Cassian and the Fathers is the initial volume in the series of Novitiate Conferences of Thomas Merton, the classes he presented to young men beginning their mon

THE obligation, which was promised to the blessed Pope Castor in the preface to those volumes which with God's help I composed in twelve books on the Institutes

Drawing on his early experience as a monk in Bethlehem and Egypt, John Cassian (c. 365-c. 435) journeyed to the West to found monasteries in Marseilles and the

The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monks, living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. In contrast to the formalised and official