One of the earliest and most celebrated of these schools in the West was that founded by the illustrious John Cassian near Marseilles, between the years A.D. 415-420. No man was better qualified than Cassian to introduce the monasticism of Egypt into Europe. He spent the earlier years of his life at a monastery in Bethlehem, then he retired to the Thebaid for seven years, conversing with the Fathers of the Desert, whilst closely observing their religious exercises, and the daily routine of their lives. Afterwards he visited Constantinople, Rome, and even the far distant Churches of Mesopotamia. At length about A.D. 415 he settled down in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, then as in Cicero's time famous for intellectual pursuits, and there founded the celebrated monastery of St. Victor, which was the nursery of many of the greatest prelates of the fifth century. He gave himself up with all zeal to the propagation of monasticism in the West; and with this view wrote twelve books of Monastic Institutes, in which he deals at great length with the nature of the monastic life, its aids, and its hindrances. In the twenty-four books of his 'Conferences'--Collationes--he deals with the eremitical life as he saw it in Egypt, and purports to give the discourses of the Egyptian Fathers, whom he had himself seen and heard. These works have been always highly prized in the Church, although the author in one or two of his 'Conferences' is supposed to have touched too closely on the errors of Semi-Pelagianism. The most celebrated disciple of John Cassian was St. Honoratus of Arles, the founder of the famous monastery of Lerins. There he put in practice the divine maxims of Cassian, and changed that barren island, which he found covered with brushwood and filled with serpents, into a garden of Eden, where man once more walked in innocence with God; and bounteous nature rewarded the incessant labour of the monks with fruits of choicest flavour and flowers of richest hues. He was taken away much against his will from his beloved island and made Bishop of Arles; but he survived only two years, dying in the year A.D. 429, just at the time that St. Patrick, his disciple, was preparing to come to Ireland. A similar monastery and monastic school was about the same time, and under the same influence, founded by St. Germanus at Auxerre, as we have already seen, when speaking of St. Patrick's training for the Irish mission.