The Conferences

Collationes patrum

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.13 · 1.14–2.1 · 2.2–2.13 · 2.14–3.6 · 3.7–3.19 · 3.20–4.18 · 4.19–5.10 · 5.11–5.26 · 5.27–6.10 · 6.11–7.5 · 7.6–7.27 · 7.28–8.12 · 8.13–9.1 · 9.2–9.20 · 9.21–10.4 · 10.5–10.14 · 11.1–11.15 · 12.1–12.10 · 12.11–13.7 · 13.8–13.14 · 13.15–14.8 · 14.9–14.19 · 15.1–16.9 · 16.10–17.3 · 17.4–17.19 · 17.20–17.30 · 18.1–18.14 · 18.15–18.16 · 19.1–19.16 · 20.1–21.4 · 21.5–21.21 · 21.22–22.2 · 22.3–22.14 · 22.15–23.10 · 23.11–24.1 · 24.2–24.17 · 24.18–24.26

1.1Cassian and Germanus, lifelong companions, come to Abba Moses in the desert of Scetis and beg him for instruction until he agrees to speak.
1.2Moses explains that every art has a goal and an end, as the farmer, merchant, and soldier show, and asks the visitors what the goal and end of the monk's life are.
1.3Cassian and Germanus answer that they endure everything for the kingdom of heaven.
1.4Moses teaches that the end of the monk's life is the kingdom of God, but its immediate goal, by which every effort is measured, is purity of heart.
1.5Like archers who need a visible target, monks need purity of heart always before their eyes as the goal by which everything is judged, with eternal life as the end.
1.6Those who renounce great wealth but then quarrel over a pen or a book show that renunciation without love, which is purity of heart, is fruitless.
1.7Fasting, vigils, reading, and poverty are only instruments of perfection; they serve purity of heart, which is love, and must never be kept at the cost of anger or contempt for a brother.
1.8Martha and Mary show that the highest good is contemplation of God, to which all other virtues, however good, are secondary, and which alone will never be taken away.
1.9Germanus and Cassian object that works of mercy cannot be taken away, since Christ rewards them with the kingdom.
1.10Moses answers that the reward of good works remains, but the works themselves, which exist because of bodily need and human inequality, will cease, while love and contemplation continue for ever.
1.11Even the higher spiritual gifts will pass away, but love never fails and will cling to God more intensely in the age to come.
1.12Germanus asks how anyone in the flesh can remain constantly fixed on contemplation of the invisible God.
1.13Constant contemplation is impossible in the flesh, but the mind must keep returning to God; the kingdom of God is within, as righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
1.14Each person will share hereafter in the kingdom he serves now; Moses shows from Scripture and reason that souls after death remain conscious and live more fully, and rejects a heretical punctuation of Luke 23:43.
1.15God is contemplated in many ways, in his creation, justice, providence, mercy, and incarnation, but no one in whom fleshly affections still live can hold such contemplation permanently.
1.16Germanus asks whether the mind can ever be free of stray thoughts that creep in unnoticed.
1.17Thoughts will come, but it lies with us to accept or reject them, and reading, psalmody, vigils, and fasting shape what kind of thoughts grow in the heart.
1.18The mind is like a mill that must always grind; whether it grinds good grain or darnel depends on what we put in through meditation or negligence.
1.19Thoughts come from three sources, God, the devil, and ourselves, each illustrated from Scripture.
1.20Like skilled money-changers, monks must test every thought and teaching for its true metal, its lawful stamp, and its weight, since the devil disguises harmful projects, even pious ones, as good.
1.21The devil deceived Abba John of Lycus into an excessive fast; every proposed action must be weighed against the acts and testimonies of the prophets and apostles.
1.22Discernment tests thoughts in four ways, lest vainglory eat away our treasure; the heart must be searched constantly and ploughed with the remembrance of the cross.
1.23Moses postpones his teaching on discernment to the next day, and the visitors sleep on reed mats with papyrus bundles for pillows.
2.1Moses begins his teaching on discernment, a gift of the Holy Spirit without which a monk stumbles as in the dark.
2.2At a night-long gathering of elders, Antony concludes that discernment, the eye of the soul that keeps the royal road between extremes, is the virtue that most surely leads to God.
2.3Saul and Ahab fell because they lacked discernment, preferring their own sacrifice or mercy to God's command.
2.4Scripture calls discernment the sun, governance, and counsel, and the conference of Antony concluded that it is the mother, guardian, and governor of all the virtues.
2.5The old monk Hero, after fifty years of rigorous solitude, trusted his own judgment, took a demon for an angel, and died after throwing himself into a well.
2.6Two brothers vowed to eat only what God himself gave; when savage tribesmen offered bread, one accepted it as God's gift and lived, while the other refused and starved.
2.7A monk deceived by a demon posing as an angel nearly sacrificed his own son in imitation of Abraham.
2.8A Mesopotamian ascetic, led by visions that showed the Jews in glory and the Christians in darkness, fell away into Judaism and was circumcised.
2.9Germanus asks how true discernment can be acquired and distinguished from false.
2.10True discernment comes from humility: opening every thought to the elders, for an evil thought loses its power once it is confessed.
2.11Abba Serapion told how, as a boy, he secretly stole a biscuit each day until he confessed before his abba, and a burning, sulphurous flame left him; secret thoughts lose their power when confessed to the elders.
2.12Germanus explains that fear of being rebuked, as happened to a brother in Syria, makes monks hide their thoughts from the elders.
2.13Not every old man is a sound elder: Moses tells how an elder crushed a young monk struggling with lust, until Abba Apollo prayed that the elder himself be assailed, teaching him compassion.
2.14God sent the boy Samuel to be taught by the old priest Eli, though Eli had offended God, to show the value of learning humbly from elders.
2.15Christ sent Paul to Ananias, and Paul compared his gospel with the apostles in Jerusalem; no one who despises the elders' teaching will be shown the way of perfection.
2.16Humility gives discernment, which keeps the monk between the equal dangers of excessive fasting and gluttony, or excessive vigils and sleep.
2.17Moses recalls being endangered more by aversion to food and sleep than by desire for them; both must be taken at the proper time, since excessive self-denial is the more ruinous error.
2.18Germanus asks what the right measure of abstinence is.
2.19The elders judged the best measure of food to be bread alone, two small biscuits weighing about a pound a day.
2.20Cassian and Germanus think the measure too generous, since they could not eat it all.
2.21Kept strictly, without extra cooked food even on weekends or for guests, the two-biscuit rule proves hard, as the elders found.
2.22The general rule is to eat what the body needs, not what appetite wants; alternating between fasting and overeating harms prayer and chastity.
2.23Moderate daily eating keeps the body from nocturnal emissions except rarely, and keeps soul and body balanced between fasting and satiety.
2.24Benjamin, who fasted two days at a time so as to eat his fill, trusted his own judgment and ended by leaving the desert for worldly philosophy.
2.25Germanus asks how the fixed measure can be kept when guests arrive after the meal.
2.26Moses advises keeping one biscuit for the evening to share with any visitor, so that both abstinence and hospitality are kept; Cassian closes the first two conferences.
3.1Cassian introduces Abba Paphnutius, presbyter of Scetis, trained in the coenobium, who withdrew so far into the desert that the anchorites called him “the Buffalo”.
3.2When Paphnutius praises their journey, Cassian and Germanus ask him instead for words that will humble them.
3.3Paphnutius announces two themes: the three kinds of calling and the three renunciations required of every monk.
3.4There are three kinds of calling: directly from God, as with Abraham and Antony; through another person, as Israel through Moses; and through necessity or disaster, as in Judges and the Psalms.
3.5The manner of calling matters less than the end: Abba Moses, a murderer who fled to the monastery, became perfect, while Judas fell though called by Christ, and Paul, called against his will, ended gloriously.
3.6The three renunciations, of possessions, of former vices, and of all visible things for the invisible, are figured in God's call to Abraham, in Ps 45, and in the three books of Solomon.
3.7The first renunciation is worthless without the second and third; like Israel longing for Egypt, monks who renounce outwardly but keep their vices gain nothing, as 1 Cor 13 shows.
3.8Vices and virtues are the soul's true possessions, which go with it after death and determine its beauty or foulness.
3.9Scripture speaks of evil, good, and indifferent riches; indifferent riches, such as wealth, become good or evil according to their use.
3.10Outward possessions belong to another; our true possessions are our vices, and renouncing them leads to the third renunciation and to the promised land of purity of heart, which God alone shows, so that both the beginning and the completion of salvation are his gift.
3.11Germanus asks what room is left for free will if God begins and completes our perfection.
3.12Paphnutius answers that between God's call and God's completion lies our response, yet no one reaches perfection without God's continual help, as the Psalms show, since free will is weak and falls unless God upholds it.
3.13The saints asked God for the direction of their way, since, as Jeremiah says, a man's way is not in himself.
3.14The saints ask God himself to teach them the knowledge of his law.
3.15Even David asked God for understanding, and Paul teaches that God works in us both to will and to accomplish; our effort is needed, but without God's help we cannot even strive effectively.
3.16The apostles asked God even for faith, and Christ prayed that Peter's faith would not fail; without Christ we can do nothing, and every good gift comes from above.
3.17Paul teaches that our endurance in temptation and our fitness for every good work come from God.
3.18Jeremiah and Ezekiel show that even the fear of God and a new heart are God's gift.
3.19The beginning of a good will and the perfection of virtue are God's gifts, while our part is to respond earnestly or slackly; Deuteronomy's conquest, the healing of the blind men, and the ten lepers illustrate the distinction.
