society of coenobites, devoted to the pursuit of learning and science (monasterium vivariense). He endowed the monastery with his extensive Roman library (Div. Lit. c. 8). The monks were incited by his example to the study of classical and sacred literature, and trained in the careful transcription of manuscripts, in the purchase of which large sums were continually disbursed. Bookbinding, gardening, and medicine were among the pursuits of the less intellectual members of the fraternity (ib. 28, 30, 31). Such time as he himself could spare from the composition of sacred or scientific treatises he employed in constructing self-acting lamps, sundials, and water-clocks for the use of the monastery. Nor was the influence of his example confined to his own age, institution, or country; the multiplication of manuscripts became gradually as much a recognized employment of monastic life as prayer or fasting; and for this the statue of Cassiodorus deserves an honourable niche in every library. The date of his death is uncertain. He composed his treatise on orthography in his 93rd year (de Orthogr. praef.).
Of his extant writings, the twelve Books of Varieties, consisting principally of letters, edicts, and rescripts, are the only work of real importance; apart, however, from the study of these pages, it is hardly possible to obtain a true knowledge of the Italy of the 6th cent. The very style of the writer, possessing, as it does, a certain elegance, yet continually deviating from pure idiom and good taste, is singularly characteristic of the age which witnessed the last flicker of Roman civilization under the Ostrogothic rule. It is as though the pen of Cicero had been dipped in barbaric ink. The general result is artificial and bizarre; but though his meaning is frequently obscured by his rhetoric, his manner is not as unpleasing as is often asserted. It will be sufficient to enumerate here the other writings of Cassiodorus, a more detailed account of which is given in Smith's D. of G. and R. Biogr. (2) Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae, libri xii., being an epitome of the ecclesiastical histories of Sozomen, Socrates, and Theodoretus, as digested and translated by Epiphanius Scholasticus. (3) Chronicon, chiefly derived from Eusebius, Jerome, and Prosper. (4) Computus Paschalis. (5) Expositio in Psalmos, principally borrowed from St. Augustine. (6) Expositio in Cantica Canticorum, of doubtful authenticity. (7) De Institutione Divinarum Literarum, an interesting work as illustrating the enlightened spirit which animated the monastic life of Viviers. (8) Complexiones in Epistolas Apostolorum, in Acta, et in Apocalypsin, first brought to light by the Marquis Scipio Maffei at Florence, in 1721. (9) De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Literarum. (10) De Oratione et de Octo Partibus Orationis, of doubtful authenticity. (11) De Orthographia. (12) De Anima. Of the lost writings of Cassiodorus the most important appears to have been de Rebus Gestis Gothorum, libri xii., of which we have the abridgment of Jornandes.
The best ed., together with an appendix containing the commentaries discovered by Maffei, is in Migne's Patr. vols. lxix. lxx.
Catharine (Catharina, Catherine, etc.), St., virgin and martyr of Alexandria. Tillemont writes, in the 17th cent., that it would be hard to find a saint more generally reverenced, or one of whom so little was known on credible authority, and adds that no single fact about her is certain (Mém. eccl. vii. pp. 447, 761; cf. Papebrocius, as quoted in Baron. Ann. Eccl. ed. Theiner, iii. ad ann. 307).
The earliest mention of St. Catharine in the Eastern church (v. Menology of Basil) under the name of Ηἱκαθαρίνα (possibly a corruption of ἡ καθαρίνη, dim. of καθαρός, pure), is about the end of 9th cent. (Tillem. u.s.; Baillet, Vies des Saints, tom. viii. Nov. 25); in 13th cent. she appears in the Latin Martyrologies (Baillet, ib.), the crusaders having brought her fame to Europe among other marvels from the East. Some time in the 8th or 9th cent. the monks on Mount Sinai disinterred the body, as they were eager to believe, of one of those Christian martyrs whose memory they cherished. Eusebius relates how a lady of Alexandria—he omits her name—was one of the victims of Maximinus early in 4th cent. (H. E. xiii. 14). It was easy to identify the corpse as that of the anonymous sufferer, to invent a name for it, and to bridge over the distance between Alexandria and Mount Sinai. Simeon Metaphrastes, a legendist of Constantinople in 10th cent., gives a long account of St. Catharine's martyrdom, with horrible details of her tortures, an exact report of her dispute in public with the philosophers of the city and of the learned oration by which she converted them and the empress Faustina and many of the court, and how her corpse was transported to Mount Sinai by angels (Martin, Vies des Saints, tom. iii. pp. 1841, seq.). But the whole story is plainly unhistorical, even apart from the significant fact that there is no external testimony to its authenticity. For in Eusebius the emperor's exasperation is provoked, not, as in the legend, by a refusal to abjure Christianity and to sacrifice to his gods, but by a refusal to gratify his guilty passion; and the punishment inflicted is merely exile, not torture and death. Even Baronius, who suggests emendations to make the legend more probable, hesitates to accept it as historical, while his commentator, with Tillemont and Baillet, abandons altogether the hopeless attempt to reconcile Simeon Metaphrastes with Eusebius.
The martyrdom of St. Catharine is commemorated in the Latin and Greek calendars on Nov. 25; the discovery ("invention") of her body on Mount Sinai on May 13 in the French Martyrology (Baillet, u.s.). In England her festival was promoted from the 2nd class (on which field labour, though no other servile work, was permitted) to the 1st class of holy-days in 13th cent. (Conc. Oxon. A.D. 1222, c. 8; Conc. Vigorn. A.D. 1240, c. 54), and retained as a black-letter day at the Reformation. It was left untouched in Germany at the retrenchment of holidays in A.D. 1540. In France it was gradually abolished as a holiday, although the office was retained in 17th cent. (Baillet, u.s.). In Europe during the middle ages her name was held in great reverence. Louis IX. of France erected in Paris a costly church in her name; and the famous Maid of Orleans claimed her special favour and tute-
