How a monk ought to flee from women and bishops.

 

In this context [“The Spirit of Vainglory”], here is an old saying of the fathers that is still current and that I, who could not avoid my own sister or escape the bishop’s hand, am unable to utter without embarrassment: A monk must by all means flee from women and bishops. For neither permit him, when once they have bent him to familiarity with themselves, to devote himself any longer to the quiet of his cell or to cling with most pure eyes, through insight into spiritual matters, to divine theoria.

- Saint John Cassian, Institutes, bk. 11, par. 18.