3.20Nothing happens without God: good things by his will, evil things by his permission when he withdraws his protection from the hardened.
3.21Germanus argues that God's words “if my people had heard me” show that salvation lies in our power.
3.22Paphnutius answers that the same psalm shows both human freedom and God's prior call and help, and dismisses the visitors humbled, realizing they have barely begun the renunciations.
4.1Abba Daniel, a humble monk of Scetis, was ordained deacon and then presbyter by Paphnutius, yet kept serving as a deacon, and died before Paphnutius.
4.2Cassian and Germanus ask Daniel why their prayer sometimes overflows with joy and at other times, for no reason, turns dry and sad.
4.3Spiritual dryness has three causes: our negligence, the devil's attack, or God's testing.
4.4God withdraws his consolation to keep us humble, showing that joy in prayer is his gift, and to test our perseverance so that we guard it better when it returns.
4.5Grace alone works what is good in us; when it withdraws, effort cannot restore the former state, yet it also visits the negligent and unworthy to rouse them.
4.6David prayed not to be forsaken “utterly,” knowing that brief desertion by God is useful for humility and training, as God left the Canaanite nations to train Israel.
4.7The war of flesh and spirit within us, common to all since the fall, is placed there by God for our good, so that we do not simply do whatever we will.
4.8Germanus asks Daniel to explain Gal 5:17 more clearly, distinguishing flesh, spirit, and will.
4.9Daniel praises the question and adds a fourth element: that we do what we do not will; he will first explain flesh and spirit, then the will between them.
4.10Daniel distinguishes four scriptural senses of “flesh”: the whole person, sinful people, sins, and kinship; in Gal 5:17 it refers to activities, not substances.
4.11In Gal 5:17 “flesh” and “spirit” mean contrary desires within one person, each pulling to an extreme: the flesh to comfort and pleasure, the spirit to limitless austerity.
4.12Our lukewarm will wants virtue without pain; the opposing pulls of flesh and spirit check each other, forcing us into the laborious middle way of real virtue, as the confusion of tongues at Babel checked a harmful unity.
4.13The resistance of the body delays our evil intentions and often allows repentance; demons, having no flesh, act at once on their malice and so are worse than men.
4.14Because spirits sin from pure malice without the pull of flesh, their sin has no pardon; so the struggle of flesh and spirit in us is actually beneficial.
4.15The struggle of the flesh benefits us by rebuking slackness and, through involuntary nocturnal emissions after long purity, by humbling our pride and teaching that purity is God's gift.
4.16The fallen angels, who had no flesh, fell by pride alone; the goad of the flesh keeps us humble and watchful against spiritual vices.
4.17Eunuchs often grow lukewarm, thinking themselves free of the struggle; this “soulish” state is worse than the fleshly one.
4.18Germanus asks how the “soulish” person differs from, and is worse than, the fleshly one.
4.19Daniel describes three states, fleshly, soulish, and spiritual; the lukewarm monk who has left open sins but not his other passions is worse than a worldly person or pagan, and is rarely converted.
4.20Many renounce the world outwardly but keep money, seek to rule others as abbots, or show pride in feigned gravity or frivolity; vices disguised as virtues are the hardest to cure.
4.21Monks who renounced great wealth but guard their mats, baskets, and books with the same covetousness have only exchanged, not cut off, their passion.
5.1Cassian introduces Abba Serapion, known for his discernment, who speaks on the vices.
5.2Serapion names the eight principal vices: gluttony, sexual immorality, love of money, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride.
5.3The vices are natural or unnatural, and they differ in whether they need bodily action and whether they are provoked from outside or from within.
5.4Gluttony and lust, rooted in the body, need bodily discipline and withdrawal as well as care of the soul; the spiritual vices are cured by the heart alone and are even exposed and healed by living among others.
5.5Christ was tempted in all things yet without sin, never feeling the goads of fleshly desire, since his conception was by the Holy Spirit.
5.6Christ, the second Adam, was tempted in the same vices as the first Adam, gluttony, vainglory, and pride (or, in Luke's order, love of money and pride), but not in the passions that follow from sin; he came in the likeness of sinful flesh.
5.7Vainglory and pride need no bodily action; Lucifer's fall was accomplished by thought alone.
5.8Love of money, being unnatural, is easily extinguished by true renunciation, unlike the natural vices such as gluttony, which assail even the best monks all their lives.
5.9Sadness and acedia arise from within, troubling even solitaries far from all human company.
5.10The first six vices form a chain, each growing out of the one before, so they must be fought from the root, beginning with gluttony; vainglory and pride, by contrast, grow out of victories over the others.
5.11Serapion lists the kinds of each vice: three of gluttony, three of sexual immorality (intercourse, self-abuse, lustful thought), three of love of money, three of anger, two of sadness, two of acedia, and two of vainglory.
5.12Vainglory can usefully restrain beginners from lust, and it can sustain great fasts, as Macarius observed, but it holds its captive more firmly; pride is fleshly or spiritual, the latter attacking the advanced.
5.13All the vices attack everyone, but a different vice predominates in each person.
5.14Each monk should find his dominant vice and fight it first with fasting, prayer, and tears, relying on God, then move to the next, like a beast-fighter who kills the strongest first.
5.15Victory over the vices must not make us proud, for, as Deuteronomy says, it is God who drives out the nations; our triumphs are due to his help, not to our own strength or free will.
5.16The seven nations of Canaan figure the vices, which are more numerous and stronger than the virtues; all the lesser sins spring from the eight principal vices and die with them.
5.17Germanus asks why Moses counts seven nations when there are eight vices, and what it means to possess the lands of the vices.
5.18The eighth vice, gluttony, is Egypt, already left behind by the monk; the seven nations are the remaining vices, and fasting must be moderate so as not to drive the monk back to Egypt.
5.19Unlike the other vices, the appetite for food cannot be destroyed, only restrained, as Israel was told not to abhor the Egyptian; the other seven vices must be wholly rooted out.
5.20Like an eagle that must descend from the heights to feed on carrion, even the most spiritual monk must eat; gluttony can only be restrained, not destroyed.
5.21An elder puzzled philosophers with a riddle about a creditor who can never be paid off, meaning the belly, and they recognized him as a true moral philosopher.
5.22The ten nations promised to Abraham add idolatry and blasphemy, which the unbaptized are subject to, and gluttony; the renouncing monk fights only the remaining seven.
5.23As each vice is driven out, its contrary virtue takes its place in the heart, reclaiming land that belonged to it.
5.24As Canaan originally belonged to the descendants of Shem, the heart naturally belongs to the virtues, which reclaim it from the usurping vices.
5.25The unclean spirit that returns with seven worse spirits, and Proverbs' enemy with seven wickednesses, signify gluttony and the seven vices that follow if the monk relaxes after overcoming it.
5.26After overcoming gluttony, the monk must fill his soul with virtues, since fasting alone does not bring purity but only prepares for the struggle against the graver vices.
5.27The order of battle against the vices differs for each person; Cassian closes Serapion's conference.
6.1Troubled by the massacre of holy monks near Tekoa by Saracen raiders, Cassian and Germanus ask Abba Theodore of the Cells why God allowed it.
6.2The question troubles those who expect the saints' reward in this life; to avoid blaming God, we must learn Scripture's definition of good and evil.
6.3Only virtue is truly good and only sin truly evil; riches, power, health, life, death, poverty, and injuries are indifferent, good or bad according to their use.
6.4Since only sin is evil, God never allows real evil to befall the saints; the devil could strip and torture Job but could not make him sin.
6.5Germanus cites Scripture passages that say God creates evil.
6.6Scripture calls afflictions “evils” loosely, as a patient calls surgery an evil; the killing of a holy man is not an evil for him but an indifferent thing that brings rest and reward.
6.7Germanus asks why the killer is guilty if his victim gains by the killing.
6.8The killer is punished for his evil intent, while the victim, by patient endurance, turns the evil intended into his own gain.
6.9The outcome does not excuse the intent, as with Judas; for those who love God all things, prosperity and adversity alike, become weapons of righteousness, and prosperity is the more dangerous.
6.10The perfect are “ambidextrous” like Ehud, using both prosperity and adversity as a right hand, as Job, Joseph, and Paul did; the bride of the Song holds the left hand beneath her head and longs for the embrace of the right.
6.11Temptations come for testing, for purification, for punishment of sins, or to reveal God's glory; some sinners are beyond correction and are abandoned, and some are punished in this life as a warning to others.
6.12The righteous mind should be not like wax, taking every impression, but like a diamond seal that stamps its own form on whatever befalls it.
6.13Germanus asks whether the mind can remain in one unchanging state.
6.14The mind cannot stand still: like a boat rowing upstream, it either progresses or is carried back, for only God is unchangeable.
6.15Constant stability in the cell is needed, since every departure sets the monk back and lost progress can never be recovered.
6.16Even angels are changeable, as the fall of some shows; those who stand do so by grace and effort, not by nature, and only God is unchangeably good.
6.17No one falls suddenly; like a house ruined by neglected leaks, the soul collapses through small neglected faults. The visitors leave consoled and instructed.
7.1Cassian introduces Abba Serenus, whose name matched his serenity and who was granted exceptional bodily chastity.
7.2After long prayer, Serenus received from an angel in a vision the removal of all bodily sexual stirring; Cassian and Germanus visit him in Lent and complain about their wandering thoughts.
7.3Cassian and Germanus complain that years in the desert have taught them only what they cannot be: their minds slip away from contemplation like eels, and they begin to think the fault lies in human nature.
7.4Serenus answers that the mind is naturally always moving, but by long practice it can be trained to dwell on spiritual things; wandering thoughts are our fault, not nature's, for we will be judged for them.
