Conference XII

Abbot Chæremon

On Chastity.

Chæremon on chastity — the second of Gibson's silences.

Translated for study.xeb.ai · CC0 — Gibson did not translate this text

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Restored for this editionGibson did not translate this text. In its place his 1894 volume prints one sentence: “Not translated.” What follows is a new translation from Petschenig’s Latin (CSEL XIII, printed pages 333–360), made for this edition and dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Our notes are collected at the foot of the page, under a heading of their own; Gibson has none here, because he wrote none. How this English was made, what was checked and what could not be, is set out on the methodology page.

I. The words of Abbot Chæremon on chastity.

The meal being over — a meal which seemed to us, who were longing for the food of doctrine, burdensome rather than pleasant — when the old man had at once perceived that we were awaiting the debt of the promised discourse: Pleasing to me, said he, is not only the rapt purpose of your mind toward learning, but the discipline of the question proposed as well. For in truth a reasonable order of inquiry has been kept by you. For it must needs be that those measureless rewards of a perfect and perpetual chastity attend the fullness of so lofty a love,1 and that the joy be equal, in so great an equality of the palms. For they are bound to one another in so great a fellowship that the one cannot be possessed without the other. This, then, is what your proposal took in: that we should unfold, by a like discussion, whether that fire of lust, whose burning this flesh feels as though implanted in it, can be fully quenched. And on this let us first inquire more carefully what the blessed Apostle thought. "Mortify," he says, "your members which are upon the earth."2 Before, therefore, we search out the rest, let us track down what those members are which he has bidden be mortified. For the blessed Apostle does not drive us by a harsh command to the cutting off of hands or feet or genitals, but desires that the body of sin, which assuredly consists of members, be destroyed as speedily as may be by a zeal for perfect holiness.3 And of this body, in another place: "that the body of sin," he says, "may be destroyed"; and he sets forth next what its destruction is: "that henceforth," he says, "we should not serve sin."4 From it also he begs with a wail to be delivered, saying: "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"5

1The love meant is presumably that of the conference before this one: Chæremon's first discourse (Conference XI) is on perfection, and its argument is that the fear of punishment gives place to hope and hope to love. The question is therefore reasonable in the sense the next sentence gives it — it asks for the second thing in its right order after the first. Cassian writes a uobis and uestrae mentis, in the plural: the question is the two visitors', not Germanus's alone, though it is Germanus who puts the questions of chapters VIIII and XIIII.

2Col. iii. 5. Gibson translates the same Latin — mortificate, inquit, membra uestra quae sunt super terram — at Conf. V. xi and Inst. I. xi; his printing there, "'Mortify,' says he, 'your members which are upon the earth,'" is the model for the broken inquit here and at the nine other places in this conference where Cassian interjects the verb inside a verse. This edition writes "he says" rather than his "says he", as Institutes VI does, and keeps "said he" for the narrative frame.

3Zelo perfectae … sanctitatis is set round desiderat and will go with either verb: the zeal is the means by which the body of sin is destroyed, or the zeal in which the Apostle desires it destroyed. The Latin does not settle it, and the two say different things — how the thing is done, or why he wants it done.

4Rom. vi. 6. Paul's verse has two purpose clauses, ut destruatur corpus peccati and ut ultra non seruiamus peccato; Cassian quotes them separately, glossing the first before giving the second as the gloss's answer. Where the Vulgate has ultra non, Cassian has iam non — both "no longer" — and "henceforth … not" is the Authorized Version's phrase for it.

5Rom. vii. 24. The Authorized Version opens "O wretched man that I am", and so does Gibson's printing of the verse at Conf. XX. xii and XXIII. x; infelix ego homo has no exclamatory particle, and none is supplied here. The copula is elided in the Latin and "that I am" supplies it.

II. Of the body of sin and its members.

This body of sin, then, is shown to be built up of many members of the faults, and to its portion belongs whatever is sinned by deed or by word or by thought. And its members are most rightly said to be upon the earth. For those who use their service cannot truly profess: "But our conversation is in heaven."6 Describing, therefore, the members of this body in this place, the Apostle: "Mortify," he says, "your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, wantonness,7 evil lust, and covetousness, which is the service of idols."8 In the first place, then, he thought fornication should be brought in, which is accomplished by carnal intercourse. The second member also he named uncleanness, which sometimes creeps on without any touch of a woman, whether men are asleep or awake, through the carelessness of an unwary mind; and therefore it is censured and forbidden in the law, which not only deprived all unclean persons of a share in the holy flesh, but ordered them also to be separated from the assembly of the camp, lest by their touch they should defile the holy things, saying: "Whatsoever soul shall eat of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation which is the Lord's, in whom there is uncleanness, shall perish before the Lord; and whatsoever the unclean man shall touch shall be unclean."9 In Deuteronomy also: "If there be among us a man who has been polluted by a dream in the night, he shall go forth outside the camp, and shall not return before he be washed with water toward evening; and after the going down of the sun he shall return into the camp."10 Then he puts wantonness as the third member of sin, which, growing together in the recesses of the soul, can befall a man even without passion of the body. For there is no doubt that libido is named from that which pleases, libeat.11 After these things, descending from the greater sins to the lesser, he brought in as a fourth member evil lust, which can be referred not only to the aforesaid passion of unchastity but also, in a general way, to all hurtful desires; which is a sickness of a corrupted will only. Of which the Lord in the Gospel: "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart."12 For it is a far greater thing to restrain the desire of a slippery mind even at the moment when the occasion of an enticing sight is offered it. By which things it is most plainly proved that for the perfection of purity the chastity of bodily abstinence alone cannot suffice, unless integrity of mind be added as well.13 After all these, as the last member of that body: "and covetousness," he says — showing beyond doubt that the mind is to be restrained not only from the appetite for the goods of others, but that a man's own are to be despised with magnanimity. For this we read that the multitude of believers did in the Acts of the Apostles, of which it is said: "But the multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul, neither did any of them say that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common. For as many as were owners of lands or of houses, selling them, brought the prices of the things which they sold and laid them before the feet of the apostles: and distribution was made to every man according as he had need."14 And lest this perfection should seem to belong to few, he testified that covetousness is the service of idols. And not without reason. For whosoever does not share in the necessities of the needy, and sets the commandments of Christ behind the money which he keeps by an unbelieving tenacity, falls into the crime of idolatry, preferring, that is, the love of worldly matter to the divine charity.15

6Phil. iii. 20. Cassian's word here is conuersatio, which is the Vulgate's and which Gibson renders "conversation" at Conf. III. vi and III. vii; autem stands where the Authorized Version has "For". At Institutes VI. vi he quotes the same verse in the Old Latin form, municipatum, "citizenship", and this edition keeps each as he wrote it.

7Libido is "wantonness" throughout this edition and not "lust", which is fixed to concupiscentia — and the two nouns stand side by side in this one verse, so they cannot share an English word. Gibson, quoting the verse at Inst. I. xi, writes "lust, evil concupiscence" and so gives libido the word this edition owes to the noun beside it. "Wantonness" is his own English for libido elsewhere (Inst. I. vii, V. vi).

8Col. iii. 5. Two divergences from the Authorized Version are Cassian's Latin, and the Vulgate reads with him at both: libidinem, where it has "inordinate affection", and quae est simulacrorum seruitus, "which is the service of idols", where it has "which is idolatry". The third difference, "evil lust" against its "evil concupiscence", is not a difference of text at all — the Vulgate has concupiscentiam malam likewise — but the rule of this edition described in the note above. The five members are expounded one by one through the rest of this chapter, which is why the list is given here in full.

9Lev. vii. 19, 20 (LXX.). The same verse stands at Institutes VI. viii, and the two divergences from the Authorized Version are kept here as they are there: sacrificii salutaris, "the sacrifice of salvation", follows the Greek σωτηρίου where it has "peace offerings", and peribit coram domino, "shall perish before the Lord", where it has "shall be cut off from his people". In qua est inmunditia is a relative on anima — the uncleanness is in the man — where the Authorized Version builds the same sense as a participle, "having his uncleanness upon him". The closing clause, quidquid tetigerit inmundus, inmundum erit, is nearer Num. xix. 22 than to anything in Leviticus vii, where the movement runs the other way; Cassian gives the two as one law.

10Deut. xxiii. 10, 11. Inter nos, "among us", is Cassian's; the Vulgate and the Authorized Version have "among you". Nocturno pollutus est somnio is "polluted by a dream in the night", where the Authorized Version reads "not clean by reason of uncleanness that chanceth him by night". Priusquam governs the return, not the hour of the washing: the washing is ad uesperam, at evening, and the return after sunset.

11The etymology stands in Cassian's own Latin — it is not the translator's importation — and it cannot be reproduced in English, so the Latin words are given as he gives them: ab eo quod libeat, from that which pleases. It is a derivation the ancients made often. Gibson's practice with a gloss that is already in the Latin is to print it inline (Inst. V. iii, "the spirit of gluttony, i.e. the pleasures of the palate"), and that is what is done here.

12S. Matt. v. 28. Moechatus est takes a bare accusative, eam, as does uiderit before it; the Vulgate has the same. The verse stands again at Institutes VI. xii, and this edition prints "hath looked on a woman" there and "shall look on a woman" here for the one reason that Cassian's verb is perfect subjunctive in the one place and here as well — the difference is the sequence, not the text.

