¹ Institutes 12.19. Latin text: Guy, Jean-Claude, ed. and trans., Jean Cassien: institutions cénobitiques SC 109 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1965)Google Scholar, 478. I have used Ramsey's translation throughout, though at various points with modifications for clearer expression of particularly educational or rhetorical language (Cassian, John, The Institutes, trans. Ramsey, Boniface, OP, ACW 58 [New York: Paulist, 2000]Google Scholar), here 265. This is also the case for the Conferences (Cassian, John, The Conferences, trans. Ramsey, Boniface, OP, ACW 57 [New York: Paulist, 1997]Google Scholar). Richard Goodrich argues that Cassian prioritizes experience over eloquence as the basis for authority in writing monastic texts in order to position himself against writers such as Basil and Jerome; see Goodrich, Richard, Contextualizing Cassian: Aristocrats, Asceticism, and Reformation in Fifth-Century Gaul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 66–75,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 68.

² For a recent discussion of this process see Chin, Catherine, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 72–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 74–93.

³ The description of Basil is Philip Rousseau's (Rousseau, Philip, Basil of Caesarea [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 48). Most scholarship on Cassian acknowledges that his writings reveal an extensive education, both rhetorical and linguistic; see Chadwick, Owen, John Cassian, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 9–10Google Scholar; Frank, Karl Susso, “John Cassian on John Cassian,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 418–33Google Scholar, at 425; Stewart, Columba, Cassian the Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Goodrich's arguments about Cassian's use of rhetorical arguments and Latin style depend on this premise.

⁴ For how education can replicate a central system of cultural reproduction, see Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. Thompson, John B., trans. Raymond, Gina and Adamson, Matthew (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 57–65Google Scholar; and Bourdieu, Pierre and Passerson, Jean-Claude, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. Nice, R., 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 1990), 71–102Google Scholar; cf. Chin, Grammar and Christianity, 7.

⁵ Cassian here tries to articulate monasticism as something different, but still uses a language of tradition. In the words of Homi Bhabha, “The enunciation of cultural difference . . . is the problem of how, in signifying the present, something comes to be repeated, relocated and translated in the name of tradition, in the guise of a pastness that is not necessarily a faithful sign of historical memory but a strategy of representing authority in terms of the artifice of the archaic” (Location of Culture [London: Routledge, 1994]Google Scholar, 35). In other words, because Cassian is presenting the conferences as his “historical memory” and the abbas as ancient authorities, he must draw on notions of tradition that were culturally located in the educational process.

⁶ For this definition of ars, see Lausberg, Heinrich, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, eds. Orton, David E. and Andersen, Dean, trans. Bliss, Matthew T., Jansen, Annemiek, and Orton, David E. (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, § 3. Conrad Leyser also investigates rhetorical tropes, including asceticism as an art, in Cassian's construction of an “ascetic holiness” and a “programme of reading” to appeal to an elite audience, but he focuses on the monk as a morally pure public speaker (Conrad Leyser, “Lectio Divina, Oratorio Pura: Rhetoric and the Techniques of Asceticism in the “Conferences” of John Cassian,” in Modelli Di Santità e Modelli di Comportamento, eds. Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero, and Francesco Barcellona [Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994], 79–105, here 79–80).

⁷ Young, Frances, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 51.

⁸ Burton-Christie, Douglas, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. His study is especially helpful for examining the tension between orality and writing in monasticism (see pp. 18 and 79–81 in particular). See also Gamble, Harry, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, particularly p. 170 for a discussion of the formation of monastic libraries; and more recently Stroumsa, Guy, “The Scriptural Movement of Late Antiquity and Christian Monasticism,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16.1 (2008): 61–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ For a discussion of the spiritual aspects of this reading method, see Roose, Pieter, “Lectio Divina Among the Monks,” Communio 13 (1986): 368–77Google Scholar. Cf. also Studzinski, Raymond, OSB, Reading to Live: The Evolving Practice of Lectio Divina, Cistercian Studies Series 231 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2009)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Cassian makes this analogy in Conference 10, discussed below.

