[VigChr Supp 112] Panayiotis Tzamalikos-The Real Cassian Revisited_ Monastic Life, Greek Paideia,...

The Real Cassian Revisited

Supplementsto

Vigiliae ChristianaeTexts and Studies of

Early Christian Life and Language

Editors

J. den Boeft B.D. Ehrman J. van OortD.T. Runia C. Scholten J.C.M. van Winden

VOLUME 112

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/vcs

The Real Cassian RevisitedMonastic Life, Greek Paideia, and

Origenism in the Sixth Century

By

P. Tzamalikos

LEIDEN BOSTON2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tzamalikos, P. (Panayiotes), 1951-The real Cassian revisited : monastic life, Greek paideia, and Origenism in the sixth century / By

P. Tzamalikos.pages cm. (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae ; VOLUME 112)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-90-04-22440-7 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-90-04-22530-5 (e-book)1. Church historyPrimitive and early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Book of Monk Cassian the Roman. 3.

Cassian, the Sabaite, approximately 470-548. I. Title.

BR227.T93 2012270.2092dc23

2011049118

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ISSN 0920-623XISBN 978 90 04 22440 7 (hardback)ISBN 978 90 04 22530 5 (e-book)

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,pi , .

the present hegoumen, abba Cassian, who is of Scythopolis bybirth, orthodox, and adorned both in his conduct of life and in histeaching.

Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Cyriaci, ad547/8.

interdum coguntur loqui, non quod sentiunt, sed quod necesse est.

[Christian authors] are sometimes compelled to say not what they[really] think, but what necessity dictates.

Jerome, Epistula 49.13.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.So I assumed a double part, and criedAnd heard anothers voice cry: what! are you here?For last years words belong to last years languageAnd next years words await another voice.Being between two livesunflowering, betweenThe live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:History may be servitude,History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.Those men, and those who opposed themAnd those whom they opposedAccept the constitution of silence.

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixPreface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiAbbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Introduction. Monk Cassian, the Sabaite of Scythopolis in Palestineand John Cassian, the Scythian of Marseilles. The Resurrection ofan Eclipsed Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Meteora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Cassian as an Intellectual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4The Akoimetoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13A Sabaite Scholar Monk at the Monastery of the Akoimetoi

(the Never-Sleeping Monks) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27An Anonymous Addresser Addressing an Anonymous

Addressee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

1. Testimonies, Addressees, and Cassians Real Milieu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Gennadius of Marseilles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Photius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Leontius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Cyril of Scythopolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78Castor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Antiochus of Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86John Cassian, the Scythian of Marseilles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

2. Cassian the Sabaite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115The Monk and Presbyter Cassian in ad536 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115The Texts of the Codex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Abba Cassian and Posterity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123The Anchorites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

3. A Greek Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Manuscript Editions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Writings by a Graeculus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152A Sixth-Century Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

viii contents

4. An Eclipsed Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207Scribing in the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207Why Was Cassian Styled Roman in Later Byzantine

Literature? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

5. Hellenism in The Sixth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243Cassian and Greek Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243Hellenism and Christianity: The Ancient Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246Hellenism and Sixth-Century Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

6. Doctrinal Decorum and Imperial Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259The Sixth-Century Origenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259The Origenism and Pseudo-Origenism of Cassian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

7. Late Antique Intellectual Interplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333Christian Influence on Neoplatonism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

1. Proclus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3362. Simplicius and Damascius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Stoicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377Aristotelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Appendix I. The Book of Cassian Copied by Posterity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407Appendix II. Greek References to Cassian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433Appendix III. Cassian and Caesarius Reviewed By Photius . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

I. Codices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443II. Primary Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444III. Modern Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483IV. Ancient Lexica of Greek Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Index of Persons of Antiquity, Locations, and Notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489Index of Greek Terms and Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520

ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1. Meteora-monasteries in the air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524Fig. 2. The Judaean desert, where the Great Laura is located . . . . . . . . . . . 525Fig. 3. The Great Laura, on the west side of brook Cedron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525Fig. 4. The Great Laura from inside (north-east) of brook Cedron . . . . . . . 525Fig. 5. West side of the Great Laura (main entrance) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526Fig. 6. The Great Laura today. The vault of the main church

() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527Fig. 7. The Great Laura today. West side of the main church

() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528Fig. 8. Codex Metamorphosis 573 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529Fig. 9. Codex Metamorphosis 573 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529Fig. 10. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 1r, colophon: (The Book of Monk Cassian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530

Fig. 11. Codex Metamorphosis 573. Inside face of front cover . . . . . . . . . . . 531Fig. 12. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 22v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532Fig. 13. Codex 573, folio 56v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533Fig. 14. Codex 573, folio 80r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534Fig. 15. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 101r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535Fig. 16. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 245r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536Fig. 17. Codex Sabaiticus 76, folio 132r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537Fig. 18. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 226v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538Fig. 19. Codex Sabaiticus 8, folio 92v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539Fig. 20. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 221r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540Fig. 21. Codex Sabaiticus 8, folio 96v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541Fig. 22. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 211r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542Fig. 23. Codex Sabaiticus 8, folio 98v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543Fig. 24. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 232v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544Fig. 25. Codex Sabaiticus 8, folio 113v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545Fig. 26. Codex Metamorphosis, folio 209r. Cassians mathematical

rules for forming the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546Fig. 27. Codex Metamorphosis 573, folio 209v. Cassians mathematical

rules for forming the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547Fig. 28. Metamorphosis 573, folio 290r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

PREFACE

The present volume, along with its sibling, A Newly Discovered Greek Father(Cassian the Sabaite eclipsed by John Cassian of Marseilles), which is pub-lished simultaneously in the same series, is the result of research initiallyset out to determine the real author of the Scholia in Apocalypsin. TheseScholia were discovered in 1908, in Codex 573 of the Monastery of Meta-morphosis in Meteora, Greece, and Adolf von Harnack rushed into ascribingthem to Origen, only four months after he saw them for the first time, in July1911. Never did this attribution enjoy unanimous acceptance by scholars eversince, hence this set of comments on part of Johns Apocalypse has remainedan orphan text, which made no mark in scholarship. My initial impressionwas that six months could suffice to determine their author, since mean-time several scholars had come up with different opinions with respectto authorship. It took me three years, only in order to reach the mistakenconclusion that the author of the Scholia is Theodoret of Cyrrhus heavilydrawing on a lost commentary on the Apocalypse by Didymus the Blind.Only after I was granted access to the Codex itself did Cassian the Sabaitecome into the scene as a commanding figure who claims our attention,and as an immensely erudite author who deserves a fair hearing. Therefore,this monograph is an argument establishing the existence of Cassian theSabaite as a first-class Christian intellectual, following the study and criticaledition of his texts included in the same Codex. He is the author of a vastnumber of theological tracts currently classified as spuria, such as De Trini-tate (Pseudo-Didymus), the Erotapokriseis by Pseudo-Caesarius, and severalother pseudepigrapha.

We come across an unknown Greek Father, who was condemned to spiri-tual death and total extinction, only because inquisitors of doctrine deemedhim as a sympathizer of Origen and an admirer of Didymus the Blind and ofEvagrius; in other words, an author who drew on heretics into his own writ-ings. However, Cassian the Sabaite was in essence an Antiochene, who cher-ished the patrimony handed down by the great doctors of Antioch: Diodoreof Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Nestorius toa certain extent. His association with all of these names, which emerges outof critical study of his texts, was sufficient reason for him to be regarded asa prime suspect of heresy.

xii preface

The importance of pursuing this project turned out to lie not simplyin the discovery of certain unpublished texts. The real treasure of Codex573 lies in what we learn about the turbulent times of Cassian of Sabaite.The sixth-century controversy over what Origenism really meant duringthose times comes up as an issue that receives further light. In addition, wecome across a learned employment of the Aristotelian thought, which hadbeen cultivated by the great schools of Edessa and Nisibis. Furthermore, itturns out that Classical and Late-Antique Greek patrimony were alive wellinto the sixth century, despite intolerant fanaticism by intellectuals of theimperial church and oppression by a crude despot such as Justinian, whorevelled in thinking of himself as a theologian.

The real value of Cassian the Sabaite is that he shakes part of our tradi-tional knowledge, which we have been educated to take for granted. As aresult, we realize that Theodoret was not the last great scholar of the earlyChristian era; Hellenism was not dead, not even moribund, at the time whenJustinian closed down the Academy of Athens; what was styled Origenismby that time, was a concoction by unlearned fanatic monks, who composedanti-Origenistic documents and anathemas, which Justinian simply signedfor the sake of his political aims and sanctioned as edicts of his own.

