαι Ῥωμαῖος, "I am a Greek," etc. But nothing forbids the name of Romans in this inscription to be restricted to the Constantinopolitans alone, who from their city New Rome were by excellence called Romans: for to what Greeks did the emperor build this tower especially, if not to the citizens of Constantinople, that it might adorn or fortify their city?
[21] But to what end, you will say, is there here so full a disputation about the signification of the name Roman? Since Cassian called the Constantinopolitans his fellow-citizens, I will say what the matter is. I wished to discuss this matter at greater length, lest I should seem to contradict Photius, the Typicon of St. Sabas, and the other Greek menologies, if I should say that Cassian was born at Constantinople, or at least in Romania or Thrace. Further, he himself clearly enough indicates that this is his fatherland, when in book 7 on the Incarnation of the Lord, chap. 31, against Nestorius, among other things he thus writes: "Whence I beseech and entreat all you, who, placed within the circuit of the city of Constantinople, are both by affection of fatherland my fellow-citizens, and by unity of faith my brethren, that you separate yourselves from that, as it is written, ravening wolf, who devours the people of God as the food of bread." Nor here with Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 739, seek an escape, as though perchance Cassian addressed the Constantinopolitans by the name of his fellow-citizens, because, admitted among the clergy by St. John Chrysostom, he had dwelt among them: for, not to urge other things, why does he not so call also the Syrians, Egyptians, Italians, Gauls, among whom he lived for a while? Nay, why, writing to Castor, bishop of Apt, does he intimate that he is a foreigner, as we saw above in no. 16? If therefore Cassian had Thrace, which is also called Romania, for his fatherland, then with the already mentioned testimony of himself agree Photius and the other Greek writers, by whom he is called Ῥωμαῖος.
[22] But there still remains a knot to be untied, and that a sufficiently intricate one: for someone will ask how this Roman fatherland of St. Cassian coheres with the testimony of Gennadius, who called him a Scythian by nation. it is explained how he himself was born in Thrace, First I answer that the certain reading of Gennadius is not altogether established, since among us in the manuscript of his catalogue it is clearly read "Cassian born at Constantinople," as at the beginning of this paragraph I noted. Yet I will yield to the antiquity of the Corbie codex, in which it is read "a Scythian by nation," and will admit that reading as far more probable. But then I answer that he can be called a Scythian and a Roman or Thracian, because Pontic Scythia constitutes a part of Thrace. But lest I seem to have asserted this rashly, I bring forward some testimonies of geographers. In the first place Stephanus of Byzantium in his alphabetical work on Cities, which Thomas de Pinedo and Lucas Holstenius illustrated with notes, has this concerning the Scythians: Σκύθαι ἔθνος Θράκιον, that is, the Scythians a nation of Thrace. I know indeed that this expression displeases Thomas de Pinedo, but in Holstenius it is confirmed by Eustathius on Dionysius, p. 97, saying: Ἦσαν δὲ Σκύθαι καὶ Θρᾴκιον ἔθνος οἱ καὶ Νομαῖοι ἐλέγοντο. That is: The Scythians were also a nation of Thrace, who were also called Nomaei. Zosimus the Greek historian, who flourished in the fifth century, agrees with both, book 4, in these words: Πόλις ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ κατὰ Θρᾴκην Σκυθίᾳ, Τομεῖς ὀνομαζομένη. That is: There is a town in that Scythia which is contained in Thrace, which they call Tomi. Again in book 5 of his history he indicates the same situation of Scythia in this manner: Ἦν δὲ Ἀβουνδάντιος ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν τῇ Θρᾴκῃ Σκυθίας. That is: Abundantius was sprung from Scythia, a part of Thrace. The moderns follow the ancients, among whom Michael Antonius Baudrand in his Geography, volume 2, p. 217, affirms that Pontic Scythia was a province of the Constantinopolitan empire, and places those Scythians in the eastern part of Bulgaria, in which tract the Tartars of Dobruja and Bialogrod even now dwell. One may also see Christoph Cellarius in his Notitia of the ancient world, book 2, chap. 8, part 1, p. 375 and following.
[23] and could truly be called by Gennadius a Scythian by nation. These things being laid down, I reconcile Gennadius with Cassian, and this I declare by a common example. Let us imagine that at Paris some heresy is spreading, which a certain Peter, born in Normandy, and at that time living in Spain, has undertaken to refute. Then let us suppose that this Peter, wishing to fortify this metropolis of Gaul against errors, refutes the heretical doctrine in a written book, and admonishes the inhabitants of that city to separate themselves from the author of the heresy. Will not Peter be able to call the Parisians, by affection of fatherland, his fellow-citizens or countrymen, since he too was born in the province of Gaul? And if he addresses them by this name in his writings, will not readers rightly gather that the author of the book was by fatherland a Parisian, or at least a Gaul? Will he not be numbered among the Gallic writers? Will he not commonly be called a Gaul, although he is sprung from a northern nation, which some ages ago fixed its seat in Gaul? Now let us further establish that by a certain writer of Toledo (we suppose that Peter lived for a while in that city of Spain, and died there fifty years ago) a catalogue of illustrious men who fought heresies is composed, and among other defenders of the Catholic faith this Peter is reviewed. If that man of Toledo, according to the more distinct knowledge of Gaul, calls Peter a Norman by nation, will he contradict other writers who have called Peter a Gaul? Will you gainsay Peter himself, who had named the Parisians, by affection of fatherland, his fellow-citizens? He who applies the several particulars of this comparison to the present question will easily understand how St. Cassian could be called by the Greeks a Roman, and by Gennadius a Scythian. Yet if to anyone this explanation should not please, I will suspect that by Gennadius the name of Scythians was taken more widely, as now we commonly call the Thracians, Macedonians, Thessalians, Bulgarians, and other peoples of the Turkish empire by the common name of Turks. Nay then my suspicion will be favored by Jornandes, who, writing in the sixth century on the affairs of the Getae, chap. 5, extends the bounds of Scythia far and wide.
§ III. The Saint's nativity, name and surname, parents or kinsmen, studies of letters, and profession of the monastic life.
We cannot assign a determinate time to the nativity of St. Cassian, since we do not certainly know how long he lived, and in what year he died. The certain year of nativity is sought in vain, The Lessons of Marseilles, which we related above in no. 11, indeed relate that he died worn out with old age, ninety-seven years being completed; but of so great an old age they make no word who emended the proper Offices of the church of Marseilles, and published them in the year 1662 fortified with episcopal authority. If so aged an age of St. Cassian had been established, why would those correctors have omitted it? Wherefore I suspect that this number of years was devised by someone at pleasure, as our Guesnay, book 2, chap. 2, gratuitously determined the year 448, in which he places the death of that holy Old man. Yet I confess that this hypothesis, in which Cassian was born in the year 351, is not altogether improbable: for our Saint seems to have set out from Bethlehem into Egypt before the year 385, because he nowhere says that St. Jerome was seen by him, who in the year 385 began to inhabit Bethlehem. Moreover the abbot Nesteros, Conference 14, chap. 9, thus exhorts John Cassian with his companion Germanus to silence: "Observe therefore in the first place, and especially thou, John, to whom, for keeping these things which I am about to say, an age still more youthful is helpful, lest the zeal of thy reading and the labor of thy desire be made void by vain elation, so that thou dost enjoin the utmost silence upon thy mouth." I do not think that a more youthful age exceeds the twenty-fifth or thirtieth year. It seems therefore that Cassian was born after the year 350, since before the year 385 the abbot Nesteros addresses him as a young man. This is our conjecture concerning the time of nativity, which we shall gladly abandon for a more probable one.
[25] It is sufficiently certain that Cassian had the forename of John: for Prosper in his Chronicle, which among his other works was published at Paris in the year 1711, but the Saint's forename and surname are more easily found, col. 745, Theodosius (for the 14th time) and Maximus being consuls, that is at the year of Christ 433, thus writes: "John the monk, surnamed Cassian, is held a distinguished and eloquent writer at Marseilles." It is not altogether established that these are Prosper's words, since they are wanting in certain codices, as the latest editor there in the notes advises. At least in our parchment codex of larger form, which does not present great antiquity of characters, under the name of Prosper at the year of Christ 434 it is thus read: "Cassian sets forth the lives of the fathers ascertained in Egypt, and their doctrines and rules, in books given to very many." Doubtless Pithou had a similar manuscript before his eyes, from which Canisius in volume 1 of the Antiqua lectio reprinted the Chronicle of Prosper the Aquitanian tyro, where p. 170 these same last words are related. Whatever be the case of the genuine Chronicle of Prosper, the abbot Nesteros calls him John, as appears from the preceding number. Again, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 35, he is called John by a certain old man Theodore. Others everywhere name him Cassian, among whom is Castor, bishop of Apt, who thus begins his letter, prefixed by Gazaeus to the works of Cassian: "To the lord adorned with the special glory of holiness, and in all things memorable; but also excelling in the beauty of the sciences, namely to father Cassian, Castor, the offscouring of those living in the world, offers the most humble services that we can." But Prosper in the edition just cited, col. 307, being silent about his other names, in the title of the book which he wrote on grace and free will against Cassian, calls him only the Conferencer, namely from the Conferences of the fathers which Cassian had published. Our Guesnay, book 1, chaps. 1 and 2, discourses eloquently enough concerning his name and surname; but these and similar reasonings of that writer can be judged rather rhetorically embellished than historically proved.
[26] by the likeness of which latter Baronius seems to have been deceived. The most eminent Baronius from this likeness of surname conjectured that Isidore of Pelusium gave a letter to our Cassian: for in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 404, no. 78, he thus writes: "There is extant a letter of Isidore of Pelusium to Cassian, when he had begun to profess the monastic life, by which he admonished him that in the first place the tongue was to be restrained by him." But this letter does not seem to pertain to our St. Cassian,
which, book 1, epistle 309, thus begins: "I hear that thou hast fled a transitory life, subject to corruption (in Greek φθαρτὸν, which word sometimes signifies a corrupt or wicked life), and hast hastened at a run to the monastic pursuit: and yet meanwhile that thou hast a pert and petulant tongue, and speakest rashly. Which indeed is nothing else than to build a firm wall inaccessible to enemies, and to leave for them a gate for entrance." This corruption of morals does not befit our Cassian, who from boyhood had lived among monks, and doubtless in the Bethlehem monastery had already learned to bridle his tongue. But if anyone should contend that by the word φθαρτὸν is designated only the secular life, which is subject to the danger of corruption, I will answer that our Cassian was most probably not known to Isidore of Pelusium, who inhabited Egypt, since from his tender years he forsook that life, and embraced the monastic institute at Bethlehem. Finally Isidore, book 3, epistle 402, and book 4, epistle 121, writes to Cassian the deacon, with which dignity our Cassian was not yet adorned while he lived in Egypt. Whence I conclude that many were distinguished by this name, and that Isidore of Pelusium more probably did not write to our Cassian.
[27] Cassian indicates the state of his parents, Our Saint himself declares how pious parents he had, when Conference 24, chap. 1, together with his companion Germanus he thus sets forth to the abbot Abraham the temptation of returning to their fatherland: "Therefore to this Abraham we disclosed the assault of our thoughts with anxious confession, because to seek again our province, and to revisit our parents, we were urged by daily heats of the mind. For hence indeed arose for us the greatest occasion of desires, that we remembered our parents to be endowed with such religion and piety, that we should by no means prefer to them our own purpose, continually revolving this in mind, that we should take greater profit from their assiduity, and that we should be occupied by no solicitude of bodily things, and by no distractions of providing sustenance, they abundantly and with joy supplying all the provision of our need. Moreover also with the hope of vain joys we fed our mind, believing that we should reap the greatest fruit from the conversion of many, who were as it were to be directed by our example and admonitions to the way of salvation; and then besides, the situation of the very places, in which our ancestors held their possession, and the pleasantness of those regions, was painted before our eyes as delightful, which stretched with pleasing and fitting spaces of solitude, so that not only could the secrets of the woods delight a monk, but also furnish great abundances of sustenance." Noris from these last words, with Holstenius, in vain infers, against the Scythian fatherland of St. Cassian, that this description of a pleasant region by no means befits the squalor of the Scythian deserts and the rigors of the Caucasus: for Pontic Scythia, from which we suppose Cassian to be sprung, is far removed from the Caucasus, and has its own delights, and furnishes great abundances of sustenance.
[28] It can be doubted whether Cassian here by "parents" understands father and mother. or of his kinsmen, The reason for doubting is that at that time kinsmen and relatives were often expressed by the name of parents, as St. Jerome testifies at the beginning of book 2 against Rufinus, where in the latest Paris edition, volume 4, part 2, p. 389, he thus assails his adversary: "But that is ridiculous, that after thirty years he boasts that he returned to his parents, a man who has neither father nor mother; and those whom, living, he left as a youth, he longs for, dead, as an old man: unless perchance in the military and vulgar speech he names kinsmen and relatives 'parents.'" So also Venantius Fortunatus in his separate booklets on the destruction of Thuringia, in our Brower p. 341, has these things:
Then father and mother, and uncle, and kinsmen, Whom I would weep for in the tomb, this grief has rendered.
Du Cange in his Glossary, at the word "parentes," adduces several examples of this signification. Since therefore here perhaps also that word is so taken, I define nothing, but only add that Cassian had a sister, of whom, book 11 of the Institutes, chap. 17, he makes mention in this manner: "Wherefore this is the opinion of the fathers persisting from antiquity even now, which I cannot bring forth without my own confusion, who could neither avoid my own sister, nor escape the hands of the bishop, that a monk ought by all means to flee women and bishops: for neither allows him whom he has bound to his familiarity to give further attention either to the quiet of his cell, or to cling with most pure eyes to divine contemplation through the beholding of holy things."
