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Self-Justification in John Cassian's Ascetic Prefaces

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Self-Justification in John Cassian's Ascetic Prefaces GOODRICH/SELF-JUSTIFICATION IN CASSIAN 411 Underpinning the Text: Self-Justification in John Cassian’s Ascetic Prefaces RICHARD J. GOODRICH John Cassian has long been recognized as a master of ascetic theory. It is only in recent years, however, that his abilities as a Latin stylist have begun to be acknowledged. This paper examines how Cassian used the prefaces of his ascetic treatises to win a hearing for his version of the monastic life. His works were intended to influence a highly literate, aristocratic audience, and the strategies he employed to gain admission into this circle of readers offer a valuable insight into the methods of a late antique writer. Sometime around 419 c.e., John Cassian wrote the twelve books of his De institutis coenobiorum et de octo principalium vitiorum remediis (Institutes) for an audience of Gallic bishops and ascetics. This work and the one that followed, the tripartite Collationes patrum (Conferences), purported to contain the distillate of Cassian’s lengthy tutelage at the hands of the Egyptian desert fathers.1 To modern readers familiar with the impact that Cassian’s work had on Western monasticism, it may seem self-evident that Cassian’s light from the East (ex oriente lux) was worth I would like to thank the following individuals for their help and critiques: Gillian Clark, Jill Harries, Conrad Leyser, and the two anonymous reviewers for JECS. Needless to say, any shortcomings that remain in this article are to be attributed to my own obstinancy, rather than a failure of their generous counsel. 1. We lack adequate evidence for the length of Cassian’s stay among the Egyptian desert fathers. The consensus view is 15 years, based on references in Coll. (Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998], 8). Karl Suso Frank, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” SP 33 (1997): 431, argues for a much shorter stay while Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 74, asserts that Cassian had virtually no contact with the Egyptian monks. Journal of Early Christian Studies 13:4, 411–436 © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press 412 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES the attention of his Gallic audience.2 But would this have been the view of his first readers? What right did John Cassian have to prescribe practices for a group that had apparently been getting on well enough without his advice?3 Who gave this foreigner4 the right to delimit authentic asceti- cism, to be the arbiter of Gallic monastic practices? In fact, John Cassian, even with his wealth of experience, faced the same problem as any new writer, ancient or modern: he had to find an audience for his works. The monastic movement was well underway before John Cassian arrived in Gaul. Other authors, such as Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus, Jerome, and Paulinus of Nola, had already articulated versions of the ascetic life which were readily available in Gaul; local aristocrats such as Honoratus of Lérins were forming their own monas- teries. There was no shortage of ascetic advice available: in order to win a hearing for his works, John Cassian would have to justify first his right to write them. Nowhere is this theme of self-justification more evident than in the prefaces of each of his compositions. Cassian bent his formidable rhetori- cal abilities to winning a favorable hearing for his works. While Cassian has been rightly celebrated as a master of ascetic theory, his artistry as both literary stylist and sophisticated rhetorician has been largely over- looked.5 In part this may be due to a historiographical bias that prefers to see Cassian as a humble, self-effacing monk rather than as a sophisticated writer who shaped his texts to foster the illusion of humility and simplic- 2. On the significance of Eastern practices for Western monks, see F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1965), 94–101, 471. 3. For Cassian as just one of a number of sources available for fifth-century Gallic monks, see Philip Rousseau, “Cassian: Monastery and World,” in The Certainty of Doubt: Tributes to Peter Munz, ed. Miles Fairburn and W. H. Oliver (Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press, 1995), 70. 4. The question of Cassian’s birthplace remains open. Supporters of Cassian as a native of the Roman province of Scythia Minor include Owen Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 190–98; Pierre Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 227 n. 5; Theodor Damian, “Some Critical Considerations and New Arguments Reviewing the Problem of St. John Cassian’s Birthplace,” Patristic and Byzantine Review 9 (1990): 149–70; and Stewart, Cassian, 6. A conflicting view sees Cassian as a native son of Roman Gaul, a position held by M. Cappuyn, “Cassien,” Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques 11 (1949): 1321; Frank, “John Cassian,” 422. 