Cassiodorus

by James J. O'Donnell

Copyright and published 1979 (University of California Press); "Postprint" 1995

Copyright by James J. O'Donnell: may be read or copied without prior permission for any noncommercial use.
Quotation and citation permitted with attribution. (N.B.: links will be added from time to time, hence it is probably
better to point to this site than to attempt any copying/mirroring/etc.)
Table of Contents:

Preface
Abbreviations
Chronological Table
Chapter 1: Backgrounds and Some Dates
Chapter 2: Cassiodorus under Theoderic
Chapter 3: The Variae
Chapter 4: Conversion
Chapter 5: Expositio Psalmorum
Chapter 6: Vivarium
Chapter 7: Old Age and Afterlives
Epilogue
Appendix I: The Ordo Generis Cassiodororum
Appendix II: Cassiodorus' Name
Appendix III: The Amals and Their Royal Kin
Appendix IV: Momigliano's Hypothesis
Bibliography (1979)
Bibliography since 1979

Explanatory note: This book was published in 1979, had a successful life in print until selling
out in 1993. At that point, I reclaimed the rights to the book from my valued collaborators at
University of California Press and began preparing this hypertext version "postprint". For the
moment it includes the original text as it was published, with the footnotes as hypertext links
(marked by highlighted numbers in double brackets). A bibliographical supplement has been
added. Over time, I hope to link this to other resources, to add new material, and to make the
WWW page the site of a virtual second (and ongoing) edition of this work. As that work
progresses, additional links will appear in the text files that simply highlight words or phrases;
such links differ from the numerical footnote calls, which should facilitate distinction of original
material form the added links. Comments welcome. (Because the original was published before
the microcomputer arrived, this version has been created by scanning the printed book and
proofreading the results. I am grateful to my student, Victor Cai, for his assistance in this
matter. Any remaining errors will be corrected as I hear of them: messages to
***@****.***.*****.**u)

2
Preface
THREE centuries have passed since the last thoroughgoing scholarly study of the life
and works of Cassiodorus saw the light of day in the prolegomena to Garet's 1679
edition of the complete works. The time has come, it seems to me, to take a fresh look at
the primary sources, review the accumulated scholarship, and attempt a new survey.
Much remains to be done, both on Cassiodorus and on his age; I hope this volume will
at least facilitate that work.
To make Cassiodorus accessible to all who might be curious, I have quoted his own
words liberally in translations of my own. Some of the renderings verge on paraphrase,
not out of ineptitude or intention to deceive, but out of sympathy for the reader.
Cassiodorus' prose is wooden and artificial enough in Latin; literally translated into
English, it would generally induce deep stupor.

I have incurred a long list of debts in the course of my researches, with no hope of
repaying them adequately: to teachers at Princeton (where this book began in the form
of several undergraduate papers--most of them never actually written--in 1970-1972), at
University College, Dublin (1972-1973), and at Yale (where a dissertation based on an
earlier version of chapters 1-3 of what follows was accepted for the doctorate in 1975,
supervised by Dean Jaroslav J. Pelikan and examined by Lowry Nelson, Jr., and Gordon
Williams); to publishers' readers and others since, whose comments have been never
less than useful and often indispensable (some were anonymous, but I know I can thank
James W. Halporn and T. D. Barnes); to attentive and critical audiences who heard
some of my arguments at Bryn Mawr College (February 1975), the 107th Annual
Meeting of the American Philological Association (December 1975), and Colorado
College (February 1976); to Bryn Mawr College and to Cornell University for financial
assistance in preparing the typescript; to August Frugé of the University of California
Press at Berkeley for his sponsorship, encouragement, and criticism (and to the editorial
staff there for their meticulous attentions); and to many other friends and colleagues,
unwilling victims who have heard a great deal more about Cassiodorus than they cared
to these past eight years.

Cassiodorus himself--a little more than sinner, a little less than saint--has been a
constant source of inspiration. It is with reluctance that I put the final touches on a work
that has served to keep my eyes riveted on so instructive and admonitory an example of
what the Christian scholar can and must be. I cannot imagine how I could have
employed my time more pleasurably or more profitably than with Cassiodorus as my
companion.

J. J. O'D.
Ithaca, New York
February 26, 1978

3
Abbreviations

1. WORKS BY CASSIODORUS
Quotations from Cassiodorus' writings are always made from the editions cited below
and identified in the ways indicated. In addition to the editions listed below, all of
Cassiodorus' works are available in volumes 69 and 70 of Patrologia Latina, for the
most part in the edition of the Maurist J. Garet (1679).

Chron. -- Chronica. Entries cited by year (in the Dionysian reckoning B.C./A.D.) after
the edition of Theodor Mommsen, Abhandlungen der phil.-hist. Classe der kön.
sächischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 8 (1861), 547- 596; reprinted with a shorter
preface in MGH.AA.XI (Chron. Min. II), 1894. The full preface is in Mommsen,
Gesammelte Schriften, 7(1909), 668-690.
Comp. -- Complexiones in Epistulas. Cited by column and section from PL 70.1309-
1422, which is a reprint of the edition of Scipio Maffei (Florence, 1721).
De an. -- De anima. Cited by chapter and line numbers from the edition of J. W.
Halporn, CCSL 96 (1973), which reprints Halporn's text published in Traditio, 16
(1960) 39-109; but the line numbers are not the same in both editions. Halporn's chapter
divisions differ from all previous editions.
De orth. -- De orthographia. Cited by page and line from the edition of H. Keil,
Grammatici Latini (1880), 7.143-210.
Ex. Ps. -- Expositio Psalmorum. Cited by Psalm (or, for the preface, by "Praef.." and
sometimes the chapter thereof) and line numbers from the edition of M. Adriaen, CCSL
97-98 (1958).
Get. -- Getica. Jordanes' abridgment, titled by him De origine actibusque getarum, cited
from Mommsen's edition, MGH.AA.V (1882), using the chapter and section numbers
given there. When I wish to refer to Cassiodorus' original work in twelve books, I call it
the Gothic History.
Hist. trip. -- Historia ecclesiastica tripartita. Cited by book, chapter, and section, from
the edition of W. Jacob and R. Hanslik, CSEL 71 (1952).
Inst. -- Institutiones. Cited by book, chapter, and section, from the edition of R. A. B.
Mynors (1937).
Ordo gen. -- Ordo generis Cassiodororum, also known as the Anecdoton Holderi. Cited
by line numbers from the edition given in Appendix I, below.
Var. -- Variae. Cited by book, letter, and section, from the edition of A. J. Fridh, CCSL
96 (1973). These references are equally valid for Mommsen's edition, MGH.AA.XII
(1894).
2. Other Works

AJP -- American Journal of Philology.

ALMA -- Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin Du Cange).
Anon. Vales. -- Anonymus Valesianus.
BARB -- Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques de
l'académie royale du Belgique.
CCSL -- Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout).

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CIG -- Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum.
CIL -- Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.
CJ -- Codex Justinianus.
Courcelle, LLW -- --P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources (1969).
CSEL -- Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna).
DA --Dissertation Abstracts (Ann Arbor).
DACL -- Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie.
DHGE -- Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques.
Fliche et Martin -- A. Fliche et V. Martin, eds., Histoire de l'église.
HSCP -- Harvard Studies in Classical Philology.
IG -- Inscriptiones Graecae.
Jones, LRE -- --A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602 (1964), using
pagination of the American edition to refer to the notes.
JRS -- Journal of Roman Studies.
JThS -- Journal of Theological Studies.
Lowe, CLA -- E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores (1934-1971).
Mansi -- J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio (1759-
1798).
MEFR -- Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'école Française de Rome
MGH --Monumenta Germaniae Historica. (AA = Auctores Antiquissimi)
PBA -- Proceedings of the British Academy.
PG -- Patrologia Graeca.
PL -- Patrologia Latina. (PLS = Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum [ed. A. Hamman].)
PLRE --Prospography of the Later Roman Empire (ed. Jones, Martindale, and Morris).
Reg. Ben. -- Regula Benedicti.
Rev. Ben. -- Revue Bénédictine
RTAM -- Recherches de théologie ancienne et médièvale.
SC -- Sources Chrétiennes.
SE -- Sacris Erudiri.
Settimane --Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo
(Spoleto).
SMRL --Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin Language and Literature (The
Catholic University of America).

5
Chronology
These dates embody the conclusions of this study, but do not always fully reflect
uncertainties inherent in those conclusions.

476 -- Deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Odovacer.

484-90 -- Cassiodorus born. (His father at this time governing first Sicily, then Lucania
et Bruttii.)
492 -- Theoderic becomes sole ruler of Italy.
c. 500-507 -- Cassiodorus' father praetorian prefect, Cassiodorus his aide.
507-511 -- Cassiodorus quaestor.
514 -- Cassiodorus consul ordinarius.
519 -- Cassiodorus writes Chronica, Gothic History. Eutharic and Justin share the
consulship.
523-27 -- Cassiodorus magister officiorum.
526 -- Theoderic dies.
527 -- Justinian accedes to eastern throne.
533 -- Cassiodorus becomes praetorian prefect.
534 -- Death of Athalaric.
535 -- Death of Amalasuintha. Gothic war begins. Agapetus becomes pope.
538 -- Deaths of Theodahad and Pope Agapetus. Cassiodorus delivers oration on the
marriage of Witigis and Mathesuentha.
540 -- Compilation of Variae. De anima written. Belisarius captures Ravenna.
Cassiodorus to Constantinople. c. 540-48 -- Writing of Expositio Psalmorum.
550 -- Cassiodorus at Constantinople (Vigilius' testimony).
551 -- Cassiodorus at Constantinople (Jordanes' testimony). Getica published.
553 -- End of Gothic war. Second Council of Constantinople.
554 -- Pragmatic Sanction. Cassiodorus returns to Squillace.
562 -- Institutiones (first edition).
565 -- Justinian dies.
568 -- Lombards enter Italy.
577-584 -- De orthographia written. (Earliest possible dates for Cassiodorus' death.)
590 -- Assuming the latest possible birth date and survival to age 100, Cassiodorus
might have lived until this year.

6
Chapter 1: Backgrounds and Some Dates
WE possess no certain information for the dates of Cassiodorus' birth and death.
Plausible dates can be suggested for both events and more demonstrable ones for other
epochs in his life, but certainty is most elusive. We cannot tell if he ever married or
sired children, though his silence on this point may mean that he did not. Here as
elsewhere the limitations of our knowledge are those of the sources. Apart from the
works of Cassiodorus himself and incidental documents dated to his consulship, there
are only three mentions of any of his family in the documents of late Roman history,
namely in letters of popes Gelasius, John II, and Vigilius; on the other hand, the list of
authors by whom one fails to see Cassiodorus mentioned is impressive: Ennodius,
Procopius, the "Anonymus Valesianus," and especially Boethius, to cite only the most
obvious. It will be helpful to bear in mind that Cassiodorus may not have been so
conspicuous in the politics of sixth-century Italy to his contemporaries as he is to us.

But all of Cassiodorus' own works betray at least some hint of the circumstances in
which they were composed, and biographical data are not altogether impossible to come
by on their pages. In this chapter we will summarize what we know and what we do not
know about the public life of Cassiodorus. For our purposes there are two chief sources.

First is the fragment published as the Anecdoton Holderi a little over a century ago.[[1]]
This short text, apparently excerpted from some larger catalogue, provides indispensable
information for the biographers of Boethius, his father-in-law Symmachus, and
Cassiodorus himself. There is no question of the fundamental authenticity of this
document; but there is no agreement on its date of composition. Furthermore, there are
two textual cruces that obscure important information about both Cassiodorus and the
nature of the fragment itself.

The dates suggested for the Ordo generis vary widely. The text is addressed explicitly to
one Rufius Petronius Nichomachus, who is the same Flavius Rufius Petronius
Nichomachus Cethegus who was ordinary consul in 504, later magister officiorum, and
princeps senatus during the worst years of the Byzantine reconquest; he last appears in
Sicily in 558. Significantly, he was mentioned in the same breath as Cassiodorus as
present in Constantinople on the fringes of the party of Pope Vigilius in 550.[[2]] In
Appendix I, below, I present a circumstantial case for assigning the work to some time
between the last years of Cassiodorus' service as magister officiorum and his
appointment as praetorian prefect (hence, 527-533); but it has been dated as early as 522
and as late as 538. The state of the text does not permit confident resolution of the issue.

The text's transmission to us raises perplexing questions as well. One must first attempt
to deduce what sort of treatise these lines were taken from: perhaps a letter not much
longer than the surviving fragment. The three entries are tersely worded and exhibit
clear parallels of verbal construction among themselves; in longer notices the demands
of elegant literary variation would have required the original author to diversify his
technique precisely where the format of a catalogue of short notices encourages formal
order. The appendix below also indicates the points that lead one to suspect that the

7
excerptor was an associate or subordinate from the period of Cassiodorus' monastic
career, provided we accept Cassiodorus' original responsibility and impute some further
originality to the excerptor.[[3]] But the truth may very well be even more complex than
that; we have no way of knowing.

More information than the Ordo generis provides has always been available in our
second source, the Variae. Apart from the whole work's function as a record of the
public acts of the Ostrogothic kingdom in which Cassiodorus was involved, several of
the letters included directly concern the family of the Cassiodori.[[4]] Letters of
appointment in the Variae frequently mention the ancestry, living relatives, and earlier
career of the individual involved. In the case of other families, these documents help to
establish a reliable prosopography of the senatorial class in sixth-century Italy.[[5]] In
the case of the Cassiodori, this information is obviously privileged and vital to our
study.[[6]]

The most complete catalogue of the family's past appears in the letter that notified the
senate of the elevation of the father of our subject to the patriciate. Theoderic, in a script
drafted by Cassiodorus, noted the fama of the foregoing generations and added that the
name Cassiodorus "really belongs to this particular family, even if it is heard of in
others."[[7]] Theoderic then listed the achievements of the father and grandfather of the
man he was honoring; thus there are four known generations of Cassiodori, spanning a
century of the history of Italy. After the mention of direct ancestors comes the clearest
statement of the origins of the entire family in the eastern half of the empire: "We
ourselves [sc. Theoderic] saw at Constantinople one Heliodorus, a blood relative of the
Cassiodori, during his eighteen years as prefect. This is a family illustrious in both
realms" (Var. 1.4.15). The mention of Heliodorus alludes to Theoderic's time in
Constantinople as a hostage (c. 461-471). At that time the Codex Justinianus records a
comes sacrarum largitionum named Heliodorus who may very well be the relative
mentioned here (CJ 10.23.3-4). The natural and perhaps correct assumption is that the
division of the family into eastern and western branches was a comparatively recent
one; this would explain why the catalogue of illustrious Cassiodori of Italy goes back
only four generations. Further evidence for an eastern origin of the family is in the very
name; for the only other testimonies to its use come from Greek inscriptions, and its
etymology refers to a deity honored near Antioch as late as the sixth century.[[8]]

The passage quoted above on this family's special right to the name Cassiodorus implies
that all the members of the family of whom we know bore that name; explicit testimony
is given for the first, third, and fourth members of the line of generation. The fullest
version of the name of our own Cassiodorus was Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus
Senator. (The first two names are largely decorative, and they appear only occasionally.)
Despite the confusion caused by an abundance of Cassiodori, modern scholars have
always used that name, usually alone, for the author of the works we are studying; his
contemporaries knew him simply as Senator. He so appears in the consular list of his
own Chronica for the year 514, and he is thus named in the superscriptions and texts of
the letters addressed to and mentioning him in the Variae; finally, the pontifical letters
that mention him refer to him only as Senator.[[9]] His works are all transmitted with at

8
least the last two elements (and works of his political career generally with more of the
initial decorations); Bede and Paul the Deacon were the first writers to refer to our
subject only as Cassiodorus.

If the Cassiodori were originally Syrian, they must have been Greek-speakers.[[10]] It is
thus at least a coincidence that they were always associated with that part of Italy
traditionally known as Magna Graecia.[[11]] The family estates at Squillace, later the
site of Cassiodorus' monastic foundation, were a powerful magnet to which every
generation of the family was drawn. In the Mediterranean itinerary of Aeneas, Squillace
had a reputation for danger, and its modern situation, however striking, has little of the
earthly paradise about it.[[12]] For Cassiodorus, however, the situation was altogether
different.

Situated on the Ionian Sea just at the base of the toe of Italy's boot, Squillace
(Cassiodorus says) looks toward the rising sun coming up out of the sea (Var.
12.15).[[13]] The situation of the city on a hill reminds him of a hanging cluster of
grapes; its temperate climate features sunny winters and cool summers. Without walls,
the city has a charming air of rusticity, situated in country that produces all three of
antiquity's staples: grain, grapes, and olives.[[14]]

All four of the Cassiodori whom we know are clearly connected with Squillace. The
first of the four, the great-grandfather of our subject, flourished early in the fifth century
and was remembered by Theoderic for defending Sicily and Calabria from the Vandals
under Genseric around 440 (Var. 1.4.14). At the time of those attacks, this Cassiodorus
had already reached the rank of illustris, the highest civil rank in the Empire.

The second Cassiodorus, son of the defender of Sicily and grandfather of our subject, is
described at greater length in the Variae. He was a tribune and notary under Valentinian
111 and seems to have befriended the powerful patrician Aetius (Var. 1.4.10-13). In
company with Aetius' son Carpilio, this Cassiodorus undertook a sort of embassy to the
court of Attila. He is reported to have been offered all manner of high rank as a reward
for his services, but he turned them down to retire to Squillace.

The third Cassiodorus was our subject's father. He must have been born not much later
than the middle of the fifth century and would have been well along in years by the time
of the letters addressed to him in the Variae (Var. 1.3-4, 3.28). Of his career we are
reasonably well-informed.

His rise was not precipitous, but rather a gradual and measured process (Var. 1.4.3).
Nevertheless, his first position in government was that of comes rerum privatarum, in
charge of the imperial lands; he soon moved to the post of comes sacrarum largitionum
(concerned with the strictly monetary fiscal matters of the realm), where "the further he
advanced in rank, the more he was praised for the decency of his character" (Var. 1.4.4).
He moved on then to what are referred to as provincial governorships without
specification of place or date; this summary concludes with the note that "he came to
our court tested in the service of our predecessor [Odovacer] and found worthy of well-

9
earned praise" (Var. 1.4.6). From there the story can be traced in another letter of
appointment, where it appears that he held the governorship of Sicily at the time of
Theoderic's entry into Italy (c. 490-493). "In the first days of our reign, when the
provinces were in turmoil with the state of affairs and the newness of our rule was an
excuse to sneer at an untried monarch, this faithful servant diverted the distrustful
Sicilians from precipitous resistance to us, saving them from blame and sparing us the
necessity of punishing them" (Var. 1.3.3-4). Governor Cassiodorus had picked the
winner of the Odovacer-Theoderic contest quickly and soon accommodated himself to
the new power in Italy. While this enunciation of the flexible governor's virtues does not
fail to mention the remarkable absence of personal avarice with which the office was
performed, what is unstated here as elsewhere is the facility of all the Cassiodori for
accommodating themselves to the party in power. The first Cassiodorus opposed an
invader when it was politic to do so, the second was on close personal terms with the
power behind the throne, while the third sided with another invader when that course
seemed (and was) the most fruitful. The later career of the fourth Cassiodorus through
the Symplegades that Ostrogothic politics became will give further testimony to this
aptitude for compromise with power.

At any rate, in reward for staunch service in Sicily the third Cassiodorus was granted the
governorship of his home province (Var. 1.3.5). In recalling these honors and the
proficiency with which the public offices were performed, Theoderic makes the
transition into what he claims is the pleasant recollection of the deeds of the third
Cassiodorus as praetorian prefect. The earliest possible date for this appointment as
prefect is approximately 501: the candidate seems to be out of office at the time his son
becomes quaestor (for none of the letters of the Variae are addressed to him in his role
as prefect), but not too long out of office (for it was as his father's consiliarius that our
subject made the impression on Theoderic that won him advancement).[[15]] The third
Cassiodorus held no official position after 507, and his elevation to the patriciate came
as he brought his career to a close and returned to Squillace.

For the last of the Cassiodori, there is no surer evidence for the dates of his birth and
death than for his ancestors. There is, however, a great amount of indirect,
circumstantial, and allusive evidence to weigh. It is best to begin with the dates from his
career that are to some extent certain.

The central unshakable Cassiodorian date is 514, the year of his consulship. The
evidence for this is clear, both in his own fasti in the Chronica and in all the other
records that survive as well. The entry in the Chronica records the most significant event
of that year, the end of the Laurentian schism upon the election of Pope Hormisdas:
"During my consulship it was to the credit of the Gothic rulers that longed-for concord
returned to the reunited clergy and people of the Roman church" (Chron., s.a. 514 A.D.).
Cassiodorus was the only consul for this year, for reasons that are not known. The honor
may have been achieved accidentally; while there is no explicit evidence to explain the
lack of an eastern nominee, the disruptions caused at that time by the insurrection of
Vitalian may well have caused the omission of the ritual appointment.[[16]] The
consul's duties were to give his name to the year and to stage the most spectacular of the

10
annual games; one reason for the occasional appointment of two men from one half of
the empire was to enable the nominees to pool the expenses. But the games were not an
irreplaceable element of the annual calendar, since appointment of two consuls from one
half of the empire meant the omission of the games in the other half; thus incipient civil
war is an easily adequate justification for omitting the appointment.

Appointment to the consulship does not itself give presumptive evidence for the age of
the holder. There was a tendency in the late empire for the consulship to be a young
man's privilege, usually funded by proud fathers. Thus the distinguished prefect Liberius
saw his son, still of tenera aetas, consul in 507, while a primaevus was consul in 509;
Boethius was told by Philosophia that he had had in his adolescence honors often denied
to old men, and his own sons followed him in the consulship by only twelve years,
apparently even more remarkably young than he had been.[[17]]

We know, however, that the consulship was not the young Cassiodorus' first post in
public life. "He was still a very young man [adeo iuvenis] when he became consiliarius
to his father, the praetorian prefect and patrician Cassiodorus, and delivered a highly
eloquent oration in praise of Theoderic, king of the Goths; he was made quaestor by the
king, then patrician and consul, and afterwards magister officiorum (Ordo gen., lines 27-
32). This is partially confirmed by the letter of Athalaric naming Cassiodorus praetorian
prefect in 533; Theoderic "took him on as quaestor while still a primaevus but soon
found him conscientious and learned in the law" (Var. 9.24.3). In both cases the
remarkable youth of the new quaestor was singled out. The two terms used to describe
the young Cassiodorus (iuvenis, primaevus) are fatally vague for the biographer's
purpose; the only direct evidence to enable us to judge their import in this place is the
use by Cassiodorus, writing in the name of Theoderic's daughter Amalasuintha, of the
term primaevus to describe Athalaric at the time of his death.[[18]] Athalaric's parents
were married in 515, and his birth took place in 516 (according to Jordanes) or in 518
(according to Procopius), making him something between fifteen and eighteen at the
time of his death.[[19]]

It would be difficult to accept that Cassiodorus could have been as young as fifteen
when he became quaestor, having already served some time as consiliarius to his father
(though it is to be noted that such a job might very well have been the source of much of
the legal knowledge for which Athalaric later praised him) and having received an
education equal to the performance manifested from the first page of the Variae.
Nevertheless, the use of the term primaevus in referring to the adolescent Athalaric and
the iuvenis Cassiodorus cannot be completely without meaning; even a society
unobsessed with birth dates would make some broad discriminations between young
men of various ages, although the terminology would not be precise--and all these terms
were actually written down and transmitted to us by the pen of one man, Cassiodorus
himself. It is difficult to believe in the face of this evidence that Cassiodorus could have
been older than twenty-three at the time of entering his quaestorship, and he was very
possibly not over twenty-one.[[20]]

11
Happily the date of accession to the quaestorship can be fixed with fair accuracy by an
examination of the contents of the Variae. The letters of the first four books (and the last
two letters in Book V, out of place for literary reasons discussed in Chapter 3, below)
contain the literary remains of Cassiodorus' term as quaestor. The bulk of the letters are
undatable, or datable only very loosely, and the limits within which they can be
presumed to fall are determined by the letters which, by explicit mention of the date or
by obvious connection with otherwise datable historical events, admit of narrower
dating. Mommsen established dates of from 507 to 511 for the first four books, and they
have not been convincingly shaken.[[21]] With this information in hand, we can make
our closest approximation of Cassiodorus' date of birth. Recalling our earlier remarks
about the significance of iuvenis and primaevus, subtracting the highest possibility from
the earliest date, we arrive at a birth date of 484; but if the precocity of the young
eruditus was truly astonishing and his age at appointment closer to Athalaric's at death,
his birth could have been as late as 490. At any rate, the range 484-490 is close to
certain and usable in later calculations.[[22]]

One important conclusion can be drawn from this calculation of the date of Cassiodorus'
birth. We have already seen that his father was functioning as governor of Sicily at the
time of Theoderic's entry into Italy and that he accepted the governorship of Calabria
(then technically the province of "Lucania et Bruttii") not long after. Since his
appointment to the prefecture was no earlier than 501 or 503, there is every likelihood
that the family spent the years from the late 480's on through our Cassiodorus' childhood
without straying far from native Squillace. Since the family's political (and presumably
financial) standing at this time was a happy one, such a childhood in a family well
enough knit to inspire Cassiodorus' later obvious loyalty, on luxurious estates
overlooking the Ionian Sea, could well have been the period when the young
Cassiodorus learned for himself to love the native soil that so attracted him in later life.

Beyond this pleasant speculation, however, we know nothing of Cassiodorus' early life.
The question of his proficiency in the Greek language will occupy us in Chapter 6, but it
is worth noting that he does not seem to have the facility of a Boethius (who probably
studied for a time in the east) and that there is no evidence that he ever left Italy for any
of his education; indeed, if he began acting as his father's consiliarius by his mid- or late
teens, he scarcely would have had time for such formal advancement of his education.
He speaks fondly in later life of Dionysius Exiguus, to whom he devotes a substantial
half-chapter of the Institutiones (Inst. 1.23.2-4).[[24]]

With these dates so far established, we can now suggest that Cassiodorus was in his
mid- to late twenties when he served as consul in 514. The consulship is the one
securely dated event in a decade of obscurity in Cassiodorus' life; there is no evidence
that he held public office apart from the consulship between 511 and 523, just during the
years when he was reaching what moderns would call maturity.[[25]] The Chronica,
discussed at length in the next chapter, was published in 519, specifically in honor of the
consulship of Eutharic, Theoderic's son-in-law; but we can only speculate whether this
was the product of an author-in-residence at court or of an ambitious young man hoping
to get back into office by calling attention to himself in this way. For this, as for the

12
next, period of obscurity in Cassiodorus' life, two possible centers of activity are
probable, though the amount of time distributed between them is impossible to define:
Rome and Squillace. First, Dionysius Exiguus was still in Rome, and Cassiodorus may
have made or remade his acquaintance at this time. Since the consulship was still
associated with the city of Rome itself, it seems likely that at least that one year was
spent in the city. Furthermore, later mention of a library once held at Rome by
Cassiodorus implies that at some period of his adult life he resided there normally and
was surrounding himself with books (Inst. 2.5.10). But Squillace was also home to him,
and as we shall see later on, there is reason to suspect that he was active there during his
years out of office as well.

It is difficult to know, therefore, how much to make of this period of apparent

rustication. It was in fact unusual for senatorial figures to spend as much time in public
life at this time as did Cassiodorus. It was not unusual for scions of wealthy families to
content themselves with the consulship and a year or two as an illustris; lower offices
did not appeal to them at all.[[26]] Thus it is difficult to say whether the eleven years
that Cassiodorus spent in office over three decades seemed to him at the time to be
much or little.

Whatever the significance of the interlude out of office, it clearly comes to an end in the
520's. From the dates of the letters in Books V, VIII, and IX of the Variae, broad limits
for his activity at court at this time of roughly 523-527 can be established; note, for
example, that the earliest firmly datable letters in this series make appointments for the
third indiction (A.D. 524-525) and therefore were written sometime around 1 September
524 (Var. 5.3-4, 5.40-41). We can also conclude that the bulk of his activity at this time
was in the post of magister officiorum; this is attested to not only by the ordering of
titles in the Ordo generis and other works, but by the explicit testimony of Athalaric's
letters from 533 appointing Cassiodorus praetorian prefect (Var. 9.24-25). There we
learn that he was originally appointed to the office of magister and that he was still in
office when Theoderic died on 30 August 526 (Var. 9.24.6, 9.25.8). Thus he was
involved in the transition of power from the old king to the regency exercised in the
name of the young one.

Both of these sources make a further reference to Cassiodorus' activities at this period.
The first mentions the service as magister and adds that "in office you were always
available to the quaestors; for whenever they needed some specially polished prose, the
matter was forthwith entrusted to your talents" (Var. 9.24.6). The second begins by
noting that Athalaric came to the throne to find Cassiodorus already magister, "but he
served us in the post of quaestor as well."[[27]] It would be easy to make light of these
references, but the repetition seems to indicate that Cassiodorus really was filling two
offices at this time. This is the solution to the infrequently posed problem of the origins
of the letters contained in the Variae after the fourth book. For there is not a significant
change in the content of the letters from the period of the official quaestorship to the
later terms as magister and prefect. The clear import of Athalaric's words is that the
literary talents of Cassiodorus were so remarkable in the Ostrogothic court that
whenever he was in Ravenna some significant public documents were entrusted to him

13
for drafting, no matter who technically exercised of quaestor. This further explains the
presence in the sixth and seventh books, the collections of formulae for letters of
appointment. There are no clearly datable references in these formulae, and, while
Mommsen suggested that they came from 511, the collection could have been put
together at any time before 534 (when the consulship, for which a formula is provided in
Book VI, was last filled in the west). However, given the respect in which Cassiodorus'
quaestorial products were held by the court, an earlier date would have preference over
a later; the occasion of compilation might well have been the termination of either of his
first two periods of service when, as he was preparing to leave Ravenna, his associates
implored him to prepare the collection so that they would have something a little special
for the bulk of the routine letters of appointment it fell on them to compose each year.

Two other aspects of Cassiodorus' activities at court in the 520's are attested by the
sources. First, Athalaric tells us that during his time as magister under Theoderic,
Cassiodorus was a favored companion of the king. "To the monarch you were a friendly
judge and an honored intimate. For when he got free of his official cares he looked to
your conversation for the precepts of the sages, that he might make himself a worthy
equal to the great men of old. Ever curious, he wanted to hear about the courses of the
stars, the tides of the sea, and legendary fountains, that his earnest study of natural
science might make him seem to be a veritable philosopher in the purple" (Var. 9.24.8).
A vignette of king and courtier passing the hours in learned discourse also appears in the
preface at the beginning of the Variae, where mention is made of Cassiodorus'
familiarity with the "exalted colloquies of kings" (Var., Praef. 8).

As if to confirm the indispensability of Cassiodorus to the royal court, Athalaric's

announcement of the prefectorial appointment to the senate went on to laud
Cassiodorus' activities in the first troubled days of the young monarch's own reign.
"How earnestly did he not labor in the first days of our rule, when the newness of our
reign required that much be set in order? He was the one man who was everywhere,
issuing proclamations, assisting at our councils; what labor he undertook was spared to
us .... He assisted the first steps of our rule with both sword and pen. For when we were
troubled over coastal defense, he shot out of his literary sanctuary and assumed military
command [ducatus] no less intrepidly than did his ancestors; he found no enemy to
fight, yet triumphed by his courageous behavior" (Var. 9.25.7-9). This military action
may have been a response to fears of assault from Vandal or Byzantine forces interested
in influencing the succession and government. The danger passed, Athalaric makes clear
a little further on, when the onset of winter made the seas an unlikely source of peril.
There is no evidence that Cassiodorus held any regular military command at this time,
and there is specific evidence that he returned to his official chores as magister after the
military alarm was over (Var. 9.25.10). It seems obvious that he was simply acting as
events demanded without color of formal appointment.

Here our special knowledge of Cassiodorus' employment at court in the 520's comes to
an end. What is remarkable about the evidence is not how much it says, but how much it
does not say. It is precisely this reticence that most inflames suspicions that there was

14
something not altogether honorable about the circumstances of Cassiodorus' return to
office.

For it is almost indisputable that he accepted advancement in 523 as the immediate

successor of Boethius, who was then failing from grace after less than a year as magister
officiorum, and who was sent to prison and later executed. In addition, Boethius' father-
in-law (and step-father) Symmachus, by this time a distinguished elder statesman,
followed Boethius to the block within a year. All this was a result of the worsening split
between the ancient senatorial aristocracy centered in Rome and the adherents of Gothic
rule at Ravenna. But to read Cassiodorus' Variae one would never suspect such goings-
on.

For both Boethius and his accusers fare equally well in the treatment accorded them by
successive kings in the letters Cassiodorus selected to preserve. The only letters to
Boethius date, of course, from Cassiodorus' first years as quaestor. They include one
directive to look into charges that the Gothic troops were being cheated on their pay and
two requests to provide presents (in one case a water clock and a sundial, and in the
other a musician) for the warring kings in Gaul, Gundobad, and Clovis (Var. 1.10, 1.45,
2.40). Symmachus, furthermore, received three letters, two on ordinary administrative
matters and one full of praise, a directive to undertake the rebuilding of a theater (Var.
2.14, 4.10, 4.51).[[28]] Three of the four books of letters from the period 507-511 end
with letters or pairs of letters involving Boethius or Symmachus; as we shall see below
in Chapter 3, the first and last positions in each book of the Variae were places of honor
for special letters.

None of this is surprising to readers of the Ordo generis, especially if that document is
interpreted to mean that Cassiodorus was claiming Boethius and Symmachus as
relatives of his. But it has long aroused curiosity that no mention is made there of their
deaths.[[29]]

Against the retention, in a collection published more than a decade after the events in
question, of favorable mentions of executed politicians, there must also be weighed the
favorable attention paid to Cyprian, the chief opponent of Boethius, and his whole rather
distasteful family. Both Cyprian and his brother Opilio appear in the books of the Variae
dating from the time of Cassiodorus' service as magister officiorum, appointed to high
offices with praise neither more nor less enthusiastic than that for all of the other figures
who are seen receiving promotions on the pages of the Variae (e.g., Var. 8.21).

There is no interpretation of Cassiodorus' actions that fully exonerates him from all
suspicion of having participated in the downfall of Boethius, if only by profiting
personally from promotion in Boethius' stead. And Theoderic in his last years, as best
we can gather from other sources, was not the benign patron of religious toleration that
he had seemed earlier in his reign; indeed, his death cut short what could well have
developed into a major persecution of Catholic churches in retaliation for measures
taken by Justin in Constantinople against Arians there. Sadly for Cassiodorus'
reputation, it is precisely at this period that the letters quoted earlier make the most of

15
his frequent, friendly discourses with the king; together with the utter lack of evidence
for any concrete actions that Cassiodorus may have taken against the increasing
harshness of Theoderic's policies, the positive evidence does Cassiodorus little credit.

The atmosphere of the court seems to have improved in the first years after Theoderic.
While Theoderic's grandson Athalaric held the throne, it was the boy's mother
Amalasuintha who held the power; she knew the benefits of Roman education and was
determined to pass them on to her son. In this relatively happy and enlightened court,
Cassiodorus seems to have completed the last year of his service as magister officiorum.
It is ominous, however, that one of his immediate successors in that post was the very
Cyprian who had accused Boethius. The more uncompromising faction within the
Gothic camp (and their adherents among the Romans of the upper classes) was in the
ascendancy once again in the early 530's, culminating in the murder of further alleged
conspirators against the throne.

This last storm seems to have passed, however, when Cassiodorus returned to court for
his last and most distinguished appointment, as praetorian prefect for Italy. This post
was effectively the prime ministership of the Ostrogothic civil government and an
honored culmination for any career. Among Cassiodorus' first activities when he arrived
back in Ravenna was the writing up of his own appointment and that of the consul for
534. Athalaric died shortly afterwards in early 534, and the remainder of Cassiodorus'
public career fell under storm clouds of Byzantine reconquest and dynastic intrigue
among the Ostrogoths.

It is to this period that we can provisionally date Cassiodorus' activities in connection

with Pope Agapetus to establish a school of Christian higher learning in Rome (Inst. 1,
praef 1). Thus our image of Cassiodorus during his prefecture is a picture divided
between the complaisant courtier doing his master's bidding and the private man
increasingly concerned with the affairs of the church. Perhaps his concern for Christian
studies specifically at Rome is evidence that he had spent some of the period between
his tours of duty in Ravenna back at Rome associated with the religious and intellectual
life of that city. At any rate, it is on this note that the public career Cassiodorus
disappears from our view. The last letters in the Variae that admit of secure dating are
from late 537 or early 538.[[30]] Moreover, the last letters written in the name of
Witigis, the last of the Gothic kings whom Cassiodorus served, cannot be put much
beyond the end of 536 (Var. 10.33-34). Neither of the two prefaces that Cassiodorus
inserted in the Variae makes any mention of the conclusion of the author's term of
office; they are open to the interpretation that they were written and the Variae
published while Cassiodorus still held office as prefect. This would also indicate that the
treatise De anima (mentioned in the preface to Book XI) also dates from the period of
public service and is further evidence of a deepening of the statesman's involvement
with religion. Nothing in the De anima itself forbids this interpretation.

On that note of uncertainty we come to the end of our knowledge of the public career of
Cassiodorus. Whether he relinquished office to a duly appointed successor or whether
military events led to the breakdown of the Gothic civil government, we simply do not

16
know. There is no record of any successor being appointed for Cassiodorus by Gothic
authorities; the next Roman authorities in Italy that we know of were appointed from
Constantinople.

For the remainder of the history of the life of Cassiodorus as a private person we rely on
his own later writings. Their evidence is arguable in the extreme, and an evaluation of
his later life, intimately bound up with the assessment of those texts themselves, is a
task reserved for later chapters. What we know for certain is that Cassiodorus spent
some time in Constantinople, probably doing most of the work on his Psalm
commentary there, but settled into the monastic life at Squillace to pursue his second
career.

17
Chapter 2: Cassiodorus under Theoderic
CASSIODORUS' public career can most usefully be studied in two parts, corresponding
first of all to his years as panegyrist and functionary under Theoderic and then (in the
next chapter) to his service as praetorian prefect in the war-torn years after Theoderic.

There is a certain preciosity about everything Cassiodorus wrote for publication during
his public life. The letters of the Variae, as we shall see, are mannered and baroque in
style, almost overloaded with rhetorical frippery -- so much so that the ordinary
government business they were meant to discuss can almost be forgotten by the reader.

It is important to emphasize this preciosity before turning to the formal literary

productions of Cassiodorus in the reign of Theoderic. There are three such works -- the
Laudes, the Chronica, and the Gothic History-- of which only the least interesting
survives intact. Furthermore, the surviving fragments of the Laudes are too short to
judge very clearly.[[1]] The two fragments that survive seem to be from panegyrics
delivered on the naming of Eutharic as heir apparent and on the marriage of Witigis and
Mathesuentha.

We are inclined today to disparage the panegyric as a literary genre; historians who
chafe at the allusive mention of otherwise unrecorded events in such rhetorical set-
pieces are not often charitable to their authors. But the very existence of the form as a
recognized literary genre certainly goes a long way toward excusing the individuals who
made use of it; modern sensitivities are offended by the resolutely obsequious tone of
such speeches and all too often refrain from appraising the literary performance of an
individual by attacking the vices of the genre. When, as in the case of Cassiodorus, we
know little more than that the speeches were written and that they conformed to the laws
of the genre, we are likely to take them merely as evidence of the author's fawning
subservience to the powers he praised.

Yet we know too little of the criteria by which such literary pieces were judged by their
contemporaries. Clearly no one, neither author, nor subject, nor audience, expected
anything other than praise of the panegyric's subject to issue forth. Since, moreover, the
ordinary delivery of such an oration was not a gratuitous action of an enthusiastic citizen
but a formally staged literary event at the royal court, the willingness to lend one's
talents to the production of such a work was often little more than a declaration of active
loyalty to the regime in power. It was to be expected that the praise contained in the
speech would be excessive; the intellectual point of the exercise (and very likely an
important criterion in judging it) was to see how excessive the praise could be made
while remaining within boundaries of decorum and restraint, how much high praise
could be made to seem the grudging testimony of simple honesty.

To the extent, moreover, that panegyric was not produced as part of a court's routine and
was at times a spontaneous contribution of the author (perhaps submitted in written
form), the same standards would be applied with the practical purpose of evaluating the
talents and the loyalty of the individual making the submission; in that case the obvious

18
purpose of such an attempt to call royal attention upon oneself was the advancement of
one's political hopes. We are explicitly told that this was the technique by which
Cassiodorus won advancement to the important post of quaestor while still in the
vicinity of his twentieth year (Ordo gen., lines 27-31). We are prone to assume that
Cassiodorus and his rhetorical talents were unique in his land and time;[[2]] in fact,
there were doubtless still numerous young men working their way into the fringes of the
court possessed of more education than experience and looking for a way to make
themselves conspicuous.

We would know more of the role of these orations in the career of Cassiodorus if more
of them survived and if we could be absolutely sure that they were written by him. The
two surviving fragments were obviously written in different circumstances almost two
decades apart. The rise of Eutharic took place during the period of seeming obscurity
between Cassiodorus' quaestorship and his appointment as magister officiorum; as we
shall see, he was active on other, similar literary fronts at the same time. The marriage
of Witigis and Mathesuentha, an effort to legitimize the rise of Witigis by a connection
with the family of the Amals (Mathesuentha later married a nephew of Justinian, for the
same sort of reason), took place during the difficult days of the war with Justinian's
forces, when Cassiodorus was still at court as praetorian prefect. In this case
particularly, the role of such fancy rhetoric was clearly to add to the formality of the
occasion, to emphasize (probably for publication) the conclusions that the general public
was meant to draw from the union extolled. How and when these documents were
published (in other words, how they came to be collected in manuscript in such a way as
to survive into our time) is not known. It is at least possible that the publication of such
a collection, like the later publication of the Variae, was a deliberate propagandistic act,
glorifying the Gothic regime in a time of crisis. This possibility is slightly reinforced by
the way in which the Laudes in general are referred to in the preface to the Variae: "You
[sc. Cassiodorus, addressed by anonymous friends] have often spoken panegyrical
addresses [laudes] to kings and queens with the approval of all who heard; you set down
Gothic history in twelve books, plucking a bouquet of happy memories. Since you were
successful in those endeavors..." (Var., Praef 11, emphasis added). The collection and
publication of the orations would have been easier to accomplish than the editing of the
Variae and would logically have preceded the larger work, even if stemming from the
same conception and purpose.

The literary panegyric was, we can conclude, an established literary form that
Cassiodorus practiced for his own advancement as well as for the pleasure of the royal
recipients of that honor. In the court of heaven, politicians may be held responsible for
the literal sense of every burst of hyperbole they utter, but the custom in this world is to
be lenient in settling such accounts. No doubt it also pleased the Amal dynasty to be
exalted by so traditionally Roman a form of rhetoric. The other two literary products of
Cassiodorus' public career more explicitly ennobled the Goths in the light of Roman
tradition. The Chronica, first of all, publicly celebrated the great honor shown to
Theoderic and his Family by the emperor Justin in sharing his first consulship with the
heir apparent to the Ostrogothic throne. Theoderic was in his sixties, without a son,
when his daughter Amalasuintha married Eutharic in 515. Eutharic came from the royal

19
dynasty of the Amals, descended through five generations from Hermanaric, the
younger brother of Theoderic's ancestor Vultvulf (Get. 14.80). Shortly after the
marriage, between 516 and 518, the son Athalaric was born, extending the Amal line
into its seventeenth generation (according to the genealogy preserved by Cassiodorus).
As events would have it, the fortunes of the dynasty were to be less happy than they
seemed at this time, since Eutharic died before his father-in-law, and Athalaric only
survived eight years ofœ hs regency, while his mother in her turn only lasted a few
months before being murdered for her kingdom by Theodahad.

None of this could be foreseen in 519, however, and there was great joy in the Gothic
kingdom on the consulship of Eutharic and Justin. The ominous potential (for the Goths)
of the reconciliation of eastern and western churches after the Acacian schism (which
Justin put an end to upon acceding to the throne) had been overshadowed for the time
being by the reestablishment and reaffirmation of concord between the Roman emperor
and his loyal Gothic viceroy. Romania and Gothia had never seemed more happily
united with such prospects of lasting harmony. In this joyful environment there
appeared at least one of Cassiodorus' essays establishing the literary heritage of the
union of Goths and Romans, namely the Chronica. Nothing could be more suitable for
the consulship of the Gothic heir than to present him with a formal listing of all the
consuls of the Roman res publica, going back to the first Brutus. In fact, the Chronica,
like earlier such documents compiled under Christian influence, adopted the
synchronism established by Eusebius and began by naming Ninus the Assyrian as the
first holder of great temporal power in order to unite all world history in one sequence
of rulers. Thus twenty-five generations of Assyrian kings from Ninus, covering 852
years, gave way to the Latin kings from Latinus and Aeneas, who in turn yielded to the
Roman kings from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus. Then the consular fasti as such
began.[[3]]

Most of what is contained in the Chronica is of little direct interest to us. The consular
fasti are preserved in other sources, and the occasional notes of important events are
sparse and derivative through almost the entire work. Cassiodorus as chronicler is
dependent on other sources, through various intermediaries: the influence of Jerome,
Prosper of Aquitaine, Aufidius Bassus, Eutropius, the Livian epitomators, and others
can be detected.[[4]]

As the listing of the consuls approached Cassiodorus' own age, however, the
propagandistic purpose of the work became more clearly apparent.[[5]] For as the Goths
enter the stage of Roman history, the facts about their presence became gradually
distorted. The first clear trace is in the note on the murder of Decius, the third-century
emperor who launched a great persecution of Christians and whose stock was
correspondingly low under Christian kings. Cassiodorus was careful to claim explicit
credit for the Goths (a claim repeated in the Getica) as Decius' slayers (cf. Get. 18).
Again, Cassiodorus makes particular mention (in 263) of the Goths for having ravaged
Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, and Asia, while allowing that other provinces were shaken
by an irruption of barbarians; by contrast, under A.D. 271, where Jerome credits
Claudius with a victory over the Goths, Cassiodorus only mentions barbari.[[6]] Under

20
287, the rise of Manichaeism is mentioned, but nowhere is there mention of the origins
of Arianism or any of the vicissitudes of that sect (to which the Goths still adhered).
Under 380, Prosper's chronicle had spoken of Ambrose, who wrote "pro catholica fide";
Cassiodorus changes the phrase to "de christiana fide." Two years later, Prosper
reported that Athanaric, a Gothic king, was murdered at Constantinople, while
Cassiodorus only admits that "Athanaric, king of the Goths, came to Constantinople and
passed away there."

In 402, Stilicho fought the Goths at the battle of Pollentia; Prosper mentions only that
the battle was fought with "slaughter on both sides," but Cassiodorus insists that "at
Pollentia the Goths defeated Stilicho in battle and put him and the Roman army to
flight." Finally, to the mention of the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410, Cassiodorus adds a
gratuitous phrase, that Alaric behaved clementer in victory. Throughout this recording
of the earlier conflicts of Romans and Goths, Cassiodorus had a narrow row to hoe as an
author attempting to celebrate the union of these two peoples. He took the Gothic side in
these disputed cases in ways that would both flatter the Goths and establish a record of
achievement (implying virtual parity with the Romans) to which Goths could point
proudly; whether Romans were expected to be impressed by these past glories, as
revised and enhanced by Cassiodorus' selective pen, is not certain. There is, to be sure,
no clear evidence that Cassiodorus deliberately falsified his facts in the places where he
diverged from the earlier Roman chroniclers. We know too little of the specifically
Gothic sources that were available to him to know whether he might not have had better
information in some places. Furthermore, in the cases where his changes were a matter
of softening the terminology (barbari for Goths at an embarrassing moment, christiana
for the sectarian catholica in another), he can be accused of little more than sensitivity to
the feelings of his audience.

Similarly, constitutional questions surrounding Theoderic's position in Italy were

doubtless involved in Cassiodorus' reluctance to make much of the achievements of the
western emperors in the fifth century. Under 423, for example, he makes the remarkable
claim that "Honorius died and Theodosius alone commanded the Roman empire for
twenty-seven years." The gist of this assertion is that, although Cassiodorus later
designates Valentinian III (who held the title of Augustus from 425 until 455) as "imp.,"
somehow the west became at this time a subordinate realm with an imperial primacy in
the hands of the east. In this context, the perfectly accurate statement that Theodosius in
424 sent Valentinian and his mother "to take power over the western realm" still
distinctly implies Theodosius' supremacy in the imperial college. The only other
mention of Valentinian marks his return to Constantinople to marry Theodosius'
daughter.

Cassiodorus takes advantage of the facts again when he reports for the year 451 that "the
Romans under Aetius with Gothic auxiliaries fought [on the Catalaunian plains] against
Attila, who retreated, overcome by Gothic might." That statement is literally true in
every detail, but it distorts the truth on two points. First, it limits mention of the
leadership of the western Romans to Aetius, thereby emphasizing the irrelevance of the
western emperors at this time; it was into Aetius' shoes that Theoderic would eventually

21
step. Furthermore, the Gothic auxiliaries who are credited with the decisive role were in
fact Visigoths; no mention is made that the Ostrogoths, including Theoderic's father,
were present on the same battlefield, fighting (albeit under some constraint) for Attila
and the Huns.

Further imperial notices in the fifth century make light of the western emperors; for 461,
Ricimer's role in creating a new emperor ("caused him to succeed to the kingdom," i.e.,
in regnum and not, to be noted, in imperium) is explicitly asserted. Henceforth for
several years the deeds of Ricimer are recorded (for example, s.a. 464, 465) until Leo is
credited with dispatching Anthemius from the east to accept the imperium in Italy.
Ricimer's actions in destroying Anthemius and replacing him with Olybrius are
condemned, but the patricius is still the center of attention (criticized implicitly for not
showing the spirit of cooperation towards an eastern emperor upon which the
Ostrogoths prided themselves). The end of the empire in the west is not emphasized, but
it is clearly stated under 476 that Odovacer killed Orestes and Paulus and assumed the
name of rex, "while using neither the purple nor other regalia."

After Odovacer's putsch there are only two short military notices interjected in the
consular listing until the arrival of Theoderic in Italy in 489. From that point it is to be
expected that the Ostrogoths will do no wrong in Cassiodorus' account. Specifically,
rumors of treachery on Theoderic's part in the death of Odovacer are thrown right back
at the presumed victim: "Theoderic entered Ravenna and killed Odovacer, who was
plotting against him." After that the work celebrates the virtues of Theoderic, including
his glorious visit to Rome in 500 (connected explicitly with his solicitous concern for
rebuilding that city), his provision of new water supplies for Ravenna, and his seizure of
lands in Gaul from the confusion caused by depredations of the Franks. For the year 514
there appears the note, quoted in the preceding chapter, in which Cassiodorus allows the
implication to stand that it was through his own influence (and, for appointing him, that
of Theoderic) that harmony was restored to the church in Italy.

The last entries in the Chronica focus logically on Eutharic, praising his marriage in
515, his acceptance of the consulship in 518, and finally his triumphant occupation of
that office in 519. Mommsen's speculation about a Roman interest in the work is
confirmed and illuminated by the contents of the last entry, which enumerates with what
for this work is considerable detail the marvels seen at Rome during the ceremonies
surrounding the consulship (still a Rome-centered honor itself) before ending with
briefer mention of the joy felt when the royal party returned to Ravenna. Rome was still
a magnet, a good place for triumph and pomp.

Finally, the formality of the roster of consuls is restored by a concluding note

recapitulating the number of years in each of the periods of history; the work ends with
a sentence that was clearly designed to make the addressee nod happily, impressed with
himself and with the dignity of the glorious office he held: "And so the whole order of
the ages down to your consulship is registered here in 5,721 years." If the Goths were
upstarts on the stage of history, they had clearly arrived when they could see a noble
Gothic name next to that of a Roman emperor at the end of a chronicle of over five

22
thousand years of history. The purpose and the technique of Cassiodorus' chronicle are
unmistakable. He can still be reproached here for tinkering with the truth, but he was at
pains to observe at least the letter of the historical record as he had it; but this sort of
chronicle is a species of panegyric itself, as the last entries make clear. If it is panegyric,
its profound purpose of praising the Gothic heir is then seen to conceal other more
private motives. Cassiodorus at this time was not holding any office at the Gothic court,
nor was he helping out the quaestors with any of their work (and he might have done
that had he been regularly resident in Ravenna at the time). Instead he produced a
document in honor of the consulship that comes out of the most solid Roman traditions,
and he concludes with a notice that may be the record of what the author himself
witnessed at the consular games at Rome. If this is so, there is room to speculate that
Cassiodorus was still in Rome following his consulship five years earlier, perhaps
making or renewing his acquaintance with Dionysius Exiguus, who was still teaching
there. We cannot tell whether we are meant to take seriously the words in the preface
alleging that the Chronica was prepared at Eutharic's own request; and we can only
speculate whether such an effort to call attention to oneself, taken in connection with the
surviving fragment of panegyric on Eutharic's rise, was the spontaneous gift of a man
whose political position was secure or the calculated device of someone who had
remained outside the mainstream a little longer than he had planned and who would be
grateful for renewed royal favor.

To this uncertainty one further note can be appended about our knowledge of the
Chronica. At some time after the first publication of the work, the manuscript tradition
that we have received the addition of a full set of Cassiodorus' formal titles, reading:
"Cassiodori Senatoris, v.c. et inl., ex quaestore sacri palatii, ex cons. ord., ex mag. off.,
ppo atque patricii."[[7]] Our ignorance besets us again, penalizing us because we do not
know at what date Cassiodorus became entitled to use the title patricius; thus we cannot
tell whether the absence of a prefixed ex- for the designation for the prefecture might be
an indicator that this recension of the work dates to that period (perhaps recirculated
about the time Cassiodorus was compiling the collected set of Laudes and the Variae,
for whatever propagandistic gain that might be had).

The most significant of Cassiodorus' extracurricular activities of a literary nature during

his public life has been twisted by the whimsy of history into a complex enigma about
which only the most tentative conclusions are really possible. Where originally there
was a work in twelve books that was always referred to as the Gothic History, we know
now only an acknowledged abridgment in sixty modest chapters, the De origine
actibusque Getarum (or Getica) from the pen of one Jordanes. It is in itself a useful
source for the history of the Gothic nation; indeed, largely due to the survival of the
Getica we are better informed about the early history of the Goths than that of any of the
other barbarian tribes. Nevertheless, our ignorance on points connected with the work is
immense; of the author we know barely the name, but can only surmise where he wrote
his works; nor do we know how much of what he wrote was his own, how much
borrowed from Cassiodorus, or which of the explicit quotations from ancient sources
were added by which of the authors. Thus is the scholar's craft of intelligent speculation
set to its task very stringently.[[8]]

23
The first problem is to set the date of Cassiodorus' own full version of the work. The
existence of the work is attested in the Ordo generis, in Athalaric's letter to the senate on
Cassiodorus' appointment to the praetorian prefecture in 533, and in Cassiodorus' own
preface at the beginning of the Variae;[[9]] it is not mentioned, it should be emphasized,
in any of Cassiodorus' writings after his retirement to Squillace, where the absence of
any mention of the works of his public life is most glaring in a catalogue at the
beginning of the De orthographia. The most germane points of the evidence are that at
the several dates involved in these quotations Theoderic is explicitly mentioned as
having in some way been the proximate cause for the work's composition, that the work
extended to twelve books, and that it chronicled seventeen generations of the Amal
dynasty. The earliest date suggested for its completion has been 519, the latest 551;
those authors who favor a later date usually assume that Cassiodorus wrote one version
of the work to which Athalaric could refer in 533, then later added to it the events of the
Gothic kingdom as they transpired, bringing it to a conclusion shortly before Jordanes
got hold of it.[[10]]

There are hitherto unrecognized arguments that add up to a strong probability that
Cassiodorus last laid a creative hand on the Gothic History in (or very shortly after) 519;
the arguments that it must not have been finished until later are fallacious. The
commonest counterattack to a 519 dating is the remark of Athalaric about the seventeen
generations, since by any reckoning Theoderic would have been only the fifteenth,
Amalasuintha the sixteenth, and Athalaric himself the seventeenth.[[11]] This objection
disappears if we return to consider the events of the year 519, when Eutharic was
celebrating his consulship. In that happy hour, Athalaric was an infant of one to three
years of age, but he already afforded the Gothic kingdom promise of unbroken
succession of the Amal dynasty through two generations at least; all seventeen
generations of Cassiodorus' reckoning were already known, and the consciousness of
the Goths was focused on the happy resolution of the succession question. (If Athalaric
had lived as long as his grandfather and had ruled in peace, he would have lasted until
590.) Athalaric's birth, moreover, would have meant the assurance of the succession to a
direct descendant of Theoderic, placating any discontent there could have been with the
selection of Eutharic as Theoderic's immediate successor.

The Getica as it survives contains important confirmation for dating the original work to
519. For Eutharic's name appears frequently in its pages, especially in the listing in
Chapter 14 of all the generations of the Amal dynasty, and elsewhere during the period
before the death of Theoderic, notably in Chapter 48, where there is a sentence
obviously integral to the structure of the chapter about Eutharic, his marriage to
Amalasuintha, and the birth of their offspring. Then there is interpolated a sentence that
cannot come from any earlier than 550, concerning the marriage of Mathesuentha and
Germanus of that year. Then, to recover from that digression, Jordanes says, "But to
take matters in order, let us return to the offspring of Vandalarius, a threefold flowering"
(Get. 48.252). But after this emphasis on Eutharic in the earlier chapters, he disappears
completely at just the point where he becomes Theoderic's heir.

24
What happened instead is that Jordanes concluded Chapter 58 with his account of
Theoderic's military politics in Gaul, noting that "there was no race left in the western
realms which Theoderic had not befriended or brought into subjection during his
lifetime" (Get. 58.303). The next chapter then begins abruptly: "But when he grew old
and felt death drawing near he called the Gothic nobles together and decreed that
Athalaric... would be king" (Get. 59.304). Eutharic only appears in a relative clause
attached to Athalaric's name, where it is stated baldly that "he had been orphaned of his
father Eutharic" (ibid.). At this point the last few pages recount, in two chapters, the
history of the Gothic nation from the death of Theoderic to the marriage of
Mathesuentha and Germanus in 550. What seems likely, therefore, is that the original
Gothic History had made a transition from Theoderic's role as peacekeeper to the
enumeration of the virtues of Eutharic and the happy events of his appointment in the
succession and his production of yet a seventeenth generation of Amals to hold the
throne. The concluding pages of the work would then have been a celebration of both
the marriage a few years before, the production of an heir, the election of Eutharic to the
succession, and the consulship, a happy occasion on which to celebrate all this good
news. When Jordanes got his hands on the Gothic History, however, he would see at
once that the emphasis on Eutharic at the end was embarrassing in view of his
premature death, and so he left off copying and excerpting the original work just at the
point now represented by the end of Chapter 58 (while omitting to delete earlier
references to Eutharic, perhaps out of inattention). Then he added his own concluding
chapters, revising the order of history to make the work celebrate, not the reunion of
Amals, but the union of Gothic Amals and Roman Anicii in the marriage of
Mathesuentha and Germanus and the fortunate progeny, the young Germanus, born in
the spring of 551. It is a quiet but telling argument for putting the date of the Gothic
History back to 519 that the public occasions for both the original full version and
Jordanes' abridgment were essentially the same, including the three elements of a
marriage in the Gothic royal family of a female descendant of Theoderic, the birth of a
male heir, and the role of the father in protecting the new line of succession.

Dating the Gothic History to 519 fits all the information offered by the three explicit
mentions of it in Cassiodorus' works cited above. It raises further the question of
Cassiodorus' relations with the Gothic court during the decade between his terms as
quaestor and as magister officiorum. Finally, it completes the pattern of literary activity
surrounding the decisions on the royal succession: the public oration (of which a
fragment survives) on the marriage, the Chronica (the record of Roman antiquity that is
made to culminate in the Gothic prince), and the Gothic History (Gothic antiquity made
Roman). The Chronica and the Gothic History are then particularly placed in parallel,
recounting the whole of the histories of the two peoples whose union is reflected in the
rise of Eutharic to the Gothic succession and the Roman consulship.[[12]]

The circumstances of the production of the abridgment we possess are little better
known than those of the original work. From the explicit evidence of the text, we know
that it was written by someone named Jordanes, who wrote a similar little treatise on
Roman history; that he addressed the work to a friend named Castalius (but that he
copied the prefatory epistle almost verbatim from Rufinus' preface to his translation of

25
Origen's commentary on Romans); that his purpose was to abridge "Senator's twelve
volumes," but that he had only three days to reread (relegere) Cassiodorus' work, which
he had obtained from Cassiodorus' steward ("dispensatoris eius beneficio");[[13]] that
he made additions of his own; and that he tells us a little (the import of which is
mysterious) about his own ancestry and background. Furthermore, the text as it stands
reports events down to the spring of 551 and is expressly laudatory of the marriage of
Germanus and Mathesuentha and the birth of their son, "in whom the gens Anicia joins
with the Amal heritage to promise hope for each race, God willing" (Get. 60.315). On
the basis of certain other documentation of extremely doubtful authority (chiefly the
appearance of the name Jordanes in other connections at this time, though the name was
not rare), there has been much speculation, and at times general agreement, that
Jordanes was either a Goth or a bishop of Crotona on the Ionian Sea not far from
Squillace.[[14]] These hypotheses can now be shown to be too grandiose for their
evidence;[[15]] however, the contrary argument of Mommsen, that traces in the text
indicate that it must have been compiled in or by a native of the province of Moesia, can
also be disregarded.[[16]] What remains is a strong likelihood that Jordanes was living
and writing in Constantinople at the time he was producing the Romana and the Getica
(the latter was written as an interruption while he was working on the former) and that it
was there, in about 551, that he knew Cassiodorus.[[17]] As for Jordanes' origins, the
mysterious passage in the Getica indicates little more than that he may have been of
barbarian family.[[18]] The question of the three-days' use of the whole text of the
original work in twelve books has exercised the ingenuity of scholars, impressed with
Jordanes' ability as a researcher in the days before photocopy; the likeliest solution is
that he had read the work before, probably even taken notes, and that it was only when
he came to publish his pré‚cis that he had recourse to the original to check and correct
the accuracy of his work.

The most pressing strictly literary question about Jordanes' version of Cassiodorus' work
is no more certainly answerable than any of these related questions. We have Jordanes'
word that to the work of Cassiodorus he "added appropriate material from some Greek
and Latin historians, adding a beginning and ending (and a number of things in the
middle) of my own" (Get., praef. 3). There are in fact explicit quotations from other
authors in the work, including one concerning the allegedly Gothic emperor Maximinus
that comes from the Historia Augusta to Jordanes through the Roman History of
Symmachus. [[19]] Scholars have tried to attribute sections of the work to each author,
but such labor comes to dust very rapidly. Passages that refer explicitly to events after
519 may be tentatively ascribed to Jordanes, but apart from that we must content
ourselves with bearing in mind that Jordanes must have made interpolations even if we
cannot identify them. What we want most to do is to read the work as though it were the
product of Cassiodorus himself; what we are in fact forced to do is to read it as Jordanes
produced it.[[20]]

As the work stands, it draws (at least indirectly) upon a motley variety of sources.[[21]]
Josephus, Tacitus, and Priscus have all been drawn upon to one extent or another. The
most mysterious source, however, is a certain Ablabius, "descriptor Gothorum gentis
egregius" and "historicus" (Get. 4.28, 14.82).[[22]] There is no other evidence for such a

26
writer's existence, and scholars are right to be suspicious of his testimony.[[23]] It is
particularly important to note that his name is quoted as an authority at the end of
Chapter 4 and again in Chapter 14, when Jordanes picks up the narrative again after
listing the genealogy of the Amal dynasty. Now Chapters five through thirteen, neatly
bracketed by these two mentions of Ablabius, are precisely the most fabulous portion of
the entire work, in which the history of the Goths becomes completely intertwined with
that of two other races with which Cassiodorus apparently identified the Goths, namely
the Getae and the Scythians. It is probably foolish to doubt the existence of Ablabius
altogether, but mention of his name in these suspicious circumstances lends strong
credibility to the hypothesis that whatever his book was like, it was the source for most
of this confused and confusing legend. In assuming this we may in part be guilty of
attempting to absolve Jordanes, and through him Cassiodorus, of the blame for this
unscholarly passage; but be that as it may, Cassiodorus seems to have accepted this
story lock, stock, and barrel, repeating it with an apparently straight face.[[24]]

After the appearance in the narrative of the Amals, the Getica takes on a great deal more
authority. From the point of view of Jordanes' position in Constantinople, one of the
most interesting features is that in Chapter 25 the conversion of the Goths to Arianism
by missionaries sent out by the emperor Valens is rebuked (the word perfidia is used
three times to describe Valens' part in the transaction); clearly the interests of the Gothic
faction at the Byzantine court by 551 were such as required renunciation of Arianism
(though one cannot conceive such a renunciation in a version of the same work
published by Cassiodorus in 519) and the blaming of the Visigoths (who were still
conveniently the enemy in far-off Spain) for that doctrinal aberration. It can also be
noted that in Chapter 59 the truth is told about the murder of Amalasuintha by
Theodahad; this story had been current in Constantinople since 534, and there was no
point in covering up the indiscretion further. Instead it could be made to appear as a foul
treachery against the Amals (even though Theodahad was an Amal himself).