¹¹ Gunderson's argument about Quintillian's text provides a parallel to mine about Cassian's: “Quintilian's own reader has been positioned to read and recover (properly) Quintilian's meaning: the author is confident that such is possible and that his readers will learn from reading him how they are to read. Quintilian thus makes reading possible in theory but impossible in practice barring the support apparatus of his own text” (Gunderson, Eric, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000], 40–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For an analysis of performance and masculinity in Cicero's De oratore, see Gunderson, Staging Masculinity, 187–22, and for worries about effeminacy, see Dugan, John, Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 157–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Young argues for a similar relationship between the literature of oratorical education and biblical exegesis as I do for Cassian (Young, Biblical Exegesis, passim). Her categories of types of Christian literature, however, do not include the particular genres Cassian uses (220).

¹² Goodrich examines Cassian's demands for renunciation of wealth, possessions, and social standing to argue that he created a radical alternative to his competitors who allowed the elite to maintain their “traditional prerequisites” (Contextualizing Cassian, 151–207, at 152). For a discussion of Cassian's monasticism as itself elite, see Rousseau, Philip, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 199–205Google Scholar, plus an examination of wealth in 205–20.

¹³ Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 77, points out the commonality of this phrase.

¹⁴ On this point, especially that the evidence in Anthony's letters suggests a more philosophically educated writer than appears in Athanasius's hagiography, see Rubenson, Samuel, The Letters of Saint Anthony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995)Google Scholar. Guy Stroumsa makes a similar point about this tension, also pointing to Rubenson's work (“Scriptural Movement,” 68).

¹⁵ Krueger, Derek, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ See Williams, Megan Hale, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Stroumsa, “Scriptural Movement,” 68 and 70. For an earlier precursor to this point, see Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, where he remarks on how “book conscious” monastic Christianity became in late antiquity (222).

¹⁸ For a useful discussion of the notions of canon, see Finkelberg, M. and Stroumsa, G., eds. Homer, The Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 2 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 1–9.

¹⁹ For a discussion of the relationship among these literary styles, see Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, 68–76.

²⁰ See, for example, Kruuger's arguments about hagiographers seeing their texts as “biblical” (Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 10). See also Perrone, Lorenzo, “Scripture for a Life of Perfection. The Bible in Late Antique Monasticism: The Case of Palestine,” in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, October 11–13, 2006, eds. DiTommaso, Lorenzo and Turcescu, Lucian (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 393–417CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 90.

²² Johnson, William, “Toward a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” American Journal of Philology 121 (2000): 593–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While much of Johnson's argument pertains to the effects of the bookroll on reading performance, his general insights into the idea that these practices, and how they are represented in an account of a reading community, point to the idea of a reading and writing system as a source of community identity. For a discussion about the shift from bookroll to codex as it pertains to studying monasticism, see Stroumsa, “Scriptural Movement,” 65–67, including the point that the codex made reading easier. For a more general discussion of the various theories for this shift, including a critique of each and a suggestion that this “rise” of the codex is a question of Romanization, see Bagnall, Roger, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), 79–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both Stroumsa (67n20) and Bagnall (81–83) engage the work of Johnson as part of their analysis.

²³ For an examination of literacy as a measure of the ability to read, see Harry Gamble, Early Christian Readers and Harris, William, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an examination of “levels” of literacy, plus a discussion of the “fluid notions of literacy,” especially in teaching language, see Kaster, Robert, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 35–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ As quoted in Johnson, “Sociology of Reading,” 601.

²⁵ This tale appears in Instit. 5.39 (SC 109:252–54; Ramsey, 139–40). Cassian's use of the term otium in this story is telling, since its implications of the leisure time used to explore philosophical debates would not be lost on Cassian's audience. Cassian, however, is interested in transforming cultural expectations of otium in his monasticism, as both Chin and Goodrich have argued. Chin has shown that Cassian links otium onto prayer; thus, the hours of prayer are the “tools” the elite need to have access for a proper culture. See Chin, Catherine, “Prayer and Otium in Cassian's Institutes,” Studia Patristica 35 (2001): 24–29Google Scholar. Goodrich makes the case that Cassian resisted the ascetic accommodation of otium prevalent in his contemporaries like Augustine (Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 152–54).