13Nisi etiam mentis addatur integritas is Petschenig's text, from S and O; his apparatus records nisi ei etiam in P and T and in the printed editions, which is what Migne reproduces (PL 49. 875). The added dative would make the integrity an addition to bodily abstinence rather than a second thing required beside it, so the pronoun is not indifferent. The translation follows Petschenig and renders no dative.

14Acts iv. 32, 34, 35. Gibson prints the same verses at Conf. XVIII. v and Conf. XVI. vi, and the wording here is his. Cassian runs verse 32 straight into the middle of verse 34, passing over verse 33 and the opening clause of 34.

15Caritas is "love" throughout this edition, and here alone it is "charity", because amor stands in the same clause and the sentence is built on the choice between the two: amorem scilicet materiae mundialis diuinae praeferens caritati. Gibson keeps the pair apart in the same way at Conf. X. x and XXI. vii. It is the one place in the four texts Gibson did not translate where the two nouns collide.

III. Of the mortification of fornication and uncleanness.

If, then, we see that many have so cast away their substance for Christ's sake that we may prove that not only the possession of money but even the desire of it has been cut off from their hearts for ever, it follows that we should believe that in the same way the burning of fornication also can be quenched. For the Apostle would not have joined an impossible thing with a possible one, but, knowing both to be possible, he decreed that they were to be mortified in like manner. And to such a degree is the blessed Apostle confident that fornication or uncleanness can be rooted out of our members, that he pronounces that they ought not only to be mortified but not even to be named among us: "Let fornication," he says, "and all uncleanness or covetousness be not so much as named among you; nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor scurrility, which are not to the purpose."16 And he teaches that these also are destructive in like manner, and that with an equal exclusion they drive us away from the kingdom of God, saying: "But know this, that no fornicator or unclean or covetous person, which is the service of idols, hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God";17 and again: "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God."18 There ought therefore to be no doubt that the contagion of fornication and uncleanness can be done away out of our members, since he has bidden these be cut off no otherwise than he has bidden covetousness, foolish talking, scurrility, drunkenness and thefts, the lopping away whereof is easy.

16Eph. v. 3, 4. Gibson's own English at Conf. V. xi — "Let fornication and uncleanness be not so much as named among you" — is followed so far as it goes; omnis and aut auaritia, which Petschenig prints here and Gibson does not quote, are rendered "all" and "or covetousness". Cassian omits sicut decet sanctos, "as becometh saints"; scurrilitas is "scurrility" where the Authorized Version has "jesting", and quae ad rem non pertinent, plural in Petschenig against the Vulgate's singular, is "which are not to the purpose" where it has "which are not convenient".

17Eph. v. 5. Gibson's rendering at Conf. V. xi is followed, except at one point: he writes "covetous person who is an idolater" where Petschenig prints the Vulgate's neuter relative quod est idolorum seruitus, "which is the service of idols". Chapter II carries the cognate formula from Colossians with simulacrorum, but its relative is feminine (quae, agreeing with auaritiam), so the parallel is lexical and not grammatical. The lemma around it is Cassian's own: illud autem scitote where the Vulgate has hoc enim scitote intellegentes.

181 Cor. vi. 9, 10. Regnum dei possidebunt, "shall possess the kingdom of God", is both Cassian's and the Vulgate's, where the Authorized Version has "shall inherit". Idolis seruientes is "idolaters", following the Authorized Version; the Latin's link to the idolorum seruitus of the verse before — both are serving idols — is not reproducible in the received English.

IIII. That the effort of human labour is not enough for the obtaining of the purity of chastity.

Yet it behoves us to be sure that, although we undergo the whole strictness of abstinence — hunger, that is, and thirst, vigils too, and unbroken labour, and unceasing zeal for reading — we cannot for all that attain by the merit of these labours to a perpetual purity of chastity, unless, while we sweat continually at them, we are taught by the schooling of experience that the incorruption of it is granted by the bounty of divine grace. For this reason only, assuredly, let each man know that he ought to persevere untiringly in these exercises: that, having obtained the mercy of the Lord through the affliction of them, he may deserve to be set free by a divine gift from the attack of the flesh and from the dominion of faults exceeding strong — not as though he trusted that he would obtain through them that inviolate chastity of body which he desires. But let him be inflamed with as great a desire and love toward the acquiring of chastity as that with which some most greedy seeker after money, or whoever is puffed up with the utmost ambition of honours, or one who is carried away by an intolerable love of a beautiful woman, longs for his desire to be fulfilled with a most impatient burning. And so it will come about that, while he is kindled with an insatiable longing for the perpetuity of integrity, desirable food is despised, necessary drink grows loathsome, and at last sleep itself, that is owed to nature, is refused; or at least that the most fraudulent deceiver of purity, the rival and adversary of chastity, is caught by a mind startled and suspicious; and so each man, made day by day the morning searcher of his own integrity, rejoices over the cleansing conferred upon him, and feels that he has obtained it not by his own zeal nor by his watchfulness but by the protection of the Lord, and understands that the continuance of it will cleave to his body so long as the Lord shall have bestowed it of His own mercy.19 For he who steadfastly holds this faith will in no wise, being high‑minded, trust in his own power,20 nor, seduced by long truces from the foul fluid, will he be unstrung by a most flattering security, knowing that he is straightway to be stained with the sprinkling of a most impure filth if the divine protection depart from him even a very little. And accordingly watch must be kept with unwearied prayers, with all contrition and humility of heart, for the perpetuity thereof.

19The thing searched for is literal, though the word for the searching is not: explorator is a scout, one sent out to find what is there. Deut. xxiii. 10, quoted at chapter II, sends the man polluted in the night outside the camp until evening, and chapter VII divides the degrees of chastity at the point where sleep is reached; a monk therefore knew on waking which side of that line he had spent the night on, and section 4's longis obsceni liquoris indutiis is the same nightly reckoning.

20Uirtus is "virtue" throughout this conference except where the noun is a capacity rather than a moral quality, and here it is set directly against protectio diuina in the same sentence, as it is again at chapter XV: humanam nihil esse uirtutem, si eam uirtus diuina non iuuerit. "Virtue" would make the sentence warn against trusting one's own goodness; the sentence warns against trusting one's own strength, which is the argument of the whole chapter.

V. Of the usefulness of the attack which is engendered for us by the heats of the incitements.

But would you take a clear proof of the truth of this thing of which we speak, whereby you may both approve what has been said and be taught that this battle of the body, which is thought hostile and hurtful to us, has been usefully implanted in our members? Consider, I pray, those who are eunuchs in body — what cause above all makes them slothful and lukewarm in seeking after the virtues. Is it not because they believe that they have no danger of chastity being corrupted? Yet let no one believe that I have put this forward in such a way as to affirm that not one of them at all can be found burning with a perfect renunciation, but because they in some sort overcome their own nature, if any of them do haply strive with the utmost strictness of mind toward the palm of perfection set before them — the ardour and desire of which compels the man it has once kindled to bear hunger, thirst, vigils, nakedness and all the labours of the body not only patiently but even gladly. For "a man in grief laboureth for himself, and forcibly driveth away his own destruction";21 and again: "but to a needy soul even bitter things seem sweet."22 For otherwise the desires of present things will not be able either to be repressed or to be torn away, unless, in the place of those hurtful affections which we long to have cut off, others, wholesome ones, have been let in. For the liveliness of the mind can in no wise subsist without the affection of some desire or fear, joy or sorrow, unless these same things have been changed to a good purpose. And therefore, if we desire to thrust carnal lusts out of our hearts, let us plant spiritual delights at once in their room, so that our mind, ever bound to these, may both have those things on which it may continually dwell and may reject the enticements of present and temporal joys. And when our mind, schooled by daily exercises, has advanced into this condition, then, with experience for its teacher, it will grasp23 the feeling24 of that little verse which we all indeed sing together in the accustomed measure of psalmody, but the power of which none perceive save a few who have made trial:25 "I foresaw the Lord always in my sight: for He is at my right hand, that I be not moved."26 For he alone will effectually reach the force and the understanding of this song who, coming to that purity of body and of soul of which we speak, understands that he is kept by the Lord at every moment lest he be rolled down from it again, and that his right hands — that is, his holy works — are continually fortified by the same. For the Lord stands by His saints not on the left — because a holy man has nothing on the left27 — but always on the right; whereas beside sinners and the ungodly He is not seen,28 because they have not those right hands beside which the Lord is wont to stand, nor can they say with the prophet: "Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the snare."29 And this no man will be able truly to profess save he who, judging all things that are in this world to be either hurtful or superfluous or at the least lower than the highest virtues, has fixed his whole gaze, his whole zeal and his whole care upon the tending of his own heart and upon the purity of chastity. And so the mind, filed by these exercises and polished by advances, will come to a perfect holiness of body and of soul.

21Prov. xvi. 26 (LXX.), and the one place in this conference where Gibson's own English of a verse is deliberately not followed. He prints it at Conf. VII. vi as "a man in grief labours for himself, and forcibly brings about his own destruction", which reverses what the dative gives: uim facere with a dative is to do violence to a thing, and the Greek behind it is ἐκβιάζεται ἑαυτοῦ τὴν ἀπώλειαν, "he forces his destruction away from himself". The verse is adduced here to show that hard labour profits the man who is on fire for perfection, and on Gibson's rendering it would argue the opposite of the sentence it is brought in to prove. Petschenig's in doloribus is plural and is rendered by an English singular, as it is in his printing. The Authorized Version's verse is a different sentence altogether: "He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him."

