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III ADAPTING EGYPT TO THE WEST Cassian's change of heart involved, to some extent, surrender to reality, but not a betrayal of principle. He had come to feel that the coenobitic life was necessary-not only as a noviciate, in which to overcome the more obvious vices, and to acquire the fundamental techniques of self-perfection, but also as a safeguard for the highest spiritual values, even for the life of contemplative prayer and inner purity. Moreover, Cassian knew his audience, their aspirations and their failings; and he felt that they needed protection, encouragemei1t, and discipline, which only community life could provide. So his analysis of monastic life was not conducted in a vacuum: he gave an interpretation of ascetic values that was, in his opinion, loyal to eastern tradition, and yet suited to the needs of his western readers.! He was at some disadvantage, legislating for ascetic experi­ ments already under way; and his own emphasis on tradition may have been an attempt to counter the influence of other monastic teachers, promoting in Gaul customs from the East of which he disapproved. Traditions initiated further north by Hilary, Martin, and Sulpicius may have disturbed him: the extent to which he knew of them, or passed judgement upon them, is impossible to discover. Nearer home, however, Castor-formerly a monk, then bishop of Apt, who commis­ sioned the writing of the Institutes-had begun to set up a monastery of his own, (it is not certain upon what pattern,) some time before he sought Cassian's advice.2 Then a Regula Orientalis, written by one Vigilius, and heavily dependent on Pachomian sources, was circulating in Gaul around 420.3 1 A major theme of Marrou, 'Le fondateur de Saint·Victor de Marseille: Jean Cassien', Provence Historique, xvi (1966), 297-308. 2 [nst., Preface, 2. 30n the possible connection with Cassian's work, see C. de Clercq, 'L'influ· ence de la regIe de saint Pachome en Occident', Melanges d'histoire du moyen age, dedies a La memoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1951), 169-76. 184 CASSIAN The situation was confused. Not that Cassian was either ignorant or unsympathetic, as far as Pachomian ideals were concerned:4 it was the instability of asceticism in Gaul that made him most anxious. This may have been partly because he was not yet sufficiently familiar with the customs and atti­ tudes of the country: the art of combining mobility and piety was a longstanding mark of its religious men and women.5 But a love of wandering eventually aroused anxiety in others besides Cassian. Even those most sympathetic sought to justify the practice very carefully-by appealing to a need, for example, to cast over a wide area when recruit­ ing monastic postulants.6 A wanderer like the young Honoratus, fleeing from fame, took with him a well proven ascetic, 'as one to guide him aright in the Lord, and protect his youth'.7 The reason for this greater care may be con­ nected with increasing pastoral concern (and not only in the minds of those less immediately connected with monas­ ticism)-a matter to be discussed more fully8-; Eucherius of Lyon, for example, thought that mobility could undermine a man's power to intercede for others.9 These are only incidental references, but enough to remind us that it was within such a situation of variety and misgiving that Cassian formulated his own ideas about solitude and community discipline. It seemed to him that the ideal of avaxwpT/otC;, the withdrawal of the anchorite from society, had been seriously misinterpreted in Gaul-not only because 4 Chadwick is less confident, Cassian, 55-60. S Jerome made the same mistake, criticizing his 'mother and daughter of Gaul' for wandering around the countryside with their friends and relations, Ep. cxvii. 6. One has only to think of Silvia of Aquitaine and Martin of Tours to see how wrong (or how hopelessly unrealistic in their criticism) he and others were. Ausonius shared, in his own way, this ability to combine piety and social ease: Satis precum datum deo, Habitum forensem da, puer. Dicendum amicis est ave Valeque, quod fit mutuum. Ausonius, Ephemeris, iv. 1,4-6. 6 Hilary of ArIes, Sermo de Vita S. Honorati, 17. They needed to justify them· selves, given opponents like Pope Leo: see his Ep. x. 5 (PL Iiv. 633A). 'Hilary, Sermo, 11 f. "See below, pp. 212-20. 9 If we can accept as his the Homilia III ad...

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