John Cassian: The Conferences

In this collection of Conferences, conversations between the author and the early Desert Fathers of Egypt, we find advice on the highest forms of prayer and contemplation. John Cassian (c.360-c.445), born in France, educated in Bethlehem and widely traveled in the Holy Land, spent seven years learning at the feet of the Desert Fathers and collecting their counsels and stories. Traveling on to Constantinople, (where he became a favourite disciple of St. John Chrysostom) and after elevation to the priesthood in Rome, Cassian finally returned to his native France to establish two monasteries, one for men and one for women. It was for these two foundations that he wrote down his desert remembrances in the current work. Cassian's rediscovery in modern times owes much to the work of John Main OSB, who found in The Conferences an echo of the Eastern practices of mantra which he used to develop his own Christian prayer life. Conferences XII and XXII are not translated in this volume.