THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
older friend named Germanus. At Bethlehem he entered a cloister, but the desire to know the famous Egyptian hermits led him and Germanus to Egypt, where they remained seven years, after which they revisited Bethlehem, but soon returned to Egypt. Thence Cassianus went to Constantinople, where he became the pupil of John Chrysostom, who ordained him deacon. The exile of Chrysostom in 403, however, obliged Cassianus and Germanus to take refuge with Innocent I. When Cassianus was ordained priest and returned home is unknown, and the fate of Germanus is equally uncertain. At Marseilles Cassianus founded two cloisters, one for monks and the other for nuns, and seems to have died shortly after completing his polemic against Nestorius.
His earliest work, written before 426, was entitled De institutis ccenobiorum et de octo principalium vitiorum remediis libri duodecim, and was composed at the request of Castor, bishop of Apta Julia, who wished to introduce the Oriental and especially the Egyptian rules into the monastery which he had founded. His second work was his Collationes viginti-quattuor, completed before 429. Both were widely spread throughout the Occident; Benedict of Nursia commanded that they be read to the monks in the refectory; Cassiodorus esteemed them highly, although he warned his monks against the heretical views of the author concerning the freedom of the will; and Gregory of Tours mentions them as used, together with other Oriental rules, in the monastery of St. Yririx. A brief compend was made by the friend of Cassianus, Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, which served as a source for the Concordia regularum of Benedict of Aniane.
The thirteenth collation of Cassianus is important in the controversy on Augustine's doctrine of grace. Against his enemies, who were centered in Marseilles, the latter addressed, shortly before his death, his De prcedestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseverantia, his chief opponent being Cassianus, who in this collation had enunciated the doctrine called Semi-Pelagianism in the Middle Ages, although it might more properly be termed Semi-Augustinianism, since Cassianus separated himself sharply from Pelagius and branded him as a heretic, while he felt himself in complete harmony with Augustine. His Greek training, however, rendered it impossible for him to accept Augustine's doctrine of unconditional predestination, particular grace, and the absolute denial of .the freedom of the will. Cassianus, on the other hand, recognized the necessity of divine grace throughout the process of salvation, while postulatin.s; the existence of free will as a necessary condition for the operation of grace, and asserting that Cod never destroys the freedom of the will, even in such an extraordinary case as the conversion of Paul. He regarded it as a religious axiom, therefore, that salvation through Christ is not restricted to a small number of the elect, but is intended for all. This non-Augustinian concept of the process of salvation conditions Cassianus's view of original sin. He believed that the fall of Adam had brought destruction on the whole
human race, although it still retained the power to seek goodness in virtue of its original state of immortality, wisdom, and complete freedom of the will. After the victory of a modified Augustinianism at the Synod of Orange in 529, the doctrines of Cassianus were generally regarded as heterodox, although this did not injure his fame as a monastic author, and in southern Gaul he was officially honored as a saint. See Semi-Pelagianism.
In the latter part of his life Cassianus Decame involved in the Nestorian controversy, and at the request of the archdeacon Leo (later Pope Leo I.) wrote his De incarnatione Domini contra Nestorium libri septem, the date being subsequent to the letters written by Nestorius to Pope Celestine in 430. The work lacks the importance which it would otherwise possess as the only extensive contribution of an Occidental to the Nestorian controversy, through its restriction to personal attacks on the opponent of its author and a complete omission of positive and independent Christological statements. Cassianus sought to prove that the divinity of Christ had existed from eternity and had never been renounced, so that Mary must be called not merely the mother of Christ, as Nestorius taught, but the mother of God. The work is especially valuable as showing the close sympathy of the interests and methods of Nestorianism and Pelagianism, while Cassianus, following the Gallic monk Leporius, who had renounced Pelagianism in 426, held that Christ possessed in a single person the two coexistent substances of God and man.
(G. Grutzmacher.)
Bibliography: The Opera, ed. A. Gazaus, were published at Douai, 1616, reprinted in MPL, xlix., 1.; best ed. by M. Petschenig, in CSEL, 2 vols., 1886-88. An Eng. transl., with a well-written Life, is contained in NPNF, 2d series, xi. 163 sqq. Consult: G. F. Wiggers, Pragmatische Darstellung des Augustinismus und Pelagianismus, ii. 7-153, Berlin, 1833; A. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, iii. 154, Tubingen, 1897, Eng. transl., V. 246 sqq., 253 sqq., Boston, 1899; A. Hoch, Die Lehre des J. Cassians von Natur und Gnade, Freiburg, 1895.
CASSIANUS, JULIUS. See Docetism; Encra-
TITES.
CASSIODORUS, cas"si-o-do'rrjs (CASSIODO- RIUS), MAGNUS AURELIUS: Roman historian, statesman, and monk; b. at Scylacium (the modern Squillace, on the gulf of the same name, 40 m. s.s.e. of Cosenza), Calabria, c. 480; d. in the monastery of Vivarium, near Scylacium, c. 570. Owing to the esteem in which his father was held by Theodoric, a public career was early open to him; and he pursued it until he had reached the highest dignities under the Ostrogothic monarchs. He stood in close personal relations with Theodoric, with whose efforts to bring about a fusion between the Germanic and Roman elements among his subjects he thoroughly sympathized. About 540 he retired from public life to the peace and quiet of the monastery founded by him on his own estates at Vivarium. Here he devoted himself to literary work, of which he had already made a beginning amidst his political activity, and pursued it zealously until his ninety-third year. He insisted on the duty of intellectual labor for his monks, helped their studies by every means