Front matter
'' 'MCIASSICS
OP^TERN
SPIRITUAUIY
mEOASSICS
OFWESTERN
SPIMTUALfTf
THE CLASSICS OF WESTERN SPIRITUALITY
A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters President and Publisher Kevin A. Lynch, C.S.P.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-Chief John Farina Editorial Consultant Ewert H. Cousins— Professor, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.
John E. Booty— Professor of Church History, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.
Joseph Dan— Professor of Kaballah in the Department of Jewish 1 bought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
Albert Deblaere— Professor of the History of Spirituality, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy.
Louis Dupre—T.L. Riggs Professor in Philosophy of Religion, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Rozanne Elder—Executive Vice President, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Mircea Eliade— Professor in the Department of the History of Religions, University of Chicago, Chicago,
111.
Anne Fremantle—Teacher, Editor and Writer, New York, N.Y.
Karlfried Froelich— Professor of the History of the Early and Medieval Church, Princeton theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.
Arthur Green— Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
Stanley S. H arakas— Professor of Orthodox Christian Ethics, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, Brookline, Mass.
Jean Leclercq— Professor, Institute of Spirituality and Institute of Religious Psychology, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy.
Miguel Leon-Portilla— Professor of Mesoamerican Cultures and Languages, National University of Mexico, University City, Mexico.
George A. Maloney, S.J.— Director, John XXIII Ecumenical Center, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.
Bernard McGinn—Professor of Historical Theology and History of Christianity, University of Chicago
Divinity School, Chicago, 111.
John Meyendorff— Professor of Church History, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y., and Professor of Patristics and Church History,
St. Yladimir's Seminary, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr—Professor of Islamics, Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa., and Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Heiko A. Oberman— Director, Institute fuer Spaetmittelalter und Reformation, Universitaet Tuebingen, VV^est Germany.
Alfonso Ortiz— Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N. Mex.; Fellow, The Center for Advanced Study,
Stanford, Calif.
Raimundo Panikkar— Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, Calif.
Jaroslav Pelikan—Sterling Professor of History and Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Fazlar Rahman— Professor of Islamic Thought, Department of Near Eastern Uanguages and Civilization, University of Chicago, Chicago,
111.
Annemarie B. Schimmel— Professor of Hindu Muslim Culture, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Sandra M. Schneiders—Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies and Spirituality, Jesuit School of T heology, Berkeley, Calif.
Huston Smith—Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
John R. Sommerfeldt— Professor of History, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas.
David Steindl-Rast—Monk of Mount Savior Monastery, Pine City, N.Y.
William C. Sturtevant—General Editor, Handbook of North American Indians, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
David Tracy— Professor of Theology, University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, 111.
\^ictor T urner—William B. Kenan Professor in Anthropology, I he Center for Advanced Study, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, \a.
KallistOS Ware— Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford; Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies, Oxford University,
England.
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/conferencesOOcass
JOHN CASSIAN
CONFERENCES
TRANSLATION AND PREFACE BY
COLM LUIBHEID
INTRODUCTION BY
OWEN CHADWICK
PAULIST PRESS
NEW YORK • MAHWAH
(^)vcr Art:
KK\ IN
1-'. N()\
\(^K, (>.S.P.
is a tree-lancc artist w ho is a nicnihcr of the [xistoral team at the St. Thomas More Newman (xnter, Ohio State L'niversitv.
(a)pyright © 1985 bv (a)lm Luibheicl -Ml rights reserved. No part of this book mav be reprodueed or transmitted in anv form or l)y any means, eleetronic or meehanical, ineluding photocopying, recording, or bv anv information storage and retrieval system w ithout permission in w riting from the Publisher. labrarv of (Congress (Catalog (^ard Number: 85-80344 ISBN: 0-809 1-2694-X (paper) 0-8091-0361-3 (cloth) [Published by Paulist Press 997 Macarthur Boulevard Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 Printed and bound in the United States of .\merica
CONTENTS Foreword ix Preface by Cohn Luibheid xi Introduction by Given Chadivick I Conference One
FHF GOAL OR OBjFd I\ E OF THE \10NK
Conference I\vo
ON DISCERNAIFNT
Conference I'hree
THE I'HREE RENUNCIATIONS
Conference Nine
ON PRAYER
Conference Fen
ON PRAYER
• Conferetice Eleven 1 4
ON PERI EC
I ION ' Conference Fourteen 1 5 5
ON SPIRI FL AE KNOWLEDGE
Conference Fifteen 1 74 I HECilETS OI (iOD Conference Fitrhteen 1 8 3 FI IE 'I
I IREE KINDS OE MONK
Indexes
Vll
Translator of this \Olumc (X)LM LL IBl Il'll) was born in 1936 in Dublin, Ireland.
