"Verus Israhel, id est monachorum plebs": la genealogia monastica di Cassiano

Cassian’s works are generally described as a collection of teachings of the ancient desert monks he met during his Egyptian sojourn. The comparison with the "Ecclesiastical History" by Eusebius and the contemporary 'historiae monachorum' gives the opportunity to put Cassian’s texts within the debate about the Christian monastic orthodoxy. Cassian’s method is genealogy, that is a rhetoric form able to present fourth century monks as a direct progeny of the apostolic community established by the evangelist Mark in Alexandria. This genealogy needs to rewrite the history of the monastic origins because the ascetic movement has to be fit, for the first time, into the universal church history.