Cassiodorus and the Preservation of the Latin Classics

Not everyone agrees who deserves to be singled out as the person who has done more than anyone else to preserve Classical Latin literature. I've said several times on this blog that that person is Charlemagne, and upon reflection, I stand by that assessment; but others have said that it is Cassiodorus, born ca AD 490, died ca 585, and there is much to be said for him in this regard.

Along with his contemporary Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, he also surely must be a contender for owning one of the most beautiful of all Roman names. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator ("Senator" is actually part of his name, not a title. If it seems very strange, it may help to think of an Englishman named John King.) was born into an upper-class family in Scyllacium, a city in in the southern Italian region of Bruttium. He held several high offices under the Ostrogothic kings of Italy: he was quaestor from 507 to 511 (Keep in mind, his birth date is estimated at 490, which would mean that he assumed the office of quaestor at the age of 16 or 17!), consul in 514, and at the time of the death of King Theodoric the Great in 526, he was magister officiorum. Under Theodoric's successor, Athalaric, he became praetorian prefect in 533.

In 540, around the age of 50, Cassiodorus retired. He had attempted to interest Pope Agapetus in the idea of the foundation of a Christian university in Rome, but this project was not realized. Instead, Cassiodorus returned to his native Bruttioum, and founded a monastery which was to be known as Vivarium, after some nearby ponds where fish were bred. I have tried and tried, without success, to find any facts at all about the later history of the monastery Vivarium. The closest I have come is LD Reynolds' passing remark, "His monastery seems to have died with him," in: Reynolds and NG Wilson, Scribes & Scholars, 2nd edition, Oxford, p 73.

In his long, long retirement, besides looking after his monastery, Cassiodorus wrote several works, which can be divided into the historical-political and the theological-grammatical. One of the latter, the Institutiones, is his best-known work, and one of his chief claims for being foremost among the preservers of Classical Latin literature, for it argued that a good education included a thorough study of the Classics.

Besides the Institutiones, which was much-copied and much-used during the Middle Ages, Cassiodorus owned a large library of pagan Latin literature, and copies of these pagan works were spread to other European monasteries along with Cassiodorus' proposals about good education.

It is a sign that knowledge of Greek was dying out in the Catholic West in Cassiodorus' time, that he saw the need to translate the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, and the ecclesiastical histories of Theodoret, Sozomen and Socrates, into Latin.

One thing which makes Cassiodorus' efforts to preserve ancient literature especially remarkable is the time in which he lived and wrote and oversaw the multiplication of Classical manuscripts: it was a time when Classical literature in general was dying out, partly being destroyed in Dark Age wars, and partly being passed by in favor of Christian literature, as has been dramatically shown in the many palimpsested Classical texts discovered since the late 18th century. It is hard to find anyone prepared to actually praise Cassiodorus as an author; but the combination of his wealth and resources, his organizational skills (perhaps honed by his first career in public office?) and his love of pagan Latin literature, meant that he preserved many ancient authors at the very time when the work of many others was vanishing.