[29] Perhaps someone might suspect that Cassian's brother was the abbot Germanus, [among whom Tillemont gratuitously numbers Germanus, the inseparable companion of Cassian.] with whom, our Saint says, Conference 1, chap. 1, "from his very novitiate and rudiments of the spiritual warfare there was thenceforth so undivided a companionship both in the monastery and in the desert, that all, to signify the equality of our fellowship and purpose, declared that there was one mind and soul in two bodies." But Cassian himself altogether removes this suspicion: for Conference 16, chap. 1, to the abbot Joseph asking whether they were brothers, it was answered that "we were bound not by carnal, but by spiritual brotherhood, and that from the beginning of our renunciation we had always been associated, both in the pilgrimage, which had been undertaken by each of us out of pursuit of the spiritual warfare, and in the zeal of the monastery, by an undivided conjunction." Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 160, conjectures that this Germanus was joined to Cassian by near consanguinity, because Conference 24, chap. 1, the same pleasantness of region, ancestral possession of forefathers, and other advantages of a rich family are ascribed to both, as can be gathered from those things which we adduced in no. 27. I do not deny that this conjecture is somehow probable. Yet it could easily happen that both had the same fatherland, in which were the neighboring possessions of their parents, and the distinct wealth of each family, although they were connected among themselves by no bond of blood. All these things, I say, can be explained of two countrymen and neighbors, even though they be not kinsmen, as will be plain to one considering. Whence we leave this uncertain conjecture, as such.
[30] The Saint had probably been instructed in the humaner letters, It is also not clear enough in what place Cassian learned the humaner letters: for although from boyhood, as he himself testifies in the preface to Castor of Apt, he lived among monks, yet boyhood admits a certain latitude, and is commonly extended to the fifteenth year, so that at home or elsewhere he could have tasted profane studies, before he betook himself to the Bethlehem monastery. The Lessons cited in § I assert that he first studied philosophy at Athens. The proper Offices of the year 1662 are silent about the training-ground of his studies. Our Guesnay at seven years old, at pleasure, sends him from the monastery to Athens, and after his studies are finished brings him back again from Athens to the monastery. However it be, Cassian himself (this was wrongly published under the name of Germanus, as Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 159, rightly observed) indicates plainly enough that he gave attention to profane letters, when, roused by the abbot Nesteros to avoid the wanderings of the mind, he thus writes, Conference 14, chap. 12: "At these things I, first moved by hidden compunction, and then grievously groaning, said, All these things which thou hast most copiously set forth have brought upon me greater increases of desperation than I hitherto endured: for to me, besides those general captivities of the soul by which I do not doubt that all the weak are assailed from without, a special impediment of salvation is added, from that knowledge of letters which I seem tenuously to have attained, in which either the insistence of the pedagogue or the intention of continual reading so macerated me, that now my mind, as it were infected with poetic songs, at the time even of prayer meditates those trifles of fables and histories of wars, with which from a little child it was imbued in the first rudiments of studies, and to me singing psalms, or supplicating for the indulgence of sins, either an impudent memory of poems is suggested, or as it were the image of warring heroes turns before my eyes, and the imagination of such phantasms, always eluding me, so does not suffer my mind to aspire to heavenly contemplations, that it cannot be expelled by daily weepings." It is not probable that these poetic fables were handed down to Cassian by the Bethlehem monks, since he himself makes mention only of the spiritual doctrine which he drank in this monastery, as we shall presently see.
[31] I know not on what occasion Cassian was imbued with the spiritual rudiments of the Bethlehem monastery, as Conference 11, chap. 5, he speaks; unless perhaps he embraced this kind of monastic life before he entered the Bethlehem monastery, when he visited the Holy Land, to which about those times from the whole world so great a concourse of Christians was made, that St. Jerome in epistle 86 to Eustochium thus asks: "For of what nation do men not come to the holy places?" Nay the same holy doctor in epistle 48 to Desiderius says: "To have adored where the feet of the Lord stood is a part of faith; and to have seen, as it were recent, the traces of the nativity and of the cross and passion." It is therefore not improbable that Cassian, for the sake of piety, made a pilgrimage to the holy places, and on that occasion took up the institute of the Bethlehem monastery. Yet since I have read this nowhere, I affirm nothing. This one thing is established, that he laid the first foundations of the monastic life in that monastery, as he manifestly indicates when, Conference 17, chap. 7, he introduces his companion Germanus speaking thus in the name of both concerning the Bethlehem monks: "Although also to their doctrine we ought to repay the highest thanks, who taught us from little ones to attempt great things, and, a taste of their good being given, instilled into our bowels an excellent thirst for perfection." Often also elsewhere he makes mention of the first rudiments of the faith and of the spiritual doctrine which he received in that monastery; but nowhere does he intimate that he there also learned the profane disciplines, which not a little confirms our opinion, set forth in the preceding number.
[32] Cassian indicates, book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 31, the situation of his monastery, which is different from the monastery of St. Jerome, which "was not far," he says, "from the cave in which our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to be born of the Virgin." Already before, book 3 of the Institutes, chap. 4, he had written this concerning the same: "It must be known, however, that this Matins (there is understood the Prime of the ecclesiastical Office) which is now observed especially in the western regions, a canonical function first instituted in our time also in our monastery, where our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin, deigning to take up the increases of human infancy, confirmed by his grace our infancy also, still tender and suckling in religion." Gazaeus in the notes on this last text of Cassian thinks that here is designated the Bethlehem monastery which Paula the Roman built, and St. Jerome governed. But doubtless he is deceived: for this monastery was built by Paula the Roman in the year 389, as Tillemont, volume 12 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 122, shows. But the reckoning of time does not permit that we defer the spiritual novitiate of Cassian so long,
as the following series of the history will demonstrate. Moreover Cassian himself declares clearly enough that the monastery in which he lived was more ancient, since he asserts there that he found in it the hours appointed by his elders for the refection of bodies. Our Guesnay, book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 9, convicts of error that opinion of Gazaeus and others—would that he had proved the other parts of his history so solidly! One may also consult Tillemont, who, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 158, impugns the same opinion by several arguments. More grievously errs the author of the proper Lessons, which we exhibited above in no. 10, when he makes Cassian the founder of that monastery, saying: "At Bethlehem, by the aid of certain associates, he founded a monastery."
[33] From this single chronology of the founding of the Hieronymian monastery (I will not here touch on other things) falls the assertion of Joseph de Sigüenza, who in his Spanish history of the Order of St. Jerome, part 2, book 1, and which the religious of various Orders vindicate for themselves. chap. 1, ascribes Cassian to the Hieronymian religion. Nor does John Baptist de Lezana rest on a firmer foundation, when in the Annals of the Carmelites at the year of Christ 404, no. 2, he thus vindicates the same for his Order: "That is not to be passed over, that indeed without reason and almost without any foundation the historians of the Basilian institute have wished to adjudge Cassian to themselves: for if the things which he wrote be inspected, it will be clearly had that he was a follower of the Elian and Essene institute, which he had beheld flourishing in Egypt and Palestine." I confess that I am blinder than a mole, if in the writings of Cassian it be clearly contained that he was a Carmelite. Nevertheless Marcus Antonius Alegre de Casanate in his Carmelite Paradise, p. 204, at the year of Christ 435, thus confidently pronounces: "St. John Cassian, a Scythian by nation, disciple and deacon of St. John Chrysostom, and in the same assembly with Chrysostom an Elian professor." Hermenegild of St. Paul in the Origin and continuation of the Hieronymian religion, Tract 5, chap. 16, heaps up many reasonings in Spanish against Marcus Antonius Alegre, and numbers Cassian among his Hieronymites. I shall seem to the learned to be trifling, if I should wish to compose or more fully discuss this ridiculous contention of those writers. Wherefore I proceed to more serious things.
§ IV. His first setting-out into Egypt.
Cassian with his companion Germanus from the Bethlehem monastery, After St. Cassian had passed some time in the Bethlehem monastery, for the sake of acquiring greater perfection, together with his faithful Achates Germanus he resolved to set out to the most famous monks and anchorites of Egypt, as he himself Conference 11, chap. 1, expressly signifies in these words: "When, dwelling in the monastery of Syria, after the first rudiments of the faith, with increases somewhat succeeding, we had begun to desire a greater grace of perfection, we resolved forthwith to seek Egypt, and, the most remote desert of the Thebaid also being penetrated, to visit very many of the saints, whose glory fame had spread through all things, out of zeal, if not of emulating, at least of knowing them." But how great a space of time before that pilgrimage they lived in that monastery appears from Conference 19, chap. 2, where our Saint out of great lowliness of mind thus speaks: "Whence it is no wonder that we cannot ascend to their sublimity, who—I will not say up to old age—cannot persevere under the discipline of the monastery, but, scarcely content to bear the yoke of subjection for two years, straightway fly off to the presumption of a harmful liberty, since yet in that very little time we are subjected to the command of the elder not according to that rule of strictness, but according to the liberty of our own judgment, so that we seem not to learn the fruit of patience, but to await the time of obtaining license." Hence also Germanus, chap. 11 of the same Conference, thus asks the abbot John: "By what remedy, then, can it be provided either for us or for the rest, who are of the same frailty and misery, who, tenuously instituted in the cenobitic disciplines, before the expulsion of all vices, have begun to affect the habitation of solitude, or in what manner shall we be able to apprehend the constancy of an unperturbed mind and the immovable firmness of patience, who have in a manner forsaken the very schools and training-ground of this exercise, in which our beginnings ought to have been fully instructed and perfected, the conversation of the monastery being untimely intermitted?" From these and other things I gather that Cassian was very young when he departed into Egypt, since from boyhood he embraced the cenobitic life. This same thing Germanus confirms, who after some years passed in Egypt, Conference 21, chap. 21, says to Theonas that he has a greener age. But it is established from Conference 14, chap. 9, that Cassian was younger than Germanus, as we showed above in no. 24.
[35] When the Bethlehem cenobites had understood the fervent desire of these novices, a promise of a prompt return being first made, they wished to dissuade them from this arduous journey and to retain them with themselves, whether because perhaps they judged this austere kind of living not sufficiently suited to their tender age, or because they were unwilling to lose the outstanding examples of virtues by which I judge both to have shone: for the abbot Pinufius, who for a while had lain hidden in the same Bethlehem monastery, and had observed their conversation, eminently praises the pious works of both, Conference 20, chap. 4. But for whatever cause the cenobites resisted their generous desire, at least they were unwilling to grant them leave to depart, unless they first solemnly promised that they would as soon as possible return from Egypt to their monastery. Hence Germanus, Conference 17, chap. 2, is solicitous concerning the faith of the pledge, "which," he says, "promising to our elders a most swift return, we know that we gave, that we might be permitted even cursorily to go round the saints and monasteries of this province… We could not otherwise have resisted the prayers of those retaining us, unless, a most speedy return being promised, we had come hither." Then, chap. 5 of the same Conference, he thus again sets forth the anxious stings of his conscience: "From both sides therefore we are now straitened. For if we wish to satisfy the promise which, the charity of the elders compelling us, we brought forth, and which before all the brethren in the cave, in which our Lord shone forth from the hall of the virginal womb, he himself being witness, we brought forth, we incur the greatest detriment of the spiritual life: but if, unmindful of our pledge, and residing in these regions, we wish to postpone that agreement to the profit of our perfection, we dread the abrupt perils of a lie of an unfulfilled promise."
[36] When therefore, under that condition, they had obtained leave of departing, with eager mind they seized the desired journey, he sets out into Egypt, the narration of which I will now weave from the very writings of St. Cassian, who Conference 11, chap. 1 and following, thus describes his pilgrimage: "Therefore we came, the voyage being accomplished, to a town of Egypt whose name is Thennesus; whose inhabitants are so washed about on every side either by the sea or by salt marshes, that, given (because land is wanting) to trafficking alone, they gain wealth and substance by naval commerce, so that when they wish to construct buildings, land is not at hand, unless it be brought from afar by ships. Where, when to us coming the divinity, favoring our desires, had granted the arrival of the most blessed and eminent man Archebius the bishop, who, snatched from the company of the anchorites, and given as bishop to the town of Panephysis, with such strictness kept in all his life the purpose of solitude, that he relaxed nothing of the tenor of his past humility, nor flattered himself concerning the honor added to him (for he did not testify that he had been admitted as fit for that office, but complained that he had been expelled as unworthy from that discipline of anchoresis, because, having dwelt in it thirty-seven years, he could by no means attain to the purity of so great a profession)—he therefore, when in the aforesaid Thennesus, whither the cause of electing a bishop there had brought him, he had received us piously and most kindly, our desire being known, by which we wished to seek the holy fathers even in the further parts of Egypt: 'Come,' he said, 'and see meanwhile the old men, dwelling not far from our monastery, whose antiquity in their now bent bodies, and holiness in their very aspect, so shines, that even the sole contemplation of them can confer great doctrine on beholders, from whom you may learn that which I grieve to have lost, and which, now perished, I can no longer hand down, not so much by words as by the very example of a holy life. But I believe that my poverty is to be somewhat relieved by this zeal, if for you inquiring I shall at least provide that evangelical pearl, which I myself have not, where you may more conveniently procure it.'
[37] coming to which. Taking therefore staff and wallet, as is the custom there for all monks entering the way, he himself, the leader of the journey, brought us to his city, that is Panephysis: whose lands, nay even the greatest part of the contiguous region, once most opulent (since from it, as fame is, food was supplied to the whole region), the sea, breaking its bounds by a sudden earthquake, occupied, and thus, almost all the villages having fallen, overspread the once rich lands with salt marshes, so that that which is spiritually chanted in the psalm: 'He hath turned rivers into a desert, and the sources of waters into thirst, a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein'; they think was foretold according to the letter of that region. In these places therefore many towns in this manner, placed on more eminent mounds, their inhabitants being put to flight, that flood made as it were islands, which furnish to the withdrawing saints the desired solitude, in which three old men, that is Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph, most ancient anchorites, dwelt.