5. Albrecht Dihle, Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire: From Augustus to Justinian (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 420, notes that Cassian was an “elegant stylist” but offers no evidence to substantiate this appraisal. GOODRICH/SELF-JUSTIFICATION IN CASSIAN 413 ity.6 We would do well to remember Gennadius’ assessment of Cassian’s merits as a writer: “he wrote, with experience as his teacher, in poised speech (and to speak more openly) choosing his words with sensitivity and enlivening his language with vigour, concerning the matters necessary to the profession of all monks.”7 Gennadius recognized both Cassian’s experience and the compositional care that shaped his presentation for a Gallic audience. Cassian’s golden artistry is the subject of this paper. Through an exami- nation of the prefaces to Cassian’s ascetic treatises, I shall demonstrate the rhetorical strategies he employed to win an audience for his works. As we shall see, his early prefaces dwell on the authorizing weight of the bishops who had commissioned them. The later prefaces differ markedly: here Cassian emphasizes how his works are spreading through the prov- ince of Narbonensis Secunda and how many exemplary ascetics have adopted and ordered their lives by Cassian’s precepts. Finally, I will compare the strategies Cassian employed in the prefaces of his ascetic treatises with those found in the theological polemic, On the Incarnation, a text directed toward an extra-Gallic, pan-Christian audience. As we shall see, in attempting to cultivate an audience, Cassian demonstrated that the humble monk was also a highly educated Roman writer. In addition to offering a shift in our appraisal of Cassian, this analysis will also serve to demonstrate the strategies a late antique Christian writer might employ in order to gain the attention and following of a local audience. INSTITUTES At the heart of each of Cassian’s prefaces is a fundamental, recurrent question: What authorizes him to compose this work? The answer he gives evolves as he gains a readership and is able to portray himself as a more confident writer. Our survey begins with the preface to the Insti- tutes. In the opening lines of his literary debut, we find a very straightfor- ward answer to the question of authority: I write because the great bishop 6. This view is slowly changing. See, for instance Rousseau, Cassian, passim; Conrad Leyser, “Lectio divina, oratio pura: Rhetoric and the Techniques of Asceti- cism in the Conferences of John Cassian,” in Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento, ed. Giulia Barone et. al. (Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994), 79– 105. 7. Gennad. Vir. 62 (TU 14:82.10–13): Scripsit, experientia magistrante, librato sermone et, ut apertius dicam, sensu verba inveniens, et actione linguam movens, res omnium monachorum professioni necessarias. 414 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES Castor has (despite my incredible deficiencies) ordered me to do so. Inextricably linked to this is the notion that since Castor has commanded the production of the work, and Cassian is only obeying his instruction, Castor bears responsibility for what is produced. These four themes—the magnificence of the patron, the patron’s demand for the work, the unwor- thiness of the author, and the patron’s final responsibility for the work— are woven throughout this preface. Indeed, the first three themes feature prominently in the encomium that introduces the Institutes: The history of the Old Testament tells how the most wise Solomon, after having received from heaven wisdom and prudence beyond measure and a breadth of heart as uncountable as the grains of sand at the seashore—so that, by the testimony of the Lord it is said that no one similar to him had ever existed in the past or will arise after him—wanting to erect a magnificent temple to the Lord, asked for help from the foreigner, the king of Tyre. This king sent Hyram, the son of a widow, to Solomon. Whatever magnificent thing the divine wisdom suggested to Hyram, either for the Temple or the sacred vases, he undertook and it was completed through his work and direction. And so if that ruler, so much higher than all of the kingdoms of the earth, that nobler and more excellent offspring of the Israelite people, that wisdom inspired by God which surpassed the knowledge and institutes of all the Easterners and Egyptians, did not disdain the counsel of a poor and foreign man, quite rightly do you, taught by these examples, most blessed Pope Castor . judge it appropriate to summon me, an indigent man and in every way a pauper, to a share in such a great work. Veteris instrumenti narrat historia sapientissimum Salomonem post acceptam diuinitus sapientiam prudentiamque multam nimis et latitudinem cordis quasi harenam maris innumerabilem, ita ut Domini testimonio nullus ei similis retro actis temporibus exstitisse, neque post eum surrecturus esse dicatur, illud magnificum Domino templum exstruere cupientem, alienigenae regis Tyri auxilium poposcisse.
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