It is necessary at the end of this survey of the Getica to make an attempt to evaluate
what more we can learn of Cassiodorus' work from the contents of the abridgment. If
our hypothesis for the date and occasion of the original work is correct, Cassiodorus'
purpose was still as deceptively but honestly panegyrical as in the Chronica and the
Laudes. Cassiodorus' own political involvement in the work would have ended with first
publication in 519, however, and the more expressly political content of the Getica as it
stands can be attributed to Jordanes; clearly the position of the Goths in 551 was serious,
made more serious by the early death of Germanus just when his marriage with
Mathesuentha had given some hope of a truly Romano-Gothic rule for reconquered
Italy. By this time the Gothic royal party owing allegiance to the Amals had thrown in
its lot with the Byzantine forces, even to the point of renouncing Arianism, against the
claims of their actual successors as kings of the Gothic people in Italy, the relatively
uncultured Witigis and his successors, Ildibad, Eraric, and Totila. Self-interest mixed
with an attempt to win a peaceful settlement for the beleaguered Gothic people back in
Italy in a desperate attempt to hold some place for specifically Gothic elements in the
Mediterranean world. What Cassiodorus may have had to do with this movement at this

27
time cannot be known; it is clear, however, that he cannot be held responsible for the
contents of the Getica as such.[[25]]

One obvious Cassiodorian literary motif shines through the turgid prose of Jordanes,
however, in the very last lines: "You who read this, rest assured that I have followed
earlier authors as I chose a few flowers from a broad meadow of their writings, with
which I might weave a chaplet [coronam] for the curious reader to the best of my
abilities" (Get. 60.316). The metaphor of picking flowers from the meadows of other
writers introduces one of the commonest Cassiodorian literary tropes.[[26]] In the
preface to the Romana, finished shortly after the Getica, Jordanes uses a similar figure,
but the same image also appears twice in the short preface to the Historia tripartita and,
most importantly, in both passages in the Variae referring to the Gothic History.[[27]]
The first, quoted above from the preface to the whole collection, had Cassiodorus'
friends say that "duodecim libris Gothorum historiam defloratis prosperitatibus
condidisti."[[28]] Then, in Athalaric's letter to the senate, after mention of the seventeen
generations of the Amals, there is a passage that is almost a verbatim allusion to the
words of Jordanes' conclusion: "You made Roman history of the Gothic origins,
gathering in one chaplet [coronam] the flowers of the seed which had been scattered on
fields of books" (Var. 9.25.5).[[29]] This allusion hints that Jordanes, no master of
Latinity,[[30]] depended on Cassiodorus for the greatest part of his own work, both in
content and literary form; his own contributions are probably minimal, and the number
of learned quotations he interjected probably should not be exaggerated.

In Jordanes' Getica we see Cassiodorus the panegyrist through a dark glass, obscured to
our view but not obliterated. The lasting value of his contributions to the ennobling of
the Gothic race may be denigrated easily; he himself did not seem to count them among
his works of lasting importance.[[31]] They should not, however, be judged by such
absolute criteria; they were works of an ephemeral and public, if not political, nature,
important for their immediate impact and the advancement of the interests of the Gothic
kingdom and its subjects. However darkly or lightly we choose to paint our picture of
that kingdom, it was by the standards of its age a sincere and partially successful effort
to establish a just and peaceful society in Italy. Cassiodorus cannot be reproached a
priori for having willingly involved himself in the politics (and even the propaganda) of
that regime; if he is to be blamed, it is for his own particular actions during his public
life, not for the decision to enter that life in the first place. For it is noteworthy that his
unabashedly propagandistic work (excepting only the fragment of an oration on the
marriage of Mathesuentha and Witigis) dates from the apparent halcyon days of the
kingdom, before the suspicions of Theoderic's old age began to react upon the other
elements of the mixture of forces in Italian politics of the time to precipitate a poisonous
residue out of that delicate equilibrium. When Cassiodorus came to compile the Variae,
he was at once less enthusiastic and more circumspect, as we shall see in the next
chapter.

In the dark years at the end of Theoderic's reign, we cannot know with any certainty
what forces motivated the king's actions. It is only speculation, but not implausible
speculation, to suggest that Cassiodorus returned to office as magister officiorum on the

28
strength of the favor he had won with his literary works.[[32]] If, however, the year 519
was the occasion of all the panegyrical works, this would imply the passage of four full
years before Theoderic hastened to reward such loyalty. It is thus more likely that
Cassiodorus acted in these matters of his own free will, whatever invitation he had
received from the court (it is always good protocol on such occasions to intimate that
one's writings were the king's own idea in the first place), with limited thought of
personal gain. It would then appear that the years of obscurity at this point in
Cassiodorus' career were more likely to have been filled with agreeable literary activity,
probably at Rome, rather than with idle scheming at ways to return to the court at
Ravenna. But the evidence is not conclusive.

29
Chapter 3: The Variae
The Variae is a work in twelve books containing the collected literary products of
Cassiodorus' years in office. It contains letters, proclamations, formulae for
appointments, and edicts in which are recorded the military commands, political
appointments, judicial decisions, and administrative orders of the Ostrogothic kingdom;
most are written in the name of the reigning kings, but some are in Cassiodorus'
name.[[1]] Most of these documents (about two-thirds of the total) are not datable
except by their position in the collection in relation to documents datable on internal
grounds. Very frequently dates and names have been excised from the documents as we
have them to make them more edifying and (to Cassiodorus' colleagues and successors
in administration) useful. As many of them as can be dated, e.g., appointments to a
particular office stated to begin from a specific indiction, can be fixed to three periods:
507- 511, 523-527, and 555-537. These, we deduce, are the periods during which
Cassiodorus himself was at Ravenna holding office, in the first instance as quaestor, in
the second as magister officiorum, and in the third as praetorian prefect. We assume that
Cassiodorus' activity drafting letters for the king would in each case roughly begin and
end with his terms in office, that Cassiodorus was only involved in the literary activity
preserved in the Variae during those years when he was holding appointive office. This
in turn may imply that he did not in fact normally reside at court except when in office;
for as we saw in the first chapter, his efforts as a ghostwriter for the king during the last
two periods of official activity were supernumerary activities, undertaken as favors
because of the high esteem in which his literary style was held. Thus, had he been at
court while out of office, he would have been every bit as capable of aiding the
quaestorial staff as when holding an official appointment.

We saw in the Ordo generis that Cassiodorus entered public life as consiliarius (a kind
of aide-de-camp for legal affairs) to his father during the latter's term as prefect. In fact,
that post was descended from that of the assessores in ancient Roman courts, the jurists
who sat next to the magistrate on the judicial bench and gave him legal advice on the
disposition of cases before him.[[2]] We know so little of the post in the sixth century
that it is only a probable assumption that the holder of the office had to have had some
legal training before such an appointment. We have seen, however, that Cassiodorus
seems to have been unusually young at the time of his appointment, and it is natural to
wonder whether most of his legal education might not have come to him on the job; that
a father would be allowed to appoint his own son to assist in this way indicates that it
was not a post under severe outside scrutiny.

As a result of the oration in praise of Theoderic that Cassiodorus presented at this time,
he received his appointment as quaestor. It seems clear that the post was a reward not
merely for the loyalty of a sycophant but also for the talent of a polished rhetorician. For
the specific function of the quaestor in this age (as the Notitia Dignitatum informs us
tersely) was literary: "Under the authority of the quaestor: drafting laws, answering
petitions.''[[3]] The Notitia adds that the quaestor did not have his own officium
(bureaucratic staff), but could requisition help from other imperial bureaus as necessary.
The formula of appointment emphasizes the quaestor's intimate relationship with the

30
king, since it was he who put the desires of the monarch into words that were both
rhetorically effective and legally valid (Var. 6.5). Much was indeed made of the
importance of rhetoric as a weapon for insuring compliance with decrees by effecting
the persuasion of the subjects that the decrees communicated were right and necessary;
the quaestor's words should prevail "so that the sword of punishment should be made
almost superfluous where the quaestor's eloquence has its way" (Var. 6.5.3). Certainly,
great store would be set on presenting the commands of the king in as impeccably
correct (both rhetorically and legally) and pleasing a fashion as possible. It was for this
virtue, as well as the presumed knowledge of the law, that Cassiodorus, the youthful
orator, must have been selected.[[4]] Despite the intellectual demands of the post, the
telltale absence of an officium marks the quaestorship as the least lofty of the posts
carrying the rank of illustris; for it is an unchanging rule of bureaucratic government
that one's dignity and worth are directly proportionate to the number of underlings on
hand to do one's bidding.

It is a subject for much speculation and little certain knowledge, to what extent the role
of the quaestor was more important under the Ostrogothic kings than under the late
emperors. For it would seem that the quaestor's job was in large measure to put the best
face on official pronouncements and to look after the sensibilities of the thin-skinned
aristocracy. To these ends every appointment to a high office was accompanied by a
letter to the senate announcing the appointment and expressing concern for the senators'
desire that their company be augmented by the most worthy candidates.[[5]] Even if
Theoderic was not illiterate, the presence in his retinue of a polished Latin rhetorician
was a valuable asset; but we have no way of knowing how far Cassiodorus went in
polishing and elaborating the monarch's thoughts. It is possible that Theoderic could
understand little more than the gist of most of Cassiodorus' most polished productions;
however that may be, it is clear that the eloquence at least, and perhaps a goodly part of
the accompanying philosophy about the nobler purposes of the king's rule, are directly
attributable to Cassiodorus. We can recall, moreover, that on his appointment to the
prefecture by Athalaric, the letter of appointment recalled Theoderic's fondness for
laying aside the cares of state and indulging in philosophical conversation with his
learned minister (Var. 9.24.8). Whether we choose to interpret this statement as
exaggerated boasting by Cassiodorus, as evidence of the king's own relatively high level
of intellectual ability, or as a carefully colored description of a relationship where a
comparatively ignorant king listened in silence, if not awe, to the lectures of his bookish
friend, the most important information seems to be that at least Cassiodorus thought of
himself as a part-time minister of culture to the Gothic kings; that his literary efforts
were sought after is the best and only confirmation that such a view has. One sees,
however, that his employment as publicist for the court was good politics for
maintaining good relations with the restive aristocracy. Theoderic must have found
Cassiodorus a valuable tool for keeping him in contact with a faction in his kingdom
that he might otherwise not have known.

Most of the letters written for the king in the Variae date to the period of the
quaestorship. A total of 187 letters in Books I through V are commonly dated to the
507-511 period, and it is possible that the 72 formulae in Books VI and VII were

31
composed at this time. From the first years as magister officiorum there are 42 letters
written in the name of Theoderic. After Theoderic's death, Cassiodorus remained in
office for little more than a year, producing the thirty-three letters of Book VIII and the
first thirteen or fourteen letters of Book IX; many of those letters were announcements
of the death of Theoderic and other documents related to the transfer of power. The
remaining eleven letters in Book IX were written after Cassiodorus' appointment as
prefect in 533 and before the death of Athalaric in 534. Book X contains all of the letters
written in the names of the various monarchs during the last three years that Cassiodorus
spent in office. Many of the first letters are pairs, e.g., one written by Amalasuintha to
introduce Theodahad, and one by Theodahad to acknowledge his own appointment.
There are only four letters in Amalasuintha's name for the six months between her son's
death and her own. Twenty-four letters appear in the name of Theodahad as well as two
addressed to the empress Theodora by Theodahad's wife and queen, Gudeliva.[[6]]
Finally, there are only five letters in Witigis' name: a formal announcement of his
election to his Gothic subjects, three diplomatic pieces to Byzantine addressees, and one
to all his bishops asking their support for a mission to Constantinople.

There was, therefore, a decline in the volume of Cassiodorus' ghostwriting during his
term as prefect especially; but it was at this time that he was for the first time entitled to
issue decrees in his own name, and these are collected (to a total of 68) in Books XI and
XII of the Variae.

It is thus of comparatively little importance to the study of the Variae to consider

Cassiodorus' activity as magister officiorum, since in fact no trace of his activities
specifically undertaken as a function of that office comes down to us. It can be
reconstructed from remarks about the office in Cassiodorian and other sources that the
magister was something remotely like head of the civil service, involved in all the
decisions of the realm insofar as they needed facilitating by the bureaucracy; and he
frequently attempted to extend the scope of his action, but was not in fact a major force
in the making and execution of policy.[[7]] In the Notitia Dignitatum the magister seems
to be in charge of certain household troops (but whether this continued under the Goths
is to be doubted), the agentes in rebus (a courier service largely replaced by Gothic
saiones, probably under Gothic control), and the four principal bureaus of the court in
charge of shuffling papers and pushing pencils: the scrinia memoriae, dispositionum,
epistolarum, and libellorum. The distinction in function between these offices is difficult
to recover at this date, though it surely resided in the form and content of the documents
with which each was concerned. The magister officiorum also had charge of the system
of post-horses maintained throughout the realm for official purposes (the cursus
publicus) and the arsenals.[[8]] There is some trace in Cassiodorus' own formula for the
office that the post had something of the functions of a modern ministry of foreign
affairs (though his role in meeting foreign ambassadors may have been more a matter of
protocol and hospitality than policy) and some authority over provincial governors (Var.
6.6). The office seems to have taken over, as time passed, more and more functions once
exercised by the praetorian prefect, due in part to the ambition of the holders of the
office, in part to a need to relegate routine bureaucratic functions to the magister while
the bulk of the administrative, judicial, and financial authority remained with the

32
praetorian prefect. We have seen how Athalaric related that Cassiodorus' service in this
post was enlivened not only by his frequent assistance to the quaestors but also by his
ready assumption of a military command when the shores of Italy seemed menaced and
there was no one else at hand to do the job (Var. 9.25.9). This glimpse of the practical
role of the office under the Goths seems to depict the magister as a kind of chief of staff
for the whole government, in charge of making things work and taking burdensome
administrative tasks away from king and prefect.9 Of Cassiodorus' own performance in
this post, however, this fleeting glimpse is our only direct information.

For Cassiodorus' second extended period out of office, from the end of his term as
magister in about 527 until his appointment as prefect in 533, we are more poorly
informed than for the first. The evidence becomes generous again only when we
examine Cassiodorus' performance as praetorian prefect. He was appointed in 533,
apparently to take office from the first of September with the beginning of the official
year; the letters concerning his appointment are contained in the Variae, drafted by their
subject. Only at this point, a quarter of a century after Cassiodorus entered public life
and almost a decade after Theoderic's death, can we begin to think of him as the leading
figure of the Ostrogothic civil government. However useful he may have been as
quaestor in publicizing and praising Theoderic's actions for a Roman audience, however
skillful a manager of bureaucrats he contrived to be as magister officiorum, he was still
undeniably outside the narrowest inner circle of power. Not only had he not held the
prefecture (though the distinguished Liberius had reached that rank before the age of
thirty, while Cassiodorus was nearly fifty in 533), he had not held any of the major
portfolios in the financial departments. His actions had been limited in their significance
to the government itself, rarely involving intervention in the affairs of the society at
large. Even if his influence with Theoderic was as substantial as he himself would have
us believe, it could only have been the influence of an adviser, and, to judge by the time
he was allowed to spend away from court, an adviser less than vital to the interests of
the monarch. And we are not without grounds for supposing that the comparatively
hasty departure from office after the change of kings in 526 indicated some reshuffle in
the royal cabinet after which Cassiodorus, willingly or not, found himself on the outside
once again.

But Amalasuintha, the actual ruler of Italy in her son's regency, did bring back
Cassiodorus to the highest rank in 533 and allowed him to publish flowery praise of
himself in her son's name. His task can have been anything but easy during these
besieged years, but the books of the Variae dealing with the period give the opposite
impression. In Cassiodorus' own books, XI and XII, sounds of war are distant
indeed;[[10]] the letters collected treat all manner of quite ordinary administrative
topics. A large part of Book XI is devoted to letters of appointment for posts in
Cassiodorus' own officium; in the same vein are edicts and letters of instruction to lower
officials for the conduct of business under the new prefect--all of Book XI may date
from the first few months of Cassiodorus' term. In Book XII there are ordinary matters
of tax relief, an obscure property case, some construction orders, and a few more
appointments. No fewer than four of the letters there have to do with the appointment of
officials and the instructions given them for the procurement of delicacies for the royal

33
table (Var. 12.4, 12.11, 12.12, 12.18). Mommsen dated these letters to the period of the
prefecture in general, but it is likely that they can be attributed to the reign of
Theodahad, who died in 536. For there is not much evidence of contact between
Cassiodorus and the martial-minded Witigis (only the five perfunctory letters in his
name in Book 1), nor is there much reason to think that the new warrior king was much
concerned with the consumption of royal delicacies in a peaceful palace--he had to
spend too much time with the troops. Theodahad, on the other hand, always appears to
have been a man who enjoyed the perquisites of the throne to the fullest.

Because he insists on including only matters of peaceful import and such a substantial
body of material on the administrative details of his assumption of office, Cassiodorus
gives us a good picture of the functionings of the officium of the praetorian prefect at
this time. The picture is largely theoretical--that is, confined to a description of how
things should run, rather than a record of actual performance. Since similar descriptions
survive in the Notitia Dignitatum and in the De magistratibus of John Lydus, we can
perceive the structure and some of the functions of the office at this period.

This snapshot of administrative structure shows how little really did change. There was
some shuffling about of minor responsibilities from office to office, but in general the
prefecture remained recognizably similar in the last days of the Gothic kingdom to what
it had been more than a century before. The office was the only cabinet post to authorize
the holder to issue directives in his own name; these included edicts on judicial affairs
and price control (e.g., Var. 11.12). He also supervised the levying of the annual
indiction, or general tax, payable in kind throughout the realm; this levy was so
important that it was assigned directly to the prefect for collection rather than to a
separate ministry (like the others that dealt chiefly with the royal monetary transactions-
-sacrae largitiones and estates--res privatae). The indictional year began on the first of
September, to coincide with the end of the harvest and the beginning of the collection of
the tax on that year's crops. Since the entire realm depended on the efficient collection
and redistribution of the harvests in the summer and fall before the onset of the winter
closed off the seas (by mid-November at the latest) and the world settled down to a long
season without economical means of transportation for bulky products, this function of
the prefecture was central to the well-being of any government; not only must the troops
on the frontier be supplied, but the corps of bureaucrats itself and the royal court had to
be the objects of the prefect's efficient (perhaps his most efficient) attention.

The prefect also had important administrative and judicial functions. He appointed and
paid provincial governors; and he was authorized to discipline them, as well as to offer
direct rescripts to their queries, some of which appear in the last books of the Variae.
Finally, he was the highest judge of appeal in all legal matters; this was important under
the Gothic kingdom, and still more so in the kingdom's last disorganized years, when
royal Justice was untutored in the ways of Roman law and not easily tracked down
sometimes in the camps. To whatever extent the ordinary administration of the kingdom
progressed in any ordinary way in the war years, the prefect, as the head of that
administration, was a figure on whom much would, or at least could, depend.

34
As indicated, every praetorian prefect was in a position to issue documents in his own
name; moreover, the occupant of the government's highest seat would have access to the
records of preceding administrations.[[12]] A preoccupation with his own literary
activity and the availability of copies of the documents that he had produced over the
preceding three decades as quaestor and as informal quaestor's helper eventually led
Cassiodorus to the notion of publishing a compilation of those documents as a
monument to his public career. In the prefaces with which he adorned this compilation
(one at the very beginning, and another before Books XI and XII to introduce his own
prefectural documents) there are self-effacing apologias. While it is difficult to descry
genuine literary motivations behind such a facade (where the urging of friends was
introduced as the motive for publication), and indeed while such a facade may not be
without some substantially accurate backing, the role of literary vanity in stimulating
such a compilation seems undeniable. If from his earliest years Cassiodorus had been
praised on all sides for the facility of his pen, it would be difficult for him to avoid
thinking fondly of his accumulated literary production at the close of his career.

To impute such a motive to Cassiodorus, however, requires us to think that he did

indeed foresee the proximate end of his public career while he was still at Ravenna with
access to the files; it is not in the ordinary course of events for a man in his early fifties
to be thinking of imminent retirement. There seems, therefore, to be a definite, if
completely unstated, air about the Variae of a man who realized that one phase of his
life was coming to an end. Whether this was connected with a growing desire to turn to
a more expressly religious style of life or with shrewd estimates of the inevitability of
Gothic defeat and the absorption of Italy into a larger political structure in which
Cassiodorus could not or would not find a place, the effect is the same. For all the
likelihood, however, that such thoughts were occurring to Cassiodorus at this time, they,
like the bloody war going on about him, leave no direct trace on the Variae.

For as much as the Variae is a document of the career of one statesman, it is also a
semiofficial record of the kingdom itself. The original readers of the Variae were not so
concerned with using it as a source to establish the dates and events of Cassiodorus' life,
or even to learn about the affairs of the kingdom. Instead, readers in Italy (or even in the
east, if such there were) perusing these pages around 540 would see spread out before
them a varnished picture of the successes of the Gothic kingdom in Italy reaching back
over three decades. The work covers a full generation of the politics of the kingdom and
brings to life again in particular the acts and achievements of the dead and sorely missed
founder of the Gothic experiment in government. When we read, for example, the first
letter of the Variae, in which Theoderic speaks of reconciliation to the emperor
Anastasius after a minor skirmish in 508, our attention is riveted on the event itself, to
Cassiodorus the editor (as opposed to Cassiodorus the original author) and to his reading
public, the letter was a painful reminder of the sad course that events had taken in the
years since. In years when Rome was besieged by warring armies, captured and
recaptured amid scenes of carnage and destruction, the lofty purposes of Theoderic in
encouraging the rebuilding of the ruins of former wars would again evoke an echo of
what might have been, what was in fact once beginning to be, before events overtook

35
their shapers. The formulae in Books VI and VII, moreover, are a clear demonstration of
the state of bureaucratic "normalcy" that once prevailed in the kingdom, whatever their
use to future quaestors may have been.

But while the Variae is a testament to the virtues of the Gothic kingdom, it is a
nonpolemical treatise, threading carefully through the events of the preceding decades,
glossing over disturbances past and present, emphasizing only the happy and the
successful. Thus the omission of any mention of the sad fate of Boethius and
Symmachus may have been conditioned by more than Cassiodorus' own reluctance to
reveal seamy details of his own advancement at his kinsmen's expense; the crime for
which the two nobles were executed was alleged collusion with the eastern empire.
Whether or not they had been guilty and whether Cassiodorus felt remorse at his own
inability to alter their fates, that aspect of their lives was not an appropriate subject for
inclusion in this dossier of success. In addition to literary vanity, then, this new motive
appears for Cassiodorus' choice of literary forms for this work; the documents of past
years, edited and selected carefully for innocuousness, had an impersonal ring to them
that increased the ability of the work as a whole to mollify inflamed sentiments. If such
a work was meant to be read in Constantinople and in Rome and in Campanian villas as
well as in Ravenna, it would have been extremely difficult to make the case for the
Gothic kingdom in the form of a treatise arguing the case as such; even a revised Gothic
History, by virtue of its need to treat all of the historical events serially, would have
been inappropriate for leading men's sentiments to reconciliation.[[13]] Instead, the
Variae as it stands is a work with which no one in the Mediterranean world had reason
to take deliberate exception. Theoderic, Athalaric, Witigis, and the Byzantine rulers
appear in these pages without stain on their character, always acting honorably and
fairly. The only former starring character in the drama on whom any adverse light is
thrown is Theodahad, but even this is most indirect; for in the palmy days of Theoderic's
reign, letters were addressed to Theodahad three times, and on two occasions the letters
were rebukes for the rapacious behavior of Theodahad's men (Var. 4.39, 5.12).[[14]] In
both cases, Theoderic makes explicit the need for his own relatives to maintain higher
standards of behavior than others.[[15]] This hint of disapproval of Theodahad (these
two letters could as easily have been omitted) is undoubtedly a quiet rebuke for the man
(already dead at the time of compilation) who had been instrumental in the downfall of
the kingdom by his murder of Amalasuintha and who had been on the throne when
Justinian opened hostilities. In spite of this, acts of his administration are preserved, in
large part addresses to the emperor and empress at Constantinople socking peace and
reconciliation. This careful inclusion of initiatives for peace (and the omission of letters,
if any there were, of a more belligerent nature) is all part of the attempt to establish and
maintain the record of the Ostrogothic kingdom as an enterprise dedicated to the well-
being of its people and the empire of which it still confessed itself a part.

We have spoken of the Variae as though it were such a dossier without being very clear
about the intended audience. Here again the evidence deserts us. Is it likely that this was
a composition intended to win the attention of powerful figures in Constantinople? If so,
whom? For ultimately only Justinian could reverse the policy of reconquest; and it is
difficult to see how much hope Cassiodorus could have entertained of having his treatise

36
reach the emperor at all, much less of having it convince him to abandon a policy for
rehabilitating the ancient glories of the empire that he must have seen, at that particular
time, as an almost total success. If the work was not directed to the emperor, or to
Constantinople, then to whom in Italy could it have been aimed? With what urgency?
Those who had lived under the Ostrogoths must have by that time known fairly clearly
what that rule was like; indeed, there must have been few Italians alive who could
remember the days before Theoderic arrived almost half a century before, and fewer still
who could remember the days when emperors ruled the west. Agents of an imperial
ideology in Italy in the late 530's must have been men of great faith indeed, since the
last years of the emperors in Italy had not been such as would inspire nostalgic yearning
in those who had heard their history. In fact, whatever nostalgia for the empire there
could have been in Italy at this time depended on what men had heard (and some
possibly seen) in the contemporary empire in the east or what had been handed down by
traditions from as far back as the grandfathers of the older men of that time.

One possible circumstance of composition needs to be observed, however. Procopius

recounts a debate between Belisarius and Gothic ambassadors at Rome in 537 or 538.
The arguments advanced by the Goths at this point resemble very closely the kind of
position that Cassiodorus takes in the Variae.[[16]] The written work, coming out at just
about the same time as the debate Procopius recounts, might then have been meant to
appeal to the Roman aristocracy in land already occupied or threatened by Belisarius.

But such speculation aside, what then are we to make of the work itself? In part we must
retreat to our notions of Cassiodorus' unquestionable literary vanity, and in part we must
confess that he may have felt only very generally that the record was worth establishing
precisely "for the record" while it still could be done. In fact, both of these motives are
the ones that appear, disguised in rhetorical coloring, in Cassiodorus' own prefaces.

The most extended apology for the work is the initial preface, where these motives must
be pursued behind the billowing garments of Cassiodorian rhetoric.[[17]] Cassiodorus
begins by attributing the idea for such a collection to learned men (diserti), who thought
he should collect the letters "so that posterity might recognize the burdens I undertook
for the common good and the conscientious deeds of a man who could not be bought"
(Var., Praef. 1). To this, Cassiodorus replies that such publication might subvert the
purpose of establishing his own reputation, if what he had written appeared foolish
(insubidum) to later generations. After quoting Horace's dictum (Ars poet. 388) that
what is to be published should be held back nine years to give the author ample time for
reflection, Cassiodorus elaborates that his literary performance in public documents had
been rushed and less than perfect; instead of nine years, Cassiodorus had had scarcely a
few hours (Var., Praef. 3-4).[[18]] He emphasizes for a long paragraph the cares that
beset him in office, his solicitousness for the welfare of the people, and the consequent
defects of his writing. In such words he purports to decline the suggestion to publish.

But the friendly urgings of learned men (never identified) are reintroduced at substantial
length in what amounts to direct quotation. They begin by accepting and repeating with
added praise the argument that Cassiodorus has been busy in his function as prefect, and

37
add a reference to his extracurricular activity as quaestor's helper; they praise his lack of
corruption, is compared to his father's integrity, and they add remarks alluding to his
intimacy with Theoderic and the long hours spent in conversation with the monarch.
They turn the initial argument in on Cassiodorus, insisting that men already know how
busy he was, and that if he could produce anything worth reading under such
circumstances, his reputation will be doubly enhanced. They add that his work can serve
as a teacher for both the well-prepared and the unprepared holders of offices in the res
publica;[[19]] moreover, if he does not act, he will allow the acts of his kings to be
obliterated in forgetfulness. "Do not, we pray, let those whom you have addressed on
their promotions to the rank of illustris be overcome forever in silence and obscurity"
(Var., Praef.. 9). For all this, they ask, "do you still hesitate to publish what you know
can be of such great use to others? You are hiding, if we might say so, the mirror in
which every future age could examine the quality of your mind" (Var., Praef. 10). The
appeal to vanity is capped by a remark that, while sons are often very different from
their fathers, "one never finds a man's speech unreflective of his character" (Var., Praef.
10).[[20]] They conclude that after his earlier successes of a literary nature (the Laudes
and the Gothic History are enumerated), there is no reason why he should resist the
persuasion to publish his records.

In the face of such argument, Cassiodorus owns himself a beaten man. "Be merciful, my
readers," he pleads, "and if there is any temerity and presumption here, blame these
friends rather than me, for I am in complete agreement with my detractors on these
points" (Var., Praef. 12). A description of the work's contents then follows.

For Cassiodorus has collected "whatever I have been able to find written (dictatum) by
me on public business while 1 held office as quaestor, magister, or prefect,''[[21]] and
arrayed the material in twelve books. To protect others from the "unpolished and hasty
addresses" that he is conscious of having produced himself all too often in honoring new
appointees, he justifies the inclusion of the sixth and seventh books containing the
formulae, "for my own use, late as it is in my own career, and for my successors who
find themselves pressed for time" (Var., Praef. 14).[[22]] The contents are reflected in
the title, and he devotes the remainder of the preface to explaining his title, Variae,[[23]]
which he chose "because we could not use a single style to address such a variety of
audiences" (Var., Praef. 15). He identifies three classes of individual readers to whom
the individual letters could be addressed, including those "multa lectione satiati," those
"mediocri gustatione suspensi," and those last "a litterarum sapore ieiuni"; each must be
addressed in a different way "persuasionis causa," so that "it sometimes becomes a kind
of artistry, the avoiding of what learned men would praise" (ibid.). The preface
concludes with a largely artificial and irrelevant attempt to connect these three kinds of
audience with the three traditional levels of ancient style (high, middle, low); this
particular schematization is not reflected in the letters themselves.

The other preface included in the Variae, at the beginning of Book XI before the books
of Cassiodorus' own publications from his prefecture, seems to postdate the earliest
preface by some time, though it is not necessary to assume that earlier portions of the
work had been published separately. The evidence for a lapse of time is the mention

38
only here, and not at the beginning where it might rightly belong, of the addition of the
treatise De anima to the twelve books of the Variae; that treatise is mentioned here in
terms that echo the opening lines of the little treatise itself.

The remainder of the second preface consists chiefly of an excuse for not having more
in the way of judicial decisions to include. Cassiodorus had, he explains himself, the
assistance of one Felix, a young lawyer whose talent he praises highly, who removed
much of the burden of such work from Cassiodorus himself. In particular, his help is
credited with having enabled Cassiodorus to give fuller and less fatigued attention to the
higher affairs of state (regales curae). Finally, Cassiodorus drapes this praise of Felix
with the further admission of his own deficiencies and the arrogance of any author so
bold as to publish such material. Here again the excuses ring truer than at first glance if
read carefully.[[24]]

However successful the prefaces were in their literary intent, they leave open some
questions that we would have been glad to have answered. The most pressing is that of
the comprehensiveness of the contents. In the passage quoted above, Cassiodorus claims
to have included whatever he had been able to find ("quod ... potui reperire") of those
things dictated while he held office as quaestor, magister, and prefect. Are we to take
this literally? Is this collection a complete anthology of all such surviving documents? If
we assume, as we probably must, that Cassiodorus was still in Ravenna and probably
still in office at the time of compilation, and then assume that he had access to the files
of the court for gathering these documents, do we then accord to this work credit for
being a full chronicle of the public acts of the Ostrogothic kingdom for those years? On
balance, we cannot.

First, according to our interpretation of the circumstances in which Cassiodorus came to

be involved in quaestorial activities during his last two terms of office, he was almost
certainly not involved in all of the literary activity of the quaestor's office; moreover, for
the eleventh and twelfth books, he explicitly states that legal decisions were largely
drafted by his aide (his consiliarius?). Second, there is an obvious conflict between the
express purpose of presenting documents that make either the author or the subject (or
preferably both) look good and the claim to have included everything Cassiodorus could
find of his compositions. Moreover, a very clear impression comes from reading this
work that nothing, nothing whatever, of a controversial nature has been allowed to
remain. The most heatedly debated events of the kingdom's history appear indirectly if
at all; thus the letter inviting the eider Cassiodorus back to court is itself the major link
of evidence in the hypothesis that the prefect Faustus fell from favor as a result of his
actions in office at about the time certain of these letters were written; but nowhere is
Faustus explicitly criticized.[[25]] Of course the deaths of Boethius and Symmachus are
nowhere hinted at, though they appear as addressees of flattering letters; and one would
scarcely know, from the exaggerated formality and courtesy of the diplomatic letters,
that there were wars being fought in these years. The nearest one gets to warfare are
letters reestablishing peace and letters involving the equipping and mustering of troops
(included because they reflected well upon the civil officials involved). Left to
ourselves, and convinced that these letters represented a balanced picture of the

39
Ostrogothic kingdom from 507 to 537, we would immediately conclude that so peaceful
and so happy a realm never existed on the face of the earth; if our attention were then
called to the sounds of war echoing from Italy at the very moment of publication, we
would be most disagreeably surprised.

From all that we have said so far in this chapter, therefore, it becomes evident that what
we have here is an edited transcript of the public record, not the unexpurgated whole.
We have already suggested the main lines of the propagandistic purpose that this work
was expected to serve, as is apparent from both the contents themselves and
Cassiodorus' own prefaces. It is worth repeating that the only on of the major characters
on the scene of Italian politics in the sixth century to appear at all to a disadvantage, and
that only indirectly, is the dead and--to both sides-- discredited Theodahad.[[26]]
Theoderic, Amalasuintha, and Witigis all used murder as an instrument of policy; but
only Theodahad's action was universally, if not reviled, at feast disclaimed by 537 or
538. If motives apart from literary vanity are to be accepted for the Variae, as I think
they must, Cassiodorus' own explicit claim that his purpose was to enshrine the
memories of the notables chronicled therein becomes a declaration of that
propagandistic intent, a clear enough statement that the work was seen to seek
reconciliation, at the price of a little self-inflicted blindness to the seamier side of
affairs.

More of this propagandistic purpose appears in the way m which the collection was
arranged. To begin with, the only chronological force demonstrably existing in that
arrangement was the division between Cassiodorus' terms of office (though this was
violated for a purpose with the last two letters of Book V) and the distinction of
monarchs under which they were originally written. Thus, as stated before, the first four
books contain documents from Cassiodorus' quaestorship under Theoderic (507-511);
Book V, except the last two letters postponed from 511, contains the letters from his
term as magister officiorum while Theoderic was still alive;[[27]] Books VI and VII, the
geographical center of the work, separating Theoderician books from those of his
successors, contain the formulae dignitatum; Book VIII and the first half (letters 1-13 or
14) of Book IX record events of the remainder of Cassiodorus' term as magister (526-
527); the remainder of Book IX, terminating in the two letters of his own appointment,
contains documents of his term as prefect trader Athalaric (533-534); Book X contains
the diverse letters, taken in rough chronological order, trader the several monarchs of
the remainder of that term (534-537/8); and Books XI and XII contain his own letters as
prefect (533- 537/8).

If the arrangement of letters in the individual books is not strictly chronological,

however, there is still a discernible literary pattern.[[28]] (Cassiodorus himself describes
the actual composition of the books as involving conscious ordinatio on his part Var,
Praef. 13].) The principle at work is that the positions of honor in each book are at the
very beginning and at the end.

Books I, II, VIII, and X all begin with letters addressed to the emperor at
Constantinople. In Book I, the letter treats for peace after the skirmishes of 505-508; in

40
the second book, the first letter merely announces the consul for the year (and is
followed by the other two letters in the dossier on that particular appointment, to the
appointee and to the senate); while Books VIII and X each begin by announcing the
succession to the throne of a new ruler, Athalaric in the one case, Theodahad in the
other. On the other hand, Books III, IV, V, and IX open with letters to barbarian kings.
In Book III, there are four such royal communications, all attempting to keep the peace
in Gaul; Book IV begins with two unrelated letters to different kings (of the Thuringians
and the Heruli); and Books V and IX begin with isolated letters of that nature.[[29]] To
confirm the importance of the opening spot in each book, there are no letters to
Constantinopolitan emperors that do not hold that spot, except in Book X, where no
fewer than ten of the book's thirty-five letters are directed to Justinian and five more to
Theodora: but this exception proves the rule, since Book X is the only one written under
more than one monarch, and the broad chronological outline takes precedence.

Obviously Books XI and XII could not open with addresses to emperors or monarchs;
again the chronological motive seems to take over, since Book XI begins with
Cassiodorus' collection of letters announcing his own appointment (though he may
obviously be using the place of importance to call attention to his own virtues a little
more), and Book XII begins with a relatively general set of instructions to various
officials. If emperors only customarily appear in the first spot in a book, barbarian kings
can appear elsewhere, but only in one specific location: at the end of a book. Thus
Gundobad and Clovis, who are both addressed in letters at the beginning of Book III,
also appear as addressees of the letters at the ends of Books I and II, respectively.
Furthermore, Transimundus, king of the Vandals, is sent two letters that appear in the
Variae at the end of Book V. This apparently deliberate positioning of the non-imperial
royal letters calls our attention to the last letters in other books, to see by what right they
hold that position. The results are at first diverse. Book III ends with a letter to a comes
privatarum named Apronianus, directing him to welcome an aquilegus (water-diviner)
coming from Africa; the letter contains a long digression on that special art of
divination. Book IV, on the other hand, concludes with a letter to Symmachus, praising
his work in reconstructing damaged edifices and particularly commissioning the
rebuilding of a theater; then the letter digresses on the nature of the theatrical art, with
frequent reference to the science of etymology. Books VI and VII, following the
hierarchical order of the offices they describe, conclude with minor offices. The last
letter in Book VIII is a directive to one Severus, vir spectabilis, to put down riots in
connection with rural, apparently pagan, celebrations in the province of Lucania (not far
from Squillace), and contains a digression on a miraculous fountain there; the two
preceding letters, also to Severus, also digress readily in praise of various amenities of
Cassiodorus' home territory. Book IX is completed by the two fetters to Cassiodorus on
his elevation to the prefecture. Book X, always pedestrian, ends with the distressingly
plain letters ascribed to Witigis. In Books XI and XII, Cassiodorus chooses to end his
personal books with impersonal documents; in the first case with a general amnesty,
very possibly issued at Easter 534 during Cassiodorus' first year in office, while in the
second case the last four letters dealt with, and the very last letter is an edict establishing
remedies for, famine in northern Italy.

41
Despite their diversity (their "variousness"), it is possible, I hold, to see clear threads
connecting these letters.[[30]] To begin with, the first several books end on letters
carrying as a unifying theme ideas about various arts and sciences. In Books I and II, the
letters to German kings are covering letters for gifts of clocks in the one case and a
musician in the other (in both cases furnished by Boethius), while Books III and IV deal
with the science of divining and the art of theatrics, respectively. Book V's concluding
letters show Theoderic, in his last appearance in the Variae, at his best in reaching a
peaceful settlement of an international disagreement; this is the very virtue that is the
last thing for which Theoderic was praised in the Getica (Get. 58). Books VIII and IX
both end with letters on subjects dear to Cassiodorus himself namely his own home
province and his own career's advancement. This self-indulgence is paralleled by the
ends of Books XI and XII, both of which show Cassiodorus the prefect to his best
advantage, dispensing legal mercy in the indulgence at the end of Book XI, and working
diligently to remedy the evils of famine in Italy in Book XII.

Both halves of the Variae, therefore, feature letters at the end of each book designed to
put the very best possible face on the Ostrogothic kingdom for its sophistication of
culture as well as its benevolence in government. The first five books reflect most
favorably on Theoderic himself while the last five books seem to be centered more and
more on the person of Cassiodorus himself a tacit recognition that the kingdom was not
so well governed at that epoch as to merit making the later kings heroes in quite the way
that Theoderic was. It is even possible to see an ironic twist (or apologia pro vita sua) in
this transition, perhaps even a hint that with Theoderic gone, Cassiodorus himself was
the last guardian of the old values left in the government. If the first letters in each book
demonstrate the public grandeur of the kingdom in its negotiations with great monarchs,
the last letters give an elegant picture of the whole life of the kingdom and its society.
Moreover, by including in these concluding letters the flattering missives to Boethius
and Symmachus, Cassiodorus is at least making an attempt to reconcile their mourners
to the Gothic kingdom; the praises of his favorite province are couched in a repression
of pagan rites that no doubt would please a Byzantine audience still not sure just how
fully Christian these people in Italy had remained under Arian rule. And pointing out the
amiability of his own administration and his concern for the well-being of the greatest
part of the people allows Cassiodorus to show how a besieged regime merits the
acceptance and support of his audience, whether Roman or Gothic, Italian or Byzantine.

The frame placed around each book in this way further conditions reactions to the
contents of the whole, giving honorable dealings with foreign powers and correct ideas
of civilization at home as the poles between which the affairs of the kingdom are
set.[[31]] The remainder of the contents, for all their variousness, are remarkably true to
the overall guidelines thus tacitly set out. This consistency leads us to believe that all the
letters in this collection were chosen according to definite limiting criteria.

More letters dealing with appointments to illustres dignitates appear in the Variae than
with any other subject. Some of those honors were virtually empty (cf. the case at Var,
2.15-16), but most are real offices by which the civil affairs of the kingdom were
administered. Since for all the highest honors there exist letters in the books of formulae

42
as well as personal efforts in the rest of the work, we are justified in assuming that not
every appointment was treated with the same personal touch. Very many of the families
honored with personal letters appointing their members to high office are indeed the
greatest families of the Ostrogothic realm; these letters commonly provide an occasion
for recalling the virtues of ancestors and relatives who have already served the kingdom
well.

After the appointments, the next commonest type of letter in the Variae is the decree on
a given administrative matter of a more or less routine nature, whether issued
spontaneously or in response to a petition. The most common subjects of these
documents are private and ecclesiastical lawsuits, with frequent cases involving the
conflicting claims to property of feuding heirs or even churches. In one instance, for
example, a minor's guardian had apparently accused the youth's brother-in-law of
engineering an unfair division of inherited property; the two letters preserved require the
parties to come to court and have justice done; a third party is directed to supervise the
execution of that justice (Var. 1.7-8).[[32]] Without fail, such cases are adorned in
Cassiodorus' letters with the king's solemn promises that he will recognize his duty to
protect the weak and secure justice.

Apart from judicial determinations, there is a large collection of royal orders on the
interconnected subjects of commerce, transport, taxes, and the grain supply. Here the
end in view is the welfare of the people and the establishment of a fair method for
providing the fisc with its revenues. Thus, one case agrees to allow the annual payment
of the tertiae (tax in lieu of land for Gothic settlers) to be lumped together by its payers
with taxes already being paid, since their land had been independently declared immune
from actual confiscation and the annual payment will continue indefinitely (Var. 1.14).
In another instance, the bishops and honorati of a district left anonymous are charged to
cooperate with royal agents in putting an end to speculation in grain that is causing the
possessores of the region to suffer (Var. 9.5). Frequently the topic is of particular
interest to the court: once Theoderic is heard complaining about an interruption in the
supply of sacra vestis, the royal purple cloth (Var. 1.2); other letters speak of procuring
delicacies for the king's table from those parts of Italy that have special treats to offer.

Such documents provide the most mundane reading in the Variae. Scattered throughout
the first five books, the last half of Book VIII, and throughout Book IX, they provide the
background of ordinary benevolence on which the Gothic rule was based. Taken
together with letters ordering an end to various abuses of the public post, they fill up the
gaps between the more remarkable discussions. For in addition to these ordinary affairs,
three other subjects stand out, two of special interest to a specifically Roman audience.

The topic of most general interest is the succession to the throne. Half of Book VIII is
filled with documents of Athalaric's succession, including notifications to virtually
every constituency (beginning with the emperor Justin) of the death of Theoderic and
the orderly transfer of power. Since Athalaric says when appointing Cassiodorus that
there were in fact some military scares at this time, we may assume that these letters

43
served at that time a function analogous to that which the Variae was expected to
perform a decade later-- the self-justification of the Gothic rule.

The two Roman topics have to do specifically with the circus (and circus factions) and
the interest that Theoderic had in the rebuilding of structures damaged in Italy's wars. In
the last half of the Variae, the only document concerning rebuilding is Cassiodorus' own
letter ordering repair of the Flaminian Way (Var. 12.18). Under Theoderic, however,
there had been more leisure and opportunity to attempt (as civilized monarchs should) to
repair what Italy had lost, and especially the city of Rome. Twenty-five letters deal with
subjects ranging from the ordinary (clearing vegetation from a watercourse [Var. 5.38])
to the decorative (mosaics for Ravenna [Var. 1.6]) to the strictly cultural (the letter to
Symmachus praising his earlier rebuilding efforts and enjoining the reconstruction of
the theater of Pompey [Var. 4.51]). In one case, Theoderic explicitly allows the use of
scattered stonework fallen from ruined buildings in these rebuilding activities, and
several other letters involve arrangements for the transportation of materials; clearly the
enterprise was one that was both necessary after decades of warfare and neglect and at
the same time willingly undertaken. There can be little doubt that such a policy was
good politics, since its result would be to associate in the public mind the Gothic regime
with the new and refurbished structures it caused to be built throughout Italy.
Theoderic's private motives--how much of this was simple expedience, how much royal
vanity, and how much a sincere concern for the ancient glories of noble Italy-are hidden
from us. Furthermore, the frequent appearance of these letters in the books dating from
Theoderic's reign (they exceed 10 percent of the letters in those five books) may be
exaggerated by Cassiodorus' own practice of selection; certainly any letters that he
could find in which Theoderic appeared as the dedicated rebuilder of Roman Italy
would have a strong claim to inclusion in a collection published shortly after the Gothic
siege of Rome sustained by Belisarius. Whatever Theoderic's policy really was, the
Variae makes it clear that Cassiodorus wanted his king remembered for his unflagging
concern for the renovation of Italy's damaged splendor. In this and other respects,
Theoderic's reign is made to seem a golden age, and one not long past at that; by
implication, it was a golden age recoverable by prudent men.

The other rulers in whose names Cassiodorus wrote do not appear fully enough, or
enough to their own advantage, for us to derive a consistent picture of the image that
Cassiodorus meant to create for them. It must have been difficult, in the first place, to do
this for Athalaric, whom everyone knew to have been in fact a child, and for Theodahad
and Witigis afterwards, the documents of whose reigns were too much constrained by
circumstance to allow much scope for the display of virtue (though Cassiodorus'
selection at least removes almost all the blots from their records, a negative but effective
device). Theoderic, on the other hand, does succeed in becoming attached in our minds
to an image of the kind of king he was (or was represented to be). Whatever he may
have been in real life', the king we meet in the Variae was a gentle man, always happy to
praise his subjects for their faithful service to his kingdom and, a fortiori (and the way in
which the logical connection is made to seem obvious is usually the acme of
Cassiodorus' art as propagandist), to virtue and justice. When he has reason to reproach
his subjects, it is with sorrow rather than anger: the voice is that of a gently chiding

44
father, calmly reviewing the principles of good government, finding them sadly lacking,
and quietly but forcefully urging the rectification of the unhappy situation.[[33]] We are
entitled to believe that Theoderic may have been more vigorous in expressing himself
when seen in life; but we see him always in the Variae as Cassiodorus would paint him
for us, or rather for the angry, strident warring parties of the time in which he published
his anthology.

In every way, then, the Variae, read as a work of contemporary history, presented a
picture of life in Italy as it once was--and as it still could be--and which contrasted
sharply with the quickly deteriorating reality. There was once a time when a learned
king sent erudite directives to his subjects, ruled moderately and justly, and was
solicitous of the health and happiness of his kingdom through happy decades. There is
not much way of knowing whether this portrait comes close to the truth; but its purpose
was not, in fact, objective truth, but the counteraction, by a kind of genteel polemic, of
the angry prejudices that were displayed on all sides in the Gothic war. The Variae is
thus a kind of final effort in the genre of panegyric by Cassiodorus, but panegyric of a
considerably more sophisticated form than any of his earlier efforts. Judged as history
the book exhibits many faults; but it is a kind of panegyric of the past that has striking
and lasting value. That it succeeded in some measure is best remarked by observing how
thoroughly our own present ideas about Theoderic and his kingdom have been
conditioned by this one work; even if our suspicions are aroused, it is still against this
text alone that they can be tested.

A literary analysis of the book (which must be balanced between considering the works
as individual documents and as elements in the whole collection) throws further light on
the nature of the work and its particular successes and failures. Some such analysis has,
in the past, been based on attempts to identify the literary genre in which the Variae can
be formally located.[[34]] It is valuable to begin such a study of the Variae by observing
the mixed position it takes between various traditional uses of the epistolary genres. For
example, the Variae partakes both of the ancient tradition of the literary epistle as
practiced by Pliny or Symmachus (the letters of appointment to high office resemble the
documents by which the earlier authors had practiced the religio of polite society), but at
the same time it has the formality of chancery rhetoric of more ordinary royal and
imperial documents of the sort that survive in bulk from all ages. In fact, the strictly
literary use of the epistolary genres dies out for most of the middle ages, reviving only
with the twelfth century; in Cassiodorus, however, two different kinds of letter-writing
have been welded together to form a new kind of document. For, in fact, late antique
chancery style, such as we know its existence, was not as consciously literary as the
letters in the Variae. The kind of letter contained in the Variae seems almost to have
been invented by Cassiodorus to combine business and pleasure. Each individual letter
was from the beginning a little piece of propaganda, as well as an instrument of
government. Receiving one of Cassiodorus' letters from the royal messenger denoted the
favor one found in the eyes of the king, gave opportunity to delight in a pleasing literary
style, and for both reasons inspired reflection on the wisdom and cultivation of the
magnanimous monarch.

45
Thus the propagandistic thrust of the Variae as a published collection was not something
altogether new imposed by artful selection and editing at the time of publication; from
the first, these letters had been fulfilling many of the purposes that they were then meant
to fill again for a new audience when Cassiodorus published the collection.
Furthermore, this idiosyncratically propagandistic use of the royal chancery was a skill
at which Cassiodorus was particularly adept, beyond the range of the ordinary quaestor.
We should note, moreover, that we only see Theoderic granting benefits (e.g., agreeing
to hear a legal case or granting tax relief), never denying them. Requests that the
bureaucracy (or even the king) rejected were probably not honored with a royal letter of
reply. The image of generosity was thus encouraged with no conscious effort at
deception and selection of material, for the Variae in fact began with dozens of day-to-
day decisions years before.

With the Variae there are many different styles, adapted chiefly to the subject of the
letter and the occasion of composition. As stated earlier, it is difficult to see a direct
relationship between a recipient's level of education or social status and the level of
style of the letter addressed to him; nevertheless, there is doubtless substantial tailoring
of the more important letters to the individual recipients in a way that is inaccessible to
us, since the private details of the relationships between these people (particularly the
high potentates of the court) and their king are lost to history. The most obvious cases of
this tailoring are the letters to Boethius and Symmachus, where the whole point of the
letters is to flatter the aristocrats by asking their advice and assistance on cultural
matters; the king wants to show an interest in such affairs, while deferring to the vanity
of those who felt themselves the particular guardians of culture. Of a different nature are
the letters at the end of Book VIII to Severus, governor of what is now Calabria, in
which Cassiodorus goes on at length about the beauty of his home province; similarly,
in the extended description of Squillace upon which we drew in Chapter 1 above,
Cassiodorus' addressee has obviously come to expect that the good prefect will grow a
little long-winded and lyrical when he has the chance to write about his home
town.[[35]] As political documents, these letters in particular may have had some effect
in maintaining good relations with the folks back home, but that was undoubtedly
minimal compared with the simple literary delight that Cassiodorus would take in the
act of composing them. By contrast, when the time came to publish the Variae, these
descriptions of a happy and fertile country could doubtless also be read as evidence of
the prosperity of Italy under the Goths.

The literary resources that went into composing these rhetorical tours de force were
considerable. The most famous example, a favorite with all Cassiodorus scholars, is the
query directed to the prefect Faustus about a delay in the arrival of the grain supply
(Var. 1.35). The ships in which the grain is to be transmitted are the focus of the trope,
which becomes outright allegory. The king wonders aloud what could cause the delay
when such favorable weather attends the season for sailing; could it be, he supposes, the
sucking-fish that has fixed its teeth in his ships, or the conch from the Indian Ocean?
Perhaps the sailors are themselves made languid by the touch of the stingray. "Truly,"
the king concludes, "men who cannot move must have suffered some such attack." But
then, he adds, the sucking-fish is really procrastinating venality, the bite of the conch

46
really insatiable cupidity, and the stingray is fraudulent pretence. "They manufacture
delays with corrupt ingenuity, pretending to encounter adverse conditions." The prefect
is then strictly directed to look into this situation quickly and make the needed amends,
"lest famine might seem to be born of negligence rather than drought."

This letter also contains one of Cassiodorus' trademarks, discussion of natural

phenomena. The effect of the various marine creatures on the ship's course is discussed
carefully in view of the behavior of the animals, and the figure stands in close relation to
the thing allegorized. This attachment to natural history is one of the commonest themes
of Cassiodorus' digressions.[[36]] He has at least ten such lengthy digressions on
subjects ranging from storms and elephants to the production of purple cloth and the
production of amber.[[37]] A large number of these digressions have been shown to
derive from the Hexameron of Ambrose, including the case discussed in the paragraph,
where Cassiodorus was drawing on a similar treatment in Ambrose of the various
fish.[[38]]

It should not be thought that Cassiodorus is not capable of integrating digressive

material harmoniously into his work. Two elegant examples demonstrate this. One of
the simplest, shortest letters in the collection is a proclamation "to all Goths and Romans
and those who command harbors and castles," dating from Cassiodorus' quaestorship
(Var. 2.19). In an unknown locality, certain slaves have murdered their own master and
dishonored the funerary rites. Theoderic is grieved, comparing human behavior to that
of birds: "Alas, the pity men abandon is found even among birds. The vulture, who lives
on the corpses of other creatures, for all his great size is friendly with lesser birds and
protects them from the attacking hawk, beating him away with his wings and gnashing
his beak: and yet men cannot spare their own kind" (Var. 2.19.2-3). This is more than a
zoological metaphor chosen arbitrarily to illustrate the cruelty of men to men;
Cassiodorus did not leave the metaphor at that, but instead integrated it neatly with the
final statement of Theoderic's judgment: "So let him be food for the vultures, who can
cruelly seek the slaughter of his shepherd. Let him find such a sepulcher, who has left
his master unburied" (Var. 2.19.3). No one, not even Cassiodorus, would call this letter
a masterwork of literature; but such a piece, unambitious yet neatly suited to its
circumstances, with the verbal details of its metaphorical structure completely worked
out and adroitly executed, is perhaps comparable to good lyric poetry for its scope and
workmanship, if not for its theme.

It is not, therefore, surprising that Cassiodorus could be as effective and competent in

one of his longer efforts with a more consciously literary purpose. The letter to Boethius
at the end of Book II, requesting that a musician be found as a gift for Clovis the Frank,
is one of the longest letters in the Variae. The business of the letter is transacted in a few
lines at the beginning and end; the bulk of the text is a little treatise de musica, with
historical and technical material in abundance. The digression begins with the third
sentence of the letter and continues for over 120 printed lines (Var. 2.40.2-16). At the
end, Cassiodorus calls this little treatise a voluptuosa digressio, then gives Boethius his
instructions: "Please name the citharoedus we have requested from you; he will be
another Orpheus, taming the hard hearts of these foreigners [gentiles] with sweet music"

47
(Var. 2.40.17). But this precisely calls into question the digressiveness of the whole
letter. For the theme of the discussion of music has been its capacity to impart peace to
the soul, to represent the peace of celestial harmony; and it is precisely peace that is the
goal of the gift itself. In fact, no more competent and learned case could have been made
for the suitability of just such a gift at just such a time.

In the same letter there is a parallel case of a well- integrated bit of apparently digressive
material, in the story of Odysseus and the Sirens. The familiar tale is repeated, mainly to
show the power of music, culminating in Odysseus' successful escape from the Sirens.
As Cassiodorus finishes this passage, he has also completed one section of his discourse
on the effects that music has on men; he wishes to turn to the music of the Psalter as his
next subject. His transition is effected by means of the mythical tale ,lust concluded,
turning from the last sentence of the tale to the next topic thus: "He had himself bound
to the mast so that he could hear the Sirens' songs with his own ears but still escape the
dangers of the sweet voices, prevented as he was from plunging to the foaming waves.
In the same way, let us pass from the example of the crafty Ithacan to speak of the
Psalter sent from heaven" (Var. 2.40.10-11). The transition is not strictly logical, but the
neatness of the figure and its integration into the structure of the letter makes it possible,
almost inevitable, that we overlook that. Our attention is propelled along happily
without being too explicitly bothered about where it is being headed next.

A more doubtful example of the functional utility of rhetorical figures, and a more
revealing specimen of Cassiodorus' practice, is a short letter to Faustus, the praetorian
prefect, enjoining tax relief for inhabitants of the Cottian Alps suffering from the
depredations of marching Gothic armies; to his command Theoderic adds the brief
metaphorical statement that "The river continuously scours its channel and sterilizes it,
leaving the surrounding country more fertile for its passing" (Var. 4.36.2). The figure is
a neat one again, offering to modern readers, for example, a new way of considering
what the effects of such an army's passing must have been like; it is less certain that
Faustus really needed to be told such things. What has happened here, instead, is that the
format has become fixed, requiring that every letter to come from Cassiodorus' pen have
some literary pretensions.

The apparatus of classical learning is another bit of fretwork added to the more colorless
business at hand. It is surprising, however, that there is so little formal classical allusion
in the Variae. Apart from the silent use of such presumed sources as Ambrose or Pliny
for the substance of digressions, there is very little dropping of classical tags, with or
without acknowledgment. From the whole work, for example, there are only five
explicit mentions of Vergil, three with quotations; and the quotations are not quite
verbatim, thus probably from memory.[[39]] The explicit and implicit allusions in the
Variae are almost exclusively from Latin literature, with only three allusions to Homeric
events to demonstrate any familiarity with Greek legends.

Cassiodorus' other major literary habit is a taste for etymology common in late antiquity
and almost extinct today. That this particular trait was Cassiodorus' own is best seen
when he makes extensive use of the science again in his Expositio Psalmorum, written

48
far from the dictates of chancery style. One scholar has catalogued etymologies in the
Variae ranging from the months of the year to musical terms to the names of provinces;
as usual in late antique authors, they contain a mixture of fact and fiction.[[40]]

When all this literary baggage had been collected and Cassiodorus set out to produce
one of his little masterpieces, the final effect achieved was neither unpleasing nor
ineffective. From the preamble (frequently taking the form of a first premise of a
syllogism developed by the letter) through the exposition of the subject (with time out
for illuminating digression) to the final determination of the king's will, the line was
actually very clear and direct.[[41]] Brevity is the reigning characteristic of the
individual documents. The longest letters are those in which Cassiodorus had a personal
interest; the longest in the whole collection is only 154 lines long in the most recent
edition.[[42]] After that, the longest letters are to Boethius to provide a musician for
Clovis and to the senate on the merits and ancestry of Cassiodorus' own father (Var.
2.40 and 1.4). Few of the other letters run to more than a hundred lines; the average
length is approximately thirty- five lines. There is a certain tedium that affects modern
readers of the Variae for two reasons, one unrelated to the original composition of the
letters, the other unrelated to Cassiodorus at all. First, the original letters came to their
audience only in small doses; while Cassiodorus argues in his preface that the
variousness of the collection makes it read more quickly, even the first readers of the
whole work must have felt some discomfort with such a vast collection of short,
disconnected letters. But second, the original letters had an attraction that does us little
good--that is, their strong topical interest. For us, to whom the events described are long
ago and far away, and to whom the individuals are names only a few of which we
recognize with any enthusiasm, the main attraction of the work for its contemporary
readers is lost. If we can presume for this work, moreover, an audience still in love with
rhetoric, the presence of its ornaments in these letters in such liberal and diverse
portions was added attraction of no little merit.

The formal shape of the letters has been altered in the course of compiling the whole
collection in two ways that lessen their interest for us but that in fact increased their
aesthetic attraction in Cassiodorus' eyes. First, there has been a wholesale deletion of
names and dates to increase the timelessness of the letters published. Most names of
legates to whom diplomatic letters were entrusted are gone, but in one case the names of
two barns involved in a lawsuit have been reduced to "illud et illud" anonymity as well
(Var. 3.29.2). But by no means are all dates missing, or all names; Cassiodorus the
compiler functioned erratically on this one point.

Second, we have also lost the attached breves by which were transmitted particular
details of the case for many of the more complicated issues treated.[[43]] In one case the
letter preserved in the Variae is almost without significant content, merely exhorting the
recipient to obey the commands specified in the attached breves; in another letter the
attachment would have given the list of names of persons affected by the royal action
(Var. 4.21 and 5.31.1).

49
Hard linguistic evidence both confirms our estimation of the kind of work this was and
gives independent testimony to the level of culture still attained by educated classes of
the sixth century. The language of the Variae has been studied from several
aspects;[[44]] the sum total of the research demonstrates that the work's ties to Latin
literary traditions are as strong in language as in rhetoric and style. Only two Germanic
words are used in the whole work, both nouns for specific technical needs (saio for the
kind of court functionary who replaced the agens in rebus, and carpa for a fish). There
are a great many more words that occur for the first time to our knowledge in
Cassiodorus, often formed by adding standard endings to old words to form new nouns
(ending in -or, -tio, -tas, -ius) and otherwise orthodox in their Latin derivation.
Moreover, very many recently coined nouns in -tio, adjectives in -lis, and adverbs in -ter
are used. The most characteristic feature is the use of increasingly abstract words to
replace existing words; the new words (whether coined by Cassiodorus or drawn by him
from the usage of his day) are weaker in force but (superficially) more specific in
meaning than classical equivalents. In addition to all of this, there is the importation of
numerous Greek words (though none in such a way as to indicate that Cassiodorus
himself knew Greek at this time).[[45]]

In syntax, Cassiodorus similarly represents the trends of the consciously literary

language of his age. He runs into occasional trouble on matters of form (his use of the
royal "we" is sometimes inconsistent even within a given letter), but he is clearly in
command of the language to the extent that anyone was in his age. The vocative case is
disappearing, to be replaced by the formal third person (e.g., magnitudo vestra), and the
general use of demonstrative pronouns is far more abundant than in Caesar and Cicero.
But nothing Cassiodorus does is without precedent in Silver or Late Latin, in the church
fathers, or in other acceptable representatives of later style. His is a rhetoric of the
schools to a fault, resulting in a highly artificial kind of work.[[46]] There is a tendency,
difficult to isolate, to depart from the periodic style in favor of a monotonous alignment
of clauses, against the boredom of which the excessive use of consciously flashy figures
and language attempts to militate.[[47]]

Whether chancery style was a cause or an effect of some of these developments in the
language is an unanswerable question. Certainly there was generally a shrill respect
enunciated by all emperors for literary values that they did not always understand fully.
Thus government language becomes characterized in general by euphemism and
vagueness.[[48]] As an author, Cassiodorus does not transcend the literary faults of his
environment; rather, he may be said to have attempted to find ways to circumvent them,
to make virtues of the vices that had crept into the language he had been taught. The
mannered style of late antique rhetoric was a home for him, a way of reacting against
the boredom that sets in when an austere style becomes too familiar and thus
contemptible.[[49]]

The most obvious thing about the language of the Variae, however, is perhaps the most
important for an understanding of the work as a whole; namely that the language is
clearly that of Cassiodorus himself uninfluenced by Gothic elements. This is an
important consideration for answering the most important question about the Variae,

50
namely the degree to which these letters reflect the actual policies of the Gothic kings in
whose names the bulk of the individual letters were written, and how much they simply
show Cassiodorus playing with his rhetorical toys. Some scholars are too ready to
assume that the letters can be taken as is to reflect the thoughts of the monarch in whose
name they were drafted; others too skeptically assume that Theoderic was an illiterate
who could scarcely understand the purport of the letters drafted for him, much less
appreciate the literary art. It seems, in light of all that we know about Cassiodorus and
Theoderic, that a middle position does least violence to the evidence.