These texts of Cassian the Sabaite treasure an abundant wealth of Greekas well as Christian learning and heritage. It is then only a supplementaryconclusion that John Cassian, the alleged father of Western monasticism,is only a figment fabricated by means of extensive blatant Medieval forgery.As a result, Cassian, a native of Scythopolis, monk and presbyter, who diedan abbot of the Great Laura of Sabas on 20 July 548, was condemned to utterobliteration as an intellectual and author. All of his writings were attributedto stars of Christian theology that were long dead: these texts are currentlyknown as spuria ascribed to either Athanasius, or Theodoret, or Justin,or Gregory of Nyssa, or Basil of Caesarea, or others. At the same time, hismonastic texts were determined as the work by a phantasmal figure calledJohn Cassian, allegedly a native of Scythia who lived in Marseilles.

The ninth-century Codex 573 of Metamorphosis (the Great Meteoron)is the sole extant set of documents that can reveal this canard. It survivedthe rage of men and the frenzy of centuries by being hidden in a vault, onlyto be discovered in 1908, along with another 610 codices that had remainedconcealed in that monastery for centuries, and their existence was unknowneven to the monks themselves.

There are many voices coming out of the texts of Cassian that are in-cluded in this monument, which is as much a beautiful piece of art, as isit a meek and gentle record. The most humble, and yet most clear, of these

preface xiii

voices is the one of Cassian the Sabaite himself, resounding the Classicaland Late Antique Hellenism, along with a glorious tradition of Christianscholarship. He put to use both traditions during the dark period of the530s and 540s. He did so vigorously and fruitfully, although it takes criticalreading in order to realize that he applied his erudition in a clandestinemanner. Now is the time to listen to this voice of Cassian the Sabaite, and toallow him to advise us that, in some important respects, the sixth centurywas somewhat different from what it is currently thought.

I thank Professor Jan den Boeft for having read the manuscripts himself,before they were sent out to anonymous readers. I am also grateful to himfor his unfailing support and encouragement during a time of uncertainty,when I was groping for my own way in the open sea of this far-reachingresearch, the outcome of which was yet far from being clear.

In the person of Publishing Manager Louise Schouten I thank Brill forincluding these books into this series, and for having assented to my wish topresent the Codex-text and the monograph in two separate consecutive vol-umes. I also thank Editor Mattie Kuiper for her diligent care and kindness. Itwas a blessing that the typesetter that effected production of both volumeshappened to be also a scholar of remarkable erudition, especially knowl-edge of Greek: through his several remarks, Johannes Rustenburg made anoteworthy contribution to the presentation of this edition, for which I amprofoundly grateful.

I am grateful to Archbishop of Constantina, Aristarchos Peristeris, theChief-Secretary of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, whogranted me access to the treasures of the Patriarchal Library, he guided mepersonally through the manuscripts, and allowed me to use photos of sev-eral of the codices I explored.

The inspiring love and support from my family has imbued this project,which resulted in three volumes. Acknowledgement of this is only a smalltoken of my gratitude to my wife Eleni and to my beloved adolescentdaughters Maritsa and Leto.

P. T.

ABBREVIATIONS

ACO Schwartz, E., Acta Conciliorum OecumenicorumAP Apophthegmata PatrumCOT P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of TimeGCS Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahr-

hundertePG J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca (volume / page / line)PHE P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History and EschatologyPL J.P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (volume / page / line)SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (volume / page / verse)TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen

Literatur

Origen

Cels Contra CelsumselGen Selecta in GenesimhomEx Homiliae in ExodumcommEx Fragmentum ex Commentariis in Exodum (= In Illud: Induravit

Dominus Cor Pharaonis)selEx Selecta in ExodumselDeut Selecta in DeuteronomiumselPs Selecta in PsalmosexcPs Excerpta in PsalmosfrPs Fragmenta in PsalmosexpProv Expositio in ProverbiaschCant Scholia in Canticum CanticorumhomJer In Jeremiam (homiliae 1220)JesNav In Jesu Nave homiliae xxvi (fragmenta e catenis)frJer Fragmenta in JeremiamselEz Selecta in EzechielemcommMatt Commentaria in MatthaeumfrLuc Fragmenta in LucamcommJohn Commentarii in Evangelium JoannisfrJohn Fragmenta in Evangelium Joanniscomm1Cor Fragmenta ex Commentariis in Epistulam I ad CorinthiosdeOr De OrationePrinc De Principiis

Didymus

commZacch Commentarii in ZacchariamfrPs(al) Fragmenta in Psalmos (e commentario altero)

xvi abbreviations

commEccl Commentarii in EcclesiastencommJob Commentarii in JobcommPs Commentarii in Psalmos

Eusebius

DE Demonstratio EvangelicaPE Praeparatio EvangelicacommPs Commentaria in Psalmos

Theodoret

intPaulXIV Interpretatio in XIV Epistulas Sancti PaulicommIs Commentaria in IsaiamDe Providentia De Providentia Orationes DecemintDan Interpretatio in DanielemintProphXII Interpretatio in XII Prophetas Minores

Cyril Of Alexandria

In Joannem Commentarii in JoannemIn Isaiam Commentarius in Isaiam ProphetamcommProphXII Commentarius in XII Prophetas MinoresDe Adoratione De Adoratione et Cultu in Spiritu et VeritateGlaphPent Glaphyra in PentateuchumexpPs Expositio in Psalmos

Theodore of Mopsuestia

expPs Expositio in PsalmoscommProphXII Commentarius in XII Prophetas Minores

Pseudo-Justin or Pseudo-Theodoret

QetR Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos

Pseudo-Caesarius

QR (chapter/line) Erotapokriseis (Quaestiones et Responsiones)

Epiphanius of Salamis

Panarion Panarion (Adversus Haereses)

Cassian the Sabaite

Const Ad Castorem Episcopum De Canonicis Occidentalis et Aegyptio-nis Coenobiorum Constitutionibus

OctoVit Ad Castorem Episcopum De Octo Vitiosis CogitationibusScetPatr Ad Leontium Hegumenum De Scetae Sanctorum PatrorumSerenPrim Ad Leontium Hegumenum Contributio Sereni Abbatis Prima

abbreviations xvii

De Panareto Ad Leontium Hegumenum Contributio Sereni Abbatis De Pana-reto

DT De Trinitate (Pseudo-Didymus = Cassian the Sabaite)

All Authors

commEccl Commentarii in EcclesiastencommJob Commentarii in JobcommPs Commentarii in PsalmosHE Historia Ecclesiastica

Psalms are numbered after LXX.

introduction

MONK CASSIAN, THE SABAITE OF SCYTHOPOLIS IN PALESTINEAND

JOHN CASSIAN, THE SCYTHIAN OF MARSEILLES

The Resurrection of an Eclipsed Author

Meteora

In July 2008 a miracle happened: I was almost through with proofing mymanuscript exploring the Scholia in Apocalypsin, which Adolph Harnackhad falsely ascribed to Origen a century ago. My two-year exertions in orderto be granted access to the Codex that incorporates the sole manuscriptof the Scholia had been unsuccessful up until that time. Suddenly, though,an unexpected chain of events brought it about that the door of the GreatMeteoron monastery was opened to me and I found myself studying theprecious Codex and its palaeographical texts.

The rock complex of Meteora in Thessaly, with impressive monasteriesin the air, perched on the summits and in the caves of the gigantic rocks,is regarded by some as a second Mount Athos. This is a token of Byzantinemonasticism, which inspires pilgrims to scale the heights in order to visit themonastic settlements at Meteora. Their origin was the Scetis of Doupiani,in the early fourteenth century. Yet the real story began in the middle ofthe fourteenth century, when the Athonite monk and hesychast Athanasiussettled on the Broad Rock ( ) and founded there what was soonto become the Monastery of Metamorphosis, the Great Meteoron, whichcurrently preserves Codex 573.

This Codex of the Great Meteoron (the Metamorphosis Convent) hasbeen surmised to be a tenth-century one, but my own opinion is that this isan early ninth-century manuscript.1 Of its nearly three hundred folia, onlythe last forty-five were related to my topic at that time. Hence, on the last dayof my study, I came to examine the book as a beautiful artefact of an ancient

1 P. Tzamalikos, An Ancient Commentary on the Book of Revelation, A critical edition ofthe Scholia in Apocalypsin from an ancient manuscript with Commentary and an Englishtranslation, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming), Introduction, (The Codex). Here-after, Scholia in Apocalypsin.

