John Cassian

THE obligation, which was promised to the blessed Pope Castor in the preface to those volumes which with God's help I composed in twelve books on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the remedies for the eight principal faults, has now been, as far as my feeble ability permitted, satisfied. I should certainly like to see what was the opinion fairly arrived at on this work both by his judgment and yours, whether, on a matter so profound and so lofty, and one which has never yet been made the subject of a treatise, we have produced anything worthy of your notice, and of the eager desire of all the holy brethren. But now as the aforesaid Bishop has left us and departed to Christ, meanwhile these ten Conferences of the grandest of the Fathers, viz., the Anchorites who dwelt in the desert of Scete, which he, fired with an incomparable desire for saintliness, had bidden me write for him in the same style (not considering in the greatness of his affection, what a burden he placed on shoulders too weak to bear it)--these Conferences I have thought good to dedicate to you in particular, O blessed Pope, Leontius, and holy brother Helladius. Aeterna Press

Drawing on his early experience as a monk in Bethlehem and Egypt, John Cassian (c. 365-c. 435) journeyed to the West to found monasteries in Marseilles and the region of Provence. Conferences is his masterpiece, a study of the Egyptian ideal of the monk.

John Cassian (d. c.435) brought the teachings of the Egyptian desert fathers to the Latin West. A. M. C. Casiday offers a revisionist account of his work, restoring the stories he tells to a position of importance as an integral part of his monastic theology.

This book examines the method of meditative reading encouraged by John Cassian (c. 360-435) in his ascetic writings, the bulk of which are fictive dialogues that purportedly record the instruction he had received from Egyptial Christian monks. This instruction was at its core an interactive experience, depending upon both the discernment of the master and diligent application of instruction by the student. Driver examines Cassian's understanding of the act of reading and suggests the implications of this for Cassian's monastic teaching and it interprets Cassian's method of reading in light of contemporary discussions of reading and the self.

"John Cassian: The Conferences is the first complete English translation of the twenty-four dialogues between Cassian and the desert fathers of Egypt. A native of Dacia, Cassian (c. 360-430) joined a monastery in Bethlehem when he was in his early adult years. From Palestine, Cassian and Germanus, a companion, traveled several times to Egypt where they learned about the monastic tradition from the great desert masters or abbas. Cassian's writings here record twenty-four dialogues with fifteen abbas." "The Conferences have long been a key work in monastic circles and among scholars of spirituality. Ramsey's helpful introductions and annotations make them accessible to a new and broader readership. Careful attention to references, notes and appendices demonstrate the outstanding research and writing which helped produce this monumental volume."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book is a study of the life, monastic writings, and spiritual theology of John Cassian (c., 360-435). His Institutes and Conferences are a remarkable synthesis of earlier monastic traditions, especially those of fourth-century Egypt, informed throughout by Cassian's awareness of the particular needs of the Latin monastic movement he was helping to shape. Sometimes portrayed as simply an advocate of the sophisticated spiritual theology of Evagrius of Ponticus (360-435), Cassian was actually a theologian of keen insight, realism, and creativity. His teaching on sexuality is unique in early monastic literature in both its breadth and its depth, and his integration of biblical interpretation with the ways of prayer and teaching on ecstatic prayer are of fundamental importance for the western monastic tradition. The only Latin writer included in the classic Greek collections of monastic sayings, Cassian was the major spiritual influence on both the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict, as well as the source for Gregory the Great's teaching on capital sins and compunction. Columba Stewart's book is the first major study of Cassian to be published in twenty years. It begins by establishing Cassian's credibility as a teacher on the basis of his own experience as a monk and his familiarity with the fundamental literary sources. Stewart then turns to Cassian's spiritual theology, paying particular attention to Cassian's view of the monastic journey in eschatological perspective, his teaching on continence and chastity, the Christological basis of biblical interpretation and prayer, his method of unceasing prayer, and his integration of ecstatic experience with an Evagrian theology of prayer.

Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of fifth-century ascetic, John Cassian (ca. 360-ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. The social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and rhetorical milieus shaping Cassian's late ancient understanding allow us to read his works as an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. Cassian's practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human possibility in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Niki Kasumi Clements brings historical and textual analyses into conversation with contemporary theoretical debates, most notably French philosopher Michel Foucault's readings of Cassian as anticipating modern subjectivity vis- -vis attention to obedience, submission, and self-renunciation. Instead of focusing on interiority and confession, Clements's engagement with Cassian's ethics contributes to contemporary reframings of religion as practice-centered, sharing methodological innovations with scholarship in the philosophy of religion that foregrounds the work of the body, the emotions, and intersociality alongside the role of critical reflection. With a focus on the lived experience and practical ethics of Cassian, Clements argues for constructions of ethics in asceticism as a lens to both critique and deepen our understanding of constructions of power--following the critical moves that Foucault himself develops. By challenging modern assumptions about Cassian's asceticism, Sites of the Ascetic Self proposes a new way to think about questions of ethics, subjectivity, and ethical agency in the study of religion today.