22Prov. xxvii. 7. Animae egenti is "to a needy soul", following the Greek ψυχῇ ἐν ἐνδείᾳ, where the Authorized Version and the Vulgate have "to the hungry soul", anima esuriens; and uidentur, "seem", stands where they have "is".

23Percipiet, "will grasp", is Petschenig's text; his apparatus records concipiet, "will conceive", in P, T, O and the printed editions, and Migne prints it. The two verbs pull the sentence in different directions — taking in what is there, or forming it — and the base text of this edition is Petschenig's.

24Affectus is "affection" at its five other places in this conference and "feeling" here and at chapter XII. 4, where it is the movement of the moment rather than the state held: what a verse is felt to have is not a disposition. Both of Gibson's own chapter titles carrying the noun use "feeling" (Conf. XI. viii, XI. xi). The line is not always sharp — section 3 above has affectibus and affectione of desire, fear, joy and sorrow, which are nearer the movement than the state, and they are "affections" there under the default.

25Uirtutem uero eius takes the "strength / power" trigger, and the English is "power": Cassian glosses the noun himself three lines later, where the same thing said of the same verse is uim atque intellectum huius carminis, "the force and the understanding of this song". What a verse has is efficacy, not a moral quality, which is the condition the trigger names. The two nouns are kept apart in English — uirtus "power", uis "force" — so that the parallel can be seen without the two being made one word. This place was published as "virtue" on 2026-08-01 and changed on 2026-08-02; the change and the reason are in the log.

26Ps. xv. (xvi.) 8. Prouidebam is "I foresaw", following the Greek προωρώμην, where the Authorized Version has "I have set the Lord always before me"; quoniam is "for" and ne conmouear a purpose clause, "that I be not moved", where it has "I shall not be moved".

27Sinistrum is an adjective agreeing with nihil — a holy man has nothing left‑hand, nothing sinister, about him — and the English keeps the locative sense that the sentence's a sinistris and a dextris require, at the cost of the pun.

28A peccatoribus … non uidetur is genuinely ambiguous, and the English settles it one way. A with the ablative after a passive is the ordinary mark of the agent, and the sentence would then say that sinners do not see Him. It is read here as locative instead — He is not seen beside them — because the sentence is built on two locative phrases in the same construction, non a sinistris … sed a dextris, of where the Lord stands and not of who sees Him, and because the clause that follows gives the reason in the same terms: they have not the right hands quibus dominus consueuit adsistere. The agent reading would make the third phrase change the figure the other two set up. The alternative is recorded because the Latin allows it.

29Ps. xxiv. (xxv.) 15. Euellet is future and so is the Authorized Version's "he shall pluck"; the one divergence is laqueo, a snare or noose, where it has "net".

VI. That patience quenches the burning of fornication.

For by as much as a man advances30 in gentleness and patience of heart, by so much will he advance in purity of body; and the further he has driven off the passion of anger, the more tenaciously will he hold chastity. For no man will turn aside the heats of the body but he who has first pressed down the impulses of the mind.31 And this the beatitude praised by the mouth of our Saviour declares most plainly: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth."32 Not otherwise, then, shall we possess our earth — that is, not otherwise shall the earth of this rebellious body be subdued to our sway — unless our mind has first been founded upon the gentleness of patience; nor will anyone be able to press down the wars of wantonness that rise up against his flesh, unless he be first furnished with the arms of meekness: for "the meek shall possess the earth, and shall dwell upon it for ever and ever."33 How we may obtain this earth, I say, the same prophet teaches in what follows in that same psalm: "Wait on the Lord, and keep His way: and He shall exalt thee to inherit the earth."34 It is plain, therefore, that no man can climb up to the firm holding of the possession of that earth save those only who, keeping the hard ways and commandments of the Lord by an unshaken gentleness of patience, have been exalted, the same Lord drawing them out of the mire of carnal passions. "The meek," then, "shall possess the earth" — and not only shall they possess it, but they shall also "delight themselves in the abundance of peace",35 which no man shall steadfastly enjoy in whose flesh the wars of lust are still stirred up. For he must needs be beset by the most cruel battles of the demons and, wounded by the fiery darts of luxury,36 be rolled down from the possession of his own earth, until the Lord "take away wars unto the ends of his earth, break the bow in pieces and shatter the arms, and burn the shields with fire"37 — with that fire, namely, which the Lord came to send upon the earth38 — and shatter also the bows and the arms wherewith the spiritual wickednesses, fighting against him by day and by night, transfixed his heart with the fiery darts of the passions. And so, when the Lord, breaking the wars in pieces, has set him free from all the heats of the incitements, he will come to that condition of purity, so that, having laid aside the shame with which he shuddered at his own self — that is, at his own flesh — while it was assailed, he begins to delight in that same flesh as in a most pure tabernacle (for "there shall no evils come nigh him, neither shall the scourge draw near to his tabernacle"),39 coming, that is, by the virtue of patience to that word of the prophet: that by the merit of meekness he should not only inherit his own earth but should also delight himself in the abundance of peace. But where the anxiety of the combat still remains, there cannot be an abundance of peace. For he does not say "they shall delight themselves in peace", but "in the abundance of peace".40 And by this it is evidently shown that patience is so most effectual a medicine of the heart — according to that saying of Solomon, "A meek man is a physician of the heart"41 — that it roots out the tinder not only of anger, of sadness, of accidie, of vainglory, of pride, but of wantonness too, and of all the faults alike. For "in long‑suffering," as Solomon says, "is prosperity for kings."42 For he who is always meek and tranquil is neither kindled by the disturbance of anger, nor consumed by the anguish of accidie and sadness, nor puffed up by the emptiness of vainglory, nor lifted up by the swelling of pride. For "great peace have they that love the name of the Lord: and there is no stumbling‑block for them."43 And therefore it is not without reason declared: "Better is the patient man than the strong, and he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city."44 Until, then, we deserve to obtain this peace firm and perpetual, we must needs be assailed by many attacks, and that little verse must often be repeated by us with groaning and with tears: "I am become miserable, and am afflicted utterly: I went mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with illusions"; and: "There is no health in my flesh because of the face of Thy wrath: there is no peace for my bones because of the face of my foolishness."45 For we shall bewail these things fitly and in truth at that time when, after a long purity of our body, hoping that we have now altogether escaped carnal defilements, we feel the goads of the flesh rise up against us again because of the lifting up of our heart; or at any rate when, through the deceit of dreams, the impurity of the former filth besprinkles us. For when a man has begun to rejoice in a long‑continued purity of heart and body, it must needs be that, while he believes that he can no longer be rolled down from that sincerity, he glories after a fashion within himself and says: "I said in my abundance: I shall never be moved."46 But when, profitably left in some measure by the Lord, he has felt that condition of purity, wherein he had confidence in himself, driven from him, and has seen himself stagger in that spiritual success, let him run back at once to the author of that integrity, and, acknowledging his own weakness, let him confess and say: "Lord, not in mine but in Thy will Thou gavest strength to my beauty.47 Thou turnedst away Thy face, and I was troubled";48 and that saying of blessed Job also: "If I be washed as with waters of snow, and if my hands shine as the cleanest, yet Thou shalt dip me in filth, and my garments shall abhor me."49 Yet he who by his own fault dips himself in filth cannot say this to his Creator. Until, therefore, he comes to a perfect condition of purity, he must needs be schooled the oftener by these unevennesses, until, strengthened by the grace of God in that purity which he seeks after, he may deserve to say effectually: "With expectation I have waited for the Lord, and He looked upon me. And He heard my prayer, and brought me out of the pit of misery and from the mire of dregs. And He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps."50

30The verb of the first limb is elided in the Latin — quantum quis in lenitate ac patientia cordis, tantum in corporis puritate proficiet — one proficiet serving both. English cannot leave it out, and "advances" is supplied.

31Animi motus: "impulses" rather than "motions", because the stirring is inward — of the mind, not of the body. The bodily sense of motus stands at chapters VII, XI and XII and is "motion" there, and conmotio, which this conference uses constantly beside it, is "commotion"; the three are kept apart in English as they are in the Latin, and the same three renderings stand in Institutes VI.

32S. Matt. v. 4 (5). Possidebunt is "shall possess", which is both Cassian's word and the Vulgate's at this verse, where the Authorized Version has "shall inherit the earth". It is kept because the next three sections are an argument about possessing the earth of one's own body, and the verb has to be the same word every time it returns. Cassian carries it into the psalm as well, where the Latin psalter has hereditabunt — see the note at section 2.

33Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii.) 11, 29. Cassian joins the first half of verse 11 to the second half of verse 29 — mansueti possidebunt terram and inhabitabunt in saeculum saeculi super eam — and the two are quoted as one sentence. He returns to the true second half of verse 11, delectabuntur in multitudine pacis, in the section following. Possidebunt is his own verb, carried over from S. Matt. v. 4; the Latin psalter has hereditabunt at both verses.

34Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii.) 34. Terram is "the earth" here and at every one of its eleven places in this chapter, where the Authorized Version has "the land"; the argument is about possessing the earth of one's own body, and it will not carry two English words.

35Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii.) 11, both halves this time. Petschenig letter‑spaces mansueti, possidebunt terram and delectabuntur in multitudine pacis separately, as three pieces of the verse driven into Cassian's own sentence, and the quotation marks follow him.

36Luxuria is "luxury" here and at chapter XII, in the older English sense of lasciviousness: "lust" is fixed to concupiscentia and "wantonness" to libido, and all three nouns stand in this conference.

37Ps. xlv. (xlvi.) 10. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Cassian's verbs are subjunctive after donec where the Vulgate and the Authorized Version have indicatives, and he writes fines terrae eius, "the ends of his earth", making the earth the man's own where they have "the end of the earth"; scuta, "shields", is the Vulgate's word where the Authorized Version has "chariot". He quotes the same verse again at chapter XII. 4, and there it stands as the psalm has it.

38S. Luke xii. 49. The words are not marked as a quotation by Petschenig and are not set as one here; they are Cassian's own allusion, turning the fire of the psalm into the fire the Lord came to kindle.

39Ps. xc. (xci.) 10. Cassian puts the verse into the third person — ad eum, tabernaculo eius — where the Vulgate and the Authorized Version address it to the hearer, "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling"; and mala is plural.

40Petschenig sets delectabuntur in pace in single quotation marks, because Cassian is citing the phrase in order to argue about it — it is what the verse does not say. That is the convention of the edition, not of this page; Gibson's own practice for exactly this construction (Conf. XVI. xvi, Conf. XIII. xiii) is ordinary double marks, and they are used here.

41Prov. xiv. 30 (LXX.). The Greek is πραΰθυμος ἀνὴρ καρδίας ἰατρός; the Authorized Version's verse is another sentence altogether, "A sound heart is the life of the flesh."

42Prov. xxv. 15 (LXX.). In longanimitate prosperitas regibus renders ἐν μακροθυμίᾳ εὐοδία βασιλεῦσιν, and regibus is a dative: long‑suffering brings kings their prosperity, it is not what their prosperity consists in. The Vulgate has patientia lenietur princeps, "by patience a prince is appeased", and the Authorized Version follows it. The verb is elided in Cassian's Latin and "is" is supplied.

43Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 165. Nomen domini, "the name of the Lord", stands where the Vulgate and the Authorized Version both have legem tuam, "thy law"; and non est illis scandalum, "there is no stumbling‑block for them", where the Authorized Version has "nothing shall offend them". It is the sharpest divergence in this conference between Cassian's Bible and the two standard texts.

44Prov. xvi. 32 (LXX.). Gibson prints the same verse at Conf. XVIII. xiii and his English is followed. Cassian's qui continet iram renders ὁ κατέχων ὀργήν, where the Vulgate has qui dominatur animo suo and the Authorized Version "he that ruleth his spirit" — a different faculty, and anger is why the verse is quoted here.

45Ps. xxxvii. (xxxviii.) 7, 8 and 4, in that order. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Adflictus sum usque quaque, "I am afflicted utterly", stands where the Vulgate has curuatus sum usque in finem and the Authorized Version "I am bowed down greatly", so the English keeps the affliction and not the bowing, which belongs to the other reading. Inlusionibus, "with illusions", stands where the Authorized Version has "with a loathsome disease", and that word is the reason the verse is quoted here at all. The last clause is verse 4, and Cassian ends it a facie insipientiae meae, "because of the face of my foolishness", where the Vulgate and the Authorized Version have "because of my sin"; insipientia is the ἀφροσύνη of verse 6, so the two verses have run together.

46Ps. xxix. (xxx.) 7. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. In abundantia mea is "in my abundance", where the Authorized Version has "in my prosperity".

47Non in mea, sed — "not in mine, but" — stands outside Petschenig's letter‑spacing, which begins again at in tua uoluntate. The words are Cassian's own, driven into the verse to make the contrast his argument needs; the psalm reads simply domine, in uoluntate tua praestitisti decori meo uirtutem. They are kept inside the quotation marks here because breaking the marks round three words would give them a prominence the Latin does not, and the fact is recorded instead.

48Ps. xxix. (xxx.) 8. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Uirtus is "strength" in this verse, as it is in the ordinary English of the Latin psalter — "thou gavest strength to my beauty" — and not the "virtue" this edition gives the noun elsewhere. The Authorized Version's verse is quite different: "Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong."

49Job ix. 30, 31. Cassian's Latin is the Vulgate's; the Authorized Version reads "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch."

50Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 2, 3. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Respexit me, "He looked upon me", stands where the Vulgate has intendit mihi and the Authorized Version "he inclined unto me"; deprecationem meam is singular where the Latin psalter has the plural.

VII. Of the differences and degrees of chastity.

For there are many degrees of chastity by which men climb up to that inviolable purity. And although our power51 does not suffice either to discern them or to set them forth as they deserve, yet, because the course of our account demands it, we will try to bring them forward as best we may according to the mediocrity of our experience — leaving what is more perfect to the perfect, and not prejudging those who, possessing a purer chastity by a more fervent zeal, excel also in vigour of insight by as much as they are of greater diligence. Accordingly I shall mark off the exceeding lofty summits of chastity by six degrees — though these stand far apart from one another in height — in such a way that I pass over certain middle ones, which are nevertheless many, whose subtlety so escapes the human senses that neither can the mind look upon it nor the tongue set it forth, and by which the perfection of chastity itself grows up little by little by daily advances. For after the likeness of earthly bodies, which take their increase day by day imperceptibly and are thus brought to their full stature while they know not, the strength and ripeness of the soul's chastity too is acquired. The first degree of chastity, then, is that the monk, when awake, be not struck down by a carnal attack; the second, that his mind linger not in thoughts of pleasure; the third, that he be not moved to lust even slightly52 by the sight of a woman; the fourth, that when awake he suffer not so much as a simple motion of the flesh; the fifth, that when either the drift of a discussion or the necessity of a reading has brought in the memory of human generation, not even the subtlest assent to the act of pleasure graze his mind, but that he look upon it with a tranquil and pure gaze of the heart as a simple work and a service necessarily allotted to the human race, and conceive nothing more from the recollection of it than if he were turning over in his mind the working of bricks or of any other trade. The sixth degree of chastity is that he be not mocked, even in sleep, by enticing phantoms of women. For although we do not believe this mockery to be chargeable with sin, it is nevertheless a token of a lust still lurking in the marrow. Yet it is plain that this illusion comes about in divers manners. For each man is tempted even when asleep according to that practice which, when awake, he had been wont to follow or to think upon. For those who have known carnal intercourse are deceived in one way, and those who are strangers to commerce with a woman in another. For as these latter are wont to be disquieted by simpler and purer dreams, so also they can be cleansed with an easier diligence and a smaller labour.53 But the others are mocked by fouler and more vivid phantoms, until little by little, according to the measure of chastity toward which each man strives, the mind, even when lulled in sleep, is turned to a hatred of that thing which before it felt to be pleasurable; and until that is granted him by the Lord which is promised through the prophet to strong men as the highest wage of their labours: "And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of your land: and I will make you to sleep securely."54 And so at last a man will come to that purity of the blessed Serenus55 and of the few men like him, which I have set apart from the six degrees of chastity named above for this reason: that not only can it be possessed, but it can even be believed, by none save the very rarest; and because that which was bestowed on him in especial by the bounty of a divine gift cannot be set forth in the form of a general precept — namely, that our mind should be so far shaped by the purity of chastity itself that, even the natural motion of the flesh itself being dead, it should not suffer that foul fluid at all. I ought not, indeed, to pass over in silence the opinion of certain men which they lay down concerning this filth of the flesh, who say that it befalls sleepers not for this reason, that the deceit of dreams produces it, but rather because the overflow of that humour shapes certain enticements in a sickly heart. They say, in short, that at that season in which that concretion gives no trouble, even as the flow of it, so also the illusion is at rest.

51Uirtus nostra sufficiat governing perspicere and enuntiare settles the sense here: what it fails to do is see and say, so the noun is a capacity and not a moral quality. Twelve of this conference's twenty‑one occurrences of uirtus are read that way — here and at chapters IIII, V, VI, VIII, X, XII, XV and XVI — and "virtue" stands at the other nine; each departure is recorded, place by place, in the register this edition keeps for them. The register counts eleven, not twelve, and the gate that reads it counts twenty occurrences and not twenty‑one: both are true in different units. The check works per paragraph, and chapter XV. 3 carries two of the occurrences in one paragraph, so twenty‑one occurrences make twenty paragraph‑term pairs and twelve departures make eleven records.

52Uel tenuiter is Petschenig's text; his apparatus records nec in P, and Migne prints nec tenuiter. The two come to the same thing in English — "not even slightly" — but they are not the same construction, and this is the third of the six degrees, so the reading is recorded rather than passed over.

53Hi enim is the second of the two groups just named, those who have never known a woman, and not the first. The demonstratives alone will not settle it — the sentence before uses hi of the other group, hi qui carnalem copulam norunt — but the descriptions do: simpler and purer dreams can belong only to the inexperienced, and the fouler and more vivid phantoms of illi autem in the section following only to those who have known a woman. "These latter" carries the reference in English.

54Hos. ii. 18. De terra uestra and dormire uos faciam put the promise in the second person where the Vulgate has de terra and eos; Fiducialiter is "securely", in trust and confidence, where the Authorized Version has "will make them to lie down safely".