[38] he is brought to the abbot Chaeremon, And so the blessed Archebius preferred first to bring us to Chaeremon, who was both nearer to his monastery, and more advanced in age than the other two. For when, alacritous only in spirit, he had passed the hundredth year of his life, so had his back been bent by the antiquity of time and the assiduity of prayers, that, as though reduced to his first infancy, he walked with his hands lowered and stretched to the ground. Beholding therefore both his wonderful countenance and his gait alike (since, all his members being now failing and mortified, he had by no means lost the censure of his past strictness), when we suppliantly asked for a discourse and doctrine, and protested that the desire only of spiritual instructions had been the cause of our coming, he, grievously sighing: 'What,' he said, 'can I confer on you of doctrine, since the weakness of old age, as it has relaxed my former rigor, so has also taken away the confidence of speaking? For how should I presume to teach what I myself do not do; or instruct another in that which I know I now exercise more sparingly or more tepidly? For which cause I have permitted no younger man to dwell with me up to this age, lest by my example the strictness of another should be relaxed. For never will the authority of the instructor be efficacious, unless he has fixed it in the heart of the hearer by the effect of his own work.'
[39] At these things we, pricked with no moderate confusion, thus answered: with whom, 'Although both the difficulty of this place, or even the solitary life itself, which robust youth also could scarcely endure, ought to suffice us for all instruction, which even, thou being silent, sufficiently and abundantly instruct and prick us, yet we ask that, thy silence being a little laid aside, thou wouldst rather deign to instill into us those things through which we may embrace this virtue which we see in thee, not so much by imitation as by admiration. For even if our lukewarmness, revealed to thee, does not deserve to obtain that which we seek, at least this ought
the labor of so great a journey at least to obtain, that we hastened hither from the rudiments of the Bethlehem monastery, out of desire of your instruction, and love of our own progress.' Moved by these things, Chaeremon discoursed on perfection in the remaining chapters of this Conference. Then Cassian and his companion held with the same old man the two following Conferences, in one of which there was disputed concerning chastity, in the other concerning the protection of God. Three Conferences therefore, namely the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, are attributed to this Chaeremon, in the last of which certain things are repugnant to sound doctrine, as we shall afterward say.
[40] The instruction of Chaeremon being received, they went to the abbot Nesteros, as also with Nesteros he converses through an interpreter; to hear the spiritual doctrine of this man distinguished in all things and of the highest knowledge, as Cassian, Conference 14, chap. 1, calls him. Gazaeus in the notes on the beginning of that Conference relates two examples which he judges should be ascribed to this Nesteros. The first, in the Lives of the Fathers in our Rosweyde, in the second edition p. 593, is thus read: "The abbot Nesteron the elder was walking in the desert with a certain brother, and, seeing a dragon, they fled. The brother says to him: 'And dost thou too fear, father?' The old man answered: 'I do not fear, son; but it is expedient, since, seeing the dragon, I fled, because I could not flee the spirit of vainglory.'" The other, in the same edition, p. 624, is related in this manner: "But after these things the old man asked that brother, saying: 'Abba Nestero, how didst thou acquire this virtue, that when any tribulation arises in the monastery, thou neither speakest nor makest complaint?' And when the brother was much urged by the old man, he says to him: 'Pardon me, abba; when I entered in the beginning into the congregation, I said to my mind: Thou and the ass be one. For as the ass is beaten, and speaks not, suffers injury, and answers not, so also thou; as also in the psalm it is read: I am become as a beast before thee, and I am always with thee.'" I see no other reason for applying these apophthegms to this Nesteros, except a certain affinity of the name, which not even itself is everywhere equal, since once he is called Nisteron, at another time Nestero. Louis Bulteau in the monastic history of the East, praised above, book 1, chap. 10, suspects that that Nesteros of whom we treat was a friend of St. Anthony, because in the same Lives of the Fathers in Rosweyde, p. 562, he had read this: "One of the fathers asked the abbot Nisteron the great, who was a friend of the abbot Anthony." Nesteros indeed, whom Cassian consulted, Conference 14, chap. 4, affirms that the blessed Anthony lived in his times; but to me there still remains a scruple, because the Lives of the Fathers call this friend of Anthony Nisteron the great: for by the epithet "great," or, as above is read, "elder," he seems to be distinguished from him who is simply named Nestero or Nesteros. But whoever at last this man was, with Nesteros Cassian held two Conferences; namely the fourteenth on spiritual knowledge, and the fifteenth on the divine charisms.
[41] but with Joseph he held spiritual conferences in Greek, With the two preceding masters of the spiritual life, on account of mutual ignorance of language, they had to speak through an interpreter; but with the third, skilled in the Greek tongue, they disputed by themselves, as Cassian, Conference 16, chap. 1, affirms in these words: "The blessed Joseph, whose institutes and precepts are now to be unfolded, one of the three of whom in the first Conference we made mention, was of a very illustrious family and a chief man of his city within Egypt, which is called Thmuis, and so diligently learned not only in Egyptian but also in Greek eloquence, that either to us, or to those who were wholly ignorant of the Egyptian tongue, he disputed most elegantly, not as the rest through an interpreter, but by himself. Who, when he had perceived that we desired his instruction, having first inquired whether we were brothers german, and hearing from us that we were bound not by carnal but by spiritual brotherhood, and that from the beginning of our renunciation we had always been associated, both in the pilgrimage, which had been undertaken by each of us out of pursuit of the spiritual warfare, and in the zeal of the monastery, by an undivided conjunction, he used such an exordium of speech." Joseph therefore, on occasion of this undivided conjunction, in the sixteenth Conference held a long dissertation on friendship. But when Germanus, on account of the promised most swift return, was tormented by the stings of conscience, and had indicated them to his companion, both, for the sake of counsel, set forth this perturbation of their mind to the abbot Joseph, who tried to persuade them that that determination or promise was not to be held; whence Cassian prefixed to the seventeenth Conference, in which that question had been discussed, the title "On the making of a determination." See, if it please, on this Conference the most learned annotations which Henry Cuyckius, afterward the most illustrious bishop of Roermond, subjoined to the works of Cassian, and which Gazaeus in the edition of the same works in the year 1628 from p. 927 reprinted.
[42] and everywhere he was received with great charity. I conclude this paragraph by relating the hospitable charity with which those two pilgrims were received by the Egyptian monks, and which our Saint, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 24, thus describes: "When, desiring to learn the ordinances of the elders, we had sought the province of Egypt from the parts of Syria, and there marveled that we were received with such alacrity of heart, that no rule of refection at all, as we had been instituted in the monasteries of Palestine, was observed up to the appointed hour of fasting; but that, without the lawful Wednesdays and Fridays, wherever we went, the daily station was dissolved. A certain one of the elders, when we inquired why the daily fasts were so indifferently passed over among them, answered: 'Fasting is always with me; but you, whom I am presently to dismiss, I cannot continually hold with me. And fasting indeed, although it be useful and continually necessary, yet is the offering of a voluntary gift: but the work of charity the necessity of the precept requires to be fulfilled. Therefore receiving Christ in you, I ought to refresh him. But dismissing you, the humanity shown for his sake I can compensate in myself by a stricter fast. For the sons of the bridegroom cannot fast, while the bridegroom is with them: but when he shall have departed, then they will lawfully fast.'" In the following chapter he thus subjoins another example of pious and benevolent hospitality: "A certain one of the elders, when he exhorted me refreshing myself to eat yet a little more, and I had said that I could not, answered: 'I have now six times set a table for various arriving brethren, and, exhorting each, took food with all, and am still hungry; and thou, now refreshing for the first time, already sayest that thou canst not.'"
Notes* ancestral
§ V. His sojourn in the solitude of Diolcos.
In the order of time we pursue the pious pilgrimage of St. Cassian, which he himself, Conference 18, chap. 1, thus proceeds to set forth: The Saint with his companion goes to Diolcos, "After the sight and conversation of those three old men, whose Conferences, our holy brother Eucherius compelling, we have somehow set forth; when we desired with greater ardor to seek also the further parts of Egypt, in which a fuller and more perfect number of the saints went to and fro, we came to a village (elsewhere he calls it a town) whose name is Diolcos, overhanging one of the seven mouths of the river Nile, compelled not so much by the necessity of the journey as by the desire of the saints dwelling there: for when, like most eager merchants, we had heard from the ancient fathers of very many and most famous monasteries there instituted, forthwith, as it were a voyage of uncertain inquiry, the hope of greater gain persuading, we undertook. Where, when, fluctuating a very long time, we stretched our eyes on every side toward those mountains conspicuous for the sublimity of virtues, the first glance of those looking round noted the abbot Piamun, the elder of all the anchorites dwelling there, and their priest, as a certain most lofty Pharos… When therefore the blessed Piamun had received us with the highest congratulation, and refreshed us with fitting humanity also, understanding that we were not of the same region, having first solicitously inquired whence and why we had sought Egypt, and knowing that we had come thither from the monastery of Syria out of desire of perfection, he thus began." Then he exhibits the eighteenth Conference, in which Piamun treats fully of the three kinds of monks.
[44] Other things which he had seen in the same place he thus narrates, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 36: which place he describes, "And so when, from the monasteries of Palestine, we had come, quite raw, to the town of Egypt which is called Diolcos, and there beheld with wonder a very great throng bound by the discipline of the monastery, and instituted in the best order of monks, which also is the first, we hastened with most sagacious heart, being incited by the praises of all, to see also another order, which is held more excellent, that is of anchorites. For these, first dwelling a very long time in the monasteries, and diligently instructed in every rule of patience and discretion, and, the virtue of humility and nakedness alike being possessed, and the whole multitude of vices being consumed to the pure, about to engage in the hardest battles of the demons, penetrate the deep secrets of the desert. Finding therefore men of this purpose dwelling about the channel of the river Nile in a place which, surrounded on one side by the same river, on the other by the vastness of the sea, makes an island, habitable by no others than monks seeking the secret places: for neither does the saltness of the soil and the sterility of the sands suffer it to be apt for any cultivation. Hastening, I say, to these with the highest desire, we admired beyond measure their labors, which they endure out of contemplation of virtues and love of solitude: for they are so constrained by the great scarcity of water itself, that they dispense it with such diligence and scruple as no one of the most frugal preserves and spares the appearance of the most excellent wine: for from three miles or more they convey it for their necessary uses from the channel of the aforesaid river, which so great an interval, divided by sandy mountains, is doubled by the most grievous difficulty of the labor."
[45] and he visited a certain monastery, In the same tract, unless I am mistaken, was situated the monastery of the abbot Paul, to which Cassian with Germanus seems to have gone once or twice, as I gather from Conference 19, which thus begins: "After very few days, the desire of greater doctrine drawing us, we again proceeded with the highest alacrity of spirit to the monastery of the abbot Paul; where, although a number of more than two hundred brethren dwelt, yet in honor of the solemnity which at that time was being kept, an infinite throng of monks also had flowed together from other monasteries: for the anniversary deposition of the former abbot, who had presided over that same monastery, was being solemnly celebrated. Of which assembly we therefore make mention, that we may briefly touch upon the patience of a certain brother, which shone under the presence of the whole congregation by its immovable gentleness. For although the intention of this work tends elsewhere, namely that we may bring forth the sayings of the abbot John, who, the desert being forsaken, had subjected himself to that monastery with the highest virtue of humility; yet we by no means think it absurd if, without any circumlocution of words, great edification, as we believe, be conferred on all zealous of virtues."
[46] in which he saw a memorable example of patience, Then immediately he subjoins the memorable example of patience which he there at that time saw. "In a huge open-air court, therefore," he says, "that multitude of monks sitting in ranks distinguished by the number twelve, when a certain one of the brethren had brought in the dish he had received a little too tardily, on occasion of that tardiness the aforesaid abbot Paul, who solicitously ran about among the throngs of the ministering brethren, with outstretched hand struck him with his palm under the gaze of all,
so that the sound resounded even in the ears of those sitting opposite or farther off. But this was done by him for this purpose, that he might make manifest to all who were present the patience of the young man, and that all who were present at such a spectacle might be instructed by the example of modesty. And how maturely the old man did this by counsel, the event proved: for the young man of memorable patience received it with such gentleness of mind, that not only was no word slipped from his mouth, or the slightest murmur signed by the silent agitation of his lips; but not even the very modesty and tranquillity of his countenance, or its color in the least degree, was changed. Which deed was so wonderful, not only to us, who lately coming from the monastery of Syria had perceived the virtue of this patience by such evident examples, but also to all who were not without experience of such pursuits, that even to the highest men there was conferred through this deed a distinguished instruction; namely that, although the paternal correction had not moved his patience, not even the spectacle of so great a multitude had tinged his countenance with any token of blushing."
[47] In the same monastery of Paul Cassian found a certain old man, and with a certain old man he held a spiritual conversation. named John, of whom Conference 19, chap. 2, he narrates this: "This old man, therefore, when we had seen him in the monastery of the abbot Paul, admiring first the age and grace of the man with which he was endowed, our countenance being lowered to the ground, we began to pray that he would deign to unfold to us for what cause, the liberty of the desert being left, and that sublime profession by which fame had celebrated him above the other men of the same life, he had preferred to undergo the yoke of the monastery. He said that, as one unequal to the anchoretic discipline, and unworthy of the sublimity of so great a perfection, he had returned to the schools of the juniors, if yet he could fulfill even their institutes according to the merit of his profession. The humility of which answer, when the refusal of our entreaty excluded, at last he thus began." This John holds a discourse concerning the end of the cenobite and the hermit, which constitutes the nineteenth Conference, in which he seems to prefer the cenobitic life to the eremitic. But neither the example nor the reasoning of this old man could extinguish the burning ardor of the anchoretic profession, which the exhortation of Piamun at Diolcos had before kindled in their minds, as Cassian, Conference 18, chap. 17, confesses in this manner: "By this disputation the blessed Piamun more ardently inflamed our desire, by which we had begun to tend from the first schools of the monastery to the second grade of anchoresis: for the beginnings of the solitary sojourn, the knowledge of which we afterward more fully attained in Scetis, we received first from him imbuing us."
