Celtic and Old English Saints 29 February
(observed this year on 28 February)
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* St. John Cassian the Roman
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St John Cassian the Roman (435)
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The Synaxarion calls him Our Father Cassian, chosen by God to bring the
illumination of Eastern monasticism to the West.
He was born in Scythia of noble parents, and was well educated in secular
things. But, thirsting for perfection, he left all behind and travelled with
his friend Germanus to the Holy Land, where he became a monk in Bethlehem.
After becoming established in the monastic life for several years, St John
felt a desire for greater perfection, and sought out the Fathers of the
Egyptian Desert.
He spent seven years in the Desert, learning from such Fathers as Moses,
Serapion, Theonas, Isaac and Paphnutius. Through long struggles in his cell,
St John developed from personal experience a divinely-inspired doctrine of
spiritual combat. Many say that it was he who first listed the eight basic
passions: gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory
and pride.
In time, struggles in the Alexandrian Church made life so difficult for the
Egyptian monks that St John (still accompanied by his friend Germanus),
sought refuge in Constantinople, where they came under the care and
protection of St John Chrysostom. When the holy Archbishop was exiled, St
John once again fled, this time to Rome, where he came under the protection
of Pope Innocent I. This proved to be providential for the Western Church,
for it was St John who brought the treasures of Desert spirituality to the
monasteries of the West.
He founded the monastery of St Victor in Marseilles, then, at the request of
his bishop, wrote the Cenobitic Institutions, in which he adapted the
austere practices of the Egyptian Fathers to the conditions of life in Gaul.
He went on to write his famous Conferences, which became the main channel by
which the wisdom of the desert East was passed to the monastics of the West.
Saint Benedict developed much of his Rule (which at one time governed most
monasteries in the Latin world) from St John's Institutions,, and ordered
that the Conferences be read in all monasteries.
Saint John reposed in peace in 435, and has been venerated by the monks of
the West as their Father and one of their wisest teachers.
His relics are still venerated at the Abbey of St Victor in Marseilles.
St John's writings were soon attacked by extreme Augustinians and, as
Augustinianism became the official doctrine of the Latin Church, his
veneration fell out of favour in the West. Outside the Orthodox Church, his
commemoration is now limited to the diocese of Marseilles.
http://www.abbamoses.com/months/february.html
-oOo-
...Returning to the contemporary British Church, we find that in the
province of Valentia, which comprised that portion of North Britain
situated between the walls of Antonine and Hadrian, there was born about the
year 360, one whose personality, amid much that is vague and
legendary, seems to stand out clear and distinct before the modern historic
vision. This is Nynias or Ninian, who was the son of a Christian Celtic
prince or chief. S. Ninian was baptized and educated a Christian. Filled
with religious zeal, he resolved to visit the great city whose ancient
glory was still the pride of the world's dominant empire, and,
circumstances being favourable to the accomplishment of his wish, he set out
from his home and reached Rome in due course. Here he studied for some time,
and in 397 he was consecrated as Bishop, and sent back to his native
country. On his way he passed through Gaul, and turned aside for some time
to the city of Tours on the Loire, where S.
Martin, commonly known as the soldier saint and now in his eightieth year,
presided over a monastery which he had founded on the Eastern
model, the fame of which was known to S. Ninian. As the latter's sojourn
with the aged S. Martin, to whom he is said to have been related, was
destined to bear much fruit, and to have far-reaching consequences later in
the Celtic Church, it will be well that we should pause here for a little,
and endeavour to examine briefly the nature and general characteristics of
the Church of ancient Gaul, many features of which were afterwards to be
incorporated into that of the Celt..
snip
...of this monasticism [the type obtaining in Gaul], S. Anthony, the
Coptic Saint, was the founder. Anthony was an Egyptian of noble
birth, who was born in Corma, situated near the boundary between Lower and
Upper Egypt, in 251 AD. He early became imbued with zeal for the ascetic
life. At first he was a solitary or eremite, but later he advocated the
coenobitic life. Later, this idea was merged in that of the monastery in
which the brethren dwelt under one roof.
Pachomius, the successor to
