Cassiodorus, moreover, whom we must regard as the greatest individual contributor to the preservation of learning in the West. His long life (c. 490-583) was enormously effective, both for his own time and for ours. What made it so effective was his conviction that there ought to be an educated clergy. We have seen (I. 570) that in 535-6, under Pope Agapetus, he attempted to found a Christian academy in Rome, avowedly in imitation of those which had existed at Alexandria and Antioch and that which was still active at Nisibis. Failing in this project, he turned to another, which, more modest in its conception, was in reality destined to attain a success far wider, probably, than would have attended the other. The library[1] which he founded for his monks at Squillace (Vivarium, the Calabrian monastery to which he retired about 540), and the handbooks which he compiled for them to serve as a key thereto (De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, and De Artibus et Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum), served to organise the literary side of monastic life. But for the existence of such a sanction for literary culture, it is quite possible that, with the exception of Virgil, no Latin classic would have reached us in a complete form. Not that Cassiodorus specially commends to his monks the study of belles lettres or of antiquity for their own sake; such matters are (and this is true of the whole period after Boethius) ancillary to the study of the Bible.
The Bible, therefore, occupies the forefront. There must be, in the first place, examination and comparison of the older versions, both Greek and Latin; and the purest possible text of the standard version, that of Jerome, must be secured. Of the textual labours of Cassiodorus the greatest remaining monument is the Codex Amiatinus; the story of its journey from England to Italy in the seventh century is a striking reminder of the wide range of influence which he obtained[2]. Further research is needed to place us in a position to gauge with certainty the extent to which his labours can be traced in the text of the Vulgate Gospels. Upon the fixing of the text of the sacred books follows the ascertaining of their meaning. A valuable companion to the books was provided by Cassiodorus in the shape of a Latin version of the Antiquities of Josephus, made at his instigation but not by his own hand. His personal contribution consisted of a voluminous commentary on the
- ↑ In this connexion the theory put forth in 1911 by the late Dr Rudolf Beer is of surpassing interest. On the evidence of the lists of authors named or used by Cassiodorus, coupled with the old catalogues and extant remains of the Library of Bobbio (founded in 612 by St Columban), he makes it appear probable that there was a great transference of books from Vivarium to Bobbio. Thus the famous palimpsests of which Mai revealed the contents to an astonished world in the early years of the nineteenth century are nothing less than the remnants of the treasure accumulated by Cassiodorus himself.
- ↑ It is worth mention that quite recently a leaf of a second Cassiodorian Bible has been recovered in the north of England, and other leaves are in private possession.