I le received his 13. A. and M..\. at Universitv CX)llege, Dublin, and in 1961 he was aw arded a Ph.D. in (dassics at Prineeton Universitv.
Sinee 1961 he has been a member of the teaching staff at Universitv Cd)Ilege, (ialw av.
I le has translated the John (dimacus and PseudoDionvsius volumes in this series.
.\uthor of the Introduction ()\\ KN (d lADW I(>K is the Regius Professor-Kmeritus of Modern
I listorv, (Cambridge Universitv.
I lis many distinguished works on the history of the (diurch include Catholicism and History (1978),
I'he Popes and European Revolution (1981), Ehe Reformation (1964), and John Cassian
(2nd ed., 1968). vm
Foreword John Cassian w rote tw enty-four Conferences, but inescapable reasons of space demanded that only nine of these could be selected to appear in the present volume. Selection implies omission, and since omission is the parent of regret it is only to be expected that someone w ho cares for the achievement of Cassian v\ ill be moved to protest at w hat has been left out; but my hope is that the nine texts will at least give a sense both of w hat the man w as trying to do and of the subtle range of his concerns.
I'he translation is based on the text prepared for Sources Chretiennes by Dom E. Pichery.
I would like to express by gratitude to John Farina of the Paulist Press, who has proved to be a most helpful, kind, and encouraging editor. And in this, as in so many other enterprises, a special word of thanks goes, as ever, to my wife, Pat.
fc.xi# >(!» ^ ir-^
; \Atm'
Cohn Liiibheid PREFACE Even l)v the standards of the twentieth century, John C>assian was a man w ho had journeyed far. Born in w hat is now Rumania, he traveled to the 1 lolv Eand, then throughout Egypt, thereafter to (Constantinople and Rome, and by the time of his death, around the year 435, he had moved to the south of (iaul.
I lis travels brought him into contaet w ith men and women of numerous backgrounds and circumstances.
It w as an era in w hich for (Christians a multiplicity of experiments had revealed the possibilities and indeed the limitations of monastic life.
It w as a time of passionate doctrinal involvement, w ith all the great cjuestions concerning the relationships first w ithin the I rinitv and then between the human and divine natures of (Christ coming under increasingly rigorous scrutiny.
It w as a season of councils, of controversy, and, for men such as John (Chrysostom, of high tragedy.
It w as a period w hen the old and the new , the traditional and the inno\'ati\ e, surfaced in myriad and sometimes bew ildering combinations.
Much of all this came to be reflected in the w ritings that bear the name of John (Cassian, in the Institutes in the Conferences^ 4 rue, he w as a monk w riting for monks. But in a more profound and timeless w av he w as a salient example of the problem faced by any (Christian w ho is somehow obliged to reconcile an admired past w ith the needs and the burdens of his ow n day.
I lis commitment w as to the life of the spirit, and this w ithin the perspectives of the later fourth century and the first third of the fifth century, but his reflections, his concerns, his
1. Among numerous recent discussions of the life and work of John (Cassian the following should be sfx-ciallv noted: Owen (Chadwick,
Cassian, 2d ed. ((Cambridge, and Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the (Church (Oxford,
197S). The latter has a \'ery useful bibliography.
PRKl ACK efforts to speak words of w eight and value mark him at once as a w riter entitled to the respeet of any age, ineluding our ow n.
For in his w av John (^assian is someone responding as he can to the old problem of w hat to make of the life one has. And that problem in its turn rests on the deeper one of making sense of whatever reality w e have happened to meet.
Is reality any deeper than the farthest reach of our own perceptive capacities?
Is this—w hat we encounter—all of it? I'he old question refuses to go aw ay.