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epoch, when I noticed the rubric on top of the initial page of this elegantbook. The book of monk Cassian the Roman ( ).Below that, a header introduced to the first text comprising this collection:By monk Cassian the Roman, To Bishop Castor On the Rules and Regulationsof the Coenobia in the East and Egypt ( , pi pipi, pi pi ). It was only then that a phrase on the upper rightside of folio 290r, written by a later hand, made some sense: .2

The rubric, beautifully adorned, informs the reader that this is the Bookof monk Cassian the Roman ( ). The title of thefirst work follows: this is the beginning of the work addressed to BishopCastor about the Institutions of the monasteries in Egypt and in the East.Therefore, all of the volume is Cassians book. In order that no doubt shouldremain to any future reader, an anonymous hand added this to the top ofthe last page. Folio 290r has a note in the upper margin going thus: , intending (monk Cassianthe Roman). A later hand advising posterity that the Scholia representCassians teaching evidently added this. This note is followed by a barelylegible abbreviated note of the kind used in ancient codices, which, to thebest of my ability, I could tentatively render thus: pi pi()(whose [sc. Cassians] this [book] contains homilies to everyone). Laterthough this hand is, it is still not a much later one. The text written on thetop of that (last) page of the Codex is the concluding section of the Scholia,and advises that Cassian was involved either with the Scholia, or both withthem and the rest of the book. In all probability this manuscript was copiedfrom a book belonging to Cassian himself and my comparative studies havebrought it about that the reproduction took place at the scriptorium of theLaura of Sabas. The Codex was copied by a monk called Theodosius (as wellas one or two other monks) and the critical apparatus to the Scholia showsthat the accompanying text of Revelation which Cassian used was one ofAntiochene / Syrian rendering. We know of a certain Theodosius scribe inthe monastery of the Stylites in Syria, working around the year 806 who wasa Monophysite. However, a comparison of Codex 573 with Codex St. Sabas76, fol. 131v132r makes it all too evident that both codices (both dated to theninthtenth cent.) were written by the same hand, or at least, within thesame scriptorium.

2 See this point canvassed in Scholia in Apocalypsin, Introduction.

monk cassian and john cassian 3

The unknown later reader who made the note on top of folio 290r con-firms that this was the Book of Cassian, as indicated on the first-page rubric,as well as on the internal face of the front cover. It seems that this readerknew that the anonyma Scholia were written by Cassian himself, hence thenote on folio 290r. Following on with analysis, we now know that Cassianreproduced passages by Didymus, Clement of Alexandria and Theodoret,along with comments of his own which he wrote during his composition.Among other points, this is evident from the portion of Revelation 14:314:5 on folio 290r. This is of the same provenance as the one used in allthe previous Scholia: it comes from a Syrian version and is (like the rest ofthe scriptural text) akin to the text K that Arethas later used with minoremendations of his own.

By that time, I had reached the conclusion that the Scholia in Apoca-lypsin were a compilation by an Antiochene, who probably was Theodoretof Cyrrhus heavily quoting from the lost Commentary on the Apocalypseby Didymus the Blind, as well as from his own work on the Book of Par-alipomenon, plus a portion from Clement of Alexandria. It turned out thatthe author was Cassian, yet not the one known from the Latin account abouthim, but another Cassian: a Sabaite monk, who was a spiritual offspring ofthe great Antiochene doctors (Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia,Theodoret of Cyrrhus) and of St Sabas himself. He was an intellectual ofAntiochene extraction, who was born in Scythopolis in c. 470 and died anabbot of the renown Laura of Sabas on 20th July, 548ad.

Up to that moment, my education had instructed me that Theodoret wasthe last scholar of Late Antiquity. I now believe that the Antiochene tra-dition lasted for another hundred years and Cassian himself was a greatscholar, who took part in the Local Synod of Constantinople in 536, at atime when he lived and wrote at the monastery of the Akoimetoi. His textstell us important things about Aristotle and Aristotelian tradition, about theNeoplatonism of Proclus, Damascius, Simplicius, as well as about DionysiusAreopagite, whom Cassian had definitely met personally. Cassian is also theauthor of a number of texts currently known as spuria under the namesof great Christian theologians. In like manner, the monastic texts of thepresent Codex have been attributed to Athanasius. He is the author of thetext ascribed to Caesarius, the brother of Gregory of Nazianzus,3 as much ashe is the author of De Trinitate, which has been falsely ascribed to Didymusthe Blind.4 In Cassians text there is an abundance of instances revealing

3 A Newly Discovered Greek Father, Appendix I.4 Op. cit. Appendix II.

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an immensely erudite scholar, who knew Plato as much as Aristotle; he wasaware of Classical poetry and prose in-as-much as he had read oriental writ-ings, such as those by Hermes Trismegistus or the Oracula Sibyllica. Explo-ration of the text by Cassian, which occupies the first 118 folia of the Codex,reveals much the same readings and liabilities of the author as the last 45folia of the same Codex, where the Scholia in Apocalypsin are located. Aboveall, he is a distinctly Antiochene scholar, who also shows himself a devoutstudent of the AlexandriansOrigen, Didymus, Cyril. For indeed to themainly Antiochene community of the Akoimetoi Origen was as much partof their patrimony as his detractors. Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mop-suestia, and Theodoret were as much so as Cyril, whereas the daemoniza-tion of Nestorius as well as Severus of Antioch had not touched them at all.

This was precisely the universal spirit of the community of the Akoime-toi in the sixth century. Thanks to the compilation of the Scholia in Apoc-alypsin by Cassian, when we now speak of the most ancient commentaryon the Apocalypse, we actually go back by two more centuries, comparedto what has been thought heretofore. For it is currently believed so far thatOecumenius Commentary on the Apocalypse, written during the 540s, isthe most ancient commentary on the Apocalypse extant. Cassian, however,has preserved for us a very large part of Didymus own Commentary on theApocalypse, which was written two centuries before Oecumenius set outto write his own commentary, indeed almost simultaneously with Cassianwriting his own compilation of the Scholia.

Cassian as an Intellectual

Once discovered, an ancient manuscript deserves to be published on its ownmerits. In the process of this exploration, however, Cassian turned out tohave important things to say. Following what I now claim to be a mythol-ogy that has been built upon the historical existence of a person calledJohn Cassian, I realised that what I styled the resurrection of an authorwill not be easily allowed by current scholarhip dealing with the figmentcalled John Cassian. This alleged Latin author is currently associated withreligious allegiances, as well as with scholarly aspirations endeavouring tomake him the link between eastern and western monasticism. I have nosuch allegiances and, as I have said in previous works of mine, I only wish tobe an accurate scholar while being utterly disinterested in modern disputesbetween different Christian denominations. Since, however, religious inter-ests and scholarly aspirations are there anyway, my point calls for sound


and indisputable evidence, which is par excellence concerned with estab-lishing the existence of Cassian the Sabaite, the real Cassian.

The Latin texts currently attributed to John Cassian are simply a forgerymade out of the original Greek, written by a Greek-speaking author in Thebook of Cassian the monk (which is the colophon of the Meteora Co-dex 573).5 Latin translators have normally lengthened, as well as abridged,amended or omitted certain passages, which has resulted in a text suitableto a scholastic paraphrase of Cassians texts. The fable that John Cassianwas indeed the author of these renderings was thereby reinforced, at leastin the minds of those to whom the original texts were not available. Besides,Greek translations of John Cassians works were produced and proliferatedlater, which contributed to the impression that Latin, not Greek, was theiroriginal language. Attentive scholars such as Franz Diekamp and Otto Chad-wick were not unwary, still they could not suspect that a Greek text such asthat of Codex 573 was there to prove the Latin-factor a mendacious inven-tion.

Cassian was above all an intellectual monk; and yet his moral teachingis all but imposition of a stringent life on monks. He shapes his argumentand mounts his replies taking into account the variety of human physicalconstruction, character and needs, thus aspiring to being a corrector of thenovice rather than a dogmatician. He wrote with animus, yet his animad-version is levelled against sin rather than sinners; his instruction aims atcountering cogitation of evil rather than the subsequent evil action by allthose who abjure worldly and sensual pursuits in order to live in unimpairedequanimity. Keeping pace with the gist of Origenism, Cassian inculcatesrighteousness with pious understanding and teaches that mastery of thebody conduces to the apprehension of wisdom. For all this, he was as broad-minded a man as to refuse to impose universal rules of fast, on account of thedifferent physical construction of each human being. Each person needs adifferent amount and quality of food, which is a good reason for banning anyuniversal regulation of fast. Despite its intellectualistic tenor, the text doesnot make as much of the dichotomy between matter and spirit as one might

5 The Catalogue of the Meteora Manuscripts was published posthumously by the Centrefor the Study of Medieval and Modern Hellenism at the Academy of Athens:, pi pi pi . (The Manuscripts of Meteora: a descrip-tive catalogue of the manuscripts conserved in the monasteries of Meteora, published fromthe extant stuff initially compiled by Nikos A. Bees), , , , 1998, , -. Volume 1 of the catalogues published by the Adacemy of Athens, pp. 598601 & 681.

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have expected. It was then natural that this set of texts became a compan-ion of monks, particularly neophytes, as indeed it also offered the basis forcomposing constitutions of new monasteries. For not only is daemonologyan everyday concern to monks: anchorites are also satisfied that the dregs ofevil still linger in the soul, even in one that has been reformed. It is impres-sive, however, that Cassian hardly ever perturbs his readers with stories ofpunishment after death, or at least he does so to the minimum possible,when he refers to the eight dispositions to evil.

