John Cassian

• John Cassian is one of the most notable writers of Gaul in the 5th century.
• He was probably born in Dacia, roughly equivalent to present-day Romania.
• He has been called by some the founder of the Semi- Pelagian School2, while others claim that he professed a Semi-Augustinian position, or better, a mitigated Augustinianism.
• In his twenties or thirties he left his native land and the large family property in the company of a friend called Germanus, and joined a monastery in Bethlehem. He was trained at Bethlehem before Jerome chose it as his retreat.
• After two years, he and his friend visited Egypt and made the acquaintance of some of the most famous cenobites and hermits of the Nitrian oasis and Thebaid.
• Cassian returned to Bethlehem after seven years in Egypt, but after a short stay returned to the desert of Scete in 386 or 387.
• Toward the beginning of the 5th century, he departed from Egypt to Constantinople. He spent a few years there and met St. John Chrysostom, who ordained him to the diaconate.

• He then went to Rome where he was ordained to the priesthood, and afterwards traveled to Antioch.
• When at length he settled down in the old Greek town of Massilia (Marseilles), he founded monasteries for men and women, composed three treatises, and committed his time to writing his experiences of eastern asceticism.

• When he was in Marseilles he composed: 1. The Institutes of the Cenobia and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Vices: Describes the life of Egyptian recluses. 2. The Conferences (Collationes): Cassian’s interviews with certain famous abbots in Egypt. His writings record twenty-four dialogues with different abbas.
• In the Sixteenth Conference on Friendship, John Cassian wrote: Just as nothing is to be preferred to love, then, so also, on the other hand, nothing is to be less esteemed than rage and wrath. For everything, however beneficial and necessary it may appear, should nonetheless be put aside in order to avoid the disturbance of anger, and everything that may seem inimical should be put up with and tolerated in order to maintain unharmed the tranquility of love and peace, for it must be believed that nothing is more destructive than anger and annoyance and nothing more beneficial than love. 3. On the Incarnation of Christ Against Nestorius: After the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy Cassian wrote, at

the desire of Leo, who was then archdeacon of Rome, his one dogmatic work, the De Incarnatione Domini contra Nestorium.

• His monastic works reveal a remarkably ordered and synthetic mind, and one that was endowed with considerable psychological acumen.