There is unquestionably triteness in even the most intellectually central concepts that
appear in the Variae, and with it further evidence of the evisceration of the natural force
of language. It has been traditional to see this process at work in the concept of civilitas,
which even the most superficial treatments of the Variae have distinguished as a central
idea of Theoderician government. Indeed, if Theoderic were entirely responsible for the
words uttered in his name, the presence of such a concept would be praiseworthy in the
policies of a barbarian. But it is Cassiodorus to whom we must assign responsibility for
the intellectual framework of the Variae, and we can be less lenient with triviality on his
part. Civilitas is in fact part of a larger scheme of slogans that springs from the whole
pattern of denatured language with which Cassiodorus loaded the Variae.

For it must be remarked that, for all the literary care that has gone into the Variae, the
effect is not memorable; there is nothing so well put anywhere in these letters that it
would bear remembering. There is everywhere in Cassiodorus a nostalgia for the
epigrammatic brilliance of Silver Latin rhetoric, but this emotion is couched in a
growing wordiness. Every epigram is taken out, examined from all angles, and
belabored to death. In the preface to Book XI of the Variae, for example, Cassiodorus
quotes a pithy anecdote to Cicero's rhetorical practice: "For that fount of eloquence is
said to have declined an invitation to speak by saying that he had not read anything the
day before" (Var. 11, Praef. 8). In the context of Cassiodorus' preface the remark has
point and purpose, for he is pleading for mercy from his audience for the failings of his
own ill-considered, hastily-published writings. But Cassiodorus is not content with
Cicero's remark; he must elaborate it through six more sentences. "What can happen to
others, if such a marvel of eloquence has to demand the assistance of auctores? Talent
grows ever rusty unless refreshed by reading." (This sentence in particular is limited to
saying just what Cicero has already been quoted as saying, but saying it less
memorably.) "The barn is quickly emptied unless replenished by continuous additions.
The treasury is readily emptied unless refilled with money." (Illustrating the line of
Cicero, Cassiodorus adds two gratuitous analogies.) "So human invention, when it is not
stocked with other people's sayings, is quickly exhausted on its own." (He summarizes
the main point again, perhaps misunderstanding it slightly--Cicero would have sought
ideas, not words, from his reading. "Anything sweet-smelling in our prose is the flower
of our studies, which nonetheless withers if cut off from its source, assiduous reading"
(Var. 11, Praef. 8-9). (Finally a connection back to the thread of the preface's argument
is made.)

51
In part the nature of the documents preserved in the Variae is responsible for this
rhetorical weakness at the knees. Very many indeed are the royal letters in the Variae
whose punch is pulled at the last moment with a final qualifier, in particular in legal
cases where the facts admit of some doubt and Theoderic wants to circumscribe the
effects of his rescript (e.g., Var. 2.29.2); in a more modern bureaucratic jargon, if
anything goes wrong the monarch must preserve his "deniability" and shift the blame
that may result from the case onto the shoulders of a bureaucratic underling.

As a matter of simple language, enervated terminology is everywhere apparent,

particularly in certain terms that recur frequently; these words are almost totally devoid
of denotative content, but they act as signals of royal approval or disapproval. It is
precisely the famous slogan civilitas and its parallel terms that provide the best example
of this linguistic spinelessness. Civilitas itself always refers in Cassiodorus to the
actions of a citizen (as etymologically it should, as Cassiodorus would see). Behaving
like a good citizen was something that Theoderic wanted to preach to his Goths, whom
he was teaching to pay taxes; his remark, "Civilitas preserved is an honor for the
Goths," was addressed to a Gothic military governor in Sicily (Var. 9.14.18).[[50]]

But Theoderic spoke more often of his own virtues than of his subjects', and in edicts
and letters laying down the law, more often of wrongdoing to be avoided than virtue to
be practiced. As a king and as a representative of Roman imperial traditions, Theoderic
would not prescribe civilitas as a model for his own behavior; when he wishes to
describe his own magnanimity, the term chosen more often than any other is humanitas-
whether as a general quality or as a term for specific acts (even used occasionally in the
plural in that restricted sense). This slogan is Ciceronian, of course, though it never
really caught on in Latin, perhaps precisely because it was too vague and watery for
most political purposes. But Cassiodorus must have thought it appropriate for giving a
folksy touch to a lofty monarch, assuring the audience he addressed that the king was at
heart decent and kind. At any rate, by a rough count humanitas and its immediate
derivatives appear about as often in the Variae as civilitas and its derivatives.[[51]]

A word that appears about four times as often as either of these terms for the kind of
behavior one hopes to cultivate is the blanket term for behavior one wants to discourage:
praesumptio.[[52]] Etymologically, the term means a taking for oneself of something; in
the Variae it usually means to do so in an unlawful or wrongful way. In particular it is a
term favored in edicts to describe proscribed behavior; it appears eight times (civilitas
appears twice) in the Edictum Athalarici in Book IX, and it appears three times,
balanced with three appearances of humanitas, in the edict that ends the Variae (Var.
9.18, 12.28).[[53]] On the rare occasions in the Variae where the word does not refer to
wrongdoing, it still has the sense of undertaking something vaguely undesirable; a
general getting a new assignment is reminded that youth is benefited by such a task:
"Iuvenum siquidem virtus praesumptione laboris animatur..." (Var. 5.25.1). In another
case, the presumption is that of the king, presuming the loyalty and integrity of a fiscal
officer (Var. 8.23.8).

52
In the generally negative sense of the Variae, praesumptio is often tied to cupiditas as
effect in action of a cause in spirit.[[54]] Praesumptio can include crimes up to and
including murder, but in later life Cassiodorus will use the same word to describe the
blunders of scribes (Inst. 1.15.6-16). Thus the word has not been strengthened by
Cassiodorus in the Variae to serve as a strong rebuke against criminal behavior; rather
the rebuke has been weakened so far as to be summarized in the equivocal term.[55]

And so the pattern of clich‚ is complete: humanitas is the kind of behavior the king
promises on his part; civilitas is the behavior he preaches as desirable from his citizens;
and praesumptio is what he deprecates. These are not the catchwords of a vital political
conception or a strong central administration; they are moralistic slogans, slogans that
fail to inspire, bits of euphemism that assume definite meanings from being used so
often but that in turn at least partially deflate what is being said in the name of verbal
nicety.

It is thus in Cassiodorus' clich‚s that we find the traces of his policies. That the soul of
his political purposes was thus entrusted to weak and hackneyed language, fortified with
euphemism and shored up with triviality, was not a sign of any great strength of purpose
or confidence in execution of design. To what extent this weakness mirrored an
insecurity of Theoderic we do not know; it may have been imported gratuitously by
Cassiodorus, since we have no certain knowledge of the roles that king and courtier
played in drafting these documents and the ideas that lay behind them. But Theoderic
was apparently pleased by the fainting language in the documents he was given to sign,
and it is certain that in the end the weakness of the kingdom did in fact come to reflect
the weakness of the language in which it was extolled. Whether it was Theoderic who
got the kind of propaganda he deserved, or whether it was the propaganda that was as
ineffectual as the government, we do not know.

In either case, the documents were the same precious little things, rhetorically and
literarily self-conscious, meant to please, to edify and (usually) not to offend, and
similar in their individual purposes to the purpose to which they would be put when
collected into the Variae. For their function was nothing less than the justification, in the
course of everyday business, of the Ostrogothic rule in Italy, on the grounds of political
and imperial legitimacy, and the demonstration of the success of the kingdom when left
to its own devices to establish and maintain an orderly society under a humane monarch,
in spite of the barbarian origin of its leaders and many of its people. In a sense,
therefore, the Variae began as panegyric but ended as a serious brief for the
constitutional legitimacy of the whole kingdom, carrying the arguments and the
supporting evidence in favor of the continued existence of the kingdom within the
Roman empire. For the tragedy of the Ostrogothic kingdom is that precisely that subject
of so much modern scholarly speculation, the constitutional position of Theoderic, was
never clearly established; the Ostrogoths always occupied an ambiguous, delicately
balanced position, in danger of overthrow at any time from several directions. In the
end, the most fearful power decided to put an end to the ambiguity. As this was
happening, Cassiodorus brought a lifetime of statesman's work to bear in this last work,
presenting the case for the Ostrogothic kingdom as strongly and diplomatically as he

53
could. But the forces then in motion were too great, too much beyond the control of
individuals, to be called back by the voice of reason and the winged words of rhetoric.

As long as we witness Cassiodorus in his public persona as spokesman to the Latin

literary world of the Ostrogothic kingdom, we are only allowed to see him as a diligent
optimistic bureaucrat. His concerns are consistently those worldly problems of the
conscientious public servant, diversified only by occasional, touching attempts to
maintain as much external pomp of the Roman traditions under the new regime as
possible. Thus the last letter we have in the collection written in the name of Theodahad,
just before that king's murder and replacement by Witigis, just as Italy began again to
know the ravages of war after Belisarius' invasion, is a marvelous, erudite, and even
amusing discussion of the condition of certain bronze elephants on the Via Sacra at
Rome that had fallen into disrepair (Var. 10.30).[[56]] When the king wants to have
them repaired, he illuminates his letter with all the hoary legends about the elephant that
were handed down from one ancient writer to another (Cassiodorus has what Pliny had,
but is independent of him as well). For example, we are told that "a wounded elephant
remembers the offense and is said to revenge himself on the perpetrator long
afterwards" (Var. 10.30.6). Cassiodorus' elephants adore their creator and serve only
good princes, opposing evil ones. In the midst of war, the king took time to speak of
these things, and he concluded, "Do not let these images perish, since it is Rome's glory
to collect in herself by the artisan's skills whatever bountiful nature has given birth to in
all the world" (Var. 10.30.8).

This hopeless effort to preserve a memento of empire at the heart of Rome epitomizes
much of what Cassiodorus had been trying to do for thirty years. There is quixotic
nobility about this that weighs disproportionately heavy in any assessment of the virtues
and vices of the man. If Cassiodorus was not, for most of his career, the most
outstanding figure in the rank-conscious society of Romans at the Gothic court, he was
still a consistent presence, loyal and ingenious after his own lights, and clearly still
faithful until virtually the very end.

54
Chapter 4: Conversion
IF the Variae was a defense of Gothic rule in Italy, it is the last such document to
survive. Dependent as we are on Cassiodorus for our knowledge of the internal affairs
of that kingdom, our view of the reconquest is obstructed by a major shift in the
character of the evidence that Cassiodorus provides at this period. Sometime in 538, as
he concluded the publication of the Variae and departed from public life, Cassiodorus
published a short treatise De anima, choosing a new genre and a new focus for his
literary interests.

The political and military situation in Italy after 537 did not admit any great sphere of
activity for intellectual bureaucrats.[[1]] Witigis besieged Rome, then lifted the siege in
538; in 539 the Goths recaptured Milan, but Belisarius, in spite of his feud with Narses,
captured Ariminum. Finally, Belisarius captured Ravenna in 540 and with it the chief
part of the Gothic nobility, including Witigis himself.[[2]] These important captives
Belisarius took with him to Constantinople, inspiring Justinian to bedeck himself with
the title Gothicus. But the war was only beginning back in Italy, for after a brief
interregnum of divided leadership, the young Totila took the Gothic throne and began an
impressive series of victories. All through the 540's he more than occupied the
Byzantine forces in Italy, capturing Rome twice, eventually going down to defeat in 552
before Narses, by then sole Byzantine commander in Italy. In 553 the last Gothic ruler,
Teias, was defeated and slain, and the Ostrogothic kingdom passed from the stage of
history.

Because the Variae ends with letters from 537, we perceive, perhaps rightly, a change in
the tone of government after that date. When Cassiodorus refuses to be our guide any
longer, we see only a trackless waste of war and destruction. The pretence of civilitas
was too expensive a luxury to maintain in the midst of battle.

We know little of Cassiodorus in this period with certainty. If we assume that the Variae
was published while Cassiodorus was still in office or at least still in contact with the
files of government, then it follows that its contents give a good terminus post quem for
either retirement or publication, whichever came first. The opening of the De anima,
which speaks of the compilation of the Variae as a task completed shortly before, also
seems to imply that the author's retirement was due to literary pursuits. Certainly there
are none of the whining complaints about the pressures of office that characterize the
prefaces in the Variae. The likeliest sequence, therefore, seems to be that Cassiodorus
ceased to function as prefect in late 537 or early 538 (whether because he was dismissed
by the Goths, because there had ceased to be tasks for a civil servant to perform in the
Ostrogothic government at war, or because of a simple desire to seek retirement
unconnected with the particular crises of the time-- and the last of these is the least
likely) and more or less immediately set himself to compiling the Variae for
publication.[[3]] This was a task that might not unreasonably be expected to have taken
some months, perhaps a year or so, if it involved searching through the files to collect
material, then editing and arranging it, and finally composing the prefaces and taking
some steps to see that the work reached whatever audience Cassiodorus had in mind.

55
Thus, by some time late in 538 or early in 539, Cassiodorus was at last truly at liberty,
though apparently still living at Ravenna and not immediately desirous of moving from
there; for Ravenna was still an island of comparative safety, and it may not have been
clear how lenient the Byzantine forces would be with someone who had served the
Gothic government in such high positions. The De anima seems to have been written in
this milieu, almost surely before the capture of Ravenna in the spring of 540. The first
sentence of the preface of the Expositio Psalmorum refers to an increasing interest in
scriptural studies while Cassiodorus was still in Ravenna: "After I had rid myself of the
duties of office at Ravenna, weary of all the world's foul-tasting woes, then when I
tasted of the heavenly Psalter, a honey for souls, I plunged myself into their study
greedily, to banish the aftertaste of bitter deeds with sweet verses" (Ex. Ps. Praef. lines
1-5).[[4]]

Thus the composition of the De anima occurred between late 538 and early 540. In
reality we come here to a serious lacuna in the evidence for Cassiodorus' activities. We
do not next have definite knowledge of his whereabouts until 550, when he was in
Constantinople in the circle of persons known to Pope Vigilius during that pontiff's long
stay in the eastern capital. We will discuss the nature and extent of Cassiodorus' stay in
Constantinople in the next chapter in connection with the Psalm commentary, which
was largely composed there. For the moment we must concern ourselves simply with
the narrower question of how Cassiodorus got from Ravenna before its capture to
Constantinople sometime in the 540's. In the complete absence of direct evidence,
hypotheses must be confected.

The commonest reconstruction of Cassiodorus' career at this point has argued that he
returned to his family estates at Squillace upon his retirement from office; there, the
theory progresses, he rounded at least some forerunner of the later monastic community
and was busy on most of the Psalm commentary. Then he went to Constantinople with
other refugees from the military activity of Totila in about 547/9, at about the same time
as Vigilius made the same trek.[[5]] There are two military difficulties with this thesis.
First, it assumes that the chief civil official of the Ostrogothic kingdom was not only
released by the Byzantine forces but that he was allowed to pass unmolested down the
entire length of Italy to his family estates on the extreme shore of the southernmost
province. Furthermore, it assumes that at a later date Cassiodorus, the lifelong supporter
of the Gothic regime, fled in fear from the approach of a Gothic army. It is certainly
conceivable that Cassiodorus changed his coat completely on the approach of the
Byzantine armies; but there is not one slightest shred of evidence, direct or indirect, for
any such event. Our whole interpretation of the Variae as a pro-Gothic dossier compiled
on the eve (or morn) of Cassiodorus' retirement runs counter to such a view.

The alternate view does seem simpler.[[6]] If we allow Cassiodorus to remain in the
comparative safety of Ravenna until its capture in 540, the probability then increases
that he would have left Italy at that time with Belisarius and Witigis. He might or might
not have gone voluntarily. If he was still interested in politics he may have thought that
Constantinople was the place where the fate of Gothic Italy might most profitably be
settled; but if he was entirely devoted to religion, a desire for the relative security of

56
Constantinople might well have been enhanced by a desire to acquaint himself with the
ecclesiastical institutions of the eastern church. He may simply have had no choice.
Some combination of both political and religious motives, volition and constraint, may
well have obtained.

If our dating of Cassiodorus' birth in the mid-480's (made possible by the discovery of
the Ordo generis) is correct, then Cassiodorus was in his early fifties upon the fall of
Ravenna; not only is this an age still adventurous enough to go off to Constantinople for
considerations at least partly still political, but it enables us to place the date of his final
return to Squillace at around 554 and his age at that time at about sixty-five to seventy, a
reasonable age for genuine retirement in any century.

Thus we provisionally accept the hypothesis of a prolonged stay at Constantinople,

lasting from 540 to 554. In the next chapter we will see that there is indirect evidence to
support this belief further. Nevertheless, the question does not, it must be emphasized,
admit of certain proof in either direction. Our choice of probabilities must in part be
conditioned by a sense for the tenor of the life we have seen Cassiodorus creating for
himself and a preference for the simpler hypothesis.

It is customary (and reasonable) to see in the De anima, the first religious treatise that
Cassiodorus wrote, a document of his "conversion" from the life of a public statesman
to that of a private man of religion. It is important, however, not to be misled by modern
notions of what "conversion" involves; furthermore, we should take into account again
what little we do know of Cassiodorus' religious life before his retirement. Some of the
evidence for religious leanings in Cassiodorus the statesman was blotted out for us,
partly by reticence in the first place, and perhaps partly by later self-censorship at the
time of compiling the Variae, because of the difficult relations between Arian Goths and
Catholic Italians. While Theoderic is praised as a model of tolerance by his
contemporaries and by modern readers of the Variae, he was still a hated Arian to, for
example, the so-called Anonymus Valesianus chronicler. What image of religious peace
there was in Italy is at least partly a creation of the tacit agreement of all concerned to
say nothing about the subject in public.

To be sure, Dom Cappuyns saw signs of increasing religious devotion in Cassiodorus'

years as praetorian prefect.[[7]] The only firm pieces of evidence to which he could
point, however, the letters at the beginning of Book XI addressed to Pope John II and
the bishops of Italy, are not strong testimony (Var. 11.2-3). We do not know how
customary such professions of faith and loyalty by new prefects were, nor how hollow
they were in practice. Furthermore, similarly respectful rhetoric had been written by
Cassiodorus and addressed to bishops and clergy of the orthodox church in the name of
Arian rulers long before that time. There is no reason why the conventional cannot be
sincere, but the presence of the conventional cannot be taken as proof positive of special
sincerity.

On the other hand, one piece of evidence from a later date for Cassiodorus' growing
interest in religion somewhere around this time is more substantive. The whole effort of

57
Cassiodorus to found a school of Christian learning at Rome in concert with Pope
Agapetus (elected 535, died 536) will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 6; but
this kind of activity (which may have begun before 533 and before Agapetus was pope
or Cassiodorus prefect) is clear evidence of an interest in Christian intellectual activity,
whether newfound or long established. The only other evidence for Cassiodorus'
religious development at this time indicates that the concern was some time in
developing. The enthusiastic praise in the Institutiones for the talents and the work of
Dionysius Exiguus indicates that Cassiodorus was personally acquainted with the
Scythian monk. As we have seen, opportunities existed for the two men to know each
other, either as teacher and student or simply as brother scholars, both before
Cassiodorus' public life and during the years from 511 to 523, some part of which, at
least, Cassiodorus seems to have spent at Rome. Thus the education of Cassiodorus, and
even his intellectual pastimes in adult years spent out of office in semiretirement, may
well have been directed toward the Christian life of learning for decades before his term
as prefect. The sudden desire to found a school may be evidence, not of new concern for
religious affairs, but rather of a newly developed consciousness of his ability to carry off
such a project, which depends more on financial resources, like-minded cosponsors, and
a certain amount of the confidence of mature years than on simple religious fervor. Thus
while the notion of Cassiodorus' growing religious concerns during these years remains
unproven, it can plausibly be replaced by a picture of a more lasting and developed
interest.

It is therefore useful to speak of the process whose outward product was the De anima
as one of conversion if we take care to understand that term. Current usage in English
commonly limits "conversion" to the adoption of a particular religious creed by an
individual or group formerly outside the community of faith thus entered; other uses are
analogical. There is a strain of evangelical Christianity that speaks of conversion even in
cases of individuals who have been brought up within organized Christianity; this is
actually a revival of some of the original content of the concept.

For "conversion" in early medieval Christianity is not a simple event, a declaration of

allegiance comparable to the acquisition of naturalized citizenship by a legal process.
Instead, the term, rooted in the etymological notion of a turning towards God, had
extensive use for many sorts of religious experience. To take the most familiar case, the
young Augustine had been brought up by a Christian mother and enrolled as a
catechumen; his chief religious activity as a young man was with the peripherally
Christian Manichaeans, but by the time of his acceptance of the chair of rhetoric at
Milan he was willing to attend orthodox Christian services while remaining officially a
catechumen. Thus in the modern sense of the term, the event that took place in the
garden at Milan in 386, and that has become the archetype for "conversion" discussions
ever since, could bc treated merely as the decision of a man who had been in Christian
milieux all his life to accept baptism; even this is not so remarkable as it would be
today, since late baptism was common.

But clearly Augustine treats his experience in Milan as a conversion, by which he has
reference more specifically to the spiritual content of his life than generally to legal

58
formalities. This distinction is central to early medieval notions of conversion.[[8]] The
best evidence for the importance of this notion is found in the textual history of the
Regula of Benedict, buried beneath a mountain of misplaced philological effort.[[9]] In
several places in that text, Benedict speaks of "conversion" as something central to the
life of the monk. In Chapter 58, with the enumeration of the vows that the new monk is
to make, the subject is emphasized; the novice is made to promise obedience, stabilitas,
and conversatio morum suorum.[[10]] The philological difficulty is with the word
conversatio. That it is only a philological difficulty is best attested by the paleographical
information that in the places in the rule were conversatio should be taken in the sense
of "conversion," the medieval monks and copyists who lived under the Regula simply
changed their text to read conversio, following the spirit and sense of their founder's
command, rather than the letter.[[11]]

The explanation for Benedict's use of conversatio has been obscured in the later history
of the term and the ideas it represents; for Benedict's conversatio had connotations of
durative action lacking in conversio. Thus its initial use directly implied an obligation
on the part of the monk whom Benedict was describing to continue throughout his life
the process begun with the taking of the monastic vows. The term, then, not only
focuses attention on the spiritual life of the monk, rather than his external acts, but
demands a continuing process of turning to God anew each day, rather than a simple,
once-and-for-all event at one stage of his life. This emphasis is directly attuned to the
whole purpose and nature of monastic life, something that seeks new perfections each
day. In a similar vein, in the seventh chapter of the Regula, Benedict listed twelve "steps
of humility" for the monk to climb, envisioning a continuing effort at perfection that
will only have its ultimate success in the next life, but that must be labored at diligently
in this.

Thus in late antiquity one could still speak of the conversion of a heathen, and even of a
heretic (e.g., a Gothic Arian), when all that was meant by it was the acceptance of
catholic Christianity by an individual. But by the extension fostered in the manner just
described, the term could also be used of actions taken by men who were already, to all
appearances, loyal Christians. Thus we begin to hear of men who are called conversi
(Cassiodorus in later life, for one); these are men who, after a life dedicated to public or
military service, have turned to a more explicitly religious way of life. The term can
refer both to those who do so in the midst of home and family (in a kind of heightened
experience of the more exclusively literary retirement of earlier aristocrats grown weary
of public life) and to those who make formal profession of membership in an organized
monastic community.

The final stage of religious ascent to which the notion of conversion could be applied
was that of devoted cenobitic monks who chose to retire to the eremitic life; both
Benedict and Cassiodorus recommend the hermit's life, when prudently and wisely
undertaken, as the highest life open to man.[[12]] Hermitage thus culminates a ladder of
external experiences of the religious life that gave practical realization to the different
levels of conversion that men could undergo in their interior spiritual life.

59
The theology of conversion could be seen under two different aspects as well. First, the
point of view could be God's rather than the individual's, in the context of the
relationship of grace. The prophet's words, "Convert us to you, 0 Lord, and we will be
converted" (Lam. 5.21), could be a summary of this understanding.[[13]] But in that
narrow context, the terminology of conversion was influenced by Luke: "If thy brother
sin against thee, reprove him: and if he do penance forgive him. And if he sin against
thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day be converted unto thee, saying, I
repent; forgive him" (Luke 17.3-4). Obviously, here the term is referring to little more
than ordinary penance; but it is important to notice the iterative quality of this kind of
penance and to recall how it reflects the repeated and continuous nature of Christian
conversion at the highest level.

Conversion could also be understood, not from the point of view of temporal things,
from which one is expected to turn towards God, but from that of eternity. The goal, the
ideal state of man's life, is thus stabilitas, the state eventually reached by conversion
when it shakes the soul loose from attachment to (and repeated turnings away from God
as a result of attachment to) unstable temporal things. It is no coincidence that the vow
that appears in grammatical parallel with that of conversatio morum suorum in the
Regula of Benedict is that of stabilitas; this kind of monastic stability was only, to be
sure, a faint echo of the kind of stability ultimately sought, but its appearance is strongly
figurative of that other stability. Cassiodorus himself summarized this doctrine very
neatly in the De anima: "Clearly the soul in this world can gain and lose goodness,
converted by an unstable and shifting will, nor does it always abide in one firm purpose
of the will, but even against its own disposition is changed in its orientation [se
conversione mutare]" (De an. 4.214-218). Conversion is thus the action of the soul,
understood temporally, intended to counteract the adverse influence of temporal things,
while stabilitas is the state to be achieved by that motion, beyond temporality, in the
next life.

The life of a conversus (of one "correcting his evil ways, doing good, pursuing the
reward of good works," as Isidore of Seville would define him [Isidore, Sententiae
2.7.7]) is thus a life deliberately (and somewhat ostentatiously, to be sure) ordered along
Christian principles. In this broad sense, it is not incorrect to speak of Cassiodorus as a
conversus from the time that he began writing the De anima and studying the Psalter,
though he only used the term of himself at a later date. Given the limitations of our
evidence, there still seems to be a direct and connected progression from Cassiodorus
the public servant active in reconciliation between warring parties to Cassiodorus the
author of the short philosophical treatise to Cassiodorus the commentator on the Psalms
and the founder of monasteries. We are, to be sure, not in possession of any direct
biographical testimony for this period, nor can we tell what vicissitudes may have
disturbed this apparently smooth and direct passage.

What we do know of the De anima, however, should caution us to avoid making too
much of the discontinuity between the last works of the politician and the first of the
conversus. First of all, the De anima, despite its clearly religious content, is not one of
the works listed in the preface to the De orthographia as the fruits of Cassiodorus' life of

60
conversion; that list, written perhaps about 580, begins with the "Psalm commentary, to
which, with God's help, I devoted my first efforts at the time of my conversion" (De
orth. 144.1-2). Thus, however justified we are in speaking of Cassiodorus' conversion as
beginning, or appearing to begin, with the De anima, very late in his life Cassiodorus
was not putting the date back quite so early.

The second consideration limiting our estimate of the religiosity of Cassiodorus'

intentions at this time is the explicit connection between the De anima and the Variae.
We have already noticed that the De anima is mentioned in the preface to Books XI and
XII of the Variae as the work that immediately followed the compilation of the Variae
(Var. 11, Praef. 7).[[14]] The reason for making mention of the De anima at that point
was to justify its inclusion in the same volume with the Variae, as almost a thirteenth
book; the treatise does in fact survive in one family of manuscripts, following
immediately on the last page of the Variae. The same thing is stated explicitly in the
Psalm commentary, which refers to something "in the book about the soul, which is the
thirteenth book in the Variae" (Ex. Ps. 145.30).[[15]]

An appreciation of the state of Cassiodorus' mind on religious matters at the time of the
composition of the De anima must thus take into account this connection with the
Variae.

First, the De anima must have been completed before the preface to the last two books
of the Variae was written; thus the two works seem to have been in production
simultaneously. Second, the state of Cassiodorus' mind before and after his retirement is
not therefore drastically changed. There is a certain very gentle irony (not emphasized at
all) in placing this philosophical disquisition, with its chapters on how to detect good
men from bad by their appearances, at the end of a long work in which a great many
good and bad men are seen in the midst of temporal affairs. But there is no reason to
think that Cassiodorus was undergoing any more than a very gradual change of mind
during this period. If Cassiodorus was always a devoted man in religious matters, a
horrible war that he had long sought to avoid would make those religious concerns more
visible to his neighbors and his literary posterity; they would not necessarily in
themselves bring about radical change. Moreover, the evidence as it stands for the
period 537-540 does not logically require us to assume anything more than this
unveiling of concerns hitherto hidden by chance and literary circumstance.

The Cassiodorus of 537-540 is therefore a man who, in the loosest early medieval sense
of the word, is in the first stages of a conversion. Whether, however, he was aware of
this very strongly himself is not known to us. At this time more than at any other in his
life, the literary persona through which Cassiodorus speaks to us obstructs almost
completely our view of what we would like to believe is the real man. There is certainly
none of the self-revelation of an Augustine before us, nor will there ever be. Very
quietly, behind all the literary smoke screens, Cassiodorus continues to develop out of
one phase of his life and into another by a quiet and continuous process, no more
theatrical or melodramatic than the course of a gentle river to the sea. If there is
something for us to grasp here of the character of the man, we must do so gently to

61
avoid crushing our catch with the vigor of our own analysis. The simplest thing to say is
that the conversion we are witnessing is only a conversion in the medieval, gradual
sense. By modern standards, the development is too subtle, too deliberate, too
unspectacular.

Thus as we turn to the text of the De anima to see what its author would have us learn
from it, the great surprise is the absence of surprises, the simplicity and
straightforwardness of the treatment of a comparatively unexciting subject. Our task
must be to determine the particular interest that this topic aroused in Cassiodorus' mind
and how the composition of this book seemed to him to be a beneficial contribution to
his own intellectual development and to his audience's understanding of the truths of
faith.

But as soon as we look for testimony about the origin and purpose of the work, we run
into a familiar feature: a rhetorical preface in which the demands of friends are
represented as the real source of the work. "While I was rejoicing in the happy
conclusion of the work I had undertaken, and the quiet harbor took me in battered from
the ocean of those twelve books, whence I had arrived freed from, if not always praised
for, my labor, a thoughtful group of friends drove me out again onto the sea of thought,
demanding that I discuss some of the things which I had read in theological and secular
books about the soul and its powers, since the soul is a key which unlocks secrets of
greater things; they said it is silly of us to be ignorant of that through which we know so
many other things, since it is always useful to know how it is that we know" (De an.
1.110). This weighty, not altogether attractive sentence tells us much and little. The
temporal connection between finishing the Variae and beginning the De anima has
already been noted; the "group of friends" is suspiciously reminiscent of the earlier
preface to the Variae; and the expressed philosophical purpose has already been alluded
to in the preface to Book XI of the Variae.

we must hesitate to judge how much truth there is in the preface to the Variae on the
matter of the anonymous friends, we are so much the more on shaky ground here. To
hear Cassiodorus tell it, he had never yet in his life had an original idea for a literary
work; his panegyrical-historical works were all inspired by his kings, and now the
Variae and the De anima are produced grudgingly at the behest of friends who remain
hidden from us. The bulk of the first little chapter of the De anima is placed in the
putative words of the friends, who expound a little their notion of the subject and
enunciate twelve questions for Cassiodorus to answer. It is this last point that offers the
surest grounds for doubting the genuineness of this supposed dialogue; for the twelve
questions so elaborated follow from one another so neatly and comprehensively that
they must have been worked out, at the very least, by the true author in conjunction
with, perhaps, philosophically inclined friends. If we admit that the entire device of the
curious friends may be fictitious, we then conclude that in fact what we have before us
is only a rather hackneyed introduction to the larger work. In either case it is a clumsy
beginning.

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The pretext for the work is a bit of sophistry implied in the passage quoted above. The
purpose of the friends' questions is to know more about that thing, the anima, through
which the human mind obtains knowledge. To justify this theme, a distinction is drawn
between the pursuits of mundani doctores (from whom we seek to know the courses of
the planets, the height of the heavens, the measure of the earth, and the four elements)
and more enlightened students of theology. The curiosity of the doctores is hypocritical:
"for when we are taught by the sages, 'know thyself,' how far can it be tolerated that we
should be thus ignorant of ourselves?" (De an. 1.16-18). There is much to this argument
that is mere quibble, but something more is present, imperfectly expressed in the stilted
prose. For the contrast presented in the first sentence between the things to be
discovered about the anima in the libri sacri and those found in libri saeculares presents
to us for the first time what is probably the most fruitful (if not original) idea that
Cassiodorus ever had, the one that moved to the center of his life's work within a few
years.

Already in his years in public life, he had sought, together with Agapetus, the
establishment of a school for sacred, as opposed to secular, studies. The first words of
the Institutiones, written at least fifteen to twenty years after the De anima, reflect the
attitudes of the last years of Cassiodorus' public career and the very words of the preface
of the De anima.[[16]] The contrast vaguely stated by the friends in the preface to the
De anima between the wide-ranging concerns of the worldly men of learning and the
more subtle discourses that they were demanding of Cassiodorus surely shows the same
discomfort that Cassiodorus expressed more clearly after settling at Squillace. For the
meantime he was trapped in wartime Ravenna, probably conscious that his first effort at
rounding a school had failed. At this time the intellectual activity of Cassiodorus was
guided by the same principles but supported by little of the confidence with which both
the Roman school and the later enterprise at the Vivarium were undertaken.

The De anima, then, undertook the study of a philosophical issue from a point of view
not strictly philosophical, making reference to scriptural texts. Unlike Augustine's early
works on the soul, which argued from the conclusions available to unaided human
reason, Cassiodorus argues from authority. Unlike Claudianus Mamertus' De statu
animae, which borrows heavily in its second book from worldly philosophers,
Cassiodorus argues from specifically Christian authority (Augustine is the only author
he cites by name).[[17]]

Any overt religiosity of purpose, however, is not very clearly represented in the outline
of the work proposed; the subjects are clearly of a philosophical order, though capable
of theological answers. It is of course typically Cassiodorian that there should be exactly
twelve questions proposed and answered in order. In the original Cassiodorian edition of
the work, these twelve questions were the chief structural features. In the manuscript
tradition there is a further division of the work into seventeen or eighteen capitula; the
seventeenth century edition of Garet preserves a twelvefold division of chapters (from a
less populous family of manuscripts) that tries to reflect Cassiodorus' intentions more
faithfully. However, it is probable that the twelvefold division was left implicit in the

63
most primitive form of the work, the form in which it first left Cassiodorus' hands, and
that all chapter divisions are later interpolations, even if by the author himself.[[18]]

The division into eighteen chapters comprises two introductory chapters presenting the
queries of friends and the reply of Cassiodorus (a similar dialogue in the preface to the
Variae was not divided into chapters), twelve chapters corresponding to the twelve
questions answered, two further chapter-divisions interpolated into the answer of the
twelfth question, a recapitulatio, and a concluding oratio. For the purposes of content,
the chapter titles interpolated over the answer to each question are superfluous. See, for
example, the end of the fourth chapter (the end of the second response): "Now let us go
on to treat the soul's substantialis qualitas in well-chosen words--you recall that this was
your third question" (De an. 4.227-229). With that, the intervening title, "De qualitate
animae," is superfluous and less informative than the preceding sentence. Rather than
being an isolated event, this case is in fact typical of the work. At the end of every single
one of the first eleven responses there is a similar sentence (most have the word nunc
directing the reader's attention) providing an easy and natural transition to the next
chapter.[[19]] The most interesting case is that of the beginning of the very first answer,
where Cassiodorus almost seems to forget that the questions were set for him by
someone else and begins to speak of what he must treat before he enters on the res
expetita; but in fact this prolegomenon is only the first of those very things suggested by
his friends.

After the discussion of the future state of souls in the answer to the twelfth question,
another transition is prepared in the text: "Now we must put aside this bundle of
questions and summarize our complex and wordy argument under a few headings, so
that we can add up our conclusions briefly and store them away in the barns of memory"
(De an. 16.60-63). This sentence confirms that the discussion of the questions has
included everything up to this point; it also makes the insertion there of the next chapter
heading, "Recapitulatio," superfluous and uninformative again. That chapter is taken up
partly with a listing of the twelve conclusions reached in the work, but it quickly
becomes a concluding discourse that praises the virtues of the anima and then a prayer
addressed in the second person to the Lord.[[20]] After this had gone on for a page or
so, the author of the eighteenfold division noticed that recapitulation had become prayer,
so he interrupted our reading once again with the unhelpful title, "Oratio." In this case,
the last of these intrusions, otherwise moderately helpful in signaling the contents of the
work for impatient modern readers, is simply misplaced.

At the beginning of Cassiodorus' part of the work he is faced with his friends' final
request: "Tell us these things in order, God willing, so we may follow you easily and so
you may earn the title doctor" (De an. 1.51-53). This would not be Cassiodorus if he did
not first protest against such implicit praise. He pleads the difficulty of the subject,
arising specifically out of the sophistry by which it was introduced just as the eye sees
stars, but not itself, so the anima knows all things save itself. This, of course, does not
actually stop Cassiodorus, but it lets him complain that "these matters do not resemble
the royal commands with which we have lately busied ourselves, but befit serious and
abstract dialogues which speak not to corporeal ears but to the purified hearing of the

64
inner man" (De an. 2.1-4). Moreover, he claims, he is fatigued by the effort of
producing the Variae: What sort of thing can I write, wearied as I am from the work I
have just been hurrying to finish?" (De an. 2.12-13). But his friends, as we suspected all
along, are relentless, and he wins only the reprieve of a few days (aliquot dies). The
work is tolerable, indeed almost pleasant: "But now I find it unburdensome to be urged
to speak of matters which, if I handle them truthfully and with God's help, will
invigorate my audience and illuminate my own understanding as I make the argument"
(De an. 2.23-26).

Whereupon he truly begins, first by distinguishing the inconveniently similar terms for
different things that often confuse men. Thus the first question thoughtfully provided for
him is an etymological one, which he enjoys as is his wont Anima, he claims, derives
from anema, signifying dissimilarity to blood, which is the source of the life of beasts;
animus is conversely derived "apo tu animu," namely the wind, since its cogitation is
similarly swift.[[21]] With soul and mind thus distinguished, he adds almost gratuitous
differentiations from other terms. Mens is defined, but the distinction from animus is not
made explicit. Spiritus is defined, and opposed to anima, in three ways. Thus, he
concludes, "the soul is defined as a spiritual substance which in no way perishes" along
with the body (De an. 3.34-36).

With his terminology settled, Cassiodorus turns to defining the anima philosophically.
He begins by presenting various opinions, first from magistri saecularium litterarum,
who "say the soul is a simple substance, a natural shape, separate from the matter of its
body, a divisible whole, having the power of life" (De an. 4.1-4). This contribution from
the oracles of secular wisdom, the straw men of Cassiodorus' argument, is not wrong but
incomplete. "The soul of man, as the opinion of truthful scholars has it [ut veracium
doctorum consentit auctoritas], is a unique spiritual substance created by God,
enlivening its body, rational and immortal, but capable of converting itself to both good
and evil" (De an. 4.4-7). The first definition echoes Chalcidius' Plato and Aristotle,
while the opinion of the veraces doctores depends on Augustine's De quantitate animae,
at least indirectly. It is this more comprehensive, and at the same time more religious,
definition that Cassiodorus proceeds to analyze in detail. The chapter that does this, and
on which the rest of the work is to be based, is longer then any of the other responses
and approximately three to four times as long as all but the ninth and the twelfth. For
this definition "is set out before us like a hen's egg, containing within the life of the
unborn bird and the pleasing array of feathers. Now we will unpack that definition
because men learn more readily what appears clearly divided in parts" (De an. 4.7-
11).[[22]] Each term of the definition of the veraces doctores is then elaborated at some
length.

The first topic is the createdness of the soul, on which for the first time in the work
scriptural authority is cited (from Ecclesiastes and Isaiah) in two passages that state
straightforwardly that God is the source of spiritus and omnis flatus (De an. 4.18-20).
Another paragraph explains the association of the soul with the body and its quality as
spirit, again quoting the authority of scripture. And so Cassiodorus proceeds through the
definition; his longest section is reserved for the discussion of the immortality of the

65
soul. In this case his procedure imitates that of the work as a whole: first he presents the
syllogisms of the auctores saecularium litterarum, but then he states, "We have no
trouble confirming the immortality of the soul on the authority of inspired texts," and he
alludes to Genesis 1.26 to argue that immortality is a necessary consequence of creation
in the image and likeness of God (De an. 4.127-132). To this argument are then added
for support only refutations of objections that might be brought against such an
interpretation of the Genesis passage; for example, it might be objected that image and
likeness entail the power to create, so Cassiodorus refutes this in hopes of leaving his
original argument erect. With such explanation he passes on to the last elements of the
definition, arguing the soul's convertibility towards good and evil on the basis of
common experience. Finally this point is used to conclude the section by showing how
this convertibility is what formally distinguishes for us between the soul of man and that
of God.

The third response, concerning the qualitas of the soul's substance, only refers at the
beginning to secular auctores, but the first theory presented is clearly pre-Christian, to
which again Cassiodorus responds with scripture and echoes of Augustine. The
remainder of the questions from this point on are of a philosophical nature, always
colored with this desire to show how the Christian answer differs from (mainly by
improving upon rather than refuting) the view of the secular authorities. Thus the fourth
section concludes that the soul does not have corporeal form, the fifth that the moral
virtues are the riches of the soul struggling against corporal impurity. Justice in this
view combats the prava vel iniqua in which man is susceptible, while prudence defends
against confusa and incerta; similar claims are made for fortitude and temperance. Thus
the cardinal virtues are made a fourfold shield against the onslaughts of vice.
Cassiodorus concentrates on the cardinal, rather than the theological, virtues, infusing
the old classical ideas with Christian meaning rather than transcending them completely.
Thus these moral virtues are contrasted only to the natural virtues of the soul, which we
would call its characteristic powers.

The most theological chapter treats the origin of the soul and attempts to understand the
scientific facts represented by the scriptural account of creation.[[23]] Since the chapter
itself begins with reference to scripture, there is no mention of secular views, and indeed
the question is taken in such a way as to preclude its ever having been asked by secular
authors. More traditional is the longest dispute, spread over two chapters, on the sedes
animae and the arrangement of the body to perform the soul's bidding. These chapters
are the least scriptural of the work, but the most obviously dependent on the
commentaries of earlier Christian writers.[[24]]

This discussion completes the scientific section of the work and affords a return to
moral issues. Two curious chapters come next, without much foundation in known
sources, on the ways of identifying good and bad men: "De cognoscendis malis
hominibus," and "De cognoscendis bonis hominibus" (De an. 12, 13). The first chapter
describes the fall of man through sin, then asserts that there are certain obvious
indicators by which evil men betray themselves. They are sad-eyed, easily distracted,
and worried over what other people might think of them; moreover, they have literally

66
an evil odor about their persons. Good men, the next chapter reveals, are forgiving,
humble, self-effacing images of what unfallen man might have been (and they have a
good odor besides). These laudable traits are not remarkable "in sexu validiore," but
Cassiodorus professes himself unable to explain the virtues of virgins and widows (De
an. 13.90-94).

It is easy to chuckle patronizingly at this kind of naive belief that good and evil men can
be distinguished by external characteristics, but there is considerable psychological truth
to the observations recorded in these chapters. They will not avail the reader much if he
stands on a street corner scrutinizing the faces of passersby, but they will enable him
better to look into his own soul and his own life. What are identified here are trivial
external characteristics that spring from deeper moral qualities and can bc symptoms of
much more significant things. There is a higher spiritual discipline in repressing and
correcting trivial bad habits, both as an inherently valuable practice and as a way of
getting at the more serious interior failings. Thus a concern for other people's opinion of
oneself is not in itself a great sin, but it is frequently a sign that temptations to vainglory
have not been altogether successfully resisted. Similarly, the virtues enumerated in the
chapter on good men are the little signs by which genuine, thoroughgoing moral
excellence can be recognized in other people. Cassiodorus is not suggesting with these
chapters that men can or should ,judge one another by these criteria, but he shows how
easily one's own failings and other people's virtues can be recognized by attention to
detail.

The last long chapter in three parts, on the state of the soul after death, is second in
length only to the definition chapter. Saeculares auctores have been forgotten, and
Cassiodorus promises to speak on the basis of a diversa lectio. He first describes death
scientifically (by sixth-century standards), then the approach to ,judgment: "There we
are burdened no longer with toil, we are no longer refreshed by food, nor are we daily
beset by hunger; but abiding without end in the soul's true nature we shall do no good or
evil deeds, but until the day of judgment only grieve for our past misdeeds or rejoice in
our probity" (De an. 14.6-11).

The bulk of this section describes the state of life in the futurum saeculum. The
identifiable verbal parallels here go back to the last books of Augustine's De civitate
Dei, where the subject was similar. Oddly, Cassiodorus does not depend at all on the
descriptions of heaven and hell provided in scripture, perhaps out of a preference for
attempting to rephrase familiar ideas. For the damned, hell is affliction without hope; for
the just, heaven is a place where "the stable mind does not hesitate, is not vacillating,
does not move, and is fixed in such a stable peace that it neither thinks nor seeks any
good save contemplation" (De an. 15.44-47). This heaven, echoing the Augustinian
formula, is a place where the soul is not able to sin (De an. 15.52-53). From here on, the
work becomes palpably less and less a philosophy treatise and more and more a
rhetorical evocation of, first, the conditions of the future life and, second, by an
imperceptible transition, God Himself. To believers painfully conscious of how little
they really could know of God, these verbal formulas were masterpieces of what the
human intellect could achieve in cooperation with divine revelation; for they achieved

67
the impossible: they captured something of the divine in mere words, enabling men to
reach some part of the unspeakable mystery of God.

It is an interruption in an exulting contemplation for Cassiodorus to call his readers back

to a mundane summary of the contents of the work here concluding, but he does so as
briefly and concisely as possible. His only comment is on his use of the number twelve,
which is the number of the zodiac signs, of the months of the year, of the principal
winds of the earth, and of the hours of each half of the day's cycle.

After that short paragraph the remainder of the work is one final admonition growing
gradually into a heartfelt prayer. "Now it remains, learned and astute readers, to
transcend the material world and speedily offer ourselves to the divine mercy which
illuminates all who behold it" (De an. 17.26-29). It is in that subjection to God that
victory for the understanding will be found; "in Christ's service no heart which gives
itself wholly up to Him is ever found untouchable, nor can it fail to see what it seeks,
nor can it lose what it is given in reward for loyalty" (De an. 17.33-36). The second
person of apostrophe to the divinity enters easily and naturally, still in the course of a
praise of divine mercy in revealing such things to men. This in turn leads to worshipful
consideration of the redemptive function of God in Christ.

The "Oratio" (as so designated in the MSS) begins with a plea to Christ for
assistance.[[25]] For the serpent is everywhere troubling all men: "he casts the evil eye,
alas, on such great peoples, because there are two of them, and still persecutes the time-
bound men whom he makes mortal by his impious efforts" (De an. 18.10-12).[[26]] This
one sentence has received more comment than any other in the De anima because
scholars have been unanimous in seeing in it a reference to contemporary events; just
how the content of that reference is to be interpreted, scholars have been far from
unanimous. The two main possibilities are that the two peoples so pitied are the
Ostrogoth-Roman kingdom of Italy and the Byzantines (argued by van de Vyver, and
followed by Besselaar, Cappuyns, and Ludwig), or that they are the Catholic Romans
and Arian Goths in Italy itself (Mommsen, followed by Schanz).[[27]] If there is a
contemporary reference in this passage, the two poles of opinion seem to me to blur an
important reality, namely the connection between the Catholic Romans in Italy and the
Catholic Romans coming from the east. Thus both opinions can be true, but neither
complete, if the reference is to the whole pattern of oppositions between peoples
brought to a head by the Gothic war, but going back to all the attempts to justify and
establish the position of the Gothic kingdom in Italy over the preceding decades. In this
view the two parties are simply those who do and do not accept the rule of the Goths in
Italy as legitimate; the whole crisis of identity which that kingdom suffered throughout
its history is here encapsulated. Thus the theory is an attractive one; but it is dangerously
undersupported by the flimsy text on which it is built. Some scholars have even
professed to be able to date the composition of the work to within a few months on the
basis of this passage almost alone; that is surely folly. The allusion is, in the end,
obscure. The thought of the passage in which it is couched is a simple and nonpolitical
one: that the devil is still active in the world to the detriment of men.

68
Having sought general assistance in this prayer against the devil, the emphasis turns
personal and the pronouns become first person singular: "Lord... save me from myself
and preserve me in you .... Then shall I belong to myself, when I truly belong to you"
(De an. 18.19-22). Only in God will we understand ourselves and our troubles and
successes. "All things rush to ruin when they revolt from loyalty to your might" (De an.
18.28-29). To love God is to be saved, to fear Him is to rejoice, to find Him is to grow,
to have lost Him is to perish. Then another apparently contemporary reference: "It is in
the end nobler to be your servant than to gain all the kingdoms of the earth" (De an.
18.31-32). This passage has also leapt out of the page and into the hands of scholars
interested solely in the text as an (albeit unsatisfactory) historical source, telling them
that Cassiodorus was profoundly disenchanted with public life and emotionally and
spiritually in the process of a drastic conversion from a worldly to a spiritual life.
Perhaps there is a special sight that reveals such hidden mysteries to some scrutinizers
of ambiguous, conventional texts of this sort, which many a public servant of the age
could have written only to return directly to the most distasteful political or military
chores; if there be such a sight, I do not possess it and the text says nothing
extraordinary to me. There is nothing in what we know concretely of Cassiodorus'
public life to make us think that he ever lost sight completely of the superiority of
heavenly to earthly kingdoms. The value as historical evidence of any such statement,
moreover, is sharply reduced by its presence in a profoundly confessional rhetorical text
such as this.[[28]] There is no reason to suspect that merely because it echoes the
conventional, it is false; but neither are there grounds for seeing in it dramatic personal
revelation. The whole tone of the work, with its extremely reserved self-representation,
militates against such a conclusion.

The tone of self-abnegation reaches its height in the last paragraph of the prayer, where
God's action in human life is extolled and sought after (De an. 18.52-54). Finally, a last
short statement directly by the author to the reader completes the motif of humility,
excusing the inadequacy of the treatment on grounds of the author's weakness,
attributing the virtues of the work to his written sources.[[29]] "They can speak of these
things blamelessly who have shown by the quality of their life that they have been
purified in divine service" (De an. 18.58-60).

If we may for a moment ignore the author's petitions for forgiveness of his faults, what
has this little book achieved? First, it has summarized the orthodox doctrine of the
church in the sixth century on the human soul, arguing not from reason, nor again from
secular authority, but from the authority of scripture and the fathers of the church.
Second, more importantly, it has made the forbiddingly dry philosophical topic lead, as
if naturally, into moral and theological considerations of the highest order, leading from
the soul to its ultimate fate to the God that directs that fate. Third, it has embodied some
stage or other in the spiritual development of its author. Concerned about the popularity
of the saeculares doctores and the way they came to dominate philosophical discussion
even in the Christian empire (as in Boethius' theological tractates, for example),
Cassiodorus' work in the form we see it represents an epoch in the progression that will
lead eventually to the monastic and intellectual enterprise at Squillace.

69
But we can comprehend the De anima no better than primitive man understood a
rainbow. However attractive and unique the work seems to us to be, we are as
unprepared to untangle with accuracy the circumstances of its composition as the
primitive was to explain the refraction of light through suspended raindrops. We should
be careful lest our desire to know more and more about Cassiodorus himself should lead
us to skip over the simpler pleasure of observing his creation. Thus the period of this
work remains for us a mystery, illuminated only by fleeting rays. We have arrived at a
working hypothesis for Cassiodorus' movements at this time, determining that he may
well have left Ravenna, perhaps under constraint, with the party in which Belisarius
took Witigis to Constantinople, and that he settled in the eastern metropolis for over a
decade. In the next chapter we will pursue the fragments of evidence that tell us about
his stay in Constantinople, and we will look closely at the literary monument that he
produced in that curious exile.

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Chapter 5, The Expositio Psalmorum
THE study of Cassiodorus' public life has focused our attention on the centers of power
in Ostrogothic Italy. With his retirement and departure from Ravenna the scene begins
to change; the horizon of his experience first expands as we study his years in
Constantinople, then contracts rapidly around the monastic foundations at Squillace.
This chapter examines the years in the eastern capital.

If Cassiodorus had never been out of Italy before his retirement, he had lived his whole
life in a land that had imperceptibly become a backwater. No longer did all roads run to
Rome; even Theoderic, the ruler of Italy for a third of a century, only made the journey
across the Apennines down to Rome once in all that time.

Constantinople was an altogether different case, for the land and sea routes of the
Mediterranean had brought the New Rome to center stage. Rome had always been a
republican city bearing imperial pageantry a bit uneasily; Constantinople was a city of,
by, and for the emperors. Physically the imperial palace was the center of the city, with
private connections to the forums of public life--the great circus and the great church.
Particularly in Justinian's day, if not again thereafter, the view from Constantinople
extended to the farthest horizons in all directions, to the frontiers with Persia, to Egypt,
Africa, Spain, and Italy, as well as up through the Black Sea to the western edges of the
great steppes. If in Italy men were preoccupied with finding new ways to settle the
politics of their corner of the Mediterranean world while a few aristocrats dreamed of
past glory, in Constantinople visions of the past were alive and real with a still glorious
future. Moderns are harsh with Justinian for having failed to cut back on imperial
pretensions at a time when such prudence could well have made permanent the Roman
claims around the orbis terrarum; but it was not a lack of vision that kept Justinian from
bringing the barbarian kingdoms into a peaceful and mutually profitable association
with the empire, but rather too many visions, and too grandiose ones. Justinian may very
well be forgiven for believing that with just a little extra military vigor the empire that
had maintained so much of itself with such indifferent leadership for so long could once
and for all settle things according to the old plan.

But what a contrast Constantinople must have meant for Cassiodorus! Not long since
honored himself with the highest rank his country could offer him, in Constantinople he
became a cipher, no doubt astonished and a little abashed in the face of the pomp and
splendor of Byzantine ceremony and city life. It is perhaps the greatest pity of all for
students of Cassiodorus that we do not know more about this period in his life, the
contacts that he made in Constantinople, the intellectual currents in which he wet his
feet, the ones in which he swam, and the particular influences that shaped his actions
when it came time to leave.

But first we must consider the length of his stay in the capital. In the last chapter we saw
evidence from an Italian perspective to indicate that he arrived in Constantinople in
about 540 and stayed until 554. Now further evidence is available from an eastern
perspective.

71
There are first of all two pieces of direct evidence from the last years of Cassiodorus'
stay; their coincidence in date (and that of a third piece of evidence now known to have
been erroneously dated so late) was the strongest explicit evidence for assuming that
Cassiodorus' stay in the capital was brief and late. First, Jordanes, who probably
composed his own works in Constantinople, obtained a copy of Cassiodorus' Gothic
History from Cassiodorus' own steward, obviously at Constantinople, in 550 or 551,
when composing his Getica (Get., praef. 2). Second, Cassiodorus is named in a letter of
Pope Vigilius, dating also from 550, which excommunicates two of the pope's
followers, Rusticus and Sebastianus, for their obstinate opposition to the ban on the
Three Chapters, in which condemnation Vigiiius had acquiesced in 548.[[1]]

The third apparent contact in Constantinople of which evidence survives was with
Justinian's quaestor, Junillus (or Junilius Africanus, as some style him). It was until
recently believed that Junillus' little pamphlet, the Instituta regularia divinae legis, was
written in 550-551. Cassiodorus later recommended this book as one of the most
important basic handbooks for the interpretation of scripture (Inst. 1.10.1). But more
importantly, the pamphlet represented the Nisibean style of interpretation, which
Junillus had learned at Constantinople from Paul the Persian, who had lectured at
Nisibis; and the enterprise of Nisibis is mentioned on the first page of Cassiodorus'
Institutiones one of the examples of organized Christian scholarship and teaching that
inspired Cassiodorus' own venture. It thus seems likely that Cassiodorus had personal
contact with the author of this work; if it was written in 550-551, moreover, that would
further confirm the late date for Cassiodorus' presence. However, there is now
conclusive evidence to believe that Junillus died in 548 or 549 and that his treatise was
composed in 542.[[2]] Nisibean ideas would probably have been unhealthy to publish
after 543 or 544 in the middle of the Three Chapters controversy.

But Cassiodorus' own position in that controversy, the principal theological amusement
of the capital through the 540's and early 550's, was always an ambiguous one.[[3]]
When writing his Institutiones back in Squillace and away from the court's power, he
had no hesitation in recommending Junillus' little book and in mentioning the Nisibis
school favorably; but we have already seen that at Vigilius' urging, sometime in 549 or
550, he was active in attempting to reconcile two rebellious westerners to accepting the
ban on the authors in question. In his own Expositio Psalmorum, written through this
same period and revised somewhat at Squillace, he made use of the Defensio trium
capitulorum of Facundus of Hermiane, published in February 548 before Vigilius'
decision to approve the emperor's condemnation. Most scholars have assumed that the
citation of Facundus must date the conclusion of the work to the period between
Facundus' publication and Vigilius' condemnation, especially since the whole
commentary is dedicated to a pater apostolicus who can only be Vigilius.[[4]] Given
Cassiodorus' ambiguous attitude, however, no such razor-sharp dating is possible; the
potential significance of this citation of Facundus will concern us when we come to
discuss the Christology expressed in the Psalm commentary.

72
We must also remark the association of Cassiodorus' name in Vigilius' letter with that of
Cethegus. Cethegus was the recipient of the original version of the document that was
condensed to make the Ordo generis Cassiodororurn; he had been a leading figure in the
Roman senate since his consulship in 504; and he made his own way to Constantinople
sometime in the 540's. The contrast that Vigilius makes between the two men, citing
Cethegus as a gloriosus vir and patricius, while Cassiodorus is called a religiosus vir and
filius noster, is the clearest definition we have of Cassiodorus' position in
Constantinople. For he could with ease have been called gloriosus, and he was certainly
entitled to the rank of patricius; but these honorific name-tags are something that
Cassiodorus begins to shed after his retirement. That he is called a religiosus vir seems
to indicate that the "conversion" that seemed to begin about the time of the composition
of the De anima had continued to such an extent that the religiosity of his life became at
this time a defining characteristic, sufficient to distinguish him from his friend
Cethegus. Furthermore, the mention at the very beginning of the Expositio Psalmorum
that his interest in the Psalter began to be serious while he was still at Ravenna would
confirm the presumption that it was at Constantinople that he composed his great
commentary (just as it would be in the same city a few decades later that Gregory would
undertake his Moralia in Job). On the other hand, the term religiosus vir is not narrowly
limiting in its denotation; there is no mention of Cassiodorus being either monk or
priest, nor of his living in any organized religious community under a rule. In fact, the
indications are just the opposite.

First, we recall that Jordanes mentioned that Cassiodorus had a steward from whom he
had obtained a copy of one of the works that Cassiodorus published during his career as
a statesman. Cassiodorus was thus still in charge of some sort of household in order to
employ a steward; moreover, he still had and cherished a copy of his Gothic History.
Since the work itself has now perished, since it is never mentioned during Cassiodorus'
Squillace period, and since other original works known to have been produced during
the Squillace period have of course survived, it seems reasonable to assume that
Cassiodorus himself grew careless of it at some point, presumably in connection with a
loss of interest in public affairs. That he still kept a copy in Constantinople implies that
he was not yet completely and formally immersed in a life of religion.

The date for Cassiodorus' departure from Constantinople is every bit as uncertain as the
other dates of his stay, but it can be approximated. We last know for certain of
Cassiodorus in Constantinople in 551, the time of Jordanes' publication; at this time
Italy was in flames with the last throes of the Gothic war. Narses was sent to mop up the
situation, and he destroyed Totila in 552 and Teias in 553. In August 554, Justinian
issued the Pragmatic Sanction reorganizing the government of Italy under Byzantine
control.[[5]] The Pragmatic Sanction seems to have been a signal for the general return
to Italy of refugees, partly because it ratified the pacification of that country. Moreover,
the struggle over the Three Chapters had come to an effective conclusion when, in late
553 or early 554, Vigilius bowed to the Council of Constantinople in condemning the
three authors disputed once and for all without cavil. The controversy was not in fact
concluded with this official decree, but the formalities were for the moment settled.
With military and theological peace throughout Italy and the empire for the first time in

73
two decades, then, it is logical to assume that Cassiodorus found his way home with the
others.

If this reconstruction is correct, then Cassiodorus' longest book was written while he
sojourned in Constantinople. The Expositio Psalmorum is the only formal commentary
on the entire Psalter surviving from the patristic era. Because, however, it tells us more
about the Psalms than about Gothic or monastic history, it has been the least fully
studied of all Cassiodorus' works.[[6]]

There is in fact still room for much further study of patristic and medieval exegesis. The
great work of Henri de Lubac has revolutionized our understanding of the theory of
interpretation, but we still need demanding critical study of the practice of
hermeneutic.[[7]] We still do not possess a cumulative understanding of the rhetoric of
this exegesis sufficient to enable us to evaluate and compare different commentaries on
the basis of the presuppositions that controlled them. There is still something of the
puzzled novice in all of our treatments of medieval exegetical writings, due simply to
the lack of adequately broad common scholarly experience in giving to works of
exegesis the kind of sympathetic attention that Lubac's work has made possible. Thus
when we approach Cassiodorus' Expositio Psalmorun, we are attempting to do things
that the human race has forgotten how to do; we must attempt to teach ourselves to read
all over again, to look to this bulky book to tell us things that we are unaccustomed to
hearing in ways that we are not used to following. As is the case so often in the analysis
of forgotten modes of intellectual activity, we must suspend every instinctive adverse
judgment in order to pursue the unique form of human thought that lies behind the (to
us) discordant surface features.

This study will approach the Psalm commentary from three different directions. First,
we will be concerned with the sources on which Cassiodorus drew, especially
Augustine's sermons on the Psalms, but also the many other works cited fragmentarily
that give us clues to the circumstances of composition. Second, we will study the
exegetical technique with which Cassiodorus worked, following the gymnastics of his
mind in coming to grips with an individual text and producing the commentary on it.
Third, we will look at the content of the exegesis, that is, at the subject matter discussed
in connection with the Psalm texts.

The circumstances and purpose of the composition of the Expositio are the first topics of
the work's preface. The opening sentence states that Cassiodorus avidly sought the
honey of the Psalter after the amarissimae actiones of his public life, while still in
Ravenna. This new study of the Psalter was hindered, however, by the obscurity of the
text, which he found veiled in parables (Ex. Ps., praef. 6-7).

The solution to this difficulty Cassiodorus found in the sermons of Augustine, the
Enarrationes in Psalmos: "Then I took refuge in the delightful work of our most
eloquent father Augustine, in which I found such a densely packed flood of sage
remarks that I could scarcely remember what I saw expounded there so abundantly"
(Ex. Ps., praef. 10-13). The Enarrationes of Augustine was a collection of his sermons

74
delivered on various occasions, selected and ordered so that they covered the entire
Psalter. There is some irregularity of coverage, some duplication of explanations;
moreover, when the compilation was made, Augustine discovered that he did not have a
sermon on the extraordinarily long Psalm 118, so a separate treatise was composed for
the purpose.[[8]] The most important feature of Augustine's work is just its homiletic
quality; rather than a systematic commentary on each verse, Augustine's work was an
interpretation of the text for an audience listening to the oral presentation. Moreover,
Augustine's collection was simply enormous beyond all convenience.

