Listed 5 sub titles with search on: Religious figures biography for wider area of: "MARSEILLE Town FRANCE" .
MASSALIA (Ancient city) FRANCE
Cassianus, otherwise called Joannes Massiliensis and Joannes Eremita, is celebrated
in the history of the Christian church as the champion of Semipelagianism, as
one of the first founders of monastic fraternities in Western Europe, and as the
great lawgiver by whose codes such societies were long regulated. The date of
his birth cannot be determined with certainty, although A. D. 360 must be a close
approximation, and the place is still more doubtful. Some have fixed upon the
shores of the Euxine, others upon Syria, others upon the South of France, and
all alike appeal for confirmation of their views to particular expressions in
his works, and to the general character of his phraseology. Without pretending
to decide the question, it seems on the whole most probable that he was a native
of the East. At a very early age he became an inmate of the monastery of Bethlehem,
where he received the first elements of religious instruction, and formed with
a monk named Germanus an intimacy which exercised a powerful influence over his
future career. In the year 390, accompanied by his friend, he travelled into Egypt,
and after having passed seven years among the Ascetics who swarmed in the deserts
near the Nile, conforming to all their habits and practising all their austerities,
he returned for a short period to Bethlehem, but very soon again retired to consort
with the eremites of the Thebaid. In 403 he repaired to Constantinople, attracted
by the fame of Chrysostom, and received ordination as deacon from his hands. When
that great prelate was driven by persecution from his see, Cassianus and Germanus
were employed by the friends of the patriarch to lay a statement of the case before
Pope Innocent I., and since Pelagius is known to have been at Rome about this
period, it is highly probable that some personal intercourse may have taken place
between him and his future opponent. From tllis time there is a blank in the history
of Cassianus until the year 415, when we find him established as a presbyter at
Marseilles, where he passed the remainder of his life in godly labours, having
founded a convent for nuns and the celebrated abbey of St. Victor, which while
under his controul is said to have numbered five thousand inmates. These two establishments
long preserved a high reputation, and served as models for many similar institutions
in Gaul and Spain. The exact year of his death is not known, but the event must
be placed after 433, at least the chronicle of Prosper represents him as being
alive at that epoch. He was eventually canonized as a saint, and a great religious
festival used to be celebrated in honour of him at Marseilles on the 25th of July.
The writings of Cassianus now extant are:
1. "De Institutis Coenobiorum Libri XII.," composed before the year 418 at the
request of Castor, bishop of Apt, who was desirous of obtaining accurate information
with regard to the rules by which the cloisters in the East were governed. This
work is divided into two distinct parts. The first four books relate exclusively
to the mode of life, discipline, and method of performing sacred offices, pursued
in various monasteries ; the remainder contain a series of discourses upon the
eight great sins into which mankind in general and monks in particular are especially
liable to fall, such as gluttony, pride, passion, and the like. Hence Photius
(Cod. cxcvii.) quotes these two sections as two separate treatises, and this arrangement
appears to have been adopted to a certain extent by the author himself. The subdivision
of the first part into two, proposed by Gennadius, is unnecessary and perplexing.
2. "Collationes Patrum XXIV.", twenty-four sacred dialogues between Cassianus,
Germanus, and Egyptian monks, in which are developed the spirit and object of
the monastic life, the end sought by the external observances previously described.
They were composed at different periods between 419 and 427. The first ten are
inscribed to Leontius, bishop of Frejus, and to Helladius, abbot of St. Castor,
the following seven to Honoratus, afterwards bishop of Arles, the last seven to
Jovinianus, Minervius, and other monks. In the course of these conversations,
especially in the 13th, we find an exposition of the peculiar views of Cassianus
on certain points of dogmatic theology, connected more especially with original
sin, predestination, free-will, and grace, constituting the system which has been
termed Semipelagianism because it steered a middle course between the extreme
positions occupied by St. Augustin and Pelagius; for while the former maintained,
that man was by nature utterly corrupt and incapable of emerging from his lost
state by any efforts of his own, the latter held, that the new-born infant was
in the state of Adam before the fall, hence morally pure and capable in himself
of selecting between virtue and vice; while Cassianus, rejecting the views of
both, asserted, that the natural man was neither morally dead nor morally sound,
but morally sick, and therefore stood in need of medical aid, that aid being the
Grace of God. Moreover, according to his doctrine, it is necessary for man of
his own free wiil to seek this aid in order to be made whole, but at the same
time the free-will of man cannot set limits to the Grace of God which may be exerted
on behalf of those who seek it not, as in the case of the Apostle Paul and others.
Cassianus certainly rejected absolute predestination and the limitation of justification
to the elect, but his ideas upon these topics are not very clearly expressed.
Those who desire full information with regard to Semipelagian tenets will find
them fully developed in the works enumerated at the end of this article.
