Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian: Second Edition

VI. CASSIAN THE WRITER

VI CASSIAN THE WRITER 1. BOOKS Armed with these convictions, supported by this concept of authority, and set in the midst of so much potential acti­ vity, Cassian lived as a writer; and in his literary skill lay his chief contribution to the history of the ascetic movement. Yet, in spite of the reputation of Jerome and Sulpicius, to write for the instruction of others was still not taken for granted as the proper task of the ascetic teacher; and the author of works as formal and as detailed as the Institutes and Conferences would have felt self-conscious. Cassian was careful to present his work as no more than a secondary sup­ port for the authority of the monastic leaders to whom his books were dedicated.] He only wished, it seemed, to report on events and customs in another land; to provide almost an armchair pilgrimage, to save his readers from the dangers of a trip to the East.2 He was also careful not to assert opinions as his own, but to claim dependence on oral tradition. This was justified, not only by the general structure of his work, which ostensibly reproduced conversations between masters and disciples, but by detailed and particular evidence of that dependence.3 Any self-confidence that Cassian may have felt as a writer would have rested to a greater extent on his status as a living source of tradition: hence, at the beginning of the Inst£tutes, his criticism of those writers 'who try to describe what they have heard, rather than what they have seen for themselves , .4 His own chief claim to authority was that he 1 e.g. Inst., Preface, 3. 'Con., Second Preface. So Cassian's books, in so far as they offered an alterna­ tive, were designed to be descriptive as well as instructive-a fact that links his work with the Dialogues of Sulpicius, and the HL. 3 Weber, Stellung, presents some interesting examples and suggestions: see Appendix IV. 4 Inst., Preface, 7. 222 CASSIAN had been in the East, and had seen these men. Yet ecclesiastical writers of this period did not regard themselves as the compromised custodians of a dying classic­ ism. Writing, and therefore reading, followed upon their desire to communicate, and to broadcast new ideas.s was not, least of all in his own eyes, a mere stenographer, preserving verbatim an oral culture: he claimed a place in a literary tradition, already well established in the East.He knew, no less than Sulpicius, that his work represented a novel alternative to accepted methods of religious forma­ tion.6 'so that you may more easily lay hold of the teaching and formative discipline of the elders: by taking into your cells these Conferences, you will receive their authors also'. 7 To read them, in other words, (so Cassian hoped,) would be to enter into that dialogue of formation so typical of Egypt. Nothing could alter the fact, in any case, that ascetic society was now more book-conscious than it had been. Moses complains to his hearers, 'There are many who treasure their books with such ardour that they will not allow anyone even to glance at them, let alone touch them, which gives rise to outbursts of anger, and even death'.8 covetousness that is condemned here, rather than possession: books have become a matter for compromise, as well as scruple. Writing to Valentinus of Hadrumetum, Januarius expressed the hope that, 'like imitators of God and Christ', the monks would read 'with all reverence, and a religious motive, ...those things which the holy fathers ...have written or collected in their books'; and the letter as a whole SChristine Mohrmann, 'Le role des moines dans la transmission du patrimonie latin',Memorial de l'annee martinienne, ed. G. Le Bras (Paris, 1962), 194. 'Con., First Preface, 1. Chadwick seems to suggest that Cassian was really recounting the collationes of desert fathers, Cassian, 3. He regards the Confer­ ences in particular as an intermediate form between the oral discourses of the pioneers and the bald recollections of the Apopkthegmata. Prolonged instruction was certainly a feature of early monasticism in the East-see V. Pack. I, 77; Nau 211-; but it seems likely that the Apopktkegmata reproduce an equally primitive method of instruction. Cassian has created something new. Statements by Moses on distractions in prayer, Can. i. 17, arc taken -from Evagrius, and then woven into a literary argument, Weber, Stellung, 28. Can. ii is built on...