Mindful of all these things and of his own inadequacies, Cassiodorus was inspired to
take up the pen himself, to "draw this ocean sprung from the Psalms themselves, with
God's help, into shallow streams," the better to serve the student (Ex. Ps., praef. 15-19).
It is unlikely that Cassiodorus could have written this work at Squillace in possession of
his library there, for he did not have a full set of Augustine's Enarrationes.[[9]] Since,
however, the explicit quotations in Cassiodorus' commentary from Augustine's original
are taken from remarks on Psalms in every decade of the Psalter, it is clear that the
commentary must have been compiled at some place where Cassiodorus had regular
access to the full Augustine, and therefore not at Squillace.

Cassiodorus was, however, more humble than precise in asserting that his work only
summarized Augustine's; while he admitted adding certain things of his own, he
deliberately left the impression that his work's virtues were all borrowed from
Augustine. In fact, the relationship between the two works is not as close as Cassiodorus
pretended, nor as distant as modern scholars believe. The scarcity of citations and
allusions indicated by the index to the only modern edition of Cassiodorus' commentary
(discerning only seventy-six such allusions in the entire work) is in fact radically
misleading. Proof for such an assertion can be given economically by presenting a
sample case; let us take Psalm 81.

There is no explicit mention or quotation of Augustine in Cassiodorus' treatment of this

Psalm; no allusion was detected in the modern edition. Nevertheless, the entire
exposition of this Psalm seems clearly based on Augustine's original treatment.
Augustine's approach to the Psalm, on a straight verseby-verse basis, beginning with the
titulus, is obscured by Cassiodorus' more formal pattern. To begin with, Augustine
asserts that the name Asaph in the titulus was placed there as a figure of the Synagoga
(Enarr. in Psal. 81.1). Cassiodorus believed firmly, but Augustine did not always accept,
that every Psalm was actually written by David, and that other names in the tituli are
only there for our edification. In this case, Augustine and Cassiodorus agree; for
Cassiodorus states that "these names are placed in the tituli for us to interpret; in this
case Asaph represents Synagoga" (Ex. Ps. 81.2-4). In treating the first line of the Psalm,
Augustine explains the term Synagoga: it represents for him congregatio, while Ecclesia
stands for convocatio--the former is proper of beasts, the latter of men. Cassiodorus:
"Synagoga is basically translated congregatio, an assembly but not specifically one of
human beings; Ecclesia is a genuine convocatio" (Ex. Ps. 81.11-13).

75
At an early stage of Cassiodorus' exposition of the first verse, he quotes scripture: "One
stands in your midst whom you know not" (John 1.26). Augustine's own explanation of
the first verse runs on at some length, but toward the end, he too quotes the same line of
John. Nor is this the only such case; apropos of verse 4, both authors quote the line,
"They are mute hounds, they cannot bark" (Isaiah 56.10). In treating verse 5, both recall
the passage, "For if they had known Him, they would never have crucified the Lord of
glory" (1 Cor. 2.8), and both cite a passage of Matthew for that same verse. Such
coincidences of citation are too close to be accidental; they constitute the strongest proof
that Cassiodorus had the text of Augustine's Enarrationes under his hand when
composing his own. This is important, since Cassiodorus, his own man, could easily
have differed from Augustine on individual points of interpretation, while at the same
time making use of the earlier author. Thus where a particular proof text seemed
apposite, he could quote it as Augustine had; for him to have found such a pattern of
parallel proof texts for one short Psalm independently of Augustine is beyond belief It
would not be worth denying that Cassiodorus brought his own fundamentally sound
intellectual and religious training to bear on the commentary he wrote; but at the same
time, it could be demonstrated more clearly than has been done before that he did indeed
rely on Augustine's work as a guide for the entire length of his endeavor.[[10]]

But Cassiodorus also had other resources than Augustine to bring to bear on the subject.
The first and most obvious was the remainder of the text of scripture itself; for all the
parallelism between Augustine's and Cassiodorus' use of individual passages,
Cassiodorus used many of his own choice as well.[[11]] In fact, in the course of the
Expositio, Cassiodorus quoted or alluded to passages from nearly every book of the
Bible. The most obvious implication of this wide-ranging use of scripture is the
familiarity that Cassiodorus must have possessed to make this kind of rapid and easy
allusion. To the period culminating in the composition of this commentary, we must
attribute a certain amount of time spent studying the scriptures directly and intensively,
in a way that made these parallels recall themselves to Cassiodorus' mind as he needed
them.[[12]]

Cassiodorus' other principal patristic source besides Augustine was Jerome, especially
the treatise on Hebrew names; but letters, treatises on the Psalms, and scattered other
commentaries of Jerome wcrc apparently used as well. Other patristic figures like Hilary
of Poitiers, Prosper of Aquitaine, Cyprian, his old friend Dionysius Exiguus, his
contemporary and acquaintance Primasius of Hadrumctum, even Pelagius, Leo the
Great, and the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon are more and less demonstrably
present.

Since Cassiodorus was interested in secular aries and disciplinae as they appear in the
Psalms, and since he was forever mentioning the technical terms for this and that
rhetorical figure, a certain number of secular authors appear as well, often (to be sure) at
second hand. Vcrgil is quoted half a dozen times, and Cicero about as often; their
presence is not surprising, but that of Macrobius, quoted by name three times, is at least
tantalizing. In truth, however, the number of other authors cited is not great, nor are the
quotations weighty;[[13]] nevertheless, the presence of the diverse batch of authors who

76
can be found here, and the diversity of works cited for the more frequently named,
evinces wide learning at least, and possibly access to a good library at the time of
composition.

The most interesting citations in the work are the ones that give us just a hint of the
circumstances surrounding its composition. There are three authors quoted whose works
would not have been widely disseminated in the west at this time, even in translation:
Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom. There are only brief citations
from their works, but nevertheless it is clear that Cassiodorus had direct access to them.
We do not see all the same works quoted later on in works from the period at Squillace
(although Cassiodorus will be active in getting Chrysostom's homilies on Hebrews
translated). Athanasius is quoted, both times from his letter to Marcellinus on the virtues
of the Psalms, in the last chapter but one of the Preface to the whole work and in the last
commentary on the last Psalm.[[14]] Cyril of Alexandria's letters are quoted twice, once
from the Latin version of Marius Mercator, and once in a Latin version not identifiable
with any surviving text (Ex. Ps. 21.70-72, 16.311-315). Finally, Chrysostom is quoted
four times, but always in versions identifiable with translations in other Latin authors
(i.e., Cassian, Leo the Great, and an anonymous manuscript version surviving from the
seventh/eighth centuries). Two things need to be said about this evidence. First, it
proves nothing, since even if equivalent versions do not survive from some quotations,
they could easily have existed at the time of Cassiodorus' writing, and he could have had
access to them anywhere in the Mediterranean world. Second, however, despite the
obvious focus on Augustine and Jerome, and despite the probability that Cassiodorus
was associating mainly with other Latins in Constantinople, nevertheless the use of
these Greek authors gives a hint of the atmosphere in which the work was composed.
The possibility that they establish is further augmented by the dedication to Vigilius
(who must have been in Constantinople when the work was completed) and the citation
of Facundus of Hermiane. There can be no doubt that Cassiodorus spent some time at
Constantinople; what remains to be certified is whether he spent the entire decade of the
540's there, composing the Expositio there, or whether he worked on it in Italy
(presumably at Squillace) and brought it along, nine-tenths finished, to complete and
hand to Vigilius at Constantinople. The combination of circumstantial evidence from the
last chapter and this one add up to a strong probability in favor of the hypothesis of a
longer stay, but certainty is still out of reach. Cassiodorus' Christological preoccupations
in this commentary will offer a little more help later on in this chapter, but they are still
not conclusive.

In this welter of unproved possibilities, there is one thread that leads to a fairly firm
conclusion. However one reads the evidence, two facts come out in parallel to one
another: that Cassiodorus did spend time in Constantinople in his middle years, and that
his works do not show a strong influence of Greek thought. This is strong evidence for
arguing that Cassiodorus did not in fact possess particularly useful facility with the
Greek language. This impression can be confirmed by the effusive praise that he had in
later years for those who could handle both Greek and Latin fluently (e.g., Inst. 1.23.2);
moreover, in spite of the extensive program of translations from the Greek that he
instituted at the Vivarium, there is no evidence that he ever worked as a translator

77
himself. Quite to the contrary, we are repeatedly told the names of the actual translators
who did the work; Cassiodorus' desire to see important texts brought over from Greek
into Latin may very well be connected with his own inadequacy.

The Expositio Psalmorum depended for much of its interpretative doctrine on

Augustine, but it was in fact a completely original work, almost unique in its formal
approach to the text and certainly unique in the goals it sought to achieve in the study of
scripture. As we examine the individuality of this work, we will begin to be able to
grasp its general purposes a little more clearly; those purposes will shed some light on
Cassiodorus' own actions at this period.

Cassiodorus' commentary certainly cannot be attacked by the common modern canard

that medieval exegesis is disorderly, rambling on eternally on trivial texts; a quite
contrary impression is derived merely from inspecting a page or two of the work. For
every Psalm there is a clear layout of the material in an introductory paragraph on the
titulus (the short attribution of the Psalm to an author or, as Cassiodorus would have it,
cantor, with other brief identifying remarks), a section entitled divisio psalmi setting out
the Psalm's different sections according to content, then a verse-by-verse exposition of
the text, and finally a paragraph of conclusio, summarizing the important points of the
exegesis and frequently discoursing on the symbolism of the Psalm's ordinal number.
This external regularity is not merely superficial, but is an indication of the underlying
principles of Cassiodorian exegesis.

In this vein, one important feature of the Expositio Psalmorum is the long preface, with
an introductory section, then seventeen chapters of methodological and technical
remarks, and a concluding list of the "chapters" into which the entire Psalter can be
divided. From the point of view of the modern reader, this division of Psalms by
allegorical subject matter is the heart of the most alien feature of the entire work. In fact,
the principle behind the practice is a simple and obvious one. In the first chapter of the
preface, "De prophetia," Cassiodorus defines prophecy as "a divine pronouncement
predicting the outcome of events through the words and deeds of men with unshakable
accuracy" (Ex. Ps., praef. 1.1-2). By this definition, David, the author of every Psalm,
was himself a great prophet, "filled with the breath of heaven" (Ex. Ps., praef 1.20).
Therefore, "we see clearly that every Psalm is spoken prophetically through the Holy
Spirit" (Ex. Ps., praef.. 1.24-25). Every Psalm can thus be interpreted allegorically to
refer to the truths of the Christian faith. The reality of the allegorical nature of the
Psalms in Cassiodorus' mind leads directly to his classification of the Psalms by subject
matter. By observation, Cassiodorus determined the major subjects under which his
interpretations of the Psalms could be summarized; he gives a list of them at the end of
the preface, where they total, oddly enough, to just twelve:

1. the carnal life of the Lord;

2. the nature of His deity;
3. the multiplied peoples who tried to destroy Him;
4. that the Jews should cease their evil ways;
5. Christ crying out to the Father in the passion, and being resurrected from the dead;

78
6. penitential Psalms;
7. the prayers of Christ, chiefly in His human nature;
8. parables, tropes, and allegories, telling the story of the life of Christ;
9. Psalms beginning with the exclamation Alleluia;
10. "gradual" Psalms, fifteen in sequence;
11. the praises of the Trinity;
12. seven Psalms of exultation at the very end.[[15]]
After enumerating these headings, Cassiodorus then failed to give coherent lists of the
individual Psalms that come under each category. Instead, therefore, of an index at the
beginning by which we could be instructed to flip to, say, the seven penitential Psalms,
our information regarding the assignment of the Psalms to given chapter headings must
be garnercd from scattered remarks throughout the commentary.

There is, however, good and adequate reason for this reticence about publishing
complete lists of which Psalms come under which headings. First, the list of the twelve
subjects is somewhat arbitrarily chosen in order to fill up the favored number twelve;
the eighth category duplicates in not altogether obvious ways the first and second, while
the eleventh covers part of the same ground as the second as well. Not every Psalm,
moreover, fits one and only one category exactly; some useful categories are not exactly
subjects (e.g., largely formal categories like prayers of David or penitential Psalms--and
Psalm 101, for example, fits both these categories), while other subcategories develop as
part of broader ones (e.g., poems prophesying the first coming of Christ as a
subcategory of those prophesying the first and second comings; or poems treating the
passion and resurrection brevius, and those treating these subjects latius). Finally, there
are the so-called alphabetic Psalms (with stanzas identified by the letters in the Hebrew
alphabet), seven in number, but overlapping at least three other categories (Alleluia,
laudes, and the carnal life of Christ). There is special allegorical significance assigned to
the alphabetic Psalms in addition to their formal virtue; for there are four such Psalms
styled "imperfect" (having fewer stanzas than there are letters in the whole Hebrew
alphabet) that Cassiodorus takes to represent the church on earth, which is almost, but
not quite, perfect. The three "perfect" alphabetic Psalms, having just as many stanzas as
the alphabet has letters, describe the acts and lives of individuals who have in fact
achieved the perfection toward which the church is striving.

Revealingly, it is the explicit, formal sort of category that comes nearest to puzzling
Cassiodorus. Speaking of the twenty Alleluia Psalms (which we have seen overlap other
categories as well), he says that their "even number perhaps represents the glory of Old
and New Testaments, so that the power of the Creator should be praised always and
everywhere. At least we have found no better reason why Alleluia is placed on just these
Psalms" (Ex. Ps. 104.38-42). In contrast to that, the alphabetic Psalms found an exact
interpretation: "the imperfect alphabet Psalms represent Ecclesia, which still flourishes
here and has not yet been purified by the weeding out of the unjust; the perfect alphabet
Psalms signify the heavenly Jerusalem, where the assembly of the perfect will be
completed with the addition of saintly men" (Ex. Ps. 144.39-42).

79
For Psalms categorized strictly by subject matter, Cassiodorus' typical treatment can be
seen in the conclusio for Psalm 108, the fifth of the Psalms to treat the passion of Christ
at length (Psalms 21, 34, 54, and 68 are the others). These Psalms, he says, have four
things in common: they are all spoken in the person of Christ, they describe the events
of the passion (allegorically), they agree in detail with the Gospel (after they have been
allegorized), and they end with exultant hope for the faithful (they look forward to the
resurrection). In addition to these Psalms, there are as many as six (Cassiodorus' list is
not complete or coherent) that deal more briefly with the same subject (Ex. Ps. 108.491-
511).

One obvious formal category does not appeal to Cassiodorus as such: Psalms joined
together by identity of text. For example, Psalm 13 has virtually the same text as Psalm
52 except for an interpolation; but Cassiodorus' interpretation resolutely casts the former
as referring to the first coming of Christ and the rebuking of the Jewish people, while
the latter is taken as referring to the second coming and the rebuking of sinners in the
world. Similarly, Psalm 107 is a cento of sections from two earlier Psalms (56.8-12 and
59.6-14), but it bears a different titulus from either of the others and hence a different
Cassiodorian interpretation. It cannot, however, be ascertained which came first: the
allegorizations of the Psalms or the subject headings under which they were grouped.

The other principal division of the entire collection of the Psalms is a less functional
one, introduced more for contemplation of the division itself than for any assistance it
affords in understanding individual Psalms. For Cassiodorus breaks the entire
commentary in two parts, making the first seventy Psalms a figure of the Old Testament
and the last eighty of the New. He attributes this division to partes nostri (Ex. Ps.
70.494). He abandons this division for practical purposes, however, since by his own
testimony and that of the manuscript tradition itself the commentary was in practice
bound in three volumes, with fifty Psalms in each. But the figurative significance of the
division by Testaments is insisted upon, and a brief new preface comes before Psalm 71.
The principle remains clear, however, that the entire Psalter is to be referred to the
content of the New Testament in particular by way of prophecy; thus this book of
scripture, the first taken up by "tyros beginning the study of Holy Scripture" (Ex. Ps.,
praef.. 16.42), becomes a compendium of the central doctrines of the Christian
faith.[[16]]

Not only does this method provide a way to teach the truths of the faith, but it also fills
the entire Psalter with abiding meaning for the student who learns its content in this way
to begin with.

The highly formal, organized way in which Cassiodorus goes about the practice of his
exegesis, as we have already indicated, is compatible with the didactic purpose of the
whole work. Each Psalm is treated in the same way, with an interpretation divided into
four clearly visible parts: titulus, divisio, expositio, conclusio.

The attention Cassiodorus gives to the tituli, the short identifying remarks given at the
beginning of each (but not quite every) Psalm is an important part of his exegetical

80
practice, termed by Schlieben the prosopographical approach.[[17]] Cassiodorus insists
repeatedly that David and only David can be taken as the author of all 150 Psalms. Once
he has assumed that the other names that appear in the tituli are not those of their
authors, he is entitled to make use of these names, with their historical and etymological
associations, to enlighten and organize his own exposition. To return to Psalm 81, for
example, we recall that there the titulus is given as "Psalmus Asaph." Cassiodorus
followed Augustine in interpreting Asaph's name as representing the synagogue (as
opposed to the church). What is characteristic in Cassiodorus' approach in this Psalm is
that he is dependent for the idea on prior tradition but independent in the importance he
attributes to the matter. He reaches down into Augustine's discussion of the first verse,
which mentions the ideas of the synagogue, to drag the etymologies of synagoga and
ecclesia up into his treatment of the titulus alone, where Augustine dismissed the titulus
in a single sentence (as he did with virtually every Psalm).

Significant names, however, are not the only subject that attracts Cassiodorus' interest in
the treatments of tituli.[[18]] Every single word that appears in the rubric is grist for
Cassiodorus' interpretative mill; in fact, much of the explanatory material contained in
the preface to the entire collection is intended to resolve some of these difficulties once
and for all so that Cassiodorus can then refer back to them as they come up, rather than
treat them over again time after time. For example, a separate chapter (the third in the
preface) is set aside for the common inscription "In finem" found at the beginning of
many Psalms in the Latin versions. Augustine's practice was to pass over this phrase
briefly, usually citing Paul: "for the end [finis] of the Law is Christ, unto justice for
every believer" (Rom. 10.4).[[19]] Cassiodorus finds it more efficient to remove this
discussion to a separate chapter of the preface, wherein he makes more explicit the ideas
contained in these and other throwaway lines of Augustine. First he states that we can
speak of a finis in two ways, the end of something in the ordinary sense (as of money
when it has been spent) and "the perfect and everlasting goal [finis] we are seeking (Ex.
Ps., praef, 3.9-10). This end and fullness of the Law, he goes on, is Christ the Lord, and
then he quotes the passage from Paul himself: Christ is the true end of all things that
men seek. "When we reach Him we shall seek nothing further, but enjoy perfect
gladness abiding in this consummation of happiness [in ipso beatitudinis fine]; the love
of this happiness grows as our understanding is illuminated by the Lord. So as often as
you find 'in finem' in the tituli of the Psalms, then turn your mind to the Lord and
Savior, who is an end without end [finis sine fine] and the complete perfection of all
good things" (Ex. Ps., praef. 3.12-18).

The last word on the tituli also requires a separate chapter of the preface, "De unita
inscriptione titulorum," which tells us that the tituli "hang before the portals of the
Psalms like sacred veils through which, if you peer through the delicate fabric, you can
easily make out the inner secrets of the Psalms. Who could think all this variety of
names superfluous where we know it is shameful to believe the Holy Scriptures contain
anything useless?" (Ex. Ps., praef 10.20-25). Thus these mysterious words, so
laboriously explained at such length, are in fact keys to the spiritual understanding of
scripture, providing the hints that we need to perfectly understand the superficially
simpler content of the Psalms themselves.

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Cassiodorus presents a summary outline of his treatment of the Psalms in the fourteenth
chapter of his preface. First, he promises, the tituli will be explained. Second, each
Psalm is to be divided up into sections, "lest any unnoticed change of subjects or
speakers should trouble our understanding" (Ex. Ps., praef 14.5-7). Third, Cassiodorus
will attempt to unfold the "meaning of the Psalm, partly according to the spiritual
interpretations, partly according to the historical content, partly according to the
mystical sense, analyzing the subtleties of things and words as far as possible" (Ex. Ps.,
praef 14.7-11). Fourth, he will attempt to elaborate the virtus of the Psalm, its inspiratio
divina, "by which the divine meaning is opened up for us, drawing us back from
immorality and persuading us to live uprightly by the words of the psalmist David" (Ex.
Ps., praef 14.14-16). Fifth, he will discuss the ordering of the numbering of the Psalms,
i.e., interpret the numbers according to mystical principles; he confesses that this will
cause some difficulty, since not every Psalm admits such treatment. Finally, "in the
conclusiones we will briefly summarize the whole Psalm or perhaps say a few words
against despicable heresies" (Ex. Ps., praef.. 14.23-25).

The notion of the explicit divisio Furnished for every Psalm (except Psalm 116, which
has only two verses) is a Cassiodorian innovation resulting from his passion for formal
order and the imposition of a visible logical skeleton on the work from outside.[[20]]
Cassiodorus alludes to his own innovation in the conclusion to his treatment of Psalm
106:"I see this Psalm was divided in sections by the most learned pater Augustine, who
says he believed he was thus expounding it to his audience in an unprecedented way.
We imitate him as best we can, dividing all the Psalms in this way, showing in our
comments that a practice authorized by so great a pater offers considerable assistance in
understanding the Psalms" (Ex. Ps. 106.518-524). In fact, however, this appeal to
Augustine's authority is strained. First, the very generality of Cassiodorus' practice is
directly at variance with Augustine's more easygoing interpretations. But second, in the
case of this very Psalm, Cassiodorus' own divisions differ from Augustine's. Augustine's
treatment is nowhere near as enslaved to external form as is that of Cassiodorus.

The function of the divisio for the commentary on each Psalm is central to the sense of
the exposition. The divisio begins with a summary of the Psalm's nature, which
establishes the persona of the speaker of the entire Psalm, whether one individual or
several (e.g., Ex. Ps. 81.17-19). In complex cases, the several voices may be those of the
prophet himself, the Lord, or unfaithful men; moreover, the prophet himself may be
addressing first the Lord in prayer, then his enemies in rebuke, then his fellow believers
in thanksgiving for support, then the Lord again. In any event, the purpose is to
represent before the student's eyes a precise understanding of who, according to a
spiritual understanding of the Psalm, is speaking to whom at every point through the
Psalm.

Having established the identity of the speaker, the exegete divides the content of his
address into sections. Cassiodorus does not give specific verse numbers for division of
the Psalms into sections; his concern rather is to lay out a general picture of the
interpretation he is going to give, the framework onto which the individual verses will

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be stretched and shrunk to fit. The actual divisions in the text will not be noticed until
they come up in the course of the detailed exposition (but they are never left
unspecified). The principles behind the division of the Psalms are more exegetical than
formal, but one strictly technical point intervenes. Many Psalms are marked by
diapsalmata, which Cassiodorus rightly recognizes as having been originally indicators
of pauses in the performance of the Psalm.[[21]] Whenever these are available to him,
he will make use of them to identify a point of division; in practice, this is usually
successful, since they were originally inserted to indicate some break in the train of
thought and direction of the Psalm, which is precisely what Cassiodorus wants to use
them for.

The most significant departure from Augustinian practice in Cassiodorus, when all the
trivial differences of interpretation are counted up, is reserved for the conclusio. The
conclusiones to Cassiodorian interpretations are important sources, to be discussed
below, for Cassiodorus' own views as distinct from Augustine's, since these passages are
entirely original with Cassiodorus in every case. In Psalm 81, for example, a strongly
Christ-centered Psalm from the exegete's point of view, the appeal of Cassiodorus'
conclusio is to the Jews to come and open their ears to the true good news. But, more
than that, Cassiodorus directs his words to those "who are boiling over with the
pestilential breath of Nestorius and Eutychius" (Ex. Ps. 81,153).[[22]] "The error of
believing in two natures divided according to two personae in Christ is very like that of
believing in only one mixed nature, howbeit only in a single person" (Ex. Ps. 81.157-
159).[[23]] After quoting a verse of Sedulius' Carmen pasohale to the Nestorians thus
refuted, he turns to the Eutychians, comparing them subtly to doubting Thomas. "Why
do you fly," he asks them, "from confessing what our patres agreed upon by a revelation
of the Holy Spirit? If you will not believe in two natures unconfused, unchangeable,
undivided, and inseparable, say 'two substances' or 'two form' .... Beware of shrinking
from the healing poultice only to prepare eternal ruin for yourselves" (Ex. Ps. 81.175-
182).

We have already seen in Chapter 4, and we will see again in more detail in Chapter 6,
that one of Cassiodorus' chief concerns when writing as a Christian intellectual was the
relationship between Christian and secular learning. This concern expressed itself in a
remarkable way throughout the Expositio Psalmorum and must become one of our chief
objects of study. Next to Cassiodorus' strictly exegetical principles and practices, the
attitude he held towards the secular disciplines is the most obvious feature of his
exegesis and one in which his contribution is unique and substantial. It is important,
however, not to allow mere idiosyncracy to become in and of itself a criterion of
significance; despite his fascination with the secular sciences, Cassiodorus in this work
is still primarily a Christian theologian cxpounding scripture, and it is to his principles
in that field that we must look first. In the preface to the Expositio, Cassiodorus
promised to interpret the sense of the Psalms, "partly according to their spiritual
interpretation, partly according to their historical content, partly according to the
mystical sense" (Ex. Ps,, praef. 14.3). This statement, covering three of the four senses
of scripture traditionally listed, gives a false impression of the multiplication of
distinctions.[[24]] Although, for example, the mystical sense of scripture is usually that

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which deals with eschatology, while the spiritual sense is more generally that which
seeks the first allegorical meaning behind the literal one, the terms are by no means
mutually exclusive and can even be redundant.[[25]]

In fact, in Cassiodorus, redundant is what they are. Moreover, the expression of interest
in the historical sense here is little more than perfunctory. For the Expositio Psalmorum
is as resolutely and monolithically allegorical a commentary as ever was written. As can
be judged by the list of "chapters" into which Cassiodorus divided the Psalms according
to their content-- the content imposed upon them by the allegorist--the entire Psalter is
made an instrument for expressing and seeing expressed the truths of Christian
revelation. Scant attention is paid to the historical background, even of the most
obviously literal Psalms. Psalm 17, to take the most literal case, is a verbatim repetition
of a passage (a prayer of thanksgiving by David) at II Samuel 22.1-51; Cassiodorus
merely furnishes the crossreference, without attempting to place the piece in any of its
historical context. He notes the "in finem" of the titulus and thus the reference to Christ;
the use of the term canticum is meant, he goes on, to call our mind from the story of
David to the celestial kingdom, with clear parallels to the resurrection of Christ. The
division of the Psalm into section leaves only one short section for the prophet to give
his thanks (the first four verses); the next three sections are placed in the personae of the
church and the Lord Himself, and any possible reference to David is obliterated. In the
conclusio, Cassiodorus' chief concern is to excuse the unusual variety of persons
represented as speaking in this Psalm; the most important thing, he argues, is to notice
that the Lord Himself did not disdain to mix his words with those of the prophet and the
church, a figure for the generosity with which he undertook "to assume the abasement of
incarnation" (Ex. Ps. 17.740- 741).[[26]]

One Psalm in which Cassiodorus does make a serious professed attempt to observe the
"literal" sense is a curious exception testing the rule. Psalm 103, a hymn of praise to
God the creator, seems to Cassiodorus to be making explicit certain things implied in
the Genesis account of creation. "Thus we have explained this Psalm ad litteram where
appropriate; but where it could increase our knowledge of the faith we have interpreted
allegorically [spiritali intellectu] as the ancients did" (Ex. Ps. 103.11-13).[[27]]
Moreover, he tells us, Augustine has treated this Psalm fully and ought to be followed.
When it comes time, however, to interpret the verses of the Psalm, the criterion for
judging whether a given passage is to be taken literally or allegorically is fidelity to and
compatibility with the Genesis account. Thus the verse "Qui tegis aquis superiora eius,
Qui ponis nubem ascensum tuum, Qui ambulas super pennas ventorum" (Ps. 103.3) is to
be taken ad litteram, "since the Lord climbs to heaven after the resurrection with the
apostles looking on" (Ex. Ps. 103.104-106), and Cassiodorus quotes the relevant passage
of Acts. But a later verse poses problems: "Qui fundasti terrain super stabilitatem suam,
non inclinabitur in saeculum saeculi" (Ps. 103.5). "It seems this verse cannot be taken ad
litteram; for where we read that earth will be transformed [cf.. Apoc. 21.1], how can it
be that it will 'not be shaken through all ages'? But we recognize in this immutable terra
the stability of the church" (Ex. Ps. 103.146-150). Similarly the sixth verse is not to be
taken ad litteram (though Cassiodorus knows there are some who would like to do so).

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That for Cassiodorus the literal sense of scripture includes what might more properly be
termed allegorical readings is thus obvious in a number of cases. For example,
commenting on the phrase "in mari viae tuae" (Ps. 76.20), Cassiodorus has already
asserted that this section of the Psalm recounts the miracles of the Lord. That in itself is
an allegorical interpretation, but within that framework his interpretation of this specific
verse divides again into literal and allegorical. "If you take this literally, 'through the sea
was His way' when He walked on the water and called Peter to come to Him. But
'through the sea was His way' is better understood of the thoughts of men, which roll
and toss like a treacherous sea, but where Christ finds a way nonetheless, when He
subjects them to Himself with great mercy" (Ex. Ps. 76.396-403). A consistent view of
this exegesis would hold that the reference to Christ's walking on the water was the
allegorical interpretation, and the reference to the thoughts of men and Christ's action in
them the moral signification. Cassiodorus is not, however, sophisticated enough in the
practice of these subtleties of exegesis to make the distinction between literal and
allegorical at this point. There is nothing surprising in this: even the subtlest of the
analysts of the exegetical levels did not always in practice preserve exactly the
distinction between the several levels, and they could commonly think of their
interpretations on the simplest level of literal versus spiritual senses; Augustine's highly
influential handbook De doctrina christiana confines itself to a twofold distinction of
senses.

We have seen enough now to begin to understand the workings of Cassiodorus' mind in
coming towards spiritual interpretations of the Psalms. Beginning with the assumption
that Christ is at the center of so many of the Psalms (for fifty-one of the first eighty
Psalms begin with the tag "in finem," and thirty-five of the last seventy are either
"gradual" Psalms or Alleluias, all of which are given specifically Christological
references in the preface), Cassiodorus did not feel that he was unjustified in
interpreting the Psalter as a handbook of Christian doctrine. Obviously, Psalms
originally referring to events in the life of David could be reinterpreted for application to
Christ very easily according to standard ideas about typology; moreover, many Psalms
of a more general nature (prayers to God, praises of God, etc.) could be read in a
specifically Christian sense very easily indeed. Once that stage had been reached in the
understanding of the Psalms as units, the interpretation of individual verses was no
tremendously difficult task. Where the interpretation flowed naturally from the sense
assigned to the Psalm as a whole, well and good; where it did not, the law of spiritual
interpretation could be invoked and difficulties would evanesce.

It would be wrong, however, to see in Cassiodorus' practice, or that of any of the patres,
a deliberate obscurantism, exploiting the notion of spiritual interpretation to wash away
difficulties without facing up to them. The entire problem with Psalm 103.5 is of
Cassiodorus' own creation, for example, since it was his own decision to interpret the
Psalm as a gloss on Genesis. If the whole Psalm were taken either more or less
allegorically to begin with, the problem need never have arisen. Furthermore, it is wrong
to assume that the interpretation retailed by a given patristic commentator of a given
passage of scripture is intended always and without exception to be the one and only
acceptable reading of the passage. The purpose of expounding the Psalter, for example,

85
is not to establish what Christian doctrine is so much as to teach it and--even more
important--to make the Psalter come to life with contemplation of things seen through,
rather than in, the words on the page. To read the Psalms, for example, as a document of
Jewish liturgical piety, or even simply as inspiring religious poetry, still confining
oneself to the simplest sense of the text at hand, inevitably becomes a tedious procedure
if often repeated. The central position of the Psalter in the life of the medieval church,
and in monastic culture especially, indicates that, quite to the contrary, it never did
become a boring round of repeated platitudes. For insofar as a medieval reader of the
Psalter had already embedded in his mind remarks of the sort that Cassiodorus makes
about every Psalm, and insofar as the Psalms themselves had been transformed from
ordinary verse into magnifying glasses through which all sorts of wondrous things
became more visible than before from a new light, the words of the Psalms became
living teachers of infinite resource. The decision, then, to overlook minor verbal
inconsistencies that come up in the course of, and often only as a result of, the
allegorical practice, is not an effort to cover up difficulties in the definition of the truths
of Christianity and their support in scripture, but rather only a convenience for the
reader, a device for augmenting the reader's ability to make profitable use of the
scriptures as a support for contemplation and liturgy.

What sets Cassiodorus' commentary apart from other allegorical interpretations of the
Psalms, however, is not any strictly theological feature, but rather a pedagogic one.
Cassiodorus is visibly interested not only in the spiritual benefits to be derived from an
enlightened reading of the Psalms, but also in the didactic benefits. He has made of the
Psalter a textbook in the liberal arts. The reason for this is quite simple: to enable
readers to draw from the scripture a knowledge of these things, in order to enable them
to go back to the same and other scriptural texts better capable of making their own
analysis. This exaltation of the Psalter as textbook is based on a fundamental theory
about the nature of the liberal arts that, though it goes back to Clement of Alexandria, is
never so fully worked out and so consistently presented as in Cassiodorus.[[28]]

For Cassiodorus believed that the arts of secular learning, the trivium and quadrivium,
had themselves a scriptural origin. His interpretation of Psalm 18.5 ("Their voice
resounds through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth") is that the
teachings of the Bible were known to all men throughout the world. The genesis of the
secular arts and sciences he explains this way: "First we must recognize that the
omnipotence of the Lord has so enriched its eloquence with many artes and disciplinae
that it both shines marvelously in the eyes of those who study it and plants well-watered
seeds of other disciplines. Thus we find in Holy Scripture the things which teachers of
secular literature [magistri saecularium litterarum] have transplanted to their own books.
Orators speak, for example, of the 'concessive deprecative' mode of speaking, when a
defendant does not defend what he has done but begs that he be forgiven; before earthly
judges this is a feeble tactic, but before the judgment seat of God it is invincibly strong,
since faithful confession alone can vindicate what no argument could defend" (Ex. Ps.
6.94-107).[[29]]

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It is precisely this "fidelis confessio" that, Cassiodorus argues, is illustrated by Psalm
6.2, the passage being expounded at this point. Briefly put, this idea, which contains all
that Cassiodorus thought on the relation of secular and sacred learning, is that the
secular magistri plagiarized their material from the sacred scripture, where the seeds of
their discipline had been hidden by God. The Cassiodorian scheme for expounding
scripture is to bypass the secular doctores entirely, plucking out the seeds himself and
presenting them directly to the student in the commentary on the sacred text. Before and
after Cassiodorus, Christian authors found themselves frequently in positions where
they felt they had to explain away somehow their use of the pagan-tainted liberal arts in
the study of scripture. Jerome's Ciceronianus dream, Augustine's metaphor of the
Egyptian gold, and Gregory's oftmisinterpreted refusal to be bound by the rules of
Donatus, are all efforts at establishing some kind of harmony between sacred and
secular intellectual life.[[30]] One recalls as a closer forerunner of Cassiodorus the
efforts of Apollinaris of Laodicea and his son in the fourth century, when Julian forbade
Christians to teach the pagan classics; their rewriting of the scriptures into a Homeric
epic, Euripidean tragedies, Menandrian comedies, Pindaric odes, and Platonic dialogues
was an effort to make of the scriptures precisely the thing Cassiodorus said they already
were. Moreover, Cassiodorus' notion of the hiddenness of the artes in scripture more
than accounted for the apparently superficial barbarity (i.e., nonconformity to secular
rules) of biblical eloquence.

The practice of this exegetical theory in Cassiodorus is persistent and intentionally

overwhelming. Rare is the verse of the Psalter that is not noted to contain some obscure
form of syllogism, some recondite rhetorical figure, or some one of the seemingly
endless species definitionis that Cassiodorus is adept at identifying. Moreover,
Cassiodorus provided marginal notations to enable the student to pursue these rhetorical
rules throughout the work. In all important carly manuscripts of the commcntary there is
prefixed a list of standardized marginal notes that then reappear throughout thc work,
singling out rhetorical figures, etymologics, etymologies of Hebrew names, neccssary
dogmas, and (most common) idiomata, that is, uniqucly scriptural figures of
speech.[[31]] Thus the intcrpretation of Psalm 16.8 ("Guard me as the pupil of your eye,
hide me in the shadow of your wings") presents the following information: (1) "By the
figure icon, in Latin called imaginatio, he compares himself to the pupil of the eye of the
Lord." (2) "Pupilla is derived from the notion of smallness, as pusilla." (3) (After the
final clause:) "Here is introduced the figure which is called parabole in Greek,
comparatio in Latin, since it joins unlike things in a sort of connection" (Ex. Ps. 16.157-
169). Certainly it is unusual for a single verse to offer two schemata and one etymology
for Cassiodorus' pleasure, but his treatment of them here is characteristic.[[32]] Note
especially the bilingual designation of thc figures identified; this affectation is
maintained in virtually every case where they are mentioned.

The special idioms of scripture are those things therein that seem to go against the rules
of secular rhetoric or that are merely unusual in common parlance and unusually
frequent in scripture;[[33]] a few lines beyond the examples quoted in the last
paragraph, we find "He uses nunc to put the present tense where you would expect the
future, a common practice with the prophets" (Ex. Ps. 16.198-199) marked with the

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marginal note PP. In the very next paragraph the mark reappears next to: "We refer the
word leo now to the devil, now to Christ. This mannerism is to be considered one of the
propria sanctae scripturae--here obviously it refers to the devil" (Ex. Ps. 16.208-211--
cf. Inst. 1.15.4). This, too, is a response to the older criticisms of scripture's inattention
to the proprieties of grammar and style; where, for example, the Old Testament
frequently uses the plural of sanguis, as in the phrase viri sanguinunm (e.g., Ps. 54.24),
Cassiodorus had to explain that this is correct and not to be tampered with, precisely
because it is the practice of scripture.

Obviously, all of this material transforming an allegorical commentary into a

commentary cum textbook is uniquely Cassiodorian, departing completely from the
homiletic form of Augustine's Enarrationes. Where Augustine would pursue at length
possible alternate figurative meanings of a given line, Cassiodorus would cut short after
the first to tell you what the Greek and Latin terms are for this figure as he interprets it.
On the one hand, this is not the most orderly way to give instruction in figures of
speech; but on the other, the Psalter is the most familiar text of scripture, and to the
extent that it can be made the mnemonic peg for dozens and dozens of these definitions
it becomes a recurring reminder of the substance of the education in the liberal arts that
Cassiodorus had in mind. The Augustinian element of Cassiodorian exegesis is chiefly
the allegorical interpretation; the Cassiodorian element is chiefly the regularization of
form and the addition of the didactic material about the artes.

Because Cassiodorus' theory eliminated any fundamental conflict between sacred and
secular literatures, he could use secular sources without any of the self-conscious
histrionics of other Christian authors. But it is not possible to go, as Schlieben does,
from this lack of polemic against "worldly men" to a general concept of "Cassiodorus'
Christian humanism."[[34]] Implicit in Cassiodorus' theory, far from any approval of an
enthusiasm for the secular classics in themselves, is a far more thoroughgoing disdain
for classical literature; rather than acknowledge that the Bible is less rhetorically
eloquent than secular texts, Cassiodorus insisted that the Bible, as source of all rules of
eloquence, is absolutely superior on literary as well as theological grounds to anything
the secular authors have to offer. Moreover, the secular authors whom he did make
frequent use of, both in the Psalm commentary and in later works, were not the great
literary classics at all, but rather textbooks and handbooks of the rules that, by his
theory, secular magistri had deduced from scripture. In establishing this notion,
Cassiodorus was so far from embracing the classics that he could abandon them
altogether as merely redundant to what is already present in scripture. At all times for
Cassiodorus, the secular sciences only serve to lead men back into scripture.

After the exposition proper of each Psalm, in which the Augustinian and Cassiodorian
elements are fused to produce an exegetical and pedagogical interpretation, each short
treatise is capped with a paragraph (sometimes running a page or more) of conclusio. In
the preface, Cassiodorus indicated that this would be the place to demonstrate the
Psalm's virtus, its inspiratio divina, and to give an account of the Psalm's number, where
possible. The first of these purposes is always achieved.

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The typical conclusio is little more than a summary of the exegetical doctrine
propounded in the body of the exposition. It is not so schematic as the divisio, but it
frequently repeats much of the same material. In the course of the whole commentary,
however, there is a noticeable development in the nature of these final paragraphs. The
first examples are the most schematic; see, for example, the conclusio of the
commentary on Psalm 7, which repeats the sections of the Psalm ("prima parte...
secunda parte... tertia parte") in praising its eloquence. This resume is followed by a
brief prayerful apostrophe to God, ending "Who indeed could avoid suffering from the
justice of God without the prior assistance of his mercy?" (Ex. Ps. 7.362-378). Then the
paragraph concludes with two sentences on the significance of the number seven.

By contrast, the later conclusiones, while not always ignoring the same threefold pattern
(summary, prayer, number), show a definite trend toward the emphasis of the prayerful
content at the expense of the other elements.[[35]] In part this is a function of the
lessening significance of number symbolism when the numbers become unwieldy, and
in part it reflects a recognition of the superfluity of an explicit rehash of the Psalm's
contents. Nevertheless, the importance of the prayerful content is growing apace of its
own accord.[[36]] By Psalm, 139, for example, the whole paragraph is a unity, starting
from the Psalm's virtus (expressed in exclamations more and more breathless as we near
the end of the Psalter) and turning rapidly into direct prayer: "How salutary, how sweet
are these words of the holy mother! She has prayed that we might avoid the temptations
of the devil by which she knows us to have been violently beset. To the ones so freed
she promises that they will see the face of God, that we might fear no toils and sadness,
we to whom such a boon is promised. Grant, Lord, that you might show by the splendor
of your mercy how desirable you are to your servants. The sins we have ourselves
righteously rebuked will not obstruct us. We confess our sins, that we might placate
you; for you are the only judge who grants forgiveness to the confessed offender; and
since nothing escapes your knowledge, you still require us to acknowledge publicly
what you know far more surely" (Ex. Ps. 139.226-236). The function of this kind of
conclusion is not simply intepretative or didactic, as is the case with the expositions
proper. Instead, such sentiments, so vividly worded, have the function of calling the
reader back from a too-studious approach to the Psalm merely as a document of doctrine
and the rhetorical arts. The conclusio serves to make vivid again the profoundly spiritual
nature of the experience towards which the study of the Psalm is meant to lead. Having
taken the Psalm out of its context, examined it from every side, and presented it to the
student with all its rivets undone and seams unzipped, the commentator is here putting
the whole thing back together again, synthesizing his own analytical labors into the text
of the word of God, always for the purpose of intensifying the devotional experience
that the Psalm's student is meant to undergo.

To modern sensitivities, Cassiodorus' speculations in so many of these conclusiones

about the significance of numbers strike a discordant note. We find such ideas
superstitious and are prone to treat them as amusing primitive aberrations. Nevertheless,
they do perform a useful function. Note first that Cassiodorus does not intrude
discussion of them at the very beginning of each exposition, where they might function
(as the tituli do) as arbiters of the exposition to follow, sources for the particular line of

89
interpretation to be taken. Instead, by saving them for the very end of the whole
discussion of the Psalm, after even prayerful summation, Cassiodorus manages to use
these discussions to serve the broader purpose of putting the interpretation of a given
Psalm in a wider context of Christian thought and experience, summoned up at random
by the chance associations of the numbers. Thus the interpretation of Psalm 12 deals
chiefly with man's search for God through faith; the conclusio presents a seemingly
random assortment of associations of the number: "The number twelve reminds us of
the twelve apostles who, in perfect obedience to His commands, loved the Lord above
all things and loved their neighbors as themselves in caritas, so that it is fitting that this
Psalm has granted such wisdom to us as is known to be dedicated to the number twelve
and thus to the apostles. We know also that the Hebrew people were divided into twelve
tribes; the Lord promised twelve thrones at the Last Judgment to the apostles; and the
year itself is divided into twelve months. But the diligent reader can find many more
such things for himself, by which he will recognize that this number is replete with
many mysteria" (Ex. Ps. 12.130-140). In this randomness, it seems more than merely
coincidental that one sees summarized the whole life of the people of God, from the Old
Testament to the New Testament, through the mundane revolution of the year to the
Last Judgment at the end of all things. This is the truest full context in which the search
for God in faith takes place, and it is to this context that the remarks on the number
twelve draw the reader.

The use of number symbolism, moreover, is not absolutely central to Cassiodorus'

commentary, however much he enjoyed such considerations. The first eighteen Psalms
are all concluded with discussions of their particular numbers; but when Cassiodorus got
to Psalm 19, the system broke down: "The significance of this particular number
escapes us, but perhaps it can be interpreted as the sum of its parts" (Ex. Ps. 19.160-
162). Instead of telling us about the number 19, Cassiodorus was forced to recall the
significance of twelve (the apostles) and seven (the first week of creation), thus making
the Psalm a summary of Old and New Testament truths over again. This kind of analysis
by subdivision is clearly not as direct and successful as the simpler kind and leads to a
greater repetitiousness. Thus Cassiodorus began to retract from giving a numerical
analysis of every Psalm; Psalm 29, for example, has its number go unnoticed, while
Psalm 30 (Joseph's years in Egypt, Christ's age at baptism) is more pliable. On occasion,
Cassiodorus will return to the subdivision technique, as in Psalm 112, which is made a
reprise of earlier considerations on the number 12, slightly expanded, designed
especially to make the Psalm into an image of eternal beatitude. In general, however, the
use of such symbolism declines, revived only for the more obvious numbers. Thus the
technique is not a central one to Cassiodorus' style of interpretation, but merely a useful
device for calling in echoes of the doctrine and faith into which individual
interpretations are fitted.

We have thus completed a survey of the mechanics of Cassiodorus' exegesis in the

Expositio Psalmorun. Despite the importance of such considerations and the
considerable influence that such form has on content, it is both possible and necessary to
dissociate from the running stream of exegesis at least some of the more significant of
the discernible theological preoccupations that guided the writer's pen. We have been

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analyzing the work hitherto on a deductive basis, from externals to their implications.
Now our attention reverses its path, working inferentially back from scattered hints in
the text to broader ideas that can be concluded to lie behind the words on the page.

We have already seen hints of the predominant theological issue that concerned
Cassiodorus: Christology. Schlieben noted this, only to remark that the Christology
expressed was thoroughly orthodox according to the Chalcedonian definition;[[37]] but
Schlieben was assuming that the commentary was written in Italy only for local
consumption, and that its dedication to Pope Vigilius at Constantinople was merely an
accident of fate, as Cassiodorus happened to be in the east at that time. Such a bland
explanation of Cassiodorus' Christology does not, however, adequately lay bare the facts
of the case.

For merely to say that Christology is a central concern for Cassiodorus and that his
Christology is orthodox Chalcedonian does not begin to do justice to the frequency and
the fervor with which the doctrines of Chalcedon are set forth. As early as the second
Psalm is interpreted as teaching the doctrine of the two natures of Christ united in one
person, concluding that "this doctrine Pope Leo together with the holy Chalcedonian
synod decreed and ordained, that whoever wishes to be a catholic [quicumque se vult
esse catholicum] should preach one Christ, a perfect union in and of two natures" (Ex.
Ps. 2.399-403).[[38]] The comments on Psalm 8 again already speak of the two natures
of Christ and refer the reader, in the conclusio, to another seven comments that treat the
subject at length (Psalms 2, 20, 71, 81, 107, 109, 138). But these Psalms are not the only
ones that excite Christological reflections; such remarks are everywhere, becoming a
refrain every few pages. The formula appears, for example, in response to the phrase
"non erit in te deus recens" (Ps. 80.10): "Wherefore our patres have preferred, by a
marvelous and holy device, to believe and preach two natures united and perfect,
abiding in one Lord Christ; so that the diseased and fetid belchings of the heretics might
be shut up like a pestiferous mouth by their saving remedy" (Ex. Ps. 80.209-213).[[39]]
It is not in connection with one of the substantial treatments of the subject that
Cassiodorus is moved to quote for us the Latin translation of the decree of Chalcedon;
the quotation occurs in the abnormally long explanation of the titulus of Psalm 58,
arising out of general considerations upon the phrase "in finem." The Nestorian heresy
is mentioned expressly in an introduction to the long quotation of the essential features
of the Chalcedonian decree, including the statement of the homoousios doctrine, the
legitimacy of the term Theotokos for Mary, and the four famous Chalcedonian
adjectives, rendered here as "sine confusione, sine conversione, sine divisione et sine
separatione" (Ex. Ps. 58.41-42).[[40]] To this full statement of the orthodox doctrine,
Cassiodorus adds: "A holy faith, inviolable truth, a preaching eagerly to be embraced,
which the catholic church professes throughout the whole world through the grace of the
Holy Spirit" (Ex. Ps. 58.48-50).

Other heresies than the Nestorian are rebuked in these Christological remarks, chiefly
the Eutychian (i.e., Monophysite), but also including the Arian and even Sabellian. To
revert to the example of Psalm 81, the conclusio there, which is unusually long for so
short a subject text, attacks Nestorians and Eutychians for almost forty lines, based

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loosely on the Psalm's first verse ("Deus stetit in synagoga deorum"). This is, of course,
one of the Psalms identified as an extended treatment of the subject; such discussion in
the conclusiones of the commentaries on these Psalms is the rule. As already shown,
these longer disputations form only the tip of the Christological iceberg; one simply
does not hear of Christ in the Expositio, it often seems, without having "duae naturae"
and "una persona" thrown in immediately, lest we should risk forgetting orthodox
doctrine (e.g., Ex. Ps. 109.331-334).

It is worth examining further, therefore, the circumstances of the composition of the

Expositio Psalmorum, to determine just what sort of role this fixation on the
Chalcedonian definitions played in Cassiodorus' thought. If we are right in concluding
that the Expositio was written in Constantinople through the 540's, we can begin by
examining the theological conditions that prevailed there in the years when Justinian
was at his best. The Council of Chalcedon was already gone from living memory after
the lapse of a century.[[41]] Eutychius as well, the great rebel against the Chalcedonian
doctrine, had long since passed from the stage, leaving his name for a sect. In the first
years of the sixth century, under the leadership of such figures as Severus of Antioch
(and with the support of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, who seems to have lived
in this milieu), the first institutionalizing of the Monophysite movement occurred. This
quickly became a more serious problem than ever for the Constantinopolitan emperors,
who were committed externally to maintaining the Chalcedonian definition (the
Henotikon had not succeeded in extricating them from that, especially after Justin ended
the Acacian schism and reconciled east and west again for a time), but who were
watching more and more of their own subjects in the east abandon the complex formulas
of the council.

In this developing crisis, we witness the playing out of the drama of the Three Chapters
controversy. The decree originally issued by Justinian in 543 declared anathema on
writings of three figures of the last century, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of
Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa, all of whom were at least of the Antiochene school if not in
fact forthrightly Nestorian. The purpose of the edict was to attempt to win support from
the right wing of the church, the Eutychians, by seeming to condemn writers of the left.
There was, however, a backlash, particularly among westerners, whose terminology on
matters of Christology differed slightly but crucially, by a fluke of language and history,
from the eastern. One can generalize that the edict condemning the three allegedly
Nestorian writers was more or less accepted in the east and rejected in the west.
Justinian, however, felt that he needed the approval of the pope for his theological
adventure, an approval that proved difficult, but not impossible, to obtain. It was to
pressure Pope Vigilius into accepting the Three Chapters decree that the pope was
summoned to Constantinople in the mid-540's. Justinian, who always got what he
wanted, however high the price, kept Vigilius at court, variously humiliating and
exploiting him, until 554, when he sent him off to Italy after the Pragmatic Sanction;
Vigilius died en route. The crucial break had come, however, in April 548, when after
much procrastination, Vigilius agreed to accept the decree in principle. We have already
seen how some scholars have tried to date Cassiodorus' Expositio to some brief period

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between the publication of Facundus of Hermiane's defense of the writers in question
and Vigilius' capitulation to Justinian (i.e., between February and April of 548).

Now let us consider Cassiodorus' theological position. On every page, all up and down
the commentary that he wrote at Constantinople in the 540's, there is implicit and
explicit in Cassiodorus the exact wording of the Chalcedonian Christology. But this is
precisely the sort of thing that was in Justinian's interest not to remind people of any too
loudly. Particularly the notion about one person in two natures as well as of two natures,
which Cassiodorus never fails to mention, was a sticking point at a time when the
establishment at Constantinople was attempting to anathematize writers who were, at
most, marginally Nestorian in their theology (and who might have been expected to
emphasize the duality at the expense of the personal unity). The emphasis of
Constantinopolitan theology at this time, for many reasons, was on the una persona. The
possibility therefore arises that, whatever its other purposes were, the Expositio
Psalmorurn was written at least in part as a tract in favor of the traditional definition
(and in favor of the historical fact that the writers condemned by the Three Chapters
decree had died in the peace of the church, uncondemned by that very council of
Chalcedon as well) and against the revisionist tendencies of Justinian. Looked at in this
way, there is nothing at all surprising about the quotation from Facundus of Hermiane,
and the dedication to Vigilius makes all the more sense for bringing the work to the
attention of one westerner on whose opinion much depended.

Whether the commentary was completed before Vigilius' decision of April 548 is not an
altogether closed question. The only indication we have that Cassiodorus ever accepted
the decree for himself, even as a pro forma matter, is the letter of Vigilius
excommunicating two diehard opponents of the decree and mentioning Cassiodorus as
someone who had been an envoy between Vigilius and the opponents. Although this
seems to indicate that Cassiodorus was publicly seen to conform with the decree, it also
demonstrates that he was someone whom Vigilius thought would have influence with
opponents of the decree. Cassiodorus, at least, was not excommunicated, even if he was
still talking to people who were.

Beyond the immediate situation in Constantinople, however, we must look to the later
life of Cassiodorus to give us a clue here. After Vigilius' death, the anathema against the
three authors did not receive wide or immediate acceptance in Italy. As late as the end
of the sixth century, the Irishman Columbanus came to settle at Bobbio, only to find
himself in the midst of a controversy still raging among the orthodox. The Lombards,
particularly, found the writings of the Three Chapters authors a useful bridge between
Arianism and Catholicism, for making Christ seem more human; Columbanus wrote in
613 to Pope Boniface IV that the Lombard king Agilulf, still an Arian, had been
reported saying that if the Catholics could make up their mind just what was the
orthodox doctrine, he would be happy to believe it.[[42]] In Cassiodorus' own case, two
arguments, one ex silentio, need consideration.

First, he never discusses the decree of the Three Chapters, nor does he include the
Council of Constantinople of 553 in his list of accepted synods (Inst. 1.11). If he wrote

93
the Expositio Psalmorum when and where he seems to have done, it would be
remarkable indeed to have said so much about Christology without mentioning the
Three Chapters, unless the purpose was specifically to ignore the embarrassing decree.
More positively, however, there is the indisputable fact that when Cassiodorus came to
compile a Latin ecclesiastical history to serve as a continuation of Rufinus' translation of
Eusebius, one of the three authors whose works he admitted for inclusion of excerpts in
the new Historia ecclesiastica tripartita was Theodoret of Cyrrhus, one of the targets of
the Three Chapters edict.

It is not therefore likely that Cassiodorus ever enthusiastically embraced the edict
against Theodore, Ibas, and Theodoret. It is apparent that, on the other hand, he made
his peace with the authorities, at least while he was at Constantinople and m the vicinity
of great powers, civil and ecclesiastical. Moreover, he did so at a time when others were
making a stand on grounds of conscience and fidelity to the earlier councils. The
outcome of this inquiry, finally, demonstrates conclusively that we cannot date the
Expositio Psalmorum at all precisely by reference to this dispute. If it were published
before the decree of Vigilius in April 548, one might indeed have expected to see some
explicit appeal to the pope; if published after that time, one might vcry well expect not
to see any explicit discussion of the issue (for that would be dangerous), but instead a
continuous barrage of arguments in favor of the full version of the Chalcedonian
definition in an attempt to get Vigilius to repudiate his earlier capitulation. Moreover,
the work, obviously composed over a long period, would reflect throughout the
atmosphere of Constantinople in the 540's and Cassiodorus' position therein. Thus, the
only conclusion we can come to about dating for this work is that it seems to have been
begun sometime in the early 540's (and recall the statement at the very beginning of the
Expositio that puts Cassiodorus' study of the Psalter back to his last days at Ravenna)
and completed sometime after Facundus' treatise was published, and very possibly after
Vigilius' first decree. Since we have tentatively argued that Cassiodorus remained in
Constantinople until about 554, plenty ofœ time remained for him to complete and
publish the work during that interlude. Finally, this pattern of Christological
preoccupation adds measurably to the probability of our hypothesis for a long stay in
Constantinople by Cassiodorus.

If one purpose of the work, however, was to establish the position of orthodox
Christology, we have already postponed almost too long a discussion of what seems to
have been the dominant purpose of the entire work, namely the introduction of the
Psalter to a specifically monastic audience. From early in the church's history, the
Psalter had been the specifically monastic book of the Bible, and the recital of the
Psalter was an important part of the monastic liturgy, usually meant to be done in full at
least once each week. At the same time, the Psalter was the first book to which Christian
youths were introduced when they were taught (usually under a monastic aegis) to read.
Jerome specifically named the Psalter as the first book that one should read when taking
up the study of scripture (followed by Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, then the Gospels,
Acts, and Epistles, and then back to the Old Testament for the Prophets, ctc.).[[43]] By
the time of Benedict, the practice of reciting the entire Psalter once around in the course
of a week could be codified into a regular routine (Reg. Ben. 18). It is not too much to

94
argue that in the early church the Psalter was a specifically monastic book in more ways
than one.

All this is represented in Cassiodorus; indeed, the strongest rcason for scholars to
believe that the commentary was written whcn Cassiodorus was already in his
monastery was precisely the monasticity of thc whole enterprise (though that does not
account for the explicit statemcnt of the origin of Cassiodorus' intercst while he was still
at Ravcnna).[[44]] The particular role of thc Psalms in the monastic life is luminously
summarized in Cassiodorus' remarkable quotation from Athanasius' letter to Marcellinus
on the Psalms: "Whoever recites the words of a Psalm chants them as if they were his
own, and each reciter sings them through as though they had been written by him and
not someone else and not as if they referred to someone else; but speaking as if about
himself, so the reciter utters these words and utters these sentiments to God as written in
the Psalm but as coming directly from himself" (Ex. Ps., praef. 16.31-37--cf. PG
27.24A).[[45]] This is thc entire purpose of Cassiodorus' commentary, the desire to
make thc Psalter come to life in thc student's hands in such a way that he has it for his
own possession forever after. For such a student-monk, thc duty of the liturgical office
thus becomes less and less a formal routine and more and more a personal encounter
with God in a way that allows the suppliant to pray with words that are at once those of
God's prophets and of the suppliant himself giving those words back to God.

There are specific references throughout thc commentary, but only few and scattered
ones, directly to the community at Squillace. This is not in itself proof that the work was
originally composed at Squillace, or even that it was meant for that monastery. By
contrast, we have seen that the indications are that the Vivarium's library did not contain
the whole of Augustine's commentary, when the whole of Cassiodorus' work reeks of
direct contact with the Augustinian model. There is every possibility that the work of
Cassiodorus was carried out with some monastic intention in mind; since, moreover, it
does not seem likely that he was already mured up in a monastic establishment in
Constantinople, the connection to the enterprise back at Squillace seems more than
possible. But again, such possibility must be carefully circumscribed, and one must not
assume that this means that Cassiodorus had actually visited the community at
Squillace, if it already existed, at any recent time prior to the composition of the
Expositio Psalmorum. But this is a matter that will occupy us further in the next chapter.

We can, for the moment, do little better to conclude this study of the Expositio than to
look at the way Cassiodorus ended the work himself. The conclusio of the commentary
on Psalm 150 became the conclusion of the whole work by the device of expanding the
comments on the Psalm's number to refer to the significance of the whole number of.
Psalms. The theory about the Psalter representing all of scripture (seventy Psalms for the
Old Testament, eighty for the New) is repeated, and this one book is called a "caeleste
armarium scripturarum divinarum" (Ex. Ps. 150.179), containing within its scope all of
Genesis, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the message of the Apostles. Other aspects of
the commentary are recalled, with an emphasis on the technical features that
Cassiodorus has been at the most pains to explain for beginners, e.g., the nature of the
tituli, the reason for inserting letters of the Hebrew alphabet at the head of stanzas in

95
some Psalms, and the reason for the name unifines being applied (only by Cassiodorus
among the church fathers) to Psalms all of whose verses have the same ending. With
prayers for the readers' benevolence, then, Cassiodorus concludes: "But now we must
convert our hearts to the Lord to whom all thought and deed should tend" (Ex. Ps.
150.246-248).[[46]] Then follows the last oratio.

The achievement of Cassiodorus in writing the Expositio Psalmorum has received

mixed reviews over the years. The work's editor, Adriaen, spoke of the work's "overall
arrangement of the material, redolent of enormous erudition rather than true
wisdom.''[[47]] Schlieben enthusiastically called it "a synthesis of unprecedented
intensity.''[[48]] Both views are extreme. The purpose that Cassiodorus set out to
achieve was a limited one: to make of Augustine's treatise a textbook of sacred and
secular learning and an introduction to the spiritual life and liturgy of monasticism.
Once again, his protestations of mediocrity must be taken into account as sincere
indications of a modesty of ambition. He was not seeking to scale new theological
heights, to bring to bear hitherto unknown lore to make the work in some way
completely his own overpowering contribution to the history of interpretation. If his
limited aspirations are understood and accepted as legitimate, as I think they should be,
we can better understand the diligent, methodical, and self-effacing activity that
preoccupied Cassiodorus during his years at Constantinople.

Whatever the work's faults, it was a success in medieval terms, which is to say that it
found acceptance across the centuries as a useful introduction to the Psalter for
generations of monks entering upon the Psalm-centered life of medieval monastic
communities. We have seen throughout this chapter that the details of Cassiodorus'
method were carefully and often quite subtly thought through to make the work
precisely useful on just this narrow basis. Read hastily, analytically, and skeptically, as
moderns are wont to do, the work leaves much to be desired. But we have not read it on
Cassiodorus' own terms until we have used it for its original purpose. That would
require, in the end, a monastic dedication to the study of the Psalter on the part of the
modern scholar; each Psalm would have to be recited at least once a week all through
the period of study. In turn, each Psalm studied separately would have to be read slowly
and prayerfully, then gone through with the text in one hand (or preferably committed to
memory) and the commentary in the other; the process of study would have to continue
until virtually everything in the commentary has been absorbed by the student and
mnemonically keyed to the individual verses of scripture, so that when the verses are
recited again the whole phalanx of Cassiodorian erudition springs up in support of the
content of the sacred text. It is in fact unlikely that any modern scholar outside a
monastery would ever undertake such a devoted study of this work; but merely to
reconstruct the possibility of such a study in the imagination affords a better idea of
what the work was and what it meant to its intended audience. In that context it was
neither pedantic nor brilliant, but only a shrewd, self-effacing propaedeutic to the most
central text in the reader's life.

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Chapter 6: Vivarium
A trick of the evidence exaggerates the way in which Italy seems to have changed
during Cassiodorus' absence; but an exaggeration is not always a falsification.
Cassiodorus himself is the chief source for our knowledge of life in Italy, seen from the
inside, throughout these years. Until he departed for the east, his perspective was the
same as that of the ruling power--it was centered on Ravenna. Even after his retirement,
apparently, he remained at the center of Gothic affairs, watching Gothic Italy being
crumpled in the hand of Byzantine might. He was gone, most probably, for almost
fifteen years, the very years of his life when he passed to the threshold of old age. When
he returned to Italy, he was no longer a great man, nor did he any longer associate with
such. It is chance, but symbolic chance, that his retirement retreat was situated very
nearly as far as it was possible to get from Ravenna without leaving Italy. Now he was
on the periphery.

