https://www.amazon.com/Cassiodorus-Variae-Translated-Texts-Historians/dp/0853234361/?tag=2022091-20
537
(Cassiodorus left behind the exemplars for another world o...)
Cassiodorus left behind the exemplars for another world of texts: that of the Christian universe of Scripture, now encompassing the Seven Liberal Arts. The grand plan of this new dispensation is contained in the two books of his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, a work which would be excerpted and copied in monasteries throughout the Latin Middle Ages.
https://www.amazon.com/Cassiodorus-Institutions-Divine-Secular-Learning/dp/0853239983/?tag=2022091-20
540
historian scientist statesman author scholars
Cassiodorus was born c. 485, on his family's estate at Scylletium, near Catanzaro (now Squillace) in Calabria, Italy. His father had been prefect of the praetorium of Theodoric, king of the Goths, and Cassiodorus followed his father in the same career.
Cassiodorus received the education in philosophy and rhetoric, appropriate to the son of a noble family.
A member of a distinguished southern Italian family, Cassiodorus, like his father, served the Ostrogoth kings. In return for this service, which lasted from 503 to 537, he was granted both rank and honor. In 507 he became quaestor, in 514 consul, in 523 master of the offices, and from 533 to 537 praetorian prefect. A record of his official career is preserved in his Variae, a collection of 468 official letters and documents that he issued while in office. With the reconquest of Italy by the forces of Justinian his public career came to an end.
Shortly after 537 Cassiodorus withdrew from politics and devoted himself to the establishment of a double monastery (which contained one section for the solitary hermit and one for cenobite communal monks) near his home town of Scylacium in the south Italian province of Bruttium. Although Cassiodorus probably did not become a monk, he was nevertheless the driving force behind the establishment of the monastic community of Vivarium, named after the artificial fishponds, vivaria, that he constructed for the monks. The rule of the order seems to have been rather informal and based upon the recommendations of Cassian. Although the copying of manuscripts had been practiced in other monasteries, Cassiodorus established the labors of the scriptorium as a regular part of monastic life and equated them in dignity to manual work in the fields. Secular as well as ecclesiastical works were copied, for Cassiodorus contended that profane knowledge frequently illuminated the meaning of the Scriptures.
Cassiodorus himself joined in the labors of Vivarium. He prepared a lengthy commentary on the Psalms; collated, commented upon, and revised other works; and, at the age of ninety-three, composed a work on orthography for the monks who were engaged in transcribing manuscripts. His greatest work, the Institutiones divinarum et humanarum litlerarum, was a manual of instruction for the members of the order. Through his encouragement of the copying of manuscripts in monasteries and by his support of the study of secular subjects as a prelude to scriptural investigation.
Cassiodorus spent his career trying to bridge the 6th-century cultural divides: between East and West, Greek culture and Latin, Roman and Goth, and between an Orthodox people and their Arian rulers. He died c. 585, in Vivarium.
Cassiodorus’ contributions to the development of science reside in the encouragement he gave to the study and preservation of the works of classical authors and to his acknowledgment of the need for a cleric to study secular subjects. He helped to save the culture of Rome at a time of impending barbarism.
(Cassiodorus left behind the exemplars for another world o...)
540Cassiodorus viewed reading as a transformative act for the reader. By assigning a specific order of texts to be read, he hoped to create the discipline necessary within the reader to become a successful monk.
Beyond demanding the pursuit of discipline among his students, Cassiodorus encouraged the study of the liberal arts. He believed these arts were part of the content of the Bible, and some mastery of them - especially grammar and rhetoric - necessary for a complete understanding of it.
