06 — The Transmission of Egyptian Monasticism

St. John Cassian (c. 360–435) is the single most important channel by which the ascetic theology of the Egyptian desert passed into the Latin West. Writing the Institutes and Conferences in Latin for the monks of Gaul, he transposed Greek desert practice into a Western idiom — softening and re-rooting the framework associated with Evagrius Ponticus — and through the Rule of St Benedict, which prescribes his works by name, he became a foundation of Western monastic spirituality for a thousand years. This section examines that twofold work of transmission: Cassian as translator of the desert, and Cassian as the source behind Benedict and Western monasticism.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; transmitter of Egyptian monasticism to the West)

Cassian’s significance for the West is not that of an original system-builder but of a mediator of genius. He had lived the monastic life in Bethlehem and in the deserts of Egypt before settling at Marseilles, and he set himself deliberately to convey what he had received — the discipline of the thoughts, the discernment of the abbas, the goal of purity of heart, the longing for unceasing prayer — to a Latin readership that knew no Greek and had never seen the desert. In doing so he made choices: he carried the substance of Evagrius’s ascetic framework while suppressing Evagrius’s dangerous name and muting his condemned Origenist speculation; he recast apatheia as puritas cordis, anchored in Matthew 5:8; and he presented the whole as the lived counsel of named fathers rather than as abstract gnosis.

The Western harvest of this labor was immense. The Rule of St Benedict commends Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes by title (RB 73) and prescribes the reading of the Conferences in the evening assembly (RB 42) — a custom that gave English the word “collation.” Through the Benedictine and Cistercian traditions Cassian became a fixture of Western monastic formation. Yet his Western standing was shadowed by the grace controversy, so that the West read him universally while never formally canonizing him as the East did. These two files set out the transmission and its complications, flagging where the scholarship is divided.

Files in This Section

File Description
Cassian as Translator of the Desert Cassian as the great conveyor of Evagrian and Egyptian ascetic theology to the Latin West: how he rendered Greek desert spirituality into Latin, recast apatheia as puritas cordis (Matthew 5:8), muted Evagrius’s Origenist cosmology and the doctrine of the nous, and presented the teaching as the lived practice of named abbas. Includes the disputed question (Stewart vs. Casiday) of how dependently he drew on Evagrius.
Influence on Benedict Cassian’s influence on Benedict of Nursia and Western monasticism: the Rule of St Benedict commending his works (RB 73) and prescribing the evening reading of the Conferences (RB 42, whence “collation”); his place in the Benedictine and Cistercian curriculum; the Rule of the Master question; and the shadow cast on his Western reputation by the grace controversy and the disputed Decretum Gelasianum.

See Also

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 Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes (RB 1980). Ed. Timothy Fry. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1981.
  • Stewart, Columba. Cassian the Monk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
  • Casiday, Augustine. Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.