Smysly Písma a smysl čtení Jana Cassiana

The first and second parts of the study present a short overview of research in Cassian’s biography and works. In 2012 P. Tzamalikos published his edition of a Greek text by Cassian and proposed a hypothesis about its author writing in Greek in the 6th century. Taking into account the first responses to the hypothesis (by A. Casiday and C. Stewart), the study recapitulates the research in Cassian’s biography with its lacunae and many hardly traceable details. In this regard, “reading Cassian” means looking for his place in the Christian and cultural history. The third part recalls usual reading of Cassian’s texts, especially doctrinal themes connected with the so-called Semipelagianism. The fourth part deals with reading the Bible. Close reading of Cassian’s Collatio 14 makes us to correct or develop our approach to the theory of four senses of Scripture presented here: it should not be seen as a mechanistic way of explaining every place in the Bible by everyone. Cassian insists on the fundamental relation between the ability to grasp the deeper senses of Scripture and the internal life of a reader. Then the senses need time to mature like some old wine. We read Cassian’s words as a call for multifold personal meditation, the first step of public/ecclesiastic exegesis that will follow after years of repeated reading and ascetic experience.