7.5The perfect mind is like the centurion who commands soldiers to come and go; armed with faith, love, hope, and the word of God, and strong in weakness and patience, the monk can rule his thoughts.
7.6Clinging to God is possible for those who die to worldly desires; the labor must not be abandoned, for the kingdom suffers violence, and only those who taste God's being all in all now will possess it fully hereafter.
7.7Germanus objects that so many powerful enemies drive the mind that resistance seems impossible.
7.8Demons can suggest but not compel; we are free to consent or refuse, and God's help is stronger than their numbers.
7.9Germanus asks how evil spirits can be so intimately united with the soul that their suggestions are indistinguishable from our own will.
7.10Spirits can influence one another because they are alike, but no created spirit can enter into and contain another; that belongs to God alone.
7.11Germanus objects that possessed persons seem to become instruments of the spirits, speaking their words.
7.12In possession the spirit does not enter the soul's substance but oppresses the bodily organs of thought, as drink or fever can; God forbade the devil to do this to Job.
7.13Only the Trinity can penetrate a soul, for only God is incorporeal; angels and souls have subtle bodies of their own, and God alone sees the heart.
7.14Germanus objects that the devil must know our thoughts, since Scripture says he puts thoughts into our hearts.
7.15Demons cannot see thoughts directly but infer them from outward signs, gestures, and expressions, as shrewd people also do.
7.16Like burglars who sprinkle sand in the dark and listen for the ring of treasure, demons cast suggestions and watch our reactions to learn what is in our hearts.
7.17Different demons specialize in different vices and attack in turn as opportunity allows.
7.18Germanus asks how demons can have an ordered strategy, since Scripture denies wisdom and order to the wicked.
7.19The wicked cannot agree perfectly but cooperate when necessity or gain requires; since contrary vices cannot assault the mind at once, demons take turns.
7.20Demons differ in strength; Christ, the president of the contest, matches the opponents to each monk's progress and gives a way out.
7.21Demons too labor and suffer shame in defeat; the psalms that curse enemies must be read as prayers against these spiritual foes, not against human beings, whom the saints loved.
7.22Demons have no power to harm except by God's permission, as Job and the Gadarene swine show; otherwise no one could live alone in the desert.
7.23The demons are less violent than in the early days of the desert, either because of the power of the cross or because monks' negligence makes fierce attacks unnecessary; some monks must be coaxed just to stay in their cells.
7.24Demons can possess a body only after first taking over the mind, once it has been stripped of the fear and memory of God.
7.25Those enslaved by vices are worse off than the possessed; God sometimes hands even saints over to Satan or illness for slight faults, to purify them fully in this life.
7.26As the disobedient prophet was killed but not eaten by a lion, God chastises saints for small faults: Abba Paul, who fled even the sight of a woman, was paralysed and nursed by nuns for four years, while oil touched by his body healed the sick.
7.27Abba Moses of Calamus, for one harsh word to Macarius, was briefly given over to a demon, but was freed at once by Macarius' prayer, showing it was a purifying chastisement.
7.28The possessed must not be despised, since nothing happens without God's permission, and he hands some over to Satan to purify them for salvation.
7.29Germanus asks why, if possession is purifying, the possessed are excluded from communion in his homeland.
7.30The possessed should be prayed for as fellow members; the Egyptian elders never barred them from communion but would give it daily, since the sacrament drives out the demon.
7.31The truly wretched are sinners who suffer no chastisement in this life, for they are storing up wrath; the Psalms, Jeremiah, and Isaiah lament such incurable prosperity.
7.32Demons have as many pursuits as men: tricksters, night visitors, violent killers, spirits of vanity, inspirers of heresy such as that of Arius and Eunomius, and others signified by the beasts named in Scripture.
7.33Germanus asks where the ranks of evil spirits came from, and whether they were created evil.
7.34Serenus postpones the question of the origin of evil spirits to the next night, as it is almost Sunday dawn and time for church.
8.1After the Sunday liturgy, Serenus serves a festive monastic meal, with a drop of oil taken to humble pride in abstinence, and invites their question.
8.2Germanus asks where the ranks of hostile powers came from, and whether God created them for this purpose.
8.3Scripture is like a field: some passages nourish plainly by the letter, some must be “cooked” by allegory, some serve in both senses, and the simple historical narrative feeds the simple; literal crosses carried by some monks show the danger of misreading.
8.4Plain teachings may be stated firmly, but obscure passages allow more than one reasonable interpretation, as with Elijah in John the Baptist and the abomination of desolation.
8.5Serenus offers his answer on the origin of the demons as a provisional opinion, not touching faith in the Trinity, though grounded on Scripture.
8.6God created nothing evil by nature, as Genesis says all he made was very good; the demons were not created evil.
8.7God created the angels before the visible world, since they praised him at the creation of the stars; Christ is the true “beginning” in whom all things, including all ranks of angels, were made.
8.8Ezekiel's prince of Tyre and Isaiah's Lucifer describe the fall of angelic princes, who drew a third of the stars with them; the fallen powers either keep their former ranks or have formed rival ranks according to their wickedness.
8.9Germanus says he thought the devil fell through envy when he deceived Adam and Eve.
8.10The devil had already fallen through pride before tempting Adam and Eve, since Genesis already calls him the serpent; envy of man's calling to the glory he had lost caused his second fall, after which God set enmity between him and humanity.
8.11In the fall, the serpent, the woman, and Adam were each punished in proportion to their part, showing that both the tempter and the one who yields to evil counsel incur punishment.
8.12The air is thick with spirits, whom God hides from our sight lest we be terrified or corrupted by constantly seeing their unceasing wickedness.
8.13Hostile powers are set over nations and fight one another, as the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece in Daniel oppose Gabriel and Michael.
8.14The fallen powers are called principalities because they rule over nations or lesser demons; Christ will abolish their rule at the end.
8.15The names of the good angelic orders describe their offices: messengers, rulers of angels, dominions, principalities, and thrones on which God's majesty rests.
8.16A monk spending the night in a cave saw a council of demons reporting to their prince; one boasted of having led a well-known monk to sin with a consecrated virgin and marry her, which the monk found at Pelusium to be true.
8.17Each person has a good and a bad angel, as Scripture and the Shepherd of Hermas teach; the adversary who sought Job had always lain in wait for him.
8.18Two philosophers sent ever stronger demons against Antony by magic, but the sign of the cross and prayer repelled them all, proving the power of the Christian profession.
8.19The philosophers became Christians; Antony had felt the attack only as bitter thoughts, confirming that demons cannot seize a soul not first emptied of holy thoughts. Demons obey either the holiness of the faithful or the sacrifices and spells of magicians.
8.20Germanus asks about the angels said to have married the daughters of men (Gen 6), and about who is meant by the devil's “father” in John 8:44.
8.21Spirits cannot have intercourse with women; the “sons of God” of Gen 6 were the righteous descendants of Seth, who married the daughters of Cain's line and were corrupted, turning Adam's natural wisdom to magic, which Ham preserved through the flood; their offspring were the violent giants.
8.22Germanus objects that the Sethites cannot be blamed for intermarriage before any law forbade it.
8.23God implanted the knowledge of the law in human nature from creation; the written law was given later as a help when it had been corrupted, and the patriarchs kept its commands before it was written.
8.24God's original creation was perfect and the natural law sufficed; the written law came when it was corrupted, and the Gospel's higher demands could only follow the law, which answers heretics who accuse the God of the Old Testament of changing his mind.
8.25The devil's “father” is not another spirit, since God alone is the Father of spirits; the devil became a liar and the father of lies by his pride. Serenus closes with a prayer for the fear and love of God, and the visitors leave eager for more.
9.1Cassian introduces the two conferences of Abba Isaac on unceasing prayer, fulfilling a promise made in the Institutes, and dedicates them to Leontius and Helladius in memory of Castor.
9.2Isaac teaches that unceasing prayer is the monk’s goal and is bound up with all the virtues, which must be built like a tower on the foundation of humility and simplicity.
9.3Pure prayer requires first cutting away worldly cares, idle talk, anger, sadness, lust, and avarice, laying the foundation of humility, and preparing the mind beforehand, since whatever occupies it before prayer returns during prayer.
9.4The soul is like a light feather that rises naturally unless it is weighed down by the moisture of vices and worldly cares, so the mind must be purified for prayer to rise to God.
9.5The Lord names surfeiting, drunkenness, and worldly cares as what weighs down the heart; monks escape the literal forms but fall into spiritual forms of them, including acquiring more money, clothing, or cells than need requires.
9.6An elder sees a demon driving a brother on in useless building work; freedom from worldly ambition is shown by refusing even small, respectable-seeming things, and the mind so purified turns everything into pure prayer.
9.7Germanus asks why good thoughts are easily conceived but not kept, sets that question aside for later, and asks what prayer should be and how it can be unceasing.
9.8Isaac explains that prayer takes as many forms as the soul has states, changing with joy, sorrow, temptation, repentance, fear, hope, danger, peace, illumination, or dryness.
9.9Isaac turns to the four kinds of prayer named by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:1 and asks what each means and whether they are offered together, in turn, or by different people according to their progress.
9.10Isaac sets out three questions about the four kinds of prayer, insisting that the Holy Spirit did not arrange the apostle’s order without reason.
9.11Supplication is a plea for pardon of one’s sins, past or present.
9.12“Prayer” in Paul’s list means a vow offered to God, as the Greek word euchē shows; monks make such vows in renouncing the world and promising chastity and patience, and are guilty if they do not keep them.
9.13Intercessions are prayers offered for others, for loved ones, for the peace of the world, and for rulers.