²⁶ This account should not be read to reflect the linguistic reality of late antique Egypt, but rather Cassian's claims about it. He specifically says the abba discarded the book since “no one in that region has any knowledge whatsoever of that language” (Instit. 5.39.3 [SC 109:254]; Ramsey, 140): quippe uniuersis in illa regione notiita linguae huius penitus ignaris). In contrast, the Historia Monachorum recounts monks listening to an Abba's teaching in Latin (HM 10.25).

²⁷ Maud Gleason has shown that the orator drew on paideia as a form of “symbolic capital” (Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995Google Scholar).

²⁸ For Cassian's antipathy, see Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 90.

²⁹ Conf. 1.7.3 (SC 42:85; Ramsey, 46). Latin text: Pichery, Dominic E., ed. and trans., Jean Cassian: Conférences, 3 vols. SC 42, 54, 64 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1955, 1958, 1959)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Conf. 1.9 and 1.10.1 (SC 42: 119–20; Ramsey 48).

³¹ Both Stewart (Cassian the Monk, 17–18) and Goodrich (Contextualizing Cassian, 49–59) examine Cassian's critique of Gallic monasticism for lacking proper rules.

³² Cf. Conf. 1.2.1 (SC 42:79; Ramsey, 41).

³³ Conf. 10.8.3 (SC 54:82–83; Ramsey, 377). Germanus continues by saying if this is true for this education, how much more so is it true for the “most sublime discipline” (sublimissimae disciplinae) of monasticism.

³⁴ Cassian says that the monastic elders “initiated” their younger brethren “with these institutes as with the rudiments of the alphabet (elementis quibusdam ac syllabis)” (Instit. 4.9 [SC 109:132; Ramsey, 82]).

³⁵ For the role of grammar and rhetoric in education, see Marrou, Henri, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. Lamb, George (London: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 274–86Google Scholar.

³⁶ See below for a discussion of the competition between Cassian's genres and other Christian “teaching” genres.

³⁷ Bourdieu and Passerson, Reproduction in Education, 99.

³⁸ Cf. Gleason, Making Men; Kaster, Guardians; and Chin, Grammar and Christianity, esp. 3–5.

³⁹ “For since all the arts and disciplines that come from human genius and that do nothing more than make pleasant this short life cannot be properly grasped by someone who has not been taught by an instructor . . . how foolish it is to believe that this alone does not require a teacher” (Conf. 2.11.7 [SC 42: 123–24; Ramsey, 93]; cf. Conf. 2.16.4).

⁴⁰ Richard Goodrich has pointed out that Cassian had to argue for his authority to a Gallic audience, even though he himself was a “foreigner” (Goodrich, Contextualizing, 32). Goodrich analyzes Cassian's claims to experience as the basis for this authority (Contextualizing, 65–116), a point also in Stewart (Cassian the Monk, 95).

⁴¹ The general thesis of Kaster, Guardians, but esp. 15–31. For the role of scribes in guarding the language of early Christian texts, see Haines-Eitzen, Kim, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Stewart, Columba, “From λογος to verbum: John Cassian's Use of Greek in the Development of a Late Monastic Vocabulary,” in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Studies in Honor of Jean LeClercq, ed. Elder, E. Rozanne, Cistercian Studies Series 160 (Kalamazoo: Cisterican Publications, 1995), 5–31Google Scholar.

⁴³ Conf. Preface 1.5 (SC 42:76; Ramsey, 30).

⁴⁴ Conf. 17.30.3 (SC 54:283–84; Ramsey, 613).

⁴⁵ Goodrich has an extensive examination of Cassian's use of insinuatio (Contextualizing Cassian, 31–6, 71–3).

⁴⁶ Instit. Preface 1.7 (SC 109:28; Ramsey, 13) and Conf. Pref. 1.5 (SC 42:75; Ramsey 30).

⁴⁷ Cf. Karl Susso Frank's argument that the first four books of the Institutes conceals Cassian's rules for coenobitic life within a literary structure of telling stories that creates a normative authority for his teachings (Frank, Karl Susso, “Johannes Cassian, De Institutis coenobiorum: Normativer Erzähltext, präskriptiver Regeltext und appellative Du-Anrede,” in Dialogische Strukturen/Dialogic Structures, eds. Erzgräber, Willi, Kühn, Thomas, and Schaefer, Ursula [Tübingen: Gunter, Narr, Verlag, 1996], 7–16Google Scholar).

