Venerable John Cassian of Rome

John Cassian, as the tradition retold by St Dimitry of Rostov has it, came from a noble family of Rome; historians also suggest other homelands, among them Scythia Minor (today's Dobruja). Well read in philosophy and Scripture, he became a monk and spent years among the monks of Egypt, in Scetis and Nitria, learning their way of life. In Constantinople he became a disciple of John Chrysostom, who ordained him deacon.

Around 415 he founded two monasteries, one for men and one for women, at Marseilles. There he wrote the Institutes and the Conferences, which passed on the teaching of the Egyptian desert fathers to the West, and a treatise against Nestorius. He died at Marseilles c. 435.