9.14Thanksgivings are offered in rapture when the mind recalls God’s past, present, and promised benefits.
9.15Each of the four kinds can produce fervent prayer and suits a different stage of progress, but a purified mind may combine them all in one flaming, wordless prayer, and even a beginner’s compunction can be as fervent as a saint’s joy.
9.16One should aim at the higher kinds of prayer born of contemplation and love, but reach them step by step through prayers for virtues and against vices.
9.17Christ gave examples of all four kinds of prayer, singly and combined in his great prayer in John 17, and Paul in Philippians shows they can be offered together.
9.18Above the four kinds of prayer is the loving, familiar converse of sons with their Father, taught in the opening of the Lord’s Prayer, whose first petition seeks the Father’s glory above one’s own, as Paul, Micah, and Moses did.
9.19The petition “Thy kingdom come” asks either for Christ’s present reign in the soul through the virtues or for the future kingdom promised to the saints, which only a good conscience can desire.
9.20“Thy will be done” asks that people on earth may do God’s will as the angels do, trusting his providence in all things, or that all may be saved, since that is God’s will.
9.21“Our supersubstantial” or “daily” bread is spiritual food above all creatures, needed every day, and it must be received in this life if one is to share it in the next.
9.22The petition for forgiveness lets us set the measure of God’s judgment on ourselves, so whoever will not forgive others asks for his own condemnation, and it is vain to skip these words when the prayer is said in church.
9.23“Lead us not into temptation” asks not to be spared all testing but not to be overcome in it, as Job, Abraham, and Joseph were tested without consenting.
9.24The Lord’s Prayer asks for nothing temporal, and to ask God for perishable things instead of eternal ones insults his generosity.
9.25The Lord’s Prayer leads the soul beyond words to a rare, fiery, wordless prayer poured out in a moment, of which Christ’s solitary and agonized prayers are the pattern.
9.26Compunction, which kindles fervent prayer, can arise from many occasions: a psalm verse, a brother’s chanting, an elder’s exhortation, a death, or the memory of one’s own negligence.
9.27Compunction shows itself sometimes in cries of joy, sometimes in stunned silence and wordless groaning, and sometimes in tears.
9.28Germanus says he has known joyful tears of compunction but cannot summon them at will and grieves when his eyes stay dry.
9.29Isaac distinguishes kinds of tears: of repentance, of longing for heaven, of fear of judgment, of grief for others’ sins, and of the righteous oppressed by the hardships of this life.
9.30Forced tears are not wholly useless for beginners, but those advanced in virtue should not strain after them, since they drag the mind down from contemplation.
9.31Isaac cites Antony, who rebuked the rising sun for interrupting his prayer and taught that prayer is perfect only when the monk is not even aware that he is praying.
9.32A sign that prayer is heard is untroubled confidence while praying that one has received what one asks, according to Christ’s promise.
9.33Germanus asks how sinners without merits can have confidence that their prayers will be heard.
9.34Isaac lists many grounds on which prayer is heard, above all persevering importunity, which anyone can offer; delays should not discourage, but confidence applies to what accords with God’s will, so every prayer should end, as Christ’s did, “not as I will, but as you will.”
9.35Christ’s command to pray in one’s inner room with the door shut means praying silently from a heart withdrawn from all distractions, so as not to disturb others and to hide one’s petition even from the demons.
9.36Isaac advises frequent but brief prayer as the true sacrifice of a contrite heart; Cassian and Germanus leave for the night, planning to return to learn how unceasing prayer is acquired.
10.1Cassian introduces an episode about a doctrinal error concerning the image of God in Genesis, as a blemish in his account that nevertheless instructs the simple.
10.2Theophilus of Alexandria’s Easter letter condemned the Anthropomorphites, who pictured God in human form; most Egyptian monks rejected it, and in Scetis only Paphnutius let it be read.
10.3The venerable Sarapion, persuaded by the deacon Photinus that God’s image is spiritual and not bodily, accepted the catholic faith but wept in prayer that his God had been taken from him; Cassian and Germanus return to Isaac.
10.4Cassian and Germanus ask Isaac why Sarapion fell into his error and how they themselves can attain the prayer he described.
10.5Isaac traces Sarapion’s error to the habits of paganism, which worshiped gods in human shape; the Anthropomorphites misread Genesis 1:26, whereas pure prayer admits no image, word, or form at all.
10.6According to its purity the mind in prayer sees Jesus either in his humility or in his glory; the glory is shown, as at the Transfiguration, to those who withdraw with him to the mountain of solitude, as he himself withdrew to pray.
10.7Perfection is the fulfilment of Christ’s prayer in John 17, when all a person’s love, thought, and life become God and the whole of life becomes one continual prayer, a foretaste of heaven.
10.8Germanus asks for a simple starting point, like the alphabet for a child, a fixed formula to which the wandering mind can always return in order to keep God continually in remembrance.
10.9Isaac praises the question as a sign of progress and agrees to disclose what he had held back in the first conference.
10.10Isaac gives the verse “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me” as the formula for continual remembrance of God, shows how it fits every temptation and every consolation, and urges that it be repeated at all times, even in sleep.
10.11Holding to this one verse makes the monk poor in spirit, a beggar before God; from there he rises to the mysteries of Scripture, praying the psalms as if he had written them from his own experience, and reaches pure, wordless prayer.
10.12Germanus welcomes the verse as perfection itself and asks how to keep hold of it steadily.
10.13Germanus describes how the mind drifts from text to text and cannot attend even during the office, and asks how to keep the verse steadily.
10.14Isaac names vigils, meditation, and prayer, supported by work and freedom from cares, as what steadies the mind; Cassian reflects that the single-verse method proved harder than it looked but is open to the unlearned.
11.1Cassian and Germanus leave their Syrian monastery for Egypt and arrive by sea at Thennesus, a town surrounded by sea and salt marsh.
11.2Bishop Archebius of Panephysis, a former anchorite who counted himself unworthy of the desert, receives them and offers to lead them to holy elders nearby.
11.3Archebius leads them to Panephysis, whose once fertile land an earthquake had turned into salt marsh, leaving island mounds where the aged anchorites Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph lived.
11.4The centenarian Chaeremon, bent double with age and prayer, at first refuses to teach, saying one should not teach what one no longer practises.
11.5They press Chaeremon to speak, pleading the length of their journey from their monastery in Bethlehem.
11.6Chaeremon teaches that people refrain from sin through fear of punishment, hope of reward, or love of goodness itself; the third belongs to God and to those who bear his image.
11.7Using the parable of the prodigal son, Chaeremon describes three stages, slave, hired servant, and son, and urges progress from fear through hope to the love that loves God for himself.
11.8One who avoids sin for love of goodness itself is steadier than one who does so from fear or hope of reward, whose restraint lapses when fear is gone; the lover of purity keeps it the same in solitude as in company.
11.9Those who reach the love of sons imitate God’s goodness, showing mercy rather than anger to sinners and loving enemies; the saying that those born of God do not sin refers to capital sins, since even the saints commit small faults.
11.10The perfect pray for their persecutors as Christ did, while harsh judgment of others is a sign of unpurified vices and brings one into the same sins.
11.11Germanus objects that Scripture praises the fear of God and shows David and Moses acting in view of reward, so how can fear and hope be imperfect?
11.12Chaeremon answers that Scripture calls people to different degrees of perfection; fear and hope are good and lead to blessedness, but love, which surpasses even the spiritual gifts and martyrdom, makes the perfect more perfect.
11.13Perfect love produces a higher fear, the loving reverence of a son or friend who dreads only to offend, which Scripture calls a treasure and which filled Christ, unlike the servile fear that love casts out.
11.14Germanus asks whether perfect and lasting chastity, free from every stirring of lust, is possible in this life.
11.15Chaeremon postpones the question on chastity until after a meal, since the body too must be cared for.
12.1Chaeremon takes up whether the fire of desire can be wholly extinguished, explaining that the “members” Paul tells us to put to death are not bodily limbs but the members of the body of sin.
12.2Chaeremon explains the five members named in Colossians 3:5: sexual immorality, uncleanness (including involuntary pollution, as in the law), lust, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry because it prefers money to God.
12.3Since Paul lists sexual sins alongside covetousness and other sins that can plainly be overcome, and forbids them even to be named, their total extinction must be possible.
12.4Ascetic labors are necessary but cannot by their own merit produce lasting chastity, which is God’s gift; the monk must desire it passionately, credit it to God’s protection, and guard it by humble prayer.
12.5The struggle against the flesh is useful, as the sluggishness of eunuchs shows; bodily desires are overcome only when spiritual delights replace them, and then the monk knows by experience that God keeps him at his right hand.
12.6Chastity grows with meekness and patience, which bring the “abundance of peace” promised to the meek; until it is secure, the monk will experience relapses, which teach him that his purity is God’s gift.
12.7Chaeremon distinguishes six degrees of chastity, from freedom from attack while awake to freedom from erotic dreams in sleep, beyond which lies the rare gift of Serenus; he notes differing views on the cause of nocturnal emissions.
12.8Only experience can show what is truly natural in the body; those who blame nature or God for pollutions caused by their own negligence are mistaken, and the truly pure are the same by night as by day.
12.9Germanus asks whether freedom from bodily arousal is possible in sleep, since the mind is then off guard and a full bladder causes arousal even in children and eunuchs.
12.10Chaeremon distinguishes continence, which fights pleasure by effort, from chastity, which loves purity for itself and is secure even in sleep; eunuchs lack only generative power, not desire, and must also strive.