⁴⁸ Cf. Stewart Cassian the Monk, 30. For an analysis of the two parts of the Institutes and the three parts of the Conferences as five volumes that teach coenobitic and anchoritic monasticism, see LeRoy, Julien, “Les prefaces des éscrits monastiques de Jean Cassien,” Revue d'ascétique et de mystique 42 (1966): 157–80Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ For the role of lists in the teaching of grammar, and how it forms a reader, see Chin, Grammar and Christianity, 25–35. On the use of lists and dialogue, see Gunderson, Staging Masculinity, 35; for Quintillian and Cicero, see Gunderson, Staging Masculinity, 6; and for Cicero, see Dugan, Making a New Man, passim.

⁵⁰ Gunderson, Staging Masculinity, 35. For Cassian's use of other monastic sources (and his “embedding” of the Bible), see Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 35–37.

⁵¹ I wish to thank one of the anonymous readers for his/her suggestion here.

⁵² Marrou notes the place of memory to create recitation of passages, which was “closely associated with reading and writing” (History of Education, 271); so too, Kaster points out that the grammarian is a man of memoria (Guardians, 205).

⁵³ Instit. 4.15.2 (SC 109:140; Ramsey, 85).

⁵⁴ Chin, Grammar and Christianity, 17 for her discussion of the corpus for “authoritative Latinity” and 24–25 for how a reader is “inserted” into a relationship with the text.

⁵⁵ A full examination of Cassian's divisions between his “ancient” and “recent” examples remains to be done. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that he regards these teachings as passing on “ancient traditions,” see, for example, Conf. Preface 3.3; cf. Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 117–50.

⁵⁶ For the claim that Christian authors used dialogue because it was the teaching genre, see Conybeare, Catherine, The Irrational Augusine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 25.

⁵⁷ For the argument that Cassian uses dialogue to place the reader into his own earlier role as student, see Driver, Stephen, Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar. For scholarly skepticism of Cassian's claims to be an eye-witness, see Guy, Jean-Claude, “Jean Cassien, historien du monachisme egyptien?,” Studia Patristica 8 (1966): 363–72Google Scholar. Julien Leroy takes a similar stance, but still argues that one can distinguish between Cassian's experience and construction of anchoritic versus coenobitic monasticism (Leroy, “Les Prefaces”). Augustine Casiday examines the historical veracity of Cassian's representation of Egyptian monasticism in order to rescue him from “attacks on the accuracy” of his account (Casiday, Tradition and Theology of St. John Cassian [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007]), 119–60Google Scholar. Philip Rousseau examines Cassian's transfer of eastern tradition to the west, and the relationship between reader and writer in the Conferences (Ascetics, Authority, 183–88 and 221–22).

⁵⁸ The rhetorician was a “literary artist as well as a teacher,” whereas the grammarian was “fundamentally and simply a man of ratio and memoria” (Kaster, Guardians, 205).

⁵⁹ In making this point, I am not presuming that Cassian either read the De oratore (though he would certainly have known Cicero, given his centrality to Latin education; see Marrou, History of Education, 278) or that he is intentionally mimicking Cicero's self-fashioning literary strategies, as discussed in Dugan, Making a New Man. Nevertheless, recent scholarship on dialogue in late antiquity suggests that an analysis of Cassian's use of this genre, beyond the recognition of its usefulness for his authority, is warranted.

⁶⁰ See Dugan, Making a New Man, 81–83 and 90–96 for Cicero's use of these figures.

⁶¹ This is the formulation of Book 12 of Quintillian's Institutio, as opposed to the five-part structure that precedes it. See Quintillian, The Orator's Education, ed. and trans. Russell, Donald A., Loeb Classical Library 124 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 7–8Google Scholar. See also Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric, §10.2 for the formulation of “actor, ars and actio” in Cicero's rhetorical theory.

⁶² Conf. 18.2.1 (SC 64:12; Ramsey, 636).

⁶³ Conf. 18.4.1 (SC 64:13–14; Ramsey, 637).

⁶⁴ Conf. Preface 1.5 (SC 42:76; Ramsey, 30).