It nags and w orries.
It surfaces in a sick man amid the fading of things.
It presses on the spectator of a dead child. (]an this be all of it?
Of course not, says a teacher in the jauntier, more confident times when the well-turned proposition compels assent, when the expert marshaling of words seems enough to guarantee the existence of awesome and accessible domains of transcendence.
Indeed this is all there is, says an assertive poet, w riting over four centuries before (>assian and claiming that craven, degenerate superstition has managed to poison the w ells of living bv means of its assertion that there exists another domain over and beyond our own, w here the dead are brought to be forever tormented.^
More quietly, more humbly, others see in a chunky rock, in the recurring flavors of a ty pe of w ine the only tokens of reliable, dependable reality.^ To believe in anything more is to take too great a chance.
But the willingness to take just such a chance is surely a mark of the (Tristian. A creature of the day and of circumstance, the Christian nevertheless claims, at times weakly, at times w ith powerful courage, that Ciod does indeed exist, that there is somew here an enduring and timeless domain w here the burdened heart may aspire to find ease. ITe
(Tristian has in him the capacity to hope for better things. After all, he has much to remember, words, for instance, such as the following:
()u come out of the things below:
I come from the things above. You come out of this world; I do not come out of this world.
I have told you that you w ill die amid your own w rong turnings. For if you do not have trust in the fact that I am the One, you will die amid your ow n w rong turnings.""^ John (^assian w as one of those who, taking such words to heart.
Lucretius, Ik Rerum Satura, passim, but note especiallv Book 3, lines 37FF.
I'hus cf. the poems "Sandstone Keepsake" and "Sloe CJin" in Seamus [ leanev, Station (London and Boston, 1984).
4. Jn 8:23-24.
FREFACF v\ orked to move as far as possible from the "things below" and to embrace a style of living that would give access to "the things above." The example of the pioneers of monasticism was there to guide him and to encourage him. There was more. John Cassian did not believe that alv\ ays and w ithout exception the life of the monk
\\ as plaved out, as it were, in the anterooms of eternity, that a man had to aw ait death before he could come directlv into the presence of his Maker. Like Augustine, he was convinced that even amid the trappings of earthliness there could occur, did occur, direct one-to-one encounters w ith God.^ l o gaze with utterly purified eves on the divinity is possible—but only to those w ho rise above low ly and earthlv works and thoughts and w ho retreat w ith Him into the high mountain of solitude.
W hen they are freed from the tumult of w orldly ideas and passions, w hen they are liberated from the confused melee of all the vices, when they have reached the sublime heights of utterly pure faith and of preeminent virtue, the divinity makes known to them the glorv of Christ's face and reveals the sight of its splendors to those worthv to look upon it w ith the clarified eye of the spirit."^
1 lere indeed w as the goal. I'his was what the monastic effort was all about. The ruthless, self-disciplined introspection, the fasting, the vigils, the meditations on Scripture, the urge to pray without ceasing these w ere the shaping ingredients of a dynamism whose longed-for and promised outcome was the direct encounter with God, briefly within time and forever beyond the w rit of mortality.
I lence the consuming need to get the life-style right.
1 fence the passionate analy sis—reflected in Cassian's w ritings—of all the complex details of spirituality. W hich w as the most productive route for a man or w oman to take? The eremitic? The cenobitic? A way reflecting the best of each? And w ho would decide? For the endless debate and discussion did not and could not take place in a vacuum.
Bv the time Cassian came to write his books, he had moved to Ciaul, where he came face to face with the fact that the cenobitic life w as becoming more common than the eremitic route, w hich had been taken bv those first great figures of the Egyptian movement w horn he so ardently venerated—hence an uncertainty that some modern schol5.
For a celebrated attempt to express the nature of such a one-to-one encounter, cf.
Augustine, Confessions 9. 10.25.
Conferences 10.6.
Xlll
PRKFACK ars have claimed to detect in his work.
The problem essentially is w hether in his view a spiritual life passed in isolation is superior to one lived in eommunitv. At times it looks as if (>assian considers the solitarv, eremitic w av to represent a higher and superior activitv.^ Actually he distinguishes in the Coufereuces betw een a life-stvle and a disposition of spirit, betw een milieu and mind.