The Goths are as good as vanished from our story. There was an exarch at Ravenna, and
insofar as there was government in Italy it was Byzantine. The Lombards were at most a
distant rumor they did not enter Italy until 568 and never penetrated as far as Squillace.
In fact, Cassiodorus' homeland remained in Byzantine hands until the Normans arrived
in the eleventh century. But for our purposes, even the Byzantine rulers did not exist.
Politics, government, armies, all became distant memories, forgotten in the cloister of
the Vivarium. This is, I say, deceptive. Merely because the central character of our
limited story has disappeared into the monastic life in a remote corner of the continent
does not mean that the whole world is somehow colored by this act.

Cassiodorus was about sixty-five years old when he returned to Italy. He had had no
special revelation of the kindly fate that would give him almost thirty years of life in
retirement at the home of his youth. At the same time, he did not think it worthwhile to
withdraw from life completely. To the contrary, the activity that he began then was
surely demanding and intellectually rigorous. Because it was prolonged by a kindly fate,
he became a symbol of one easy opposition of ancient and medieval qualities; and the
symbol would be valueless if it did not in some way reflect the realities of the world in
which he lived. At the same time, nothing had changed. One elderly politician, out of
office for many years and exiled, had returned home to a monastery he had rounded, to
settle down to collecting books. There is nothing remarkable about this, for retirement to
family estates and indulgence in literary pastimes was a common decision for Roman
aristocrats at all periods.

Both of Cassiodorus' passions in old age, Christian intellectual culture and the
specifically religious life, were furthermore the fruit of developments that had been
building throughout his life. When he finally got back to Italy, twenty years had passed
since his first effort to found a school of Christian learning, and fifteen years had passed
since his first published treatise on a theological subject. There is nothing anywhere here
of a man in a hurry, of frenetic activity; rather, there is the slow, measured working out
of an obsession that had been fostered in the very busiest days of his secular career and
that did not finally achieve realization until he at last got himself away from the vicinity

97
of the great and the powerful and back to the land of his birth on the coast of the Ionian
Sea.

Cassiodorus did not, however, take the steps that he did out of touch with the rest of his
age. If the institution he rounded, at first glance an unseemly hybrid of ancient traditions
of rhetoric and "modern" ideas about ascetic life, was a unique place unduplicated by his
contemporaries or by following generations, it is nevertheless at least better, if not fully,
understood in terms of other institutions in sixth-century Italy, chiefly the schools of
Rome and the monastery at Monte Cassino.

In 529, the very year in which we are told that Benedict founded Monte Cassino,
Justinian closed the Academy at Athens.[[1]] There is another facile opposition of
ancient and medieval here that obscures as much as it illuminates reality. But Athens
with its pagan sentiments had already been bypassed; for if Constantinople was the new
Rome, it was as well a new capital of Greek culture replacing Athens, supported by
Antioch and Alexandria. The last shreds of nostalgia, which had kept the Hellenistic
world harking back to Athens as the fountain of their teaching, had blown away, leaving
behind a new intellectual map of the Mediterranean. As we shall see below, moreover,
for Cassiodorus the life of the mind was something to be pursued in the Latin language,
with whatever (limited) support could be brought over from the Greek world within the
narrow restraints imposed by the growing division between Greek and Latin lands in the
Mediterranean.

Thus it was the schools of Rome that occupied Cassiodorus' mind as representatives of
the old intellectual order; from the eastern world he heard only good news. Indeed, the
strongest direct evidence for the survival of rhetorical schools in the ancient tradition is
Cassiodorus' own opening remark in the Institutiones (however much it must be
qualified by regard for the rhetorical point he was making): "When I saw secular studies
being pursued with great fervor, so much so that a great mass of men believed such
studies would bring them the wisdom of this world, I confess I was seriously perturbed
that there should be no public professors of Holy Scripture, when worldly texts were the
beneficiaries of a distinguished educational tradition" (Inst., praef. 1). The clear import
of this passage seems to be that there really were secular schools flourishing into
Cassiodorus' own middle age. He went on immediately in his preface to speak of his
collaboration with Agapetus in the 530's, now long forgotten by all but him. Whether
some of Cassiodorus' concern was inflamed by seeing similar institutions of higher
secular learning at Constantinople, we do not know; but it is clear that this concern with
the magistri saeculares and their excessive influence goes all the way back to the 530's.
We saw in Chapter 4 how these worthies were made Cassiodorus' chief foils in the De
anima, and we saw in Chapter 5 how by the late 540's Cassiodorus had developed a
complex theory of the ultimate dependence of secular on sacred learning that would
justify to himself and others his own distaste for the secular sciences.

For there must have been some conflict within Cassiodorus on these points. He was
himself clearly one of the last completely rhetorical men, owing most of his intellectual
formation and his career itself to his rhetorical training. It was as an orator that he came

98
to Theoderic's attention, it was as a wordsmith that he was employed, and it was as a
rhetorician that he pleaded the cause of the Gothic kingdom in the published works of
his secular career. There was, therefore, a certain breach of pietas in his rebellion
against secular rhetoric but a certain manifestation of pietas in the way he attempted to
model his school of Christian learning on the secular schools. His theory may have been
that secular rhetorical principles were derived from scripture; but nothing could be
clearer than that his own Christian rhetorical principles were in fact derived from
secular ones. If they were originally Christian, as he would claim, he had them only at
second hand, after a filtering through the centuries of ancient pagan tradition.

There is, to be sure, evidence outside Cassiodorus' own assertion in the Institutiones for
the existence of schools at Rome in this century. Gregory the Great himself who later
expressed impatience with the rules of Donatus, was born perhaps half a century after
Cassiodorus and yet still received the old kind of education in the city of Rome. There
are other cases, as well, scattered about the literary remains of the period, several in
Cassiodorus' own works. For example, there was a quaestor appointed in about 534,
following Cassiodorus' footsteps in office by a quarter century, who was specifically
praised for having learned his eloquence at Rome, where it was specially cultivated
(Var. 10.7.2: "Roma tradit eloquium"). From early in Cassiodorus' career, during the
quaestorship, two letters survive directing patricians (Festus in one case, Symmachus in
the other) to allow named individuals to return home to Sicily (the letters are almost
identical in wording) while leaving their sons behind in Rome for educational purposes
(Var. 1.39, 4.6). The most important evidence, however, is the letter in which Athalaric
admonished the senate that he had heard that the "doctors of Roman eloquence" were
disgruntled about shortages in their pay, "as the sum set aside for the schoolmasters
seems to have been reduced" (Var. 9.21.1). These doctores were specifically said to be
concerned with the training of adulescentes. The letter praised at length the liberal
studies, particularly the trivium. The gist of the letter is that, in some undefined way, the
responsibility of the senate to look after the support of these teachers continued, to see
that they received the "remuneration fixed for their services" (ibid.). Whether they were
being fully subsidized or only partially is not clear; what is clear is that there were
schools at Rome and that teachers were finding work.[[2]]

This conclusion is partially supported by what external testimony there is. Venantius
Fortunatus, born between 530 and 540, claimed to have gone to school at Ravenna to
learn both grammar and rhetoric (obviously in the years during or just after the war of
reconquest). Gregory the Great is another principal case, while Benedict himself seems
to have had at least some of the old education before devoting himself to ascetic
pursuits.[[3]] Despite this relative scarcity of evidence, we are justified in concluding
that so well-entrenched an institution was not one that would disappear rapidly. It has
been argued with some verisimilitude that Theoderic barred Goths from the schools of
Rome; there is certainly no conclusive evidence of Gothic interest in Latin culture
outside of Theoderic's own household.[[4]]

There is no reason to doubt the literal sense of Cassiodorus' own words nor the sincerity
and purpose of his remarks about his endeavor with Pope Agapetus to found a school of

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Christian learning at Rome. As he put it, "Together with Pope Agapetus, I sought to
raise funds to endow Christian schools with paid professors in the city of Rome, as we
hear has long been done at Alexandria and now is reported being done by the Jews at
Nisibis in Syria; from these Christian schools the soul could win eternal salvation while
the tongues of the faithful were being trained in chaste and eloquent speech" (Inst.,
praef. 1). Everything thus far in this chapter finds its place in this remarkable sentence.
First, we note that Cassiodorus' interest, focused on Rome, was further inflamed by his
knowledge of distant lands. We have already discussed his contact with the Nisibean
experiment through the quaestor Junillus at Constantinople, where it would also have
been easy to hear of the exegetical activities of the schools of Alexandria. Second, we
see implicit confirmation of the apparent public support of teachers in the secular
schools, since the plan is to provide support for them in Christian schools.

What else we know about Agapetus and his intellectual activities confirms the
likelihood of his participation in such an enterprise. There survive today ruins of a
library, attributed confidently to Agapetus, that is located west of the Caelian Hill in
Rome, on the ancient Clivus Scauri (on the modern Via d. SS. Giovanni e Paolo)
opposite a church of fifth-century origin.[[5]] An inscription from the sixth century, now
destroyed, was preserved in an early manuscript collection at Einsiedeln and is worth
quoting in full:

Sanctorum veneranda cohors sedet ordine [longo],

Divinae legis mystica dicta docens.
Hos inter residens Agapetus iure sacerdos
Codicibus pulchrum condidit arte locum.
Gratia par cunctis, sanctus labor omnibus unus;
Dissona verba quidem sed tamen una fides.[[6]]

There can be no doubt that this preserves an authentic bit of the original ornamentation
of the library, probably connected with some mural or fresco; the historical content of
the inscription is that Agapetus did indeed found a library. This would be completely in
character with the enterprise that Cassiodorus described. From what we know of the
area and the ecclesiastical history of the sixth century, it is apparent that this library was
one that Gregory the Great knew; his own monastery was close by, just up the Caelian
Hill from where Agapetus' structure stood. The likeliest possibility is that the contents
of Agapetus' collection were removed to the Lateran by Gregory the Great.[[7]]
It is possible that we know one thing more about the history of this library. In the
Institutiones, Cassiodorus alludes in passing to a library at Rome; he speaks of a treatise
de musica by one Albinus, "which we recall having and reading carefully in a library at
Rome. If that copy has been carried off in the barbarian invasions [gentili incursione],
you have a copy of Gaudentius here instead" (Inst. 2.5.10).[[8]] Not only did
Cassiodorus make specific reference to a library at Rome (to which he hoped that his
monks might yet gain access to retrieve a copy of the work), but it was a library of
whose fate Cassiodorus was ignorant. We have already seen very well how this could
be, since Cassiodorus seems most probably to have gone from Ravenna to Squillace

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only via Constantinople. What is remarkable, however, is that Cassiodorus, the great
collector and lover of books, would have abandoned such a library behind him,
presumably when he went up to Ravenna in 533 to become prefect. There can be no
proof one way or the other, but the likeliest explanation of this remarkable and
uncharacteristic loss is that the library to which Cassiodorus refers is the one that he
created for the institution for which Agapetus built the building.[[9]] It is apparent that
the library of Agapetus was to be at least an adjunct to and perhaps the heart of the
Christian university planned at Rome, in the way that the library was central to the
enterprise at the Vivarium. One coincidence reinforces this hypothesis: the casual
remark in the Institutiones speaks of the gentilis incursio by which the work may have
been carried off precisely the same circumstance is alleged at the beginning for the
failure of the whole plan for the school: "My plan proved impossible of implementation
on account of raging wars and upheaval in the Italian kingdom (for an affair peaceful by
nature finds no place in turbulent times)" (Inst., praef. 1). Since, moreover, Agapetus
died in the midst of the war, in 536, while Cassiodorus was at Ravenna functioning as
prefect, Cassiodorus may well have lost contact with the whole institution just at the
moment when it was being dragged down by the undertow of war. In that context, more
than any other, one can make sense of Cassiodorus' having lost track of the valuable
book that he mentioned later in the Institutiones.

What the school in Rome would have been like is another unanswerable question.
Clearly the secular schools themselves would be taken as some kind of competitive
model, but the intellectual directions taken later at the Vivarium would no doubt have
had a dominant role. Most tantalizing, however, is the moot question whether the school
was conceived as leading exclusively to the religious life (as medieval monastic schools
would), or whether it was meant to be a training ground in direct competition with and
imitation of the secular schools, leading to public life. The balance of probability (owing
to the deliberate mention of competition) seems to incline slightly in favor of the latter
thesis. Furthermore, when Cassiodorus established the Vivarium, one thing that he was
clearly not doing was setting up shop in the forum of a great city. By the time the Gothic
war had blown itself out in Italy, the model to be pursued was monastic rather than
scholastic.

Despite the presence of some isolated centers of ecclesiastical learning in Italy,

Cassiodorus' Vivarium was the most ambitious and important such enterprise of its
time.[[10]] First, the Vivarium was at least some kind of success; the textbooks and
texts composed and copied there found wide diffusion up and down Europe. The
Historia tripartita and the Latin Josephus, particularly, were widely popular throughout
the middle ages (because of their deliberately useful character) in a way that Eugippius'
abridgment of Augustine (compiled at Naples in Cassiodorus' lifetime) was not. Second,
there was a clarity of purpose at the Vivarium that was lacking elsewhere. Cassiodorus
was not merely preparing convenient handbooks, for he was in his own eyes saving,
preserving, expanding, and exalting his idea of Christian intellectual culture. Moreover,
his enterprise was comprehensive, in the sense that it sought to provide a complete,
well-rounded education for the Christian scholar, concerning itself with all the details of
the educational advancement of everyone in the monastery, down to the least literate. In

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a way, the eccentricities of the Cassiodorian system can be taken as the indications of a
firm unified purpose guiding a complex enterprise. Cassiodorus' institution was well-
organized while other intellectual projects at the time seem randomly inspired.

If the Vivarium meant a departure on several fronts at the intellectual level, it was
considerably less original and more mimetic at the level of the precisely monastic
features of the enterprise. For of course Cassiodorus' contemporary, Benedict, born in
about the same decade as he, shaped the whole monastic future of the middle ages. The
traditional date of the rounding of Monte Cassino is 529, and Benedict's death is given
as occurring in about 547. Thus the Benedictine enterprise flourished first in the years
between Cassiodorus' term as magister officiorum and the middle of his stay in
Constantinople. The first destruction and abandonment of Monte Cassino took place in
581, about the time of the likeliest date for Cassiodorus' own death. How far the odor of
Benedict's repute had spread in his lifetime is questionable; and how widely his praises
were sung after his death is debatable. The embarrassing truth is that, apart from
Gregory's life of Benedict in the second book of his Dialogi, we know virtually nothing
of the early history of the Benedictine movement.

What we do know is based chiefly on the Regula that is handed down in Benedict's
name. It is too well known to need a summary of its contents, but certain aspects of its
tone and tenor are worth remark. Benedictine monasticism strikes a via media in
monastic customs. Although it recognizes, for example, the virtues of the anchoritic life,
it prescribes the cenobitic, while scorning the wandering life of the gyrovagues. While it
does not leave administration entirely to the discretion of the abbot but lays down
written regulations for the life of the monastery, at the same time it does not go to the
opposite extreme of attempting to define legalistically every detail of the monk's life.
Until this time, western monasticism, exemplified by figures like Cassian in Gaul, had
sought the two extremes. In Italy, the chief example of the legalistic style of
monasticism is recorded in the anonymous Regula Magistri. Benedict is more precise
about the order of saying the Psalms and the twelve grades of humility than about the
order of seating in choir; his emphasis is on the spiritual life as supported by the
minimum of necessary, continuing legislative authority. That his choice was an effective
one is testified to by the most pragmatic of standards: it worked, it survived, it lives
today.

When we mention the Regula Magistri, however, we address a subject that beclouds our
knowledge of early Benedictinism by adding information that we do not know how to
use. There has been an effort, moreover, in recent years to use the same document to
confuse our knowledge of Cassiodorus. The problems are three in number:

1. There are substantial duplications of content between the Regula Magistri and the
Regula Benedicti.
2. There is no surviving Rule as such of Cassiodorian monasticism.
3. There is not one mention of Benedict, nor one clear allusion to his Regula, anywhere
in Cassiodorus.

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Certain scholars have attempted to use this information to achieve two separate
purposes: the establishment of the priority of Benedict's rule over that of the Master, and
the subordination of Cassiodorus to Benedictine ideas. Neither attempt, however, is
grounded in fact.

The literature on the question in recent years is vast and dismaying. The identification of
Cassiodorus with the author of the Regula Magistri was first proposed by Dom
Cappuyns and may now be said to have been thoroughly disposed of, most recently and
most effectively by Dom David Knowles.[[11]] There is no purpose in recording again
at length the tortuous arguments in favor of the identification and their meticulous
refutations. I have no arguments to offer in favor of the identification, but I can propose
two new ones against it. First, the considerable literary vanity of Cassiodorus, always
giving lists of what he had written, signing his name over everything he wrote, even
telling one where to find his works on the bookshelves of his library, would not, I am
convinced, have allowed him to produce so extensive a work as the Regula Magistri
without taking credit for it, both in the work itself and elsewhere. Second, there is a
telltale sign lacking in the Regula Magistri that is characteristic of Cassiodorus' other
works. After Cassiodorus' conversion to the monastic life, there is no work of his that
does not have profusely scattered through its pages phrases like "Domino praestante,"
"Deo iuvante," and so on.[[12]] By contrast, the lexicon of the Regula Magistri shows
such phrases appearing only twice in all the verbiage of that text.[[13]] After extensive
contact with Cassiodorus' ecclesiastical prose style, I am convinced that this tag phrase,
a defining characteristic of Cassiodorus' own newly emphasized humility, is in itself an
acid test to Cassiodorian authorship, especially in a work as personal as a rule of life for
his monks.

As to the matter of the duplications of content between Benedict and the Master, the
truth is that Benedict was copying the Master and not the other way around. This is not
in itself surprising, since the genius of Benedict lay in his temperance rather than in any
originality of plan.[[14]] The difficulties in the textual transmission seem to have been
fairly clearly solved by a stemma positing an archetypal version of the Regula Magistri
that shortly became prevalent in two redactions, one of which leads to the present text of
the parent rule, the other of which was used by Benedict.[[15]] With all this said, it can
be freely admitted that there does seem to be a purely palaeographic connection between
the Regula Magistri and the scriptorium of Cassiodorus.[[16]] This can be explained
well and fully by assuming that the text was one that found its way as easily to Squillace
as to Monte Cassino, that it was just one of the several "patrum regulae" that
Cassiodorus commended to his monks.[[17]] At any rate, it should henceforth stand as
proven that Cassiodorus did not write the Regula Magistri, nor did he accord it a special
place of honor in his monastery.

But if we have a picture of monastic Italy in which Benedict plays a central role,
following somehow in the footsteps of the shadowy Master, and if we now conclude
that Cassiodorus did not have direct contact with these movements, what then do we
make of Cassiodorian monasticism? That question can only be approached by a

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consideration first of the historical data about the foundation of the monasteries at
Squillace.[[18]]

Here again we know nothing and presume too much. It should be insisted first of all that
we have no information about the date or circumstances of the actual foundation of the
Vivarium. The assumption of scholars has always been that the foundation of the
monasteries was directly connected with Cassiodorus' return to Squillace in retirement.
Thus the issue of the date of his retirement has been an important one, as well as the
question of his stay in Constantinople. The assumption has been that if he went directly
from Ravenna to Constantinople he could not have rounded the monastery until his
return in the 550's. Thus the safer assumption has seemed to be that he returned to his
estates in the 540's to found the monastery and only then moved on to Constantinople;
for this, however, it has been necessary to adduce the motive that Cassiodorus fled
Calabria in the face of the approaching armies of the Goths. This is very dangerous,
since it is known that at no time did those armies in fact ever reach Squillace.

The assumption of Cassiodorian presence at the creation of his own monasteries is

further buttressed by the no less widely-accepted assumption that the first and express
purpose of rounding the monasteries was the intellectual enterprise undertaken there.
Thus readers of the first pages of the Institutiones have read into the text something like
this: "I, Cassiodorus, tried to found a school of Christian learning at Rome; war
interfered, so I quit politics in disgust a couple of years later and came home here to
found a monastic school instead." This is a tantalizing hypothesis, positing a fleshed-out
image of Cassiodorus with which the reader can identify. But there is no shred of
evidence for this whatever.

First, it must be stated that it is still perfectly credible that Cassiodorus did not found the
monasteries at Squillace until about 554, upon his return from Constantinople. He was
then in his middle sixties and still clearly vigorous. Furthermore, if the institution took
root in buildings and facilities already present on the comparatively wealthy estates of
the Cassiodori, relatively little bricks-and-mortar work would be required of the
founder. But I believe there is another, likelier hypothesis. For this we must dissociate
the monastic and intellectual enterprises somewhat in our minds.

The great patrician Liberius found time in the midst of his seventy years of public life in
every corner of the Mediterranean to found a monastery on estates in Campania.[[19]]
Indeed, to found a monastery took little investment of capital and needed only willing
manpower. At least through the middle years of the sixth century, such manpower was
apparently always forthcoming in Italy. Liberius died in his ninetieth year, having only
just returned to Italy at last after the Pragmatic Sanction. Clearly his personal
involvement in the administration of the monastery was insignificant; the most that can
be said is that he may have had it in mind to use the monastery as a refuge in that old
age that he never took the time to have.[[20]]

Entering the realm of speculation, let us turn to Cassiodorus. Let us picture him as a
man growing involved in the intellectual life of the church at Rome in the 530's, perhaps

104
planning to move from a political to an educational career before many more years had
passed, perhaps intending to remain in Rome for the rest of his life. Add then our
assumption (only ex silentio, but relatively firm) that he never married and never had
children. In this context it is certainly plausible to imagine him becoming concerned
about the fate of his family's estates at Squillace, the more so because he had no heir to
enjoy them. It is thus not difficult to imagine that at this stage of his career Cassiodorus
took the initial step of establishing a monastic community on his own lands. Indeed,
nothing at all prevents us from assuming that he rounded such an institution very early
in his career; if personal intervention was required, that could have taken place during
one of his periods out of office, most probably during the time between his services to
Athalaric (527-533). The purpose of such a foundation would be strictly monastic, in the
way that the foundations of Benedict or the Master were monastic as against scholastic
or cultural.

Where does this speculation get us, then? First, it gets the monastery established and
running under independent leadership well before Cassiodorus ever goes near it to
retire. Second, it throws new light on the direction that Cassiodorus' life was taking after
his retirement, both while he was still at Ravenna and while he was in Constantinople.
For if Cassiodorus at this time had just seen the ruin of his plans for a school at Rome,
was just beginning to see that his own political career had ended, and was finding
himself half by chance, half by design, a vir religiosus now and no longer a vir illustris,
this monastery already existing back at Squillace would have naturally come into his
mind. Thus during the stay at Constantinople he would have begun to think more and
more of returning directly to Squillace, to think more and more of transferring there,
mutatis mutandis, the enterprise that he had thought to establish at Rome. How, then,
does his activity at Constantinople appear to us?

First, we begin to understand his growing fascination with the Psalter that we saw
starting already at Ravenna. For a man who had a house full of monks back in Squillace
already chanting the daily office, and who was himself more and more drawn to the
prospect of monastic retirement, the Psalter, the most specifically monastic book of the
Bible, was the obvious object to study. Moreover, the particularly pedagogic way in
which he chose to treat the Psalter was fully in harmony with an intention to prepare a
textbook of the Psalter for a new monk to use in imbuing himself with the music of
divine eloquence. Thus at last are explained the particularly monastic features of the
commentary itself. Finally, if we choose to believe, as is plausible, that Cassiodorus was
in Constantinople not entirely of his own accord, we understand better the nature of the
delay and the heightening of the desire, while at the capital of culture, to make
preparations for his return to the relative obscurity of Ionian shores.

Thus we reach firm ground for another speculation about Cassiodorus' activities at
Constantinople. One of the remarkable things, indeed the most remarkable thing, about
the Squillace enterprise is the comparative richness of the library. This is the more
surprising since, as we have seen, Cassiodorus' earlier collection at Rome, whatever its
institutional affiliation, had clearly not been transferred to Squillace. Nevertheless,
within a very few years of Cassiodorus' return (the first draft of the Institutiones can be

105
confidently dated to about 562[[21]]), there was a bountiful library of scripture and
scripture commentaries, histories and grammar books, miscellaneous useful guides (e.g.,
Columella), and the Greek works set for translation. To our picture of Cassiodorus,
therefore, abiding impatiently in Constantinople, taking thought of the monastery to
which he would return, attempting to salvage something of his notion of a school of
Christian learning, we should add the likelihood of his becoming actively involved in
the procurement of manuscripts for the library of that institution. He certainly must have
picked up his copy of Junillus there, since the work had only just been composed. Other
texts as well, particularly the Greek ones that would be translated at Squillace, could
most readily have been obtained in Constantinople; there, moreover, would be the
likeliest place to get the idea, from the abridgment made by Theodore the Lector, for a
Historia tripartita and to collect the raw materials for it.

Thus in 554 we now picture, speculatively but plausibly, Cassiodorus returning to Italy
(still accompanied by his steward?) with a trunkload or two of manuscripts, importing a
healthy dose of Christian intellectual culture to the hitherto placid monastery. We need
not assume that the state of learning at the monastery prior to Cassiodorus' arrival was
as high as it became after the founder, hitherto a distant figure, a great man on the stage
of politics, swirled in from the east with his load of books. Finally, we must not neglect
the strong possibility that the bilingual scholars who did the actual work of translating
for Cassiodorus--Mutianus, Bellator, Epiphanius, and perhaps no others--may have
come back to Squillace with the monastery's founder, a core of professorial staff,
perhaps enticed away from their former positions with promises of lifetime tenure, the
scenic delights of Squillace, and the quiet, monastic life in a secluded region.

Some at least of this propaganda seems to have been true. "The site of the monastery of
Vivarium conduces to making provision for travelers and the poor, since you have
irrigated gardens and the nearby river Pellena full of fish--its waves threaten no danger,
but neither is it despicable for its size. It flows into your precincts, channeled artificially
where it is wanted, adequate to water your gardens and turn your mills. It is there when
you want it and flows on when no longer needed; it exists to serve you, never too
roisterous and bothersome nor yet again ever deficient. The sea lies all about you as
well, accessible for fishing with fishponds [vivaria] to keep the caught fish alive. We
have constructed them as pleasant receptacles, with the Lord's help, where a multitude
of fish swim close by the cloister, in circumstances so like mountain caves that the fish
never sense themselves constrained in any way, since they are free to seek their food
and hide away in dark recesses. We have also had baths built to refresh weary bodies,
where sparkling water for drinking and washing flows by. Thus it is that your monastery
is sought by outsiders, rather than that you could justly long for other places. These are
the delights of temporal things, as you know, not the things the faithful hope for in the
future; these things shall pass away, but those shall abide without end. But placed here
in the monastery, let us be in the power of those desires that will make us co-regents
with Christ" (Inst. 1.29.1). The cloister becomes an image of paradise: an irresistible
picture. Numerous travelers over the years sought to establish the site of Cassiodorus'
foundations, without much success.[[22]] The evidence had never received close and
exacting scrutiny, however, until Pierre Courcelle undertook the study in the

106
1930's.[[23]] His conclusions, based on textual, palaeographic, topographic, and
archaeological evidence, have now won wide acceptance and even, by a stroke of luck,
partial archaeological confirmation. Courcelle began principally with the text just
quoted wherein Cassiodorus gave the closest description of the precise site of the
Vivarium. To this he added the shorter passage a little further on in the Institutiones
describing the hermitage monastery on the mons Castellum, which provided a happy
retreat for the monks of the Vivarium when they sought anchoritic silence and solitude
(Inst. 1.29.3). To these texts he juxtaposed (and this was the telling piece of evidence)
manuscript illustrations from three ninth-century copies of the Institutiones. The
similarity of these pictures, placed just before the chapter on the site of the monastery in
the manuscripts, led Courcelle to believe that they were copies of an original, authentic
depiction of the scene, stemming from a Vivarian archetype. These pieces of evidence
together began to suggest the probability of identifying the center of the Vivarium with
the present site of San Martino di Copanello, a small church now on private property;
furthermore, the mention in the Institutiones that the hermitage on the mountain was
located inside ancient walls led him to identify that site with the original location of
Greek Skylletion, long abandoned in the sixth century, on a mountain overlooking the
shore, about half a mile from the Vivarium site. The site of the Vivarium is thus south of
the Roman city along the coast, on the Punta di Staletti marked on modern maps just
south of the Alessi river, with the hermitage on the site of modern Santa Maria de
Vetere.[[24]]

All of this information Courcelle confirmed by a visit to the site in 1936. In the vicinity
he found that the monks of the abbey of Gregory Thaumaturgus at Staletti (inland from
the coast) claim to succeed Cassiodorus, but their site is no older than the seventeenth
century. On the Vivarium site itself there stands a little nineteenth-century chapel built
by a Garibaldian colonel near the traces of an earlier church known in the papal bulls of
Eugene III (1151) and Alexander III (1178). Since the manuscript illuminations had
specifically identified one of the monastery churches as dedicated to St. Martin, and
since the cult of that saint is otherwise rare in southern Italy, Courcelle found his
conclusion further supported. As corroboration, some decorated stones from the earlier
church have come to rest in the museum at Catanzaro; they bear decorative forms
identical to ones from the church of Saint Clement on the Caelian Hill in Rome,
narrowly dated to the reign of Pope John II (532-535). Two obvious facts leap out of the
page with this news: first, the library of Agapetus was in the same neighborhood of
Rome; and second, the period 532-535 embraces Cassiodorus' last possible years in
Rome before returning to Ravenna for the prefecture, and the period immediately
precedes Agapetus' own pontificate. Thus there is further corroboration for at least the
possibility of our suggestion that the establishment at Squillace dates to before
Cassiodorus' prefecture, when he might have had the opportunity to direct the
construction of the church, starting in Rome and perhaps visiting the site himself,
perhaps in connection with the formal establishment of the monastic community. Thus it
is likely that Cassiodorus took one decision in the early 530's, to spend the rest of his
private life in Rome working on the school of Christian studies and to devote his estates
at Squillace to monastic purposes; we have already sketched how his plans were

107
changed by the forces of war and politics and how he would then have come to rest at
the monastery at Squillace himself.

There are also on the present site three natural basins (10-12 meters long, 4-5 meters
wide, 11/2-21/2 meters deep--about the size of a modest swimming pool today)
communicating with the sea by narrow canals. These basins could easily be diked off
from the sea to make permanent fishponds, in which the fish would not sense
themselves captured.

The little church of Santa Maria de Vetere was convincingly identified by Courcelle
with the church called the Sancta Maria de veteri Squillatio, known from the sixteenth
century. One Marcellus Terracina, inspecting Basilian monasteries in the south of Italy
for the Holy See, visited that church on October 11, 1551.[[25]] He saw it when it had
only a few monks left suffering badly from the depredations of pirates. Working
backward from that identification, Courcelle found the monastery recorded in a list of
Basilian institutions of the fourteenth century; there are as well two Greek documents of
September 1242 and June 1243, recording a land deal participated in by the abbot of the
monastery THS THEOTOKOU TOU PALEOU SKULLAKOS. Finally, there is a bull
of Honorius III of May 26, 1219, which a seventeenth-century commentator explained
by citing a tradition that the Basilian monastery succeeded one of Cassiodorus'
foundations. In all likelihood, Courcelle concludes, the name change to the typically
Greek invocation of the Theotokos came some time around the end of the seventh
century, when Basilian monks took over.

Courcelle concluded his article in 1937 by urging the need for excavations on the site of
San Martino. The tides of war washed away those plans, but not all was lost.[[26]] For
in 1952, workmen beginning construction on a private summer house on the site
uncovered a sarcophagus of considerable archaeological interest.[[27]] This object,
associated with the ruins of the ancient church (a tidy structure with a foundation only
20 meters by 12 meters), and containing a few bones, seems to be contemporary with
firmly datable sixth-century sarcophagi from Ravenna. Furthermore, there are two short
Greek graffiti on the outside that indicate that the coffin's occupant was treated as a saint
by local inhabitants. The irresistible conclusion (to which I subscribe) is that the coffin
is that of Cassiodorus himself. The truly remarkable feature of the discovery is that it
came after Courcelle's groundbreaking article, enabling the new find to be treated as
corroborating evidence for the former conclusions and to be itself authenticated in part
by them. Thus the happy sequence of events increases on all sides the probability for
identifying the site and the sarcophagus.

Of what import is all this information for our knowledge of Cassiodorian monasticism?
First, it gives us a notion of the size of the property owned by Cassiodorus and
composing the establishment. Roughly half a mile lay between Castellum and Vivarium
proper, then another kilometer or so up the coast lay another church associated with the
monasteries (known from the manuscript illustrations). We know that there were
agricultural laborers, perhaps regular tenant farmers, living on the land controlled by the
monastery, and providing in part for its material needs (Inst. 1.32.3). But for all this

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expanse of rural country, there are indications that the monastic community itself was
modest in size; the ruins described for the one church, apparently the central
establishment, do not indicate a large body of monks. With space set aside for altars and
processional and ritual space, a building 20 meters by 12 might conceivably have had
room for as many as a hundred monks, so long as one assumes an interior austerity of
plan to go alone with the apparent austerity of size. Such a building, however, would be
more comfortable with only a quarter to a half that number of monks.

We possess one other piece of information about the monasteries of Cassiodorus that we
could too easily overlook: they did not survive and thrive. We have already seen that the
successor monastery established by Basilian monks took the most remote of the
Cassiodorian sites for its own, and how even it was not safe from piracy in the later
middle ages. We know nothing of the later history of the Vivarium and how it came to
an end; yet we can at least conclude that it did not, at any rate, prove widely attractive,
nor did it grow to great size, nor did it win wide influence over other monasteries. This
is some kind of evidence for scarcity of recruits and hence perhaps a relatively small
community.

Once we have appreciated, then, the attractions of the site and the comparative luxuries
afforded by nature if not by the builder's art, what is more worthy of our consideration is
the kind of life that Cassiodorus and his monks lived at Squillace. Unfortunately there
has not been a shortage of scholarly energy trying to prove connections of monastic
customs between Cassiodorus and Benedict. Before plunging once again into that
fevered pool of speculation, it is well to review the Cassiodorian texts that tell us
something specific.

First, we know that Cassiodorus recommended the writings of John Cassian. In the
chapter in which he described the sites of the Vivarium and Castellum, he appended to
the description of the first his only specific recommendation for readings on particularly
monastic subjects: "Read diligently and heed willingly the precepts of Cassian, who
wrote on the indoctrination [de institutione] of faithful monks and who set out at the
beginning of his work the eight principal vices to be avoided" (Inst. 1.29.2). But, he
went on to add, Cassian was not to be trusted on the question of free will, and
Cassiodorus recommended prudence in reading him, with the help of an expurgated text
that Cassiodorus himself had made. (And one Vivarian church was named for the monk
of Tours, St. Martin.)

After that crucial chapter, there follow two in which Cassiodorus approved specific
kinds of monastic activity, including the scriptorial (resuming some of his earlier
arguments) and medical, with his usual bibliographical advice. Then there follows a
much disputed chapter entitled "Commonitio Abbatis Congregationisque Monachorum"
(Inst. 1.32). In this, Cassiodorus first urged the monks to follow the patrum regulae as
much as their own superior's commands ("tam patrum regulas quam praeceptoris proprii
iussa servate"), and then he urged two abbots, whose names are given as Chalcedonius
and Gerontius (Greek names), to rule their flock (in the singular) wisely. Moreover, they
should receive visitors "ante omnia," give alms, clothe the naked, and break bread for

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the hungry, "for he can truly be called consoled who himself consoles the wretched"
(Inst. 1.32.1). The remainder of the chapter is general spiritual advice to the community
and the abbots, including only one section on suggested readings: "And so read
diligently the lives of the patres, the confessions of faithful souls, and the acts of
martyrs, always mindful of future beatitude; to this end particularly see Jerome's letter
to Chromatius and Heliodorus" (Inst. 1.32.3).[[28]] That is not much, in sum, to go on.
What, then, do we know?

First, there is no mention in the Institutiones, a work obviously addressed to the coming
generations of Vivarium monks (we believe it to have been given a last revision in
Cassiodorus' very last years, since it mentions the De orthographia, written when he was
ninety-two), of any specific monastic Regula to be followed to the letter. This is the
strongest obstacle that proponents of Vivarian adherence to the Regula Benedicti or the
Regula Magistri have to overcome.

In fact, no convincing case can be made that there had to have been a Regula as such for
the community. Everything about Cassiodorus' idyllic description seems more in tune
with a community run by an unwritten constitution, populated by a small number of
well-disciplined individuals. That impression may not be correct, but it is the only shred
of evidence we have. In particular, it seems to give the lie to the possibility that the
legalistic and harsh code of administration set out by the Regula Magistri could ever
have been intended by Cassiodorus for his monks to follow.

As we move here between our numerous ignorances (whose width and variety, as
Housman would have said, are wonderful), we must next confess confusion about the
roles of the two named abbots. Cappuyns argued that the existence of two abbots echoed
the practice of the Regula Magistri whereby a successor abbot could be created in the
lifetime of his predecessor if the former holder of the office was near death; then if he
survived, the institution would have two abbots.[[29]] Conversely, it could be supposed
that the two officials presided respectively over the Vivarium and the Castellum
establishments; but did a hermitage in the hills need an abbot? And why is their flock
referred to in the singular? Why, finally, does the title of the chapter, supported by all of
the manuscripts in one way or another, give the singular "abbatis"? We simply do not
know the answers to these questions--the fact of the names of two abbots flatly defeats
us.

The last bit of evidence to be gathered from the Institutiones is that the name of Cassian
appears where Benedict's does not. This pattern recurs at one important point in the
Expositio Psalmorum, where Cassiodorus follows Cassian and diverges from Benedict
on the advisability of using the first line of Psalm 69, "Deus, in adiutorium meum
intende," as an ejaculation pre-paratory to undertaking any monastic activity. Writing at
Constantinople fifteen or twenty years after Benedict rounded Monte Cassino,
Cassiodorus said that "Cassian (who is not always to be trusted, however), discussing
this verse's use in his tenth Collatio, thought so highly of it that he directed that monks
begin every task with a triple recitation of it" (Ex. Ps. 69.48-52).

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More substantial possible indications of Cassiodorian monastic practice come from the
evidence for the canonical hours observed at the Vivarium. Both of the testimonia for
this, however, come from the Expositio Psalmorum; one passage seems to have been
corrupted, moreover, by later hands attempting to increase the parallel to Benedictine
practice (Ex. Ps., praef. lines 77-85). The one clearly authentic reference has been
shown to agree more closely with a pseudo-Augustinian rule (which may have been one
of the sources used by Benedict) than with Benedict himself (Ex. Ps. 118.3045-3048).
Specifically, the hour of prime (mention of which was clearly an interpolation in the
passage in the preface) is not mentioned, but compline is already in its place.

On these unsatisfactory and somewhat discordant notes we come to the end of our
tether. A review is in order. There is no hard evidence that Cassiodorus had ever even
heard of Benedict. There is no evidence that he knew the Regula Benedicti. Although
there may be enough evidence to link the manuscript tradition of the Regula Magistri
with Cassiodorus, there is no credible evidence that it played any significant role in his
community. There are apparent analogies in Cassiodorian practice with various
elements of the monastic culture common at the time and with Christian monasticism of
the preceding centuries in general. Cassian is the only monastic author specifically
recommended by name for the monks to read. The only picture we are capable of
drawing on this basis, I hold, is of an independent foundation guided benevolently and
liberally.

After our earlier discussion of the position of Benedictine monasticism in the western
tradition, we can see that Cassiodorus' enterprise, understood in this way, was indeed
more liberal than Benedict's. If there was less regulation and authoritarian government,
there was more concern for the niceties of the spiritual life. Less austere and more genial
(on the seashore rather than a mountaintop), the abbey of the Vivarium (with the
"secreta suavia"--on a mountaintop--of the Castellum for the most ascetically minded)
was perhaps a little too urbane, too gentle to survive beyond the enthusiasm and self
discipline of the first generation of monks. We noted already that Benedict's more
tightly disciplined style of monasticism was the one that proved to have the staying
power and the inbuilt tendency to self-reform that let it survive and flourish for
centuries.

We said earlier that Cassiodorus does not seem to have left a Regula for his monks to
follow, but everything we have said in this chapter undercuts that statement to some
extent. For the book that Cassiodorus did write about his monastery, with its
admonitions to seek the heights of monastic spirituality and the discipline of intellectual
activity, the Institutiones, we must now examine. It seems to have taken the place of a
formal Regula; it is clearly the founder's apologia for his enterprise and his exhortation
and guide for those to come after him. Its form and content tell us most of what we
could want to know about the life of the monastery of the Vivarium and the way its
founder approached the monastic ideal.

If, in fact, we consider the Institutiones as a substitute for a formal monastic rule, some
of its characteristics come into plainer light. There is certainly every reason to believe

111
that the work was intended for no wider audience than the monks at the Vivarium. On
the very first page of the preface, Cassiodorus addresses his audience familiarly:
"Caritas inspires me to prepare this introductory volume for you, with the Lord's help, to
serve in place of a live teacher [ad vicem magistri]" (Inst., praef. 1). If, as Lehmann
demonstrated with considerable certainty, the Institutiones was first written about 562,
this motive becomes even clearer.[[30]] Cassiodorus was at that time by our best
calculations about seventy-five years old, nearing the end of his first decade at Squillace
with his monks. Certainly in his own lifetime and in the formative years of the
institution especially, Cassiodorus himself would function as the director of studies for
this school of Christian learning. But with encroaching old age he would be of a mind to
put down his plan to study in the form of a bibliographic guide, to serve "ad vicem
magistri" when he had died. Thus it is that the last chapters of the first book of the
Institutiones are addressed to members of the community, first reminding them of the
happy situation of the monastery, praising the work of the scribes and physicians (the
two most important supporting specialist groups within the community), then directing a
commonitio to the abbots and community, and concluding the introduction to the
Christian intellectual life with exhortations to seek the heights of the Christian spiritual
life of monasticism. Just in the same way, the second book of the Institutiones,
dedicated to the exposition of the secular arts and disciplines necessary to the Christian
scholar, ends in a six-page conclusion that puts the secular sciences back into
perspective and recommends readings like the Apocalypse of St. John and the De
videndo Deo of Augustine.

There are, of course, many other marks of the audience that the author of the
Institutiones had in mind; there are specific sections on the contents of the numerous
manuscript collections made at the Vivarium and even distinct references to the location
of specific books in the cabinets of the monastery's library. In every way, then, this
treatise is a handbook of a very practical nature written with a specific audience in mind.
Empirically, then, this work is a handbook for the Christian scholar. But what kind of
book is it in formal terms, and how does it achieve its numerous ends? The title itself,
howbeit obscured by the manuscript tradition, shows the way. Mynors rightly preferred
shorter forms, placing only Institutiones on the title page of his edition.[[31]] Beyond
that, the choices offered by the manuscripts are numerous but closely similar; the
clearest distinction is always between the contents of the first book (always described
with the adjective divinae) and the second (almost always saeculares, but occasionally
humanae), reflecting the different contents of the books. Just what the noun for the
contents may be is uncertain, but again similar terms occur: litterae, lectiones, res.[[32]]
The sense of institutio here clearly has to do with education, in the way that Lactantius
(whom Cassiodorus may not have known) and Calvin used the word in their Divinae
Institutiones and Institutio christianae religionis, respectively. The direct sources of the
title may have been twofold; the first was Cassian's De institutis cenobiorum, which
Cassiodorus knew and recommended to his monks, and which, if it were the source,
would add to the character of Cassiodorus' work as something functioning in place of a
monastic rule. The second source, even closer at hand, was the Instituta divinae legis of
Junillus, which, as we have seen, Cassiodorus recommended to his monks, and whose
author he probably knew personally. In either case, however, it is to be noted that

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Cassian and Junillus used the simpler form instituta; Cassian used it to denote a work
concerned chiefly with monastic discipline, while Junillus used it for one providing
guidance in exegetical practice. Cassiodorus wrote a book with both purposes in mind
and used the slightly more sesquipedalian word, perhaps only out of a pardonable
literary vanity and a preference for longer words.

If the title and certain obvious statements indicate that the two books of the work were
meant to be a unified whole, there is much in the respective books, both in tone and
content, to belie that assumption.[[33]] In the first place, Book I is far more personal in
tone and far more devoted to specific discussions of practical questions than is Book II;
furthermore, it is bibliographical in content, attempting to show the beginning student
where to go to begin his course of studies in Christian learning. Book II, by considerable
contrast, is far more austere in outline (divided rigidly into seven chapters on the seven
components of trivium and quadrivium), and is in fact an attempt to teach a certain
amount of material of substance, as well as to provide a propaedeutic for further studies
in the subjects covered. We are again face to face with Cassiodorus' theory of the
subordination of the secular disciplines to sacred science. Far from being the avid
humanist student of secular learning that he is often made out to be, Cassiodorus is here
in fact only following the tradition set forth by Augustine's influential De doctrina
christiana, which urged the acquisition of necessary skills from the secular doctores in
order to facilitate the accurate interpretation of scripture. Not only is Cassiodorus far
from original in the treatment he gives of the secular subjects, he is far from enthusiastic
about their study. Note the negative phrasing he uses in describing their worth: "It is not
irrelevant to discuss briefly in the following book the rudiments of secular education,
the artes and disciplinae, as a refresher for those who have already studied them and as a
brief compendium for those who cannot read more widely in those subjects. Knowledge
of these things, as the patres saw, is clearly useful and not to be shunned, since you find
them sprinkled throughout the Bible, that fount of universal and perfect wisdom" (Inst.
1.27.1). The whole tone of the conclusion at the end of Book II echoes this restrained
advice to use the secular studies but not to delight in them too much for their own sake.
There is a similarity in his language here, where he speaks of "rejecting and condemning
the vanities of this world," and studying the scriptures in such a way "so that what men
are seen to have sought on account of earthly praise, we might helpfully refer to
heavenly mysteria, converting all things to the glory of the Creator. And so, as blessed
Augustine and the other learned patres said, secular writings ought not be rejected"
(Inst. 2, concl. 3). Thus, in both places, the emphasis is on the strictly negative formula
that secular studies are not to be scorned, not to be fled from.

Thus the Institutiones establishes the theoretical principles and guidelines for the kind of
study that we saw Cassiodorus himself practicing in the Expositio Psalmorum. It is clear
that the unified theory that he propounded there about the scriptural origin of the secular
sciences dominates the conception of this work.[[34]] It is no accident, therefore, that
the first book is an annotated bibliography of the study of scripture and religious
subjects, while the second book is designed chiefly as a textbook in itself.

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With this in mind, we are better able to appreciate the internal order of the first book. It
begins, as the Christian student's work begins, with the Bible. Cassiodorus expended
considerable effort in establishing in his library accurate texts of Sacra Scriptura. These
included one gigantic edition in nine volumes of a Vulgate text written per cola et
commata, clearly the chief treasure of the Vivarium library; its traces are seen today in
the codex Amiatinus, a close descendant of the Cassiodorian edition, perhaps even
including a quaternion of pages from the original archetype. Also influencing the
Amiatinus was the codex grandior, a non-Vulgate text in one large volume. Finally,
another text, "minutiore manu," called a pandect, provided a copy of the entire Bible in
one volume containing the Vulgate of Jerome.[[35]]

The order of the first book of the Institutiones follows the nine biblical volumes in
order, introducing the patristic texts that explain each section of scripture. Thus the first
volume of the large edition, containing the Octateuch, is presented with a long list of
subsidiary texts; these include no fewer than fifteen works treating in some way the
book of Genesis (the most popular subject, I venture, of all patristic exegesis). The list
gives an instructive glimpse of the breadth, and occasionally the shallowness, of
Cassiodorus' library. There is Basil's Hexaemeron (probably in the translation of
Eustathius), bound together with Augustine's De Genesi contra Manichaeos. Ambrose's
Hexameron (which, as we've already seen, Cassiodorus knew and used in the earliest
days of his political career) is mentioned next, with no mention of the parallels between
that work and Basil's, with which it would more appropriately have been bound. There
is much more Augustine to be had, understandably, since Augustine wrote prolifically
on Genesis. There is his De Genesi ad litteram in twelve books, the Contra Faustum in
thirty-three books, and the Contra inimicum legis et prophetarum in two books.
Cassiodorus is among the first, though not the last, to point out the last three books of
the Confessiones as a Genesis commentary; he does not say, however, that he has had
those books separated from the whole for juxtaposition with other works on Genesis.
Then Cassiodorus praises the Quaestiones in Heptateuchum of Augustine, as well as the
Locutiones in Heptateuchum (which he calls the De modis locutionum). The collection
of Augustine on Genesis is incomplete, however, since Cassiodorus confesses that he
has heard of--but not been able to find--seven sermons of Augustine on the seven days
of creation; he seems not to have heard of the De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber.

The list does not stop with Augustine, however; there are seven books of Ambrose, De
patriarchis, mentioned for what they offer on Genesis and the other books of the
Octateuch. Then there are mentioned the works of Jerome on Hebraicae quaestiones and
Hebraeorum nomina, both of which Cassiodorus recommends highly (and we have seen
how he made frequent use especially of the latter in the Expositio Psalmorum). Prosper's
Liber de promissionibus is next on the list, completing the collection of works by Latin
authors.

What remains in this chapter is a lengthy discussion of the works and authority of
Origen. The Vivarium had three codices of his homilies, covering all the Octateuch
except Ruth.[[36]] Cassiodorus' defense of Origen freely admits the difficulties with that
author, balancing Jerome's praise against Pope Vigilius' condemnation and adding other

114
authorities. Cassiodorus quotes what he calls the conclusive dictum already proverbial
in his day concerning Origen: "Where he's good, there's none better; but where he's bad,
none worse" (Inst. 1.1.8). To get around the problems of Origen's heterodoxy,
Cassiodorus devised a technique for guiding his monks without mangling his copy of
the manuscript: "So in reading the works of Origen, I have marked passages which
contradict the teaching of the partes with the sign achresimon --'unusable'--so that he
will not deceive those who heed the warning of that sign" (Inst. 1.1.8). This affectation
of a scholiastic term in the margin, Cassiodorus is sure, will suffice to warn his monks
away from doctrinal error. This is the first place in the Institutiones where Cassiodorus
mentions precautions of this sort taken to sanitize a doctrinally suspect author. It is
perhaps a sign of the underlying respect in which Origen was held (and the relative
innocuousness of his errors; Cassian and Pelagius erred on grace and free will, hotter
topics than the eternity of creation and apocatastasis) that Cassiodorus thinks it
sufficient to mark off doubtful passages without going to the trouble of preparing an
expurgated edition.[[37]]

Cassiodorus' practice of introducing the first volume of scripture with its supporting
library is repeated in treating the remainder of the Bible. The Old Testament is divided
into one volume of historical books, one of prophets, one of sapiential literature (entitled
"De Salomone"), one of "Agiographi" (i.e., Esther, Tobias, Maccabees, etc.), and of
course the Psalter, with respect to which Cassiodorus offers not only his own
introductory commentary, but also Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, and as much of Augustine
(apparently only comments on twenty Psalms) as he has been able to acquire for the
Vivarium. There are then three volumes of the New Testament, one of Gospels (with the
fewest commentaries associated with it of any of the volumes), one of Epistles, and one
of the Acts of the Apostles bound together with the Apocalypse. In nine chapters, then,
Cassiodorus goes through the contents of his exegetical library.

This only furnishes, as it were, the raw materials for the study of scripture. The practical
guidance must now grow more fundamental. Unfortunately, the first chapter with which
Cassiodorus began that instruction is the apparent victim of a textual defect that
confuses (though it does not destroy) the order of Cassiodorus' suggestions. Briefly, the
chapter advises the student to begin with certain elementary guidebooks (Augustine,
Tyconius, Adrian, Eucherius, and Junillus--whose short treatises Cassiodorus had bound
together in a codex introductorius[[38]]), to proceed by studying existing commentaries
on scripture, then catholici magistri treating individual theological problems, then
various occasional writings of the patres (including letters and sermons), and finally to
consult the elders of the monastic community.

There is much more to the first book of the Institutiones, however. After the first nine
chapters on the books of the Bible and the tenth on methodology, there follow numerous
chapters of technical information. The first chapter lists the four major synods of the
church that are to be accepted as authoritative; the three chapters that follow this listing
of the synods (and index the text of their decrees in the library) are actually concordance
tables, showing the different listings of the authoritative books of scripture according to
different authorities--Jerome, Augustine, and the Septuagint (Inst. 1.12-14). This

115
measure enabled students to find their way from one text of scripture to another, a
matter that was particularly important since Cassiodorus' own arrangement of the nine-
volume set was idiosyncratic and grouped the books according to their contents, in
slight violation of the other usual orders. Chapter 14, indeed, concludes with a summary
of the codices available at the Vivarium. From this it is a logical step to turn to the
subject of correct copying of texts and the precautions to be taken therein: "Sub qua
cautela relegi debeat caelestis auctoritas" (Inst. 1.15).

The chapter on accurate transcription is concerned chiefly with preventing eager scribes
from altering the inspired words of scripture in the name of grammatical and stylistic
rules. Where the text of scripture is not at risk, Cassiodorus encourages the emendation
of texts according to the rules of secular magistri, but the text of scripture must always
be checked against good and ancient exemplars (a principle curiously similar to that
with which Richard Bentley planned to edit the New Testament twelve and a half
centuries later).

The remainder of the first book of the Institutiones is a sequence in no clearly defined
order of chapters on other matters of bibliographical importance for the monks of the
Vivarium. There is a general chapter, for example, "de virtute scripturae divinae," which
repeats some earlier material (e.g., it recommends Augustine's De doctrina christiana
again) and offers general principles for the study of scripture. A separate chapter is set
aside for Christian historians, chiefly making mention of works available at the
Vivarium. Then comes a series of chapters naming and praising those doctors of the
church whom Cassiodorus esteemed most highly: Hilary of Poitiers, Cyprian, Ambrose,
Jerome, Augustine, and his own contemporaries, Eugippius and Dionysius (Inst. 1.17-
23). We are, of course, most intrigued by his choice of contemporary writers to praise;
mention has often been made of the presumed early friendship between Cassiodorus and
Dionysius Exiguus, perhaps beginning when the latter was teacher and the former pupil.
The choice of Eugippius was at least in part based on comparative geographical
proximity (Eugippius wrote from a monastery near Naples), and in part on a similarity
of purpose in monastic intellectual enterprise. Cassiodorus, however, seems to have a
more personal reason for mentioning him, claiming a relationship to the Proba to whom
Eugippius' Augustine anthology was dedicated (Inst. 1.23.1).[[39]]

After a short chapter exhorting the monks to make the study of scripture the goal of all
their intellectual work ("Let us not let an excess of curiosity deflect us toward empty
speculations" [Inst. 1.24.1]), we get a scattered sequence of chapters on subjects not
strictly religious. In fact, had Cassiodorus been of a different mind, these chapters could
well have been relegated to the second book on secular studies; they treat
cosmographers (like Ptolemy), agronomists (Gargilius Martial and Columella),
orthographers, and Greek physicians (Inst. 1.25, 1.28, 1.31). There is, moreover, the
chapter on the site of the Vivarium and the recommendation for readings on
monasticism, chiefly from Cassian, and a chapter "de schematibus ac disciplinis," which
introduces and justifies the second book to follow (Inst. 1.27, 1.29). Finally, there are
the two chapters of commonitio to the abbots and community and of prayer in
conclusion.

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To understand the peculiar difference in structure and style between the first and second
books of the Institutiones, however, it is necessary to look closely at the chapter in Book
I that introduces the second book. It comes in the middle of the sequence of
miscellaneous chapters on the auxiliary sciences that monks should study if they are
able; it justifies attention to the secular studies by pointing out how useful they are in
understanding scripture and how, of course, they got their start from scripture itself.
Then Cassiodorus states his particular purpose in composing Book II: "Let us accept the
burden of antiquity, collecting in our second book the things they wrote of more
extensively in many volumes...; thus what they have furtively carried off will be
restored to the service of accurate understanding" (Inst. 1.27.2). Book II, therefore, is a
kind of extended gloss on this single chapter of Book I, taken out and expanded so that
the subject could be treated at an appropriate length without spoiling the structure of the
first book.

In this way, Book I of the Institutiones is a theoretically complete work, covering

everything about divine and secular learning that the student needs to know. But it has
been necessary for Cassiodorus to provide a text of the seven artes and disciplinae of a
sort that will reduce those studies to the appropriate state of subservience to scriptural
ones, a state they have long avoided in the hands of their secular practitioners.[[40]] It is
true, therefore, that Cassiodorus introduces the study of what we would call
"humanities" to his monastery; but he does so only in order to take command of those
subjects once and for all, to make them truly a branch of "divinity," to subordinate them
to higher things.

It is inevitable, therefore, that the second book should be of vastly less interest to us than
the first. In it Cassiodorus is merely repeating what he has been told by the authors he
excerpts.[[41]] It is in many ways difficult for us to appreciate just how so schematic
and abstract a treatise could have been of real use to students; I think it must be thought
of in connection with Cassiodorus' true magnum opus, the Expositio Psalmorum. The
only students for whom the second book of the Institutiones was written were
themselves monks. In Cassiodorus' monastery they would have been educated in the
opus Dei, the divine office, by means of that very Cassiodorian commentary, full of
allusions to all the devices of secular learning. For them, then, this second book of the
Institutiones would be a valuable companion text, taking the material scattered at
random according to the disposition of the text in the Expositio and presenting it in a
unified whole in one short book. Thus the excessive schematization of the presentation
would be precisely its virtue; for the student who came from the Expositio with his head
buzzing with arcane bits of rhetorical and scientific information, the straightforward
style of the Institutiones, showing the elements of these sciences in their necessary
relationships to one another, would provide just the organizational information to enable
the student to make sense of what he had learned. Hence, the longest section of the
second book is on dialectic, sorting out all the syllogisms and categories that had been
noted in passing throughout the Psalter; after that, rhetoric and arithmetic got the most
extended attention.[[42]]

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Thus the Expositio and the Institutiones provide together all the practice and the theory,
respectively, that a monastic scholar needed for introduction to the life of Christian
intellectual culture. Having read through the commentary, he would know the monk's
book, the Psalter, as well as could be expected, having learned well the techniques of
exposition as practiced by Cassiodorus; the Institutiones gave theoretical order to the
techniques of exposition as well as comprehensive and orderly bibliographical material
on the further study of all of scripture, with all the ancillary material that was at the
student's disposal in the Vivarium. On this basis the intellectual and cultural enterprise
of the Vivarium takes on new unity, in harmony with the monastic enterprise that lay at
the base of all life there; we can now see more clearly the kind of education that
Cassiodorus had had in mind as far back as the days at Rome when he and Agapetus
were conspiring together.

It can also now be seen in what way the two works we have discussed, the Expositio
Psalmorum and the Institutiones, were the centerpieces of Cassiodorus' own intellectual
labors through the 540's and 550's. When he had completed these works, in his seventy-
fifth year or thereabouts, he could be to some degree confident that he had provided for
his monks and for the study of Christian culture. How much success was actually visited
upon this endeavor we will attempt to discuss in the next chapter. In the meantime it
must not be neglected that there were many other works published for the monks at the
Vivarium, spinoffs from the central purposes of the enterprise.

These works divide themselves into two interacting categories, There were, first of all,
numerous works that Cassiodorus had translated from the Greek for the use of his
monks; and there were the manuscript collections that he made of numerous works of
the Greek and Latin fathers for various purposes. We have already seen that throughout
the first book of the Institutiones he was mentioning the compilation of manuscript
editions of groups of commentaries on individual sections of the Bible.[[43]] In this
regard the Institutiones are as much a record of the program of works intended to be
compiled as of the work already done; for frequently Cassiodorus mentioned works that
he had been unable to get but for which he urged his followers to be vigilant.

The question of translations raises the arguable question of the state of knowledge of
Greek at the Vivarium.[[44]] Despite efforts to prove that Squillace was in a Greek-
speaking vicinity and drew its monks from among native Greek speakers, the evidence
seems to be that the bulk of the people for whom and with whom Cassiodorus was
working neither spoke nor read the Greek language. We know the names of only three
individuals (Bellator, Mutianus, and Epiphanius) who worked for Cassiodorus in
translating Greek into Latin. Cassiodorus himself seems never to have done any
translating. The chief products of the Greek translators at the Vivarium were three: the
Latin version of the homilies of Chrysostom on Hebrews, which had a considerable
medieval vogue; the Latin Josephus, a best-seller for centuries; and the Historia
ecclesiastica tripartita, The other translations included chiefly commentaries on books of
scripture for which Latin treatments were not available, but also the work of Gaudentius
on music.

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Of these works, the only one to show any trace of originality was the Historia tripartita,
and even it was a borrowed idea. Designed to fill up the period from the end of
Eusebius' ecclesiastical history (which was present at Squillace in Rufinus' translation),
the Historia tripartita translated and conflated passages from the three Greek
ecclesiastical historians, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, covering the
period from the conversion of Constantine down to the year 429, when the narrative of
Socrates ends. There is a preface that is obviously by Cassiodorus, but it is also clear
that the bulk of the work was done by Epiphanius.[[45]] There has been a certain
amount of scholarly gloating over the translation errors in this work;[[46]] but a more
balanced view shows that it is comparatively accurate for works of that genre and
period.[[47]]

If we assume that Cassiodorus' knowledge of Greek was relatively slight, we will find
support in the Historia tripartita; Epiphanius had in hand the tripartite history of
Theodore the Lector (completed around 530, in Greek), which he followed in selecting
passages from the three historians down through the middle of the second book. From
there on he had a free hand in the selection and translation of passages, which he seems
to have exercised judiciously.[[48]] A glance at the contents will show, for example,
that the compiler largely followed the narrative of Socrates, the best of the three from an
historical point of view. The whole project is thus one that Cassiodorus inspired
(possibly bringing a manuscript--perhaps a partial one--from Constantinople for the
purpose) but that he put almost entirely into the hands of Epiphanius.[[49]] The Latin of
the Historia is good, albeit sounding as much like a translation as it in fact was.[[50]]

We know of one other original work compiled at the Vivarium at this period: the
computus that was keyed to the year 562 and designed to explain the Christian calendar.
The work is of slightly greater interest than the usual such treatise (although it is very
short and simple), because it is the first document from the medieval world that uses the
Dionysian system of reckoning dates anno Domini. The little treatise was generally
ascribed to Cassiodorus in the past (it is transmitted with his work: see below), then
denied by Mommsen on the grounds that at that time (1861, in his first edition of the
Chronica) he thought Cassiodorus must have been dead by 562. Paul Lehmann,
however, showed with clarity and vigor that the probability favors a Vivarian origin for
the work, in the time of Cassiodorus, for three reasons: that Cassiodorus lived well past
562; that he knew and admired Dionysius Exiguus, the author of the new reckoning, and
had just the sort of curiosity about natural history to be intrigued by such a system; and
that all four manuscript versions of the computus appear in codices bound with Book II
of the Institutiones, three of them immediately following the end of the authentically
Cassiodorian work.[[51]] The treatise itself is of merely antiquarian interest now, with
its rules for determining the year A.D. when the indiction is known and vice versa, as
well as rules for determining the arcane numbers of epactae, adiectiones solis, the year
of the 19 year circulus, and the date of the next bissextile day, as well as complex rules
for determining the date of Easter and simpler ones for the day of the week.

The last major surviving work produced by the Vivarium enterprise is the only one that
shows the continuation of Cassiodorus' work after the master left off. This is the

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commentary on the Epistles, originally written by Pelagius the heresiarch, revised by
Cassiodorus and his school, and now associated with the works of Primasius of
Hadrumetum.[[52]] Cassiodorus knew the work under the name of Gelasius and saw the
need to expunge heretical ideas from it (Inst. 1.8.1). He himself only managed to get
through the part of the commentary that treated Romans, leaving the rest for his monks
to expurgate. (Note that this work was so infected as to need a completely revised
edition and could not make do, as did Origen and Cassian, with marginal warning
notes.) Examples can be adduced of the use of the Rules of Tyconius the Donatist in the
revision of the commentary on Second Thessalonians and of the use of Eucherius'
Instructiones in several cases (but never in revising the commentary on Romans); both
authors had been recommended by Cassiodorus (cf. Inst. 1.10.1). What is more, this
later revision gives us a glimpse of the level of intellectual activity at the Vivarium
when Cassiodorus himself was not directly involved; where Cassiodorus had
relentlessly purged the Pelagian poison on his own authority, his monks had recourse to
the most elementary of the scriptural handbooks that Cassiodorus had recommended to
them.