[48] And so St. Cassian with his companion returned to Diolcos, Cassian, having returned to Diolcos, at the exhortation of a certain Archebius, and both were led to begin the eremitic life by a certain pious deception, which book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 37, is thus set forth: "These things therefore being seen, when the ardor of imitating them kindled us, and the aforesaid Archebius (he had mentioned him before in chap. 35 of the same book), most approved among them, had drawn us for the sake of humanity to his little cell, our desire being explored, he pretended that he wished to depart from that same place, and to offer us his cell as one thence about to migrate, affirming that he would do this even if we had by no means been present. Which thing we, both kindled by the desire of dwelling, and lending undoubted faith to the assertions of so great a man, gladly embracing, received the cell with all its furniture and utensils. And so, having obtained his religious circumvention, in a few days, in which he might prepare the expenses of the cell to be built, departing from the place, and returning after these things, he built another for himself with the greatest labor: which again, not long after, other brethren coming upon him, and desiring with the same desire to dwell there, being circumvented by a like falsehood of charity, he delivered to them with all its instruments. But he himself, persevering untiring in the work of charity, built a third cell for himself, in which he might remain." Gazaeus in the notes on this place has examined sufficiently what is here said concerning the falsehood of charity, so that there is no need to dwell longer on this question.
[49] who is to be distinguished from another of the same name, Further, beware of confusing this Archebius with the Archebius of the same name, bishop of Panephysis, of whom in no. 36 and following we said several things. For this man (the words are Cassian's, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 38) "sprung of a not ignoble family, fled from his boyish years, the affection of this world and of his parents being despised, to the monastery which is about four miles distant from the aforesaid town, namely Diolcos; where he so passed his whole age of life, that never at all through fifty whole years not only did he enter, nor see, the village from which he went out, but did not even behold the face of any woman, or of his own mother." But the other, as Cassian speaks, Conference 11, chap. 2, "snatched from the company of the anchorites, and given as bishop to the town of Panephysis… did not testify that he had been admitted as fit for that office, but complained that he had been expelled as unworthy from that discipline of anchoresis, because, having dwelt in it thirty-seven years, he could by no means attain to the purity of so great a profession." Therefore, besides the deep circumstances of discrepancy which could here be noted, that Archebius of Diolcos still persevered in the anchoretic profession, when Archebius of Panephysis had long before been taken from the desert to the episcopate: wherefore I conclude that they are diverse from each other, and that Gazaeus errs, when in the notes on book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 37, he fused these two into one.
[50] he lays the foundations of the anchoretic life, When these two novices were founding the anchoretic life in the solitude of Diolcos, they probably manifested there to the abbot Abraham the temptation of returning to their fatherland, of which we said something in no. 27, and on that occasion held with him the discourse on mortification, which makes the twenty-fourth Conference: for there, living in great scarcity of things, they were compelled to seek water in a place three miles distant, which labor Cassian above in no. 44 narrated must be undergone by the anchorites of Diolcos. But now let us hear Germanus, who Conference 24, chap. 10, besides other inconveniences of poverty which he suffered with his companion, reviews a similar distance of water: "We are certain," he says, "that both this our present habit, and these daily barefoot walkings, we can by no means practice in the neighborhood of those (namely our parents); but that not even with a like labor there shall we provide the things which are necessary for sustenance; as here also we are compelled to convey water on our necks from three miles: for neither our modesty nor theirs will at all suffer us to do these things before them." Moreover from chap. 4 of the same Conference it is established that the place in which they dwelt was squalid, and that it was different from the desert of Calamus, Porphyrion, and Scetis. From these things I gather that St. Cassian with Germanus held this austere manner of living at Diolcos, and that they were there before the year 394, since Abraham, Conference 24, chap. 26, speaks with them of St. John of Lycopolis as still living, who died in the year 394, as at the 27th of March in the preliminary Commentary to his Life, no. 3, our Elders showed.
[51] Perhaps also at Diolcos they understood that the abbot Pinufius, and he goes to the abbot Pinufius, once known to him who once had lain hidden among them in the Bethlehem monastery, had returned to his own monastery, which is in Egypt not far from the city of Panephysis, as is said in book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 30: for easily in the solitude of Diolcos, which is not very far removed from Panephysis, they could learn the fame and dwelling of this man. But in whatever place at last they acquired that knowledge, they visited him, as Cassian asserts, book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 32, in these words: "This old man, therefore, on account of that familiarity which we had had with him in our monastery, when after these things in Egypt we had most zealously sought him, it is my mind to weave into this little work the exhortation which he gave to the brother whom in our presence he was receiving into his monastery, because I think some instruction can accrue from it." In Conference 20, chap. 2, Cassian indicates with what great hospitality they were received by him: "When therefore after no long time the desire of holy instruction had compelled us also to seek Egypt, seeking him out with the highest affection and desire, we were received with such grace and humanity of his, that he honored us, as it were his former fellow-cellarers, with the hospitality even of his cell, which he had built in the furthest part of the garden."
[52] When they had heard Pinufius handing down to a certain brother the arduous precepts of the highest perfection, who discoursed with him on penitence and satisfaction. they so fell in mind, that they thought they would never come to so great a summit of spiritual sublimity, as Cassian in the place just cited confesses: "So incomprehensible to us," he says, "and so wonderful seemed the summits of true renunciation, that in no way did we believe our lowliness could ascend thither. Therefore, cast down by desperation, and not concealing even in our very countenance the inmost bitterness of our thoughts, we had recourse with anxious mind to the blessed old man." After these things, chap. 3 of the same Conference, they candidly and humbly set forth to him the cause of their sadness, and the perturbation of their little spirit. Wherefore the pious abbot, chap. 4, desiring to raise their dejected minds, thus begins to praise the virtue of both, once seen by him in the Bethlehem monastery: "I am indeed much delighted with the copious fruits of your humility, which also, once received in the dwelling of that cell, I perceived with no incurious estimation, and I greatly rejoice, because that which by us, the least of all Christians, is enjoined perhaps only with the liberty of words, you have received with such admiration, that you fulfill it (if I am not deceived) no more sluggishly than it was said by us. And since (as I remember) by the labor of your work the industry is almost equaled to our sayings, so you conceal the merit of your virtue, as if no breath of those things which you daily practice had reached you. But because this very thing is most worthy of the highest praise, that, as though still raw, you testify that these institutes of the saints are unknown to you, that which you diligently ask of us, let us briefly, as we can, embrace: for it is necessary that, beyond our possibility and virtue, we obey the command of your ancient familiarity." Then Pinufius held an exhortation on the end of penitence and satisfaction, which constitutes the twentieth Conference in order, at the end of which Cassian thus writes: "Thus far the abbot Pinufius discoursed on the token of satisfaction and the end of penitence: who, although he entreated with solicitous affection that we would prefer to reside in his monastery, yet, when he could not retain us, invited by the fame of the Scetic solitude, he sent us forth." If anyone desires to read the singular example of humility which the abbot Pinufius exhibited by fleeing twice, let him go to book 4 of the Institutes, chaps. 30 and 31, and Conference 20, chap. 1. We meanwhile with our Saint pass to another desert.
§ VI. Sojourn in the Scetic desert.
Departing into the Scetic solitude, When Cassian wished to perfect in Scetis the solitary manner of living, whose foundations he had laid at Diolcos, he went to the most famous anchorites of that desert,
that he might be imbued with more perfect documents of the spiritual life. First there he visited the abbot Moses, of whom, Conference 1, chap. 1, he relates this: "When in the desert of Scetis, where the most approved fathers of monks and the perfection of all the saints dwelt, desiring to be founded by his instruction, I had sought the abbot Moses, who among those excellent flowers burned the more sweetly not only with active but also with contemplative virtue, together with the holy abbot Germanus… and likewise begged from the same abbot a discourse of edification with poured-out tears (since we most manifestly knew this rigor of his mind, that unless to those faithfully desiring and seeking with all contrition of heart he would by no means consent to open the door of perfection, lest, namely, if he displayed it indifferently either to those unwilling or those tepidly thirsting for it, he should seem, by disclosing the necessary things which ought to be ascertained only by those desiring perfection, to those unworthy and receiving them fastidiously, to incur either the vice of boasting or the crime of betrayal)—at last, wearied by our prayers, he thus began." Moses in this whole first Conference discourses on the intention and end of the monk; but in the following he disputes on discretion.
[54] where he conversed with the abbot Moses From Conference 1, chap. 21, I gather that Cassian was in the Scetic solitude before the year 394: for that Moses thus speaks of John of Lycopolis, whom I said above died in the year 394: "In whom also we have learned that the abbot John, who lately dwells at Lyco, was deluded." But from the other Conference it appears with what parsimony of food these new guests there macerated their body. For when Moses, Conference 2, chap. 19, instructed them concerning the taking of daily food usual among the elders, after other things he thus says: "They preferred before all those the refection of bread alone, of which they established the most equitable measure in two loaves (paximacia), which little loaves it is most certain scarcely have the weight of one pound." But they indicate that a greater parsimony of bread was observed by them, chap. 20, in these words: "Which we, gratefully embracing, answered, that we by no means reckoned this measure for continence: since we could by no means consume it whole." From this answer it seems to follow that each of them daily ate only one loaf. It could be doubted of what weight the loaf is, because the speech of the abbot Moses is ambiguous, by which it can be signified that either one or two of those little loaves had the weight of one pound. But Gazaeus in the notes on this place rightly proves that each loaf was almost of six ounces.
[55] I suspect that Cassian speaks of the same Moses when, book 10 of the Institutes, chap. 25, he records a useful remedy who seems different from the Moses who from a leader of robbers became a hermit. which at the beginning of the anchoretic life he had received against accidie from the abbot Moses: "When, beginning to dwell in the desert," he says, "I had said to the abbot Moses, the highest of all the Saints, that I had yesterday been most grievously worn out by the sickness of accidie, and could not have been freed from it otherwise, unless I had straightway run to the abbot Paul: he said, 'Thou hast not freed thyself from it; but rather hast shown thyself given over and subject to it: for the adversary will henceforth assail thee more grievously, as a deserter and fugitive, whom he beheld straightway fleeing when overcome in the conflict: unless henceforth, an engagement being made, thou preferrest to let its heats, coming on, evaporate for the hour not by desertion of the cell or the torpor of sleep, but rather learnest to triumph by endurance and conflict.'" Whence it has been proved by experiment that the assault of accidie is not to be fled by turning aside, but to be overcome by resisting. Tillemont, volume 10 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 728, against Gazaeus contends that that Moses, with whom Cassian held two Conferences, was that famous leader of robbers. But surely he is deceived, since this Moses, Conference 2, chap. 2, thus speaks of himself: "I remember, therefore, that once, being still in the years of boyhood, in the parts of the Thebaid, where the blessed Anthony dwelt, elders came together to him for the sake of inquiring after perfection." These things do not befit Moses the leader of robbers, of whom Tillemont himself in the volume just cited from p. 63 relates things plainly diverse. But since at that time there were several anchorites of this name, it is not easy to define who this Moses was.
[56] Not long after they seem to have gone to the abbot Paphnutius, whom Cassian, Conference 3, Cassian, desirous of perfection chap. 1, thus praises: "In that choir of Saints, who like most pure stars shone in the night of this world, we saw the holy Paphnutius flashing with the brightness of knowledge in the place of a great luminary. For he was the priest of our congregation, that is, of that which dwelt in the desert of Scetis, in which he so endured up to his extreme age, that he never migrated from the cell which he had begun as a younger man to inhabit, and which was distant five miles from the church, even to nearer places: nor, wearied with years, was he troubled by the space of so great a journey when about to come to the church on the Sabbath or the Lord's Day; but not even content to return thence empty, placing under his neck a vessel of water, which he was to use through the whole week, he carried it back to the cell. And when he had exceeded the ninetieth year of age, he never suffered it to be conveyed for him by the labor of the juniors." Then he proceeds to relate the whole synopsis of his life and his other virtues, which for brevity's sake I do not here copy out.
[57] "Desiring therefore to be instructed by the teaching of this man," says our Saint, chap. 2 of the same Conference, by the priest Paphnutius, "agitated also by the stings of our thoughts, we came to his cell when the day was already growing toward evening: who, silence being held for a while, when he had begun to praise our purpose, namely that, leaving our fatherland, so many provinces being traversed for the love of the Lord, we strove so greatly to endure the want of the desert and to imitate the rigor of their conversation, which scarcely they themselves, who were born and brought up in the same necessity and want, endured: we answered that we had aimed at his doctrine and teaching for this, that we might somewhat be imbued with the institutions and perfection of so great a man, which by innumerable documents we had perceived to be in him: not that we might be burdened with his praises of those things which yet were not in us, or, in that elation of mind by which even in our own cells we were sometimes titillated by the suggestion of the enemy, be inflated also by his discourses. Wherefore we rather prayed that those things be instilled into us by which we might be pricked or humbled, not those by which we might flatter and extol ourselves." Then Paphnutius in this whole Conference, which is third in order, begins to treat of the three renunciations, and hands down so sublime a doctrine, that Cassian at the end of chap. 22 confesses the following: "Instructed by these discourses, the abbot Paphnutius sent us forth from his cell not so much alacritous as pricked in heart before the middle of the night, conferring on us this chief thing by his Conference, that when, through the consummation of the first renunciation, which we strove with all effort of virtue to fulfill, we believed the summits of perfection to be attainable by us, we should begin to recognize that we had not yet begun even to dream of the heights of monks: since we, instructed by the Fathers in the monasteries concerning the second renunciation, knew that we had not before even perceived by hearing the third, in which all perfection is contained, and which precedes those two lower ones in many ways."
[58] and from other hermits he received various documents of the spiritual life. The fourth Conference seems to pertain to the same time, which our neo-anchorites held on the concupiscence of the flesh and of the spirit with the abbot Daniel, whom Cassian, Conference 4, chap. 1, extols with these praises: "Among the other men of Christian philosophy, we saw also the abbot Daniel, equal indeed in every kind of virtues to those who dwelt in the desert of Scetis, but more peculiarly adorned with the grace of humility, who by the merit of his purity and meekness was preferred by the blessed Paphnutius, priest of the same solitude, to the office of the diaconate, and that although he was much younger in age: for the blessed Paphnutius so rejoiced in his virtues, that him whom he knew to be his equal in the merits and grace of life, he hastened to make equal to himself also in the order of the priesthood," etc. There follows the fifth Conference, which was held with the abbot Serapion on the eight principal vices, and which St. Cassian, chap. 27, humbly thinking of himself, thus concludes: "Thus far the abbot Serapion, discoursing on the nature of the eight principal vices, so lucidly unlocked the kinds of the passions lurking in our heart, whose causes and affinities, since we were daily laid waste by them, we could not before either thoroughly know or discern, that we seemed to behold them as it were placed before our eyes, as in a mirror."
