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John Cassian was only a teenager when he, with his friend Germanus, left his home in Scythia Minor (present-day Romania) and joined a monastic community in Bethlehem. One day, an Egyptian monk named Pinufius sought lodging in their monastery. Pinufius filled the young men's imaginations with stories of the asceticism of the Egyptian desert, making their Bethlehem community seem tepid in comparison.

Soon Pinufius was discovered by a posse of Egyptian monks who had been hot on his trail. He was their abbot, they said, and they wanted him back. It turned out that Pinufius had a tendency to run away from home in search of anonymity, hoping to preserve his humility.

John Cassian and Germanus were dazzled by such spiritual discipline. "After our first infancy in the faith, we had begun to long for some greater grace of perfection," wrote Cassian in his Conferences, "and we were determined to go to Egypt."

Cassian and Germanus settled in the famous center of Scetis and spent the next dozen or so years in monastic paradise. What Cassian experienced there provided the template for his later monastic teachings.

At the very end of the fourth century, Cassian, Germanus, and many famous Egyptian monks were driven from the region because of the Origenist controversy (see "Ascetic Agitators"). Cassian went first to Constantinople and worked closely for a few years with John Chrysostom, the famous bishop and theologian, until Chrysostom's fall from imperial favor in 404.

After several years, Cassian found his way to Marseilles, then as now, a busy port. His monastic experiences in Palestine, Egypt, and Asia Minor (and perhaps other places) soon made him a recognized authority in the region. He put down his insights in his Institutes, and later his Conferences, which laid out a comprehensive program for the monks of Gaul (today's France), as well as the bishops eager to support and guide them. Cassian professed to give his readers "a perfect recollection" of Egyptian monastic wisdom; in fact, he brilliantly synthesized and adapted traditional monastic teaching. For example, though he praised the solitary Egyptian hermits, he shaped their insights for the community-dwelling monks of Gaul.

In the Institutes, Cassian spoke of "eight principal faults" he had learned in Egypt from his teacher Evagrius (354-399). This menu was the basis for the later western list of seven deadly sins. In the Conferences, he described a method of unceasing prayer based on a one-verse formula taken from the Psalms. By praying in that simple, scriptural way, Cassian taught, "whatever we breathe, whatever we know, whatever we speak, is God."

While many details of his life remain obscure (the monastic call of humility kept him from sharing much autobiographical information), his teachings have been preserved and are still used by monks East and West.

Columba Stewart, associate professor of theology at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota, and author of Cassian the Monk (Oxford, 1998).

Still stunned by his younger brother's death, Basil sat and listened to his older sister Macrina as she delivered a harangue that touched on every area of his life—and his pride.

Ever since you came back from college you've been stuck up, she said. You're always quoting the classics, but do you quote the Christian Scriptures? Our father, may his memory be blessed, was renowned for his gift of oratory, and he employed it in the praise of Christ. You inherited that gift intact, but you use it only to feed your pride.

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