The sixth century in the West was not altogether an age of darkness and ignorance, but was illuminated by two writers—who have already been mentioned as intimates of Theodoric—Cassiodorus and Boethius. The latter was a voluminous and able author; and his Consolation of Philosophy, composed in the prison from which he was released only by a death sentence, is well known to modern readers, and has every title to rank as one of the Latin classics. Cassiodorus, also a prolific writer, though of no great talent, is important in the world of letters as having been the founder of literary monkhood, which he originated in a monastery erected by himself at Squillace, whither he retired after his political career.[1] He is understood to have survived there for thirty years, and almost to have become a centenarian in the enjoyment of learned leisure. St. Benedict also flourished in the first half of the sixth century; and the well-known order instituted by him, the Benedictines, ultimately took up the work initiated by Cassiodorus, and produced some of the most erudite contributors to knowledge of the ancient classics.
When treating of Byzantine art the question must always arise whether that term can be applied to productions which in previous or subsequent ages would not have been accepted as competent work. The renaissance of art in Italy is a phrase virtually synonymous with emancipation from Byzantine methods, but the latter, as already explained, ultimately became rooted in a conventionalism which was
- [Footnote: introduction to Diehl's Justinian, and his Études Byzant., 1904. Useful
summaries and jottings on various points are also to be found in the appendixes to Bury's Gibbon, especially vol. iv.]
- ↑ See his tracts for educational purposes, some of which are referred to on p. 212.