⁶⁵ As Chin has argued, grammatical education “formed a technology of the imagination that allowed its users to understand themselves as part of a coherent cultural system, one specifically oriented toward the valorization of an idealized past" (Grammar and Christianity, 7).

⁶⁶ This is Johnson's definition of a reading culture (“Sociology of Reading,” 603, emphasis his).

⁶⁷ Most scholars on Cassian note his competition with Martin of Tours, and Richard Goodrich extends this competition to include especially Jerome. See Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 17–18; Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 94–95; Goodrich notes Martin (28–30, 172–3, 192–3) and Jerome (66–75 and 81–85). Karl Susso Frank has argued that Cassian structures the first four books of the Institutes deliberately as story-telling rather than following the genres he was acquainted with from Basil and Jerome (Frank, “Johannes Cassian, De Institutis coenobiorum: Normativer Erzähltext,” 9–10).

⁶⁸ Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 80. Cf. also his argument that “reading will not of itself produce understanding of Scripture; the only effective reading is conducted within the frame of ascetic experientia, directed towards moral purity” (“Lectio Divina,” 90).

⁶⁹ Cf. Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 83–84, who notes that Cassian “virtually collapsed the whole of ascetic life into a programme of literary activity.” It remains to be determined the extent to which the literary and educational aspects of Cassian's monasticism are related to Evagrius's teachings. For a discussion of Evagrius, see Stewart, Columba, OSB, “Evagrius Ponticus on Monastic Pedagogy,” in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West, eds. Louth, Andrew, et al. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), 241–71Google Scholar. See also Young, Robin Darling, “Evagrius the Iconographer: Monastic Pedagogy in the Gnostikos,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 53–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of Evagrius's creation of a monastic paideia, itself inherited from the Cappadocians.

⁷⁰ The phrase lectionis instantia, which Ramsey sometimes translates “intense reading” and sometimes “diligent reading” is used often throughout the Conferences; I have translated it as “intense reading.” Here the reference is to Conf. 13.6 (SC 54: 154; Ramsey, 471).

⁷¹ Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 104–05 for his description, for terms, and also for connections to passages on reading and memorization I discuss below.

⁷² Conf. 14.10.4 (SC 54:196; Ramsey, 514–15).

⁷³ Instit. 2.5.2 (SC 109:66; Ramsey, 39).

⁷⁴ Instit. 2.6 (SC 109:68; Ramsey, 41) where the whole passage reads “thereupon the venerable senate (senatus) of fathers understood that, at the Lord's willing, a general canon had been established for the congregation of brothers through the teaching of an angel.”

⁷⁵ Instit. 11.3 (SC 109: 428; Ramsey, 241).

⁷⁶ Instit. 10.2.1 (SC 109: 386; Ramsey, 219). Evagrius, Thoughts 33, also explains the activities of demons against those engaged in reading.

⁷⁷ Instit. 4.17 (SC 109:142–44; Ramsey, 86).

⁷⁸ In both the Institutes and Conferences Cassian makes clear that these texts omit miracles in favor of “institutes and studies (institutis studiisque) of the holy men” and so contain “only what is necessary for instruction in the perfect life, and not a useless and vain object of wonderment without any correction for faults” (Conf. 18.1.3 [SC 64:12; Ramsey, 635]). For a full examination of Cassian's exclusion of miracles, especially as part of his competition with other monastic authors, see Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian, 74–75 and 111–12.

⁷⁹ Johnson, “Sociology of Reading,” 604.

⁸⁰ Instit. 5.34 (SC 109:244; Ramsey, 136).

⁸¹ Instit. 5.33 (SC 109:242–44; Ramsey, 136). Stewart notes that Cassian also uses the figure of Abba Theodore to support his own claims to the importance of experience; it is “not so much that book learning is wrong, as that it cannot be a shortcut or substitute for the knowledge gained by monastic experience” (Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 91).

⁸² This draws on the third of Johnson's “propositions” about defining reading, that a “reading event” is “in part formed by . . . the reader's conception of ‘who s/he is,’ that is, to what reading community s/he thinks to belong” (“Sociology of Reading,” 602).

⁸³ Young, Biblical Exegesis, 76–96.