For special reasons, the last two works of Cassiodorian authorship have been reserved
for consideration in our next chapter. But the picture drawn so far of intellectual activity
at the Vivarium is completely consistent with that painted by the Institutiones. It can be
clearly seen how ecclesiastical history, translations or commentaries on scripture, and
preparation of doctrinally orthodox editions of other commentaries are all elements in
the process of studying scripture that Cassiodorus set up.

Not every work in the Vivarium library was produced there, of course. Our last
consideration in examining the intellectual enterprise at Squillace must be the question
of the copying of manuscripts preserved there. For centuries, the general assumption of
scholars has generally been that Cassiodorus was instrumental in establishing the
practice of manuscript copying in monasteries and that particularly he was somehow
responsible for the preservation of manuscripts of ancient secular classics.[[53]] We
must be blunt: there is no evidence for either assumption. We know that Cassiodorus
showed his monks how to copy manuscripts, but they were busied chiefly with
scriptural manuscripts and ancillary handbooks and textbooks. It is not, however,
surprising that a monastery would be engaged in copying manuscripts of works it
needed; even Benedictine monasticism at its inception needed books for distribution to
the monks at the beginning of Lent (Reg. Ben. 48). Moreover, there is no convincing
palaeographical evidence that any surviving manuscripts of pagan classics passed
through the Vivarium. Even more damaging is the realization that it cannot be
demonstrated that the library at the Vivarium contained so much as a single manuscript
of Vergil.[[54]] In fact, the secular authors whom Cassiodorus can be shown to have
known and used at the Vivarium are only those who can be made use of in some way in
the study of scripture. Thus there are grammarians present, but not poets or classical
historians.[[55]] One is justified in asking, then, what this entire enterprise of students,
copyists, and translators added up to. The picture is a simpler one than scholars have
ever been willing to admit; it can best be drawn by examining more closely the mind
and heart of Cassiodorus at this period.

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First, we must rid ourselves of the notion that the retirement to Squillace was a romantic
flight to a monastic refuge, that Cassiodorus was taking ancient culture and walling it up
inside the monastery with him. In fact, Cassiodorus seems not to have cared one way or
the other what happened to secular culture, for he did not admit its theoretical right to
exist. Obsessed with his new idea of a Christian culture that rose above and absorbed all
previous intellectual culture, he was seeking only the best environment in which to
pursue that goal. The decision to work at the Vivarium, on the farthest shore of Italy,
was mostly coincidence. The land was there, and we have already seen that the
monastery may well have already been there before the idea of locating the school there
germinated. Cassiodorus' first choice for a site for his school had been Rome itself, but
after the collapse of those efforts and Cassiodorus' departure from Italy, the movement
of this man's heart into the monastic life began and quickened. The whole period at
Constantinople can only be understood as constituting the time when Cassiodorus the
statesman disappears from the stage of history to be replaced by Cassiodorus the monk.
Moreover, he had no grandiose conception of himself any longer, if ever he had had one
before, nor did he deserve one. He was one man, attempting in his old age to found a
school where men might come to a greater knowledge of the things their faith spoke of.
To this all his efforts were bent.

Second, we must discount all our notions that Cassiodorus saw a great mission for his
institution in some way reaching out to all of Europe. There is no credible evidence that
he ever looked beyond the boundaries of his estates except to see if he could pick up a
copy of an elusive manuscript. The works produced there were narrowly limited to local
use; even the Expositio Psalmorum, written in metropolitan Constantinople, was later
revised in places to include references to specific works in the library at Squillace.[[56]]
We will discuss in the next chapter the largely coincidental way in which Cassiodorus
came to have some impact on later developments. But apart from the very remote
possibility that the Vivarium would become a source of teachers for other schools
(although there is no evidence for this in the texts), or that students would come from
afar to study the methods there (again, no evidence), there is every reason to believe that
the self-sufficient Christian life of monasticism was all that Cassiodorus really cared for.
That this included scholastic activity was implied in Cassiodorus' understanding of
monasticism and the faith he professed; in Cassiodorus, monastic and intellectual
activity is fused directly in a way that would be duplicated partially, and independently,
throughout medieval monastic Europe.[[57]] We need not look to Cassiodorus, in fact,
as the fountainhead of this development; indeed, the love of learning and the desire for
God were passions that, when the former was adequately subordinated to the latter,
came naturally to the monastic life. In the beginning, one had monks singing the Psalter
and reading scripture, doing the opus Dei. That the monastic quest for God took on
intellectual forms reflects, not the influence of one inventor, but the nature of man
himself It would be astonishing if these men had abided in their cloisters meditating on
the Word and not become scholars.

Thus the Vivarium was for Cassiodorus something more than psychotherapy, as one
scholar put it,[[58]] but also something less than an evangelical mission to rescue

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Europe from intellectual disorder. The real quest of Cassiodorus at Squillace was the
soul's search for God through faith; in this he was atypical only in the intelligence and
resourcefulness, not to mention the bureaucrat's talent for organization, that he brought
to the task.

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Chapter 7: Old Age and Afterlives
BECAUSE the whole span of Cassiodorus' activity in his monastery presents itself to us
in one image in the Institutiones, it is easy, too easy, to think of that period as
homogeneous. For that reason it is particularly valuable to separate the study of his
activity there into two parts, following natural lines offered by the evidence. There are
two particular pieces of evidence, one a text, the other the history of a text, that show us
the progress of Cassiodorus' work.
To begin with, Cassiodorus gave a clear list of works written after his retirement in the
preface to the De orthographia: "[1] After the Psalm commentary, to which I gave my
first attention at the time of my conversion, [2] and after the Institutiones, ... [3] and
after the commentary on Romans, from which I removed the blots of Pelagian heresy,
leaving the rest for others to expurgate, [4] and after the volume in which I gathered the
Artes of Donatus with his Commenta, a work on etymologies, and another book of
Sacerdos on schemata, for the benefit of the less sophisticated brethren [simplices
fratres], [5] and after the book of tituli of Scripture..., [6] and after the volume of
Complexiones, [7] I have come to treat my old friends the orthographers in the ninety-
third year of my life" (De orth. 144.1-16). It will quickly be seen that in the preceding
chapter we have really only examined Cassiodorus' career through the production of the
first three of these seven works: the Expositio Psalmorum, the Institutiones, and the
expurgation of the commentary on Romans. We have already put a terminus ante quem
for the first draft of the Institutiones, embodying most of the educational program and
the collection of manuscripts, at 562, almost a decade after Cassiodorus' return to
Squillace. Thus the remaining four works are the fruits of almost two decades of
presumably less intense work by the aging Cassiodorus.

Here the textual history of the Institutiones comes into play, albeit with arguable
significance. The evidence on the question makes only one thing certain: that
Cassiodorus himself did put a hand to revising his own work, including new material
(mentioning, e.g., the De orthographia), and correcting obvious errors in the first edition
(such as calling a Priscian a Greek, a slip rectified when Cassiodorus had obtained a
codex of his work in Latin). The further difficulty, however, is that the original edition
survived (apparently) and was itself the basis for successive interpolated editions by
other hands of the second book particularly, which includes further information on the
seven liberal arts. There is some possibility, then, that a copy of the Institutiones in its
first draft left the Vivarium and began to receive accretions. Thus there survive copies
of the entire work (revised by Cassiodorus, uninterpolated), copies of Book 11 (also
revised and uninterpolated), and numerous additional copies of Book 11 (not revised by
Cassiodorus, interpolated by persons unknown in two stages).[[1]]

This new information is not decisive, but it throws light on the subject from a new
angle, putting better relief on the contours of the later years of Cassiodorus' career.
Returning to the Complexiones and to the De orthographia, we can examine the quality,
as well as the quantity, of the later works. What is most noteworthy is the decline in
originality; of the last four works named, three are mere compilations, including a codex
of grammatical texts, a handbook of chapter headings from the Bible for ready

123
reference, and the De orthographia itself. Only the Complexiones shows any meager
originality on Cassiodorus' part. Far from surprising us, this should confirm what we can
surmise about Cassiodorus' life at this period. He had by and large completed the
establishment of his library, with a few lacunae remaining, and prepared the major
textbooks for the training of young monk-scholars. By this time Cassiodorus was in his
mid-seventies, full of years and for the most part ready to rest in the contemplation of
divine things. While he did not cease literary activity entirely, there were yet no gaps
that he alone could fill; for he had not the vigor to undertake any major labors of
commentary on other books of scripture, the more so because of his earlier diligence in
preparing codices containing comments gathered from many sources where integral
works did not exist. There was then a last major textbook to be put together on grammar
(matching the ones already mentioned in the Institutiones on rhetoric and dialectic) and
the handbook of chapter headings, perhaps something of an old man's pastime,
something to keep the pen moving while he read through the whole corpus of scripture
over several months.

There is no particular reason why either of those works should have survived; what did
survive from this period were the Complexiones and the purely functional De
orthographia.

Turning to the Complexiones from the Expositio Psalmorum, we see how much
Cassiodorus' approach to writing scriptural commentary had changed from his active
days at Constantinople (when he was in his fifties) to the last years at Squillace (for the
preface to the De orthographia seems to say that the Complexiones was being written
just at the time of that work, in other words, at some time around the turn of
Cassiodorus' tenth decade, c. 575). The single surviving manuscript, discovered in 1712
by Scipio Maffei with his trove of Verona manuscripts, goes back itself to the sixth
century, but apparently to a northern writing center otherwise unidentifiable.[[2]] Maffei
was excited by the work because he thought it provided independent authority for
textual readings in the Latin Bible, since Cassiodorus clearly did not follow the Vulgate.
In particular, Maffei leapt to point out that Cassiodorus already knew the trinitarian
interpolation at I John 5.7-8, and took that as proof that the reading is valid (it is not).

The difference between this work and the Expositio Psalmorum is not merely in the
scale, but also in the purpose and the style. In the preface, Cassiodorus put forth this
cryptic explanation of his work: "Breves of the Apostles, which we can more accurately
call complexiones, embrace various things summarily, showing what things are treated
there, striking a balance between diffuse description and excessive (omissive) brevity"
(PL 70.1321-1322). What Cassiodorus then promised was a brief narration,
summarizing the intentiones of the sacred authors, not discussing every word of the text.
"This is the difference between breves and complexiones: that breves are an analytical
index of what follows, while complexiones give a consecutive narration of the same
things" (PL 70.1322). This seems to mean that Cassiodorus is not intending to provide a
set of canons to accompany a text of scripture, but rather an independent work capable
of being read on its own.

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The purpose of the work, then, is to introduce the reader to the non-evangelical books of
the New Testament: "For reasons of brevity I omit mention of some doctrinal disputes,
the purpose being to introduce the reader to the text, not to tell him all there is to know"
(PL 70. 1382A).

The procedure by which this introduction is achieved is formal and simple to a much
greater degree than that of the Expositio Psalmorum. The scripture was divided up
arbitrarily into numbered sections, which are the units of commentary.[[3]] The
numbered sections each begin with a scriptural lemma, the first words of that section of
the text. Explanation follows very literally, very directly; what is given is scarcely more
than a paraphrase. The actual words of the lemma need not be the subject of the
explanation (cf. ad Rom. 9.1 [PL 70. 1327B]), nor is every word of the passage
considered (cf. ad Rom. 1.18-24 [PL 70. 1323A], where Romans 1.20, a popular text in
the middle ages but one neglected in the Expositio Psalmorum, is passed over in
silence). Throughout the work the purpose of the comments is to clarify and to simplify,
with frequent references to parallel texts of scripture, especially the Psalter.

Insofar as this work fits the categories of early medieval exegesis, it is resolutely literal.
There is virtually no allegorical interpretation, not even of individual figures; thus the
mention of Noah in I Peter 3.17 is ignored. On the other hand, no part of the text is
considered worthy of outright neglect; on I Peter 5.8, Cassiodorus summarizes the
contents of the author's personal greetings and commendation of the letter's bearer. The
closest he comes to allegory is on Apocalypse 3.1, where he reads a phrase thus: "and in
shining vestments, that is, a purified conscience" (PL 70. 1408A). Nor is there
digression, nor anything not explicitly called for by the text.

As described so far, then, this is a work almost without interest except as a guide to the
original text itself, perhaps intended as a way of finding explicit references to particular
contents of the books of scripture covered. But in this apparent desert, the one visible
theological preoccupation stands out all the sharper. The work is filled, even
overflowing, with repeated and fervent insistences on the entirety and unity of the Holy
Trinity. Most commonly, these take the form of gratuitous assertions, when one member
of the trinity is mentioned, that the naming of the one implies automatically all three.
This is a pronounced habit particularly in the Pauline epistles, where the first verse of
every letter, offering greetings in the name of God, is elucidated by reference to all three
members of the Trinity. At the beginning of II Corinthians, for example, Cassiodorus
describes Paul as "seeking that peace and grace be granted them by God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ: these two are named, but the Holy Spirit is recalled often, for the
simple mention of one member of the Trinity embraces all three completely" (PL 70.
1339A-B). On Ephesians, he describes Paul as hoping "that they might have grace and
peace from the Father and Christ the Lord; where the religious spirit senses the allusion
to the Holy Spirit" (PL 70. 1345D). More explicitly, on the opening of I Thessalonians:
"Nor does it matter that he omits mention of the Holy Spirit; for whether he mentions
one or, as just now, two persons of the Trinity, he means the whole Trinity to be
understood" (PL 70. 1349C). This same admonition is repeated over and over again
throughout the commentary. For example, the triple prepositional phrases of Romans

125
11.36 excite the remark: "Veritably he proclaims the work of the Holy Trinity to be
incomprehensible; for ex ipso, namely from the Father, and per ipsum, namely through
the Son, and in ipso, namely in the Holy Spirit, all things exist; and to show the unity
indivisible in them he adds, 'glory to them forever'" (PL 70. 1329A).

What is remarkable and valuable about this penchant of the nonagenarian scholar for
insisting on the unity and coequality of the members of the Trinity is that it is not
(apparently) directed at any particular heretical tendency of the age; where the
Trinitarian features of the Expositio Psalmorum showed Cassiodorus very much bound
up in the controversies that raged around him in Constantinople, this habit in the
Complexiones is merely the repetitiousness of an old man who is also a patient teacher,
insistently drumming the central dogma of the Christian faith into his students' ears and
eyes. A lifetime spent in the company of heretics and controversialists disagreeing
violently among themselves about the Trinity had left Cassiodorus acutely conscious of
the necessity of inculcating proper doctrine in the inexperienced, to avoid prolongation
and repetition of the controversies that had rent the church for centuries. The enemies of
the truth had receded in the distance from Squillace, but the need to teach and preserve
the true interpretation lived on. It is particularly noteworthy that Cassiodorus shows no
sign of contact with Lombard Arianism, with lingering disagreement in Italy over the
Three Chapters edict, or with any contemporary eastern arguments. The isolation of the
Vivarium was complete.

We have seen, therefore, that the originality of Cassiodorus' last independent work of
scholarship is not very great after all. In his old age he was still preparing textbooks, but
with none of the resourcefulness that he showed when doing the Expositio
Psalmorurn.[[4]] Apart from witnessing the progress of Cassiodorus the man into grave
old age, however, we should also notice that there was still a demand for this kind of
work in his community. Not all of his monks, however many had stayed on through
twenty years and however many new ones had entered, were capable of advancing to
the level of their teacher, and the ones for whom he was writing were still relatively
unadvanced in their own studies.

If this strikes us as being the case with the Complexiones, it forcibly speaks to us on
every page of the De orthographia. The very need for the textbook clearly shows us
something of the state of affairs inside the Vivarium around 580. For comparison, we
should first recall that Cassiodorus had already had something to say about the subject
of correct spelling, in the Institutiones; in the chapter on copying manuscripts, after the
careful instructions to observe the idioms of scripture, there follows about a page of
orthographic instructions (Inst. 1.15). The instructions are simple and very much to the
point; they enjoin, for example, careful observation of the use of b and v, n and m, and -
e and -ae endings. Some of what he advised was exotic as well, as his insistence that
narratio be spelled with one r out of deference to its derivation (and he has his
etymology right for once) from gnarus--not even the manuscripts of that particular
passage obey him on that point. But in general at that stage, Cassiodorus was addressing
serious problems faced by the best scribes of the period; his advice reflects not any local
weakness of scribes but a general difficulty in the contemporary Latin culture. If we

126
date that state of affairs to around 560, we can see how much things had changed by the
time Cassiodorus came to write the De orthographia. We see first that the idea for the
work came from someone else (as Cassiodorus always claimed except, significantly, for
the Institutiones): "When I was working on my Complexiones of the Apostles, monks
suddenly began to clamor, 'What use is it to us to know the thoughts of the ancients, or
even your own, if we have no idea [omnimodis ignoremus] how to write them down?
Neither can we read aloud things written in indecipherable script'" (De orth. 143.1-6).
The picture conjured up is striking and sufficiently unflattering to Cassiodorus and his
enterprise to make us think there is truth in it. Consider the situation: Cassiodorus, in his
tenth decade of life, the most senior and most revered member of the community, even
if loved as much for his knowledge as for his sanctity, is approached by his monks to set
down on paper a last volume of ideas for their benefit: a spelling book.

Now consider the implications: For this spelling book they came to Cassiodorus
himself, already preoccupied with the Complexiones and surely slowed by age, instead
of approaching any other member of the monastic community. Are we to assume that he
was the only one who retained the confident ability to handle even so rudimentary a
subject in a professional fashion? I fear that we are, for when we look at the contents of
the work we see that it is but a digest of other texts, all of which must have been readily
present. Thus we are to presume that no one in the community had the minimal ability
to do the relatively mechanical task of compilation, and more, that the brothers who
needed this service could not make use of the original works themselves, but positively
needed to have the digest made. If any reader of the Institutiones has come away with a
glamorous notion of the lofty intellectual life of the ordinary monks at the Vivarium,
this state of affairs will be enough to disillusion him and more. How dismal a failure
was the whole enterprise if, almost thirty years after the founder's arrival from
Constantinople, there was still more need for a spelling book than anything else?

When we turn to the work, we find our fears confirmed. It is no particular surprise that
the old, old man has not written an original tract, nor that he has abridged material
sometimes carelessly and ineffectively. His sources are a handful of Roman
grammarians going back to the first century A.D., including L. Annaeus Cornutus
Neptitanus (from the age of Nero, not otherwise known), Curtius Valerianus (of whom
nothing is known), Papirianus (also known to Priscian), Adamantius Martyrius (whose
work survives separately for comparison with Cassiodorus' treatment), Eutychis (also
surviving), Caesellius Vindex (quoted only twice, known to and quoted by Aulus
Gellius), and finally Priscian himself.[[5]] Cassiodorus' task was to abridge these
authors' works, following certain observable principles.

Particularly where we can compare Adamantius Martyrius on the same page of Keil's
edition, we can see that Cassiodorus followed his source closely, with some few
liberties. He abbreviated a number of the examples given, but above all he simplified.
For example, Adamantius said, "Greek usage vindicates Bacchus and baccar" (Adam.
172.4-5),[[6]] the meaning of which could be elusive; Cassiodorus gives the rule to be
followed very simply: "for Bacchus and Baccha and baccar are written with a b" (De
orth. 172.4-5). Later there is a complicated hypothetical case that does not in fact occur

127
in Latin; Cassiodorus omits it entirely (Adam. 187.10-13). In other places, he reverses
procedure to insert explanations and examples where Adamantius may be opaque.[[7]]
A little later, Cassiodorus gives the example, "ut amo amabo, voco vocabo, doceo
docebo," where Adamantius has only "ut amabo docebo" to illustrate the future (De
orth. 198.11; Adam. 198.6).

If Cassiodorus digested the different prescriptions and etymologies of his sources, he

was not always able to sort them out. The two following dicta from different sources
occur scarcely ten pages apart. Following Cornutus he said, "There are those who write
quotidie with a co-: cotidie; they would give up that error if they knew quotidie is
derived from quot diebus, that is, 'on all days'" (De orth. 149.6-8). Following Papirian:
"Cotidie is spoken and written with co-, not with a quo-, since it is derived not from
quoto die, but from continenti die" (De orth. 158.18-19). Only the alert reader, not the
aged Cassiodorus, notes any contradiction here.

To recount the vicissitudes of a spelling book is a tedious chore and happily ended.
What emerges from even the briefest glance, however, is that the whole purpose of the
work was different from Cassiodorus' earlier brief essay in orthographic instruction in
the Institutiones. Then the purpose had been to warn against the most common errors;
now the need was to lay down the most basic rules for every contingency. In the earlier
case, Cassiodorus seems to have envisaged giving advice to inexperienced but
competent scribes; here he is offering the rudiments to scribes with very little
competence at all. It is impossible to refrain from what seems the obvious conclusion:
that the intellectual level of achievement at the Vivarium, as judged from competence in
reading and writing Latin texts, had fallen off so far (or perhaps had never risen above a
level that Cassiodorus had originally overestimated) as to give a very poor showing for
the members of the community. One sturdy argument from silence stands forth to
support this hypothesis: we never hear of any work written, or any students taught, by
any member of the community of the Vivarium not under the immediate supervision
and initiative of Cassiodorus himself. If the expurgation of the Pelagian commentary
extended in time past the founder's death, it is the only work we know of that did so, and
we have already seen the decline in intellectual acuity and accuracy from the portions
revised by Cassiodorus to the remaining sections. After thirty years of Cassiodorus
instructing the monks in the sciences of scriptural interpretation, not one of Cassiodorus'
students ever had a career independent of the master. This Socrates had neither a Plato
nor a Xenophon (for that matter, this Anselm had no Eadmer); the intellectual history of
the Vivarium ends with Cassiodorus' death. Moreover, as we shall see, the history of the
community at the most rudimentary level is wrapped in mystery and rapidly comes to an
end; the works preserved there disseminated to Europe, but through means we can only
surmise. After Cassiodorus, there is silence at Squillace.

If Cassiodorus was being besought for a spelling book in his ninety-third year, he must
have had some inkling that his experiment had failed on the level of worldly success; he
does not speak of this, nor is he concerned by it visibly, nor, on the level of
contemplation, should he have been. It is possible that one factor in our ignorance of the
fate of the Vivarium may not be the fault of the inhabitants, but of the broader sweep of

128
history. Throughout the Vivarium years, there is something missing from the life of
Cassiodorus that we have always seen there before: an awareness of wider geographical
horizons. For a man who had been a statesman in the highest circles of power, who had
traveled the Mediterranean himself and sent others on missions around the known
world, the horizons from Squillace were suddenly very close and very narrow indeed.
There is some mention of seeking out manuscripts from a distance, but this may or may
not ever have been successful. Instead we see Cassiodorus isolated and alone at
Squillace, out of touch with the political and theological events of the day, with only the
companions of his self-imposed exile to write to and for. When he came to mention
ecclesiastical writers of his own age, he named only Dionysius and Eugippius, both
some decades dead. On the rest of the history of the second half of the sixth century in
Italy, Cassiodorus is silent. (Out there in the wider world, by around 575-580, Justinian
was a decade and more dead, the Lombards were in control of the plains of northern
Italy, and Gregory was on his way to Constantinople as papal apocrisiarius.)

This isolation in turn is an accident of history and a byproduct of the remoteness of

Cassiodorus' hideaway. The farthest tip of the Calabrian peninsula is unique in having
been spared the ravages of the sixth century's wars. When Roman and Gothic forces
raged up and down, they always clung to the west coast, seeking the straits of Messina.
Years later, when the Lombards entered Italy in the late 560's, they never quite got as
far as Squillace. The toe of Italy had passed quietly back into Byzantine hands while
Cassiodorus was away in the north and then in Constantinople, and it remained
Byzantine until the Normans came in 1060. The actual fate of Cassiodorus' monastery is
murky, as we have said. Gregory the Great mentioned the establishment in two letters,
one arbitrating a dispute with the bishop of Squillace as late as 598; but after that there
is silence.[[8]] As discussed in the last chapter, we surmise that Basilian monks took
over some of the remnants of the institution, and we saw how Cassiodorus himself
might have been an object of their veneration (to judge by the Greek graffiti on his
sarcophagus). The patria of the man who had run all of Italy for the Ostrogoths, the site
of his last and proudest achievement, is reduced to merely another gaggle of monks
looking no farther than the next cloister.

What is remarkable about Cassiodorus in his old age, however, is that in his last work,
the De orthographia, there appeared personal touches and signs of the individual spirit
behind the literary persona with which we have for so long dealt, to an even greater
degree than in the Institutiones. We have already quoted his proud, quiet passage listing
the works he had written since his retirement and taking up the request of his monks to
provide them with one more textbook. He saw that this was the task of a true "modern,"
receiving and preserving some of the heritage of antiquity: "It is our intention to weave
into one fabric and assign to proper usage whatever the ancients have handed down to
modern custom. But the things which were only customary in the past it is best to
abandon with hesitation, lest extra care be taken beyond what is needed nowadays" (De
orth. 145.14-18).[[9]] This very nearly summarizes the entire enterprise of Cassiodorus'
years in retirement, discarding what is useless of the ancient, preserving into the new
age the useful treasures of olden days. Cassiodorus was never, as we have seen, the most
original of writers, always preferring another man's carefully chosen words to his own

129
composition. So too at the end of his preface, when he wished to say a few words of
general advice, he had recourse to another writer's words: "But before beginning our
treatise on orthography, we have decided to cite the preface of Phocas, the writer on
artes, since it seems to fit our whole endeavor [cuncto operi nostro]as if we had written
it ourselves" (De orth. 146.20-22). Note how he insists that these verses are so much of
his sense that they are as good as his own.

Ars mea multorum es, quos saecula prisca tulerunt;

sed nova te brevitas asserit esse meam.
omnia cum veterum sint explorata libellis,
multa loqui breviter sit novitatis opus.
te relegat iuvenis, quem garrula pagina terret,
aut siquem paucis seria nosse iuvat;
te longinqua petens comitem sibi ferre viator
ne dubitet, parvo pondere multa vehens;
te siquis scripsisse volet, non ulla queretur
damna nec ingrati triste laboris onus.
est quod quisque petat: numquam censura diserti
hoc contemnet opus, si modo livor abest.

(De orth. 146.13-24)[[10]]

This elegy is good as an epitaph for Cassiodorus himself and shows us more clearly than
anything else how he envisioned his own work. There can be no question that his was an
age for the abbreviator; the second book of the Institutiones, prepared as an ancilla to
the more important first book and as a propaedeutic to the Expositio Psalmorum, itself
became a prime source of handbook knowledge of the liberal arts, revised and
interpolated as the opportunity came. We see here, too, antiquity's prolixity reduced into
a shorter, simpler, modern compass; and there is the plea that the work not be scorned
by learned men simply because it is brief, since it directly serves a useful human
purpose.

Those are not quite the last words of a personal nature from Cassiodorus, however.
There is a conclusion at the end of the De orthographia, a final envoi. It would not be a
work of Cassiodorus, one feels, if the number twelve were not a distinguishing feature,
and certainly this is no exception. There have been twelve chapters of excerpts, which
the conclusion explains once again: "For if, as we know, twelve hours make a day,
twelve months complete the year and its seasons, twelve signs of the zodiac hem in the
plains of heaven in a solid ring, then it ought to be enough that we have excerpted
twelve volumes of orthographical writings to set out the rules for correct spelling" (De
orth. 209.22-27). Then there is a last, more personal paragraph of direct address:
"Farewell, brethren; deign to remember me in your prayers. I have written this brief
guide to spelling, and I have prepared copious instructions on the interpretation of
scripture. Just as I have sought to separate you from the ranks of the unlearned, so may
the heavenly power not allow us to be mixed with evil men in community of
punishment" (De orth. 209.28-210.5). There can be no doubt that this conclusion refers

130
to the spelling book just completed. There is not, to be sure, any mention of secular
sciences here; Cassiodorus' achievement, the thing on which he stakes his hope of
heaven, is the material he has prepared copiosissime (contrasted neatly with the brevitas
of the work at hand) for the understanding of holy scripture.

And that is that. Completed in the ninety-third year of his life, somewhere around 580,
the De orthographia is the last thing Cassiodorus ever wrote, excepting minor
modifications to the Institutiones. When did Cassiodorus die? There are no legends of
his having been taken off into the hills around Squillace to return again at the onset of
the next dark age, but neither is there any evidence to tell us of the scholar's death and
the monk's entry into the next life. We only know that he survived into his ninety-third
year, but not how much longer; our conclusion in Chapter 1 was that his birth was
somewhere between 484 and 490, so we see him surviving until at least 576 and perhaps
as late as 582 by the time of the De orthographia. As with Cassiodorus' birth, his death
enfolds us in ignorance.

We have already alluded to the speedy disappearance of his monastery from the stage of
history, perhaps within about two decades of his death. Cassiodorus himself suffered
one injustice at the hands of fate, perhaps as a result of the speedy dissolution of his
monastery: he never achieved recognition as a saint. In large part this is the result of
there never having been an organized cultus and, more pertinently, the result of
Cassiodorus' having neglected to leave behind a hagiographer prepared to state his case.
If one looks into the Acta Sanctorum, however, one will find the name Cassiodorus
listed, on the authority of a late martyrology, under March 17, a day already associated
with a saint of the century of Cassiodorus' birth. But this is at best legend. The most
interesting survival of Cassiodorus' name in hagiographical history turns Cassiodorus
into two martyrs of a group of four assigned to the age of the Antonines and recorded in
Acta Sanctorum on September 14 under the names Senator, Viator, Cassiodorus, and
Dominata. Hippolyte Delahaye published the story of this text, which he dated to the
eighth to eleventh centuries, discounting all historical authenticity except to note that the
name of our subject must have been embraced by legend at some time in the early
middle ages.[[11]]

As we saw in the last chapter, there has come to light in this century evidence of a
debatable nature that may indicate the rudiments of a cultus directed toward the founder
of the Vivarium: the graffiti on the sarcophagus from San Martino di Copanello at
Squillace. Written in Greek, their clear import is to appeal to the coffin's occupant as a
holy spirit and intercessor.[[12]] Even this, however, would not be enough to establish a
formal case for canonization. What recognition Cassiodorus has reccivcd in the afterlife
will have to be confined to the land that eye has not seen; for what it is worth, Dante did
not recall seeing him there.

There is a more mundane kind of afterlife that writers of books are given to suffer here
below in the material world. In the past the survival and transmission of Cassiodorus'
works in the middle ages has been a favorite pastime for scholars, especially
palaeographers. This study does not pretend to present original research on the subject

131
for many reasons, the most substantial of which is the simplest: the topic is of less
pressing interest than we have, in the past, wanted it to be.

The vulgate opinion of Cassiodorus has it that he is the veritable savior of western
civilization,[[13]] and even that he was a pagan at heart secretly using the monastic
system to preserve for future generations the fruits of ancient culture.[[14]] Moreover,
just at the point when scholarship found itself in a position to assess this claim, there
arose the theory that the manuscripts of the Vivarium had been transported to Bobbio,
providing a nucleus library around which the Irish additions brought by Columbanus
were built. While that theory, now totally exploded, clung to a tenuous existence, the
moment of crisis passed and Cassiodorian scholars with the range and depth of learning
to attack the broader assumption had passed from the scene or come to work no longer
on Cassiodorus. In the last decades, there has been a gradual tendency in the most
specialized studies to recognize the nature of Cassiodorus' contribution and influence for
what it was, but old misconceptions die hard.[[15]]

Cassiodorus' influence on medieval culture was, to be blunt, insignificant. When we

assess his contribution we can say, for example, that he was found useful without going
beyond that to insist that his utility had any particular influence on the recipients of his
intellectual legacy. Likewise we can find that he was a respected author without making
the further leap to deducing that hc was influential. These things need to be kept in mind
as we glance briefly at the history of Cassiodorus' legacy since his death.

We lack direct evidcnce for the earliest history of the dissemination of the Vivarium's
manuscripts. The only sixthcentury manuscript surviving of any of Cassiodorus' own
works, that of thc Complexiones, already comes from a northern scriptorium and offers
no information except that the dissemination began early; on the other hand, of this
particular work no other copy survives anywhere, implying that this one case may be
irregular to begin with. There is one surviving manuscript that seems to be a product of
the Vivarium itself (MS Leningrad Q.v.l.6-10); this codex, with several characteristic
Cassiodorian features, is only a collection, however, of works of a pseudo-Rufinus,
Fulgentius, Origen, and Jerome, and its post-Vivarian history is obscure. [[16]] An
hypothesis has grown up in this century which argues that the contents of the Vivarium
were at some point around the end of the sixth century transferred to the library of the
Lateran at Rome. [[17]] The idea is attractive, since it hearkens back to the original
effort to found a school of Christian learning in Rome (for the contents of Agapetus'
library were probably also taken over by the Lateran). On the other hand, such
conscious design seems to imply that Cassiodorus himself had something to do with the
decision to transfer, even if only as a deathbed instruction to his monks to give up all
they had strived for in the intellectual sphere and send the library to Rome. Another
hypothesis, with benefits and disadvantages of its own, might be that Cassiodorus had a
copy of each of the important manuscripts of his library made to be sent to Rome as a
present to a reigning pontiff. This runs into the particular obstacle that not only the
works of Cassiodorus and his colleagues themselves but also the particular codices of
compilations of other authors' works seem to find themselves represented among the
survivors (to judge by later manuscripts). Moreover, we do know that at least one of the

132
great biblical manuscripts, or a copy of one, went eventually to England. At that point
we must ask whether there was such a surplus of personnel and materials at the
Vivarium to allow for the conception of so substantial a program of production of gift
copies; then we must add the query whether Cassiodorus would have prepared such a
gift without making a slightly revised edition of the Institutiones (with a new preface
and cosmetic modifications elsewhere) to accompany the library as an index.

On balance, then, our ignorance will go so far as to allow us to say that it seems that
Cassiodorus' library made its way to Rome, and thence to the world, not long after his
death. The circumstances are opaque to us.

Of Cassiodorus' own works the early fate is no less obscure. We saw that the second
book of the Institutiones in its interpolated versions may have derived from a copy of
the first edition prepared by Cassiodorus and unrevised later. All this is obscure to us as
well, raising the question whether a copy left the Vivarium before the revised edition
was prepared or whether the original edition was kept uncorrected (most of the changes
were very minor) side by side with the revision. Compared with his other works,
however, the Institutiones tells a simple and clear tale of its origins; for we know
nothing of the early history of the others until they begin receiving mention in the works
of other authors and are copied in manuscripts that survive.[[18]]

Of the medieval fate of the Vivarium works themselves rather more is known. Of
course, the Gothic History perished completely, and the Complexiones survived in only
one manuscript. All of Cassiodorus' other works were more fortunate, with the historical
translations (Josephus and the Historia tripartita) being the most widely successful,
while of his own original works, the second book of the Institutiones and the Psalm
commentary had the widest vogue. Let us now examine the fate of each work in
sequence.[[19]]

1. Variae. Apparently not known in England before the Normans, this work survives in
manuscripts that are all comparatively late and mostly contain only portions of the entire
work.[[20]] Two manuscripts of the last four books survive from the eleventh century,
with the bulk from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries.[[21]] Of the three surviving
manuscripts of the entire work, two are fourteenth-century, one fifteenth. One surmises
that the work became more popular in the later middle ages when Europe rediscovered
political thought as a subject distinct from ethics and saw in the Variae a handbook of
examples of moral Christian political action.[[22]] This is certainly the impulse that
drove Marsilius of Padua to open his Defensor Pacis with a quotation on the benefits of
the tranquility of civil regimes taken from the first letter of the Variae (Theoderic's
appeal to Anastasius to reaffirm their peaceful relations in 508). Manitius' manuscript
catalogues show that copies are indicated only beginning in the twelfth century. Today
over a hundred manuscripts are known.[[22a]]

2. Chronica. The only mention in Manitius' catalogues is ninth-century and German.

The work, obviously, was not especially important, since it was abbreviated, derivative,
and ended with the sixth century. One surmises that it remained useful for a time,

133
however, wherever other historical calendars of this sort were lacking. Ranulphus
Higden only quotes Cassiodorus indirectly, but his entry for him mentions the Chronica:
"There flourished also Cassiodorus Senator, who expounded the Psalter and published a
chronicle [chronicam] of emperors and pontiffs.''[[23]]

3. Ordo generis Cassiodororum. As discussed in Appendix 1, this survived only in

connection with two relatively early copies of the Institutiones, from which the
individual paragraphs have occasionally been borrowed as they appear in other
manuscripts. The information that the fragment contains, particularly the crucial
affirmation of Boethian authorship of theological tractates, was forgotten.

4. De anima. One hundred and eighteen manuscripts survive independently or with

unrelated works (including the Institutiones), another fifty bound with the Variae, which
Cassiodorus tells us was the original disposition of the manuscript. Mentions in
medieval catalogues are fewer but come as early as the tenth century;[[24]] the work
was specifically cited by Rabanus Maurus and Hincmar of Rheims and used in the De
anima of Aelred of Rievaulx, then quoted later by Albertus Magnus and Johannes
Pccham. Representing a typical prescholastic view of the soul, it had its small place in
late controversies; short and attractive, it was useful as a devotional tract. It was
unknown in England bcforc the Normans.

5. Expositio Psalmorum. This was the most successful of Cassiodorus' own works. It
was known in continental catalogues of every century and used frequently as early as
Bede and Alcuin, who spoke of the work highly; Alcuin listed it in the York library. The
utility of the work was obvious, since it was the only complete Psalm commentary from
the patristic era except for Augustine's much bulkier and less well-organized collection
of sermons; and Cassiodorus' express purpose had been to produce a more useful work
than Augustine's. The passage from Ranulphus Higden cited above shows the priority of
mention of this work.[[25]] Adriaen collected testimonia to this work from Bede and
Paul the Deacon (in the eighth century); Alcuin, Theodulf of Orleans, Amalarius,
Hildemar, Gottschalk, Hincmar of Rheims, Prudentius of Troyes, Angelome, and
Notker Balbulus (in the ninth century); Flodoard of Rheims (in the tenth century); Berno
of Reichenau, Bruno of Wurzburg, and Durandus of Troarn (in the eleventh century);
and Abelard and the Decretals of Gratian (in the twelfth century). The work's popularity
faded only with that of its style of exegesis and the rise of the great Glossa
ordinaria.[[26]]

6. Institutiones. At a very early date, the two books were dissociated from each other in
most copies. The first book, with its specific references to the library of the Vivarium,
was less universally useful and had much less broad distribution. The second book was
a handy introduction to the liberal arts and spread far and wide (influencing Rabanus
Maurus' De institutione clericorum); it was also interpolated frequently, however, and
used by authors of other textbooks as much as it was used directly itself. Alcuin's De
rhetorica is an example of the later trend, more interesting because by that time the first
book of the Institutiones had not, to our knowledge, reached England. The difficulties in
using Book I, however, were not insurmountable, and it found itself used, and modified,

134
in many ways. A short eighth-century abstract of Italian origins, for example,
interpolated a schedule of readings from scripture throughout the church year into the
last chapter on the books of the Bible.[[27]] Some later monasteries seem to have used it
as a loose guide in establishing and organizing their own libraries.[[28]] In the later
middle ages, the first book was taken occasionally for a "De viris illustribus" and passed
on under such a title.[[29]]

7. De orthographia. Spelling books were always popular, and there are a variety of
catalogue citations from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. This particular work
may have been known to Bede, and was definitely known to Alcuin.[[30]]

To the catalogue of Cassiodorus' own works, the most important additions to be made
are the Latin Josephus and the Historia tripartita, published in Latin at the Vivarium, and
the Instituta of Junillus, in whose transmission the Vivarium played a crucial part.

1. Josephus. Not yet published in a full modern edition, the Latin version of the
Antiquitates gave the medieval scripture student priceless background information about
the historical context of the New Testament. By an examination of relative numbers of
citations in Manitius' report of medieval library catalogues, this appears in fact to be the
single most often copied historical work of the middle ages, followed most closely by
Sallust, more distantly by writers like Orosius, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Paul the
Deacon. There are 171 manuscripts of the Latin Josephus listed by the most recent
editor, including a fragmentary sixth-century papyrus in Milan, perhaps a close relative
of the original. Bede knew and used Cassiodorus' translation.[[31]]

2. Historia tripartita. Cassiodorus' abridgment of the ecclesiastical historians was less

popular by far than either Josephus, Eusebius, or Orosius. Nevertheless, preserving the
story of an important century of church history, it retained a vigorous antiquarian
interest and its survival was assured. Boniface and Alcuin quoted the work, and all six
surviving ninth-century manuscripts are in continental monasteries with close English
connections, perhaps indicating a crucial role for Alcuin in its distribution. A specific
check of its appearance in medieval catalogues is available, showing it in seven from the
ninth century, two from the tenth, nine from the eleventh, thirteen from the twelfth,
seven from the thirteenth, and six each from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[[32]]
The earliest reference to the work, however, is contemporary with Cassiodorus:
Liberatus of Carthage used the work in his Breviarium (dated 560-566). Gregory the
Great knew the work in 597, only to reproach its indulgence toward the authors of the
Three Chapters.[[33]] A competitor appeared in the ninth century in the form of a
Chronographia tripartita translated into Latin by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, but this
work spread much less rapidly and widely.[[34]] A medieval translation by one Leopold
Stainreuter of Vienna has recently been edited, showing a vernacular interest in
Cassiodorus' compilation.[[35]]

3. Junillus That Cassiodorus was instrumental in the transmission of Junillus' Instituta to

the western world can be easily demonstratcd; in the Institutiones Cassiodorus gave
Eucherius and Junillus as the last two authors (in that order) of the five whosc works

135
were included in his codex introductorius (Inst. 1.10. 1). In three manuscripts of the
seventh to ninth centuries, that is precisely the order in which those two authors appear
one after the other.[[36]] Since, moreover, the Instituta was written c. 542 and
apparently returned to Italy with Cassiodorus ten years later, it is already probable that
the Vivarium marked the work's entry into the west. It was a popular treatise, containing
as it did a brief introduction to the Antiochene style of scriptural exegesis.[[37]]

But the transmission of Junillus contains a significant blunder that was not uninfluential
in later medieval literature. The original work was a dialogue between a teacher asking
questions and his pupils answering; writing in Constantinople, Junillus used a device
from the Greek alphabet to indicate this, using the Greek capital letter delta (for
didaskalos to indicate the teacher's questions and a Greek capital mu (for mathetes) for
the students' responses. But in the manuscripts of Junillus this system has gotten
confused. They give the following text in the preface: "Lest any confusion should arise,
as so often does through scribal negligence, I have designated the teacher [magister]
with a Greek letter M and his students [discipuli] with a D, so that all error may be
avoided by the use of foreign characters not used in writing Latin" (PL 68.17). The
vulgate text says shortly afterwards that the work gives the text of the dialogue in true-
to-life fashion, where "everything is simply and clearly written as if with students
asking questions and the teacher answering them" (ibid.) The scribes have taken the
Greek letter M to apply to the Latin word beginning with the same letter and have
reversed the application of the two Greek letters; in their versions the dialogue takes
place between inquisitive students and an answering teacher, a press conference style
rather than the catechism that the work was originally intended to be.[[38]]

The confusion that exists in the Junillus manuscripts sprang, one doubts not, from the
copying of the work by Latin-trained scribes, presumably away from Constantinople, to
whom the allusion to the Greek words for "teacher" and "students" did not occur.[[39]]
My purpose in rehearsing this history is to suggest that, given Cassiodorus' crucial role
in the transmission of Junillus, it is worth asking whether he and his monks were to
blame, at least partially, for the confusion. There are two possibilities: either they
reversed the delta and mu in the introduction and rewrote the other passage into
"discipulis interrogantibus" and "magistro respondente," thus setting the tradition
reversed only by a few isolated and presumably early scribes who knew a little Greek;
or they copied the original manuscript slavishly, never thinking that the apparent
contradiction between the initials and words would be puzzling to Latin readers, in
which case the three surviving accurate or halfaccurate readings would be direct
survivals and the vast majority of corrupted manuscripts would be the result of an easy
and natural corruption. On balance, the latter is more likely, with Cassiodorus meriting
at least some blame for not recognizing the likely confusion and taking steps to produce
a version that would be immediately intelligible to a Latin audience. (Reversing the
letters both in the preface and all the way through in the dialogue would have sufficed,
as one scribe tried to do later.) In either case, the history of Junillus' text shows
Cassiodorus' enterprise at its best and worst, preserving a mildly influential work
otherwise unknown in the west, but not thinking through adequately the circumstances
of its transmission to insure an accurate tradition.

136
In addition to these specific traces of individual works, there is of course a variety of
other information about the uses to which Cassiodorus was put in the middle ages.
Lehmann has shown that he was known to and drawn upon by Isidore for his
Etymologiae, for example.[[40]] In the confusion of medieval attributions of authorship,
we find the curious product of a commentary on the Psalms attributed to Bede; in that
work each comment on a given Psalm is preceded by a shorter explanatio depending
heavily, sometimes word for word, on Cassiodorus.[[41]] Another pseudo-Bedan work
on music consists of only twenty-nine definitions of technical terms, twenty-five wholly
from Cassiodorus, and two more partly from him and partly from Arnobius and
Jerome.[[42]] Similarly there is a phony letter on clausulae attributed to Cicero
confected out of Martianus Capella and Cassiodorus.[[43]] Finally there are little traces
up and down the middle ages of the survival of various Vivarian influences, as in the
case of Cluny, where we know Mutianus' version of Chrysostom on Hebrews was
included in the annual round of reading in the refectory.[[44]]

The picture of Cassiodorian survivals in the medieval period is thus set out before us
like a mosaic whose pattern momentarily eludes us. What emerges from the welter of
detail is a realization of the importance of the distinction that I suggested we carry into
this examination. There can be no question that Cassiodorus was a respected author, not
quite of the rank of a Father of the Church, but yet approved and appreciated by all who
mention his name; and their number is considerable. There can further be no question
that much of what Cassiodorus did was of great utility to medieval scribes and readers.
The situation for which he prepared his own works at the Vivarium and designed the
program of compilations and translations was very much the paradigm case of the
medieval center of intellectual activity: the monastic school of scripture and spirituality.
Thus the works he put together for his monks were of considerable use to monks up and
down Europe. Further, it is important that Cassiodorus, a guide to the monastic
intellectual life, began to fade from view in the twelfth and later centuries, when the
center of intellectual life was shifted to the universities and thus changed into something
radically new. It is in this period that Cassiodorus' major surviving work from his own
secular career, the Variae, began to come into its own. The final judgment of the middle
ages, however, was respectful but, coming from a Renaissance humanist who resembled
Cassiodorus in more ways than one, not enthusiastic: "1 readily number Cassiodorus
among the happy and distinguished--a man of such high rank and such good fortune, so
learned and so pious; but I cannot altogether approve his embracing all the sciences,
both sacred and profane, in his writings."[[45]]

But was Cassiodorus influential? Have we seen anything to indicate that his ideas
themselves had any greater life in the middle ages, that his educational scheme itself
took root and thrived? We have not. As constituted, Cassiodorus' works lend themselves
to being used, but do not succeed in passing on theological or educational ideas.[[46]]
For example, the Cassiodorian notion of the harmony of scripture and secular learning
very nearly died with the author.

137
There is another level at which Cassiodorus has often been presumed to have been an
influential figure: in the model he gave of the monastic intellectual life, by the example
of the Vivarian enterprise. Unfortunately, the evidence is lacking to support this
hypothesis (one might almost call it rather a vain hope), and the balance of probability
weighs against it. In order for Cassiodorus to be important in this regard, the success of
the first book of the Institutiones would have to be more noticeable; for that work to fall
into disregard for centuries indicates that such was not the case. We know too well now
that the Vivarium was not the only monastery copying manuscripts in the sixth century,
and we have seen in this study that the scope and nature of Cassiodorus' enterprise itself
is nowhere so ambitious as has been suggested in the past. In particular, apart from a
faint hint that we may owe the survival of Cato's De re rustica to Cassiodorus, his long-
presumed importance in the history of the transmission of classical manuscripts has
almost disappeared in the light of close scrutiny.[[47]] Where his works did appear and
become most useful, apparently reaching the continent anew from England with Alcuin,
they followed upon a revival of interest in monastic intellectual activity and cannot be
shown to have instigated it in any way. In fact, it is still more probable that it is with
Cassiodorus that we see the beginning of the period of neg1ect of secular classics; into
his own century the senatorial aristocracy had been patronizing the copying of the most
pagan of classics, but after Cassiodorus and the decision to concentrate on litterae
divinae, the practice virtually disappeared until the Carolingjan revival.[[48]]

But we can see how Cassiodorus won his reputation. The superficial reader of the
Institutiones would notice that there was apparently equal treatment of secular and
sacred science (in Migne and earlier editions, the two books were printed as separate
works, the second almost as long as the first, owing to the interpolations) and would
find a chapter in the first book devoted to the science of copying manuscripts. That
chapter in particular would warm the hearts of palaeographers and textual critics
wishing later medieval scribes had been so well-instructed those œactors combined in
minds desirous of finding a little classical humanism in the long gap between the last
pagan aristocrats and the Carolingian Renaissance, and the monster oF that Cassiodorus
who could be called "a pagan at heart" was born.[[49]]

Happily the modern fate of Cassiodorus has not been marred completely by those who
would make of him what he was not. He broke into print irregularly through the first
centuries after Gutenberg, finding an editor for his complete works in the rather
undistinguished Maurist Johannes Garet, who gave the complete works (lacking only
the then-undiscovered Complexiones) to the light of day at Rouen in 1679.[[50]] This is
the version that survives in Patrologia Latina. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries
have been kinder, however, with a wide variety of eminent scholars doing serious, if
piecemeal, work on his texts.[[51]] Because of the fragmentation of Cassiodorian
studies into separate departments for church historians, theologians, Roman historians,
palaeographers, etc., the immediate benefit was that scholars of considerable eminence
from different fields would be moved to the study of the one author. The only problem
is that Cassiodorus has thus had to wait so long to be treated as a unity.

138
The real landmarks of modern Cassiodorus scholarship mark a proud record of scholarly
advance. Two German dissertations just over a century ago, one by A. Franz and the
other by A. Thorbecke, performed the useful service of setting forth the state of
knowledge at that time in convenient Form.[[52]] Not long after, while Mommsen had
been editing the Chronica, Holder's happy discovery of the Ordo generis and its
publication with a commentary by Hermann Usener offered new stimuli to look at
Cassiodorus. Mommsen, by default, became the editor of the Variae for the Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, having just done the Getica, but his edition shows no trace of
haste or carelessness; what is more, it is graced with an index by Ludwig Traube that is
a model of its kind and the starting place for all serious study of the Variae. For several
decades, scholars were digesting this new mass of material; Lehmann's
"Cassiodorstudien" and van de Vyver's first article were fruits of this rumination. Then
in the 1930's, apparently unbeknownst to each other, two young scholars undertook
work on Cassiodorus and the Institutiones. Pierre Courcelle was intending an edition of
the work when he was forestailed by the remarkable edition published by R.A.B.
Mynors. This edition was limited in its intention, providing a text of considerable
critical authority for the use of scholars, without pretending to a final determination of
the history of the text and its interpolations or providing a commentary on the many
problems the text raised. Courcelle's work went not for naught, as we have seen
repeatedly in the notes to this study.[[53]] His early article on the site of the Vivarium
was followed by the magisterial study of Greek influence in the west in the fifth and
sixth centuries, which includes the most careful study of the survival of Cassiodorian
manuscript materials. Since that time there has been a new scattering of work, some
missing the mark but stimulating much helpful discussion in so doing, such as
Cappuyns' identification of Cassiodorus as the author of the Regula Magistri and
Momigliano's hypothesis about the origins of the Getica. With the establishment of the
Corpus Christianorum project, the means were at last at hand to bring the remaining
works into modern editions. Adriaen's edition of the Expositio Psalmorum is scarcely
more than a redaction of Garet's original edition, and plagued by typographical errors at
that; a critical edition is in preparation by J.W. Halporn for the Vienna Corpus. The new
volume of Corpus Christianorum containing the Variae and the De anima is a more
useful contribution, though the Variae there is plagued by misprints and sorely misses
Traube's index. The only remaining work from Cassiodorus' pen without a critical
edition is the Complexiones[[54]] but that is the work least desperate for a new edition,
since it survives in one undamaged uncial manuscript ably published by Maffei.

139
Epilogue
THE history of Cassiodorus was only a small part of a much larger story, of course. By
the categories that we are taught in textbooks, his life formed a part of the transition
from antiquity to the middle ages, or--in the more melodramatic formulation--the
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." But what is striking at the conclusion of a
minute examination of Cassiodorus' life and works is just how useless and inapplicable
the larger categories are for our purposes. Only at a distance does the world seem simple
enough to fit into such comfortable slots; viewed up close, as always, all sense of grand
pattern disappears and we are left with a complex network of men and events, of
purposes and cross-purposes, an inextricable tangle of success and failure.
Cassiodorus himself comes through the often stiff and artificial prose of his works as a
man intent on backing carefully into the future. His concerns seem always to connect
the past with the present: the Roman empire with the Ostrogothic kingdom, traditional
forms of rhetorical education with the need for religious indoctrination. But for a man so
dull and pedantic in his personal style, he was at the same time a great seizer of
opportunities and someone who, all unwilling, was on the side of change and
innovation.

For example, if the Ostrogoths had settled their dynastic problems and been left to their
own devices by Justinian, Italy as a whole might have survived into the middle ages as a
considerably more unified and politically viable nation than it in fact did. In such an
alternate version of history, Cassiodorus would appear as an important figure in the
adaptation of Roman culture to barbarian rule (and Theoderic might be credited with
having presided at the-birth of modern Europe).

In his monastic career, Cassiodorus showed the same characteristics. He was never, one
feels, a charismatic leader, but an organizer. Had his school of Christian studies at Rome
survived, he might indeed almost deserve the reputation that he has wrongly attained as
the savior of western civilization. But his impact on medieval culture was less dramatic
than that. He was in the main a purveyor of textbooks to posterity.

Cassiodorus was more a doer than a thinker. By most common criteria, he was in fact a
failure in most of what he did. The Ostrogothic kingdom for which he labored so long
and faithfully was itself only a fading memory long before Cassiodorus himself ever left
this world. His school at Rome was fated to a particularly brief existence, while his
monastery at Squillace scarcely survived its entrepreneur.

Nevertheless, Cassiodorus was never simply a politician and an administrator. In the

course of his life he came to care very deeply about his religion and the way in which it
was studied and taught. And if his schemes did not achieve success, by the kinds of
standards historians commonly use, Cassiodorus nevertheless must have felt some
considerable satisfaction in reflecting on the course of his life (this is palpable in the
preface to the De orthographia, as we saw). What he had done, he had done well and
faithfully to the best of his abilities. Contingent historical events over which he had no
control would to a large extent minimize the influence that Cassiodorus would have on

140
the world at large. But in the end, as Tertullian said, no man is born for another who is
destined to die for himself. Cassiodorus might himself have been pleased with greater
"success," but at the same time he could have rendered, I venture, a pretty fair account
of the way he had succeeded in the end in conducting his own life. By definition, the
view from the monastery is meant to be directed towards a heavenly, not an earthly,
city. In some ninety-odd years of life, Cassiodorus had become proficient in the ways of
both cities, a remarkable achievement in any age.

141
Appendix I : The Ordo generis Cassiodororum
THE text here presented was discovered by Alfred Holder in the course of a study of
Reichenau manuscripts. He turned it over to Hermann Usener, who published it in
pamphlet form with a commentary in 1877.[[1]] It has been reprinted frequently since,
with each editor lending his hand to the task of emending the crucial passages.[[2]] In
the intervening century, other copies of the fragment have come to light, all apparently
derived from the first copy discovered; but there is one possibly improved reading in
one of the other manuscripts. The original discovery was made in Karlsruhe Augiensis
106, dating from the tenth century, containing a good copy of one of the interpolated
versions of the second book of the In- stitutiones. Mynors quoted Bischoff to the effect
that the script is typical of northern France. The other principal copy is Reims 975,
another tenth-century copy of the same interpolated version of the second book of the
Institutiones, where, however, only the last paragraph of the Ordo generis, pertaining to
Cassiodorus himself, has been preserved; it has not been formally collated with the other
copy, but Cappuyns reported one variant reading of significance that it contains.[[3]]
Finally, it has been reported that certain later manuscripts with connections to
Reichenau transmit the paragraph dealing with Symmachus; one manuscript even
conflates the Ordo generis paragraph with a narrative of the martyrdom of Boethius and
Symmachus.[[4]]

Because any substantive emendations involve decisions about the dating of the text and
the chronology of Cassiodorus' career, I will give the text of the fragment following the
manuscript as closely as possible, giving in my text only the unanimously accepted
corrections (with readings of Aug. 106 in the apparatus). A commentary on the various
difficulties follows. Text

Excerpta ex libello Cassiodori Senatoris

monachi servi dei ex patricio, ex consule
ordinario quaestore et magistro officiorum
quem scripsit ad Rufium Petronium Nicomachum
5 ex consule ordinario patricium et magistrum
officiorum. ordo generis Cassiodororum: qui
scriptores extiterint ex eorum progenie vel
+ex quibus eruditis+
Symmachus patricius et consul ordinarius,
10 vir philosophus, qui antiqui Catonis fuit
novellus imitator, sed virtutes veterum
sanctissima religione transcendit.
dixit sententiam pro allecticiis in senatu, parentesque
suos imitatus historiam quoque Romanam septem
15 libris edidit.
Boethius dignitatibus summis excelluit.
utraque lingua peritissimus orator fuit. qui
regem Theodorichum in senatu pro consulatu
filiorum luculenta oratione laudavit. scripsit

142
20 librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam
dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium. condidit
et carmen bucolicum. sed in opere artis logicae
id est dialecticae transferendo ac mathematicis
disciplinis talis fuit ut antiquos auctores aut
25 aequiperaret aut vinceret.
Cassiodorus Senator vir eruditissimus et multis
dignitatibus pollens. iuvenis adeo, dum patris
Cassiodori patricii et praefecti praetorii
consiliarius fieret et laudes Theodorichi regis
30 Gothorum facundissime recitasset, ab eo quaestor
est factus, patricius et consul ordinarius,
postmodum dehinc magister officiorum; et
+praefuisset+ formulas dictionum, quas in duodecim
libris ordinavit et Variarum titulum superposuit.
35 scripsit praecipiente Theodoricho rege historiam
Gothicam, originem eorum et 1oca mores XII
libris annuntians.

1 Excepta (et Mommsen); casiodori 2 & cons

5 & cons ordinarium 6 officioru; casiodoruq
13 proalecticiis 16 Botius 20 cap
22 bocholicum; loicae 24 fuit (bis scriptum,
priore 1oco erasum) 25 eq. perar&
28 praecorii (apud Usener), praecarii (apud Fridh)
29 consilianus fier& laudes 32 offociorum (corr.
a manu prima) 36 & 1oca mores in libris (et Mommsen)
Commentary

2-3. monachi servi... officiorum. The original text of the work from which this is
excerpted dates, at the latest, from the years at Constantinople. It is therefore to be
assumed that the first sentence is the work of a later copyist, identifying what he is
about to excerpt. Mommsen deleted these two lines, as though the rest of the sentence
could be Cassiodorus' own words.

2. ex patricio. This is not formally correct; the patriciate was an honorary title held for
life.

4-5. Ruffium Petronium Nicomachum ex consule. Usener stigmatized this phrase for
omitting the usual late Roman designator of rank (in this case, V.I. for Vir Illustris); but
it is significant that such designators are omitted for all the figures of this fragment. A
monastic copyist (implied by the mention of monasticity in line 2) might easily omit
them.

8. +ex quibus eruditis+. Usener replaced quibus with civibus; Mommsen began (in the
preface to his edition of Jordanes) with vel qui eruditi; in his edition of the Variae he

143
allowed the manuscript reading to stand, voicing a suspicion that some verb like
profecerint had dropped out after eruditis. Mynors, quoted by Momigliano, PBA,
41(1955), 231, offered claruerit after eruditis, with an understood subject like genus or
progenies. Finally, Cappuyns, in his discussion of the Ordo generis cited above, offered
the simplest emendation: eruditi sunt (but he probably should have said sint). The point
at issue is a vital one, unfortunately, for a clear reading of the text would make it clear
just what relationship Cassiodorus was claiming existed between himself and the two
figures described. On balance, the most obvious readings of the text seem to downgrade
the probability of strict blood or marriage relationship between Cassiodorus and the
others; but the whole gist of the document as preserved seems to be to list individuals
who are related to the Cassiodori. Since, further, the fragment preserved is only an
excerpt from some presumably longer work, the difficulties presented are insoluble; we
can only balance probabilities and possibilities. (And recall that the title, Ordo generis
Cassiodororum, does not go back demonstrably further than the excerptor, who may
have misunderstood the purport of the work himself.)

11. imitator. Note that the same idea is repeated fifteen words later, 14 imitatus.

13-14. parentesque suos imitatus. An allusion to the Annales of Virius Nicomachus

Flavianus (A.D. c. 334-394), recorded in CIL 6.1783 (cf. J. Matthews, Western
Aristocracies and Imperial Court, A.D. 364-425 [1975], 231).

16-25. This is, of course, the text that radically increased the difficulty of arguing that
Boethius the Christian was not the same individual as Boethius the philosopher (cf.
especially V. Schurr, Die Trinitätslehre des Boethius im Lichte der "skythischen
Kontroversen" [1935]). But note that no mention of the Consolario philosophiae is
made. (The carmen bucolicum probably refers to the earlier literary activity mentioned
in the first lines of the Consolatio. )

28. Notice that the usual formula praefectus praetorio is here altered by the substitution
of the genitive praetorii (restored by Usener). Again a monastic scribe unaccustomed to
the terminology of chanceries is indicated.

29. The et is another of Usener's restorations, and a likely one. Note here and in line 26
the superlatives applied to Cassiodorus in this paragraph; the description of the putative
author of the fragment is every bit as impersonal and eulogistic as those of the other two
subjects.

31. patricius. If we knew when Cassiodorus received this title, whether early in life like
Boethius or late like his own father, it would help to date the Ordo generis.

33. +et praefuisset+. Usener was happy to delete everything from et (end of line 32)
through superposuit (line 34). Mommsen emended praefuisset to run "praefectus
praetorio. suggessit formulas .... "B. Hasenstab, Studien zur Variensammlung des
Cassiodorus Senator (1883), 3, suggested "praefectus praetorio fuit et formulas
dictionum in duodecim libris ...." Fridh gives "praefectus praetorio. composuit et

144
formulas ...."He does not seem to know, however, the suggestion made by Cappuyns,
who apparently found in Reims 975 the single word praefectus already in the text for
praefuisset; but Cappuyns' report of the reading (DHGE, 11[1949], 1368) is clumsily
presented in such a way as to make only further hash of an already jumbled sentence.

The only unavoidable problem with the text is the at least unclassical use of praefuisset,
which (1) does not ordinarily take the accusative direct object, and (2) is in the
subjunctive in an apparently independent clause where we would expect the in- dicative.

A hitherto unnoticed solution runs this way: In the first lines of the Ordo generis,
Cassiodorus' cursus is only carried as far as his tenure as magister officiorum. In the last
paragraph the only justification for seeing an allusion to the period of his prefecture lies
in the relative clause beginning "quas in duodecim libris" (referring to the Variae and
thus to the end of the prefecture) and in the appearance on the same part of the page of
the letters praef- in praefuisset. If we assume, however, that the simplest reading of the
evidence is the correct one, namely that the text before us dates in its original form to
some time towards the end of Cassiodorus' term as magister officiorum (or at least to
before his appointment as prefect), then the words put in Athalaric's mouth in Var.
9.25.7-8 take on considerable significance: "Erat solus ad universa sufficiens: ipsum
dictatio pubfica, ipsum consilia nostra poscebant, et labore huius actum est, ne laboraret
imperium. Repperimus eum quidem magistrum, sed implevit nobis quaestoris officium
...." This is documentary evidence for the view, canvassed at length and generally
approved in Chapter 1 above, that the documents in Var. 5-10 from after Cassiodorus'
formal term as quaestor were things written above and beyond the call of duty, that
Cassiodorus' proficiency as a ghostwriter was so remarkable that he was called upon to
perform what were technically quaestorial functions long after he had risen higher in the
ranks. In that regard his superintendence of the preparation of the formulae dictionum
might well be a matter of remark and a sign of the regard in which he was held by his
superiors.

