Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the sixty-fourth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds John Cassian, The Institutes and the Conferences, from the period about AD 420 – 428.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.
In this volume
John Cassian was born about AD 360, probably in Scythia Minor on the lower Danube. He became a monk at Bethlehem and then spent years among the monks of the Egyptian desert, whose sayings he later set down. He was ordained deacon at Constantinople by John Chrysostom, and about AD 415 he settled at Marseilles, where he founded two monasteries. He wrote the Institutes and the Conferences for the monks of Gaul, and in AD 430 he wrote On the Incarnation against Nestorius. He died about AD 435.
The Institutes and the Conferences were written for the monks of Gaul within a few years of each other, and they are best read together. The Institutes describe the outward rule of the monastery and the eight vices that a monk must fight. The Conferences give the inner teaching of the elders on prayer, discretion and the purity of heart that is the goal of the monk. The English text used here leaves out Book 6 of the Institutes and Conferences 12 and 22, which deal with chastity and with nocturnal illusions.
Dates and authorship
Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.