John Cassian and the reading of Egyptian monastic culture / by Steven D. Driver.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 121-144) and index.

Print version record.

Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Series Editor Foreword; Dedication; Contents; Preface; Introduction; 1. John Cassian; What Can Be Known; Intriguing Possibilities; 2. Stories and Histories of Early Egyptian Monasticism; The Story of Christian Monasticism; A Revision of the Story; Reading Evagrius Ponticus; 3. Western Perceptions of Egyptian Monasticism; The Lives of Antony and Paul; Jerome's Early Monastic Vision; Jerome's Influence; Apatheia and Inpeccantia; 4. Literary Structure and Monastic Praxis; Appropriating the Self in the Text; Reading the Institutes; Reading as Monastic Praxis.

5. Implications for Praxis: A Reconsideration of the Solitary LifeFraming the Question; Anachoresis in the Institutes; Piamun and John on the Solitary Life; Anachoresis as Interiority; 6. Implications for Theoria: Reading, Interiority and the Transfiguration of the Self; Withdrawal and Interiority; Reading and Mystical Knowledge; Reading and the Interiorization of the Text; Reading and the Transfiguration of the Self; Reading and Egyptian Monastic Culture; Bibliography; Index.

This book examines the method of meditative reading encouraged by John Cassian (c. 360-435) in his ascetic writings, the bulk of which are fictive dialogues that purportedly record the instruction he had received from Egyptial Christian monks. This instruction was at its core an interactive experience, depending upon both the discernment of the master and diligent application of instruction by the student. Driver examines Cassian's understanding of the act of reading and suggests the implications of this for Cassian's monastic teaching and it interprets Cassian's method of reading in light of.

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