⁸⁴ Chin discusses Jerome's use of ars to define scriptural interpretation and so to require “a specific kind of schooling” (Chin, “Jerome Inside the Book,” in The Early Christian Book, eds. Klingshirn, William E. and Safran, Linda [Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007], 101–16Google Scholar, esp. 108). This article is expanded on in Grammar and Christianity, chapter 6.

⁸⁵ Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 90–91. Leyser references Conf. 14.9, but many of these claims recur throughout the text.

⁸⁶ Cf. Leyser “Lectio Divina,” 87–88.

⁸⁷ Conf. 10.13.1(SC 54:94; Ramsey, 385–86).

⁸⁸ Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 88–90. Cf. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 110–13 who examines this reading method as preparation for prayer.

⁸⁹ Conf. 10.10.2 (SC 54:85; Ramsey, 386).

⁹⁰ Conf. 10.14.3 (SC 54:95–96; Ramsey, 387).

⁹¹ Conf. 10.14.3 (SC 54:95–96; Ramsey, 387); inperitia litterarum is literally “ignorance of literature” and not specifically lacking the ability to read at all. It speaks to more an elite expectation of what literacy would entail.

⁹² The terms used for “sublimity” vary. Russell, in the definitive commentary on Longinus's treatise, notes that Longinus is loose with his terminology; Russell, accordingly, allows a variance in his translation (“Longinus,” On the Sublime, ed. Russell, D. A. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964]Google Scholar, 57). Cassian also uses words other than the cognate sublimitas to indicate sublimity; Ramsey, in his translation, likewise varies. What appears as “sublime” might have any number of Latin terms; conversely, sublimitas might be translated as “lofty” and not “sublime.” This article is not a word study of Cassian's use of these terms, though I have included the Latin terminology for clarity.

⁹³ Amy Richlin begins her account with this “famous line” (“Gender and Rhetoric,” 90); Gunderson (Staging Masculinity, 6) uses Quintillian's version (1.pr.9), though Quintillian also quotes Cato (12.1) to make clear “no one can be an orator unless he is a good man.”

⁹⁴ For an examination of the relationship between sublimity and the use of quotation in biblical exegesis, see Young, Biblical Exegesis, 100–01.

⁹⁵ On Sublimity, 9.2 (Russell, 9–10). I have used D. A. Russell's translation, at times with modification, available in Russell, D. A. and Winterbottom, M., eds., Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 460–503Google Scholar, here 468.

⁹⁶ Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric, §§ 37–41.

⁹⁷ On Sublimity 1.2 (Russell, 1; Russell, 462).

⁹⁸ This work is generally dated to the first century CE. For a discussion of the manuscript tradition, as well as my choice simply to refer to the author as “Longinus,” see Russell, “Longinus,” xxii–xxx.

⁹⁹ Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, 2.118–26, see 122 for oratory. The phrases quoted above repeat at the end of each muse's song. Latin edition: Dick, Adolfus, ed., Marianus Capella (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1969)Google Scholar. Translation: Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts. Vol. II: The Marriage of Philogy and Mercury, trans. Stahl, William Harris and Johnson, Richard, with Bunge, E. L. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 40–45Google Scholar. I wish to thank the anonymous reader for bringing this passage to my attention.

¹⁰⁰ Likewise, a study of Augustine's view of Scripture argues for the influence of this important theory, discernable in the works of educated Christians in late antiquity, even when there is no direct evidence of having read Longinus's treatise. See Michel, Alain, “Augustin et le sublime: les enarrationes in psalms 41 et 42,” Augustínus 39 (1994): 357–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰¹ On Sublimity 7.3 (Russell, 8; Russell, 467).

¹⁰² On Sublimity 15.1 (Russell, 21; Russell, 477). See Russell, “Longinus,” 120 for the role of the Greek term ἐιδωλοποιίας in rhetoric and philosophy.

¹⁰³ On Sublimity 15.9 (Russell, 23–24; Russell, 479).

¹⁰⁴ Instit. 5.32.1–3 (SC 109: 240–42; Ramsey, 135–36).

¹⁰⁵ Conf. 14.10.2 (SC 54:195; Ramsey, 379). The Latin here is lectio sacra, not divina.

