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John Cassian: The Conferences. Translated by Boniface Ramsey, O.P. Ancient Christian Writers No. 57. New York: Paulist, 1997. xv + 886 pp. $39.95 (cloth).
Last summer, on my way to the airport in Nice after two weeks of touring Romanesque churches and abbeys in southern France, I saw a freeway sign for "Lac Saint Cassien." Since Cassian's monastic home had been Marseilles, this prophet had at least been honored in his own country, if not the wider Church. (Cassian got into the ecclesiastical doghouse for his opposition to Saint Augustine's views on grace and predestination.) Except for Saint Benedict, Cassian (360-435) is arguably the most important western monastic figure before Saint Bernard. His two great works, The Conferences and The Institutes, constitute, in Adalbert de Vogue's words, "a doctrinal compendium without parallel in all of Latin monastic literature.... Cassian's work, therefore, embraces all of monastic...