55Abbot Serenus, of Conferences VII and VIII. Cassian records there (Conf. VII. ii) that he prayed to be given this very thing and that an angel took from his bowels igneum carnis tuber, a fiery tumour of flesh. The state named here is therefore not a seventh degree in the series: it is a gift the speaker has set outside his own reckoning of degrees, because it can neither be promised nor prescribed, which is what sequestraui, "I have set apart", says. The sentence still says et ita demum, "and so at last", so the six are the road to it.

VIII. That the inexperienced cannot treat of the nature of chastity and of its effect.

But no man will be able to take up these things or to approve them, or to determine by a sure test whether they are possible or impossible, unless by long experience and purity of heart he has come, the word of the Lord guiding him, to the borders of flesh and spirit. Of which word the blessed Apostle: "The word of God," he says, "is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two‑edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of the joints also and of the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."56 And so, set as it were between their borders — the flesh's and the spirit's — he will discern by a just weighing, like an inspector and a judge, what has been necessarily and unavoidably assigned to the human condition and what has been brought in by vicious habit and by the heedlessness of youth; and concerning their effect and nature he will not be led away by the false opinions of the crowd, nor acquiesce in the prejudged definitions of the inexperienced, but, weighing the measure of purity by the sure balance of his own experience and by a just examination, he will in no wise be deceived by the error of those who, defiled by the fault of their own negligence with more frequent emissions than nature compels, lay the blame on the natural condition; and although it is plain that they rather do violence to nature and wring from her a pollution which she does not of herself bring on, they refer their own intemperance to the necessity of the flesh — nay rather, to its Creator — transferring their own faults to the discredit of nature. Of whom it is elegantly said in the Proverbs: "The folly of a man corrupteth his ways, but he blameth God in his heart."57 Lastly, if any man shall wish to withhold his belief from this assertion of ours, I beg that he will not dispute with us with a prejudged opinion before he has taken up the rules of this discipline; and when he has kept them for a very few months with that moderation in which it is handed down, then assuredly he will be able to prove by a true judgement the things which we have said. But for the rest, a man will dispute in vain about the end of any art or discipline whatever who has not first pursued with the utmost zeal and power58 all the things that belong to the completing of it. As if, for example, I should affirm that the likeness of honey can be produced out of wheat, or again out of it — as also out of the seeds of the radish and of flax — the fluid of a most delicate oil: if a man wholly ignorant of these things should stand by, will he not, crying out that this is against the nature of things, mock me as the author of a most manifest lie? And if I should bring forward to him countless witnesses to testify that they have themselves both seen and tasted and made these things, and should set out besides the reason and the order by which those substances are transformed either into the fatness of oil or into the sweetness of honey, but he, persisting in the obstinacy of a most foolish persuasion, should deny that anything either of sweetness or of unguent can be produced from those seeds: is not his unreasonable and stubborn contentiousness rather to be marked than the truth of my words to be laughed at — a truth which is propped up by the weight of many and faithful witnesses, and by clear proofs, and, what is more than these, by the test of experience? And therefore whosoever shall have come by an unbroken intentness of heart to that condition of purity in which, his mind being now wholly loosed from the titillation of this passion, his flesh casts out through sleep as it were the overflow of a superfluous humour, will most surely apprehend the condition and the measure of nature; and so, when, awaking, he has found his flesh polluted after long seasons without his knowing or being aware, then at last let him lay it to natural necessity — coming beyond doubt to that condition in which he is found such by night as by day, such in his bed as at prayer, such alone as hemmed in by crowds of men; so that, in short, he never looks upon himself in secret such as he blushes to be seen by men, nor does that inescapable eye detect in him anything such as he would wish to be hidden from human sight. And so, when he has begun to delight continually in the most sweet light of chastity, he will be able to say with the prophet: "And night is illumination in my delights.59 For darkness shall not be darkened by Thee, and night shall be lightened as the day: as is the darkness thereof, so also is the light thereof."60 Lastly, since this very thing seems to be above the condition of human nature, the same prophet subjoins how he obtained it, saying: "For Thou hast possessed my reins"61 — that is: not by my diligence nor by my power did I earn this purity, but because Thou hast mortified the burning of wanton pleasure implanted in my reins.

56Heb. iv. 12. Gibson prints the same verse at Conf. II. iv and VII. xiii and his English is followed, save that Cassian has no enim — the interjected inquit stands in its place — and writes conpagum quoque, "of the joints also".

57Prov. xix. 3 (LXX.). The Greek is ἀφροσύνη ἀνδρὸς λυμαίνεται τὰς ὁδοὺς αὐτοῦ, τὸν δὲ θεὸν αἰτιᾶται τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ; the Authorized Version has "The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth against the Lord", where Cassian's Latin lays a charge against God rather than a grievance. Causatur is the verb of the two sections around it — de naturali condicione causantur above, de naturali necessitate causetur below — and the English keeps the same blame‑idiom for all three, because the verse is quoted precisely to name what those men are doing. Strictly, insipientia is the subject of both verbs, as ἀφροσύνη is in the Greek: "but it blameth God in his heart". The man is put in as the subject here because the sentence Cassian draws from it is about men.

58Summo studio ac uirtute pairs the effort with the capacity to make it, as uiribus atque industria does at chapter XVI. 1; the grammar does not decide it, and the reading rests on that parallel. See the note at chapter VII.

59Petschenig prints et nox inluminatio in deliciis meis, with no mea; the Latin psalter has et nox illuminatio mea in deliciis meis. The possessive is not supplied here.

60Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 11, 12. Inluminatio is a noun — night is the illumination — where the Authorized Version has "the night shall be light about me"; non obscurabuntur a te is passive, "shall not be darkened by Thee", where it has "the darkness hideth not from thee".

61Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 13. The gloss that follows is Cassian's own and stands outside Petschenig's letter‑spacing; the reins are the seat of desire, and the whole force of the verse for this chapter is that the possessing is God's act and not the man's.

VIIII. A question whether we can escape the motion of the body even when asleep.

Germanus: We have indeed in some part learned by experience that a perpetual purity of the body can be possessed through the grace of God by the waking, and we do not deny that, with the rigour and judgement of strictness resisting, the commotion of the flesh can fail to befall the waking. But we wish to be taught whether we can be free from this disquiet when asleep as well. For we do not believe this to be possible, for two reasons; and although we cannot speak of them without immodesty, yet, since the necessity of the cure itself compels it, we beg that with your pardon you receive them, if perchance aught has been laid bare somewhat immodestly. The first, then, is that, the vigour of the mind being relaxed through the rest of sleep, the stealing on of that commotion cannot be watched against at all; the second, that the gathering of the urine also, when it has filled the capacity of the bladder by the unceasing inflow of the inward humour while we are at rest, rouses the drooping members — which befalls little children or eunuchs too by the same law none the less. Whence it comes about that, if the delight of wantonness does not wound the assent of the mind, the shamefulness of the members nevertheless humbles the mind with confusion.62

62Eam is feminine, so the masculine adsensum cannot be its antecedent. The only feminine nouns standing in the sentence are oblectatio and libido, and neither yields any sense — the delight of wantonness is not what the shamefulness of the members humbles. The reference is to mens, which stands in the sentence only inside the genitive mentis, a construction ad sensum. The noun is repeated in English because an English "it" here would fasten on "the assent", which is the one candidate the Latin excludes.

X. The answer, that the commotion of the flesh which happens in sleep is no hindrance to chastity.

Chæremon: It appears that you have not yet recognized the power63 of true chastity, since you believe that by the help of strictness it is held fast by the waking only; and hence it is that you think that integrity cannot be preserved by the sleeping, the rigour of the mind being as it were slackened. But chastity subsists not, as you judge, by the guard of strictness, but by the love of itself and by delight in its own purity. For it is called not chastity but continence,64 where some opposition of pleasure still resists it. You see, then, that to those who have received the affection of chastity into their marrow through the grace of God, the ceasing of strictness when they sleep is no hindrance — a strictness65 which is proved by a most sure reasoning to be untrustworthy even for the waking. For whatever is repressed with labour grants the fighter a temporary truce, yet does not bestow after the labour a perpetual rest of security; but whatever has been utterly overcome by a deep‑seated virtue, being set in order without any suspicion of disquiet, will confer on the victor an unbroken firmness of peace. Wherefore, so long as we feel ourselves assailed by the commotion of the flesh, let us know that we have not yet come to the summits of chastity, but that, still set under the weakness of continence, we are wearied by battles in which the issues must always be doubtful. But as for your wishing to establish, by this proof, that the commotion of the flesh is unavoidable — namely, that not even eunuchs themselves can be without it, though their genitals have been taken away — it must be known that it is not the heats of the flesh nor the accomplishment of wantonness that is wanting to them, but only the power of generation by seed. Whence it is plain that not even they, if they desire to come to this chastity toward which we strive, ought to be loosed from humility and contrition of heart or from the strictness of abstinence66 — although it is by no means to be disbelieved that chastity can be laid hold of by them with less labour and zeal.

63Uerae castitatis uirtutem: the genitive will carry either sense, and the reading is taken from the argument rather than from the grammar — the chapter asks what holds a monk when strictness is asleep, and the answer is what chastity itself can do. The noun keeps its ordinary "virtue" one section on, at profunda uirtute deuictum, where it is a quality of the man. See the note at chapter VII.

