Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

764 25. monasticism
monastery on the island of Lérins (between Cannes and Antibes), and
later became bishop of Arles (in a.d. 426). Honoratus had previously travelled
in the east, perhaps even in Egypt and Syria; and he brought to his
Gallic foundation the practices he observed or learnt of on his journey.
This transference of eastern ideas was more direct than in the case of
Martin. Although we have little certain textual evidence of the earliest
regime at Lérins itself – it is likely that the canons of monastic practice
were committed to writing only gradually – it is clear that a regular round
of work and prayer, a system that included both coenobites and solitaries,
and a detailed pattern of government under a designated superior
were quickly established according to eastern models. 57 As the century
progressed, a whole series of regulae began to appear, some in the Rhône
valley, some across the Alps, almost all linked with Lérins to some degree,
and all indebted to the heritage of Pachomius and Basil. Thus there
sprang into being on western soil a stream of ideas and practices that
would flow eventually into the prescriptions of Caesarius in Arles and of
Benedict and his predecessors in Italy. 58
From that same south-eastern Gallic milieu come the writings of John
Cassian, an easterner by origin, who, after extensive travels in Palestine and
Egypt, had settled in Gaul and had, by c. 415, founded two monasteries near
Marseilles. For his own monks and for other communities already beginning
to grow nearby (including that of Honoratus at Lérins), he wrote his
Institutes and Conferences, which were greatly honoured and not infrequently
imitated in the centuries to follow. In practical matters, the Institutes concentrated
on the admission of novices and on the round of daily prayer. The
singing of psalms at evening and in the night hours now became more
ordered, with a split between ‘nocturns’ proper and a dawn service of disputed
character, reflecting an amalgamation of Egyptian and Palestinian
practice, but carried to a new level of formality. And instead of leaving the
daylight hours to personal reflection (meditatio), brief ‘offices’ that we now
know as ‘terce’, ‘sext’ and ‘none’ provided a more rigid and spaced-out
framework. Enduring vagueness and obscurity, however, remind us that traditions
had yet to congeal into patterns familiar to Benedict a century later. 59
Cassian prescribed otherwise very little. It seems that he felt his duty was
more to describe and gently recommend eastern practices, leaving his
readers (at first envisaged as potential superiors themselves) to decide how
57 Hilary’s Life of Honoratus (something of a misnomer) provides a little institutional information.
Adalbert de Vogüé (1982) argued with vigour that the so-called ‘Rule of the Four Fathers’ was the rule
operating at Lérins from the earliest days. Its connection with the monastery appears to be beyond
doubt; but its date is much less easily discovered.
58 There can be no doubt that, in spite of difficulties in matters of dating and dependence, the account
of this tradition given by De Vogüé (1982) is the most cohesive and appealing currently available.
59 Concerning novices, De institutis (CSEL 17) i discusses the symbolism of a monk’s clothing and
iv.1–7 the experience of renouncing the world. The round of prayer: ii and iii.
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