03 — The Institutes
St. John Cassian’s Institutes (De institutis coenobiorum et de octo principalium vitiorum remediis, “On the Institutes of the Coenobia and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Vices”) is the first of his two great monastic works and the founding text of Western coenobitic legislation. Its twelve books fall in two parts: Books 1–4 set out the outward life of the monk — the habit, the canonical offices and horarium, and the discipline and formation of the renunciant — while Books 5–12 each anatomize one of the eight principal vices and its cure. This section reads the Institutes as Cassian’s deliberate, moderated transmission of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism to the harsher climate and weaker usage of Gaul.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; transmitter of Egyptian monasticism to the West)
Written at Marseilles in the 420s at the request of Bishop Castor of Apt, the Institutes are Cassian’s attempt to set before the new monasteries of Provence the customs he had learned among the fathers of Egypt and Palestine — but tempered, by his own announced principle, for a colder land and a softer observance (Cassian, Institutes, preface 9). The work’s twofold architecture is itself a theology: first the body and the common life are ordered (dress, prayer, obedience, renunciation), and then, on that floor, the long inward warfare against the eight logismoi is fought, with purity of heart as its aim. This section treats the two parts in two files — the outward rule, and the eight principal vices — and traces the Institutes both backward to their Egyptian and Evagrian sources and forward to St. Benedict’s Rule and the Western “seven deadly sins.”
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Coenobitic Rule | Institutes Books 1–4 — the outward life of the monk: the habit and its symbolism (Book 1), the canonical prayers, night office, and horarium (Books 2–3), and the discipline, three renunciations, and formation of the coenobite (Book 4), including the obedience exempla of the novice John watering a dry stick (4.24) and Abbot Pinufius (4.30–31). Egyptian rigor moderated for Gaul. |
| The Eight Principal Vices | Institutes Books 5–12 — the eight principal vices in order (gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory, pride), the acedia/“noonday demon” treatment (Book 10), the Evagrian source of the eight logismoi, Cassian’s silence on Evagrius, and Gregory the Great’s later reduction of eight to the Western “seven deadly sins.” |
See Also
- The Conlationes — the Conferences, Cassian’s companion and more interior work
- Prayer and Purity of Heart — puritas cordis, the goal toward which the Institutes are ordered
- Among the Desert Fathers of Egypt — the Egyptian observance the Institutes report and adapt
- Founding Saint Victor at Marseilles — the Gaulish setting and occasion of the work
- Cassian as Translator of the Desert — Cassian’s role as transmitter of Eastern monasticism to the Latin West
- Influence on Benedict — the passage of the Institutes into the Benedictine Rule
- Purity of Heart and Hesychasm — the Eastern continuation of Cassian’s ascetic psychology
- St. Benedict of Nursia — the chief Western heir of the Institutes
- Monasticism — the coenobitic life in the Orthodox tradition
- The Church Fathers — Cassian among the Fathers
- Methodology — citation and verification standard for this repository
References
- Cassian, John. The Institutes. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 58. New York: Newman Press, 2000.
- Cassian, John. The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 57. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
- The Works of John Cassian. Trans. Edgar C. S. Gibson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 11. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1894.
- Stewart, Columba. Cassian the Monk. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.