64Continentia is "abstinence" in this edition, which is Gibson's commoner word for it, and "continence" in the six places where Cassian sets the noun against castitas as the lower of two states — this sentence, section 3 of this chapter, and the four sections of chapter XI, whose heading is quod multum intersit inter continentiam et castitatem. Rendering both by one English word would flatten the distinction those chapters exist to draw. Where the noun instead names the discipline of food, drink and sleep — chapters II. 5, IIII. 1, X. 4 and XV. 2, and the capitulum of XIIII — it is "abstinence", and Gibson's own title at Conf. II. xx, "that abstinence in which a man is sustained by two biscuits", is that use exactly.

65Quae is feminine and either cessationem or districtionis can carry it grammatically; only one of them can carry it in sense, since what the next sentence proves untrustworthy is the labour that represses, not the ceasing of it. The noun is repeated in English because a relative pronoun in English cannot reach past the nearer noun to the genitive behind it.

66Continentiae districtione is "the strictness of abstinence" here, and not of continence as at sections 1 and 3 of this chapter. The phrase is Cassian's own at chapter IIII. 1, where he glosses it in the next breath — omnem continentiae districtionem, famem scilicet ac sitim, uigilias quoque et operis iugitatem atque incessabile studium lectionis — so continentiae districtio in this conference is the regimen of food, drink, sleep and work, which chapter XV will set out in measures; and it stands here beside humility and contrition of heart, which are practices and not states. The last noun of the sentence is castimoniam, not castitas; nothing marks the two apart here, and both are "chastity" in this edition.

XI. How great a difference there is between continence and chastity.

Wherefore the perfection of chastity is distinguished from the laborious rudiments of continence by a perpetual tranquillity. For this is the consummation of true chastity, which, not assailing the impulses67 of carnal lust but detesting them with a whole horror, keeps its own purity continual and inviolable, and cannot be anything else than holiness. And this will come to pass when the flesh, ceasing now to lust against the spirit, shall have consented to the spirit's desires and to its virtue,68 and when they shall have begun to be bound to one another in a most firm peace, and, according to the word of the psalmist, shall have dwelt as "brethren in unity",69 possessing that blessedness promised by the Lord, of which He says: "If two of you shall agree upon earth touching anything for which they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven."70 Whosoever, therefore, shall have passed beyond the degree of that intellectual Jacob — that is, of the supplanter71 — will climb up, from that wrestling of continence and supplanting of the faults, the sinew of the thigh being numbed, to the merit of Israel by a perpetual straightness of heart. And this order the blessed David also marked out thus by the prophecy of the Holy Spirit, saying first: "In Judæa is God known"72 — that is, in the soul which is still held under the confession of sins, for Judæa is by interpretation confession. But "in Israel" — that is, in him who is one seeing God, or, as some interpret, most upright of God — not only is He known, but "His name is great." Then, calling us on to loftier things and wishing to show the very place in which the Lord delights: "And His place," he says, "is made in peace"73 — that is, not in the conflict of the combat and the wrestling with the faults, but in the peace of chastity and in a perpetual tranquillity of heart. If, then, a man has deserved to obtain this place of peace by the quenching of carnal passions, advancing from this degree also and being made a spiritual Sion — that is, a watchtower of God — he will consequently be His dwelling‑place also. For the Lord abides not in the conflict of continence but in the continual watchtower of the virtues, where He now neither blunts nor represses, but has shattered for ever the powers of the bows74 from which, that is to say, the fiery darts of wantonness were once aimed against us. You see, then, that as the place of the Lord is not in the wrestling of continence but in the peace of chastity, so also His dwelling is in the watchtower and contemplation of the virtues. Whence it is not without reason that the gates of Sion are preferred to all the tabernacles of Jacob: for "the Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob."75 But as for your asserting that the commotion of the flesh is unavoidable on this ground, that the urine, when it has filled the bladder by a continual dripping,76 rouses the members at rest — although that commotion, which this necessity alone at times, and only77 through sleep, has stirred up, is no prejudice to true followers of purity for the obtaining of that purity, yet it must be known that, if they have been moved, they are brought back to their own rest by the command of chastity in such a way that they are settled not only with no itching but not even with the least recollection of wantonness. And therefore, that the law of the body also may agree with the law of the mind, excess is so to be chastened even in the drinking of water itself, that that daily gathering of humour, flowing more sluggishly into members that have been dried, may render that motion of the body which you think unavoidable not only most rare but slow also and lukewarm, and may rouse a cold fire, so to speak, and a bedewing flame without the heat of any scorching — after the manner of that wonderful vision of Moses, so that the bush of our flesh, encompassed with a harmless fire, may not be burnt;78 or as it was with those three young men, from whom the flame of the Chaldean furnace was so beaten back, the spirit bedewing,79 that the smell of the fire did not breathe upon their hairs or fringes — that we may begin in some sort to possess already in this body that which is promised to the saints through the prophet: "When thou shalt walk through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, and the flame shall not burn in thee."80

67Motus is rendered "impulses" here, where it is governed by concupiscentiae, and "motion" at section 5, where it is governed by corporis; the Latin word is the same in both places, and the distinction is drawn from the genitive and not from the noun. Conmotio, which this conference uses constantly beside it, is "commotion" throughout, as in Institutes VI.

68Desideriis eius uirtutique: eius is the non‑reflexive genitive, so it cannot be the flesh's own — the subject of consenserit is caro. The desires are the spirit's, and the noun is repeated in English because "its", standing next to "the flesh", would be read of the flesh, which is the disease and not the cure. Consenserit is also the verb of the verse quoted three lines below, si duo ex uobis consenserint — that identity is what makes the flesh and the spirit the two who agree, and English cannot show it while keeping Gibson's wording of the verse.

69Ps. cxxxii. (cxxxiii.) 1. Only the three words fratres in unum are letter‑spaced by Petschenig; the verb is Cassian's, and the quotation marks are set round what he quotes and no more. Gibson's English of the whole verse is at Conf. XVI. iii.

70S. Matt. xviii. 19. Gibson prints the verse at Conf. IX. xxxiv and his English is followed, including its "touching anything" for de omni re quamcumque.

71Gen. xxxii. 24‑32. Petschenig prints the root twice within two lines and spells it two ways — subplantatoris on printed page 351 and supplantatione on 352 — and both were read again at 600 dots to the inch. Migne normalises both to the assimilated form. The inconsistency cannot be shown in English, where one word answers both, and it is recorded here rather than tidied away.

72Ps. lxxv. (lxxvi.) 2 — verse 1 in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1, and the same offset holds for the two citations from this psalm in the section following. Cassian breaks the verse in three and glosses each piece: notus in Iudaea deus, in Israhel, magnum nomen est eius, and Petschenig letter‑spaces the three separately; autem is Cassian's connective and stands outside the marks. The two etymologies are the standard ones of the Fathers and are not Cassian's own; "most upright of God" renders rectissimus dei as it stands.

73Ps. lxxv. (lxxvi.) 3. Sion stands in the same verse of the psalm, and Cassian glosses it specula, a watchtower; the etymology is his, and it is what the sentence turns on.

74Ps. lxxv. (lxxvi.) 4. Petschenig does not letter‑space confregit potentias arcuum, and the words are absorbed into Cassian's own sentence; but they are the next clause of the psalm he has just quoted, which reads ibi confregit potentias arcuum, and they are left unmarked here as they stand in his text.

75Ps. lxxxvi. (lxxxvii.) 2. Petschenig prints cunctis Iacob tabernaculis in Cassian's own sentence immediately before the verse, and omnia tabernacula Iacob inside it; Migne straightens the first to cunctis tabernaculis Jacob. The difference stands two words apart on Petschenig's page and is invisible in English, where one phrase must answer both.

76Iugi stillatione is Petschenig's own conjecture — his apparatus reads iugi stillatione scripsi — against every manuscript witness: S and O read iugis titillatione, and P and T and the printed editions instillatione, which is what Migne prints. "By a continual dripping" renders the editor's word, because Petschenig's text is the base text of this edition; but a reader should know that the word is his and not any manuscript's, and that one of the rejected readings is titillatio, the noun this conference uses of pleasure at chapters VIII and XVI.

77Tantum is Petschenig's own conjecture also — tantum scripsi: tamen codd. v — against every manuscript and every printed edition, all of which read tamen. The word is load‑bearing: "only through sleep" and "nevertheless through sleep" are two different claims about the involuntary emission, which is the question of the chapter. In fairness to the editor it should be said that the manuscript reading is hard to construe here — quam haec sola interdum et tamen per soporem necessitas excitarit — which is presumably why he emended. His own cross‑reference in defence of the conjecture is to chapter XVI. 2 of this conference, where cum dormienti tantum per sopitae mentis incuriam conmotio carnis obrepserit stands in every witness.

78Exod. iii. 2. Petschenig prints circumdata, feminine, which cannot agree with the masculine rubus; the participle answers to carnis by sense, unless the text is corrupt for circumdatus. English cannot show the disagreement, and the sense is not in doubt.

79Dan. iii. 19‑50. Rorante spiritu is a bare ablative absolute with no object; the Greek of Daniel has πνεῦμα δρόσου, rendered spiritum roris in the Old Latin, where the Vulgate has quasi uentum roris flantem. Cassian writes spiritu alone, without sancto — which he does not do at Institutes VI. xvii, where rore sancti spiritus leaves nothing to decide — so the small letter is kept here and the Latin left as open as it is.