It is a distinction that corresponds to the immediate aim of the monk—puritas cordis, "cleanness of heart" and his ultimate objective of reaching the kingdom of (lod.^ Kach goal has to be attained, though w ith the former recjuired to precede the latter.
Kach goal demands the achievement of certain practical steps, w hich the accumulated experiences of the Egyptian desert had sought to identifv in as precise a form as possible. W hether one is an anchorite or a cenobite it is, at the end, an indi\ idual, not an entire community, who w ins through to the kingdom. And because this is so and because
(>assian w as caught betw een, on the one hand, his deep admiration of the great Egyptian fathers and, on the other, his task of prov iding guidance for the increasing numbers who sought to live communally as monks and nuns, there is nothing too surprising in the fact that sometimes, hankering back to the giants of the past, he seems to set a higher v alue on the solitary life while at other times he thinks of the cenobitic and the eremitic ways as stages or aspects of the life of the indiv idual.
In any case the situation he encountered in Ciaul presented him w ith the classic problem of hav ing to accommodate a rev ered tradition to human needs for which that tradition had made inadequate prov ision.
I he essence of his difficulty can be stated simply enough.
I here w as on one side the shining example of those great and rare men who had completely withdraw n from Egyptian society and who had manifestly attained the summits of personal holiness. But on the other side there w as the bitter truth of human frailty, which ensured that most of those embarking on a religious life would require the continuous guidance not of their ow n increasingly enlightened consciences but rather ol concerned yet impartial mentors. Indeed if there is one figure w ho evokes the constant denunciations of (>assian, it is the monk w ho takes himsell lor a teacher.
The history of the desert, as (>assian tirelessly proclaims, was filled w ith examples of men w ho would listen to none but themselv es and w hose liv es had mov ed inexorably into spiritual disaster.
(jmferences first Preface, 4.
Conferences \ , passim, hut especially section 4. xiy
PREFACE This high road to catastrophe was taken especially by those untutored and undirected men in \\ horn a sense of proportion, the capacity for introspection, and a close understanding of the processes of selfdelusion had faltered or yanished. As a terrible, paradigmatic example,
Cassian relates the story of 1 lero,^ a man w ho liyed a solitary and penitential life for over half a centurw He fasted strictly, even amid the jubilation of Easter Sunday.
1 le refused all contact w ith fellow ascetics.
I le thrust aw ay any occasion w here the adv ice, the encouragement, and the insights of others might hav e been available to him. Year after year he followed his lonely vv ay until, in a mood of subtle and potent hubris, he became convinced at last that the unrelieved rigor of his self-imposed burdens had not only made him spiritually perfect but had even earned him a dispensation from the law s of nature and of earthliness. And to prove the truth of his conv iction he leapt off the edge of a rocky pit.
1 le w as dead two days later.
It is a story set dow n w ith horror by (.assian, and the purpose of the telling comes as part of the repeated insistence on the need of all but the very few to be open to the guidance and the directiv es and the insights of others. For without such guidance the monk runs the continuous risk of losing whatever feeling he has for the way things are.
1 lence the lengthy reflections embodied in the Conferences.
It is not dry and finicky detail that really concerns John C^assian.
If he deals at length w ith topics ranging from the pitfalls risked by the soul to the question of how much solid food a monk should consume every day, the reason lies in his heartfelt aw areness of the sheer difficulty that may beset the journey to the kingdom of Ciod.
If his memory is continually haunted by the great solitary heroes of the Egyptian desert, his practical unillusioned intellect knows that any advice he proffers now, in the closing years of his own pilgrimage, must be grounded in a deep feeling for the extent to w hich Christian men and women need each other's help and guidance, fhis is one reason why the Conferences can be taken to be not only a source of invaluable historical material and an authoritative view of early monasticism but also a sort of parable, an extended metaphor of the complexity aw aiting anyone who seeks to pursue the life of the spirit.
9 .
Conferences 2.5.
10. An eerily similar situation is described in the section on Mount Athos in the novel
Report to Creco bv Nikos Ka/.ant/.akis.
I he pilgrim sees on the shore of an inlet the bones of anchorites who, convinced that they had become angels, had leapt from their cells in the cliff face.