[59] I know not whether the sixth Conference pertains to the first or the second sojourn in Scetis, The Conference of the abbot Theodore, which the abbot Theodore held on the slaying of the Saints on occasion of certain monks who had been killed in Palestine by the Saracens. If this be the same Theodore of whom Cassian, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 33 and following, makes mention, that Conference seems to be ascribed to the former sojourn, because Cassian, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 35, sufficiently intimates that at that time he was still raw in the anchoretic life, as appears from this his narration: "This same Theodore, when unexpectedly he had come to my cell in the dead of night, secretly exploring with paternal curiosity what I, a still raw anchorite, was doing alone, and had found me, the evening solemnity just finished, beginning to refresh my wearied body and lying upon my mat, drawing deep sighs from his heart, and calling me by my name: 'How many,' he said, 'O John, at this hour converse with God, and embrace and retain him in themselves, and thou art defrauded of so great a light, dissolved in idle sleep!'" But whether this sixth Conference be referred to the first or to the second habitation in Scetis, a chronological difficulty remains to be solved, as will appear from what follows.
[60] Our Saint, Conference 6, chap. 1, relates the following: "In the parts of Palestine near the village of Tekoa, which was held on occasion of monks killed in Palestine by the Arabs, which deserved to bring forth Amos the prophet, there is a most vast solitude reaching as far as Arabia and the Dead Sea, into which the streams of Jordan, entering, fail, and the ashes of Sodom, extended with a most ample expanse. In this monks of the highest life and holiness, dwelling a very long time, were suddenly slain by the roving little robbers of the Saracens. Whose bodies, although we knew that they were snatched away, both by the pontiffs of that region and by the whole people of the Arabs, with such veneration, and laid up among the relics of the Martyrs, that innumerable peoples, running together from two towns, indicted for themselves a most grievous contest, and even to the clash of swords the contention for the holy plunder proceeded, while with pious devotion they contended among themselves which of them more justly possessed their burial and relics; some, namely, glorying in the nearness of their dwelling, others in the nearness of origin," etc.
[61] Then in the same chapter he sets forth how, on occasion of this slaughter, he held with the abbot Theodore the sixth Conference, it was held, to which for this reason he prefixed the title "On the Slaying of the Saints." "Sorrowful, to the holy Theodore," he says, "a man singular in the active conversation, we proceeded. For he dwelt in Cellae (concerning the etymology of this place
see Sozomen, book 6 of the history, chap. 31) which place, situated between Nitria and Scetis, and distant indeed five miles from the monasteries of Nitria, is separated from the desert of Scetis, in which we dwelt, by an intervening solitude of eighty miles. To whom, when we had poured forth a complaint concerning the slaying of the aforesaid men, wondering at so great patience of God, that he had permitted men of that merit to be thus slain, so that those who ought by the weight of their sanctity to free others also from a temptation of this kind, did not snatch even themselves from the hands of the impious, or why God had permitted so great a crime to be committed against his servants," etc. Further, Cassian declares how fully his doubt was satisfied by Theodore, when he thus ends chap. 17 of that Conference: "These things therefore being ascertained, we received an infinite delight of spiritual food, so that from this Conference we were filled with greater joy of mind than before we had been affected with sadness over the slaying of the Saints. For not only were we instructed concerning those things about which we hesitated, but also those things which, for the tenuity of our understanding, we knew not how to inquire, we learned under the interrogation of that question."
[62] it contains a certain chronological difficulty, Cardinal Baronius in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 410, no. 58, rightly proves that in this year or at the beginning of the following the barbarians burst into Palestine, whose hands St. Jerome could scarcely escape. But it does not please me that the most eminent Annalist adds in the following number, namely that Cassian makes mention of this very irruption of the barbarians. For how, on occasion of this irruption, could Cassian consult the abbot Theodore concerning the slaying of the Saints, who had already before departed from Egypt, and had discharged an embassy in the cause of St. Chrysostom to Innocent the Roman Pontiff, as Baronius himself at the year of Christ 404, no. 78, affirms? But if with the most eminent man you say that Cassian after this embassy set out into Egypt, and there began to cultivate the monastic life, you invert and disturb the whole chronology of his Acts, as is easily gathered from what has hitherto been said, and will more manifestly appear from those things which are henceforth to be examined.
[63] which is here somehow solved. To this is added that Cassian made no word of so late a setting-out into Egypt, whereas he is wont to indicate his other pilgrimages. Nay in the Preface to the books on the Institutes of monasteries he thus writes: "Those things which, placed from our boyhood among the same (namely the Syrian and Egyptian monks, of whom he here treats), and incited by their daily exhortations and examples, we either attempted to do or learned or perceived by sight, we can now by no means retain entire, drawn away by so many circles of years from their fellowship and the imitation of their conversation." From these and other things said before I conclude that Cassian was younger when he was engaged in Egypt, such as he is by no means to be thought when he discharged an embassy for St. Chrysostom to Pope Innocent. Add that he signifies that he was drawn away by so many circles of years from the conversation of those monks, so that the things which he had seen he could scarcely hold in memory. I do not therefore see how this irruption of the barbarians and slaughter of the monks can be reconciled with Cassian's sojourn in Egypt, unless we say that the barbarians often burst into Palestine, and that the monks were several times slain by them, which is not improbable. Certainly if our Henschen had had to discuss the Life of Cassian chronologically ex professo at the 28th of May, on which he related the martyrdom of those monks with the Roman Martyrology, he would doubtless have preferred to admit a repeated incursion of the barbarians several times, than with Baronius to overthrow the chronological series of that life.
[64] While Cassian dwelt the first time in the Scetic solitude, Cassian saw the falls of certain hermits in Scetis. he not only saw very many anchorites raised to the highest summit of perfection, but also some miserably deceived by the frauds of the demon, as is plain from Conference 2, chap. 5, where the abbot Moses narrates the terrible example of Heron, who after a solitary life of fifty years cast himself into a well. "Recall," he says, "that which lately done you saw with the gaze of your eyes; namely the old man Heron, before very few days, cast down from the highest to the lowest by a diabolical illusion." Then, chap. 24 of the same Conference, the same Moses thus addresses Cassian with his companion: "Which you know that Benjamin, your fellow-citizen, lately obstinately held; who, lest, receiving daily two loaves, he should continually retain a continual sparingness with equal chastisement, preferred always to continue fasts of two days, provided that, coming to refection, he might with a doubled measure fill the gluttony of his belly, that is, eating four loaves, rejoice in the desired satiety, and in a manner compensate the fulfilling of his belly by a two-day fast: who, by the obstinacy and pertinacity of his mind acquiescing rather in his own determinations than in the traditions of the elders, with what end he terminated his purpose, you doubtless remember."
Notes* perhaps "was fragrant" (fragrabat).
§ VII. Excursion to the Bethlehem monastery, and return to the Scetic desert.
[65] Although Cassian with his companion Germanus had resolved, according to the counsel of the abbot Joseph, to remain in Egypt, yet both returned after seven years to the Bethlehem monastery, The Saint makes an excursion to the Bethlehem monastery, whether because they were admonished to this by the frequent letters of those cenobites, or because they hoped that they would easily obtain leave of returning to the Scetic solitude, as in fact was done. All these things are related in Conference 17, chap. 31, in these words: "By this instruction and doctrine of the most blessed Joseph, as it were confirmed by a divine oracle, we preferred to reside in Egypt. But although henceforth we were little solicitous concerning our promise, yet, the number of seven years being completed, we gratefully fulfilled our pledge. For making an excursion to our monastery at that time when we bore confidence of obtaining a return to the desert, first we paid the due honor to our elders; then we restored the former charity to the minds of those who, for the ardor of charity, had by no means been soothed by the most frequent satisfactions of our letters, and at last, the sting of our pledge being fully torn away, these too accompanying us with joy, we returned to the secret places of the Scetic solitude." But they do not seem then to have lingered long in the Bethlehem monastery, since Cassian calls this return by the name of an excursion.
[66] To the time of the second sojourn in Scetis I refer the seventh and eighth Conferences, which he held with the abbot Serenus, and having returned to the Scetic solitude, because Cassian, Conference 7, chap. 3, sufficiently intimates that he had now long dwelt in the solitude, when he thus answers the abbot Serenus there: "The reckoning of times and the habitation of the solitude, by the contemplation of which thou conjecturest that we ought to have attained the perfection of the inner man, has conferred this only upon us, that we have learned what we cannot be; yet it has not made us be what we strive to be: for neither do we know that we have attained either the fixed stability of the desired purity, or any strength of firmness and knowledge, but only increases of confusion and shame. For whereas the meditation of all disciplines is exercised and perfected by daily studies to this end, that, coming from tepid rudiments to a certain and stable skill, one may begin to know the things which at first he either ambiguously or wholly was ignorant of, and, proceeding with a firm (so to say) step by the quality of that discipline, may be perfectly and now without any difficulty engaged in it; on the contrary I, laboring in the pursuit of this purity, find that I have profited only this, that I know what I cannot be: whence I feel nothing else to be conferred on me than mourning with so great contrition of heart, that never, namely, is matter of tears wanting, nor yet do I cease to be what I ought not to be." By this answer our Saint also betrays no vulgar lowliness of his mind.
[67] again with masters of the spiritual life, Besides the outstanding endowments and virtues of this abbot Serenus, which Cassian, Conference 7, chaps. 1 and 2, sets forth, his great frugality in food appears from Conference 8, chap. 1, where the following is narrated: "The things which the solemnity of the day required being consummated, and the congregation of the church being dismissed, having returned to the cell of the old man, we were first refreshed most sumptuously: for instead of the brine, which, a drop of oil being poured over it, was wont to be set for the daily refection, he mixed a little of fish-sauce, and poured over somewhat more oil than usual. For everyone, about to refresh himself daily, instills that drop of oil for this, not that he may perceive from it any sweetness of the throat (since so great is its measure, that it scarcely suffices—I will not say to anoint, but to pass through—the passage of the very throat and gullet); but that by this use he may blunt the boasting of the heart, which for a stricter abstinence is wont blandly and secretly to creep in, and the stings of elation: because the more secretly abstinence itself is exercised, and is perfected with no man as witness, so much the more subtly does it not cease to tempt its concealer. Then he set frried salt, three olives, upon which after these things he brought a basket having roasted chickpeas, which they call trogalia, of which we took only five grains, two prunes each, one dried fig each: for it is culpable that anyone in that desert should exceed this number." These things I have adduced, that from this poor banquet you may gather the temperance of St. Cassian, who affirms that he was refreshed most sumptuously. The more obscure words which occur in enumerating these dishes are explained by Gazaeus in the notes on this place.
[68] he held various Conferences, There seem also to be referred to this time three Conferences, namely the twenty-first and the two following, which Cassian held with Theonas, steward of the Scetic solitude: for after in Conference 21 he had narrated how this Theonas, his wife being left, fled to the monastery, at the end of chap. 9 he adds this: "Forthwith, stripped of all worldly means, he flew to the monastery, where in a short time he shone with such splendor of holiness and humility, that, John of blessed memory migrating from this light to the Lord, and the holy Helias also, a man who was no less than his predecessor, likewise departing, Theonas, chosen third by the judgment of all, succeeded in the dispensation of his diaconate." Tillemont, volume 10 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, pp. 59 and 439, says that John was made steward of Scetis in the year 386, and that Helias succeeded this man, and Theonas Helias. Whence in volume 14 of the same work, p. 172, he conjectures that these three Conferences are to be ascribed to Cassian's second setting-out into Egypt, although in this latter place he contradicts himself, and, preferring Helias to John, overthrows the order of succession before established by him, as will become manifest to one wishing to compare the two places with each other.
[69] Whatever be the case concerning the time of these three Conferences, certainly the ninth and tenth, held with the abbot Isaac, pertain to Cassian's second sojourn in Scetis, the time of which is approximately gathered from the disturbances, as is drawn out from the letters of Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, which Tillemont, volume 11, p. 461, judges to have been written about the year 399. But Cassian himself, Conference 10, chap. 2, thus mentions this letter of Theophilus and the disturbances that followed it: "Within the region of Egypt this custom is preserved by ancient tradition, that, the day of Epiphany being past
(which the priests of that province define to be either of the Lord's baptism or of the nativity according to the flesh, and therefore celebrate the solemnity of both sacraments not in two parts, as in the western provinces, but under the one festivity of this day), letters of the Alexandrian pontiff be directed through all the churches of Egypt, by which both the beginning of Lent and the day of Easter are designated, not only through all the cities, but also through all the monasteries. According to this custom therefore, a very few days after the former Conference had been held with the abbot Isaac, the solemn letters of Theophilus, bishop of the aforesaid city, came, in which, together with the Paschal announcement, he also disputed with a long disputation against the inept heresy of the Anthropomorphites, and destroyed it with a copious discourse."
[70] "Which was received with such bitterness by almost the whole kind of monks, which the Anthropomorphites stirred up against Theophilus of Alexandria. who dwelt through the whole province of Egypt, in the error of simplicity, that on the contrary the greatest part of the elders decreed that the mentioned pontiff, as though depraved by a most grievous heresy, was to be detested by the whole body of the fraternity, because, namely, he seemed to impugn the sentence of Holy Scripture, denying that Almighty God was formed by the composition of a human figure, since Scripture most manifestly testified that Adam was created to his image. Finally, even by those who dwelt in the desert of Scetis, and who in perfection and knowledge excelled all who were in the monasteries of Egypt, this letter was so refuted, that, except the abbot Paphnutius, priest of our congregation, none of the other priests, who presided over three other churches in the same desert, would at all admit it even to be read or recited in their assemblies." The most eminent Baronius in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 400, no. 53, relates these disturbances of the Anthropomorphites. But whether these happened in the year 399 or 400, it concerns us nothing, since from them at least it is established that the two Conferences of the abbot Isaac pertain to Cassian's second habitation in Scetis.
