response to her critics, whom she says disbelieved she
could have written the Arboleda and chastised her for the
audacity of pretending that a woman could have com-
posed such a work. Although the Admiración is crafted
in a tone framed by obligatory rhetorical modesty, there
are at times murmurs of irony in Teresa’s voice as she
defends the Arboleda’s divine inspiration and fails to
give ground on the fact that God may endow women
with both strength and intelligence. The Admiración
is notable because it constitutes an apology for female
authorship as well as a series of refl ections by Teresa
on her own writing and its place in society and in the
church.
Although there is no hint of heterodoxy in her works,
Teresa’s converso origins may have complicated her ex-
istence and helped shape the nature of her writing. Both
her works were composed shortly after the anti-converso
riots of 1449 in Toledo and appear to incorporate that
experience into her choice of imagery. The traditional
Augustinian allegory of the City of God is transformed
by Teresa from a secure and ordered place into one of
fear, suspicion, and isolation.
The date of her death is unknown.
See also Cartagena, Alfonso de
Further Reading
Cartagena, T. de. The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena. Trans.
Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez. Cambridge, U.K., 1998.
Deyermond, A. “Spain’s First Women Writers.” In Women in
Hispanic Literature. Ed. Beth Miller. Berkeley, 1983.
E. Michael Gerli
CASSIAN, JOHN (d. 435)
Essentially nothing is known of the early life of this
important fi gure in the development of Christian mo-
nasticism in southern France. Born probably in the Ro-
man province of Scythia Minor (present-day Romania),
Cassian appears ca. 385 as a member of a monastic
community in Bethlehem; in 385, or shortly thereafter,
he and a friend named Germanus left for a “tour” of the
monastic settlements in Egypt, where they discussed
such matters as ascetic discipline and prayer with des-
ert monks. By 399 or 400, Cassian and Germanus had
left Egypt, probably because of controversy over the
theology of Origen. In Constantinople, Cassian was
ordained deacon by John Chrysostom and then, in 405,
went on to Rome. By 410–15, Cassian was at Marseille
in southern Gaul, where he founded two monasteries,
one for women, the other for men.
Cassian’s fame rests on two books that he wrote after
settling at Marseille: the Institutes and the Conferences.
The Institutes was composed at the request of Castor,
bishop of Apt, who had decided to found a monastery.
In Books 1–4, Cassian deals with the dress, prayer, and
rules for monks in community and draws extensively
on his Egyptian experience. Books 5–12 are each de-
voted to one of the eight capital sins (gluttony, lust,
covetousness, anger, melancholy, accedia, vanity, and
pride), their symptoms, and their remedies; in this, as
in many other aspects of his spirituality, he follows the
Greek monastic author Evagrius. In the Conferences,
Cassian claims to be recounting conversations held
several decades earlier with Egyptian desert ascetics.
The twenty-four conferences are concerned primarily
with the techniques of bodily and spiritual discipline
that lead to effective prayer, and thus contemplation.
Within the monastic life, Cassian distinguishes an “ac-
tive life,” which he understands as the pursuit of virtue
and fl ight from sin, from the “contemplative life,” the life
of quietness, prayer, and contemplation. Drawing again
upon Evagrius, Cassian sees the goal of the active life as
apatheia (Evagrius’s Greek term for a state of passion-
lessness or detachment) or “purity of heart” (Cassian’s
usual term for the same state; cf. Matthew 5:8, “Blessed
are the pure in heart for they shall see God”). This state
of tranquillity, purity, and freedom from distraction is
the starting point for concentration, interiorization, and
advancement in prayer leading toward the experience
of divine presence.
Cassian also wrote an anti-Nestorian christological
treatise (De incarnatione) and in his thirteenth Con-
ference opposed Augustine’s ideas about grace by
suggesting that the human will has some independent
role in salvation (a position later known as Semi-Pela-
gianism).
Cassian’s infl uence on western monasticism and
spirituality was profound and lasting. His monastic
regulations and spirituality influenced Benedict of
Nursia and many later monastic writers. His transmis-
sion of the ideas of Evagrius, especially on apatheia
or purity of heart, was crucial for western spirituality.
The Rule of St. Benedict’s requirement that the Confer-
ences be read to the monks during meals ensured that
generations of monks would be shaped by the ideals of
asceticism and prayer that Cassian had gleaned from
the desert ascetics.
See also Benedict of Nursia, SaintFurther Reading
Cassian, John. Opera. PL 49–50.
——. Opera, ed. Michael Petschenig. CSEL 13, 17. Vindobonae:
apud C. Geroldi fi lium, 1886–88.
——. John Cassian: Conferences, trans. Colin Luibheid. New
York: Paulist, 1985.
Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian: A Study in Primitive Monasti-
cism. 2nd ed. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
——. Western Asceticism. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958.
[Translation of selected Conferences.]CASSIAN, JOHN