12.11True chastity is lasting peace in which flesh and spirit agree, the passage from Jacob’s wrestling to Israel’s vision, where God dwells; involuntary arousal in sleep does no harm to the pure, and moderation even in drinking water helps, so that the flesh becomes like the burning bush that is not consumed.
12.12The wonderful works of God that the psalmist praises are the inner transformations he works in the saints, turning gluttons to abstinence, the lustful to chastity, the angry to gentleness, and persecutors to apostles, known only to those who experience them.
12.13Like the taste of honey, the joy of these gifts cannot be described but only known by experience; God’s wonderful work is a steadfast soul, like the old man in Alexandria who said Christ’s miracle was that he was not moved by insults.
12.14Germanus, daunted by so high an ideal, asks for the method and time needed to attain it.
12.15Chaeremon prescribes withdrawal from idle talk and anger, two small loaves a day, limited water, and three or four hours’ sleep, with trust in God’s mercy rather than one’s own effort, and says that within six months one will know chastity is possible.
12.16The key victory is to hope for chastity from God and not oneself; Chaeremon sums up perfect chastity as freedom from lust awake and from deceiving dreams asleep, and sends them to rest.
13.1Germanus is troubled that Chaeremon seemed to deny any merit to human effort in attaining chastity, and Chaeremon asks what is troubling them.
13.2Germanus objects that chastity, won by one’s own labor, should be credited to that labor, as a farmer’s harvest is to his work.
13.3Chaeremon answers that the farmer’s own example shows that effort achieves nothing without God, who sends rain, gives strength, and averts disaster; the beginning of good actions and thoughts is from God, and it is ours to follow his grace or resist it.
13.4Germanus objects that this view destroys free will, since pagan philosophers, ignorant of God and his grace, are said to have attained chastity by their own effort.
13.5Chaeremon replies that the pagan philosophers had only a partial chastity, restraining outward acts but not inner desire, as sayings of Socrates and Diogenes show; true chastity, the circumcision of the spirit, is God’s gift.
13.6Chaeremon argues that nothing concerning salvation, least of all chastity and its ascetic means, can be accomplished without God’s help, which gives both the desire and the power and opportunity to carry it out.
13.7God wills all to be saved and calls all without exception; whoever perishes does so against his will, and he fosters every spark of good will, whether he struck it himself or found it in us.
13.8Like a lover spurned by an unfaithful woman, God persists in seeking our salvation; his providence goes before us, and he strengthens every beginning of good will, whether he planted it or it sprang from our own effort.
13.9Scripture speaks both of human choice and of God’s initiative, so both grace and free will are declared: a person can sometimes by nature begin to desire the good, but always needs God’s help to accomplish it.
13.10Chaeremon sets pairs of Scripture texts side by side, each affirming human free will and at the same time its weakness and need of God.
13.11Chaeremon poses the question whether God’s mercy follows our good will or precedes it; Scripture gives examples of both, so grace and free will, though they seem opposed, must both be held according to the church’s faith.
13.12God did not make man incapable of good: the knowledge of good survived the fall, the seeds of virtue are implanted by nature, and David’s good intention was his own; yet they need God’s help to grow, and Scripture shows God and man each anticipating, inviting, and seeking the other.
13.13Grace cooperates with the will, sometimes waiting for some effort from it, yet remains free, since slight efforts receive an immeasurable reward; David’s sin and confession were his own, his pardon was God’s gift, and Paul’s labors were his yet done by grace with him.
13.14God tests people as he did Job, the centurion, and Abraham, not shielding them so completely that no room is left for their own strength; like a nurse teaching a child to walk, he supports, lets them struggle, and rescues them.
13.15God calls people to salvation in countless ways, as the gospel calls and healings show: some unasked, some at their request, some against their will, according to each person’s faith and capacity.
13.16Chaeremon rejects the view that grace is given according to merit and all depends on free will; grace often exceeds human faith, as in the healings of the official’s son, the paralytic, the man at the pool, and the lame man at the temple.
13.17God saves in countless unsearchable ways, sometimes compelling the unwilling, sometimes helping the willing, sometimes inspiring the first desire; no one can fathom these ways, and God’s love surpasses even a mother’s.
13.18Chaeremon concludes that God works all in all, inspiring good will, enabling good works, and granting perseverance, yet without destroying free will; how both are true is beyond human reason and must be held by faith.
14.1Abba Nesteros explains that spiritual knowledge, like every art, has its own order, and is twofold: practical knowledge, which cleanses from vices, and contemplative knowledge of divine things.
14.2Practical knowledge must come first, since contemplation cannot be reached without it, and God’s Spirit does not dwell in one subject to sin.
14.3Practical knowledge means first understanding and curing the vices, then being formed by the virtues; uprooting vices takes twice the labor of planting virtues, as Jeremiah’s commission shows.
14.4Practical virtue takes many forms: solitude in the desert, governing monasteries, hospitality, care of the sick, intercession for the oppressed, teaching, and almsgiving.
14.5Each monk should persevere in the calling he has chosen while admiring others’ gifts, since the church is one body with differing members and gifts.
14.6Trying to imitate every admired virtue at once leads to failure; there are many ways to God, and each should follow his own steadily.
14.7Nesteros warns against imitating extraordinary examples, telling of a married peasant who drove out a demon Abba John could not, and who had kept his wife as a virgin for twelve years; John admired but forbade imitation.
14.8Contemplative knowledge divides into historical and spiritual understanding, the latter threefold, tropology, allegory, and anagogy, so that Jerusalem can mean the Jewish city, the church, the heavenly city, or the soul; Nesteros links these to Paul’s revelation, knowledge, prophecy, and teaching.
14.9Nesteros tells Cassian (John) that spiritual knowledge requires purity of heart and practical discipline; he must keep silent, learn from the elders, act before teaching, and not mistake eloquence for spiritual knowledge.
14.10True knowledge of Scripture requires humility and constant meditation, which makes the mind like the ark of the covenant; memorized Scripture guards against evil thoughts and yields its meaning later, even in sleep.
14.11Scripture’s meaning deepens as one grows: the command against sexual immorality applies literally to the carnal, and spiritually to idolatry and pagan superstition, to Judaizing observance, to heresy, and finally to any wandering thought away from God.
14.12Cassian confesses that the poems and war stories of his classical education return to his mind even in prayer, and despairs of being rid of them.
14.13Nesteros tells Cassian to replace the poems with equally diligent study of Scripture, since the mind cannot be empty, and to receive even familiar teachings eagerly; the Scripture thus stored will become a spring flowing from his heart.
14.14Only experience qualifies one to teach, and an impure soul, like a foul jar, cannot receive or keep spiritual knowledge however much it reads.
14.15Germanus objects that many impure people, Jews, heretics, and sinful catholics, are learned in Scripture, while many holy men are not.
14.16Nesteros replies that the impure have only skill in words, “knowledge falsely so called”; true knowledge follows the order of practical virtue, above all chastity, as the prophet, the psalmist, and Paul show, and may flourish even in the unlettered.
14.17The mysteries of Scripture should not be thrown before the impure or taught for vainglory, but given to penitents who are weighed down by sorrow; teaching for human praise is lending the Lord’s money at usury.
14.18Spiritual teaching fails either because the teacher lacks experience or because the hearer’s heart is hardened.
14.19God sometimes grants the gift of teaching even to the unworthy for others’ salvation; the question of gifts of healing is deferred to the evening.
15.1Nesteros explains three sources of healings: the holiness of saints, God’s working even through sinners for the faith of others, and demonic deception meant to discredit religion or puff up the healer.
15.2One should judge holiness not by miracles but by freedom from vice and by love, which Paul ranks above all spiritual gifts; the fathers used miraculous powers only in extreme necessity.
15.3Macarius, founder of the settlement at Scetis, challenged a Eunomian heretic to raise a dead man; when the heretic fled, Macarius raised an ancient corpse before the people, acting only from love and necessity, as Elijah did.
15.4Abba Abraham the Simple restored a nursing mother’s milk with a cup of water signed with the cross.
15.5Challenged by mockers, Abraham called on Christ’s name and healed a lame man’s withered knee.
15.6The saints ascribed their miracles to God, since even reprobates can work wonders in Christ’s name, and Christ told his disciples to rejoice not in power over demons but that their names are written in heaven.
15.7Christ told his disciples to learn humility from him, not miracles; love and humility mark his disciples, and monks who advertise themselves as exorcists are vainglorious.
15.8Overcoming one’s own lust, anger, and sadness is a greater miracle than casting out demons or healing bodies, since the soul is worth more than the body.
15.9The apostles were not to glory in exorcisms, which were done by God’s name, but in the purity for which their names were written in heaven.
15.10Paphnutius, burned while cooking, learns from an angel that fire will not spare him while carnal desire remains, and concludes that conquering inner lust is greater than conquering demons; Nesteros then sends them on to Abba Joseph.
16.1Abba Joseph of Thmuis, a well-born and bilingual elder, learns that Cassian and Germanus are brothers in spirit rather than by blood, and begins to speak on friendship.
16.2Joseph lists the ordinary kinds of friendship, from recommendation, contract, shared work, or kinship, shared even by animals and criminals, which do not last because distance, time, or quarrels dissolve them.
16.3The only indissoluble friendship rests on likeness in virtue and a single will; friendships in which one partner is weak or lukewarm break, and true unity is of character, not of place.
16.4Germanus asks what to do if one friend wants to do something good and the other disagrees.
16.5Joseph replies that perfect friendship exists only among the perfect, who rarely disagree, and offers to explain the path toward it.
16.6Joseph gives six foundations of lasting friendship: contempt for possessions, cutting off one’s own will, preferring peace to everything, never being angry, healing a brother’s anger against oneself, and daily remembrance of death.
