St. John Cassian by prof. I. M. Kontzevich

THE FATHERS OF ORTHODOX MONASTICISM

The Life of ST. JOHN CASSIAN THE ROMAN

By Prof. I. M. KONTZEVICH


SAINT JOHN CASSIAN THE ROMAN
360–435
Commemorated February 29

LET US LEAP FOR JOY, O men, spiritually jubilant,+ made merry now by commemoration of Cassian;+ let us sing to God in praise of the wondrous one among the saints,+ who sanctifies those who venerate him with faith.+


ST. JOHN CASSIAN THE ROMAN was born, most likely, in Gaul (present-day France), about 357-360 A. D., near the present Marseilles, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He calls his homeland a country rich and pleasant in the produce of the earth, such as the region of Provence is even today, where a marvellous climate is united to the fertility of the earth. He was the son of wealthy and eminent parents and received a good education. Marseilles at that time gloried in a flourishing of secular sciences, and it is known from history that Romans even travelled to the school of Marseilles instead of to the East for education.

John Cassian loved from his youth the God-pleasing life, and, burning with a desire to attain perfection in it, he went to the East, where he entered a monastery in Bethlehem and became a monk. Having heard of the ascetic life of the Egyptian Fathers, he wished to see them and learn from them. For this purpose he made an agreement with his friend Germanus, and they went to Egypt about the year 390, after he had been two years in the monastery at Bethlehem.

They spent seven whole years in Egypt, living in monasteries as well as among anchorites in solitude. They noted everything, and actually passed through and came to know in detail the life there in all its aspects, bearing all the sorrows and difficulties of the anchoretic life and "even the terrors of this utter desert," as St. John Cassian himself expressed it. In this fashion they spent some time in the Thebaid, and then in the desert of Scetis, near Lake Mareotis in Egypt.

And thus, through seven years of personal experience they so zealously assimilated in every way the spiritual wisdom of the traditions of the ancient ascetic Fathers that it was only in consequence of a vow they had given that they returned to the monastery in Bethlehem (in 397). But in the same year they again set out for the same Egyptian desert lands and remained there until the year 400.

Leaving Egypt this time for good, St. Cassian and his friend went to Constantinople, where they were favorably received by St. John Chrysostom, who ordained St. Cassian deacon and his friend, as the elder of the two, priest. St. Cassian was later ordained priest, either in Rome or in Marseilles.

His residence in the capital enriched the already exceptionally extensive and many-sided knowledge of John Cassian, and his Orthodox religious world-view found its definitive forms and received its final polishing. St. John Chrysostom without question was the chief instrument in this. In his person St. Cassian had not only an educated and extraordinarily gifted teacher, but, further, in St. Chrysostom's personal life St. Cassian saw the actualization of the great testament of the Egyptian anchorites whose teaching on spiritual perfection he had absorbed during his residence in their midst.

When St. Chrysostom was sentenced to banishment, those devoted to him sent in 405 several mediators to Pope Innocent in Rome; among them were St. Cassian and his friend. But this embassy produced no results.

After this St. Cassian returned to his homeland and there continued his life according to the models of the Egyptian ascetics. He soon became renowned for his holiness. Disciples one after another began to flock to him, and soon he founded a monastery for them. Following this example, a women's monastery was also established nearby. In both monasteries the rule was introduced according to which monks lived and were saved in the Eastern and especially the Egyptian monasteries.

The good order of these monasteries and the evident success of the brethren laboring there in asceticism attracted the attention of the hierarchs and superiors of monasteries in the region of Gaul. Desiring to introduce such order into their own institutions, they begged St. Cassian to write for them the monastic rules with a description also of the very spirit of Eastern asceticism. He willingly fulfilled this desire, describing everything in twelve books of Institutions and twenty-four Conferences. Parts of these Conferences are included in the Philokalia under the title: "An Examination of the Spiritual Warfare."

"All sciences and arts," he writes, "have their goal and their end, in view of which the connoisseur and lover of art will gladly bear all labors and expense... The end of our ascetic life is the Kingdom of God, and its goal is purity of heart, without which it is not possible to attain the end. To this goal our glance is chained, and to it we must direct our truest course, as by a straight line. But if our thought, even by a little, should incline away from it, we must immediately return to contemplation of it and correct our thought, as by a norm."

In this "spiritual warfare" St. Cassian establishes a genetic link between the passions, of which the eight chief ones have the following sequence: gluttony is followed by fornication, then by covetousness, anger, dejection, despondency (accidie), vainglory, and pride.

St. John Cassian may justly be numbered among the first founders of monasticism in the West. For the exemplary good order of his monasteries he received the honorary title of Abbat, which corresponds to the Eastern Abba, which is applied to the eldest and most perfect men.

St. John Cassian died in 435. He was canonized in the East, and monasteries have been dedicated in his honor. Although he was never canonized in the West, Pope Urban V (1362-70), Pope in Avignon (and former Abbot of St. Victor's in Marseilles), ordered the head of St. John Cassian to be placed in a silver chest and the inscription made: "Head of Saint Cassian."

