John Cassian

Trained among the monks of Egypt, he founded monasteries near Marseille around 415 and wrote the Institutes and the Conferences, which shaped monastic life in the Western catholic church. In his thirteenth Conference he argued that the first movement of a good will may sometimes arise from the person, with grace then assisting. Later writers labeled this view semi-Pelagian.

Bethlehem and Egypt

Learning from the Desert Monks

John Cassian was born around 360, probably in Scythia Minor, the region near the mouth of the Danube in what is now Romania, though some scholars place his birth in southern Gaul. He came from a well-to-do Christian family and received a good classical education. As a young man he and his friend Germanus entered a monastery at Bethlehem.

Around 385 the two friends went to Egypt to learn from the monks of the desert, and apart from one brief return they stayed for about fifteen years. They visited the famous hermits of Scetis and Nitria, listened to their teaching, and practiced their disciplines of fasting, manual labor, and continual prayer. Cassian absorbed especially the teaching of Evagrius Ponticus, though he never names him.

When Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, turned against the monks who admired Origen around 400, Cassian and Germanus left for Constantinople. There John Chrysostom, the city's bishop, ordained Cassian a deacon. After Chrysostom was driven into exile in 404, the two friends carried a letter on his behalf to Innocent I, bishop of Rome.

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