80Isa. xliii. 2. Per ignem, "through the fire", stands where the Vulgate has in igne; in te is "in thee", with the Vulgate, where the Authorized Version has "upon thee".

XII. Of the wonders which the Lord works in His saints in especial.

For truly great and marvellous are the things which the Lord bestows with an unspeakable bounty upon His faithful ones while they are still set in this little vessel of corruption, and they are known to no men at all save only to those who have made trial. And the prophet, surveying them in purity of mind, cried out as much in his own person as in the person of those who come to this condition and affection: "Wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knoweth right well."81 Otherwise the prophet is understood to have said nothing new or great, if he should be believed to have uttered these words with another affection of heart or concerning other works of God. For there is no man who does not acknowledge that the works of God are wonderful, even from the greatness of creation itself. But those things which He dispenses in His saints by a daily working, and pours out abundantly with a special munificence, no other knows save the soul of him who enjoys them — a soul which, in the secret of its own conscience, is so singular a judge of His benefits that it is not only unable to set them forth in any words, but cannot even embrace them in perception and thought, once, departing from that fiery fervour, it has been rolled down to these material and earthly views. For who would not wonder at the works of the Lord in himself, when he has seen that the insatiable voracity of the belly and the costly and destructive luxury of the palate have been so pressed down within him that he scarcely takes that scanty and cheapest food itself, rarely and unwillingly? Who would not be astounded at the works of God, when he has fully felt that fire of wantonness, which before he believed to be natural and as it were unquenchable, to have so grown cold that he does not feel himself stirred even by a simple motion of the body? How should a man not tremble at the power82 of the Lord, when he has seen men once fierce and savage, who were provoked to the utmost fury of anger even by the most obliging services of their subordinates, pass over into so great a gentleness that they are not only no longer moved by any injuries, but even, when injuries have been inflicted, rejoice with the utmost magnanimity? Who plainly would not wonder at the works of God and cry out with his whole feeling:83 "For I have known that the Lord is great",84 when he has beheld either himself or some other man become open‑handed out of most rapacious, self‑restrained out of prodigal, humble out of proud, squalid and shaggy out of dainty and delicate, and even willingly enjoying the want and straitness of present things? These assuredly are the wonderful works of God which the soul of the prophet and of those like him knows in especial, astonished by the gaze of a marvellous contemplation. These are the wonders which He hath set upon the earth, which the same prophet, considering them, calls all peoples to the admiration of, saying: "Come and see the works of God, what wonders He hath set upon the earth: taking away wars unto the ends of the earth. He shall break the bow in pieces and shatter the arms: and burn the shields with fire."85 For what greater wonder can there be than that in a very brief moment apostles are made out of most rapacious publicans, and out of savage persecutors most patient preachers of the gospel are made, so that they should spread abroad, even by the pouring out of their own blood, the faith which they were persecuting? These are the works of God which the Son testifies that He works daily together with the Father, saying: "My Father worketh until this day, and I work."86 Of these works of God the blessed David, singing in the spirit: "Blessed," he says, "be the Lord God of Israel, who alone doeth great wonders."87 Of these the prophet Amos also: "who maketh," he says, "all things and turneth them, and changeth the shadow of death into the morning."88 This surely is "the change of the right hand of the Most High."89 Concerning this saving working of God the prophet prays to the Lord, saying: "Confirm, O God, this which Thou hast wrought in us"90 — that I may pass over those secret and hidden dispensations of God which the mind of all the saints beholds wrought within itself in especial at every single moment: that heavenly infusion of spiritual gladness, by which a cast‑down soul is lifted up with the eagerness of an inbreathed joy; those fiery ecstasies of the heart, and consolations of joys as unspeakable as they are unheard of, by which at times, when we are numb with a most sluggish torpor, we are roused to a most fervent prayer as though out of the deepest sleep. This, I say, is the joy of which the blessed Apostle: "That which eye," he says, "hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath ascended into the heart of man"91 — of that man, namely, who, dulled by earthly faults, is still a man and cleaves to human affections and beholds nothing of these gifts of God. Lastly, the same Apostle, as much of himself as of those like him who had now departed from human converse, subjoined, saying: "But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."92

81Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 14. Cassian's psalter reads mira opera tua where the Latin psalter has mirabilia, and it is mira opera that he takes up in his own voice below (ista sunt profecto mira opera dei, section 4), which is why the quotation is worth the difference. The Authorized Version's "marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well" differs in the adjective and in the conjunction. It does not differ in the adverb, and that is worth saying plainly: "right well" for nimis is the Version's phrase and is taken from it. Nimis is an adverb of degree — exceedingly, very much — and no English of it is neutral; the Version's is the received one, it renders the Latin, and the log records that it arrived from the Version and was then checked against the Latin rather than the other way round. The verse returns at chapter XIII. 2, where the Latin is identical word for word, and the English there is the same words.

82Uirtutem domini is the Lord's power as it shows itself in act, standing third in the series with opera domini and opera dei in the two sentences before it. See the note at chapter VII.

83Toto ... affectu is the movement of the moment, not the disposition held, and is "feeling" as it is at chapter V and chapter XIII; the noun is "affection" at chapters V, X, XII and XIII where it is the settled state.

84Ps. cxxxiv. (cxxxv.) 5. Cognoui is perfect, "I have known", where the Authorized Version has the present "I know"; Cassian stops before its second half.

85Ps. xlv. (xlvi.) 9, 10. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Cassian writes opera dei where the Vulgate has opera Domini, and fines terrae in the plural. This is the same verse he quoted at chapter VI. 3, and there he put its verbs into the subjunctive under donec and made the earth the man's own, terrae eius; here they stand as the psalm has them, which is why the two renderings differ.

86S. John v. 17. Usque hodie, "until this day", stands where the Vulgate has usque modo and the Authorized Version "hitherto".

87Ps. lxxi. (lxxii.) 18. Mirabilia magna, "great wonders", where the Latin psalter has mirabilia alone.

88Amos v. 8 (LXX.). The Greek is ὁ ποιῶν πάντα καὶ μετασκευάζων καὶ ἐκτρέπων εἰς τὸ πρωὶ σκιὰν θανάτου. Cassian's first clause, qui facit omnia et conuertit ea, follows the Greek against the Vulgate's facientem Arcturum et Orionem and the Authorized Version's "that maketh the seven stars and Orion"; his second clause stands in both of them, the Vulgate rendering the Greek's shadow of death as tenebras, darkness, and the Authorized Version reading "and turneth the shadow of death into the morning".

89Ps. lxxvi. (lxxvii.) 11. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Cassian has inmutatio where the Latin psalter has mutatio; one English word serves both. The Authorized Version's verse is another sentence: "I will remember the works of the Lord."

90Ps. lxvii. (lxviii.) 29. The verse is numbered one lower in the Hebrew the English Bibles follow, the Latin psalter counting the title as verse 1. Gibson prints the verse at Inst. XII. xiv ("Confirm, O God, what thou hast wrought in us") and at Conf. III. xv ("Strengthen, O God, that which Thou hast wrought in us"); hoc stands in Petschenig and is rendered.

911 Cor. ii. 9. Ascendit is "hath ascended", with the Vulgate, where the Authorized Version has "neither have entered into the heart of man". Cassian stops before the clause that completes the sentence in Paul, "the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him", and turns instead to gloss hominis.

921 Cor. ii. 10. Reuelauit stands without an object in Cassian, who has broken off before the clause that would have supplied it; "them" is the Authorized Version's and is supplied.

XIII. That they alone who make trial of it know the sweetness of chastity.

In all these things, therefore, by however much the mind has advanced toward a subtler purity, by so much the more loftily will it behold God, and will take within itself increases of wonder rather than find a faculty of speaking or a language for the telling. For as the man who has not made trial of it will not be able to perceive with his mind the force of this gladness, so the man who has will not be able to unfold it in speech: just as if a man should wish to set forth in words the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted anything sweet, he assuredly will not take in by his ears the sweetness of that savour which he has never perceived with his mouth, nor will the other be able to show forth in words the sweetness which he has known by the pleasure of tasting, but, drawn on only by his own knowledge of the sweetness, he must needs marvel silently within himself alone at the delightfulness of the savour he has tried. So then, whosoever has deserved to come to this condition of the virtues of which we have already spoken, surveying with a silent mind all these things which the Lord works in His own by a special grace, and set on fire by the astonished consideration of them all, will cry out with the inmost feeling of his heart: "Wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knoweth right well."93 This, then, is the wonderful work of God: that a man of flesh, set in the flesh, should have rejected carnal affections, and, in so great a variety of things and of assaults, should hold one condition of mind and endure unmoved in every change of the things that draw near.94 Founded upon which virtue, a certain old man at Alexandria, when he was surrounded by crowds of unbelievers and pressed not only with revilings but even with the most grievous injuries of men who thrust at him, and it was said to him by the mockers: "What miracle has your Christ, whom you worship, done?" — but the old man: "This," said he, "that I am not moved nor offended by these injuries, nor by greater ones if you inflict them."

93Ps. cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 14 again, as at chapter XII, section 1, where the Latin stands word for word the same. There it was the prophet's cry; here it is the cry of the man the prophet was speaking for, and the English is deliberately the same words.

