Christian History Home > Issue 64 > Antony and the Desert Fathers: The Gallery - Getting Their Act Together
Antony and the Desert Fathers: The Gallery - Getting Their Act Together
Monasticism was more or less a solitary affair until these four came along and taught monks how to live in community.
Columba Stewart; John Cassian; Frederica Mathews-Green; Macrina Basil; Marci Rae Johnson | posted 10/01/1999 12:00AM
THE MONKS' MONK
John Cassian
(c.365-c.435)
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 ...
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