[71] There is no doubt that Cassian sometimes made excursions from Scetis to other deserts: for book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 29, he testifies The Saint seems from the Scetic desert to other solitudes, that he saw an old man, Machetes by name, dwelling far from the throngs of the brethren. He proceeded also to the abbot Theodore, who was distant from the desert of Scetis by a solitude of eighty miles, as we noted above in no. 61. Perhaps also he went to the anchorite Paul, of whom, book 10, chap. 24, he narrates the following: "Finally the abbot Paul, most approved of the fathers, when, dwelling in a more vast desert which is called Porphyrion, secure with the fruits of palms and a small garden, he had a sufficient substance of his food and sustenance, and could exercise no other work whence he might be sustained, because from the towns and habitable land the dwelling of that desert was separated by seven stations (that is, by a journey of seven days) or more, and more would be demanded as the price of carriage than the value of the work sweated over could be worth; the leaves of the palms being collected, he continually exacted from himself a daily task, as though thence to be sustained. And when his cave had been filled with the work of a whole year, that which he had labored at with solicitous care, every year, fire being placed under it, he burned up: proving thereby that without the work of the hands a monk can neither endure in his place, nor ever ascend to the summit of perfection." Book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 23 and following, he makes mention of several anchorites with whom he dealt; but he does not assign the place in which they dwelt.
[72] and namely to have made an excursion to the Thebaid, Moreover it is certain that St. Cassian purposed to penetrate the remote desert of the Thebaid, as he himself, Conference 11, chap. 1, asserts. But he seems to have carried this purpose into execution, since book 2 of the Institutes, chap. 3, he speaks in this manner: "And so through all Egypt and the Thebaid, where monasteries are not instituted according to the judgment of each renouncer, but through the successions and traditions of the elders even to the present day either remain or are founded to remain, we SAW the lawful measure of prayers retained in the evening assemblies or nocturnal vigils." Then book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 1, he records the rules of the Tabennesiotes, whose monastery is in the Thebaid, and distinguishes them from the Egyptian monks. Finally Castor, bishop of Apt, in his letter to Cassian has this: "Thee indeed we hold most especially experienced in the doctrine of the Eastern monasteries, and especially of the Egyptian and those founded in the Thebaid." The printed Menaea, from which above in no. 6 we exhibited the eulogy of our Saint, attribute to him other pilgrimages through Pontus and Cappadocia and other regions. But it is not established that Cassian made all these, although book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 19, he thus mentions the monasteries of various regions: "For through all Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Cappadocia, and the whole East, each week the brethren in turn succeed to render these offices to themselves." Certainly he could have heard the customs of those regions from others. I know not whether Cassian visited the Thebaid and other deserts at the time of the first or the second sojourn in Scetis.
[73] but it is not known how many years he remained the second time in Scetis. Also I am ignorant how many years Cassian remained the second time in the Scetic solitude. Only from the mentioned letter of Theophilus of Alexandria is it gathered that about the year 400 he still lived in it, and from another source it is certain that in the year 404 he was at Constantinople. Wherefore from what has hitherto been said I compose a certain chronological system, which I propose to the learned reader to be examined and corrected. First, according to those things which we said above in no. 24, it is probable that Cassian departed from Bethlehem into Egypt before the year 385. Then, after seven years passed in that region, he returned to the Bethlehem monastery, and a little after again sought Egypt, which perhaps about the year 401 he forsook on account of the disturbances arisen between the Egyptian monks and the patriarch of Alexandria. Thence he came with Germanus to Constantinople, where, ordained deacon by John Chrysostom, he strenuously defended his cause, and for that reason in the year 405 set out for Rome; all which in the following paragraph we shall confirm by the testimonies of the ancient writers.
Notes* for "&"
* for "&"
§ VIII. Departure to Constantinople, the diaconate, the Roman journey, the priesthood, and other things.
[74] I suspect that Cassian with Germanus came to Constantinople not long after the year 400, and that both were initiated into the sacred Orders by St. Chrysostom, Cassian is ordained deacon at Constantinople by St. John Chrysostom, then archbishop of that city; but doubtless they had already lived there for some space of time before Cassian was promoted to the diaconate and Germanus to the priesthood. Whatever be the case of the year of ordination, which certainly was made before the Roman embassy of the year 405, Cassian, book 7 on the Incarnation, chap. 31, glories that he had John Chrysostom as his master, and testifies that he was taken by him among the sacred ministers of the church of Constantinople, in these words: "Whence I too myself, humble and obscure in name, as in merit, although I cannot usurp among the eminent prelates of the city of Constantinople the place of a master, yet I presume the zeal and affection of a disciple: for, adopted by John the bishop of most blessed memory into the sacred ministry, and offered to God, although I am absent in body, I am there in affection, and to that most beloved to me and most venerable people of God, although now I am not mingled in presence, yet I am joined in mind. And hence it is that, condoling with him and compassionating, I have now burst into a voice of common sadness and grief, and, what alone I could, by the tearful complaint of our little works, as for the weakness of my members and limbs, I have cried out. For if, according to the Apostle, when a smaller part of the body suffers, the greater condoles and compassionates; how much more, when the greater suffers, ought the smaller to compassionate? For it is most inhuman that in one and the same body the smaller should not feel the infirmity of the greater, when the greater suffer those of the smaller."
[75] Then he exhorts the citizens of Constantinople to flee the heresy of Nestorius, and to hold the Catholic doctrine of the ancient doctors, whom he praises exceedingly: and on that occasion thus breaks forth into the praises of St. John Chrysostom: "Whence I beseech and entreat all you, who, placed within the circuit of the city of Constantinople, are both by affection of fatherland my fellow-citizens, and by unity of faith my brethren, that you separate yourselves from that, as it is written, ravening wolf, who devours the people of God as the food of bread. Touch not anything of his, for all things are unto destruction. Go out from the midst of him, and be separated, and touch not the unclean thing. Be mindful of your ancient masters and priests; of Gregory, noble through the world, of Nectarius, distinguished in holiness, of John, wonderful in faith and purity: of John, I say, of that John, who truly, after the likeness of John the Evangelist, both a disciple of Jesus and an apostle, reclined as it were ever upon the breast and affection of the Lord. Of him, I say, be mindful, him follow, his purity, his faith, his doctrine and holiness consider. Of him be mindful always, your doctor and nourisher, in whose bosom as it were and embrace you grew: who was a master common to me and to you; whose disciples and instruction we are. His writings read, his instruction hold, his faith and merit embrace. Which although it is great and difficult to attain, yet to follow is beautiful and sublime: since in the height of things not only the attainment, but also the imitation itself is to be praised: because scarcely ever is anyone wholly without a portion of that thing to which he has striven to climb and to come. Let him therefore be always to you in mind and as it were in sight; let him be engaged in your soul and in your thought. Let him finally himself also commend to you these things which are written by me: because these things which I have written, he taught me; and by this believe these things to be not so much mine as his: for the stream consists from the fountain, and whatever is thought to be the disciple's, it is fitting that the whole be referred to the honor of the master."
[76] From this eulogy falls a certain fable, born first I know not at what time, whence falls the little fable which relates that he was cast out by Chrysostom. which Sigebert of Gembloux in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 427 thus relates: "Cassian, cast out from the church of Constantinople by John Chrysostom, and ordained priest at Marseilles in Gaul, wrote many things, among which also he sets forth the Lives of the fathers ascertained in Egypt, and their doctrines and rules, books being given to very many." Trithemius in his work on ecclesiastical writers followed the same error, which the most eminent Baronius in the Annals at the year of Christ 404, no. 78, refutes, where at the same time he thus discloses the more probable origin of this fable: "Here note that they are mistaken, in my opinion, who relate that this very man was ordained deacon by John Chrysostom, and after some years expelled by him, and, having fled to Marseilles, was there ordained priest. But let them say, I pray, when it happened that this man was expelled by him, who even after his exile is known to have persevered in the service of John himself, and for him
discharged an embassy to Innocent? But I think that the occasion of erring flowed thence, that they supposed him, who is found to have been expelled for John Chrysostom, as also the other clerics of his church, to have been cast out by John himself: for it happened, not by him, but for his cause, that he was then made an exile with the rest. For the rest, none of the ancients is read to have branded Cassian with a mark of this kind. But Cassian himself, in the books which he wrote on the Incarnation of Christ, seems sufficiently propense and grateful toward the memory of the same John Chrysostom, inasmuch as he often celebrates him with no vulgar praises, and, what ought to seem greater, refers whatever he himself knew liberally as received from him." Now from this digression let us return to the series of our history.
[77] He goes with Germanus to Rome, to defend Chrysostom, When Theophilus of Alexandria in the year 403 wished to condemn John Chrysostom in the synod at the Oak, the holy prelate sent to him three bishops and two priests, among whom the latter was a certain one, named Germanus, as Chrysostom himself asserts in a letter, written in the year 404 to Pope Innocent, which in the latest Paris edition of his Works, volume 3, from p. 515, is read. But that Germanus seems to have been the inseparable companion of Cassian: whence it could be concluded that he had already from the year 403 been raised to the dignity of the priesthood. Most probably in the year 404, in which St. Chrysostom was driven into exile, and the cathedral church was burned, Germanus and Cassian were keepers of the sacred vessels, as will be understood from what is presently to be said: for since the calumniators of John Chrysostom had, among other things, accused the holy prelate of having retained for himself the precious vessels of the church, Germanus the priest with Cassian the deacon was sent to Rome in the year 405, to defend before Innocent the Pontiff the archbishop of Constantinople against the calumnies of his adversaries. But then these legates, besides other testimonies of his innocence, exhibited to the Roman judges an inventory of the sacred furniture, which in the fire of the past year had been prodigiously preserved.
[78] It is helpful to hear this series of the deeds from a contemporary author (whether he was Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, as from a contemporary writing or another, I do not now dispute), who wrote the Life of St. Chrysostom by way of a dialogue, and whom Emeric Bigot in the year 1680 published at Paris in Greek and Latin. He therefore, in the edition already cited, pp. 92 and 93, thus relates the wonderful preservation of the ecclesiastical treasure amid the flames: "In this manner therefore the fire, flying about and flooding like a sea tossed by a violent south wind, advancing as if at a given signal, seized without distinction the neighboring buildings on every side, and spared only the little building in which the abundance of vessels was stored: not reverencing the gold or the rest of the silver furniture, but that it might give no place of lying to the calumniators against the just man, as though he himself had claimed all the fairest things for himself. Thus the fire, driven backward, turned itself back, searching out the envy of those who had perpetrated these things, to refute the madness of Theophilus, in that he pretends that he cast out John on account of the sacred vessels."
[79] The same synchronous author in Bigot, p. 27, narrates some of those things it is proved; which in the following year happened at Rome in the cause of Chrysostom. "After Palladius," he says, "came Germanus the priest together with Cassian the deacon, who were of John's party, religious men, delivering the letters of the whole clergy of John, in which they write that their church had suffered violence and tyranny, their bishop being cast out by a military hand and driven into exile through the faction of Acacius bishop of Berea, Theophilus of Alexandria, Antiochus of Ptolemais, and Severian of Gabala. Meanwhile they showed the little inventory of the aforesaid, in which they had delivered the precious vessels before the judges, Studius prefect of the city, and Eutychian prefect of the praetorium, and John Count of the treasures, and Eustathius quaestor, and the registrars, in gold, silver, and vestments, repelling the calumny from John the bishop." Their embassy to the Apostolic See is confirmed from the letters of Pope Innocent, written in the year 405 to the clergy and people of Constantinople, which Sozomen, book 8 of the Ecclesiastical History, chap. 26, relates, and of which this is the beginning: "Innocent the bishop to the priests and deacons and the whole clergy and people of the church of Constantinople, which is under John the bishop, beloved brethren, salvation. From the letters of your charity, which you sent by Germanus the priest and Cassian the deacon, I have with anxious solicitude learned the scene of evils which you have set before my eyes, and with what great hardships and calamities the faith labors, I have perceived by a reading repeated more than once."
[80] Thus far we have somehow pursued the chronological series of the Acts; but now in the Life of our Saint there occurs a gap, but it is uncertain whither he turned after this embassy. which we can scarcely supply by divining. Some think that, the embassy being accomplished, he remained at Rome until the City was taken by Alaric, king of the Goths, and thence sailed to Marseilles: but others suspect that he returned to the Bethlehem monastery, and after the devastation of that monastery at last in the year 416 came from Syria into Gaul Narbonensis. Nor are there wanting those who would have him return into Egypt. I greatly marvel that those embraced this conjecture who in the year 1662 published the proper Offices of the church of Marseilles, and that those correctors, many other things being cautiously cut away or changed, confidently inserted into the fifth lesson these words: "Chrysostom being dead, he went into Egypt, and there from the examples and discipline of the solitaries collected the renowned books of the Conferences." This conjecture seems to us plainly improbable, because Cassian himself in the Preface to Castor signifies that he was drawn away by a long space of years from the Egyptian monks, while he wrote the Conferences, as we indicated above in no. 63. One may also see the things which Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 174, opposes to this assertion. Others finally devised other things, so that here there are as many opinions as heads. But since all these opinions rest on no testimony of antiquity, we choose none of them, but rather ingenuously confess that we are ignorant whither Cassian turned after the Roman embassy. From Gennadius only it is established that Cassian did various things at Marseilles, and there remained until his death, as in the following paragraph we shall discuss in particular.