Once Cassians texts are scrutinised, one finds an entire library, bothChristian and Greek, condensed in his succinct statements. In this library,the leading role is played not only by Gregory of Nyssa, Eusebius, Theodoretof Cyrrhus and Cyril of Alexandria, but also by Lucian of Samosata, Origen,Didymus, Evagrius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plutarch, Galen, Proclus, Sim-plicius, Damascius, John Philoponus. The writer clearly intended a returnto intellectualism. In terms of philosophy, this means a return to the Greekpatrimony. In terms of theology, this meant revisiting Origen.

Cassian lived in an environment that encouraged struggle with the newchallenges of the era. Whereas scholars in the capital (such as John Gram-maticus) endeavoured to cultivate the so-called neo-Chalcedonism, itseems that the monastic community of the Akoimetoi were more radical,and more tolerant to the notion of heresy none the less. This means thatthe hypothecation of long orthodox traditions being carried on in thesetexts should be avoided. The clergy and courtiers alike must have lookedon the Akoimetoi with consternation, as something of a hotbed of libertinepreaching. In contrast to the neo-Chalcedonians who sought a third way byobscuring or eliminating uncomfortable terminology, it seems that in diver-gent approaches to Chalcedon, the Akoimetoi were seeing more homologythan polarity, which in turn called for clarification rather than obscurity ofthe theological apparatus. This notwithstanding, forgeries that were pro-duced in their scriptorium represented defunct authorities as vatic figuresbeing the mouthpieces of old ecclesiastical platitudes entertained withinthe new hot Christological context. This, however, eventually turned out tobe a cause of discord rather than concord.

This community was in effect a spiritual colony of Antioch in Con-stantinople. The monks of this monastery carried on the noble traditionof Antioch rather than Alexandria cherishing the textual tradition of suchfigures as Origen and Didymus, alongside Aristotle and his late antique com-mentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias. The community entertainedmutual tolerance to divergent theological understanding between its ownmembers. This I could style a sort of Christian universalism, meaning that


they drew without encumbrance on the entire Christian patrimony to noexclusion of authors that had been disputed as heretics, save the Arians.This is all too evident in Cassians work. His predilection for the great Anti-ochene doctors such as Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, andTheodoret, is all too evident, and yet this does not overshadow his respectfor Didymus, Cyril of Alexandria, the Cappadocians, Evagrius, and of courseOrigen, let alone his heavy liabilities to Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias,and Chrysippus.

What makes Cassians scholarship interesting is that he felt free to gleanfrom all streams of Christian tradition, actually from all streams of thought,including the Greek patrimony and the Oriental lore. This means thatdespite specific streams of thought traced here and there in his writings,he actually saw one tradition available to him, which was the treasures ofChristian and Greek patrimony. Cassians work is a novel fusion. In whatfollows, it will be argued through evidence that this could have happenedonly during the first half of the sixth century. For we are faced with a newsort of style defiantly drawing on Greek lore, with no inflated despise againstthe very source of its own spiritual inspiration. Not only was Cassian famil-iar with Proclus theology, but he was also immersed in the Neoplatoniccurrents of his own day. His aim however was not to row against the perse-cuted resplendence of Damascius and Simplicius. Rather, he sought to equiphimself with the oars of that fresh Neoplatonic wisdom in order to arrive atChristian formulations that were called for by the sixth-century challenges.These challenges were not seen as mere doctrinal ones. The decline of thecivic ethos was only a mirror of the decline of the monastic ethos, whichought to be a source of inspiration and yet it was not. If these writings emitan aroma of munificence, this is so because the author takes this virtue intocounsel against covetousness, vainglory, greed, pride,in short, passionsthat flourished in society only because they burgeoned within monasteriesin the first place. Put differently, the veracity of Cassians purpose cannotbe assessed apart from the alimentary social setting and chain of events,which at his time both nourished and were nourished by the decline of themonastic ethos. His purpose, therefore, is to contribute to adjudication ofthe ravages of his time by supplying not only a nursery of prototypal monas-tic paradigm and rigour, but also an operative exemplar for a way out ofthis exigency by means of both righteous ethos and intellectual enlighten-ment.

With Cassians texts we come upon an unabashed revolt against the offi-cial state renouncing Classical Greek lore. This is availed of to the extreme,thus marking an audacious revival of the spirit of acquiescence to these

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sages of the outsiders that had been condemned in the person of Ori-gen. Despite the hostility that was aired in the official environment of hisepoch, Cassians work turns out to be a milestone marking a decisive shiftfrom the professed anti-Hellenism of Justinians era towards a spirit openlyembracing the Greek patrimonya process that culminated with Photiusand, later still, with Michael Psellus. This process resulted in the empiresphysiognomy transformed into a Greek one. It is an irony of history thatthis course, though clandestine and risky, was initiated during Justiniansreign. The monastery of the Akoimetoi was the isolated milieu where theeggs of this bold and libertarian attitude were hatched. Justinian himselfwas aware of this fatal process. Even though he issued his Novellae in Greek,he refers to Latin as the language of our fathers6 in a sentiment of nostal-gia, indeed with a taciturn mourning for the Roman character of the empiredoomed to be lost to the Greek. He was of course the source of all power,which was actually put to use: the Akoimetoi were written off and after 534their monastery entered a process of decline, which resulted in ruin. How-ever, the present texts reveal that much of their treasure was rescued by theamiable environment of the monastery of Studios, with Theodore Studitesbeing the intellectual who saw the value of their heritage, and the impor-tance of Cassian himself.7

Cassian was a Christian by upbringing and no doubt he took pride inhimself having been personally trained during his boyhood by St Sabashimself. Though careful he appears to expound what he saw as orthodoxdogma, he does not care to extol Christian superiority. His style is far toodistant from the tedious pertinacity of old-time converts, who had chosen tosee in paganism nothing but a simple-minded practice of idolatry, and hadpresumed that all the outsiders had cared to treasure was the licentiousconduct of their gods and the abominable trappings of the mysteries. In DeTrinitate he quotes heavily from the outsiders ( ) in order to makethe point that they said certain divine things as well as Christians did. Inother words, he does not feel he is at war with either the Greek spiritor the Oriental one. The schizophrenic early Christian attitude aiming atdaemonising and exorcising the Greek lore, while drawing on that in orderto produce a Hellenized Christianity, was now past. Once the author of DeTrinitate comes upon an outside asseveration making the same point as

6 See p. 239.7 See infra, pp. 209; 234.


Christian literature does, he says so, although he refrains from assessing thecomparative value of either of them. This was the culmination of a processof conflict. During the sixth century this process reached a peak, and startedto decline thereafter. It is certainly not a coincidence that all those whosaw the value of the outside lore and made something of it were eitheranathematised (Origen, Didymus, Evagrius, Philoponus) or placed sub par(Clement of Alexandria, even Gregory of Nyssa), or indeed extinguishedaltogether from and by the imperial intellectual mindset, which is indeedthe case with Cassian.

Three years after the Local Synod of Constantinople, in 536, where Cas-sian was present as a delegate of the Laura of Sabas (since he happened tobe present in the capital at the time) he moved to the monastery of Soukawhere he became abbot to remain there until October, 447. Holding viewsof this kind (which must have been appalling to some monks in the region)was not the best credential to make him popular with the so-called anti-Origenist party. For this party, if we are to believe the chronicler-monkCyril of Scythopolis (525558), did not include the most ingenious of intel-lectuals. Cyril dreaded the Origenists on account of their scholarship andmental qualities. This must have been a reason for Cassian to choose tolive in Constantinople after the death of his tutor Sabas, in 532. Had hecontinued to live in the Laura, he would have had to observe the commonordinances established therein, and to be vexed by the shortcomings of afanatical climate amid different parties cherishing different values, differ-ent aspirations and different levels of education. This means that he hadto take sides, indeed with regard not only to the patrimony of theologicalknowledge, but also to everyday communal principles and priorities, whichis why he describes current state of monastic affairs as sheer decay. Cas-sian succeeded in becoming acceptable by the two parties. As a result, andalready having been an abbot of Souka for eight years, he was summonedto become abbot of the Great Laura in 548, at the recommendation of Patri-arch of Jerusalem, with the consent of the strong Origenistic group whichby that time had taken hold of the Laura of Sabas. This assignment was acompromise-solution between the two conflicting parties, at a time of pas-sionate Origenistic controversy with Origenists having the upper hand. Hewas after all a well-respected intellectual and writer. Being a hegoumenosin a certain monastery and subsequently transferred to another was a veryexceptional event. This bespeaks the distress felt by the Patriarch and themonks of all parties interested in the election of a suitable abbot: Cassianwas acceptable by all those living in the Great Laura, especially the power-ful Origenists.

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The monastery of Souka has been identified with the monastery of Chari-ton.8 It was located south east of Jerousalem, as far from Bethlehem asthe Great Laura was to the east. Southeast farther still, the New Laura waslocated at a distance that was half as far as the Great Laura was. This is theplace where the renowned coenobite Cyriacus (448557) lived, whose biog-raphy (indeed hagiography) Cyril of Scythopolis wrote.