AS FOR THE WORKS of St. Cassian, there is expressed in them the whole exceptional breadth and many-sidedness of his education and development. He received in his homeland, Marseilles, a brilliant secular classical education. In the East, both in Constantinople and in the desert, he assimilated not only the wisdom of the Eastern holy Fathers and ascetics, but also learned through experience the "science of sciences": the path to perfection and the laws of the unseen warfare. Then, having returned to the West, he became acquainted with the leaders of Western thought, such as Blessed Augustine and St. Ambrose of Milan.

In the dispute of Blessed Augustine with Pelagius; he took a quite special position, for he approached this question not on the basis of abstract reasoning, but as one who had attained in his personal experience the whole meaning that grace has in the work of the soul's salvation. He writes: "Salvation without human efforts is something incomprehensible. But it is also impossible to attain it by these efforts alone without Divine grace." At the same time he notes that: "Grace may be far less adequately defended by pompous words and verbose controversies, by dialectic syllogisms and the eloquence of Cicero [here he means Augustine], than by the examples of the Egyptian ascetics."

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1. Pelagius taught that man may attain salvation by his own will without the aid of grace; Augustine, in opposing this heresy, taught the indispensibility of Divine grace in the soul's salvation, but went to the opposite extreme of virtually denying man's free will (tr. note).


In order to explain the working of grace, he starts with the correct conception of the will, with an examination of those inner laws of the soul according to which all processes of the will proceed. The first link in every process of the will is desire, which can pass under a particular motivation into resolve to fulfill the desire.

And although in the work of salvation the beginning of a good desire may belong to human freedom, still to it must be joined grace, as a power working within, and under its cooperation a man's good desires or a good act of the will come to fulfillment.

Both any good activity and faith are possible only with the cooperation of grace, and without it they are impossible, for after the fall of Adam nature was impaired and struck with weakness. Thus the gracegiving help of God is absolutely indispensable in the spiritual and moral growth of a man, and in all stages this growth belongs not to the efforts of man, but to grace. But at the same time human efforts also are an indispensable condition for the drawing down of grace.

IN HIS PERSONAL LIFE and in his literary works St. John Cassian remains exclusively an ascetic. This is the basic tenor of his whole life and activity. His significance in the development of Western monasticism was very great.1 Western monasticism, having received its foundation from the Eastern ascetics, was living until this time on what came to it by chance from the East. Now, however, St. John Cassian in his works gave the West the full experience of asceticism in the spirit of the views and attainments of the Eastern ascetics. In them St. Cassian defines the very aim and the final goal of Christian asceticism and describes its whole process, leading the ascetic to the moment when he renounces everything earthly and lives purely by the contemplation of God.

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1. See article below, p. 57.


In the light of Divine revelation, through a primarily psychological analysis of the conditions which the ascetic must undergo, St. John Cassian familiarizes the reader with every manifestation in the sphere of the spiritual life of a man being saved. He examines the condition and disposition of the powers of the soul in the natural, sinful man, as well as the form in which the life of the man of flesh usually manifests itself; then, as the Conferences progress, he makes known the condition and disposition of these natural human powers in various stages of spiritual life, and he shows likewise the manifestations of the spiritual life by which the life of the ascetic is chiefly characterized in various stages of spiritual perfection.

Together with subjects concerning the sphere of the ascetic life, St. John Cassian in his Conferences touches also on more general basic points of the Christian world view, so that the ascetic, through a true understanding of them, might more clearly and correctly understand the aim of his life and feel firm ground under him.


Atrium (Entrance) of the ancient Basilica of St. Cassian's Monastery of St. Victor. The Basilica dates from the time of St. Cassian


THE WHOLE of subsequent Western monasticism lived on the heritage of St. John Cassian, and the West was never able subsequently to produce anything equal to his works in the sphere of asceticism. But in the East also, in the seedbed and flower-garden of monasticism, the works of John Cassian enjoyed immense respect for the exalted ascetic views set forth in them, and they were very early translated into Greek. St. John Climacus in the 6th century speaks of his works with praise: "Great Cassian reasons surpassingly and exaltedly"; and Patriarch St. Photius in his thousand-volume library testifies that his works are "something divine in nature."

The works of St. Cassian are three in number:

The Institutes of the Monasteries (De Institutis Coenobiorum) in twelve books. The first book discusses the outward appearance of the monks, i.e., their dress; the second, the system of nocturnal psalmody and prayers; the third, the daily prayers; the fourth, renunciation of the world. The remaining eight books discuss the eight chief sins.

Twenty-four Conferences (Collationes), wherein are given talks of anchoretic fathers on various spiritual subjects. In the thirteenth Conference the dispute between Pelagius and Blessed Augustine on freedom of the will is examined.

Seven books On the Incarnation of the Lord against Nestorius (De Incarnatione Domini contra Nestorium). This was written in 430, when St. Cyril of Alexandria in his battle with Nestorius appealed for support to Pope Celestine. The examination of the question was entrusted to the priest of Marseilles John Cassian, as one who knew the East. His conclusion regarding Nestorius was very harsh. The support shown to St. Cyril by the Papal legates at the Council of Ephesus (451) had great significance. The victory gained by St. Cyril was the triumph of the true veneration of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.


St. Cassian's Monastery of St. Victor, overlooking the Port of Marseilles (1655)