[81] and whether then he received the dignity of the priesthood. I doubt whether I ought to defer further the priesthood of St. Cassian, since on account of the various opinions it is not certain at what time or place he received that dignity. The more ancient lessons of the church of Marseilles, which we gave in § I, expressly have this: "But when at Constantinople he had been ordained deacon by John the great bishop, he went to Rome, and there was raised to the grade of the priesthood." The same relates the Chronicle of Marseilles, which our Guesnay mingled with his "Cassian Illustrated," and according to which, book 1, chap. 39, he asserts that our Saint was promoted at Rome by Pope Innocent to the priestly dignity. Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 174, says that he could have been ordained priest at Rome or somewhere in the East, if our Cassian be that priest Cassian who labored at Rome about the year 414 to reconcile the union between the Roman and the Antiochene church. But the proper Offices of Marseilles of the year 1662 prescribe the sixth lesson to be recited thus: "Loaded with so great merits, and adorned with so great virtues, Cassian was not yet a priest. Many labors therefore and storms being overcome, betaking himself to Marseilles, as into a tranquil harbor, he was made a priest." The same seems to be indicated by Gennadius, when he says that he was "ordained deacon at Constantinople by John the great bishop, at Marseilles a priest." To the same opinion is favorable the Roman council which was celebrated in the year 494 under Pope Gelasius I, where in our Labbe, volume 4 of the Councils, col. 1265, he is called "a priest of the Gauls." But others explain these things as if he had only been co-opted among the priests of Marseilles, and enrolled in the clergy of that church, as our Guesnay has it, book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 50.
§ IX. His deeds, writings, and death at Marseilles.
[82] I know not in what year or on what occasion our Saint migrated to Marseilles. Only it is established that two monasteries were built by him there, The Saint founded two monasteries at Marseilles, which about the end of the fifth century still subsisted, as Gennadius in his Catalogue of illustrious men, chap. 62, relates in these words: "Cassian, a Scythian by nation, ordained deacon at Constantinople by John the Great bishop, at Marseilles a priest, founded two, that is, of men and of women, monasteries, which exist to this day." Concerning the place in which the convent of nuns was situated, there is some controversy: for our Guesnay in "Cassian Illustrated," after an ample description of that convent of virgins, which he had given book 2, chap. 17, in the same work book 2, chap. 25, p. 508, thus writes: "Nor is the convent of virgins of Our Lady of Yvelin, commonly of Veaune, to be omitted in this place, founded by Cassian in the suburban territory of Marseilles, which had almost the same beginnings as the very monastery of St. Victor." But Dionysius Sammarthanus in the latest edition of the Gallia Christiana, volume 1, col. 695, thus rejects Guesnay's opinion: "The monastery of St. Saviour at Marseilles, of women of the order of St. Benedict, was founded by Cassian, as is to be read in those things which we premised, in treating of the Victorine convent, near which it was situated, and not in the place which Guesnay assigns to it." We cannot pass judgment in this matter. Wherefore let the people of Marseilles themselves settle this dispute.
[83] More easily do the writers agree concerning the monastery of men, [and he is said to have presided over five thousand monks, which is here explained in some sense.] which all even today call the abbey of St. Victor. In the already often mentioned Lessons of the church of Marseilles St. Cassian is said to have there presided over five thousand monks. Aldebert, bishop of Mende, in a diploma which he gave in the year 1060 in favor of the monastery of St. Victor of Marseilles, and which Dionysius Sammarthanus in volume 1 of the Gallia Christiana among the instruments, p. 23, published, also thus establishes so great a number of monks: "As we have heard and in part learned, that monastery, since it was of such antiquity and nobility, that the blessed abbot Cassian, a most distinguished doctor, now resting in body in it, existed with five thousand monks dwelling therein, as is found in the books which he himself composed," etc. I have indeed read the letter of Castor, published in print by Gazaeus, in which Cassian is called "father of the servants of God"; but our Saint himself nowhere in his Works makes mention of so great a multitude, which nevertheless Aldebert signifies is found in his books. Nay I can scarcely be brought to believe that five thousand monks dwelt in one monastery at Marseilles. Wherefore I rather go over to the already often praised correctors of the Marseilles Breviary, who in the proper Offices of the year 1662 propose this to be read thus: "He is read to have first introduced monks into Gaul, and to have existed as father and example of five thousand divided here and there." Thus namely it can be understood how Cassian presided over five thousand monks, because various convents followed the rules prescribed by him, and acknowledged him as their spiritual father, as is not obscurely
drawn out from the letter of Castor just cited, and from the very lucubrations of Cassian, concerning which now something must be said.
[84] At the request of Bishop Castor, who sought rules for his new monastery, Castor, who is said to have ascended the chair of Apt before the year 419, with most humble letters asked Cassian to prescribe a certain manner of living for the monks recently gathered by him, and after other tokens of his veneration thus addresses him: "Thee therefore, dearest father, with what charity we can we anticipate, that with pious and inexhausted abundance thou mayest succor us who know nothing to bring forth, and mayest not delay to rouse us neophytes, and enticed by the accuracies of worldly pomp, with those exercises in which thou preeminent, under which thy powerful mind and members grew. Thee indeed we hold most especially experienced in the doctrine of the Eastern monasteries, and especially of the Egyptian and those founded in the Thebaid: especially since also the places distinguished by the Lord's nativity have been illustrated by thy presence. Wherefore since thou art filled with the discipline of all Catholic pursuits, it befits thee also not to pass us by, who are destitute of knowledge. For we ask thy paternity, that the institutes of the monasteries which thou hast seen flourish and be instituted through Egypt and Palestine, and hast sanctioned to be observed, and, as they were there handed down by the fathers, in simple speech thou wouldst not refuse to apply, smoothed out, in our rude monastery, and, pouring forth abundant words with the mellifluous sweetness of thy eloquence, thou wouldst not delay to water our long-parched hearts; from which, sterility being cast off, the fruits of justice may be able to sprout. Whence I judge, if it be possible for us to make any progress, that thou too art to be rewarded with a greater merit, if the obedience of paternal labor shall have rendered the minds of the slothful in any way apt for service. Farewell, father of the servants of God, and be mindful of us."
[85] Cassian designates a certain work, Our Saint, in the preface to the books on the Institutes of monasteries, in a manner answering this letter, brings forward various reasons by which he might show that he would never have consented to his petition, "unless," he says, "the confidence of thy holiness animated me to these things, and the promise that either to thee these trifles would be acceptable, of whatever sort they be; or that thou wouldst assign them to the congregation of the brethren dwelling only in a new monastery: who, if anything perhaps be brought forth by us less cautiously, may both piously read it over and support it with a more indulgent pardon, requiring rather the faith of my discourse than the elegance of eloquence." Then he thus sets forth the argument of his writing: "Wherefore, most blessed pope (from this title I gather that Castor was a bishop when Cassian wrote to him), one pattern of religion and humility, animated by thy prayers, according to the powers of my talent I will undertake the work which thou enjoinest; and those things which have been left altogether untouched by our predecessors, inasmuch as they attempted to describe things heard rather than experienced, I will impart, as to a rude monastery, and to those thirsting for the truth. Nor plainly will I strive to weave a narration of the wonders and signs of God; which, although many and incredible we have not only heard through our elders, but also seen fulfilled under our own gaze, yet, all these being passed over, which to readers confer nothing beyond admiration for the instruction of a perfect life, I will strive faithfully to explain only their institutes and the rules of the monasteries, and especially the origins and causes and cures of the principal vices, which are designated eight by them, according to their traditions, as far as, with the Lord's help, I shall be able." Finally he forewarns that he will accommodate certain rules of the Eastern monks to the Gallic region.
[86] To this end therefore Cassian wrote those things and writes twelve books for the cenobites, which "on the Institutes of monasteries, and on the remedies of the eight principal vices, are digested in twelve little books, with the Lord's help," as he himself in the preface to the first Conference speaks. Photius in the Bibliotheca, cod. 197, indicates that he read those little works of Cassian, or at least a compendium of them, in Greek; but he distinguishes the four former books from the eight following, as a diverse work; whereas Cassian himself in the preface to the eleventh Conference says that he embraced the institutes of monasteries in twelve little books. The Greek title of the same writing may also be seen in Lambecius, book 4 of the Imperial Library, p. 167. But Gennadius in the edition of Miraeus, chap. 61, thus divides this lucubration: "He wrote, experience teaching, in a lettered discourse, and, that I may say it more openly, finding words by sense and moving the tongue by action, things necessary for the profession of all monks, that is, on the habit of the monk, and on the canonical measure of prayers and psalms which is kept in the monasteries of Egypt day and night, three books; one book of Institutions; on the origin and quality and remedies of the eight principal vices, eight books, dispatching, namely, of the several vices in several books." I prefer to acquiesce in the judgment of Cassian himself, who in the texts already adduced, and book 5, chap. 1, thus signifies that he pursues the same work: "This fifth book, with God's help, is struck out by us: for after the four little books which are digested on the Institutes of monasteries, we now dispose, your prayers strengthening us with the Lord, to seize the wrestling against the eight principal vices."
[87] These twelve little books so pleased Castor, that he sought also other little works from Cassian, after these he publishes ten Conferences, which nevertheless, prevented by death, he could not see, as Cassian in the preface to the ten Conferences of the fathers sets forth in this manner: "But now, because the aforesaid pontiff (namely Castor, of whom a little before he had spoken), forsaking us, has migrated to Christ, these ten Conferences meanwhile of the highest fathers, that is, of the anchorites who dwelt in the Scetic desert (which he, burning with an incomparable zeal of holiness, had ordered to be written for himself in a like discourse, not weighing, for the multitude of his charity, with what a weight he burdened my weak neck), I have believed should be consecrated most especially to you, O most blessed pope Leontius, and holy brother Helladius. For one of you is joined to the mentioned man both by the affection of brotherhood, and by the dignity of the priesthood, and, what is greater than these, by the fervor of holy zeal, and demands the fraternal debt by hereditary right: the other has undertaken to follow the sublime institutes of the anchorites, not, as some, by his own presumption, but, apprehending the lawful path of doctrine, the Holy Spirit suggesting, almost before he learned it, has preferred to be instructed not so much by his own inventions as by their traditions."
[88] But those ten Conferences could not yet fulfill the desire of Honoratus and Eucherius, and then again he adds seven, who sought others also, as Cassian in the preface before the eleventh Conference sufficiently declares in these words: "Accordingly, because neither those Institutes of monasteries, which in twelve little books we wrote to the bishop Castor of blessed memory, in what discourse we could, nor the ten Conferences of the fathers dwelling in the Scetic desert, which at the command of the holy bishops Helladius and Leontius we somehow digested, could satisfy your faith and fervor, now also, that the reckoning and order of our journey may be known, I have believed the seven Conferences of the three fathers existing in another desert, whom we saw first, written in like style, should be consecrated to you, that by them those things which concerning perfection in our past little works were perhaps more obscurely comprehended or passed over may be supplied. But if these too shall not have been able to satiate the holy thirst of your zeal, seven other Conferences, which are to be sent to the brethren, holy men who dwell in the Stoechades islands, will, as I judge, fulfill the desire of your ardor." If Honoratus was that famous prelate of Arles, as Tillemont and others think most probable, it follows that these seven Conferences were written before the year 426, in which Honoratus ascended the chair of Arles: for Cassian in the already said preface signifies that he still presided over a huge convent of brethren when he wrote these things, and addresses him by the name of brother, in which familiar manner he would not address a bishop. Nor do they seem to have been written long before this year 426, since in the preface of the seven following Conferences, which he had already promised, he honors Honoratus with the title of bishop.
[89] to which finally he joins seven others, A little after he seems to have written the last seven Conferences: for he speaks of Honoratus the bishop, who died in the year 429, as still living, whereas elsewhere he calls Castor, dead, a bishop of blessed memory. But he dedicated them to the monks inhabiting the Stoechades islands, which are now commonly called les îles d'Hyères, and concerning whose name, number, and situation Hadrianus Valesius treats fully in the Notitia of the Gauls from p. 531. Thus he prefaces before the eighteenth Conference: "Ten Conferences of the fathers being accomplished, by the help of the grace of Christ, which at the demand of the most blessed bishops Helladius and Leontius were somehow digested; seven others I dedicated to the blessed bishop Honoratus, and to the holy servant of Christ Eucherius. As many now also I have believed should be assigned to you, O holy brothers Jovinianus, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodore. For the last of you founded that holy and excellent discipline of the monasteries in the Gallican provinces with the strictness of the ancient virtues: but the rest, by your institutions, have provoked monks not only to seek most eagerly the cenobitic possession, but also to thirst after the anchoretic sublimity. For these Conferences are woven with the disputation of the highest fathers, and so tempered for all, that they suit both professions, in which you have made not only the western regions, but also the islands, flourish with the greatest bands of brethren, that is, that not only those who still endure in the congregation with laudable subjection, but also those who, withdrawing not far from your monasteries, long to follow the discipline of the anchorites, may, according to the condition of the places and the measure of their state, be more fully instructed."
[90] It could here be asked in what idiom Cassian wrote his little books, since Trithemius in his catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers in my copy, p. 52, thus speaks of him: all which ascetic works he composed in Latin. "He wrote, experience being his teacher, several little works, in which even in the interpreter the elegance of eloquence is conspicuous." Why is here mention made of an interpreter, since Cassian wrote the already mentioned works in Latin, as he himself manifestly indicates, when in the Preface to the ten Conferences he says that he "brought forth the Egyptian monks, in a manner incorporated in his Institutes, and, what is greater, disputing in Latin eloquence"? Moreover Conference 1, chap. 5, he has this: "Which is more evidently set down in the Greek, κατὰ σκόπον διώκω, that is, I pursue according to the destination." Here the author shows sufficiently that he writes in Latin, when he cites a Greek text to illustrate a Latin sentence. Everywhere other things occur which prove that he wrote in Latin, as can be seen in Guesnay, book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 59. But, you will say, how did Cassian learn the Latin tongue, since from boyhood he lived in the Bethlehem monastery? I answer with Tillemont, that at that time very many from the West flowed together to visit the holy places of Palestine, and that some perhaps remained in the Bethlehem monastery, from whom Cassian could easily learn the Latin tongue. Add that whatever knowledge of this tongue he could afterward perfect at Rome and at Marseilles. Yet I could easily believe that he wrote against Nestorius in Greek, since he directed that work to the people of Constantinople, concerning which now something must be briefly treated.