It seems however that Cassians reputation underwent a sea change afterhis death in 548. The custodians of orthodoxy kept an open file against hisname for the next decades, which turned out to be centuries. His writingssurvived, yet transcribed under names of old authorities, and he himselfwas condemned to spiritual death and scholarly extinction. He thus sufferedthe second-death mentioned in the book of Revelation, of which he mademuch in his own Scholia in Apocalypsin. The feigned anachronistic author-ship ascribed to John Cassian is only part of this development.

The texts that are included in Codex 573 are imbued by a prodigiousGreek Classical lore, at a time when Hellenism was still a cause of defama-tion rather than adulation. The lesson Cassian had learnt as an Antioch-ene was that Aristotle rather than Plato was more appropriate in afford-ing a sophisticated account of the doctrine. Following his great masters(Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret) he viewed Alexan-drian Platonism as the cause of much theological aberration. At the sametime though it was clear that there was an enormous treasure enshrinedin the works of Alexandrian doctors such as Origen, Didymus, and Cyrilof Alexandria, which no one could afford not to take advantage of. Now,after a century since the passionate debate between Theodoret and Cyril ofAlexandria, it was clear that there were no substantial differences betweenthe two masters, especially with respect to Christology.9 An Antiochenethough he was, Cassian saw the feat of the church of Alexandria, namelycanons and formulations of both scripture and doctrine. Redundant as hisadmonition may appear to a modem reader, or to a well-groomed audience,the gist of it should not elude us: Cassian carries on the shift marked by theEvagrian return to the Origenist legacy, namely, return to intellectualism,and he seeks to build on the ancestral wisdom by crowning faith with knowl-edge.

The fact that Cassian seeks to inspire a fresh start of a monasticismcherishing knowledge as much as uprightness, should not be obscured by

8 See Y. Tsafir, L. Segni, J. Green, Tabula Imperii Romani Judaea Palaestina, Jerusalem1994, p. 236.

9 See Scholia in Apocalypsin, Introduction.


the ostensible wish for mere return to the ethos of the ancient anchorites.The heroes of his dialogues only make up the scenery for Cassian himself toteach.10 Whereas they declare themselves ignorant and simpletons, theyare made to entertain a highly refined Aristotelian language, with nuancesthat many modern Aristotle-scholars are simply not aware of.11 Therefore,the apparent simplicity of Cassians writings should not delude us. As amatter of fact, they are works calling for proficient readers. For beyond theiroutwardly simple words used by the staged anchorites, these characters arethe vigorous proof of monks embracing intellectual analysis. In other words,they employ an attitude which is far too different from the fourth-centurymonastic ideal of mere praxis. They advance the ideal of knowledge thatbred the great theologians of old, who in effect had set out to improve onthe Origenist legacy.

This is why Cassians writings are more than a prolonged and dextrouswrestling with the difficulties of monastic life. Whether aware of it or not,he brought Origen to the fore. Some of his statements bear on tenets thatwere branded Origenistic, although Origen himself never actually heldthem. He definitely drew on Didymus as much as he did on Cyril. In hiswritings the Antiochene spirit prevails, yet Alexandria is present, evenif sometimes only in terms of terminology rather than specific doctrinalpoints of view. Above all, Cassian is the best pupil of Gregory of Nyssaand draws on him abundantly, in precisely the same sense Gregory himselfwas the best pupil of Origen. At the same time, the Greek Classical prose,poetry, Aristotle and his commentators (from Alexander of Aphrodisiasto John Philoponus) make a distinctive mark, along with the Neoplatonicpatrimony of Proclus, Simplicius, and Damascius. In Cassians texts theaffinities with Simplicius and Damascius are so striking (and, sometimes,with no other parallel) that one can hardly escape surmising that therehad been a personal acquaintance between Cassian and these philosophers,either in the region of Antioch, or in Constantinople.

To a certain extent, I have explored the close relation between Simpliciusand the text of De Trinitate, and I suggest that Simplicius Commentariusin Epicteti Enchiridion probably bespeaks a personal relation between thisNeoplatonist philosopher and Cassian.12 I also suggest that when Cassian

10 Cf. Photius referring to Caesarius dialogue as only a literary scheme staged by theauthor. Bibliotheca, Codex 210, p. 168b: pi pi pipi pipi. Full text in Appendix III.

11 Cf. the distinction between pi and in edition volume, Cod. p. 57r and note 7(pp. 216217).

12 A Newly Discovered Greek Father, Appendix II.

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makes the threefold classification of human established habit () inbabyish (pi), practical (pi) and cognitive (), he be-speaks a certain close relation to the Neoplatonist master. A unique analysisby Simplicius advises that this was in fact a classification made by Epicte-tus: men are classified under the labels of idiots, those progressing, andphilosophers. The first group corresponds to Cassians babyish character,the second to the practical and the third to the cognitive.13

When Cassian expresses the notion of something involving much diffi-culty through the expression pi ,14 he actually uses anAristotelian formula.15 Although Aristotelian commentators followed thisusage (from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Eustratius of Nicaea, and certainlySimplicius), Cassian is the sole Christian author to entertain this. Like-wise, the elegant expression (the quest is now resolved),which had remained out of use for centuries, revived in the sixth centurythrough Cassian and Simplicius.16 By the same token, the expression - 17 (most perfect virtue) comes from Chrysippus and only ahandful of authors used it.18 Of Christian authors alongside Cassian, it wasonly Theodoret who entertained both this notion and expression,19 which isabsent from the parallel Latin text.20 Besides, Cassians term pi(one who is hard to expel)21 only tells us that he used an epithet which oth-erwise remained exclusive to Aristotelian commentators. So was the expres-

13 See endnotes 11, 12 (pp. 351353) to the Greek text, De Panareto, p. 102v. Cf. Simplicius,Commentarius in Epicteti Enchiridion, p. 132.

14 See endnote 37 (p. 227) to the Greek text, ScetPatr, Cod. p. 61r.15 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1091b22; (Cf. 1085b17; 1086b12); De Partibus Animalium, 645a28;

Politica, 1261a10; 1263a22; 1335a2.16 See Cod. p. 112v and note 27 (p. 362) in edition volume.17 Cassian the Sabaite, Const, p. 5v and note 11 (p. 70) in edition volume.18 Chrysippus, Fragmenta Logica et Physica, Fr. 459: pi .

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Lysia, 9: pi . Philo, DeAbrahamo, 116117: pipi. De Specialibus Legibus (lib. iiv), 2.68: pi pi pi . De Aeternitate Mundi, 75(quoting Chrysippus): pi . Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 114: , pi pi . John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium, v. 13,1, pp. 145146: pi, pi pi .

19 Theodoret, Quaestiones In Octateuchum, p. 207: pi. Interpretatio in Psalmos, PG.80.1117.4244: pi , ,

20 Cf. Institutiones, IV.7, PL.49.161B: alii traditur seniori, qui decem junioribus praeest,quos sibi creditos ab abbate instituit pariter, et gubernat: secundum illud scilicet quodordinatum in Exodo legimus per Moysen.

21 OctoVit, p. 30r.


sion about those who are excellent and good ( pi ),22which is one more token of Cassians Aristotelian learnedness and did notenjoy due attention, until conspicuous Aristotelian commentators such asAlexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus took this seriously. The for-mula never attracted Christian authors, which attests to Cassians personaleducation. Unique instances of this kind bring Cassians special spiritualrelation with Theodore Studites to the fore, since canvassing of the textsreveals tens of instances where Theodore turns out to be a staunch followerof Cassians language and the Studite environment turns out to be the placewhere Cassians treasures were preserved and cherished.

Philological and philosophical exploration of Cassians text reveals aclandestine interplay between Christian theologians, on the one hand, andProclus, Damascius and Simplicius on the other, which took place under thenose of imperial autocracy. It then becomes quite plain that Neoplatonismwas a stock that Christians have been more eager to appropriate thanthe Neoplatonists to share. In view of condemned Christian theologianswho are shown to have been heavily involved in Cassians education andwritings, it could be claimed that somehow these texts adumbrate a deviantChristianity. This may be true. But were that the case, this is an aberranceof a remarkable tenacity and refinement.

Out of this give-and-take, only the Areopagite escaped condemnationand survived, perhaps because his fanciful adumbration of divine hierar-chies was too fascinating to jettison, notwithstanding his Origenism andimplicit Monophysitism imbuing his texts, alongside crude Neoplatonicadaptations.

The Akoimetoi

Any Syrian or Antiochene monk was quite at home living at the Akoimetoi(sleepless monks),23 whose roots were in fact Syrian. The founder of theinstitution was Alexander (c. 350430), who engaged in monastic life inSyria in c. 380, and went to Constantinople after 404, the same year when he

22 Const, p. 18v. See endnote 21 (p. 73) to the Greek text.23 Rudolf Riedinger, Akoimeten, Theologische Realenzyklopdie, Pt. 2 (1978), p. 149. Also,

Vernace Grumel, Acmtes, Dictionnaire de spiritualite, 1 (1937), pp. 169176. Jules Pargoire,Acmtes, Dictionnaire darcheologie chretienne et de liturgie, I/1 (1907), 307321. S. Vailh,Acmtes, Dictionnaire dhistoire et de geographie ecclesiastique, 1 (1912), pp. 274281. Howdid the community of Akoimetoi fare until the eighth century, see Peter Hatlie, The Monksand Monasteries of Constantinople, ca. 350850, Cambridge, 2007, passim.