In that light, praefuisset is not so bad a reading after all. The first difficulty mentioned
above can be overcome by concluding either that the Latinity of the author or scribe of
our text had weakened to the point of accepting an accusative direct object after forms
of praesum (on analogy from praeficio?) or that some other verb is intended for this site
(and that would be related to the mistaken subjunctive) or that, indeed, formulas has
assimilated the -as ending from quas after having originally been in fact formulis. The
second difficulty, the subjunctive, is easier to resolve. In the first place, it seems to echo
the earlier subjunctives in the paragraph, especially recitasset three lines earlier; and
second, if the text originally contained a verb from a different root that the scribe was
mistakenly attempting to correct, the incorrect form given here could echo as well the
shape of the original word. What such another verb might be, I am not sure, but I note
that it could as easily have begun with pro- as with prae-. (But might not the simplest
emendation of all, to prafuit formulis, yet be the best?)

With all this out of the way, Cappuyns' new reading of praefectus for praefuisset merits
treatment along with the relative clause beginning quas in duodecim libris. If we assume

145
an initial date for this work of c. 527-533, it is clear that the actual excerpt represented
here comes from a later period, probably (as other indications have shown) from some
time in Cassiodorus' monastic career. Thus the clause describing the Variae would be
the interpolation, obviously suggested by the pre- existing mention of the formulae
dictionum. As for the altered praefectus, perhaps the scribe of Reims 975 was simply
quicker (by a millennium or so) to emend than Hasenstab, Mommsen, or Fridh.

A final note on the date of the making of the excerpt: as indicated in Chapter 6 above,
following A. van de Vyver, Rev. Ben., 53(1941), 59-88, the interpolated versions of the
second book of the Institutiones with which this fragment survives derive from the
earliest edition of the complete Institutiones prepared in 562. Apparently a copy of at
least the second book had left the Vivarium before Cassiodorus could make his own
later revisions on it, thus probably in Cassiodorus' own lifetime; if that assumption is
true, then the Ordo generis may well have been placed on the manuscript which left the
Vivarium to identify the author of the Institutiones. But we cannot be certain that this
did not take place until after Cassiodorus' death.

36. loca mores XII libris. Usener's restoration of this passage ("1oca moresque XII
libris") was dropped by Mommsen but partly accepted by Fridh (who drops the -que but
retains the XII). I accept Fridh's reading; I am as sensitive as Usener to the greater
elegance and correctness added by the enclitic -que but find no reason to depart from the
manuscript. The XII seems to me an important correction for two reasons. First,
Cassiodorus' passion for writing works in twelve books, chapters, etc., seems to me so
strong that he would mention it here as well, especially if the reference just before to the
Variae is by Cassiodorus himself. Even if that passage is an interpolation, however, the
form of that interpolation may well have been further conditioned by the surrounding
text, including this precise point. Second, the paragraph on Symmachus makes it very
clear, at just this parallel point in the last line, that his Roman history contained seven
books; the formality of the whole piece and the impersonality of the descriptions
indicates to me that the parallelism would be carried out, even by an interpolating
excerptor.

146
Appendix 2: Cassiodorus' Name
Syrian origin of the name Cassiodorus was demonstrated by A. J. Letronne.[[1]] He
identified the connection with the cult of Zeus Cassius, centered on Mount Cassius
between Antioch and the sea, across the Orontes from Seleucia.[[2]] Fridh asserts that
the cult continued at Seleucia and near Pelusium even into the sixth century.[[3]] It was
attended by the apostate Julian while he resided at Antioch.[[4]] The name itself appears
in Greek inscriptions three times (twice in the genitive, Kasiodorou once in the
nominative, Kassiodoros);[[5]] these inscrip- tions are the best evidence for the accepted
spelling of the name ending in -rus. Scholars before Mommsen's edition of the Variae
usually accepted Cassiodorius, for the oldest manuscript of any of Cassiodorus' works
dates from the late sixth century and gives the genitive very clearly as Cassiodorii.[[6]]
But that testimony is apparently only secondhand. M.J. Cappuyns had an ingenious
solution to accommodate all the evidence, arguing that the name was Cassiodorus
through three and a half generations known to us (MSS of the Variae are unanimous in
using -rus), but that in his pedantic old age Cassiodorus Senator added the iota for
etymological elegance.[[7]] This is a quaint thesis but altogether unlikely.

It should finally be noted that Cassiodorus' known relative at Constantinople,

Heliodorus, bears a name ending in a similar -dorus.

147
Appendix 3: The Amals and Their Royal Kin
THE following table is based on a similar table by T. Hodgkin, corrected and
supplemented with Mommsen's editions of the Getica and Variae, and with N. Wagner,
Getica (1967), 51-56. I have throughout this work used forms of German names as
faithful to the originals as Latin spelling allows, even where this results in slight
variations from traditional English spellings.

148
Appendix 4: Momigliano's Hypothesis
IN an attractive article that has received wide attention, Arnaldo Momigliano has argued
that Cassiodorus himself must have been involved in revising the Gothic History down
to the marriage of Germanus and Mathesuentha in 550, else there would not be any
emphasis on the connections of Germanus with the Anicii.[[1]] This is a seductive
argument, but one for which there is in the end just too little support. First, we do not
even know for sure whether Cassiodorus was claiming in the Ordo generis actual
kinship with Boethius and Symmachus; second, we do not know that he thought of that
relationship as going through the gens Anicia;[[2]] third, there is no other evidence for
Cassiodorus' involvement in Gothic politics after his retirement from the praetorian
prefecture over a decade before the putative date of a Cassiodorian final revision of the
Gothic History; and finally, it has been shown that there is more than adequate room on
the imperial family tree of Constantinople for an Anician parent for Germanus
himself.[[3]] Cassiodorus' love of literary formalities should also be recalled, as one
symptom of which the Gothic History is only one of many Cassiodorian works
composed in twelve units; it is not likely that Cassiodorus would have broken up that
formal pattern with additions and deletions after the fact, for his literary fastidiousness
and vanity were simply too great.[[4]] Finally, it must be recalled that the purpose of the
Gothic History was not that of a modern historical narrative, to record events fully,
fairly, and accurately, it was merely another species of panegyric, an attempt to provide
a legitimate, honorable history of flattering antiquity for newcomers on the Roman
scene. If Cassiodorus is to be imagined as adding to the original work as time went on,
we must also assume that he gave up the original purpose of the work entirely for a
newer motive that is nowhere acknowledged. Furthermore, the quality of the
information recorded after Theoderic's death in the abridgement is simply so sketchy (as
opposed to the usual ancient practice of becoming more prolix as the author approached
his own times) that it is far likelier that the last two chapters are a hasty addition, not an
abridgment of a fuller chronicle.

149
Bibliography -- 1979
This listing is derived from pp. 274-296 of James J. O'Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979), with very small additional notes, chiefly memos
of places where studies listed here have been reviewed.
1. Aeberg, Nils.
Die Goten und Langobarden in Italien.
Uppsala, 1923
Arbeten Utgifna med Understöd af Wilhelm Edmans Universitetsfond, Uppsala, 29
2. Alberdingk Thijm, P.P.M.
Iets over M.A. Cassodorus Senator en zijne eeuw.
Amsterdam, 1857
3. Alfonsi, L.
'Cassiodoro e le sue Institutiones'
Klearchos 6(1964), 6-20
4. Altaner, Berthold
'Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Schriften des Athanasios von Alexandreia'
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 41(1941), 45-59
= KpS 392-408
5. Altaner, B.
'Beiträge zur Geschichte des altlateinischen Übersetzungen von Väterhandschriften'
Historisches Jahrbuch 61(1941), 208-226
6. Altaner, B.
'Der Einfluss und das Fortleben der griechischen Literatur im Abendland vom Ende des
4. bis in die zweite Hälfte des 6. Jahrhunderts'
Theologische Revue
48(1952), 41-50
7. Amatucci, Aurelio-Giuseppe
'D'un luogo di Cassiodoro che si riferisce al De re rustica di Columella'
Bollettino di filologia classica, 2(1895-96), 21-23
8. Amelli, Ambrogio
Cassiodoro e la Volgata
Grottaferrata, 1917
9. Amelli, Ambrogio
'Cassiodoro e San Benedetto'
Rivista storica benedettina 11(1920), 168-72
10. Andersson, Theodore M.
'Cassiodorus and the Gothic Legend of Ermanaric'
Euphorion 57(1963), 28-43
11. Ashworth, Henry
'The Psalter Collects of Pseudo-Jerome and Cassiodorus'
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 45(1962-63), 287-304
12. Aubert, Marcel
'L'église du monastère de Cassiodore, en Calabre'
Bulletin monumental 98(1939), 231-32; repr. Revue archéologique 14(1939), 208
13. Bacherler, Michael

150
'Cassiod. inst. saec. im Bambergensis und bei Garet-Migne'
Philologische Wochenschrift 42(1922), 1217-23
14. Bacherler, Michael
'Cassiodors Dichterkenntnis und Dichterzitate'
Bayerische Blätter für das Gymnasialschulwesen 59(1923), 215-19
15. Baehrens, W.A.
Überlieferung und Textgeschichte der lateinisch erhaltenen Origenes homilien zum
Alten Testament
Leipzig, 1916
= TuU 42.1
16. Bardy, Gustave
'Cassiodore et la fin du monde ancienne'
Année theologique 6(1945), 383-425
17. Bardy, Gustave
L'église et les derniers Romains
Paris, 1948
18. Bardy, Gustave
'Les origines des écoles monastiques en Occident'
Sacris Erudiri 5(1953), 86-104
19. Bardy, Gustave
'Le souvenir de Josèphe chez les Pères'
Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 43(1948), 179-91
20. Bardy, Gustave
'Sur les anciennes traductions latines de saint Athanase'
Recherches de science religieuse 34(1947), 239-42
21. Basabe, Enrique
'La conservación de los clásicos'
Helmantica 3(1952), 381-419
22. Baudi di Vesme, Carlo
'Frammenti di orazioni panegiriche di Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro'
Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (Scienze morali, storiche e
filologiche), Ser. 2, 8(1846), 169-212
23. Beer, Rudolf
Bemerkungen über den ältesten Handschriftenbestand des Klosters Bobbio
Anzeiger der kaiserlicher Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, philosophisch-
historischen Klasse, 48(1911), Heft 11
24. Bergmüller, Ludwig
Einige Bemerkungen zum Latinität des Jordanes
Programm, Augsburg, 1903.
25. Berza, M.
'"Causidicus" dans les textes latins du moyen âge'
Revue historique du sud-est européen 23(1946), 183-95
26. Bessel, W.
'Ueber "defloratis prosperitatibus" beim Cassiodor'
Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte 1(1862), 639-43
27. Besselaar, Joseph J. van den

151
'Cassiodoro Senador e la cultura retórica de sua época'
Revista de Letras 1(1960), 11-52
28. Besselaar, Joseph J. van den
Cassiodorus Senator en zijn Variae: De Hoveling, De Diplomatieke Oorkonden der
Variae, De Rhetor
Nijmegen, 1945
rev. M. van den Hout AJP 69(1948), 233-5
29. Besselaar, Joseph J. van den
Cassiodorus Senator, Leven en Weerken van een Staatsman en Monnik uit de Zesde
Eeuw.
Harlem-Amsterdam, n.d. [1950]
Reviews by: E. Hendrikx, Studia Catholica 26(1951), 214; R.B.C. Huygens, Latomus
13(1954), 621; E.J. Jonkers, Hermeneus 26(1954), 13; A. van de Vyver, Le Moyen Age
57(1951), 383
30. Bianchi, Dante
'Note sui Getica di Giordane e le loro clausule'
Aevum 30(1956), 239-46
31. Bieter, Frederic A.
The Syntax of the Cases and Prepositions in Cassiodorus' Historica Ecclesiastica
Tripartita
Washington, D.C., 1938
SMRL, 6
32. Bischoff, Bernhard
'Vier angebliche Freunde Cassiodors'
Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige,
55(1937), 100-1
33. Bischoff, Bernhard
'Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im Frühmittelalter'
Sacris Erudiri 6(1954), 189-281
repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien (Stuttgart, 1967), 1.205-73
34. Blatt, Franz
The Latin Josephus Volume I: Introduction and Text, the Antiquities: Books 1-V
Aarhus, 1958
Acta Jutlandica: Aarsskrift for Aarhus Universitet, 30,1; Humanistik Serie 44
rev. J.A. Willis, 51(1961), 272
35. Blatt, Franz
'Remarques sur l'histoire des traductions latines'
Classica et Mediaevalia 1(1938), 217-42
36. Blum, Hans
'Über den Codex Amiatinus und Cassiodorus Bibliothek in Vivarium'
Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 64(1950), 52-57
37. Bradley, Dennis R.
'The Composition of the Getica'
Eranos 64(1966), 67-79
38. Bruyne, Donatien de
'Cassiodore et l'Amiatinus'

152
RB 39(1927), 261-6
39. Bruyne, Donatien de
Préfaces de la Bible latine
Namur, 1920
40. Bulhart, V.
'Textkritisches VI'
RB 70(1960), 639-41
41. Bulhart, V.
'Zur Historia Tripartita'
ALMA 24(1953), 5-17
42. Burns, Thomas S.
Transformations in Ostrogothic Social Structure
Diss., Michigan, 1974
43. Bury, J.B.
The Later Roman Empire
London, 1923
44. Cameron, Alan
'The End of the Ancient Universities'
Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 10(1967), 653-73
45. Capelli, Luigi Mario [v.l. Cappelli?]
'I fonti delle "Institutiones humanarum rerum" di Cassiodoro'
Rendiconti del Reale Istituto Lombardo, Ser. 2, 31(1898), 1549-57
46. Cappuyns, Maïeul J.
'L'auteur de la Regula Magistri: Cassiodore'
RTAM 15(1948), 209-68
47. Cappuyns, Maïeul J.
'Cassiodore'
DHGE 11(1949), 1349-1408
48. Carcopino, Jérôme
Souvenirs de sept ans, 1937-44
Paris, 1953
49. Cazzaniga, Ignazio
'Spigolature critiche III: Osservazioni ad alcuni passi di Cassiodoro-Epifanio'
La Parola del Passato 11(1956), 110-15
50. Cazzaniga, Ignazio
'Varia Graeco-Latina -- III'
Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo (Classe di Lettere, Scienze morali e storiche),
75(1941-42), 349-66
51. Ceresa-Gastaldo, Aldo
'Contenuto e metodo dell'Expositio psalmorum di Cassiodoro'
Vetera Christianorum 5(1968), 61-71
52. Ceresa-Gastaldo, Aldo
'Da Vivario a Roma: Appunti per la storia del codice Vaticano Latino 5704'
Giornale Italiano di Filologia 22.3(1970), 39-46
53. Ceresa-Gastaldo, Aldo
'La tradizione virgiliana nell'esegesi biblica di Cassiodoro'

153
Rivista di Studi Classici 16(1968), 304-9
54. Chapman, John
'Cassiodorus and the Echternach Gospels'
RB 28(1911), 382-95
55. Chapman, John
'The Codex Amiatinus and Cassiodorus'
RB 37(1925), 139-50; 39(1927), 12-32
56. Chapman, John
'The Codex Amiatinus Once More'
RB 40(1928), 130-4
57. Chapman, John
Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels
Oxford, 1908
58. Chapman, John
Saint Benedict and the Sixth Century
London, 1929
59. Charlier, célestin
'Cassiodore, Pélage et les Origines de la Vulgate Paulinienne'
Studiorum Paulinorum Congressus Internationalis Catholicus, 1961, 2.461-70
(= Analecta Biblica, 17-18)
60. Chastagnol, André
Le sénat romain sous le règne d'Odoacre: Recherches sur l'épigraphie du Colisée au
V[e] siècle
Bonn, 1966
= Antiquitas, Reihe 3, Band 3.
61. Chatelain, émile
'Palimpsestes de Turin, IV. Fragments des Panégyriques de Cassiodore'
Revue de philologie, n.s. 27(1903), 45-48
62. Church, R.W.
'Cassiodorus'
Miscellaneous Essays
London, 1888
63. Ciampi, Ignazio
I Cassiodori nel V e nel VI secolo
Rome, 1877
64. Cipolla, Carlo
'Considerazioni sulle Getica di Jordanes e sulle loro relazioni colla Historia Getarum di
Cassiodorio Senatore'
Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (Classe di Scienze morali,
storiche, e filologiche), Ser. 2, 43(1893), 99-134
65. Cipolla, Carlo
'Richerche di Scipione Maffei intorno alle testo delle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei (Classe di Scienze morali, storiche, e
filologiche), Ser. 5, 16(1907), 393-400
66. Coens, Maurice
'Anciennes litanies de saints'

154
Analecta Bollandiana 59(1941), 272-98
67. Corssen, P.
'Die Bibeln des Cassiodorius und der Codex Amiatinus'
Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie 9(1883), 619-33.
68. Courcelle, P.
'De la Regula Magistri au Corpus Vivarien des "Chroniques"'
REA 56(1954), 424-28
69. Courcelle, P.
'Histoire d'un brouillon cassiodorien'
REA 44(1942), 65-86
70. Courcelle, P.
Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques.
3rd ed., Paris, 1964
71. Courcelle, P.
Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources
Cambridge, Mass., 1969
Trans. H.E. Wedeck from Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore
(2nd ed., Paris, 1948)
72. Courcelle, P.
'Nouvelles recherches sur le monastère de Cassiodore'
Actes du V[e] congrès international d'archéologie chrétienne (Rome, 1957), 511-28
73. Courcelle, P.
'Le site du monastère de Cassiodore'
MEFR 55(1938), 259-307
74. Courtès, Jean-M.
'Figures et tropes dans le Psautier de Cassiodore'
REL 42(1964), 361-75
75. Crocco, A.
'Il liber de anima di Cassiodoro'
Sapienza 25(1972), 133-68
76. Curtius, Ernst Robert
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
New York, 1953
(trans by W. Trask from Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter [Bern, 1948])
77. Dahn, Felix
'Ueber Cassiodor. Variarum XII.g.: Paschasio praefecto annonae Senator Praefectus
Praetorio'
Bausteine: gesammelte kleine Schriften (Berlin, 1880), 2.275-89
78. Delahaye, Hippolyte
'Saint Cassiodore'
Mélanges Paul Fabre: études d'histoire du moyen âge (Paris, 1902), 40-50
repr. in his Mélanges d'hagiographie grecque et latine (Brussels, 1966; = Subsidia
Hagiographica, 42)
79. Della Valle, Giuseppina
'Moenia'

155
Rendiconti della Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli, n.s.
33(1958), 167-76
80. Di Capua, F.
'Cassiodoro. De inst. div. litt. c. XV'
Bollettino di Filologia Classica 19(1912), 89-90
81. Di Capua, F.
'Una pseudoepistola di Cicerone De numerosa oratione e le irregolarità del latino
biblico'
Il Mondo Classico 9(1938), 211-18
82. Dobiache-Rojdestvensky, Olga
'Le Codex Q.v.I.6-10 de la Bibliothèque Publique de Leningrad'
Speculum 5(1930), 21-48
83. Donelin, Paul F.
Cassiodori Senatoris Complexiones in Epistulis Sancti Pauli
Dissertation, CUA, 1970. (DA 32A.916)
84. Dubuat-Nançay, Louis Gabriel
'Abhandlung von dem Leben des Cassiodors'
Abhandlungen der Churfürstlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
München 1(1763), 79-96
85. Duchesne, Louis
L'église au VI[e] siècle
Paris, 1925
86. Duckett, Eleanor Shipley
The Gateway to the Middle Ages
New York, 1938
87. Durand, V.
Quid scripserit de anima M.A. Cassiodorus
Toulouse, 1851
88. Eberle, Josef
'Dank an Cassiodor'
Lateinische Nächte (Stuttgart, 1966), 186-202
89. Ennis, Mary Gratia
The Vocabulary of the Institutiones of Cassiodorus
Washington, D.C., 1939
SMRL, 9
90. Ensslin, Wilhelm
'Aus Theoderichs Kanzlei'
Würzburg Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 2(1947), 75-85
91. Ensslin, Wilhelm
'Beweise der Romverbundenheit in Theoderichs des Grossen Aussen- und Innenpolitik'
Settimane 3(1956), 509-36
92. Ensslin, Wilhelm
Des Symmachus Historia Romana als Quelle für Jordanes
Munich, 1949
= Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-
historische Klasse, 1948, Heft 3.

156
93. Ensslin, Wilhelm
Theoderich der Grosse.
Munich, 1947.
2nd ed., 1959
94. Erdbrügger, Henricus
Cassiodorus unde etymologias in Psalterii commentario prolatas petivisse putandus sit.
Dissertation, Jena, 1912
95. Ermini, Filippo.
'La scuola in Roma nel VI secolo'
Archivum Romanicum, 18(1934), 143-54
96. Esposito, Sebastiano
'Cassiodoro, la Bibbia e la Cultura Occidentale'
Divus Thomas 61(1958), 193-204
97. Feuerlein, Fredericus
Disputatio circularis de M.A. Cassiodoro
Altdorf, 1686
98. Fiebiger, Otto, and Ludwig Schmidt
Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der Ostgermanen
Vienna, 1917-39.
Denkschriften der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische
Klasse, 60(1917), Abh. 3; 70(1939), Abh. 3
99. Fischer, Bonifatius
'Bedae de titulis psalmorum liber'
Festschrift Bernhard Bischoff (Stuttgart, 1971), 90-110
100. Fischer, Bonifatius
'Bibelausgaben des frühen Mittelalters'
Settimane 10(1963), 519-600, with discussion on 703-4
101. Fischer, Bonifatius
'Codex Amiatinus und Cassiodor'
Biblische Zeitschrift n.F. 6(1962), 57-79
102. Forstner, K.
'Schriftfragmente des 8. und früheren 9. Jahrhunderts in Salzburger Bibliotheken'
Scriptorium 14(1960), 245-46
103. Fortin, Ernest L.
Christianisme et culture philosophique au cinquième siècle: la querelle de l'âme
humaine en Occident
Paris, 1959
104. Franceschini, Ezio
'La polemica sull'originalità della Regola di S. Benedetto'
Aevum 23(1949), 52-72
105. Franceschini, Ezio.
'Regula Benedicti, Neoterici Magistri, Regula Magistri'
Liber Floridus: Festschrift Paul Lehmann (St. Ottilien, 1950), 95-119
106. Franz, Adolph M.
M. Aurelius Cassiodorius Senator. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der theologischen
Literatur

157
Breslau, 1872
107. Frend, W.H.C.
The Rise of the Monophysite Movement
Cambridge, 1972
108. Freund, Walter
Modernus und andere Zeitbegriffe des Mittelalters
Köln and Graz, 1957
Neue Münstersche Beiträge zur Geschichtsforschung, 4
109. Fridh, Ake J.
Contributions à la critique et à l'interprétation des Variae de Cassiodore
Göteborg, 1968
Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum et Litterarum Gothoburgensis, Humaniora 4
110. Fridh, Ake J.
études critiques et syntaxiques sur les Variae de Cassiodore
Göteborg, 1950
Göteborgs Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhälles Handlingar, 6. följden, Ser. A,
4:2
111. Fridh, Ake J.
Terminologie et formules dans les "Variae" de Cassiodore: études sur le développement
du style administratif aux derniers siècles de l'antiquité
Stockholm, 1956
Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia, 2
112. Friedrich, J.
'Über den kontroversen Fragen im Leben des gotischen Geschichtsschreibers Jordanes'
Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und der historischen Klasse der
königlichen bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (1907), 379-442
113. Fuchs, Siegfried
Kunst der Ostgotenzeit
Berlin, 1944
114. Galtier, P.
'Pénitents et "Convertis": de la pénitence latine à la pénitence celtique'
Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 33.1(1937), 1-26, 277-305
115. Gaudenzi, Augusto
Gli Editti di Teodorico e di Atalarico e il Diritto Romano nel Regno degli Ostrogoti
Bologna, 1884
116. Gaudenzi, Augusto
L'Opera di Cassiodorio a Ravenna
Bologna, 1887
Reprinted from Atti e Memorie della Reale Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie
di Romagna, Ser. 3, 3(1885), 235-334; 4(1886), 426-63
117. Gissing, George R.
By the Ionian Sea
London, 1901
118. Gladysz, B.
'Cassiodore et l'organisation des écoles médiévales'
Collectanea theologica 17(1936), 51-69

158
119. Goetz, G.
'Zu Varro de lingua latina'
Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift 30(1910), 1367-68
120. Gomoll, Heinz
'Zu Cassiodors Bibliothek und ihren Verhältnis zu Bobbio'
Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 53(1936), 185-9
121. Gorce, Denys
La lectio divina des origines du cénobitisme à s. Benoît et Cassiodore
Paris, 1925
122. Grimm, Jacob
'Über Iornandes und die Geten'
Kleinere Schriften (Berlin, 1866), 3.171-235
123. Gross, Julius
'Cassiodorus und die augustinische Erbsündenlehre'
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 69(1958), 299-308
124. Hägg, Emil
Linköpingshandskriften af Cassiodorus' Variae
Göteborg, 1911
125. Hagendahl, Harald
La prose métrique d'Arnobe. Contributions à la connaissance de la prose littéraire de
l'Empire
Göteborg, 1937
Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift, 42(1936), 1
126. Hahner, Ursula
Cassiodors Psalmenkommentar: Sprachliche Untersuchungen
Munich, 1973
Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung, 13
Rev. MLatJb 12(1977) 276-77
Rev. Durius 4(1976) 286-7
127. Halporn, James W.
'Ecclesiam adunare in Cassiodorus'
RTAM 28(1961), 333-4
128. Halporn, James W.
'The Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' De Anima'
Traditio 15(1959), 385-7
129. Hammer, Jacob
'Cassiodorus, the Saviour of Western Civilization'
Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America
3(1944-45), 369-84
130. Hansen, Günther
'Einige Corrigenda zur neuen Cassiodor-Ausgabe'
Theologische Literaturzeitung, 80(1955), 123-4
131. Hanslik, Rudolf
'EDpiphanius Scholasticus oder Cassiodor? Zur historia ecclesiastica tripartita'
Philologue 115(1971), 107-13
132. Hasenstab, B.

159
De codicibus Cassiodori Variarum Italis
Munich, 1879
133. Hasenstab, B.
Studien zur Variensammlung des Cassiodorus Senator
Programm, Munich, 1883
134. Haussleiter, Johannes
'Contropatio'
Archiv für lateinische Lexicographie und Grammatik 14(1906), 360
135. Heerklotz, Alexander Theodor
Die Variae des Cassiodorus Senator als kulturgeschichtliche Quelle
Dissertation, Heidelberg, 1926
136. Helbling, L.
Vom Adel des Menschen
Einsiedeln, 1965
Sigillum, 26
trans. de an.
137. Hodgkin, Thomas
Italy and Her Invaders
Oxford, 1885 (vols. 3-4)
138. Hodgkin, Thomas
The Letters of Cassiodorus
London, 1886
139. Hörle, G.H.
Frühmittelalterliche Mönchs- und Klerikerbildung in Italien
Freiburg im Breisgau, 1914
140. Hofinger, Max
Cassiodors und Tertullians De Anima
Dissertation, Vienna, 1970
141. Hofmeister, Adolf
'Zur Überlieferung von Cassiodors Variae'
Hisorische Vierteljahrschrift 26(1931), 13-46
142. Hoppenbrouwers, H.
'Conversatio: une étude semasiologique'
Graecitas et Latinitas Christianorum Primaeva, Supplementa, Fasciculus 1 (Nijmegen,
1964), 47-95
143. Houghton, Grace L.
Cassiodorus and Manuscript Illumination at Vivarium
Dissertation, SUNY-Binghamton 1975 (DA 36a.1136)
144. Hubrecht, A.V.M.
'Cassiodorus Senator en het Monasterium Vivariense'
Hermeneus 30(1959), 130-33
145. Jacob, Walter
Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der sogenannten Historia tripartita des Epiphanius-
Cassiodor (ed. R. Hanslik)
Berlin, 1954
TuU 59, ser. 5, bd. 4

160
146. Jacopi, G.
'Sarcofago (forse di Cassiodoro?) con iscrizioni graffite scoperto a S. Martino di
Copanello, sul Golfo di Squillace'
Pepragmena tou [5th] diethnous byzantinologikou synedriou (Athens, 1955), 1.201-5
147. Jäger, A.
'Cassiodorus'
Pharus 18(1927), 401-17
148. Janne, Henri
'Une contresens de Cassiodore: les "furets" du Contra Apion'
Byzantion 11(1936), 225-7
149. Janson, Tore
Latin Prose Prefaces
Stockholm, 1964
Studiea Latina Stockholmensia, 13
150. Jaspert, B.
'Regula Magistri, Regula Benedicti. Bibliographie ihrer Erforschung, 1938-70'
Subsidia Monastica 1(1971), 129-71
151. Jones, A.H.M.
'The Constitutional Position of Odoacer and Theoderic'
JRS 52(1962), 126-30
repr. in his The Roman Economy (Oxford, 1974), 365-74
152. Jones, Leslie Webber
Cassiodorus Senator: An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings
New York, 1946
Reviews by Baynes, History 33(1948) 275f; D.R. Bradley, CR 67 N.S. 3(1953), 174-6;
J. A. Cabaniss, Journal of Religion 27(1947), 304; E.S. Duckett, Speculum 22(1947),
275-7; J. Hammer, Latomus 6(1947), 378; A. van de Vyver, L'Antiquité Classique
16(1947) 163-5; A. van de Vyver, Scriptorium 2(1948), 304f
153. Jones, Leslie Webber
'Further Notes Concerning Cassiodorus' Influence on Mediaeval Culture'
Speculum 22(1947), 254-56
154. Jones, Leslie Webber
'The Influence of Cassiodorus on the Mediaeval Culture'
Speculum 20(1945), 433-42
155. Jones, Leslie Webber
'Notes on the Style and Vocabulary of Cassiodorus' Institutiones'
Classical Philology 40(1945), 24-31
156. Jungmann, J.A.
'Die Abwehr des germanischen Arianismus und der Umbruch der religiösen Kultur im
frühen Mittelalter'
Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 69(1947), 36-99
157. Kahrstedt, U.
'Kloster und Gebeine des Cassiodorus'
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Römische Abteilung) 66(1959),
204-8
158. Kappelmacher, Alfred

161
'Columella und Palladius bei Cassiodor'
Wiener Studien 39(1917), 176-9
159. Klauser, Theodor
'Vivarium'
Robert Boehringer: Eine Freundesgabe (Tübingen, 1957), 337-44
160. Knaack, G.
'Cassiod. var. III.51'
Hermes 25(1890), 82-90
161. Knowles, David
'The Regula Magistri and the Rule of St. Benedict'
Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History (London, 1963), 135-95
162. Kremmer, Martin
De catalogis heurematum
Dissertation, Leipzig, 1890
163. Laistner, M.L.W.
'The Mediaeval Organ and a Cassiodorus Glossary Among the Spurious Works of Bede'
Speculum 5(1930), 217-21
164. Laistner, M.L.W.
Thought and Letters in Western Europe, 500-900 A.D.
2nd ed., Ithaca, 1957
165. Laistner, M.L.W.
'The Value and Influence of Cassiodorus' Ecclesiastical History'
Harvard Theological Review 41(1948), 51-67
repr. in his The Intellectual Heritage of the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1957), 22-40
166. Lamma, Paolo
'Cultura e vita in Cassiodoro'
Studium 43(1947), 234-41
167. Lanciani, Rodolfo
The Destruction of Ancient Rome
New York, 1899
168. Lauterborn, Robert
'Die Clusurae Augustanae des Kassiodor als gotische Grenzsperre am Alpenrhein'
Germania 10(1926), 63-7
169. Lecce, M.
'La vita economica dell'Italia durante la dominazione dei Goti nelle Variae di
Cassiodoro'
Economia e Societa 3(1956), 354-408
170. Lechler, G.
Die Erlasse Theoderichs in Cassiodors Varien, Buch I-V
Programm, Heilbronn, 1888.
171. Leclercq, Henri
'Cassiodore'
DACL 2(1910), 2357-65
172. Leclercq, Henri
'Vivarium'
DACL 15(1953), 3133-3140

162
173. Lécrivain, Charles
'Remarques sur les formules du curator et du defensor civitatis dans Cassiodore'
MEFR 4(1884), 133-8
174. Lehmann, Paul
'Cassiodorstudien'
Philologus 71(1912), 278-99, 72(1913), 503-17, 73(1914), 253-73, 74(1918), 351-58
repr. in his Erforschung des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1959), 2.38-108
175. Lejay, Paul
'Bobbio et la bibliothèque de Cassiodore'
Bulletin d'ancienne littérature et d'archéologie chrétiennes 3(1913), 259-65
176. Lenormant, François
La Grand Grèce
Paris, 1881-84
177. Leroy-Molinghen, Alice
'De quelques traductions latines littérales ou fautives'
Latomus 4(1940-45), 35-39
178. Letronne, Antoine Jean
'Mémoire sur l'utilité qu'on peut retirer de l'étude des noms propres grecs pour l'histoire
et l'archéologie'
Mémoires de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 19.1(1851), 1-139
179. Löffler, G.A.
Der Psalmenkommentar des M. Aur. Cassiodor Senator. Die exegetische Bildung des
Verfassers und sein Psalmentext.
Freiburg im Breisgau, 1920
180. Löwe, Heinz
'Cassiodor'
Romanische Forschungen 60(1947), 420-46
repr. in his Von Cassiodor zu Dante (1973)
181. Loewe, Raphael
'The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate'
Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge, 1966-69), 2.102-54
182. Lohr, M.
'Casjodora klaztor "Vivarium"'
Studia Warminskie 2(1965), 371-87
183. Lowe, E.A.
Codices Latini Antiquiores
Oxford, 1934-71
184. Lowe, E.A.
'An Uncial (Palimpsest) Manuscript of Mutianus in the Collection of A. Chester Beatty'
JThS 29(1927), 29-33
repr. in his Palaeographical Papers, 1907-65 (Oxford, 1972), 1.233-8
185. Lubac, Henri de
Exégèse Médiévale: les quatre sens le l'écriture
Paris, 1959-64
186. Lucchesi, E.

163
'Note sur un lieu de Cassiodore faisant allusion aux sept livres d'Ambroise sur les
Patriarches'
Vigiliae Christianae 30(1976), 307-9
187. Ludwig, Günter
Cassiodor: Über den Ursprung der abendländischen Schule
Frankfurt-am-Main, 1967
188. Lundström, Sven
'Insertus statt insitus'
ALMA 27(1957), 231-4
189. Lundström, Sven
'Sprachliche Bemerkungen zur Historia Tripartita des Cassiodorus'
ALMA 23(1953), 19-34
190. Lundström, Sven
Übersetzungstechnische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der christlichen Latinität
Lund, 1955
Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, Ny Följd, 1. Audelningen, Bd. 51,3.
191. Lundström, Sven
Zur Historia Tripartita des Cassiodor
Lund, 1952
Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, Ny Följd, 1. Audelningen, Bd. 49,1.
192. Lusito, N.
'Guidizio di Cassiodoro sulla scuola romana del suo tempo'
Euphrosyne 6(1973-74), 155-61
193. McGuire, Martin R.P.
'The Decline of the Knowledge of Greek in the West from c. 150 to the Death of
Cassiodorus'
Classical Folia 13.2(1959), 3-25
194. MacMullen, Ramsay
'Roman Bureaucratese'
Traditio 18(1962), 364-78
195. Mair, John R.S.
'A Note on Cassiodorus and the Seven Liberal Arts'
JThS 26(1975), 419-21
196. Manitius, Max
Handschriften antiker Autoren im mittelalterlichen Bibliothekskatalogen.
Leipzig, 1935
Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, Beiheft 67
197. Marcello, Alessandro
'I vimini flessibili nella lettera di Cassiodoro ai Tribuni Maritimi'
Atti del'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere et Arti (CLasse di scienze morali e lettere),
122(1963-64), 543-9
198. Marrou, Henri-Irénée
'Autour de la bibliothèque du pape Agapit'
MEFR 48(1931), 124-69
199. Marrou, Henri-Irénée
'Doctrina et Disciplina dans la langue des pères de l'église'

164
ALMA 9(1934), 5-25
200. Marrou, Henri-Irénée
A History of Education in Antiquity
Translated by G. Lamb
New York, 1964
201. Marrou, Henri-Irénée
'La technique de l'édition à l'époque patristique'
Vigiliae Christianae 3(1949), 217-24
202. Masai, F.
'Cassiodore peut-il être l'auteur de la Regula Magistri'
Scriptorium 2(1948), 292-6
203. Mercati, G.
'Fastucium'
Biblica 29(1948), 282-3
204. Merton, Thomas
A Prayer of Cassiodorus
Worcester (England), 1967.
205. Michon, étienne
'Rapport sur les travaux de l'école Française de Rome durant l'année 1935-1936'
Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1937, 207-24
206. Mierow, Charles C.
Jordanes: The Gothic History
Princeton, 1915
207. Milde, W.
Der Bibliothekskatalog des Klosters Murbach aus dem 9. Jahrhundert. Ausgabe und
Untersuchung von Beziehungen zu Cassiodors Institutiones
Heidelberg, 1968
Euphorion, Behieft 4.
208. Milkau, F.
'Zu Cassiodorus'
Von Büchern und Bibliotheken: Festschrift A. Kuhnert (Berlin, 1928), 38-44
209. Minasi, G.
Cassiodoro Senatore nato a Squillace in Calabria nel quinto secolo. Ricerche storico-
critiche.
Naples, 1895
210. Mohrmann, Christine
'à propos des collectes du psautier'
Vigiliae Christianae 6(1952), 1-19
repr. in her études sur le Latin des Chrétiens (Rome, 1965), 3.245-63
211. Mohrmann, Christine
'Regula Magistri: à propos de l'édition diplomatique des mss. lat. 12205 et 12634 de
Paris'
Vigiliae Christianae 8(1954), 239-51
repr. in her études sur le Latind es Chrétiens (Rome, 1965), 3.399-411
212. Momigliano, Arnaldo
'La caduta senza rumore di un impero ne. 476 d.C.'

165
Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 3.2(1973),
397-418
213. Momigliano, Arnaldo
'Cassiodorus and Italian Culture of His Time'
Proceedings of the British Academy 41(1955), 207-45
repr. in his Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1964), 191-229
repr. in his Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 181-210
214. Momigliano, Arnaldo
'Gli Anicii e la storiografia latina del VI sec. d.C.'
Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1964), 231-53
215. Mommsen, Theodor
'Ostgotische Studien'
Neues Archiv 14(1889), 225-49, 453-544; 15(1980), 181-6
repr. in his Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1910), 6.362-484
216. Moore, Clifford Herschel
'The Oxyrhynchus Epitome of Livy in Relation to Obsequens and Cassiodorus'
AJP 25(1904), 241-55
217. Morin, Germain
'L'ordre des heures canoniales dans les monastères de Cassiodore'
Rev. Bén. 43(1931), 145-52
218. Morin, Germain
'Une compilation antiarienne inédite sus le nom de S. Augustin issue de milieu de
Cassiodore'
Rev. Bén. 31(1914-1919), 237-43
219. Mortet, Victor
'Notes sur le texte des Institutions de Cassiodore d'après divers manuscrits'
Revue de philologie 24(1900), 103-118, 272-81; 27(1903), 65-78, 139-50, 279-87
220. Nagy, T.
'Reoccupation of Pannonia from the Huns in 427. Did Iordanes use the Chronicon of
Marcellinus Comes in the Writing of the Getica?'
Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 15(1967), 159-86
221. Nickstadt, Helmut F.A.
De digressionibus quibus in Variis usus est Cassiodorus
Dissertation, Marburg, 1921
222. Ogilvy, J.D.A.
Books Known to the English, 597-1066
Cambridge, Mass., 1967
223. Olleris, Alexandre
Cassiodore: Conservateur des livres de l'antiquité latine
Paris, 1841
224. Paschali, G.J.
Untersuchungen zu Cassiodors Institutiones
Dissertation, Marburg, 1947
225. Pfeilschrifter, Georg
Der Ostgotenkönig Theoderich der Grosse und die katholische Kirche
Münster, 1896

166
Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, 3
226. Picotti, Giovan Battista
'Osservazioni su alcuni punti della politica religiosa di Teoderico'
Settimane 3(1956), 173-226
227. Picotti, Giovan Battista
'Il Patricius nell'ultima età imperiale e nei primi regni barbarici d'Italia'
Archivio storico italiano Ser. 7, 9(1928), 3-80
228. Piétri, Charles
'Le sénat, le peuple chrétien, et les partis du cirque sous le pape Symmaque (498-514)'
MEFR 78(1966), 122-39
229. Pluta, Alfons
'Ergänzende Bemerkungen zur Verbindung eines ut mit einem Imperativ'
Wiener Studien, n.F. 2(1968), 218-24
230. Punzi, A.G.
L'Italia del secolo VI nelle Variae di Cassiodoro
Aquila, 1927
231. Quacquarelli, A.
'L'Epembasi in Cassiodoro (Exp. in Ps.)'
Vetera Christianorum 1(1964), 27-33
232. Rand, Edward Kennard
Founders of the Middle Ages
Cambridge, Mass., 1929
233. Rand, Edward Kennard
'The New Cassiodorus'
Speculum 13(1938), 443-7
234. Ranke, Leopold von
'Jordanes'
Weltgeschichte (Leipzig, 1883), 4.2.313-27
235. Reeve, M.D.
'Seven Notes'
Classical Review 20(1970), 134-6
236. Reifferscheid, A.
'Mittheilungen aus Handschriften'
Rheinisches Museum 23(1868), 127-46
237. Reifferscheid, A.
'Die römischen Bibliotheken'
Sitzungsberichte der kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien 56(1867), 441-
556
238. Riché, Pierre
éducation et culture dans l'occident barbare, vi[e]-viii[e] siècles
Paris, 1962
Patristica Sorbonensia, 4
trans. Contreni, Columbia, S.C., 1976
239. Riz, J.
De praepositionum in Cassiodori Variis orationumque reliquiis vi atque usu
Dissertation, Innsbruck, 1920

167
240. Rohlfs, Gerhard
Griechen und Romanen in Unteritalien
Geneva, 1924
Biblioteca dell'archivium Romanicum, ser. 2, vol. 7
241. Rougé, Jean
'Sur un mot de Cassiodore: Exculcatoriae--Sculcatoriae--Sulcatoriae'
Latomus 21(1962), 384-90
242. Ruggini, Lellia
Economia e società nell' "Italia Annonaria": Rapporti fra agricoltura e commercio dal IV
al VI secolo d.C.
Milan, 1961
Fondazione Guglielmo Castelli, Collana, 30
243. Russo, F.
'Tradizione umanistica in Calabria da Cassiodoro a Telesio'
Archivo storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 24(1955), 309-36
244. Saint-Marthe, F. D. de
La vie de Cassiodore
Paris, 1695
245. Salmon, Pierre
Les 'tituli psalmorum' des manuscrits latines
Rome, 1959
Collectanea Biblica Latina, XII
246. Salvioli, Giuseppe
'L'Italia agricola nelle lettere di Cassiodoro'
Studi di storia napoletano in onore di Michelangelo Schipa (Naples, 1926), 1-4
247. Schaedel, Ludwig
Plinius der Jüngere und Cassiodorius Senator
Darmstadt, 1887
248. Schepss, G.
'Geschichtliches aus Boethiushandschriften'
Neues Archiv 11(1886), 123-40
249. Schirren, C.
De ratione quae inter Iordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat commentatio
Dorpat, 1858
250. Schlieben, Reinhard.
Cassiodors Psalmenexegese. Eine Analyse ihrer Methoden als Beitrag zur Untersuchung
der Geschichte der Bibelauslegung der Kirchenväter und der Verbindung christlicher
Theologie mit antiker Schulwissenschaft
Dissertation, Tübingen, 1970
251. Schlieben, Reinhard
Christliche Theologie und Philologie in der Spätantike: Die schulwissenschaftliche
Methoden der Psalmenexegese Cassiodors
Berlin, 1974
Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 46
252. Schmauch, J.
Die eschatalogischen Gedankengänge Cassiodors

168
Munich, 1958
253. Schmidt, K.W.
Quaestiones de musicis scriptoribus romanis imprimis de Cassiodoro et Isidoro
Giessen, 1899
254. Schmidt, Ludwig
'Cassiodor und Theoderich'
Historisches Jahrbuch 47(1927), 727-29
255. Schneider, Artur
'Die Erkenntnislehre bei Beginn der Scholastik'
Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 34(1921), 225-64, 339-69
256. Schneider, Fedor
Rom und Romgedanke im Mittelalter
Munich, 1926
257. Schubert, Hans von
Das älteste germanische Christentum oder der sogen. 'Arianismus' der Germanen
Tübingen, 1909
258. Schurr, Viktor
Die Trinitätslehre des Boethius im Lichte der 'skythischen Kontroversen'
Paderborn, 1935
Forschungen zur christlichen Literatur- und Dogmengeschichte, 18.1
259. Schuster, I.
'Come finì la biblioteca di Cassiodoro'
La scuola cattolica 70(1942), 409-14
260. Schwartz, Eduard
Zu Cassiodor und Prokop
Munich, 1939
Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-
historische Abteilung, 1939, Heft 2.
261. Siegmund, Albert
Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateinischen Kirche bis zum
zwölften Jahrhundert
Munich, 1949
Abhandlungen der bayerischen Benediktiner-Akademie, 5
262. Simon, Manfred
'Zur Abhängigkeit spätrömischer Enzyklopädien der artes liberales von Varros
Disciplinarum libri'
Philologus 110(1966), 88-101
263. Sinnigen, William G.
'Administrative Shifts of Competence Under Theodoric'
Traditio 21(1965), 456-7
264. Skahill, Bernard H.
The Syntax of the Variae of Cassiodorus
Washington, D.C., 1934
SMRL 3
265. Slaughter, Gertrude
Calabria: The First Italy

169
Madison, Wisc., 1939
266. Souter, Alexander
'Cassiodorus's Copy of Eucherius's Instructiones'
JThS 14(1913), 69-72
267. Souter, Alexander
'Cassiodorus' Library at Vivarium: Some Additions'
JThS 41(1940), 46-7
268. Souter, Alexander
'The Commentary of Pelagius on the Epistles of Paul: The Problem of Its Restoration'
PBA 2(1905-6), 409-39
269. Souter, Alexander
The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of Saint Paul
Oxford, 1927
270. Souter, Alexander
Pelagius's Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul
Cambridge, 1922-31
Texts and Studies, 9
271. Souter, Alexander
'An Unrecorded Reference to the Rules of Tyconius'
JThS 11(1910), 152-3
272. Sowa, G.
Die Musikanschauung Cassiodors
Dissertation, Berlin, 1953
273. Spengel, L.
'Die Subscriptio der Institutiones des Cassiodorus im Bamberger codex'
Philologus 17(1861), 555-7

274. Stangl, Theodor

'Cassiodoriana'
Blätter für das bayerische Gymnasialschulwesen 34(1899), 249-83, 545-91
275. Stangl, Theodor
'Cassiodoriana II'
Wochenschrift für klassische Philologie 32(1915), 302-14, 228-40
276. Stangl, Theodor
'Ein Fund zu Cassiodorius Senator'
Wochenschrift für klassische Philologie 1(1884), 315
277. Stangl, Theodor
'Zu Cassiodorus Senator'
Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Wien 114(1887), 405-13
278. Stanley, M.
The Monastery of Vivarium and Its Historical Importance
Unpublished B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1939
279. Stein, Ernst
'Deux questeurs de Justinien et l;'emploi des langues dans ses novelles'

170
Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques de l'académie royale
du Belgique (BARB), Ser. 5, 23(1937), 365-90; reprinted in his Opera Minora Selecta
(Amsterdam, 1968), 359-84
280. Stein, Ernst
'La disparition du sénat de Rome à la fin du VI[e] siècle'
Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques de l'académie royale
du Belgique (BARB), Ser. 5, 25(1939), 308-22; reprinted in his Opera Minora Selecta
(Amsterdam, 1968), 386-400
281. Stettner, Thomas
'Cassiodors Enzyklopädie eine Quelle Isidors'
Philologus 82(1926), 241-2
282. Stettner, Thomas
'Cassiodors Name'
Philologus 81(199925), 233-6
283. Suelzer, Mary Josephine
The Clausulae in Cassiodorus
Washington, D.C., 1944
SMRL 17

Rev. L.W. Jones CP 41(1946), 118-21

284. Suerbaum, Werner
Vom antiken zum frühmittelalterlichen Staatsbegriff
Münster, 1961
Orbis Antiquus, Heft 16/17.
Var. title: 'Über Verwendung und Bedeutung von res publica, regnum und status bei
Cassiodor'
285. Sundwall, Johannes
Abhandlungen zur Geschichte des ausgehenden Römertums
Helsinki, 1919
öfversigt af Finska Vetenskaps-Societetens Förhandlingar, 70(1917-18), Afd. B, No. 2;
repr. New York, 1975
286. Svennung, J.
'Zur Cassiodor und Iordanes'
Eranos 67(1969), 71-80
287. Sybel, Hans von
De fontibus libri Iordanis de origine actuque Getarum
Berlin, 1838
288. Sybel, Hans von
'Zu dem Aufsatz: Geten und Gothen'
Zeitschrift für Geschichte 7(1847), 288
289. Szymanski, L.
The Syntax of the Nominal Forms of the Verb in the Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita of
Cassiodorus-Epiphanius, Book I.
Dissertation, Washington, D.C., 1955
290. Szymanski, L.

171
The Translation Procedure of Epiphanius-Cassiodorus in the Historia Tripartita, Books I
and II
Washington, D.C., 1963
SMRL 24
291. Tannery, Paul
'Var., III, 52'
Revue de philologie et de littératures anciennes et d'histoire n.s., 27(1903), 245-7
292. Tanzi, Carlo
'Studio sulla cronologia dei libri "Variarum" di Cassiodorio Senatore'
Archeografo Triestino n.s., 13(1887), 1-36
293. Tea, Eva
'I committenti d'arte a Ravenna nel V e VI secolo'
Studi in onore di Aristide Calderini e Roberto Paribeni (Milan, 1956), 3.747-51
294. Teutsch, L.
'Cassiodorus Senator, Gründer der Klosterbibliothek von Vivarium. Ein Beitrag zur
Würdigung seiner wissenschaftlich-bibliothekarischen Leistung'
Libri e Rivisti 9(1959), 215-39
295. Thiele, Hans
'Cassiodor, seine Klostergründung Vivarium und sein Nachwirkung im Mittelalter'
Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige
50(1932), 378-419
296. Thorbecke, August
Cassiodorus Senator. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Völkerwanderung
Heidelberg, 1867
297. Titz, F.
Cassiodors Stellung zu Theoderich
Programm, Gablonz a. N., 1901
298. Toribios, Anastasio
'O "Mestre" não pode ser Cassiodoro'
Mensageiro de S. Bento 19(1950), 123-6
299. Trijia, C.
M.A. Cassiodoro di Calabria
Rome, 1909
300. Tross, Carl Ludwig
In Cassiodori Variarum libros sex priores symbolae criticae
Paris, 1853
301. Tross, Carl Ludwig
'Nachricht für den künftigen Bearbeiter der Variarum des Cassiodor'
Archiv 6(1838), 485-7
302. Usener, Hermann
Anecdoton Holderi. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgothischer Zeit
Bonn, 1877
Festschrift zur Begrüssung der XXXII. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und
Schulmänner zu Wiesbaden
303. Vaccari, A.
'La Bibbia nell'ambiente di S. Benedetto'

172
Scritti di erudizione e di filologia (Rome, 1952), 1.257-81
304. Vaccari, A.
'Cassiodoro e il p sûq della Biblia ebraica'
Biblica 40(1959), 309-21
305. Vaccari, A.
'Una definizione compagna'
Scritti di erudizione e di filologia (Rome, 1952), 1.142
306. Vaccari, Pietro
'Concetto ed ordinamento dello Stato in Italia sotto il governo dei Goti'
Settimane 3(1956), 585-94
307. Vandenbroucke, François
'Saint Benoît, le Maître et Cassiodore'
RTAM 16(1949), 186-226
308. Vandenbroucke, François
'Sur les sources de la Règle bénédictine et de la Regula Magistri'
Rev. Bén. 62(1952), 216-73
309. Vanderhoven, H.
'Regle du Maître, statistiques et manuscrits'
Scriptorium 3(1949), 246-55
310. van de Vyver, Andrè
'Cassiodore et son Oeuvre'
Speculum 6(1931), 244-92
311. van de Vyver, Andrè
'Les étapes de développement philosophique du haut moyen-âge'
Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 8(1929), 425-52
312. van de Vyver, Andrè
'Les Institutiones de Cassiodore et sa fondation à Vivarium'
Rev. Bén. 53(1941), 59-88
313. Vega, Angel C.
'El comentario al Cantar de los Cantares atribuido a Cassiodoro ¿es español?'
Ciudad de Dios 154(1942), 143-55
314. Viarre, Simone
'à propos de l'origine égyptienne des arts libéraux: Alexandre Neckam et Cassiodore'
Arts Libéraux et Philosophie au Moyen âge (Paris, 1969), 583-91
Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress on Medieval Philosophy, 1967
315. Vismara, Giulio
'Rinvio a fonti di diritto penale ostrogoto nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Studia et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 22(1956), 364-75
316. Vismara, Giulio
'Romani e Goti di fronte al diritto nel regno ostrogoto'
Settimane 3(1956), 409-63
317. Vogüé, Adalbert de, ed.
Regula Magistri
Paris, 1964-5
SC 105-7
With concordance by J. Neufville et al.

173
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Getica: Untersuchungen zum Leben des Jordanes und zur frühen Geschichte der Goten
Berlin, 1967
Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker,
n.F. 22
319. Weinberg, Wilhelm
'Handschriften von Vivarium'
Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, scritti di storia e paleografia (Rome, 1924), 4.75-88
320. Weissengruber, Franz
'Cassiodors Stellung innerhalb der monastischen Profanbildung des Abendlandes'
Wiener Studien 80(1967), 202-50
321. Weissengruber, Franz
Epiphanius Scholasticus als Übersetzer
Vienna, 1972
Sitzungsberichte der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-
historische Klasse, Bd. 283
322. Weissengruber, Franz
'Zu Cassiodors Wertung der Grammatik'
Wiener Studien 82(1969), 198-210
323. Werner, Fritz
Die Latinität der Getica des Jordanis
Dissertation, Halle, 1908
324. Wes, M.A.
Das Ende des Kaisertums im Westen des Römischen Reiches
The Hague, 1967
Archeologische Studiën van het Nederlands Historisch Instituut te Rome, Deel 2
rev. P. Brown, Rivista storica italiana 80(1968), 1018-22; repr. in his Religion and
Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (1972), 227-34
325. White, H.J.
'The Codex Amiatinus and Its Birthplace' (with an appendix by W. Sanday)
in White's Studia Biblica (Oxford, 1890), 2.273-324
326. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Ulrich von
'Lesefrüchte'
Hermes 34(1899), 203-230
327. Wilhelmsson, Ingrid
Studien zu Mutianus dem ChrysostomusUbersetzer
Dissertation, Lund, 1944
328. Winkelmann, Friedhelm
'Spätantike lateinische Übersetzungen christlicher griechischer Literatur'
Theologische Literaturzeitung 92(1967), 229-40
329. Witty, Francis J.
'Book Terms in the Vivarium Translations'
Classical Folia 28(1974), 62-82
330. Witty, Francis J.
Writing and the Book in Cassiodorus
Dissertation, Catholic U. of America, 1967

174
DA 28A.2226
331. Wölfflin, Eduard
'Zur Latinität des Jordanes'
ARchiv für lateinische Lexicographie und Grammatik 11(1900), 361-8
332. Wrede, Ferdinand
Über die Sprache der Ostgoten in Italien
Strassburg, 1891
Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der germanischen Völker,
Heft 68
333. Zahn, Theodor
'Ein Stück aus den Institutiones divinarum litterarum des M. Aurelius Cassiodorus'
Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons (Erlangen, 1888-90), 2.267-84
334. Zeiller, Jacques
'Les églises ariennes de Rome à l'époque de la domination gothique'
MEFR 24(1904), 17-33
335. Zeiller, Jacques
'étude sur l'arianisme en Italie à l'époque ostrogothique et à l'époque lombarde'
MEFR 25(1905), 127-46
336. Zetzel, J.E.G.
Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity
Dissertation, Harvard, 1972
HSCP 78(1974), 284-7
Published, New York, c. 1981.
337. Zimmer, Heinrich
Pelagius in Irland
Berlin, 1901
rev. C.H. Turner, JThS 4(1903), 132-41
338. Zimmermann, F.
'Cassiodors Schrift Über die Seele'
Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie 25(1911), 414-49
339. Zimmermann, Odo John
The Late Latin Vocabulary of the Variae of Cassiodorus, with special advertence to the
technical terminology of administration
Washington, D.C., 1944
SMRL 15

175
Bibliography since 1979
The bibliography published with my Cassiodorus in 1979 was a rigorously-constructed
artifact, comprising works I had consulted on C. and others that I knew existed but had
not been able to locate. This list is very difficult in character: it consists of all the
bibliography of possible relevance to my own continuing interest in Cassiodorus that I
have collected; most of it I have not seen or verified, many references are sketchy, and
the range of subjects included will seem to someone with a narrow interest in C.
impossibly broad. I make it available only because it might be of use to someone
working seriously in the area and save some time and effort. See also some limited
updates from the Societas Internationalis pro Vivario

1. Abramowski, L.
'Die Zitate in der Schrift "In defensione trium Capitulorum" des Römischen Diakons
Pelagius'
Vigiliae Christianae 10(1956), 160-93

2. Acta Sanctorum
September, 4 (Venice 1761), 349-50,
on Senator, Viator, and Cassiodorus: Settimana su Cass. 260n33

3. Adriaen, ed., Cass. Exp. Ps., reviewed at: O. Chadwick, JTS 10(1959) 409f; R.
McNally, Theological Studies, 20(1959), 466f; J.-G. Preaux, Latomus 21(1962), 918;
Verbraken, Rev. Ben. 69(1959), 129f

4. Alessio, G. et al.
Dall'eremo al cenobio. La civiltà monastica in italia dalle origini all'età di Dante.
Milan, 1987

5. Alföldi, M.R.
'Il medaglione d'oro di Teodorico'
Rivista italiana di Numismatica e scienze affini 80(1978), 133-41

6. Allen, Pauline
'The "Justinianic" Plague'
Byzantion 49(1979), 5-20

7. Allen, Pauline
'Neo-Chalcedonism and the Patriarchs of the Late Sixth Century'
Byzantion 50(1980), 5-17

8. Allen, Pauline
'A New Date for the Last Recorded Events in John of Ephesus's Historical Ecclesiastica'
Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 10(1979), 251-55
On the trial of Anatolios of Edessa, also in Greg. Mag.

176
9. Allen, Pauline
'Some Aspects of Hellenism in the Early Greek Church Historians'
Traditio 43(1987), 368-71
including Socr. Soz.

10. Alonso-Nuñez, J.M.

'L'historien Jordanès comme source de l'histoire de la Péninsule ibérique'
Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 59(1981), 147-59

11. Alonso-Nuñez, J.M.

'Jordanes and Procopius on northern Europe'
NMS 31(1987), 1-16

12. Altaner, Berthold

'Der Liber de fide, ein Werk des Pelagianers Rufinus des "Syrers"'
Kleine Patristische Schriften 467-88

13. Altaner, Berthold

'Zum Schrifttum der "skythischen" (gotischen) Mönche: Quellenkritische und
literarhistorische Untersuchungen'
Kleine Patristische Schriften 489-506

14. Amelotti, M., and L.M. Zingale

Scritti teologici ed ecclesiasticii de Giustiniano
Milan, 1977
Legum Justiniani Imperatoris Vocabolarium, Subsidia III

15. Amman, E. 'Trois-Chapitres (Affaire des)'

Dictionnaire de theologie catholique 15.2 (1950) 1868-1924

16. Anastos, M.V.

'The Immutability of Christ and Justinian's Condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia'
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 6(1951), 125-60

17. Angrisani, M.L.

'Materiali per uno studio della produzione libraria latina antica ed altomedievale in
Italia'
Bollettino del Comitato per la preparazione dell'edizione nazionale dei classici greci e
latini, N.S. 24(1976), 87-112; 26(1978), 111-137; 27(1979), 139-51

18. Angrisani, M.L.

'Iord. Get. 266 e Cassiod. inst. I 28'
Romanobarbarica 4(1979), 5-11
agrammatus ('une réminiscence de Jordanès'!)

19. Angrisani Sanfilippo, M.L.

177
'Cassiod. Orat. rell. p. 470, ll. 16-21 Tarube'
QC 4(1982) 457-66

20. Annibaldi, Giovanni and J. Werner

'Ostgotische Grabfunde aus Acquasanta, Prov. Ascoli Piceno (Marche)'
Germania 41(1963), 356-73

21. Antes, S.
'Témoignages sur Martianus Capella'
APh 1983, 3210

22. Aricò, G.
'Cassiodoro e la cultura latina'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 154-78

23. Aricò, G.
'Per il Fortleben di Stazio'
Vichiana 12(1983), 36ff
= Miscellanea di Studi in memoria di F. Arnaldi

24. Arslan, Ermanno A.

Le Monete di ostrogoti, longobardi e vandali
Milan, 1978

25. Aschoff, D.
Studien zu zwei Kompilatoren ['émanant peut-être de l'entourage de Cassiodore']
An.Phil. 1990, no. 1332

26. Atti della settimana di studi su Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro (Cosenza-
Squillace 19- 24 settembre 1983), a cura di S. Leanza (Soveria Mannelli Rubbettino Ed.,
1986) = Settimana su Cassiodoro
Rev. Orpheus 9(1988), 165-8; Athenaeum 66(1988), 654-9; Maia 39(1987), 246-7

27. Atti del XVII Conv. di studi sulla Magna Graecia: Magna Grecia bizantina e
tradizione classica (Taranto 9-14 ott. 1977), Naples, 1982
articles by Schirò, von Falkenhausen, Settis, Tsopanakis, Cavallo, Kapsomenos

28. Baader, G. 'Lo sviluppo del linguaggio medico nell alto e nel basso medioevo'
Atti e Memorie dell' Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere "La Columbaria' 34 (n.s.
20) 1969, 59-109.

29. Bach, E.
'Théoderic, romain ou barbare?'
Byzantion 25-7(1935-7), 413-20

178
30. Bachrach, Bernard S.
Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe
Minneapolis, 1977

31. Bachrach, Bernard S.

Merovingian Military Organization, 481-751
Minneapolis, 1972

32. Bachrach, B.S.

'Who were the Ripariolilbriones'
GB 3(1975), 15-19

33. Baehrens, W.A. Textgeschichte der lateinisch erhaltenen Origines-homilen zum

alten Testament Berlin, 1916
Texte und Untersuchungen 42.1

34. Bagnall, Roger S., Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz, and Klaas A. Worp
Consuls of the Later Roman Empire
Atlanta, 1987
Philological Monographs of the American Philological Association, Number 36

35. Bailey, R.N.

The Durham Cassiodorus
Jarrow Lecture 1978.

