John Cassian is more renowned for his seminal monastic writings than for his polemical tract against Nestorius. Around 380 Cassian traveled from the Roman province of Scythia Minor (modern-day Dobrudja) to Palestine, where he lived as a monk in Bethlehem for a few years. Around 385 he departed for Egypt to live among and learn from the Egyptian anchorites. In 399 or 400 he was forced to leave Egypt in the wake of a controversy that had reached violent proportions, when Origenist monks questioned the validity of Anthropomorphite theology. He accompanied the exiled Origenist monks through Palestine to Constantinople, where John Chrysostom ordained him to the deaconate. Toward the end of 404 the supporters of Chrysostom sent Cassian to Pope Innocent of Rome with information that exonerated the archbishop of some of the charges made against him. Chrysostom had been (falsely) accused of crimes ranging from excessive punishment and harassment of the clergy to gluttony and refusing to pray either inside or outside of the church.1 Eventually Cassian settled in Gaul (France), near Marseille.