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The Twelve Books of John Cassian on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults · Book IV. Of the Institutes of the Renunciants

Chapter XI

Page 321 of 1,144

The kind of food which is considered the greater delicacy by them.

I pass over, too, that difficult and sublime sort of self-control, through which it is considered the greatest luxury if the plant called cherlock,766 prepared with salt and steeped in water, is set on the table for the repast of the brethren; and many other things like this, which in this country neither the climate nor the weakness of our constitution would permit. And I shall only follow up those matters which cannot be interfered with by any weakness of the flesh or local situation, if only no weakness of mind or coldness of spirit gets rid of them.

Notes

  1. 766

    Labsanion. Cf. below, c. xxiii., where cherlock is mentioned again, together with other delicacies (!) of the Egyptians.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume 11, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1890–1900). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.