14 introduction

appeared in Antioch to be thence expelled forthwith. Cassian himself wasin a familiar milieu, not only because his writings make clear that Syria washis place, but also because his native Scythopolis was part of the Koile Syria.The relations between the Akoimetoi and the wider region of Palestinewere close and both the Akoimetoi and the Great Laura were renownedfor their libraries. The library of the Akoimetoi was later reproduced byits daughter-monastery of Studios,24 through the exertions of the alreadymentioned famous abbot Theodore Studites, who created one of the greaterscriptoria of his times there. The library of the Laura is mentioned in theVita Stephani Sabaitae,25 which advises that Stephen had been appointedto care for the library when he became a cell dweller. It seems he used totake care of preservation and classification of books in his cell. The authorof the collection of stories relating monastic experience entitled PratumSpirituale (), John Moschus (c. 550619, born in Damascus), andhis pupil Sophronius settled in the New Laura for a long period of time andused to visit the Great Laura frequently. The seventh-century Sabaite monkand abbot Antiochus of Palestine composed his Pandecta Scripturae Sacraewithin the same premises drawing heavily on Cassians texts, as shown inAppendix I. It is then pretty plain that once intellectuals of this level wereable to work in the Great Laura, there was a society of intellectual monksbeing around. There are testimonies of similar intellectual activity, as wellas copying of manuscripts, in other desert monasteries, too. Among themthe Laura of Souka appears,26 which is a telling fact explaining Cassiansdecision to join the specific monastery upon his return to Palestine fromConstantinople.

The strictures against the Akoimetoi reflected on Cassian himself. Hewas vilified by different quarters competing for championing the imperialorthodoxy, which took no pride in the fact that an intellectual such asCassian had decamped to Constantinople from Palestine. His teaching, nomatter how prone to Origenistic tendencies or Nestorian sympathies, ortolerant of the Monophysite cause it was, was embraced (or tolerated) only

24 Parts of that library were probably transferred to Studios, following the decline of theAkoimetoi, after their condemnation by Pope John II of Rome, on charges of Nestorianismin 534, instigated by Justinian.

25 G. Garitte, Le dbut de la Vie de S. tienne le Sabaite tertouv en arabe au Sinai,Analecta Bollandiana 77 (1959), 332369, p. 354.

26 R.P. Blake, La litrature greque en Palestine au VIII sicle, Le Muson 78, 1965, pp. 367380. S.H. Griffith, Greek into Arabic: Life and Letters in the Monasteries of Palestine in theNinth Century: The Example of the Summa Theologiae Arabica, Byzantion 56, 1986, pp. 117138. A. Linder, The Christian Communities in Jerusalem, in J. Prawer, ed., The History ofJerusalem: The Early Islamic Period (6381099), Jerusalem (Hebrew), 1987, pp. 112113.


so long as Justinian was seeking compromises with theological dissent andhad not yet communicated his despotic resolutions to the clergy.

I will canvass how Nestorius and the Monophysites entertained thenotion of (coherence) which makes plain that Cassian (and Cae-sarius, who is the selfsame person) applies the idea more or less in the samesense.27 Beyond such points, however, Cassian advises that in another workof his ( pi) he has argued that the Holy Spiritdoes not give birth to progeny ( ).28 It was Nesto-rius who had made the notion of the Holy Spirit begetting (apud John3:3&3:7) a major point of dispute and he had himself defended his positionvigorously, only to be followed by Cassian.

Theologians used to quote John 3:37 conveniently, taking this to be-speak spiritual, ethical, and existential renewal: a rebirth, or a new life,through the sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit. Although the scripturalportion involves a notion of birth from the Spirit, almost no author tookthis statement to suggest that the Holy Spirit gives any kind of birth to anykind of offspring. Beside Nestorius himself, it was Cassian alone who felt itnecessary to make the assertive proclamation that the Holy Spirit does notgive birth to progeny ( ). As was the case with theimplicit homage Cassian used to pay to Origen, this was in effect his mannerto pay his respects to Nestorius, too. His statement is practically a confidentNestorian echo and a courageous defence of his compatriot. No matter whathis dissent from Nestorius, this did not go as far as to disown the feeling ofspiritual alliance with a doctor who had stood up against the Alexandrianextreme apotheosis of Christ at the expense of his humanity. It was after allTheodoret who had vouched for the real import of Nestorius preaching andthe master of Cyrrhus was a real spiritual father to Cassian. Nestorius hadcontended that the portion of Matthew 1:20, for that which was conceivedin her is of the Holy Spirit has consequential things to say: It is one thing toco-exist with that which was conceived; but it is quite another to argue thatit was the Holy Spirit that made that which was in Marys womb ( ). As I will sustain presently,no one has ever been able to make a convincing case against Nestoriusforceful argument: For the holy fathers, who had a profound knowledge ofthe holy scriptures, saw that, if we substitute the expression the one who wasincarnated with the one who was born [from the Holy Spirit], then the Son

27 See Cod. p. 84v and endnote 17 (pp. 298299).28 Cassian the Sabaite, De Panareto, Cod. p. 116r. See endnote 39 (pp. 366370) to the Greek

text.

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becomes son of the Spirit, which results in [Jesus Christ] having been bornof two fathers. And if [the word ] were written with one n, [viz.] then God the Logos becomes a creature of the Spirit. Nestoriuspoint is clear-cut: the fathers deliberately refrained from ascribing theconception of Jesus in the womb to the Holy Spirit. Instead, they opted forreference to incarnation by the Holy Spirit. First and foremost was Johnthe Evangelist who eschewed the term conception or birth, and employedthe expression incarnated from the Holy Spirit instead. Although Nestoriuswas thrown to fire, no theologian did ever take the risk of maintaining thatthe Holy Spirit is a progenitor whatsoever, or specifically that Jesus wasborn of the Holy Spirit. Everyone, including Justinian and his anathemas,found it more safe to postulate that Jesus was born of Mary. Nestorius waseventually adjudged a heretic, his teaching was indiscriminately proscribed,yet no formulations explicitly running contrary to this specific reasoning ofhis were ever issued by anyone. What therefore Cassian actually did wasto endorse Nestorius argument banning any notion of birth given by theHoly Spirit. He does not fail to advise us that he has argued for this thesisin another work of his, too, which means that he had expounded in moredetail what at the present point he mentions only in passing. The portion ofMatthew 1:20 was naturally quoted without encumbrance by gifted as muchas mediocre theologians. All of them, however, (including the councils ofEphesus and Chalcedon) saw the precariousness of the point and werequick to append the additional avowal that Jesus was conceived from theHoly Spirit and the Virgin Mary. In other words, Jesus human generationwas not ascribed to the Holy Spirit alone at the exclusion of Mary. But itwas Cassian alone who was bold enough to stand by Nestorius, for which hesubsequently paid a heavy posthumous price.

When Cassian the Sabaite wrote the Scholia in Apocalypsin,29 his mainsource to quote from was Didymus commentary on the same scripturalbook. It then hardly comes as a surprise that these Scholia are anonyma.The dominating figure underlying them is Didymus, a persona non grataduring the 540s, which could immediately put Cassian at risk. That Didy-mus was condemned in 553 clearly bespeaks that his theological views werecurrent among certain monastic circles, such as the Origenists in Palestineand the monastery of Akoimetoi in the capital. How could Cassian possibly

29 Not only is this work anonymous, it has no title either. There is only a series of portionsof the Apocalypse, with each of them followed by a comment. I use this title only as aconventional one, which is how it appears in the forthcoming edition volume published bythe Cambridge University Press.


have divulged this source of his amidst an environment where controversywas raging over Origen, Didymus and Evagrius? In addition, the Scholiaare the fruit of an amazingly rich library having been studied by Cassian.As a matter of fact, Cassian wrote the Scholia entertaining his education,which related not only to orthodox theologians and the acceptable Philo,but also to an impressive abundance of pagan writers. Those were philoso-phers,30 poets,31 biographers,32 anthologists,33 historians,34 rhetors and ora-tors,35 Late-Antiquity sophists,36 as well as heretics,37 including dangerousArianists,38 at a time when Arianism was not simply a problem of the past,but a menace to the north of the empire, namely, Arian Goths.

