77 Theophilus succeeded Timothy as Bishop of Alexandria in the summer of 385. The festal letters of which Cassian here speaks were issued by him in the year 399.
78 The Anthropomorphite heresy, into which the monks of Egypt had fallen, "supposed that God possesses eyes, a face, and hands and other members of a bodily organization." It arose from taking too literally those passages of the Old Testament in which God is spoken of in human terms, out of condescension to man's limited powers of grasping the Divine nature and appears historically to have been a recoil from the allegorism of Origen and others of the Alexandrian school. The Festal letter of Theophilus in which he condemned these views, and maintained the incorporeal nature of God is no longer extant, but is alluded to also by Sozomen, H. E. VIII. xi., where an account is given of the Origenistic controversy of which it was the occasion, and out of which Theophilus came so badly. On the heresy see also Epiphanies, Haer. lxx.: Augustine. Haer. l. and lxxvi.; and Theodoret, H. E. IV. x.
10 Ps. lxix. (lxx.) 2. It is not impropable that this chapter suggested to S. Benedict the use of these words as the opening versicle of the hour services, a position which it has ever since occupied in the West. See the rule of S. Benedict, cc. ix., xvii., and xviii.
19 On Honoratus and Eucherius, see the Introduction, p. 189.
20 Cf The Preface to Conference I.
21 A group of islands off the coast of France opposite Marseilles; mentioned by Pliny, H. N. III. V., now known as Les Isles d'Hierves.