94Accedentium is Petschenig's text, from T alone; S, P, O and the printed editions read accidentium, "of the things that befall", and Migne prints that. Petschenig defends accedentium by a cross‑reference to Conference I. 5. 4. The sense differs — things drawing near, or things happening — and the English renders the reading he prints.

XIIII. A question about the quality of abstinence and the measure of time in which chastity can be perfected.

Germanus: Since our wonder at this chastity95 — not human nor earthly, but plainly heavenly and angelic — has so confounded us with a sudden amazement that it has struck into us the terror of despair rather than roused our minds to seek after it, we beg that you would instruct us by the teaching of a most full discussion concerning the quality of the observance and the measure of time in which chastity may be acquired or perfected, so that we may both believe that it can be consummated and be encouraged henceforth to seek after it within the space of a fixed time. For we judge it in some sort not to be laid hold of by those set in this flesh, unless some order, and a way by which one may come to that chastity, be laid open to us by a sure method.

95Admiratio ... castitatis is the objective genitive — wonder at the chastity, not a property of it — and nos is the object of confudit: the sentence is about what the hearing did to the two of them. Four pronouns follow in the Latin (quo ... eam ... se ... illam) and every one of them is castitas, sixty words back; Latin gender holds them together and English has nothing that will, so the noun is named twice. Qua in the last clause is feminine and can only be uia, not the masculine ordo — two things are asked for, a sequence and a road.

XV. The answer, within what time the possibility of chastity may be recognized.

Chæremon: It is quite rash to define a fixed measure of time concerning the consummation of this chastity of which we speak, especially amid so great a diversity whether of wills96 or of strengths — a measure which cannot easily be determined even in these material arts and visible disciplines. For according to the intentness of the mind and the quality of the wit these must needs be laid hold of by each man either more quickly or more slowly. Yet the method of the observance, and the measure of time within which the possibility of that chastity may be recognized, we can most steadfastly fix beforehand.97 Whosoever, then, being drawn away from all idle talk and mortified from all anger and anxiety and worldly care, shall have been content with two biscuits98 only for his daily refreshment, and, the satiety of water being withdrawn, shall have bounded the rest of sleep within the space of three, or, as others have laid it down, of four hours — and shall yet have believed that he will obtain that chastity not by the merit of labours or of this abstinence but by the mercy of the Lord, since without this faith all the effort of human labour is vain — he will know within not more than six months that the perfection of that chastity is not impossible for him.99 Yet it is an evident token that purity is now close at hand, to begin not to hope for it from the diligence of one's own labour. For if each man shall have conceived in truth the force of that little verse — "Except the Lord build the house, they have laboured in vain that build it"100 — it follows that he is neither lifted up on account of the merits of his own purity, understanding that he obtained it not by his own diligence but by the mercy of the Lord, nor moved against others with a harsh severity, knowing that human power is nothing if the divine power has not helped it.

96Uoluntatum, "of wills", is what the page plainly prints; Migne has uoluptatum, "of pleasures", and the two differ by one letter and change the sentence. Chæremon declines to fix a time for the consummation of chastity because men's wills and strengths differ, not because pleasures do — and then, in the next breath, fixes the time within which its possibility may be known.

97Praefinire, "to fix beforehand", is Petschenig's word; Migne prints definire, and Petschenig's apparatus records definire as a correction in P and O. It is the more specific verb — it fixes the term in advance — and this is the sentence that introduces the six months.

98Paxamatiis: the παξαμάτιον, a small twice‑baked ration loaf. "Biscuits" is Gibson's word for it, in the text at Inst. IV. xiv and Conf. II. xi and in his chapter title at Conf. II. xx, "that abstinence in which a man is sustained by two biscuits" — which is the same measure this sentence sets. The word is spelt four ways across the tradition; Petschenig prints paxamatiis, T has paxmatiis and O paximatii, and Migne prints paximaciis.

99The sentence the conference is read for, and it was verified twice against the page image. Petschenig prints perfectionem istius inpossibilem sibi non esse cognoscet and Migne perfectionem istius non impossibilem sibi esse cognoscet — the same claim, with the negative in a different place; T drops the negative altogether and reads cognoscat for cognoscet. Sex mensibus is identical in both printings and is not in doubt. What is promised within the six months is not chastity but the knowledge that it is not impossible, which is what the chapter heading also says. T's reading is not one more indifferent variant: without the non the sentence says that the man will recognize the perfection of chastity to be impossible for him, and its cognoscat turns a promise into an instruction. It is not adopted.

100Ps. cxxvi. (cxxvii.) 1. Gibson prints the verse at Inst. XII. ix with the present tense, "they labour in vain that build it"; Cassian's Latin, which is the Vulgate's, has the perfect laborauerunt, and it is kept.

XVI. Of the end and the remedy of chastity.

Accordingly, for each one of us who sweats with all his strength against the spirit of fornication, the one victory is this: not to hope for the remedy from the merit of his own endeavour. And although this faith seems easy and plain to all, yet it is possessed by beginners as hardly as the perfection of chastity itself. For when even a small portion of purity has smiled upon them, straightway, as a certain elation subtly steals in within the secret places of their conscience, they flatter themselves; and, believing that they have obtained it by the zeal of their own diligence, they must needs, being stripped a little of that heavenly guard, be overwhelmed for just so long by those passions which the divine power had quenched, until, with experience for their teacher, they know that they cannot obtain the good of purity by their own strength and diligence. And that we may briefly conclude our discussion — drawn out through a long night's vigil — of the end of the fullest chastity, gathering into one all the things which have been set out at large and here and there: this is the consummation of chastity, that no delight of wantonness graze the monk while he is awake; that the illusion of dreams deceive him not while he is at rest; but that, when the commotion of the flesh has crept upon him in sleep, only through the heedlessness of a mind lulled asleep, even as it was roused without any titillation of pleasure, so it should also subside without any itching of the body.101 These things concerning the end of chastity we have set forth as far as we could, not with words but with experience for our teacher. And although I judge that they will perhaps be reckoned impossible by the slothful and the negligent, yet I am sure that by zealous and spiritual men they will be alike acknowledged and approved. For man is as far distant from man as those things toward which the intent of their minds reaches102 are themselves set apart from one another — that is, either heaven from hell or Christ from Beliar103 — according to the word of the Lord the Saviour: "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there shall also My servant be";104 and again: "Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also."105

Thus far did the blessed Chæremon discourse of the perfection of chastity, and with such words he closed the wonderful teaching of a most lofty purity, urging us, astounded and anxious as we were, that, since the greater part of the night had now run out, we should in no wise defraud our limbs, given over for a little to rest, of the natural food of sleep, lest the mind also, languishing through the torpor of its own body, should lose the vigour of holy purpose.106

101Tantum is taken here with per — tantum per sopitae mentis incuriam, the stirring arising from nothing but the mind's unconsciousness — and not with the dative dormienti, which would limit the time instead of the manner: in sleep and nowhere else. The Latin admits both, and neither is a misparse; word order is the argument for the other one, since tantum commonly follows what it limits, and it stands here immediately after dormienti. What decides it is the editor's own apparatus. At chapter XI. 4 Petschenig prints tantum where every manuscript and every printed edition reads tamen — tantum scripsi: tamen codd. v — and he defends that conjecture with a bare cross‑reference to this sentence, "cf. cap. 16, 2". What he printed there is tantum per soporem; the parallel that makes this sentence evidence for it is the collocation tantum per with a cause lying in sleep, and read the other way this sentence gives his emendation nothing to stand on. So the two passages stand or fall together, and a reader who wants to weigh them should weigh them as a pair: XI. 4's tantum is the editor's own word and not any manuscript's, and it is the warrant for construing this one — which stands in every witness — as he construed it. Take the emendation away and the argument from the apparatus goes with it, leaving the word order. This page first printed "in sleep only", on the word order; it was changed after a cold re-translation of this chapter, made from the Latin alone, construed it the other way and sent us back to the apparatus. The methodology page records that check.

102Ad quae is Petschenig's text; Migne prints in quibus, which leaves tendit without a goal to strain toward. Tendere ad is the natural construction and is what is translated.

1032 Cor. vi. 15. Petschenig prints Beliar, the Greek‑influenced form, from S and apparently the first hand of P, against Belial in the second hand of P, in T and O, and in the printed editions; Migne prints Belial, and so does Gibson when he quotes the verse at Conf. XIV. xiv. The base text of this edition is Petschenig's, so Beliar stands.

104S. John xii. 26. Gibson prints the verse at Conf. I. xiv and his English is followed except in the placing of one word: he has "there shall My servant also be", and this edition has "there shall also My servant be", because Cassian's illic et minister meus erit puts et before the noun it lifts. Petschenig has ubi sum ego where Migne has ubi ego sum; the word order sits inside the letter‑spaced quotation and is recorded for that reason, though English word order cannot reproduce it.

105S. Matt. vi. 21. Cassian's verbs are est and erit where the Vulgate has est twice; the Authorized Version reads "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also", in the plural.

106The one paragraph break in this conference, and it is a change of voice: Cassian's own frame resumes here and Chæremon stops speaking. This is Gibson's usual reason for a paragraph break — twelve of his seventeen multi‑paragraph chapters are the last chapter of a conference, and the formula is the same one, "Thus far did Abbot Serapion discourse to us" (Conf. V. xxvii). Petschenig marks it too: this is the only section of the sixteen chapters whose Latin begins with a capital letter without also beginning a chapter.

Notes on the Restored Text