This monograph, originally a St Andrews dissertation supervised by Jill Harries, attempts to read and analyse books i–iv of John Cassian's De institutis against the background of Roman Gaul in the first half of the fifth century. The first chapter sketches with broad strokes ‘the world of Gallic asceticism’ (pp. 8–31). Chapters ii–v follow the contours of Cassian's project. First Goodrich focuses on how Cassian recommends his own reconstruction of monastic practice in Egypt and Palestine: here the key term is experientia. On the one hand it serves to construct a distinction between true monasticism, which includes strenuous ascetic training under a stern and experienced master, and traditional Gallic asceticism, whose anarchism lacked accepted norms and standards (pp. 32–64). On the other hand it helps to emphasise Cassian's own apprenticeship with the ascetic masters in Egypt and thus polemically to distance him from the admittedly superior eloquence of predecessors like Jerome, Basil (Rufinus) and Sulpicius Severus (pp. 65–116). Ch. iv demonstrates how Cassian constructed a unified tradition of Egyptian monasticism whose normative instituta had been handed down from the time of the Apostles (pp. 117–50). Ch. v focuses on bk iv of De institutis and its insistent ‘rhetoric of renunciation’: again normative Egyptian monasticism with its radical renunciation of wealth, possessions, social prestige, control over one's family and oneself is contrasted with deficient Gallic monasticism and its comfortable transformation of traditional aristocratic otium into an equally leisured Christian withdrawal from the world and its troubles (pp. 151–207). The brisk conclusion paints Cassian as a monastic legislator who proposes to his aristocratic audience a type of ‘meritocratic’ asceticism that abolishes ‘the artificial divisions of class and station’ of late antique society. Goodrich rightly judges that Cassian probably failed to succeed with this brand of utopian monasticism (pp. 209–10). His limited success lay in transmitting certain features of Evagrian ascetic psychology to a western audience (pp. 208–10). Two lengthy appendices follow. The first suggests that an important source for the biography of Cassian, Gennadius of Marseille (De viribus illustris 61), may, because of its focus on Marseille, be seriously incomplete. Goodrich points out that Cassian never mentions the bishop, priests or monks of his alleged home. Moreover, Goodrich tries to argue that the fact that he dedicates his works to clergy from the adjacent province of Narbonensis Secunda, seems to suggest that he lived there when he wrote them. Goodrich concedes that Cassian may later have moved to Marseille (pp. 211–34). The second appendix deals with the vexed problem of De institutis 3, 4–6, 8 which seems to presuppose six monastic offices (instead of five). Owen Chadwick (John Cassian, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1968) had proposed to view De institutis 3–6 as a later interpolation. Goodrich supports Chadwick's claim with an elaborate analysis which partly relies on advanced techniques of stylometric analysis (pp. 235–73).

There is much to recommend in this well-written, thoughtful and clearly structured study. Some of its bolder claims, however, cannot be accepted without reservations: for example, Goodrich's attack on the credibility of Gennadius' entry (pp. 226–30) is somewhat less than compelling and for my taste relies too much on the argumentum e silentio. Moreover, sometimes the contextualisation could be still more wide-ranging: when Cassian claims a venerable apostolic origin for the instituta of Egyptian monasticism (see G. J. M. Bartelink, ‘Monks: the ascetic movement as a return to the aetas apostolica’, in A. Hillhorst [ed.], The apostolic age in patristic thought, Leiden–Boston 2004, 204–18), reference could also be made to pseudapostolic church orders of the fourth and fifth century which were also disseminated in Egypt. Goodrich seems to be curiously unaware of Adalbert de Vogué's magisterial Histoire littéraire du movement monastique dans l'antiquité, particularly of vol. vi (Paris 2002) with its extensive discussion of John Cassian's writings.