16.7Nothing should be preferred to love, and anything, however useful, should be given up to avoid anger.
16.8The enemy divides spiritual men through disputes about ideas, as he divides carnal men over property; contention breeds hatred.
16.9Giving up possessions is not enough to keep love; disputes over spiritual ideas must also be cut off by humility.
16.10Joseph recalls how ideas that seemed brilliant proved false when examined with his companion, and how the elders’ rule, never to trust one’s own judgment above a brother’s, prevented quarrels.
16.11Since Satan disguises error as light, one must submit one’s ideas to a mature brother or elder and humbly count others’ judgment above one’s own.
16.12Even the learned can err and the simple see truly, so no one should think he needs no counsel; Paul himself went to Jerusalem to submit his gospel to the other apostles.
16.13Love is so divine that John calls it God, and Paul says it is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who prays within us.
16.14Joseph distinguishes agapē, the love owed to all, even enemies, from diathesis, special affection for a few; Jacob’s love for Joseph and Christ’s for John show that love can be ordered without hating anyone.
16.15Some monks, instead of making peace after a quarrel, withdraw to sing psalms, which only feeds their pride and the quarrel, contrary to Christ’s command to be reconciled first.
16.16Christ refuses our prayers until we have reconciled with a brother who has anything, even trivial, against us; to excuse ourselves from this command is to make ourselves judges of the law.
16.17Some monks excuse their anger against a brother as more justified than against a pagan, but Christ’s warning concerns precisely anger against a brother.
16.18Mocking silence and scornful gestures that inflame a brother’s anger are as guilty as open insults, since God judges intention; such false patience is like Judas’s treacherous kiss.
16.19Some monks fast for days out of anger, which is sacrilege, like sacrificing to demons rather than to God.
16.20Some provoke others to strike them and then turn the other cheek in anger, misusing Christ’s command, which aims to uproot anger.
16.21Germanus asks how turning the other cheek can be blameworthy.
16.22Joseph explains that turning the other cheek means the inner man yielding in humility so as not to be moved within; patience must be inward and aim to calm the other, not win glory at his expense.
16.23The one who yields his will to his brother’s is the stronger; giving up some strictness for the sake of peace loses nothing of perfection, for the strong must bear the weak.
16.24The weak are quick to insult but cannot bear insult, so lasting love is possible only between those of equal virtue.
16.25Germanus asks whether the patience of the perfect cannot then bear the weak for ever.
16.26A weak partner may eventually break away despite a strong one’s patience; to keep friendship, one should keep inner calm, fall silent when disturbed, and remember past and future love even in anger.
16.27Anger must be restrained by discernment and dissolved in a heart made wide by patience; “giving place to wrath” means humbly yielding, not walking away, and anger that must be hidden should be hidden in order to die.
16.28Friendships founded on sworn compacts do not last, since they rest on obligation rather than virtue and the enemy works to break the oath; true concord exists only among the virtuous.
17.1Unable to sleep after Joseph’s conference, Cassian and Germanus go out at night to talk privately.
17.2Germanus is torn between the greater spiritual profit of staying in Egypt and the sworn promise to their elders at Bethlehem to return soon.
17.3Cassian proposes that they put the question to Joseph and accept his answer as from God; after the night office they sit down with him.
17.4Joseph, echoing the patriarch Joseph, asks why they are sad and invites them to share their trouble.
17.5Germanus explains that they promised in the cave of the Nativity to return, but that returning would harm their progress, while staying would make them liars and perjurers; once back, their elders would never let them leave again.
17.6Joseph asks whether they are sure they will progress more in Egypt.
17.7Germanus answers that the Egyptian way of life is far superior and cannot be learned in passing but only by staying.
17.8Joseph advises that when every choice brings loss, one should choose the lesser loss; a rash promise may be broken, as a single past fault, rather than accept continual spiritual harm, and correcting a bad promise is not inconstancy.
17.9Peter rightly broke his vow not to let Christ wash his feet, while Herod kept a rash oath and killed John the Baptist; the end must decide whether a decision should be kept.
17.10Germanus wants to stay but fears Christ’s command to let one’s yes be yes, believing that nothing begun with a broken promise can end well.
17.11Joseph teaches that intention, not outcome, determines the moral worth of an act.
17.12Judas was condemned though his act served salvation, while Jacob’s deceit of his father was blessed because of his intention; God judges the aim of the mind, and Joseph asks why they made their promise.
17.13Germanus says they promised in order not to grieve their elders, and because they wrongly thought they could practise at home what they learned in Egypt.
17.14Since they made their promise from desire for perfection, and that same desire is better served by staying, breaking it keeps the true goal, a pure heart, and is not a breach of their spiritual vow.
17.15Germanus objects that such teaching would give the weak an excuse to lie, which Scripture sternly forbids.
17.16Abba Joseph argues that the Old Testament accounts of saints' “dispensations” must not be denied or allegorized away merely because some misuse them.
17.17Joseph compares lying to hellebore, a poison that heals only in extreme need, and cites Rahab and Jacob as saints who lied for a good end.
17.18Germanus objects that deceptions allowed in the Old Testament, like David's, are forbidden under the gospel, which rules out every lie.
17.19Joseph answers that lies were condemned in the Old Testament too, but that deceptions for another's safety, like Hushai's and the woman who hid David's messengers, are right even under the gospel.
17.20Joseph argues that Paul too practised useful pretence, becoming all things to all, and that truth told by Doeg brought ruin while Rahab's lie brought blessing.
17.21Joseph raises everyday cases: whether a monk should conceal his fast from a visiting brother, and whether he should refuse a drink offered in love.
17.22Germanus agrees that a fast may be concealed but says a monk need not lie in refusing hospitality.
17.23Joseph replies that the Egyptian elders held it better to yield to others and to conceal abstinence by a humble lie than to parade it by the truth.
17.24Joseph cites Abba Piamun, who broke his abstinence rather than reveal it, and elders who told their own deeds as others', like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.
17.25Joseph gives many scriptural examples of saints who deceived for a good end and of decisions changed for a better reason, including God's own threats to Hezekiah, Nineveh and Saul.
17.26Joseph teaches that even an oath made in passion should be set aside if a sounder judgment finds the other course more just.
17.27Germanus asks how the Psalmist's vow to keep God's judgments fits with this teaching.
17.28Joseph distinguishes the principal commandments, to be kept at the cost of death, from ascetic practices, which may be relaxed for a better reason.
17.29Joseph advises that a secret let slip is better kept by passing over it lightly than by binding the hearer with an oath.
17.30Joseph warns against binding oneself by rigid vows about ascetic practice; Cassian then tells how he and Germanus kept their promise to return to their monastery before going back to Scetis, and closes the second set of Conferences.
18.1Cassian and Germanus travel to Diolcos in the Nile Delta, where the aged anchorite and presbyter Abba Piamun receives them and begins to teach.
18.2Piamun warns that one who comes to Egypt only to look at monasteries, without adopting their rules, gains nothing and is suspected of seeking only a living.
18.3Newcomers must drop their former customs and imitate the elders humbly, without demanding reasons, since learning by argument leads to self-willed error.
18.4Piamun names the three kinds of monks in Egypt: cenobites and anchorites, both excellent, and the lukewarm Sarabaites.
18.5Piamun traces cenobitic life to the Jerusalem church of Acts, whose common life was kept by those who withdrew when the church as a whole grew lax.
18.6The anchorites grew out of the cenobites, founded by Paul and Antony, who went into the desert to fight the demons openly, following biblical models of solitude.
18.7Piamun describes the Sarabaites, self-governed monks who work for their own profit, contrasts them with obedient cenobites, and says they are common outside Egypt.
18.8A fourth, recent kind of monk leaves the coenobium early for solitude to escape correction, and so nourishes hidden vices instead of conquering them.
18.9Germanus asks whether a coenobium and a monastery are the same thing.
18.10Piamun explains that “monastery” names any monks’ dwelling, even of one monk, while “coenobium” means a community living under a common discipline.
18.11Piamun warns against feigned humility, illustrated by Abba Serapion’s exposure of a self-abasing young man who resented a mild rebuke, and says true humility shows in patience under insult.
18.12Germanus asks how inner calm can be acquired and kept, suggesting that only solitude can preserve meekness.
18.13Piamun teaches that patience rests on humility, not on solitude, and is proven in trials, as the parable of the two houses shows.
18.14An Alexandrian woman asks Athanasius for the most difficult widow to care for, and through her insults attains perfect patience.
18.15The young Paphnutius, falsely accused of theft by an envious monk, does penance in silence until the accuser, possessed by a demon, confesses and is healed only by Paphnutius’s prayers.
18.16Piamun concludes that peace must be found within, not in solitude or good company, warns that envy is the most incurable vice, and so fires Cassian and Germanus with desire for the solitary life.
19.1At a crowded festival in Abba Paul’s coenobium, a young monk slapped by the abbot for slowness bears it without the least change of word or face.
19.2Cassian and Germanus meet the aged Abba John, who has left the desert for Paul’s coenobium, and ask him why.
19.3John explains that after fifty years as cenobite and anchorite he returned to the coenobium because desert life had become entangled with material cares, and asks leave to speak freely.
19.4John tells how in the desert he was often so rapt in contemplation that he forgot whether he had eaten, so that monks counted out a week’s loaves to keep track of the days.
19.5When the desert grew crowded and hospitality brought material cares, John chose the coenobium, where obedience and freedom from care for tomorrow make up for lost contemplation.
19.6John lists the cares and luxuries that have crept into the desert and says the coenobium gives him freedom from care, quiet of heart, and the obedience of Christ.