3. "De Incarnatione Christi Libri VII.", a controversial tract in confutation
of tlie Nestorian heresy, drawn up about 430 at the request of Leo, at that time
archdeacon and afterwards bishop of Rome.
The following essays have been ascribed erroneously, or at all events upon insufficient
evidence, to Cassianus: De spirituali Medicina Monachi seu Dosis medical ad exinaniendos
Animi Affectus"; "Theologica Confessio et De Conflictu Vitiorum et Virtutum ";
" Vita S. Victoris Mar tyris", &c. There are no grounds for believing that he
wrote, as some have asserted, a Regula Monastica, now lost.
The attentive reader of this father will soon perceive that he was
thoroughly engrossed with his subject, and paid so little attention to the graces
of style, that his composition is often careless and slovenly. At the same time
his diction, although it bears both in words and in construction a barbaric stamp
deeply impressed, is far superior to that of many of his contemporaries, since
it is plain, simple, unaffected, and intelligible, devoid of the fantastic conceits,
shabby finery, and coarse paint, under which the literature of that age so often
strove to hide its awkwardness, feebleness, and deformity.
The earliest edition of the collected works of Cassianus is that of
Basle, 1559, in a volume containing also Joannes Damascenus. It was reprinted
in 1569 and 1575. These were followed by the edition of Antwerp, 1578. The most
complete and best edition is that printed at Frankfort, 1722, with the commentaries
and preliminary dissertations of the Benedictine Gazaeus (Gazet), and reprinted
at Leipzig in 1733. The edition superintended by Gazet himself was published at
Douay in 1618, and again in an enlarged form at Arras in 1628.
The Institutiones appeared at Basle in 1485 and 1497, and at Leyden, 1516. The
existence of the Venice edition of 1481, mentioned by Fabricius, is doubtful.
The Institutiones and Collationes appeared at Venice, 1491; at Bologna, 1521;
at Leyden, 1525, at Rome, 1583 and 1611.
The De Incarnatione, first published separately at Basle in 1534, and reprinted
at Paris in 1545 and 1569, is included in Simler's "Scriptores veteres Latini
de una Persona et duabus Naturis Christi," Zurich, 1572.
There is a translation of the Institutiones into Italian by Buffi, a monk of Camaldoli,
Venice, 1563, of the Collationes into French by De Saligny, Paris, 1663, and of
the Institutiones, also by De Saligny, Paris, 1667.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Gennadius, a presbyter of Marseilles, who flourished at the close of the fifth
century, is known to us as the author of a work De Viris Hlustribus, containing
one hundred short lives of ecclesiastical writers from A. D. 392 to about A. D.
495, thus forming a continuation of the tract by Jerome which bears the same title.
The last notice, devoted to the compiler himself. embraces all that is known with
regard to his history and compositions: "Ego Gennadius, Massiliae presbyter,
scripsi adversus omnes haereses libros octo, et adversus Nestorium libros sex,
adversus Pelagium libros tires, et tractatus de mille annis et de Apocalypsi beati
Johannis, et hoc opus, et epistolam de fide mea misi ad beatum Gelasium, urbis
Romae episcopum." Gelasius died A. D. 496.
Of the writings here enumerated, none have been preserved, with the
exception of the Biographical Sketches and the Epistola de Fide mea, or, as it
is sometimes headed, Libellus de Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus, which was at one time
ascribed to St. Augustin. Notwithstanding the pretensions put forth by Gennadius
himself as a champion of orthodoxy, expressions have been detected in both of
the above pieces which indicate a decided leaning towards Semipelagianism. On
the other hand, it has been maintained that the whole of these passages are interpolations,
since the most obnoxious are altogether omitted in the two oldest MSS. of the
De Viris Illustribus now extant, those of Lucca and Verona. The preliminary remarks
upon Jerome are also, in all probability, the production of a later hand.
The De Viris Illustribus was published in a volume containing the
Catalogue of Jerome, along with those of Isidorus, Honorius, &c., by Sulfridus,
8vo. Colon., 1580; with the notes of Miraeus, fol. Antw. 1639; with the notes
of Miraeus and E. S. Cyprianus, 4to., Helmst., 17000 by J. A. Fabricius, in his
Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, fol., Hamb., 171 , and is included in most editions
of the collected works of Jerome.
The Libellus de Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus will be found in the Benedictine
edition of St. Augustin, vol. viii. Append. . and was published separately by
Elmenhorst, 4to., Hamburg, 1614.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Honoratus, bishop of Marseilles, about the close of the fifth century, is generally considered to be the author of the Vita S. Hilarii Arelatensis, printed by Barralis in the Chronologia Sanctae Insulae Lerinensis, p. 103, and by Surius under 5th May. The piece in question is, however, ascribed in the Arles MS. to a certain Reverentius or Ravennius, the successor of Hilarius in his episcopal chair. (Gennad. De Viris Illustr. 99.)
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