Dorothee Schenk: John Cassian on monastic and traditional education

Almost all topics discussed in John Cassian’s conferences, can be summarised in the question for monastic education. But there are two sides of the concept of monastic education in the conferences: On the one hand one has to look at the monastic education, which is described on a literary level. On the other hand one has to consider the structure and style of Cassian’s writing and how by these means he refers to the background of traditional education of his audience.First, the paper will explore exemplarily how young Cassian and his travel companion Germanus ask fathers in the Egyptian desert for advice to educate themselves to become good monks, seeking for perfection. On their educational path they discover that the contents of traditional education, which both Cassian and Germanus had acquired, come into conflict with the new contents of monastic education. But the fathers, especially Abbas Nesteros in coll. 14, are able to teach them a way out of this problem: They have to use well-known structures of learning and apply those to the new contents.Second, the paper will focus on few examples for the structure and style of his writing, where Cassian uses exactly this strategy: Aware that his whole audience is familiar with the traditional way of acquiring knowledge, he creates his conferences in the same way as traditional (school-)books are created, so that his addressees can consume the new content of monastic education in the well-known structures of traditional education.