19.7Germanus asks John to state the end of the cenobite and of the hermit.
19.8John says the end of the cenobite is to crucify his own will and take no thought for tomorrow, and the end of the hermit is a mind stripped of earthly things and united to Christ.
19.9Perfection in both lives is rare, but Moses, Paphnutius, and the two Macarii had it, loving solitude yet patiently receiving the crowds who came to them.
19.10Monks who go into solitude before being purified in the coenobium grow wild, cannot bear either visitors or silence, and mistake avoiding people for virtue.
19.11Germanus asks how those who left the coenobium too early can gain patience in solitude and know whether they really have it.
19.12John explains that solitude only represses the outward acts of unhealed vices, and gives signs by which a solitary can detect lingering impatience, anger, avarice, lust, and pride.
19.13Germanus asks for the remedies to the vices diagnosed and fears that those who left the coenobium imperfect can never be perfected in the desert.
19.14John prescribes that the solitary rehearse imagined insults to train patience, rebuke himself sharply when any disturbance is revealed, and hold that anger is never lawful.
19.15Germanus asks whether lust too can be cured by deliberately imagining its provocations, which he thinks contrary to chastity.
19.16John answers that lust, unlike anger, must be starved of every memory, and that only the fully mature may test their chastity by an imagined temptation, and ends the conference at the ninth hour.
20.1Cassian recalls how the famous abbot Pinufius twice fled his honors to live as an unknown novice, first at Tabennesi and then in Cassian’s own monastery in Palestine, and was twice discovered.
20.2Visiting Pinufius in Egypt, Cassian and Germanus hear his address to a new monk on renunciation, fall into despair at its height, and bring their distress to him.
20.3Germanus says the height of Pinufius’s teaching has cast them into despair and asks to learn the end of repentance and the sign that satisfaction has been made.
20.4Pinufius praises their humility, notes that many have written on the power of repentance, and agrees to speak on what others have neglected: its end and the sign of satisfaction.
20.5Pinufius defines repentance as never committing the sins again, and the sign of forgiveness as the disappearance of all affection for them, even their memory and image.
20.6Germanus objects that remembering one’s sins seems necessary for compunction, tears, and humility, and says he deliberately recalls his.
20.7Pinufius answers that remembering sins belongs to those still doing penance; once tears and purity of heart have removed the sting of memory, forgiveness is complete.
20.8Pinufius lists the many means of forgiveness after baptism and martyrdom, among them love, almsgiving, tears, confession, affliction, amendment, the prayers of the saints, converting others, forgiving others, and above all God’s mercy, and urges mortification.
20.9Pinufius forbids deliberately recalling past sins, which defiles the mind and can rekindle pleasure; such memories must be fled at once and the mind raised to heavenly things.
20.10Compunction should be roused by desire for virtue and heaven, not by dwelling on vices, as one who stirs a sewer is choked by its stench.
20.11Satisfaction is complete only when the inner movements toward sin are removed, which requires cutting off each sin’s cause, such as familiarity with women, excess of wine, love of money, or pride.
20.12Pinufius limits the forgetting of sins to grave crimes; for daily small faults repentance never ends, and the perfect must also press on to positive virtue and love.
21.1Cassian introduces Abba Theonas, married young by his parents, who after five years brings offerings to Abba John, steward of the diaconia, and hears him preach.
21.2Abba John praises the donors’ tithes and first fruits, but says that by them they fulfil only the righteousness of the old law, which cannot bring perfection.
21.3Under the law tithes went to the Levites and first fruits (about a fiftieth) to the priests, and the righteous show they are above the law by giving more than it requires.
21.4Abraham, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Elisha, and the Rechabites went beyond the law, offering not tithes but themselves to God.
21.5Christians are called beyond tithes to the Gospel’s counsel of perfection, which Christ offers to free will rather than imposing as a law with curses, so that the great may be crowned and the lesser still spared.
21.6The Gospel both raises the strong to perfection and pardons the weak, whereas the law leaves its keepers only halfway between condemnation and glory.
21.7Each person chooses to live under grace or under law; merely keeping the law’s requirements, like tithing, leaves one short of the Gospel, which demands everything.
21.8Moved by John’s words, Theonas resolves to follow the Gospel and urges his wife with tears to join him in serving God in chastity.
21.9Theonas’s wife refuses to join him, warning that she may sin if deserted; he argues from the Gospel that the call to perfection outweighs marriage, and when she will not yield he leaves her for the monastery, later becoming head of the diaconia.
21.10Cassian insists that he does not encourage the breaking of marriages, affirms marriage as honorable, and leaves judgment of Theonas’s act to the reader, noting that God and the elders approved him.
21.11Cassian and Germanus ask Theonas why Egyptian monks do not kneel or fast until the ninth hour during the fifty days after Easter.
21.12Theonas begins by saying that the fathers’ customs deserve obedience even unexplained, and that, as Ecclesiastes teaches, things neither good nor bad in themselves are good or bad according to their time and use.
21.13Theonas argues that fasting cannot be a good in itself like the virtues, since then eating would be evil, which Scripture denies.
21.14Fasting is intermediate, like marriage or vigils: good in its right time and manner, but wrong when it shuts out hospitality, harms health, ignores festivals, or seeks praise, as Isaiah 58 shows.
21.15Fasting serves the virtues, especially love, as tools serve an art, and is worthless when kept for its own sake.
21.16Theonas gives the marks of a principal good and shows that fasting has none of them, since it serves purity of heart, can be harmful out of season, and its opposite, eating, is not evil.
21.17Because fasting has set times, manner, and measure, it is intermediate, whereas commanded virtues and forbidden vices admit no exceptions of time.
21.18Christ’s answer that the bridegroom’s friends cannot fast while he is with them shows that fasting is not always fitting, and applies especially to the forty days after the resurrection.
21.19Germanus asks why the fast is relaxed for fifty days when Christ remained only forty days after the resurrection.
21.20Theonas explains that the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost complete the fifty days foreshadowed by the Feast of Weeks, and that like Sundays they exclude fasting and kneeling as signs of mourning.
21.21Germanus fears that fifty days of relaxed fasting will rekindle the passions, especially in the young.
21.22Theonas answers that conscience, weighing body and soul fairly, will prevent the festive relaxation from harming chastity, and warns against unjust weights: excessive rigor, stinting God, and demanding more of others or showing more to them than one practices.
21.23During the fifty days the only relaxation should be taking the meal at the sixth hour instead of the ninth, with no change in the amount or kind of food, so that chastity won in Lent is not lost.
21.24Germanus asks why Lent lasts six weeks when, without Saturdays and Sundays, that makes thirty-six fast days, not forty.
21.25Theonas explains that Lent is a tithe of the year: thirty-six and a half fast days, reckoned from seven weeks without Saturdays and Sundays, plus the Easter vigil and its night.
21.26Monks offer God daily first fruits by giving him their first waking thoughts, words, and movements in prayer before anything else, and must guard these morning moments from the devil’s suggestions.
21.27Six-week and seven-week Lents give the same thirty-six fast days, since those who keep six weeks also fast on Saturdays.
21.28Theonas suggests Lent is called Quadragesima from the forty-day fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, or from the name of a tax, and notes that demons attack monks especially then, like Pharaoh oppressing Israel.
21.29The Lenten fast was set by church leaders for those absorbed in worldly life; the perfect, who give God all their time, are not bound by it and may relax it for a holy reason.
21.30Lent did not exist in the first church, which fasted all year; it was imposed later on lax believers as a kind of tithe, while the perfect live beyond it under grace.
21.31Germanus asks how Paul can say sin has no dominion over Christians when nearly all the baptized are still slaves of sin.
21.32Theonas contrasts law and grace: the law commends marriage, tithes, retaliation, and hatred of enemies; grace calls to virginity, total renunciation, nonresistance, and love of enemies.
21.33Under grace, love of God excludes sin; under the law, marriage, tithing, and retaliation leave room for lust, avarice, and anger, whereas grace uproots these by virginity, total renunciation, and love of enemies.
21.34To be under grace is to fulfil Christ’s counsels; those who neither keep the law nor follow the Gospel but use grace as license are under a double dominion of sin.
21.35Germanus asks why bodily struggles and nocturnal emissions sometimes grow worse during strict fasting, leaving monks ashamed to pray.
21.36Theonas praises their concern for inner purity rather than outward continence and postpones the question to a later conference because the night is nearly over.
22.1A week after Pentecost Cassian and Germanus return to Theonas, who gladly resumes the postponed question.
22.2Theonas restates the question: why nocturnal emissions sometimes occur more during strict fasting than during relaxation.
22.3Theonas gives three causes of nocturnal emissions: past overeating, a slothful mind still harboring passions, and the devil’s attempt to keep monks from communion, and warns that gluttony breeds the other vices.
22.4Germanus asks whether a monk who has had a nocturnal emission should receive communion.
22.5Theonas rules that an emission without pleasure or consent, caused by nature or the devil, need not keep a monk from communion, but one caused by his own fault should, since unworthy reception brings judgment.
22.6Theonas tells of a chaste brother whose emissions came only before communion; the elders judged it the devil’s work and bade him communicate, and the trouble ceased; he then urges moderation in food and the inner purity of the true virgin and eunuch for Christ.
22.7However pure a monk becomes, he must always count himself unworthy of communion, since the sacrament is received by grace, not merit, and no one is without hidden sins.
22.8Germanus objects that if no one is sinless, no one is holy, and so no one can receive the sacraments or hope for the kingdom.
22.9Theonas distinguishes being holy, that is, consecrated to God, from being sinless, which belongs to Christ alone, who was tempted like us but without sin.