Cassian appears not to have set a great store by words themselves, asdistinct from the truth that a particular statement means to convey. Quitesimply, he declined to eschew a word or expression only because inauspi-cious parties had used them. Therefore, the paradox of the period is this:whereas it had been thought that the wave of great theologians during thefifth century had definitely settled the doctrine, it appeared after Chalcedonthat no general agreement had been achieved about cardinal issues. Follow-ing the fourth century self-confident sense of doctrinal clarity and conclu-siveness, the dogma once again appeared to have settled in semi-fixed andambiguous formularies. Of this development, Neo-Chalcedonism is a con-spicuous emblem. Although an Oecumenical Council, Chalcedon was nownegotiable, which stands in stark contrast with the obdurate tenacity of theterminology employed at Nicaea.

Neo-Chalcedonism sought compromise by means of withholding toomuch construal of statements by either party. However, their analyses weremore likely to obfuscate than to illuminate the mind, to cloud the issuesrather than clarify them. The Akoimetoi, on the other hand, appear to have

30 Plato, Aristotle, Speusippus, Theophrastus, Plotinus, Albinus, Alexander of Aphro-disias, Aspasius, Posidonius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Hermias of Alexandria, Ammonius ofAlexandria, Elias of Alexandria, Hierocles of Alexandria, Olympiodorus of Alexandria, Davidof Alexandria, John Philoponus, Dexippus, Plutarch, Damascius, Simplicius.

31 Homer, Hesiod, Anacreon, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.32 Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch.33 Stobaeus.34 Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodore of Sicily, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cassius

Dio.35 Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isocrates, Lysias, Hermogenes, Libanius.36 Apollonius, Claudius Aelianus, Aelius Herodianus, Aelius Aristides, Dio Chrysostom,

Lucian of Samosata.37 Origen, Evagrius of Pontus, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Diodore of Tarsus, Marcellus of

Ancyra, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, Severus of Antioch.38 Aetius of Antioch, Asterius of Antioch, Julian the Arian.

18 introduction

seen their production as part of the required increasing explicitness, whichhad started with Origen, proceeded with Nicaea but was rescinded by Chal-cedon. This is probably a reason why they felt it more safe to put their anal-yses on the lips of defunct authorities, thus resting their case with the stain-less orthodoxy of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril, Chrysostom, andothers. On the one hand, this was a way to expound resolutions on conceptsthat were beset with misunderstanding and subsequent controversy. On theother, they sought to shield themselves from the shifting imperial vicissi-tudes of the era. Henceforth, several works actually written by Antiochenehands gave the impression of being Alexandrine. De Trinitate, with its amplescriptural quotation, is an outstanding paradigm, which shows two things.One, how far and wide Antiochene influence had expanded. Two, the authorof De Trinitate (that is, Cassian himself)39 essayed to preserve a modicumof Classical learning, which Alexandria since Origen had been all too shyto do, and had actually seen this as an almost sacrilegious anomaly. Thistendency, however, could not mushroom until a couple of centuries later,since this train of thought was not, and could not be, in ascendancy duringJustinians reign. At the same time, compromises were deemed inevitable.Which is why during the heated controversies which swirled around Ori-gens thought, authors ostensibly endorsed Justinians skewed depiction ofOrigen. No matter how irritating plagiarism is to modern scholarship, theAkoimetoi produced their writings being under the impression that theseworks were solicitous for the welfare of the entire Church.

The Akoimetoi were completely on their guard against falling into thepitfall of extremism. Which is why they were by no means shy to draw onGreek traditionalism. This can be gleaned from Cassians writings, abound-ing in terse yet revealing references, where subterraneous echoes of Aris-totle and Stoicism are audible, even though Cassian is always ready to partcompany with them whenever necessary. The Akoimetoi freed themselvesof fanaticism, yet they incurred imperial onslaught demanding everyone totake sides unequivocally and be a downright Chalcedonian in unswervingcompliance to the official faith. The predicament of their monastery in 534shows that broadmindedness did not avail against the storm, and yet its sur-vival shows that the community held out against staggering odds.

Both truth and error sought to undergird their arguments by means ofScripture, while at the same time decking themselves out in the nomencla-ture and subtleties of philosophy. Alexandria sought to do this by means

39 See A Newly Discovered Greek Father, Appendix II.


of Plato, only to be accused by Antiochenes that they caused the city tobecome the incubator of all heresies. In order to overcome this, Antiochemployed a doctrine of hermeneutics combined with the philosophy ofAristotle, which was in turn held accountable for such aberration as theThree Chapters and heretics as Nestorius, not to mention Theodore of Mop-suestia. The Akoimetoi seem to have held that quite simply both Alexandriaand Antioch had hyperbolised their differences, which seemed rather idlefrom a distance of the time-span of a century.

Personal antipathies deformed the appraisement of many churchmen inthe sixth century, as in the fourth. Once an embittered antagonist had foundreason for branding one of his opponents an Origenist or a Nestorian or aMonophysite, Cassian could have been tarred with every heresy that ran-cour could lay at his door. This was not difficult, as a matter of fact, let alonethat Cassians traffic with Origenist, Nestorian and Monophysite thoughtcan definitely be traced following the analyses in this book. Especially afterthe Akoimetoi had come under the emperors disfavour in 534, and his hard-ening of policy after 536, it was all too convenient for anyone to trade onthe notoriety of Origen, Nestorius, and Severus, rather than to investigatethe writings of a specific author such as Cassian. As heresy after heresy waslaid at Origens door, it was not difficult for critics to find causes for scandalin Cassians teaching. Apparently heresiologists convicted Cassian of stray-ing to Origenism, even though the notion itself was increasingly obscure:to them it sufficed that the emperor had convicted Origen and his eminentfollowers. Likewise, the blame of Nestorianism and Monophysitism musthave been laid at his door, too, which was the case with the Akoimetoi as awhole. The fact is, however, that coming across instances of vocabulary thatis redolent of the ferment over Nestorius or Monophysitism, does not meanespousal of doctrine. What we know about the theology of condemned fig-ures is mostly onslaught by the synods. But we also know that these syn-ods present antipodal arguments unsympathetically, in highly abbreviatedform, and with only the scantiest indication of how these arguments hadbeen meant to work.

Cassian did not deserve such a fate, no matter what his delinquenciesmay have been. All the more so, since his language reveals his dues tohis eminent predecessors, who are in fact those who allow us to identifyhim as a Greek Christian author. However, he was the perfect match: hehad composed monastic tracts that were handy for the dawning westernmonasticism; he was disfavoured, yet not so famous as to be anathema-tised by name, by any synod. The bulk of his Greek manuscripts perishedthrough destruction or neglect, or indeed through attribution to past stars of

20 introduction

Christian literature, whereas his boldest speculations are the ones that hisenemies would have been most zealous to suppress and his admirers leastsolicitous to shelter.

Certain writings strongly point to Cassian being their author. Amongthem, many of the epistles of the collection Epistulae et Amphilochia (cur-rently attributed to Photius) present us with striking evidence which is hardto overlook. The same goes for the texts currently under the name Pseudo-Justin, Pseudo-Clement, Pseudo-Macarius, the Quaestiones et Respon-siones currently ascribed either to Pseudo-Justin or Pseudo-Theodoret bydifferent editors, Synopsis Scripturae Sacrae (Pseudo-Athanasius), De Vitaet Miraculis Sanctae Theclae (Pseudo-Basil of Seleucia), Oratio Quatra Con-tra Arianos (Pseudo-Athanasius). I am confident that future philologicalexploration will reveal Cassian as the author of a prodigious literary out-put. Moreover, Migne published two works: De Incarnatione Domini and DeSancta Trinitate under Cyril of Alexandrias name. They are now believedto be Theodorets, all the more so since there is a testimony by Gennadiusof Marseilles,40 according to which Theodoret had written a book on theIncarnation of the Lord. However, both are conspicuously present in ourexplorations of Cassians work and their possible relevance to his pen shouldremain a moot question calling for investigation.

A prolific writer though Cassian was, his name had to be associated onlywith monastic writings attributed retrospectively to another Cassian. Allthat was needed about Cassian was silence; neither tendentious invective,nor dispute, not even dabbling in the rest of his writings: it could sufficeto attribute these writings to Athanasius, Chrysostom, and others. The trueCassian was an antecedent to be done away with. The role of ancestor wasreserved for another Cassian. Not much was needed anyway: it sufficed topresent this other Cassian as having composed these writings as answers tothe same problems and having deduced his stance from identical premisses.Revisiting the collection of biographies by Gennadius of Marseilles, interpo-lating an alleged biography of a figment John Cassian plus some tampering

40 Gennadius of Marseilles, De Viris Illustribus, LXXXIX: Theodoretus Bishop of Cyrrhus(for the city founded by Cyrrhus King of the Persians preserves until the present day inSyria the name of its founder) is said to have written many works. Such as have come to myknowledge are the following: On the incarnation of the Lord, Against Eutyches the presbyterand Dioscorus Bishop of Alexandria who deny that Christ had human flesh; strong works bywhich he confirmed through reason and the testimony of Scripture that He had real fleshfrom the maternal substance which he derived from His Virgin mother just as he had truedeity which he received at birth by eternal generation from God the Father.


with some other points of the same collection was enough to put the realCassian to a second death and give rise to a link between the eastern andwestern monasticism under the name of a phantom called John Cassian.