¹⁰⁶ Both Longinus, and earlier Cicero, dealt with the difficulty of defining the sublime by describing it through various examples. These fragmentations can be seen to function in ways similar to those that appear in the ars grammatica in terms of creating a past authority (see Chin, Grammar and Christianity, 20–25).

¹⁰⁷ Conf. 14.12 (SC 54:199; Ramsey, 516–17). In addition, the Latin term means “ghost, apparition,” whereas phantasia is the Latin transliteration of Longinus's Greek term, meaning “imagined experience.” Cassian's language here more refers to the effects on the reader (who is haunted), accomplished by reading (creating ghosts), rather than by the achievement of the speaker or writer (who has the ability to create the imagined experiences which cause this effect).

¹⁰⁸ It is intriguing that Longinus differentiates between sublime poetry and rhetoric when it comes to visualization. Here Cassian rejects poetry but not rhetoric; elsewhere his rejection of rhetoric is linked, as we have seen, to his concerns about eloquence.

¹⁰⁹ Cf. Chin, Grammar and Christianity, for how reading was taught “in a way that created classics” (11) and then “was instrumental in the merging of literary activity and ‘paganism’ in the minds of some late ancient readers” (41); cf. Leyser, “Lectio Divina,” 89 for his discussion of this passage.

¹¹⁰ Conf. 14.10.4 (SC 54:196; Ramsey, 514–15).

¹¹¹ See e.g. Conf. 3.10.4, supremus (SC 42:154; Ramsey, 130); 17.25.10, sublimior (SC 54:276; Ramsey, 607); 23.3.1, praeclara (SC 64:141; Ramsey, 791).

¹¹² On Sublimity 9.9 (Russell, 11–12; Russell, 470). See Russell, “Longinus,” 92–93 for why this is no longer regarded as a later Christian interpolation, but can be treated as authentic.

¹¹³ See Conf. 14.16.5 (SC 54:204; Ramsey, 521) vs. Conf. 14.16.1 (SC 54:203; Ramsey, 520). The correct application of ornatus to rhetorical style was a debated topic in antiquity, and Cassian's differentiation between correct and incorrect ornatus echoes those debates. Here I am indebted to Dugan's discussion of Cicero's defense of ornatus, especially in creating a “Ciceronian” sublime (Dugan, Making a New Man, 50–51 and 281–82).

¹¹⁴ Conf. 10.12 (SC 54:93; Ramsey, 385). Ramsey has memoria as “awareness.”

¹¹⁵ Conf. 14.9.4 (SC 54:193; Ramsey, 512).

¹¹⁶ Longinus states that the “pride” brought about by sublimity is in those who have heard the text, not created it (On Sublimity 7.2 [Russell, 7; Russell, 467]).

¹¹⁷ Likewise, George Walsh has argued about Longinus's treatise that “when Longinus claims to have written a treatise adequate to its subject matter, he means not only technically adequate but spiritual too” (Walsh, George, “Sublime Method: Longinus on Language and Imitation,” Classical Antiquity 7 [1988]: 252–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 268). Cassian does not claim his work is adequate in terms of his writing, but does argue that the teachings it contains are sublime.

¹¹⁸ On Sublimity 15.2 (Russell, 21; Russell, 477). Cassian's writing here falls into the category of what Miller calls “corporeal imagination”; this describes “the techniques used by Christian authors to achieve the conjunction of discourse, materiality, and meaning . . . [it] designates a kind of writing that blurs the distinction between reading and text” (Miller, Patricia Cox, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Antique Christianity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 7). She focuses on examples of ekphrasis in Christian writing, drawn from “exercises in composition for students of rhetoric,” which also depends on “vivid” description and so “turns listeners into spectators” (9). While that is certainly an effect of Cassian's texts—his audience is to imagine being part of these conversations—the language regarding the materiality of these teachings differs.

¹¹⁹ Conf. 10.1 (SC 54:75; Ramsey, 371).

¹²⁰ Conf. 2.26.4 (SC 42:137; Ramsey, 104).

¹²¹ Conf. 12.1.1 (SC 54:121; Ramsey, 435).

¹²² Conf. 13.18.4 (SC 54:181; Ramsey, 491).