22.10Christ was tempted like us by gluttony, vainglory, and pride in the desert, by the offer of kingship, and by the sufferings of his passion, yet always without sin.
22.11Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, with real flesh but without sin; his hunger, thirst, sleep, and anguish showed the likeness of sin, while his knowledge, gifts, and power showed he had none.
22.12Christ, born of a virgin, alone bore only the likeness of sin, though his enemies called him a sinner; anyone who claims to be sinless blasphemously claims equality with him.
22.13The righteous still fall daily in seven kinds of lesser faults without ceasing to be righteous, as Peter shows, who erred and denied Christ yet remained holy through repentance and grace.
22.14Theonas reads Romans 7 as Paul’s own confession that perfect purity is beyond human strength and must be sought from God’s grace.
22.15Germanus raises the common view that Paul in Romans 7 speaks in the person of sinners, since it cannot fit the perfect apostle.
22.16Theonas postpones the question on Romans 7 until the next day.
23.1Theonas argues that Romans 7 cannot describe sinners, who sin willingly and eagerly and serve God neither in mind nor in flesh, and must describe the perfect.
23.2To understand Paul one must share his disposition; though he had every virtue, these are like gems compared with the one pearl he still lacked.
23.3The one best thing is contemplation of God, Mary’s good part, compared with which all virtues, and all created goods, are like lesser metals beside a pearl, since God alone is good in himself.
23.4Scripture calls many things good, yet compared with God none is good; so all virtues, like the law beside the Gospel, are dimmed beside contemplation, and busy good works hold the saints back from it.
23.5Even good works, like caring for the poor or Paul’s manual labor, distract from contemplation; Paul longed to depart and be with Christ, and no saint can keep his mind always fixed on God, even in prayer.
23.6Like a keen-sighted man who sees the countless small objects in a house that a bleary-eyed man misses, the saints see and condemn in themselves even small distractions in prayer, which the careless do not notice.
23.7Ignorant of true sinlessness, we notice only crimes punished by secular law and feel no compunction for dejection, vainglory, distraction in prayer, impure thoughts and dreams, or grudging almsgiving.
23.8The saints treat even a moment’s distraction from God as a sacrilege and repent at once; yet no one but Christ has kept his mind fixed on God without ever straying.
23.9The saints are like rope-walkers whose least misstep means a fall; God harms no one, but turning away from him is itself death.
23.10Because even the saints are daily drawn from God by earthly thoughts and good but earthly works, they truly confess themselves sinners and cry out with Paul for God’s grace.
23.11The “law in the members” is the curse of Adam, by which thoughts sprout like thorns and even the saints can eat the heavenly bread of contemplation only by the sweat of their brow.
23.12Theonas explains “sold under sin” as Adam’s sale of his descendants into slavery to the devil for the forbidden fruit, from which God, respecting free will, redeemed them only in the fullness of time by Christ’s blood.
23.13Because of Adam’s curse even the saints are drawn from contemplation to earthly thoughts, yet they are not condemned, since Christ’s daily grace frees them; so Romans 7 speaks of the perfect.
23.14Germanus proposes that Romans 7 describes converts who want to be chaste but are still dragged back by the force of old sinful habit.
23.15Theonas argues that grave sins after baptism are cleansed only by long penance or punished eternally, so the daily “law of sin” in Romans 7, cured by Christ’s daily grace, must be the distraction of the saints from contemplation, which makes them wretched rather than guilty.
23.16The “body of death” is what drags the perfect from contemplation to earthly thoughts even in prayer, and Paul’s “I myself” shows he speaks of his own experience.
23.17The saints confess themselves sinners, as Isaiah did after seeing God, yet hope for salvation by grace; his words “we sinned … and we shall be saved” answer the objection that if no one is sinless no one can be saved.
23.18The Lord’s Prayer, given to the saints, requires all to ask forgiveness daily; so no one is sinless, yet the righteous remain righteous.
23.19Anyone who claims sinlessness should test it by whether he has kept even one synaxis without a single distraction; the purer the mind, the more faults it sees, and John says that claiming to have no sin is self-deception.
23.20Those who have truly crucified the flesh testify daily that they cannot be free from sin for even an hour.
23.21Awareness of sin should not keep monks from communion; they should receive it every Sunday humbly as a remedy, rather than once a year as if they could become worthy.
24.1Introducing the last conference, Cassian tells how he and Germanus confessed to Abba Abraham their longing to return home, where their pious families would support them and they might convert many.
24.2Abraham tells them their longing shows they have not truly renounced the world; the monks of Scete could have had comfort from families, patrons, the Nile, or gardens, but chose hardship for eternal gain, renouncing daily.
24.3A monk should live where no fertile land tempts him to outdoor work, staying within his cell like a fisherman on a rock, catching and sorting his thoughts.
24.4Even hermits of the remote deserts of Calamus and Porphyrion, who farm in the open, cannot bear the cell and silence of Scete, because outdoor work has let their thoughts run loose.
24.5Going out of the cell to relieve acedia only strengthens restless thoughts, like cold water that inflames a fever.
24.6As a builder draws an apse from a fixed center, the monk must turn every thought around the love and remembrance of God, or his spiritual house will collapse.
24.7Germanus asks why living near relatives should harm them when the Egyptian monks themselves live in their own country and near their villages.
24.8Abraham answers that practices safe for some are fatal for others, as Saul’s armor would have been for David; they must weigh whether they could keep such austerity in their colder, less devout homeland.
24.9Abba Apollo refused to leave his cell at night to help his brother free an ox, saying he had been dead to the world for twenty years; only those so dead to their families could safely live near them.
24.10Germanus concedes the point but asks what harm there would be in letting relatives supply their needs so they could give themselves wholly to reading and prayer.
24.11Abraham cites Antony, who told a monk living on his family’s support that he would share their lot in the next world, that their fortunes would drag his mind to earthly things, and that he was cheating himself of the reward of manual labor that Paul modeled.
24.12Antony adds that a healthy monk living on others’ gifts takes alms meant for the weak, since all food not earned by one’s own hands is charity (agape); so the monks chose barren desert where no one owns the land and nothing tempts them to farm.
24.13Through Abba Macarius’s parable of a barber who left a small steady income for a city of high wages and higher prices, Abraham warns that seeking to convert others at home would cost them the small but real gain of solitude.
24.14Germanus asks for the cause and cure of the illusions that drew them homeward.
24.15Abraham explains that all vices have one source but take different names according to which of the soul’s three parts, rational, irascible, or concupiscible, is corrupted, as one humor causes different diseases in different members.
24.16Their longing comes from vainglory in the rational part of the soul, which made them think themselves fit to teach others; the cure is humble recognition that they still need a teacher.
24.17The devil attacks each soul at its weakest part, as Balaam did Israel through lust and the Syrians deceived Ahab through vain mercy; he tempted Christ in all three parts but found nothing to seize.
24.18Germanus adds that visits from brothers break their silence and fasting, which would not happen at home where there are few monks.
24.19Being visited is a sign of love for God, not a fault; the devil lures monks away with dreams of better solitudes and willing converts, only to trap them in worldly cares.
24.20The relaxation that visitors bring is useful, preventing both lukewarmness and bodily illness and renewing the desire for solitude.
24.21The apostle John, stroking a partridge, explains to a hunter that the mind, like a bow, must sometimes be unstrung to keep its strength.
24.22Germanus asks how Christ’s yoke can be easy and light when Scripture speaks of hard ways and persecution.
24.23Christ’s yoke is easy for one who has renounced all possessions and his own will, for then no loss, want, command, or persecution can trouble him.
24.24The yoke seems heavy only because monks keep wealth and self-will, by which the devil torments them; those who leave the royal road for crooked paths are torn by thorns, while the humble who bear Christ’s yoke stand firm.
24.25Temptation brings greater reward, and the Lord’s road, though it seems hard, gives rest to those who take his yoke humbly; it is our own worldly ways that make it heavy, as a comparison of monastic peace with worldly cares shows.
24.26Abraham explains the promised hundredfold in this life as the far greater spiritual love, possessions, and honor that monks receive in place of what they renounced, and Cassian closes the Conferences commending them to the holy brothers.

About this work

Author: John Cassian
Attribution: authentic
Standing: Honoured by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Catholic, Orthodox.
Older English translation: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 11 (1894) (public domain, at CCEL; for comparison: our translation is made from the original first and checked against it afterwards) · Edgar C. S. Gibson's translation.
Date: ca. 426–429 (approximate)
Written at: Massilia (Marseilles), Gaul (probable)
Addressed to: Castor, bishop of Apt (books 1–10); Honoratus and Eucherius (books 11–17); Jovinian, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodore (books 18–24)
Language: Latin
Genre: treatise
Reference system: conference.chapter (24 conferences, cited as collatio.caput); the digital text's three prefaces (to parts 1–3) and its tables of chapter headings are not staged; the digital text's finer numbered sections within each chapter are not the traditional citation and are merged into their chapter
SBL abbreviation: Conf.Not yet checked
Clavis: CPL 512 (not yet checked)
Text from: Michael Petschenig, ed., Iohannis Cassiani Opera, Pars II: Conlationes XXIIII, CSEL 13 (Vienna: Gerold, 1886) (Printed edition in the public domain; digital text CC BY-SA 4.0)
Critical editions: Eugène Pichery, ed. and trans., Jean Cassien: Conférences, SC 42, 54, 64 (Paris: Cerf, 1955–1959) (cited, not reproduced)
CTS URN: urn:cts:latinLit:stoa0076c.stoa001

The Conferences

Contents

About this work