Telling points of Cassians text direct us to the pseudepigrapha Ero-tapokriseis (Pseudo-Caesarius) and De Trinitate (Pseudo-Didymus). In turn,these texts open the door to the monastery of the Akoimetoi, the broad-minded but intractable community of Constantinople. This was the placewhere the Areopagite corpus was composed. This was also the place wherePseudo-Caesarius (that is, Cassian)41 met Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite per-sonally, so that he could advise posterity that this mysterious figure was amonk coming from the region of Thace. The adventure of exploring theseworks shows how the Akoimetoi hankered for Greek patrimony, and howpersistently did they avail themselves of this patrimony despite all odds andthreats by the hostile imperial environment. Not only do we owe them agood number of Greek epigrammatic passages not otherwise attested, butwe also arrive at the conclusion that most of the collection Epistulae etAmphilochia, currently ascribed to Photius, are their product and probablythe fruit of Cassians own pen. Furthermore, it is Cassians own texts thatcompel us to reconsider several epistles ascribed to Basil of Caesarea andascribe them to Cassian himself. It seems that Rudolf Riedinger was right inendorsing Uwe W. Knorrs claim, according to which what we are currentlypresented with as epistles by Basil are actually compilations (Lesefrchte)from Basils epistles. Cassians texts allow us to go a step further and ascribesome of these epistles to Cassian drawing on Basil, or at least inspired by theCappadocian.42

Cassian himself was treated as a heretic and his writings fell prey tomongers and forgers. The name Cassian was purloined from a real authorwho was pushed to extinction. Subsequently, the existence of a phantom,which was subsequently made a skeletal phenomenon until flesh tints wereapplied to that, was only a matter of fissiparous reproduction. All begunwith the phantasmal flesh and blood interpolated in the text of Gennadiusof Marseilles, which was subsequently peppered accordingly from start tofinish.

For all this, the process marked by the tolerant Akoimetoi was irre-versible and texts such as the monastic ones, as well as the Caesarius-oneand De Trinitate, mark this course, no matter how censorious religious

41 See A Newly Discovered Greek Father, Appendix I.42 Rudolf Riedinger, Akoimeten, p. 149.

22 introduction

orthodoxy might be of them. While Cassian draws conveniently on Gregoryof Nyssa, Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, and others, he goes a step beyondthem, in the sense that his respectful attitude towards Greek letters is ipsofacto professed. Origen was shy about quoting much of Greek philosophersand poets in Contra Celsum, whereas Theodoret sought a cure for the Greekmaladies. Origens cautious and reticent (and yet condemned) referenceto the Greeks was that those outside the faith have said certain thingsthat have been well-said,43 still he was prompt to add that Moses and theprophets had said the same things in a fuller and more correct manner.

It has been believed that, all of a sudden, John of Damascus (c. 676749)appeared on stage in order to offer an account of the doctrine, which maynot have been original, yet it rendered the spirit of previous theologians.Cassian fills the gap. For he is the synthesis of Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret,Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Alexandria, Didymus, Evagrius. Cassian isnot the meeting-point between east and west: quite simply, St. Benedict andhis successors drew heavily on his work. Rather, he is a continuation, as wellas fresh start of the uninterrupted eastern tradition well into the sixth cen-tury. This process was accomplished by Sabaite intellectuals and nourishedin the libraries, as well as the ascesis, of the monastery of the Akoimetoi.Antiochus and Damascenus, who both drew on the Sabaite library that wasavailable to them within the same premises, took up Cassian. Scribe Theo-dosius, who reproduced the book of Cassian (Meteora Codex 573) was aSabaite monk, as Codex 76 and Codex 8 of St. Sabas show.

Whereas Cassians monastic texts draw heavily (yet covertly) on Greekphilosophy (especially on Aristotle, who was favoured by the Nestorianlegacy), in the Scholia in Apocalypsin the presence of a vast number ofpagan intellectuals turns out to be dominating. Which is why the Scholiawere written as anonyma, whereas the text of Caesarius was written as apseudonymous one. Cassian must have been encouraged by the work ofsuch personalities as Dionysius Areopagite and John Philoponus. There canbe no doubt that he endeavoured to comply with the official doctrine, asfar as he was able to grasp and treat it. He did not succeed all the waythrough none the less, yet he was writing under the strong protection of suchpowerful persons as Leontius. Along with Theodore Askidas and Domitian,he took part in the Local Synod of 536 in the capital and subscribed toits acts, thus complying with the wishes of Leontius and of the emperor

43 Origen, Cels, VII.46 & Philocalia, 15.5: , pi , pi .


himself. None of the aforementioned intellectuals had to be present in thatsynod, since this was a local () one and only those who happenedto be in the capital should have been present. Had they wished not to bethere, they could have simply set sail for Palestine (or, anywhere else) fora while. Still they went and paid this service to the court. Theodore andDomitian were rewarded for this: they both became bishops of powerful andhistorical sees. Cassian had already been rewarded with a convenient abodein the monastery of Akoimetoi, where a vast library was available for him tocompose his works. Two monks in that synod (the sole synod in which theAkoimetoi appear to have been represented) also stood for the monasteryof Akoimetoi at the Local Synod of 536: John, presbyter and archimandrite,and Euethius, deacon and archimandrite.44

Nevertheless, the year 536 marks a shift of Justinians policy towards notonly Monophysites, but also whatever he saw as aberration by living anddeceased theologians alike. Justinians sympathies changed and developedover time, with the result that those favoured by him got regularly juggled,too. Cassian realised this change in the air, as indeed the entire commu-nity of the Akoimetoi must have done, too. It was time for him to leavethe capital. Considerate and aware of the balance of power as he was, heknew that to return to his own monastery of Sabas would only promisehim a hard time: the new abbot Gelasius, appointed in 535, was a staunchanti-Origenist. It only remained for Cassian to go somewhere else and, onceagain, his friend Leontius must have played his part. Instead of subduinghimself to the rule of Gelasius, Cassian was appointed an abbot by anotherhistorical monastery, that of Souka, in 539. The years 536539 would havenot been easy for him. Justinians change of policy made Cassian vulnerableto censure by the new custodians of mandatory orthodoxy. The monasteryof Akoimetoi as an institution had a hard time against the imperial author-ity, which is probably why they were present in the synod of 536, in orderto offer the emperor a supine appeasement. Following this period, De Trini-tate must have been written by Cassian in defence of himself when he wasan abbot of the Souka monastery, that is, during or after 539. This is a workclearly evincing the distress of its author being faced with stricture. It is easyto see his anxious endeavour to show that, unlike his unlearned detractors,

44 ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, Tome 3, p. 47: pi pi pipi pi pi pi. op. cit.p. 68: pi .

24 introduction

he is a knowledgeable theologian that had said nothing wrong, and hemakes his point by composing a Greek tract exhibiting ample knowledgeof both Greek and Oriental writings. De Trinitate is indeed the work wherea vast number of pagan quotations are lavishly offered. Some of them aretreasures that have never been attested otherwise, and we are not able toidentify the source of them all, although there is some room for guessing. Itis in this same tract that the author announces his subsequent work, whichis no other than the text written under the name Caesarius. It is knownthat the opening of this work is a grosso modo quotation from the Ancoratusby Epiphanius of Salamis. Although some scholars have been apt to stylethis plagiarism, this is actually far from being so. The author writing inthe arrogant and exhibitionist style of a highly erudite theologian that justescaped condemnation, declares himself as orthodox as Epiphanius himselfwas. The latter was not chosen at random: for the Bishop of Cyprus wasa most stern inquisitor as regards what he saw as theological deviation. Itshould be noticed, however, that this is not a verbatim quotation. Amongminor differences here and there, one should be pointed out. WhereasEpiphanius was a bishop and was so addressed ( pi), the authorof Erotapokriseis is addressed child-loving father ( pi), thusemending Epiphanius text on this small but telling point, which means thathe was an abbot, not a bishop.45

A survey may furnish instances of influence or conflict, even though occa-sional similarities lurk only to obscure research. In the first place there issome chance to reveal the scope (intellectual, geographical) of a notionbeing entertained. This may mean nothing significant on its own merit. Butit may provide a scope, within which certain relations can be pointed out.For instance, the epithet (without successor) applied to the NewTestament, has a distinct meaning in Cassian and in Didymus only. Howthe rest of the scholars use this, may be instructive, but it is not essential,and it would be rash to translate mere verbal affinity to intellectual rele-vance. Nevertheless, we could hardly do away with this preliminary processin order to reach more substantial conclusions, even though exhumationof sources is only a preliminary stage and interpretation is the main task tofollow. Certainly common linguistic tools do not always trans

[VigChr Supp 112] Panayiotis Tzamalikos-The Real Cassian Revisited_ Monastic Life, Greek Paideia,...

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