¹²³ Conf. 8.25.5 (SC 54:37; Ramsey, 312).

¹²⁴ Conf. 4.18 (SC 42:181–82; Ramsey, 166); euidenter expressum est ita ut eam ipsis quodammodo manibus notris palpabilem factam esse credamus.

¹²⁵ Conf. 5.27.2 (SC 42:217; Ramsey, 204).

¹²⁶ Conf. 14.13.3 (SC 54:200; Ramsey, 517).

¹²⁷ Conf. 15.10.5 (SC 54:220; Ramsey, 545).

¹²⁸ George Walsh has noted about this passage that one result is that Longinus implies that “a good deal of what he tells us about [sublime writers] applies also to himself . . . For example, if sublime writers are “more than moral and . . . sublimity raises them until they approach the magnanimity of god” (36.1), Longinus's method should likewise confer a kind of divinity. Tekhne (method) will enable men to imitate the spiritual life of gods” (Walsh, “Sublime Method,” 253).

¹²⁹ On Sublimity 9.1 (Russell, 9; Russell, 468).

¹³⁰ Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 109, places this commentary in monastic context, including possible parallels with Evagrius.

¹³¹ Conf. 9.21.1 (SC 54:58; Ramsey, 343).

¹³² On Sublimity 39.3 (Russell, 47–48; Russell, 497).

¹³³ Conf. 9.25.1 (SC 54:61; Ramsey, 345). Cassian's phrase ineffabilis oratio is ambiguous: either the prayer cannot be said in words or it is an experience beyond description (or, perhaps, both). I have followed Ramsey's translation of “wordless prayer,” rather than a more literal “indescribable prayer,” because this translation is more consistent with the rest of Cassian's description. I thank my anonymous reader for raising this ambiguity.

¹³⁴ I am not discounting the influence of Evagrius's language about light here (see Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 120–21).

¹³⁵ On Sublimity 12.4 (Russell, 18; Russell, 475).

¹³⁶ On Sublimity 9.9 (Russell, 11–12; Russell, 470).

¹³⁷ Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 112 and 125–28. Cf. Conf. 10.8.1 (SC 54:82) and Conf. 9. 28.1 (SC 54:63; Ramsey, 347), where Germanus's statement—“I think there is nothing more sublime than this condition [the “unspeakable joy at the Lord's visitation” which results form compunction]—is an agreement with Abba Isaac's earlier description: “And so a still more sublime (sublimior) and exalted condition follows upon these kinds of prayer” (Conf. 9.18.1; SC 54:55; Ramsey, 340).

¹³⁸ Conf. 9.28.1–2 (SC 54: 63; Ramsey, 347).

¹³⁹ Some writers “fancy themselves possessed when they are merely playing the fool” (On Sublimity 3.2 [Russell, 4; Russell, 464). The marks of sublime writing “are also causes and principles not only of success but of failure” (On Sublimity 5.1 [Russell, 7; Russell, 466).

¹⁴⁰ Conf. 9.26.1–2 (SC 54:62; Ramsey, 436).

¹⁴¹ Cf. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 126 for discussion of this passage, Conf. 9.27 (SC 54:63; Ramsey, 346). It is intriguing that the “shouts” from joy are loud enough to be heard by neighboring monks, thereby creating an audience for this performance.

¹⁴² Conf. 9.27 (SC 54:63; Ramsey, 346); Conf. 9.35 (SC 54:71–72; Ramsey, 353); I am grateful to Catherine Chin for personal correspondence about points raised in this paragraph.

¹⁴³ Instit. 5.31 (SC 109:240; Ramsey, 135).

¹⁴⁴ Goodrich has a discussion of Cassian's achievements in Latin literary style even as he denigrates them (Goodrich, Richard, “Underpinning the Text: Self-Justification in John Cassian's Ascetic Prefaces,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13 [2005]: 411–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 420).

¹⁴⁵ Bourdieu, Reproduction, 95.

¹⁴⁶ See Vessey, Mark, “From Cursus to Ductus: Figures of Writing in Western Late Antiquity (Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Bede)” in European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance, eds. Cheney, Patrick and de Armas, Frederick A. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 49–103Google Scholar, at 95.