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Cassian the Monk. By Columba Stewart. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. xvi + 286 pp. $60.00 cloth.
Columba Stewart prefaces his fine study of John Cassian by stating, "I write as a monk about a monk." But, as he himself admits, "it is not that simple" (vii). Neither the author nor his subject is simply a monk. Cassian was a learned theorist of the ascetic life who managed to find himself on the theologically suspect side in two major controversies, those over "Origenism" and "(Semi-)Pelagianism." Stewart is an accomplished historian of early Christianity whose first book brilliantly explored a theologically suspect ascetic movement, "Messalianism." Given these credentials, the reader expects a work of theological subtlety and meticulous scholarship, and he or she is not disappointed.
On the other hand, Stewart's opening statement signals precisely how his approach to Cassian is located in the current academic conversation. As is well known, late ancient asceticism has enjoyed sustained and lively scholarly attention, with persons such as Michel Foucault, Peter Brown, and Elizabeth Clark leading the way. Foucault himself wrote a famous essay on Cassian titled "The Battle for Chastity" as part of his unfinished project on early Christian "technologies of the self." But it...