[91] Thus far I have enumerated the ascetic little works of St. Cassian,
little works, Finally he disputed in seven books against Nestorius, to which he afterward added a polemical lucubration, namely seven books on the Incarnation of Christ against the recently arisen heresy of Nestorius, which he attacked by the command of Leo, as he himself testifies in the preface. Most think that this was Leo the Great, afterward Pontiff of the Roman Church. Baronius in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year of Christ 430, no. 90, gathers the time of this writing from the Council of Ephesus, which was held in the year 431, and rightly infers that these seven books were elaborated by Cassian before the synod of Ephesus and the deposition of Nestorius, since he himself makes no mention of them. Some wrongly ascribe other little works to Cassian, whom our Guesnay, book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 58, refutes. Gennadius wove a sufficiently accurate catalogue of his writings, and after the Institutions and Conferences enumerated thus concludes his eulogy: "Finally, being asked by Leo the archdeacon, afterward bishop of the city of Rome, he wrote against Nestorius on the Incarnation of the Lord seven books: and in these he made the end of writing and of living at Marseilles, Theodosius and Valentinian reigning." Since Theodosius and Valentinian reigned from the year 425 to the year 450, from this testimony the certain year of death cannot be drawn out.
[92] Nevertheless one could suspect, from the manner in which Gennadius speaks, and he died at Marseilles after the year 432. that Cassian died a little after the books written against Nestorius, that is about the year 431. But to this suspicion it stands in the way that Prosper in the year 432 or 433 wrote against Cassian while living, and in the book against the Conferencer, chap. 2, thus speaks: "Therefore in the book whose title is ON THE PROTECTION OF GOD, a certain man of priestly rank, who in the practice of disputing excels among those with whom he lives, introduces a certain abbot discoursing on the grace of God and free will, whose opinion he shows that he approved and undertook in all things." Add that in some Chronicles of Prosper, which I cited above in no. 25, at the year 433 or 434 Cassian is treated as living. When therefore Gennadius says that Cassian "in these (namely the seven books on the Incarnation) made the end of writing and of living at Marseilles," he wished only to signify that nothing was afterward written by him. Trithemius in his Work on ecclesiastical writers binds the death of Cassian to the year 435; but Guesnay prolongs his life to the year 448. But since neither produces a solid argument for his assertion, I prefer to confess that I am ignorant of the year of his death. Now I will bring forward the judgments of various men concerning the writings of St. Cassian.
§ X. Judgment on his doctrine.
[93] Many men illustrious in holiness and erudition greatly commended the writings of St. Cassian, Cassian, attributing too much to free will, whose testimonies, prefixed to his Works, everywhere occur. But St. Prosper in his book against the Conferencer sharply impugned his doctrine on grace. Whence Cassiodorus, who flourished about the middle of the sixth century, in his book on the Institution of the Scriptures, chap. 29, thus admonishes the monks of Vivarium: "Read diligently and hear gladly Cassian the priest, who wrote on the Institution of faithful monks: who among the very beginnings of the holy purpose says that eight principal vices are to be fled. He so competently insinuates the noxious motions of minds, that he makes a man almost see his own excesses, and compels him to avoid those which before he was ignorant of through the confusion of darkness: who nevertheless concerning free will was justly blamed by the blessed Prosper; whence we admonish that in such matters you ought to read him, exceeding, under caution; whose sayings Victor, bishop of Martyria, an African, so purged, with the Lord's help, and added what was wanting, that the palm of these matters is deservedly conferred on him, whom among others from the parts of Africa we believe should quickly be directed to us." Ado in his chronicle at the year of Christ 425 says this of Cassian: "Cassiodorus, senator of Ravenna, wishing to purge his errors, could not fully in every part." Gennadius also in his Catalogue of illustrious men, chap. 63, in Miraeus, asserts that Eucherius of Lyons reduced some little works of Cassian into a compendium, which in the time of Peter Damian seems still to have existed, as that Saint, book 5, epistle 19, intimates. Whatever be the case of these compendia or corrections, which in our time are not found, today in the Works of Cassian we read those things which St. Prosper disapproved.
[94] some in vain benignly interpreting his doctrine, Nevertheless Cassian obtained some benign interpreters of his doctrine, whom our Guesnay, book 1 of "Cassian Illustrated," chap. 63, reviews in a long order. Besides them, not long ago Bruno Neusser, a Minorite, in his "Prodromus velitaris" against Noris, part 2, chap. 3, no. 10, explains in a Catholic sense certain propositions of Cassian impugned by Prosper. But even if I pass over the other defenders of his doctrine, yet it will be helpful to hear on this matter the judgment of blessed John Dominici of Florence, who was taken from the sacred Order of Preachers to the Roman purple, and whose Acts in our Work at the 10th of June are illustrated. Further, St. Antoninus, disciple of that Blessed, part 2 of his histories, tit. 10, chap. 10, §2, treating of the writings of Cassian, after relating the estimation of his holy founder concerning them, also thus relates the judgment of his blessed master concerning them: "The blessed father Dominic, as is read in his Life, reading studiously and understanding vigilantly that book which is entitled the Conferences of the fathers, searching out in it the paths of salvation, apprehended a great summit of perfection. For that book treats of purity of heart, of vices, and of the perfection of all virtues. But that book is said to be numbered among the apocrypha, Distinction XV 'SANCTA Romana,' there where it is said: 'The little works of Cassian the PRIEST of the Gauls.' Which perhaps is for this reason, because Prosper, whose doctrine is approved by the Church in the said Chapter, and after him also Cassiodorus, arraign him, asserting that he did not write Catholically on free will and grace, and attributed more to free will, and less to grace, than is fitting, namely in the first Conference of Moses, and that of Chaeremon on the protection of God. In which nevertheless some, as lord John Dominici in the book which is entitled THE LOVE OF CHARITY, excuse him, saying that his sayings can be saved, if they be soundly and maturely understood, and not in the manner in which Prosper and others expound them, understanding them too cursorily and superficially."
[95] I with reverence recede from this judgment of blessed John Dominici, he seems to have fallen into the error of the Semipelagians, and prefer to follow Suárez in his tripartite Work on grace, part 1, prolegomenon 5, chap. 5, no. 7, and Petavius, volume 3 of the Theological Dogmas, in the book on the heresy of the Pelagians and Semipelagians, chap. 7, and the torrent of Theologians, who show that Cassian was implicated in the opinion of the Semipelagians. Yet that error by no means stands in the way of his holiness, since he defended it at that time when it was permitted to dispute for either side in those matters, as Noris, cited in §1 of this collection, no. 3, speaks, and Prosper himself at the end of his book against the Conferencer not obscurely indicates. The same think those who published the Tutelary Vindications for the holiness of John Cassian, in which they thus discourse: "Nay let it be permitted us to add, from the likeness of our own times, that that error of the people of Marseilles had not yet been so condemned by the Church, that those imbued with it were placed outside the Catholic Church; wherefore Cassian, Faustus, Hilary, and other doctors of Gaul and Africa could, without loss of holiness, dissent from St. Augustine, Prosper, Fulgentius, and others rightly thinking, until the Church interposed a definitive sentence: for neither now in the question concerning the concurrence of grace and free will, or concerning the immaculate conception of the most blessed Mother of God, is it permitted us to condemn those thinking the contrary, or to judge them alien from the merit of holiness, although without doubt the one part errs in fact; and it can happen that the Church by a final judgment may define which part speaks the truth: which if it do, yet it will not condemn of impiety those who meanwhile thought and wrote otherwise, although it pronounce the error itself henceforth to be condemned in posterity." He who wishes more arguments of this matter, let him go to Guesnay, book 1 of the Work just praised, chap. 64.
[96] Yet altogether Cassian abhorred the heresy of the Pelagians, whom, book 1 on the Incarnation, chap. 3, he sharply assails, although he abhorred the Pelagian heresy; and chap. 4 asserts that he labored that a certain Leporius might forsake their perverse doctrine: "Leporius," he says, "then a monk, now a priest, who, descending from the institution or rather depravity of Pelagius, as we said above, was among the Gauls an assertor of the aforesaid heresy, either among the first or among the greatest, being admonished by us, and amended by God, so magnificently condemned his ill-conceived persuasion, that the correction of him is almost no less to be admired than the unharmed faith of many." Tillemont, volume 14 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 185, tacitly carps at Cassian, as though he ascribed to his own admonitions the conversion of Leporius, which nevertheless he affirms was made in Africa by the instructions of St. Augustine. But here Tillemont wrestles with shadows: for Cassian asserts nothing else than that Leporius was admonished by him and amended by God. Nay he himself indicates that this happened in Africa, when a little after the words just cited he thus speaks: "He therefore, returned to himself, not only in Africa, where then he was, and now is, confessed his error with grief as without shame; but also to all the cities of Gaul gave tearful letters of his confession and lamentation." Could it not easily happen that Cassian admonished Leporius of his error, and that St. Augustine afterward converted him, or even perfected the conversion begun by Cassian? Was Cassian for that reason to be accused, as if he attributed too much to himself? For the rest, concerning the person of Leporius and the time of his conversion, see the intricate disquisition in Tillemont, volume 13 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, p. 1039 and following.
[97] but Ado wrongly imputes to him the heresy of the Encratites, Although I cannot exempt Cassian from the Semipelagian error, nevertheless he seems to me to be justly vindicated from the foolish heresy of the Encratites, which Ado in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 425 thus imputes to him: "Cassian also, a Scythian by nation, ordained deacon at Constantinople by John, dies a priest at the city of Marseilles: who among other things wrote a book of Institutions. His works are to be read most cautiously by Catholics, especially concerning free will and grace: but he also incautiously favored the heresy of the Encratites." I know not what suspicion of this heresy Cassian ever afforded to Ado, for St. Epiphanius, who in heresy 27, elsewhere 47, explodes their ravings, in the Greek-Latin edition of Petavius, volume 1, p. 396, thus briefly depicts them: "The Encratites are as it were a certain appendix of Tatian. These condemn marriages,
which they attribute to Satan. They think that one must abstain from the use of all animate things." What ever, I pray, did our Saint teach out of these dogmas?
[98] from which by his own writings Is he perhaps to be called an Encratite, because Conference 21, chaps. 8 and 9, he narrates the example of Theonas, who left his unwilling wife and fled to a monastery? But Cassian himself, chap. 10 of the same Conference, thus removes from himself every suspicion of this heresy: "But let no one think that we have woven these things to provoke divorces of marriages, we who not only by no means condemn marriages, but also, following the apostolic sentence, say: 'Marriage honorable in all, and the bed undefiled'; but that we might faithfully unfold to the reader the beginning of the conversion by which so great a man was dedicated to God: from whom I first demand this good favor, that whether this please him or displease, granting that I am in every way alien from calumny, in this his deed he either praise or reprehend the author. But I, who have not brought forth my own opinion on this matter, but have embraced the history of the deed in a simple narration, it is just that, as I claim for myself nothing of the praise of those who approve this deed, so I be not assailed by the odium of those who disapprove it."
[99] But as for what pertains to the choice of foods, our Saint sufficiently distinguishes himself from that madness of the Encratites, he is vindicated, when, book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 22, he thus speaks: "Let us therefore know that we expend the labor of bodily continence for this, that by this fasting we may be able to come to purity of heart. For the rest, labor is expended by us in vain, if we indeed sustain it untiringly out of contemplation of the end; but cannot obtain the end for which we endured so great afflictions. And it were better to temper from the forbidden foods of the soul (namely from vices or sins), than to have fasted bodily from voluntary and less noxious ones: for in these there is a simple and innocent partaking of God's creature, having nothing of sin through itself; but in those, in the first place, the pernicious devouring of the brethren," etc. The rest of the errors of the Encratites, which Epiphanius in the edition already mentioned, volume 1 from p. 400, more fully sets forth and refutes, are so gross that the suspicion of them cannot fall on St. Cassian, as will be plain to one considering. Therefore I do not see on what foundation Ado said that our Saint favored the heresy of the Encratites.
[100] By way of conclusion I here transcribe what Alard Gazaeus in the letter to the reader prefixed to the Works of Cassian admonishes in this manner: and the decree of Pope Gelasius "But lest these things, which seem somewhat to derogate from Cassian and his writings, offend the minds of the ruder, and turn them away from the zeal of reading and studying him, or render them more sluggish, I have thought fit seriously to admonish the reader concerning these things. First, as for what pertains to the censure or decree of Gelasius, whose beginning is 'SANCTA Romana'; it is not to be so taken as though the Pontiff utterly condemned the writings, or, as he calls them, little works, of Cassian and of all others who are there named, or altogether forbade them to be read; but that he is unwilling that they be publicly read in the Church and have canonical authority, on account of certain errors mixed in, or their authors being somewhat suspect. Which is manifest both from the word ἀπόκρυφον, which signifies nothing else than something hidden, recondite, or secret: and is proved from the same decree, in which the Pontiff manifestly distinguishes three classes or orders of books: and in the first class indeed he reviews the canonical and authentic books, namely of Sacred Scripture and of the holy Fathers, which the Catholic Church receives and approves, and publicly uses in the ecclesiastical Offices.
[101] explained. In the second, the apocrypha, which he indeed forbids to be publicly read and pronounced in church; yet by no means prohibits to be read privately or outside the church: in which order, with many others, are named the little works of Cassian. In the third place finally he establishes the books of heretics and schismatics utterly condemned and repudiated by the Church. But what Catholic ever doubted to read, or dissuaded from reading, the writings of those ancient authors, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Victorinus, and others, because by the same decree they are numbered among the apocrypha? Especially since what was erred by them, and therefore to be avoided, has now for many ages been clearly ascertained and explored? Or by what reason did the most holy men Benedict, Cassiodorus, Dominic, Thomas, Denis, Ignatius, and others embrace and venerate Cassian himself with such great zeal, and commend him to others to be embraced, studied, read, both by their own example and by their writings, and by many encomiums, if they had not judged him a most useful, nay the chief, mirror of the monastic life, and, a few blemishes being removed, a body otherwise most beautiful, and in all ways commendable?"