The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults

St. John Cassian · c. 420 AD

111 of 269

Section 27

What the two Abbots Pæsius and John said of the fruits of their zeal

When the aged John, who was superior of a large monastery and of a quantity of brethren, had come to visit the aged Pæsius, who was living in a vast desert, and had been asked of him as of a very old friend, what he had done in all the forty years in which he had been separated from him and had scarcely ever been disturbed in his solitude by the brethren: “Never,” said he, “has the sun seen me eating,” “nor me angry,” said the other.