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

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION This is a book that was in some ways written backwards: not as a search for roots, but as the exploration of a literary heri­ tage, the ordered discovery of attitudes (above all on auth­ ority) gradually accumulated in the minds of Christians in the century after Constantine. The book is about ascetics, but inquiry began with bishops, and Augustine in particular. What reputation could a man in his position acquire? What hold did he have over the imaginations of those who knew him, both living and after death? Hence an analysis of, among other things, hagio­ graphy: the life of Augustine by Possidius, but also, for comparison, those of other bishops-of Ambrose by Paulinus of Milan and, most important of all, the skilful and enduring biography of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius, his disciple. Reading this last work, two features demanded attention, throwing light on the influence of bishops, but pointing the way also to what became the central concern of the book. First, there was a marked emphasis on Martin's ascetic aspira­ tions, and on his specifically monastic endeavours (part of a forceful attempt, on the part of Sulpicius, to imply that an ascetic quality in Martin greatly influenced the development and success of his episcopal career). Second, the Life, coupled with Sulpicius's Dialogues, stood out as a literary masterpiece, not only destined but designed to impress upon a wider audience, both in his own and subsequent generations, the otherwise restricted influence of a relatively isolated churchman. Literary forms, in other words, (for the same observation applied to other Vitae, such as those by Athanasius and Jerome,) were being used to strengthen the effect of ascetic personality. The fruits of these reflections, as far as Martin and Sulpicius are concerned, will be found in Part Four. So it became necessary to inquire further into the mon­ astic life that had nurtured these men. Study of the Life of Martin, and some investigation into its later influence, 2 INTRODUCTION pointed forward to the fact that many bishops in Gaul, during the fifth century, had been products of a monastic environment, not least that of Lerins and other communities in Marseille. This prompted a reading of Cassian, whose works (or at least ideas), it seemed just to suppose, would have provided an essential element in their formation. Im­ pressions gained from Cassian's work are defended in Part Five. In spite of his praise of the eremitic life, in both Insti­ tutes and Conferences, he seemed to be at heart a coenobite: to advocate a spirituality and a monastic discipline that both reflected and encouraged the coenobitic life. Moreover, his com­ ments on the non-monastic world, and on the clergy and epis­ copate, seemed to leave room for a link between the hopes and ideals of the monk-in particular, his conception of authority and discipline-and the pastoral opportunities offered by the church as a whole. Examples of monk-bishops in Cassian's lifetime, such as Rusticus of Narbonne and Honoratus of Lerins, did nothing to belie this impression (and linked the Gaul of Cassian, in some way, with that of Sulpicius), and it was supported further by his own readiness to enter a wider arena of controversy and pastoral concern­ in his Thirteenth Conference on the issue of freedom and grace, and in the De Incarnatione against Nestorius. Finally, it became clear that, while he appeared to reproduce the in­ timate instruction of ascetic masters, delivered to a small circle of disciples, Cassian did so in a literary form, calculated to exert a more impersonal influence upon those who read his works, and in this respect he appeared as a link between the charismatic but transitory influence of the desert father and the greater rigidity of later monastic rules. Here was another species of literary enterprise to place beside that of Sulpicius. Cassian emphasizes respect for tradition; and he points to his fidelity to the practice and principles of the first ascetics in support of his own opinion. Reading Cassian, therefore, one is inevitably led back to Egypt, where he had received much of his ascetic training. In the biographies of Antony and Pachomius, but above all in the Apophthegmata Patrum, features of the ascetic life were revealed similar to those already detected in the pages of Sulpicius and Cassian- INTRODUCTION 3 indeed, they suggested themselves as the explanation of much...