36. Bailey, R.N.

'Bede's text of Cassiodorus' commentary on the Psalms'
JThS 34(1983), 189-93

37. Bailey, R.N. and R. Handley

'Early English manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Expositio psalmorum'
Classical Philology 78(1983), 51-55
criticizes Halporn

38. Baldwin, B.
'Jordanes on Eugenius: Some further possibilities'
Antichthon 11(1977), 103-4

39. Baldwin, B.
'The Purpose of the Getica'
Hermes 107(1979) 489-92

40. Baldwin, B.
'Sources for the Getica of Jordanes'
Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 59(1981) 141-46

179
41. Balzani, U.
Le cronache italiane nel medio evo
Milan, 1909, ed. 3, pp. 4-19

42. Bambeck, M.
'Fischer und Bauern gegen Philosophen'
APh 1983, 3628

43. Barbieri, G.
'La concezione politico-economica di Aurelio Cassiodoro (sec. vi)'
E&S 3(1982), 295-301

44. Bardy, G.
'Sur les anciennes traductions latines de saint Athanase'
Recherches de science religieuse 34(1947), 239-42

45. Bark, W.
'Theoderic vs. Boethius: vindication and apology'
American Historical Review 49(1944), 410-26

46. Bark, W.
'The Legend of Boethius' martyrdom'
Speculum 21(1946), 213-17

47. Bark, W.
'Boethius' fourth tractate, the so-called De fide catholica'
HThR 39(1946), 55-69

48. Barnish, S.J.B.

'The Anonymous Valesianus II as a Source for the Last Years of Theodoric'
Latomus 42(1983) 572-96

49. Barnish, S.J.B.

'The Genesis and Completion of Cassiodorus's Gothic History'
Latomus 43(1984) 336-61

50. Barnish, S.J.B.

'The Wealth of Iulianus Argentarius: late antique banking and the Mediterranean
economy'
Byzantion 55(1985), 5-38

51. Barnish, S.J.B.

'Martianus Capella and Rome in the Late Fifth Century'
Hermes 114(1986), 98-111

180
52. Barnish, S.J.B.
'Taxation, Land and Barbarian Settlement in the Western Empire'
Papers of the British School at Rome, 54 (N.S. 41), 1986

53. Barnish, S.J.B.

'Pigs, Plebeians and Potentes: . . .'
PBSR 55(1987), 157-85

54. Barnish, S.J.B.

'Transformation and Survival in the Western Senatorial Aristocracy, c. AD 400-700'
PBSR 56(1988), 120-55

55. Barnish, S.J.B.

'The transformation of classical cities and the Pirenne debate'
Journal of Roman Archaeolgoy 2(1989), 385-400

56. Barnish, S.J.B.

'The Work of Cassiodorus After his Conversion'
Latomus 48 (1989), 157-87

57. Barnish, S.J.B.

'Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodahad: Poetry, Philosophy and Politics in
Ostrogothic Italy'
Nottingham Medieval Studies (1990), forthcoming

58. Batiffol, P.
'L'empereur Justinian et la siège apostolique'
Recherches des sciences religieuses 16(1926), 192-264

59. Bavant, B.
'Le Duché byzantin de Rome'
MEFR, Moyen Age 83(1971), 149-58

60. Bednarz, G.
De syntaxi Boethii
Striegau, 1892-1910
3 vols.

61. Berchem, D. van

'Poetes et grammariens. Recherches sur la tradition scolaire d'explication des auteurs'
Museum Helveticum 9 (1952), 79-87.

62. Berschin, W.
Griechisch-Lateinisches Mittelalter
Berne/Munich, 1980

181
63. Bertini, F.
'Il De orthographia di Cassiodoro'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 92-104

64. Bertolini, O.
Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Langobardi
Bologna, 1941

65. Bertolini, Ottorino

'Il Liber pontificalis'
Spoleto Settimane 17(1970) 397-455

66. Beutler, R.
'Proklos'
PW 23.1(1957), 186-247

67. Beyerele, Franz

'Süddeutschland in der politischen Konzeption Theodorichs des Grossen'
Vorträge und Forschungen 1(1955), 65-81

68. Bickel, E.
'Peter von Blois und Pseudo-Cassiodor De Amicitia'
Neues Archiv 45(1924), 223-34

69. Bickel, E.
Review of Mynors Cassiodori Institutiones
Gnomon 14 (1938), 322-8.

70. Bierbrauer, V.
'Alamannische Funder der frühen Ostgotenzeit aus Oberitalien'
Studien zur vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie, Festschrift für Joachim Werner
zum 65. Geburtstag
Munich, 1974, 2.559-77

71. Bierbrauer, V.
'Die Ansiedlung der Ostgothen in Italien'
Les relations entre l'empire romain tardif, l'empire franc et ses voisins
Nice, 1976, 42-70

72. Bierbrauer, V.
'Die ostgotischen Funde von Domagnano, Republik San Marino'
Germania 51(1973), 499-523

73. Bierbrauer, V.
Ostrogotische und ostgotenzeitliche Grabfunde von Tortona, Prov. Alessandria'
Boll. della Soc. Pavese di Storia Patria 22/23 (1973), 3-30

182
74. Bierbrauer, V.
'Reperti Alemanni del primo periodo ostrogoto provenienti dell'Italia settentrionale'
I Longobardi e la Lombardia
Milan, 1978, 241-60

75. Bierbrauer, V.
'Zur ostogischen Geschichte in Italien'
Studi Medievali, ser. 3, vol. 14 (1973), 1-37

76. Bierbrauer, V.
Die ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien
Biblioteca degli Studi Medievali, no. 7
Spoleto, 1975

77. Billanovich, Giuseppe

I primi umanisti e le tradizioni dei classici latini
Freiburg, 1953
p. 5f on Cassiodorus

78. Bischoff, Bernhard

'Biblioteche, scuole e letteratura nelle città dell'alto medio evo'
Spoleto Settimane 6 (1959)

79. Bischoff, Bernhard

'Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla'
Mittelalterliche Studien (Stuttgart, 1967), 1.171-95

80. Blum, R.
Die Literaturverzeichnung im Altertum und Mittelalter. Versuch einer Geschichte der
Biobibliographie von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit
Frankfurt am Main, 1983, coll. 79-97 and 213-18

81. Blumenthal, H.
'529 and after: What happened to the Academy?'
Byzantion 41(1978), 369-85

82. Bognetti, G.P.

L'Età longobarda
Milan, 1966-68 (four volumes)

83. Bona, István

The Dawn of the Dark Ages: The GEpids and the Lombards in the Carpathian Basin
BUdapest, 1976

84. Bonamente, G.

183
'Settimana di studi su Flavio Aurelio Cassiodoro. Convegno internazionale nel xiv
centenario della morte (583-1983)'
C&S 23(1984), no. 90, 266-75

85. Bonfante, G.
Latini e Germani in Italia
Studi grammaticali e linguistici 6
Brescia, 1965

86. Bonini, Roberto

'Giustiniano e il problema italico'
Bisanzio, Roma e l'Italia nell'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1988), 1.73-92
= Spoleto Settimane 34

87. Boot, C.
Cassiodorus' Historia ecclesiastica tripartita in Leopold Stainreuter's German translation
Amsterdam, 1977
Amsterdamer Pub. zur Sprache und Lit. 29-30
Rev. Erasmus 30(1978) 91-3
Rev. BN 13(1978) 21

88. Bracco, V.
'Marcellianum e il suo battistero'
Rivista di Archeologia cristiana 34(1958), 193-207
Var. 3.33

89. Brennan, B.
'Senators and social mobility in sixth-century Gaul'
Journal of Medieval History 11(1985) 145-61

90. Breschi, Maria Grazia

La cattedrale ed il battistero degli ariani a Ravenna
Ravenna, 1965

91. Brown, T.S.

Gnetlemen and Officers
London, 1984

92. Brown, T.S.

'The Interplay between Roman and Byzantine Traditions and local Sentiment in the
Exarchate of Ravenna'
Bisanzio, Roma e l'Italia nell'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1988), 1.127-60
= Spoleto Settimane 34

93. Bruce-Mitford, R.L.S.

'The Art of the Codex Amiatinus'

184
Journal of the British Archaeological Association Ser 3, 32 (1969) 1-25 + plates.

94. Bruce-Mitford, R.L.S.

'Decorations and Miniatures'
in T. Kendrick et al., edd., Evangeliorum Quattuor Codex Lindisfarnensis 2.51 (Olten-
Lausanne 1960).

95. Bruyne, D. De
Préfaces de la Bible latine; Sommaires, divisions, etc.

96. Bruyne, E. de
études d'esthétique médiévale I, de Boéce a Jean Scot Erigène
Brugge 1946
Rijksuniversiteit te Gent. Werken uitgegeven door de faculteit van de wijsbegeerte en
lettren 97
chapter on C. and rhetoric

97. Bruyne, L.A. de

L'antica serie di ritratti papali della basilica di S. Paolo fuori le mura
Rome, 1934
=Studi di antichità cristiana 7

98. Bulhart, V.
'Textkritische Studien zum lateinischen Flavius Jospehus'
Mnemosyne 4. Series 6(1953) 140-57

99. Bullough, D.A.

'Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia'
Papers of the British School at Rome 34(1966), 82-130

100. Burkert, W.
Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism
1972

101. Burns, T.S.

A History of the Ostrogoths
Bloomington, 1984
Rev. Goffart, AHR 90(1985), 914ff
Rev. Krautschick, Gnomon

102. Burns, T.S.

'Pursuing the early Gothic migrations'
Acta Archaeologica Hung 31(1979), 189-99

103. Burns, T.S.

'Calculating Ostrogothic Population'

185
Acta Antiqua 26(1978), 457-63

104. Burns, T.S.

'Ennodius and the Ostrogothic Settlement'
Classical Folia 32(1978), 153-68

105. Bullough, D.A.

'Urban change in early medieval Italy: the example of Pavia'
Papers of the British School in Rome 34 (n.s. 21) (1966), 47-115

106. Callu, J.-P.

'La première diffusion de 'l'Histoire Auguste' (VIe-IXe s.)
Bonner Historia Augusta Colloquium 1982-83 (Bonn 1985), esp. 122-4

107. Cameron, Alan

Circus Factions
Oxford, 1976

108. Cameron, Alan

'The Last Consul: Basilius and His Diptych'
JRS 72(1982), 126-45

109. Cameron, Averil

'The Artistic Patronage of Justin II'
Byzantion 50(1980), 62-84

110. Cameron, Averil

'The Empress Sophia'
Byzantion 50(1980), 5-21

111. Cameron, Averil

Continuity and Change in Sixth Century Byzantium
London, 1981
'A Nativity Poem of the Sixth Century A.D.' CP 79(1979), 222-32

112. Cameron, Averil

'Eustratius's Life of the Patriarch Eutychius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council'
Kathegetria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for her 80th Birthday, ed. J.
Chrysostomides (Camberley, Eng.: Porphyrogenitus, 1988)

113. Cameron, Averil

Procopius and the Sixth Century
London and Berkeley, 1985

114. Cameron, Averil

'Cassiodorus Deflated'

186
JRS 71(1981) 183-86

115. Cameron, Alan

'Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the Anicii'
11th Byzantine Studies Conference, 25 October 1985

116. Campanale, M.I.

'Settimana di studi su Flavio Aurelio Cassiodoro. Convegno internazionale per il xiv
centenario della morte (583-1983)'
A&R 29(1984), 91-6

117. Capizzi, C.
L'imperatore Anastasio I (491-518): Studio sulla sua vita, la sua opera e la sua
personalità
Rome, 1969
Orientalia Christiana Analecta 184

118. Cau, Ettore

'Fulgenzio e la cultura scritta in Sardegna agli inizi del VI secolo'
Sandalion 2(1979), 221-29

119. Cavallo, G.
'Aspetti della produzione libraria nell'Italia meridionale longobarda'
Libri e lettori nel medioevo. Guida storica e critica, ed. G. Cavallo (Bari, 1983), 106ff

120. Cavallo, G.
'Scrittura, alfabetismo e produzione libraria nel tardo antico'
La cultura in Italia fra tardo antico e alto medioevo (Atti del Convegno), Rome, 1981,
533ff

121. Cavallo, G.
'La produzione di manoscritti greci in Occidente tra età tardoantica e alto medioevo'
Scrittura e Civilità 1(1977), 111-31

122. Ceresa-Gastaldo, A.
Filone di Carpasia, Commento al 'Cantico dei Cantici' nell'antica versione latina di
Epifanio Scolastico
Turin, 1979
Corona Patrum, 6

123. Cesa, Maria

'La politica di Giustiniano verso l'occidente nel guidizio di Procopio'
Athenaeum n.s. 59(1981), 389ff

124. Chamberlain, D.S.

'Philosophy of Music in the Consolation of Boethius'

187
Speculum 45(1970), 80-97

125. Charanis, P.
Church and State in the Later Roman Empire: the religious policy of Anastasius I.
Madison, 1939; 2nd ed. Thessaloniki, 1974

126. Chatillon, F.
'Le manifeste aux habitants d'Arles'
RMAL 23(1967), 38-43 [pub. 1976?]
Var. 3.17

127. Chauvot, Alain

Procope de Gaza, Priscien de Césarée, Panégyriques de l'empereur Anastase Ier
1986

128. Chavasse, A.
'Messes du pape Virgile dans le sacramentaire léonien'
Ephemerides Liturgicae 64(1950), 161-213 at 212 [on Gelasius against pagans]

129. Chénon, émile

'étude historique sur le defensor civitatis'
Revue historique de droit 13(1889), 515-37

130. Chesnut, G.F.

The First Christian Histories. Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen Theodoret, and Evagrius
Paris, 1977
Théologie hist. 46

131. Chiesa, P.
'Ad verbum o ad sensum? Modelli e coscienza metodologica della traduzione tra tarda
antichità e alto medioevo'
Medioevo & Rinascimento (Firenze), 1(1987), 1-51
--Rufinus, Cassiodorus (both less literal), Marius Mercator (more literal)

132. Chrysos, E.
'Zur Datierung und Tendenz der Werke des Facundus von Hermiane'
Kleronomia 1(1969), 311-24
cf. CCSL 90A.12ff

133. Chrysos, E.
Die Bischöfslisten des V. ökumenischen Konzils (554)
Bonn, 1966

134. Chrysos, E.
TO\ BYZA/NTION KAI\ OI( GO/QOI
Thessalonica, 1972

188
135. Chrysos, E.
*H( E)KKLHSIASTIKH\ POLITIKH\ TOU= *I)OUSTINIANOU= KATA\ TH\N
E)/RIN PERI\ TA\ TRI/A *KEFA/LAIA KAI\ TH\N E' OI)KOUMENIKH\N
SU/NODON
Thessalonike, 1969

136. Chrysos, E.
'Die Amaler-Herrschaft in Italien und das Imerium Romanum: Der Vertragsentwurf des
Jahres 535'
Byzantion 51(1981), 430ff

137. Chrysos, E.
'Zur Reichsideologie und Westpolitik Justinians: Der Friedensplan des Jahres 540'
From Late Antiquity to Early Byzantium, 41ff
Proceedings of the Byzantinological Symposion in the Sixteenth International Eirine
Conference, ed. V. Vav ínek
Prague, 1985

138. Clark, A.C.

The Descent of Manuscripts
104-23: 'Primasius on the Apocalypse'

139. Claude, Dietrich

'Zur Königserhebung Theoderichs des Grossen im Geschichtsschreibung und Geistigen
Leben im Mittelalter'
Festschrift für Heinz Löwe zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K. Hauck and H. Mordek
Cologne, 1978, 1-13

140. Claude, Dietrich

'Die ostrogotischen Königserhebungen'
Die Völker an der mittleren und unteren Donau im 5. un 6. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Wolfram
and F. Daim
Vienna, 1980, 149-86

141. Claude, Dietrich

Der Handel im westlichen Mittelmeer während des Frühmittelalters
Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-his. Kl. III 144,
1985

142. Claude, Dietrich

'Der millenarius'
Denkschriften der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Phil.-his. Kl.
193(1988), 17ff

143. Claude, Dietrich

189
'Millenarius und thiuphadus'
Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Germ. Abt. 88(1971), 181ff

144. Clauss, Manfred

Der Magister Officiorum in der Spätantike (4-6 Jh.): Das Amt und sein EInfluss auf die
kaiserliche Politik.
Munich, 1980
Vestigia, 32

145. Codispoti, L.
'L'anima secondo Cassiodoro illustre figlio di Squillace nel xiv centenario della sua
morte 583-1983
Squillace Grafica Silipo-Lucia 1983 (150p.)

146. Collins, Roger

Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000
London, 1983

147. Conso, D.
'Sur le sens de Formula dans les Variae de Cassiodore'
RPh 56(1982), 265-85

148. Cook, G.M.

The Life of Saint Epiphanius by Ennodius
Washington, D.C., 1942

149. Corssen, P.
'Der codex Amiatinus undd er Codex grandior des Cassiodorus'
Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie 17(1891), 611-44

150. Corte, F. Della

'La posizione di Cassiodoro nella storia dell'enciclopedia'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 29-48

151. Courcelle, P.
'Le Gril de Saint Laurent au Mausolee de Galla Placidia'
Cahiers archeologiques 3 (1948) 32ff

152. Courcelle, Pierre

Review of Momigliano, Cassiodorus
Latomus 16(1957) 741-43

153. Corsano, Karen

'The first quire of the Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones of Cassiodorus'
Scriptorium 41(1987), 3-34

190
154. Courtois, C.
Les Vandales et l'Afrique
Paris, 1955

155. Cracco, G.
'Uomini di Dio e uomini di chiesa nell' alto medioevo'
Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa 12(1977), 163-202

156. Cracco Ruggini, L.

"'Ticinum": dal 476 alla fine del Regno Gotico'
Storia di Pavia I (L'età antica), 271-301
Milan, 1984

157. Cracco Ruggini, L.

'Tra la Sicilia e i Burzii: patrimoni, potere politico e assetto amministrativo nell'età di
Gregorio Magno'
Miscell. di St. Stor. dell'Un. della Calabria, Dip. di St., II (Cosenza 1982), 59-77

158. Cracco Ruggini, L.

'Nobiltà romana e potere nell'età di Boezio'
Atti del Congr. Int. di St. Boeziani, 73-96
Rome, 1981

159. Cracco Ruggini, Lellia

'Pubblicistica e storiografia bizantine di fronte alla crisi dell'impero romano'
Athenaeum NS 51(1973) 146-83

160. Cracco Ruggini, Lellia

'Società provinciale, società romana, società bizantina in Cassiodoro'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 245-61

161. Cracco Ruggini, Lellia

'Tolleranza e Intolleranza nella società tardo-antica: il caso degli Ebrei'
Richerche di storia sociale e religiosa 23(1983), 27-43
esp. on Jewish resistance to Belisarius and support of 'Goths' at Naples

162. Cracco Ruggini, Lellia

'Vicende rurali dell'Italia antica dall'età tetrarchica ai Longobardi'
Rivista storica Italiana 76(1964), 261-86

163. Croke, Brian

'Jordanes' understanding of the usurpation of Eugenius'
Antichthon 9(1975), 81-83

164. Croke, Brian

'A.D. 476: The Manufacturing of a Turning Point'

191
Chiron 13(1983) 81-119
APh for 1985: G. Zecchini, 'Il 476 nella storiografia tardoantica' (cf. no. 5729; no 10998
in another volume)
Perhaps W.E. Kaegi, 'Gli storici protobizantini e la Roma del tardo quinto secolo',
Rivista Storica Italiana 1976, 5-9

165. Croke, Brian

'Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes'
Classical Philology 82(1987), 117-34

166. Croke, Brian

'The misunderstanding of Cassiodorus' Institutiones 1.17.2'
CQ 32(1982), 225-6

167. Croke, Brian

'The originality of Eusebius' Chronicle'
APh 1982 1757

168. Csaki, Luciana Cuppo

'Variarum I.x of Cassiodorus as a program of monetary policy'
Florilegium 9(1987) 53-64

169. La Cultura in Italia fra Tardo Antico e Alto Medioevo (Atti del Convegno tenuto a
Roma, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, dal 12 al 16 Novembre 1979), 2 vols.
Roma, 1981.

170. Curti, C.
'L'Expositio Psalmorum di Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro. La praefatio e la teoria esegetica
dell'autore'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 105-17

171. Cuscito, G.
'Aquileia e Bisanzio nella controversia dei Tre Capitoli'
Atti dell'Antico Adriatico 12(1977), 231-62

172. Dagron, Gilbert

'Aux origines de la civilisation byzantine: Langue de culture et langue d'état'
Revue historique 241(1969), 23-56

173. Dagron, Gilbert

'Discours utopique et récit des origines: 1. Une lecture de Cassiodore- Jordanès: les
Goths de Scandza à Ravenne'
Annales ESC 26(1971) 290-305

174. Dagron, Gilbert

'Rome et l'Italie vues de Byzance (IVe-VIIe) siècles'

192
Bisanzio, Roma e l'Italia nell'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1988), 1.43-64
= Spoleto Settimane 34

175. Dahn, Felix

Ein Kampf um Rom
Krautschick v, 'KuR . . . "Lieblingsbuch weiland Kaiser Wilhelms I"'

176. Dahn, Felix

Die Könige der Germanen. Das Wesen des ältesten Königsthums der germanischen
Stämme und seine Geschichte bis auf die Feudalzeit.
vols. 1-2, 2nd ed. Leipzig 1910-11
vols. 3-4, Würzburg, 1866

177. D'Amico, John F.

Theory and Practice in Renaissance Textual Criticism
Beatus Rhenanus

178. De Camp, L. Sprague

Let Darkness Fall

179. Degani, Mario

Il tesoro romano-barbarico di Reggio EMilia
Florence, 1965

180. Degrassi, N.
'Rinvenimento di un tesoretto: Le oreficerie tardo-Romane di Pavia'
Notizie deli scavi di antichità, ser. 7, vol. 2(1941), 303-10

181. Deichmann, Friedrich W.

Die Spolien in der spätantiken Architektur
1975

182. Deichmann, Friedrich W.

Studien zur Architektur Konstantinopels im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert Nach Christus
Baden-Baden, 1956

183. Deichmann, Friedrich W.

Ravenna, Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes.
Wiesbaden, 1969

184. Deichmann, Friedrich W.

Rom, Ravenna, Konstantinopel, Naher Osten
1982
esp. article 469-79 on Gothic court at Ravenna

185. Dekkers, E. and A. Hoste

193
'De la pénurie des manuscrits anciens des ouvrages le plus souvent copiés.'
'Sapientia Doctrina' . . . Mélanges offerts à . . . Bascour, 24-37
Louvain, 1980
=Rech. thèol. med., numèro special 1

186. Dekkers, E.
'Les traductions grecques des écrits patristiques latins'
Sacris Erudiri 5(1953), 193-233

187. Della Valle, G.

'Teodorico e Roma'
Rendiconti Accad. Archeol. Lett. Belle Arti Napoli 34(1959), 119-76

188. Demicheli, A.M.

'La politica religiosa di Giustiniano in Egitto. Riflessi sulla Chiesa egiz. della
legislazione eccl. Giustinianea'
Aegyptus 63(1983), 217-57

189. Demougeot, émilienne

'Bedeutet das Jahre 476 das Ende des römischen Reiches im Okzident?'
Klio 60(1978) 371-81

190. Demougeot, émilienne

'La Gaule selon Cassiodore'
APh 1983.11931

191. Devreesse, R.
Pelagii diaconi ecclesiae romanae In defensione Trium Capitulorum
Vatican City, 1932
Studi e Testi 57

192. Devreesse, R.
'L'église d'Afrique durant l'occupation byzantine'
MEFR 57(1940), 143-66

193. Devreesse, R.
Essai sur Théodore de Mopsueste
Vatican City, 1948
Studi e Testi 141

194. Devreesse, R.
Le Commentaire de Théodore de Mopsueste sur les Psaumes
Vatican City, 1939
H.N. Sprenger, Theodori Mopsuesteni Commentarius in XII prophetas (Wiesbaden,
1977)

194
J.N. Guinot, 'L'importance de la dette de Théodoret de Cyr à l'égard de lexégèse de
Théodore de Mopsueste', Orpheus, n.s. 5(1984), 68-109

195. DeVries, W.
'Das zweite Konzil von Konstantinopel (554) und das Lehramt von Papst und Kirche'
Or. Chr. Per. 38(1973), 331ff

196. De Waal, E.
Seeking God. The way of St Benedict
London, 1984

197. Diehl, C.
Etudes sur l'administration byzantine dans l'exarchat de Ravenne (568-751)
Paris, 1888

198. Diekamp, F.
Die origenistischen Streitigkeiten im sechsten Jahrhundert und das fünfte allgemeine
Council
Münster, 1899

199. Diesner, H.-J.

Fulgentius von Ruspe als Theologe und Kirchenpolitiker
Stuttgart, 1966
=Arbeiten zur Theologie 26

200. Dionisotti, Anna C.

'On Bede, Grammars, and Greek'
RB 92 (1982), 111-41

201. Dolbeau, F.
'Un nouveau témoin fragmentaire de l'Anecdoton Holderi'
RHT 12-13(1982-83), 397-9
BN Franc 17698, fol. 406, from the papers of Mabillon, 'which allows one to improve
the text edited by Holder and proves that the text circulated more widely than one has
believed hitherto'

202. Douglas, Norman

Old Calabria
New York, 1928

203. Duchesne, L.
'De l'origine des évêchés et des provinces ecclésiastiques dans le Bruttium et la Lucanie'
Mélanges P. Fabre, 1-16
Paris, 1902

204. Duchesne, L.

195
'Vigile et Pélage'
Rev. des questions hist. 36(1884), 282ff

205. Duchesne, L.
'Les évêchés d'Italie et l'invasion Lombarde'
MEFR 23(1903), 83-116; 25(1905), 365-99

206. Dunn, Marilyn

'Mastering Benedict: monastic rules and their authors in the early medieval West'
English Historical Review 105(1990), 567-94

207. Duval, Y.M.

'Pélage est-il le censeur inconnu de l'Adversus Iovinianum à Rome en 393? ou: du
"portrait-robot" de l'hérétique chez S. Jérome'
RHE 75(1980), 525-57

208. Duval, Y.M.

'Cassiodore et Jérôme: De Bethléem à Vivarium'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 335-56

209. Eastwood, B.S.

'Origins and Contents of the Leiden Planetary Configuration (Ms. Voss. Q. 79, fol. 93v):
An Artistic Astronomical Schema of the Early Middle Ages'
Viator 14(1983), 1-40
--planisphere of the year 579

210. Engelbrecht, A.
Das Titelwesen bei den spätlateinischen Epistolographen
Vienna, 1893

211. Ensslin, W.
'Papst Johannes I als Gesandter Theoderichs bei Kaiser Justinos I'
BZ 44(1951), 127-34

212. Ensslin, W.
'Papst Agapet und Kaiser Justinian I'
Hist. Jahrb. 77(1958), 459-66

213. Ensslin, W.
'Rex Theodericus inlitteratus'
HJ 60(1940), 391-8

214. Ewald, P.
'Reise nach Spanien im Winter von 1878 auf 1879'
Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtsforschung 6(1881), 217-
398

196
215. Fanning, Stephen C.
'Lombard Arianism Reconsidered'
Speculum 56(1981) 241-58

216. Farioli, R.
'Il monastero Vivariense di Cassiodoro'
APh 1982.8942

217. Farioli Campanati, R.

'L'arte giustinianea in Italia'
Bisanzio, Roma e l'Italia nell'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1988), 1.99-118
= Spoleto Settimane 34

218. Ferber, S.
'The Temple of Solomon in Early Christian and Byzantine Art'
in J. Gutmann, ed., The Temple of Solomon, 30ff
Missoula, 1976

219. Ferrarino, P.
'Quadrivium'
APh 1976.9997

220. Fiaccadori, G.
'Cassiodorus and the School of Nisibis'
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39(1985), 135-7 etc.
cf. Macina

221. Fichtenau, H.
Arenga: Spätantike und Mittelalter im Spiegel von Urkundenformeln
Graz und Köln, 1957

222. Fink-Dendorfer, Elisabeth

Conversio: Motive und Motivierung zur Bekehrung in der Alten Kirche
Frankfurt, 1986

223. Fischer, Balthasar

Die Psalmenfrömmigkeit der Märtyrerkirche
Freiburg 1949

224. Fischer, Elizabeth

'Greek translations of latin literature in the fourth century'
Yale Classical Studies 27(1982), 173-215

225. Flusser . . .
''

197
in Josephus-Studien. Otto Michel zum 70. Geburtstag, 130ff, 1974

226. Foggini, P.F.

S. Epiphani Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum
Roma, 1750
Inst. 1.5.4, trans. by Epiphanius

227. Folliet, G.
'Pour le dossier "Augustinus Magister"'
REAug 3(1957), 67-8

228. Fontaine, J.
'Cassiodore et Isidore. L'évolution de l'encyclopédisme latin du vie au viie siècle'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 72-91

229. Fontaine, J.
Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique.
2nd ed. 3 vols.
Paris, 1983

230. Fontaine, J.
'La présence d'Eugippius dans la bibliothèque de Séville'
APh 1984.1633

231. Francisci, P. de
'Per la storia del Senato romano e della Curia nei secoli V e VI'
Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia di Archeologia 22(1946-7), 275-319

232. Franklin, C.V., I. Havener, J.A. Francis, eds.

Early Monastic Rules: The Rules of the Fathers and the Regula Orientalis
Collegeville, Minn., 1982

233. Frantz, A.
'Pagan philosophers in Christian Athens'
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 119.1(1975), 29-38

234. Frend, W.H.C.

'Eastern Attitudes to Rome during the Acacian Schism'
Studies in Chruch History 13(1976), 69-81
repr. his Town and Country in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1980)

235. Frend, W.H.C.

The Rise of the Monophysite Movement
Cambridge, 1972
J. Lebon, Le monophysisme sévèrien. étude historique . . . (Louvain 1919)
G. Bardy, 'Sotto il regime dell'Enotico' in Fliche/Martin 4

198
236. Fridh, A.
'Cassiodorus' digression on music, Var. II 40'
Eranos 86(1988), 43-51

237. Fridh, A.
'Cassiodor'
TRE 7.657-63.
Berlin, 1981

238. Fuchs, S.
Kunst der Ostgotenzeit
Berlin, 1944

239. Fuhrmann, M.
Das systematische Lehrbuch. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in der
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Göttingen, 1960.

240. Funke, H.
'Kirche und Literatur am übergang von der Spätantike zum Mittelalter'
Klio 64(1982), 459-65

241. Garzya, A.
'Cassiodoro e la grecità'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 118-34

242. Gaudenzi, A.
'Die Entstehungszeit des Edictum Theoderici'
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, Germ. Abt. 7(1887), 29-52

243. Gero, S.
Barsauma von Nisibis und Persian Christianity in the Fifth Century
Louvain, 1981
CSCO 426, Subsidia 63

244. Geymonat, M.
'Antichi frammenti ambrosiani delle orazioni di Cassiodoro e delle epistole di San
Paolo'
ScrPhil 3(1982) 119-131

245. Gibson, Margaret

'"Tradizioni perdute" of the "De Consolatione philosophiae": Comments on a Recent
Book'
REAug 30(1984) 274-8

199
246. Giesecke, H.-E.
Die Ostgermanen und der Arianismus
Leipzig, Berlin, 1939

247. Gilliard, F.D.

'The senators of sixth-century Gaul'
Speculum 54(1979) 685-97

248. Ginetti, L.
'La legazione di Rustico a Bisanzio e le Varie di Cassiod. X, 19-24; XI, 13'
Studi Senesi nel Circulo Giuridico della R. Università 19(1902)

249. Giordano, Oronzo

Jordanes e la storiografia nel VI secolo
Bari 1973
Rev. Courcelle REA 76(1974), 407

250. Gissing, George

Veranilda
London, 1904
posthumous novel, set in 544-5 (Cass. not a character)

251. Giunta, Francesco

Jordanes e la cultura dell'alto medio evo
Palermo 1952
Reprint Siracusa, 1988

252. Gloeden, I. von

Das römische Recht im Ostgothischen Reich
Jena, 1843

253. Goffart, W.
Barbarians and Romans: The Techniques of Accommodation
Princeton 1980
Rev. article, M. Cesa, 'Hospitalitas o oltre 'techniques of accommodation'? A proposito
di un libro recent', Archivio Storico Italiano 140(1982), 539-52
Rev. D. Claude, Francia 10(1980), 753ff
W. Goffart, 'After the Zwettl Conference: Comments on the "Techniques of
Accommodation"', Denkschriften der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Wien, Phil.-hist. Kl. 193(1987), 73ff

254. Goffart, W.
The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede,
and Paul the Deacon.
Princeton 1988.

200
255. Goode, H.D. and Drake G.C., trans.
Cassiodorus Institutiones Book II Chapter 5. Isidore of Seville Etymologies Book III
Chapters 15-23. Colorado Springs, 1980

256. Goubert, P.
'Autour du voyage à Byzance du Pape S. Jean I (523-526)'
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 24(1958), 339-52

257. Gorce, Denys

La lectio divina des origines du cénobitisme à saint Benoit et Cassiodore:
I, Saint Jérôme et la lecture sacrée dans le milieu ascétique romain (Paris, 1925)
no more published

258. Gorce, Denys

Les voyages, l'hospitalité et le port des lettres dans le monde chrétien des IVe et Ve
siècles (Paris, 1925)

259. Graus, Frantisek

Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger
Prague 1965

260. Gray, P.
'The "Select Fathers": Canonizing the Patristic Past'
Studia Patristica 23(1989), 21-36

261. Gretschel, A.
Ad edictum Athalarici regis Ostrogothourm apud Cassiodorum Variarum IX 18 obuium
succincta commentatio
Leipzig, 1828

262. Gribomont, J.
'Cassiodore et la transmission de l'héritage biblique antique'
Le monde latin et la Bible (ed. J. Fontaine and C. Pietri), 143-52
Paris, 1985

263. Gribomont, J.
'Cassiodore et ses bibles latines'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 262-80

264. Gribomont, J.
'La Règle et la Bible' [or is that the title of the volume?]
Atti del Settimo Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, Norcia-Subiaco-
Cassino-Montecassino (Spoleto, 1982), 1.355-89

201
265. Grierson, P.
'The Date of Theodoric's Gold Medallion'
Hikuin 11(1984), 19ff

266. Gross, K.
'Lob der Hand im christlichen Altertum'
APh 1976.4662

267. Grundmann, H.
'Litteratus-illiteratus. Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter'
Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40(1958), 1-65

268. Guarino, A.
'Note su Cassiodoro e il ius privatum'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 206-9

269. Guillaumin, J.Y.

'La christianisation du thème de l'oeil de l'âme chez Cassiodore (Institutions, II,3,22)'
RPh 59(1985) 247-54

270. Guillaumont, A.
Les 'Kephalaia Gnostica d'Evagre le Pontique et l'histoire de l'origénisme chez les Grecs
et chez les Syriens
Paris, 1952

271. Guillet, J.
'Les exégèses d'Alexandrie et d'Antioche. Conflit ou malentendu?'
Recherches de Science Religieuse 34(1947), 257-302

272. Guillou, A.
Culture et Société en Italie Byzantine
London, 1978 (Variorum)Guillou, A.
Régionalisme et indépendance dans l'Empire byzantin; l'exemple de l'Exarchat et de la
Pentapole d'Italie
Rome, 1969

273. Guillou, A.
'L'évêque dans la société méditerranéenne des VIe- VIIe siècles: Une modèle'
Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes 131(1973), 5-19

274. Gutas, D.
'Paul the Persian on the Classification of Aristotle's Philosophy: A Milestone Between
Alexandria and Bagdad'
Der Islam 60(1983), 231-67
--on the Nisibis school

202
275. Haacke, W.
Die Glaubensformel des Papstes Hormisdas im Acacianischen Schisma
Rome, 1939
=Analecta Gregoriana 20
rev. H. Koch, Theolog. Literaturzeitung 65(1940), 259

276. Hadot, I.
Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique
Paris, 1984.

277. Hagendahl, H.
Von Tertullian zu Cassiodor: die profane literarische Tradition in dem lateinischen
christlichen Schrifttum
Göteborg, 1983
Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia, 44

278. Hahn, L.
'Zum Gebrauch der lateinischen Sprache in Konstantinopel'
Festgabe für M. Schanz (Würzburg 1912), 173

279. Halporn, J.W.

'A New Fragment of Durham Cathedral Library MS B.II.30'
CP 69(1974), 124-5

280. Halporn, J.W.

'Methods of Reference in Cassiodorus'
Journal of Library History 16.1(1981), 71-91

281. Halporn, J.W.

'The Editing of Patristic Texts: The Case of Cassiodorus'
REAug 30(1984), 107-26

282. Halporn, J.W.

'Pandectes, pandecta, and the Cassiodorian Commentary on the Psalms'
Revue Bénédictine 90(1980), 290-300

283. Halporn, J.W.

'The modern edition of Cassiodorus' Psalm Commentary'
Texte und Textkritik (TuU 133[1986]), 239-47

284. Halporn, J.W.

'Further on the early English manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Expositio Psalmorum'
Classical Philology 80(1985), 46-50

285. Halporn, J.W.

203
'Cassiodorus' citations from the Canticum Canticorum and the composition of the
Expositio Psalmorum'
Revue Bénédictine 95(1985), 169-84

286. Halporn, J.W.

'The manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Expositio Psalmorum'
Traditio 37(1981), 388-96

287. Halporn, J.W.

'Cassiodorus' commentary on Psalms 20 and 21; text and context'
REAug 32(1986), 92-102

288. Halporn. J.W.

'The Use by Cassiodorus of the Term "Codex."
Manuscripta, 25 (1981), 7 [resume]

289. Hammond-Bammel, C.P.

'Products of Fifth-Century Scriptoria Preserving Conventions Used by Rufinus of
Aquileia'
JThS, N.S. 30(1979), 447-451

290. Hannestad, Knud

L'évolution des ressources agricoles de l'Italie du IVe au VIe siècle de notre ère
Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser udgivet af Det Kongelige Danske Vindenskabernes
Selskab, vol. 40, no. 1
Copenhagen, 1962

291. Hannestad, Knud

'Les forces militaires d'après la guerre gothique de Procope'
Classica et Medievalia 29(1960), 136-83

292. Hansen, G.C.

Theodoros Anagnostes Kirchengeschichte
Berlin, 1971
GCS 54

293. Harnack, A. von

'Der erste deutsche Papst (Bonifatius II, 530/32) und die beiden letzten Dekrete des
römischen Senats'
Sber. Berlin. 1924, 24-42 (=Kleine Schriften 2[1980], 655-73)

294. Harris, H.A.

'The starting-gate for chariots at Olympia'
Greece and Rome 15(1968), 113-26; 16(1969), 172-3

295. Hartmann, L. M.

204
'Cassiodorus'
Pauly-Wissowa 3.1671-6

296. Hartmann, L. M.
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Verwaltung in Italien 540-750
Leipzig, 1889

297. Haupt, Albrecht

Das Grabmal Theoderichs des Grossen zu Ravenna. Mit 40 Textbildern, 5 Lichtdrucken
und 9 Photolithographischen Tafels.
Leipzig, 1913
Monumenta Germaniae architectonica, I

298. Hauptfeld, Georg

'Die Gentes im Vorfeld von Ostgoten und Franken im 6. Jahrhundert'
Denkschriften der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl.
179(1985), 121ff

299. Heather, Peter

'Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun
Domination'
JRS 79(1989), 103-28

300. Heather, Peter

Goths and Romans, 322-489
Oxford, 1991 [= 1992]

301. Helm, R.
'Cassiodorus'
RAC 2.915-26.
Stuttgart, 1954

302. Heidenreich, Robert and Heinz Johannes

Das Grabmal Theoderichs zu Ravenna
Veröffent. d. deutschen Archäolog. Instituts, no. 8, 1895
Wiesbaden, 1971

303. Heinzelmann, Martin

Bischofsherrschaft in Gallien. Zur Kontinuität römischer Führungsschichten vom 4. bis
zum 7. Jahrhundert. Soziale, prosopographische und bildungsgeschichtliche Aspekte.
Zurich-Munich 1976 (Francia Beiheft 5)

304. Heinzelmann, Martin

'Gallische Prosopographie, 260-527'
Francia 10(1982) 531-718

205
305. Hendy, M.
Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300-1450
Cambridge, 1985

306. Henrici, E.
Die Quellen von Notker's Psalmen.
Strasbourg, 1878.
Quellen und Forschungen zur sprach- und cultur- geschichte der germanischen Völker,
29.

307. Herman, József

'La situation linguistique en Italie au VIe siècle'
Revue de linguistique romane 52(1988) 55-67

308. Hermann, A. and W. von Soden

'Dolmetscher'
RAC 25(1957), 24-59

309. Heuberger, Richard

'Ein angebliches Edikt Theoderichs des Grossen vom Jahr 505 aus dem Castrum
Maiense über dem Laureinerbert'
Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft

310. Holder, A.
'New Treasures and Old in Bede's "De Tabernaculo" and "De Templo"'
RB 99 (1989), 237-49

311. Holleman, A.W.J.

Pope Gelasius I and the Lupercalia
Amsterdam, 1974

312. Holtz, L.
'Les mots latins désignant le livre au temps d'Augustin'
A. Blanchard, Les débuts du codex, 105-113
Turnhout, 1989

313. Holtz, L.
'Le Parisinus latinus 7530, synthèse cassinienne des arts libéraux'
Studi Medievali, 3a Serie, 16(1975), 148ff

314. Holtz, L.
'Quelques aspects de la tradition et de la diffusion des Institutions'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 281-312

315. Holtz, L.
'Le contexte grammatical du défi à la grammaire. Grégoire et Cassiodore'

206
APh 1986, 1818

316. Holtz, L.
'La typologie des manuscrits grammaticaux latins'
RHT 7(1977), 247-69

317. Holtz, L.
Donat et la tradition de l'enseignement grammatical. Etude sur l'Ars Donati et sa
diffusion (IVe-IXe siecle), et edition critique
Paris, 1981

318. Honigmann, Ernest

'Stephen of Hieropolis in Euphratesia and the Alleged "Episcopus Meneudis" (458
A.D.)'
Patristic Studies, 169-73
= Studi e Testi 173 (1953)
cf. exp. Ps. 76.9.171

319. T. Honoré
'The Making of the Theodosian Code,'
Zeitschrift d. Savigny-Stiftung 103(1986), 133-222

320. Houghton, G.L.

'Cassiodorus and the Utrecht Psalter Illuminations'
Manuscripta, 23 (1979), 11-12

321. Hubert, Porcher and Volbach

Europe in the Dark Ages
pl. 241, for the binding of the gospel book Greg. Mag. gave Theodolinda

322. Iandiorio, L.
Le lettere siciliane di Cassiodoro
Orpheus 24-25(1977-78), 171-86

323. Iliescu, Vladimir

'Bemerkungen zur Gotenfreundlichen Einstellung in den Getica des Jordanes (I)'
XIIe Conférence internationale d'études classiques Eirene (1972) (Bucharest-
Amseterdam 1975) 411-27

324. Illmer, Detlef

Formen der Erziehung und Wissensvermittlung in frühen Mittelalter. Quellenstudien zur
Frage der Kontinuität des abendländische Erziehungswesens
München, 1971
[repub. under different title (unchanged?) 1979]

325. Iordache, R.

207
'Quatenus, hactenus, protinus et tenus dans les oeuvres de Jordanès'
AAPal 5(1984-85), 331-52
APh ref.: 'sur le bon latin de chancellerie de l'auteur'

326. Iordache, R.
'L'infinitif dans les oeuvres de Jordanes'
Linguistica (Ljubljana) 24(1984), 121-57

327. Iordache, R.
'Habitats gothiques aux bords du Pont-Euxin selon l'historien Jordanes'
Noi Tracii (Roma Centra europeo di studi traci) 14 (Nos. 128-9), 1985, 8-15

328. Iordache, R.
'La confusion Gètes-Goths dans la Getica de Jordanès'
Helmantica 34(1983), 317-37

329. Iordache, R.
[[has postface in J., Getica, préf. de J.C. Dragan, trad. and comm. (into Romanian) by G.
Popa-Lisseanu), pub. Rome, Ed. Nagard, s.d. (1986?), 200p.

330. Iordache, R.
'L'interrogative indirecte dans les oeuvres de Jordanès'
Ziva Antika 33(1983), 149-84

331. Iordache, R.
'Observaciones sobre la subordinación causal en las obras di Jordanes'
Helmantica 27(1976), 5-62
revising work noted at APh 45.167

332. Irigoin, J.
'L'Italie meridionale et la tradition des tèxtes antiques'
Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 18(1969), 40

333. Irmscher, J.
'Das Ende des weströmischen Kaisertums in der byzantinischen Literatur'
Klio 60(1978), 397-401

334. Jahn, Otto

'über die Subscriptionen in den Handschriften römischer Classiker'Berichte der
Sächsische Akademie 3(1851), 327-72

335. Jahn, Otto

'Variarum lectionum fasciculus'
Philologus 26(1867) 1-17
from Schlieben's bibliography

208
336. James, Edward, ed.
Visigothic Spain: New Approaches
Oxford, 1980

337. Jamróz, W.
'De Amalasuntha docta Gothorum regina'
APh 1981, no. 8843

338. Janson, T.
A concordance to the Latin panegyrics: a concordance to the XII Panegyrici Latini and
to the panegyrical texts and fragments of Symmachus, Ausonius, Merobaudes,
Ennodius, Cassiodorus
Hildesheim, 1979
Alpha-Omega: 37

339. Jaspert, B.
Die Regula-Benedicti-Regula Magistri Kontroverse
2nd ed., Hildesheim, 1977
his bibliography revised

340. Jemolo, V., L. Merolla, M. Palma, F. Trasselli

Bibliografia dei manoscritti Sessoriani
Rome, 1987
[[CLA 4.418: only surviving product of Eugippius' house?; cf. Gorman]]

341. Jerphanion, G. de
'Contribution à l'histoire du Sacramentaire léonien. Son influence sur un monument de
Ravenne'
Revue des sciences religieuses 16(1936), 364-66

342. Johnson, Mark

'Toward a History of Theoderic's Building Program'
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42(1988), 73-96

343. Jordan, P.
'Pythagoras and monachism'
Traditio 29(1961), 432-441

344. Judge, E.A.

'The earliest use of the word "monachos" for monk (P. Coll. Youtie 77)'
JAC 20(1977), 72-89
earlier: F.-E. Morard, 'Monachos, moine: histoire du terme grec jusqu'au 4e siècle',
Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 20(1973), 329- 45

345. Jülicher, A.
'Facundus' (3)

209
Pauly-Wissowa 6.2

346. Kaimio, J.
The Romans and the Greek Language
Helsingfors 1979
= Comm. Human. Litt.

347. Kampers, G.
'Anmerkungen zum lateinisch-gotischen Ravennater Papyrus von 551'
Historisches Jahrbuch 101(1981), 141-51

348. Kihn, H.
Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten
Freiburg 1880

349. Kihn, H.
'über QEORI/A und A)LLEGORI/A nach den verlorenen hermeneutischen Schriften der
Antiochener'
Theologische Quartalschrift 62(1880) 531-82

350. Kirkby, H.
'The scholar and his public'
APh 1983, 1074

351. Klauser, T.
'Die Liturgie des Abendlandes vom 4.-15. Jahrhundert'
Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 13(1936), 354-6

352. Klauser, T.
'War Cassiodors Vivarium ein Kloster ode eine Hochschule?'
Festg. J. Straub 413-20

353. Kloeters, Gert

Buch und Schrift bei Hieronymus
Diss. Münster 1957

354. Köpke, R.
Die Anfänge des Königthums bei den Goten
Berlin, 1859

355. Körbs, O.
Untersuchungen zur ostgotischen Geschichte
Eisenberg 1913

356. Korkkanen, I.
The peoples of Hermanaric. Jordanes, Getica 116

210
Helsinki, 1975
Annales Acad. Scient. Fennicae Ser. B 187
Rev. Helmantica 27(1976) 567
Rev. AAHG 30(1977) 230 Claude
Rev. AC 45(1976) 275
Rev. 54(1976) 541
Rev. REL 55(1977) 437

357. Kunze, G.
Die gottesdienstlichey Schriftlesung
Göttingen, 1947
-on pericopes

358. Kraus, F.F.

Die Münzen Odovacars und des Ostgotenreiches in Italien
Halle, 1928

359. Krautheimer, R.
Rome
Princeton, 1979

360. Krautschick, Stefan

Cassiodor und die Politik seiner Zeit
Bonn 1983
(Habelts Dissertationsdruck, Reihe Alte Geschichte, Heft 17)
rev. O'D, Gnomon 58(1986), 374-6
Byz. Zeitschr. 78(1985), 380-3, Hermann-Otto
Latomus 45(1986), 375-6 Barnish
Goffart, Speculum 60(1985) 989-91.
Gymnasium 93(1986) 329-30 Klein
BJ 189(1989) 695-7 Gruber
Eos 76(1988), 176-85 Prostko-Prostynski

361. Krautschick, Stefan

'Bemerkungen zu PLRE II'
Historia 35(1986), 121-4

362. Krautschick, Stefan

'Zwei Aspekte des Jahres 476'
APh 1986.9851

363. Krüger, G.
Vigilius
Prot. RE (Herzog-Hauck) 20 (3rd ed. 1908), 633-40

211
364. Krusch, B.
Neues Archiv 9(1884), 113ff
--arguments about the computus 562

365. Kurth, Godefroid

'Les sénateurs en Gaule au VIe siècle'
études Franques (Paris 1919) 2.97-115

366. Lagorio, V.M.

'A text of Cassiodorus's De rhetorica in Codex Pal. Lat. 1588'
Scriptorium 30(1976), 43-5

367. Laistner, M.L.W.

'Antiochene Exegesis in Western Europe during the Middle Ages'
HThR 40(1947), 19-31

368. Lamma, Paolo

'Due descrizioni di orologi: il significato della tecnica nella cultura e nella politica del
VI secolo'
his Oriente e Occidente nell'Alto Medioevo. Studi storici sulle due civilità, 161- 71
Padova 1968

369. Lamma, Paolo

Richerche su la storia e la cultura del VI secolo
Brsecia, 1950

370. Lammert, F.
'Literatur zu Cassiodorus'
Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 231, p. 80

371. Lanzoni, F.
Le diocesi d'Italia dalle origini al principio del secolo VII (an. 604)
Faenza 1927
Studi e Testi 35

372. Laubman, G.
'Cassiodors Institutiones saecularium litterarum in der Würzburger und Bamberger
Handschrift'
Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (1878) 2.71-96

373. Lausberg, H.
Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik
München 1960

374. Lehmann, P.

212
Review of Mynors Cassiodori Institutiones
Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 55 (1938), 80-3

375. Leone, D.
'Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro e il basso impero'
CaLet 25, 4-6 (1977), 100-3

376. Leopold, J.W.

'Consolando per edicta. Cassiodorus, Variae, 4,50 and imperial consolations for natural
catastrophes'
Latomus 45(1986), 816-36

377. Liber-Diurnus Studien:

W.M. Peitz, Liber diurnus. Beiträge zur Kenntnis der ältesten päpstlichen Kanzlei vor
Gregor dem Großen, I: überlieferung des Kanzleibuches und sein vorgregorianischer
Ursprung (SB Wien 185.4: Wien, 1918)
W.M. Peitz, 'Liber diurnus. Methodisches zur Diurnus-Forschung', Miscellanea
Historiae Pontificiae 2(Rome, 1940), 83-180.
L. Steinacker, Liber Diurnus. Studien und Forschungen (Stuttgart, 1976: Päpste und
Papsttum, 10)

378. Lienhard, J.
'The Earliest Florilegia of St. Augustine'
Augustinian Studies 8 (1977) 21-31.

379. Lilja, S.
'Cassiodors Bedeutung für das Nachwirken der Antike'
Logik, Mathematik u. Philosophie des Transzendenten, Festschr. f. U. Saarn, ed. A.
Hakamies (Munich, 1957), 57ff.

380. Llewellyn, P.A.B.

'The Roman Church during the Laurentian schism: priests and senators'
Church History 45(1976), 417-27

381. Llewellyn, P.A.B.

'The Roman clergy during the Laurentian schism'
Ancient Society 8(1977), 245-75

382. Llewellyn, P.A.B.

'Le indicazioni numeriche del Liber Pontificalis relativamente alle ordinazioni del V
secolo'Rivista della storia della Chiesa in Italia 29(1975), 439-43

383. Löhlein, Georg

Die Alpen- und Italienpolitik der Merowinger im VI. Jahrhundert
Erlanger Abhandlungen zur mittleren und neueren Geschichte, 17
Erlangen, 1932

213
384. Lorenz, R.
'Die Anfänge des abendländischen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert'
Zeitschrift fUr Kirchengeschichte 77(1966), 1-61

385. Lorenzo, J.L.

El valor de los proverbios en Jordanes
Salamanca, 1976
Rev. Emerita 47(1979), 474-6
Rev. REL 55(1977) 437

386. Lorenzo, J.L.

'Algunas consideraciones sobre la técnica de los retratos en Jordanes'
Durius 5(1977), 127-38

387. Lorenzo, J.
'Ecos virgilianos en Gregorio de Tours y Jordanes'
APh 1982.5133

388. Loreti, I.
'Simbolica dei numeri nella Expositio Psalmorum di Cassiodoro'
Vetera Christianorum 16(1979), 41-55

389. Lotter, F.
Severinus von Noricum: Legende und historische Wirklichkeit
Stuttgart, 1976
Rev. E.A. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians (Madison, 1982), 113-33 M. van
Uytfanghe, 'Les Avatars contemporains de 'l'Hagiologie"', Francia 5(1977), 639-71

390. Lowa, G.
Die Musikanschauung Cassiodors
Berlin, 1953

391. Löwe, Heinz

'Theoderichs Gepidensieg in WInter 488/89: Eine historisch-geographische Studie'
Historische Forschungen und Probleme: Peter Rassow z. 70 Geburtstage dargebracht . .
., 1- 16
Cologne, 1961

392. Löwe, Heinz

'Von Theoderich dem Grossen zu Karl dem Grossen: Das Werden des Abendlandes im
Geschichtsbild des frühen Mittelalters'
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 9(1952), 353-401

393. Löwe, Richard

'Der gotische Kalender'

214
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Litteratur 59(1922), 245-90

394. Löwe, Richard

'Gotische Namen in hagiographischen Texten'
Beiträge zur Geschichte d. deutsche Sprache und Litteratur 47(1923), 407-33

395. Lucchesi, E.
'Note sur un lieu de Cassiodore faisant allusion aux sept livre d'Ambroise sur les
Patriarches'
Vigiliae Christianae 30(1976), 307-9

396. Luiselli, Bruno

'La società dell'Italia romano-gotica'
Atti del 7o Congr. intern. studi sull'alto medioevo 29 sett.5 ott. 1980 (Spoleto 1982), 49-
116

397. Luiselli, Bruno

'I dialoghi scientifici tra Cassiodoro e Teoderico'
Saggi de. a Val. Tonini, 59-68

398. Luiselli, Bruno

'Sul De summa temporum di Jordanes'
Romanobarbarica 1(1976) 83-133
Jordanes trained at Vivarium and went to Crotona!

399. Luiselli, Bruno

'Note sulla perduta Historia Romana di Simmaco'
APh 1976.3822

400. Luiselli, Bruno

'Cassiodoro e la storia dei Goti'
Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Atti dei Convegni Lincei 45, Convegno internazionale.
Passagio dal mondo antico al medio evo da Theodosio a san Gregorio Magno (Roma,
maggio 1977) 225-53
Rome 1980

401. Lumpe, A.
'Ennodiana'
Byzantinische Forschungen 1(1966), 200-10

402. Lumpe, A.
'Die konziliengeschichtliche Bedeutung des Ennodius'
Annuarium historiae Conciliorum 1(1969), 15-36

403. Maassen, Friedrich B.C.

Geschichte der quellen und der literatur des canonischen rechts im Abendlande

215
Graz, repr. 1956

404. MacCormack, Sabine

Art and Ceremonial in Late Antiquity
Berkeley, 1981

405. McCormick, Michael

Eternal Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early
Medieval West.
Cambridge, 1986

406. Macina, R.
'Cassiodore et l'école de Nisibe. Contribution à l'étude de la culture chrétienne orientale
à l'aube du Moyen Âge'
Muséon 95(1982), 131-66
cf. Fiaccadori

407. MacNamara, M.
'Tradition and Creativity in Early Irish Psalter Study'
Irland und Europa (ed. P.N. Chathain and M. Richter), 338-89
Stuttgart, 1984

408. Macpherson, Robin

Rome in Involution: Cassiodorus' Variae in their literary and historical setting
Pozna , 1989

409. Mair, J.R.S.

'A manual for monks. Cassiodorus and the '
JThS 31(1980), 547-51

410. Manso, Johann Kaspar Friedrich, 1760-1826

Geschichte des Ost-gothischen reiches in Italien
Breslau, 1824

411. Marco, M. di
'Scelta e utilizzazione delle fonti nel De anima di Cassiodoro'
SMSR 9(1985), 93-117

412. Marin, M.
'Note sulla fortuna dell'esegesi agostiniana di Mt 25,1-13'
APh 1981, no. 745

413. Marin, M.
'Saecularis elocutio e caelestis auctoritas nelle Institutiones di Cassiodoro'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 442-52

216
414. Markus, R.A.
'The Cult of Icons in Sixth Century Gaul'
Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 29(1978), 151-7

415. Markus, R.A.

'Carthage-Prima Justiniana-Ravenna. An Aspect of Justinians Kirchenpolitik'
Byzantion 49(1979), 73-302 (sic!)

416. Markus, R.A.

'Reflections on Religious Dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine Period'
Studies in Church History 3(1966), 140-50

417. Markus, R.A.

'La politica ecclesiastica di Giustiniano e la Chiesa di Occidente'
Il mondo del diritto, 113-24 (a coll. vol.?)

418. Marosi, R.
'L'attività del praefectus praetorio nel regno Ostrogoto attraverso le Variae di
Cassiodoro'
Humanitas (1975-76), 71ff

419. Marosi, R.
'L'officium del prefetto del pretorio nel VI sec.'
Romanobarbarica 2(1977), 103ff

420. Marrou, H.-I.

'L'école de l'antiquité tardive,'
in La scuola nell'Occidente latino dell'alto Medioevo. XIXa Settimana di Studio del
Centro italiano di Studi sull'alto Medioevo, 127-143, 203-211 (discussion)
Spoleto, 1972.

421. Marti, H.
übersetzer der Augustin-Zeit
Munich, 1974

422. Martino, P.
'Gothorum laus est civilitas custodita (Cassiod. Var. 9,14,18)'
Sileno 8(1982), 31-45

423. Martroye, F.
L'Occident à l'époque byzantine: Goths et Valdales
Paris, 1904

424. Mathisen, R.W.

'Patricians as diplomats in late antiquity'
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 79(1986) 35-49

217
425. Mazza, M.
'La Historia tripartita di Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro senatore: Metodi e scopo'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 210-44

426. Mazza, M.
'Sulla teoria della storiografia cristiana: osservazioni sui proemi degli storici
ecclesiastici'
La storiografia ecclesiastica nella Tarda Antichité (Atti del Convegno di Erice, 3-8 XII
1978), Messina, 1980, 335ff, esp. 373ff.

427. Meister, R.
'Relocare'
Wiener Studien (1941) 150

428. Mercati, G.
'Per la vita e gli scritti di Paolo il Persiano'
Note di letteratura biblica e cristiana antica
Rome, 1901, 180-206
Studi e Testi 5

429. Meyvaert, P.
'Bede and the Church Paintings at Wearmouth-Jarrow'
Anglo-Saxon England 8 (Cambridge 1979) 70-3.

430. Meyer, H. and R. Suntrup

'Zum Lexikon der Zahlenbedeutungen im Mittelalter'
APh 1987.5324

431. Milik, J.T.

'La famiglia di Felice III papa'
Epigraphica 28(1967), 140-2

432. Minicucci, A.
'De Vergilio apud Cassiodorum'
RPL 6(1983), 223-9

433. Minio-Paluello, L.
Opuscula: the Latin Aristotle
Amsterdam, 1972

434. Mirkovi , Miroslava

'Die Ostgoten in Pannonien nach dem Jahre 455
Recueil des travaux de la faculté de philosophie 10, no. 1 (Belgrade, 1968), 119- 28

435. Mirkovi , Miroslava

218
'Sirmium: Its History from the First Century A.D. to 582 A.D.'
Sirmium I, 5-90
Belgrade, 1961

436. Mócsy, András

'Der Name Flavius als Rangbezeichnung in der Spätantike'
Aketen des IV. internationalen Kongresses für griechische und lateinische Epigraphik,
257-63
Vienna, 1962

437. Mohlberg, C.
'Nuove considerazione sul cosi detto 'Sacramentarium Leonianum'
Ephemerides Liturgicae 47(1932), 3-12

438. Moller, D.G.

Disputatio circul. de M.A. Cassiodo
Altorf, 1686

439. Momigliano, Arnaldo

'Cassiodoro'
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 21(1978) 484-504;
repr. in his Sesto contributo (Rome 1980) 487-508

440. Momigliano, Arnaldo

'Un appunto di I. Casaubon dalle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Tra latino e volgare 2.615-7
Sesto o ottavo contributo

441. Montico, M.G.

'Il valore psicagogico della musica nel pensiero di S. Agostino e di altri filosofi cristiani
(Boezio, Cassiodoro e S. Bonaventura)
Miscellanea Francescana 38(1938), 398-410

442. Moorhead, John

"'Libertas" and "nomen Romanum" in Ostrogothic Italy'
Latomus 36(1987), 161-8

443. Moorhead, John

'Papa as "bishop of Rome"'
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36(1985), 337-50

444. Moorhead, John

'Boethius and Romans in Ostrogothic service'
Historia 27(1978), 604-12

445. Moorhead, John

219
'The Laurentian schism: East and West in the Roman church'
Church History 47(1978), 125-36

446. Moorhead, John

'Italian Loyalties During Justinian's Gothic War'
Byzantion 53(1983), 575-96

447. Moorhead, John

'Culture and power among the Ostrogoths'
Klio 68(1986) 112-23

448. Moorhead, John

Theoderic in Italy
1992.

449. Moorhead, John

Justinian.
1994

450. Moorhead, John

'The Last Years of Theodoric'
Historia 32(1983), 106-20

451. Moorhead, John

'The Decii under Theoderic'
Historia 33(1984) 107-15

452. Moorhead, John

'Theoderic, Zeno and Odoacer'
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 77(1984) 261-6

453. Moreau-Marichal, J.
'La Linguistique medievale et ses temoins manuscrits'
Scriptorium 22 (1968) 303-5.

454. Moreau-Marichal, J.
'Recherches sur la ponctuation'
Scriptorium 22 (1968) 56-66.

455. Morosi, R.
'L'Officium dal prefetto del praetorio nel VI secolo'
Romanobarbarica 2(1977) 104-48

456. Morosi, R.
'L'attività del praefectus praetorio nel regno ostrogoto attraverso le Variae di
Cassiodoro'

220
Humanitas 27-8(1975-6), 71-96

457. Morosi, R.
'Cancellarii in Cassiodoro'
APh 1976.11148

458. Morosi, R.
'I saiones, speciali agenti di polizia presso i Goti'
Athenaeum 59(1981), 150-65

459. Morosi, R.
I comitiaci
APh 1981(9957)

460. Morton, Catherine

'Boethius in Pavia; the Tradition and the Scholars'
Congresso internazionale di studi Boeziani: Atti, 49-58
Roma 1981

461. Mosshammer, A.
'Two fragments of Jerome's Chronicle'
RhM 124 (1981) 66-80

462. Mundo, A.
"'Bibliotheca." Bible et lecture du careme d'apres saint Benoit'
RevBn 60 (1950) 65-92.

463. Murphy, J.J.

Rhetoric in the Middle Ages
Berkeley

464. Näf, Beat

'Das Zeitbewusstsein des Ennodius und der Untergang Roms'
Historia 39(1990), 100-23
Xerox: all about 476 and E's not noticing

465. Nasturel, Petre S.

'Les Actes de saint Sabas le Goth'
Revue de études sud-est européenes 7(1969), 175-85

466. Neugebauer, O.
'On the Computus Paschalis of "Cassiodorus"'
Centaurus 25(1981), 292-302
APh: 'Ce texte anonyme peut être daté de 562, date à laquelle Cassiodore ne pouvait être
vivant'?

221
467. Norberg, Dag
In Registrum Gregorii Magni Studia Critica
Uppsala 1937
Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift 1937, 4

468. Norberg, Dag

In Registrum Gregorii Magni Studia Critica II
Uppsala 1939
Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift 1939, 7

469. Norberg, Dag

'Qui a composé les lettres de Saint Grégoire le Grand?'
Studi Medievali 3. Serie 21 Fasc. 1 (1980), 1-17

470. Norberg, Dag

Critical and exegetical notes on the letters of St. Gregory the Great
Stockholm 1982
Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Filologiskt Arkiv 27

471. Norden, E.
Die Antike Kunstprosa

472. Nordenfalk, C.
'Corbie and Cassiodorus'
Pantheon 32 (1974) 225-31.
CLA 5.632; for a contrary view, see Bischoff, 'Die überlieferung der technischen
Literatur', in B.B., Mittelalterliche Studien 3(1981) 292.

473. Nordhagen, Per Jonas

'The Codex Amiatinus and the Byzantine Element in the Northumbrian Renaissance'
Jarrow Lecture 1977.

474. O'Donnell, James J.

Cassiodorus
Berkeley 1979
Peter Brown, University Publishing 9(Summer 1980) 3-4
G. Bonner, Speculum 56(1981)
A.J. Woodman, Greece and Rome (1980) 189
F. Weissengruber, Gnomon 52(1980) 633-638
C. McDonough, Phoenix (1981) 34(1980), 370-3 -- On emendations suggested therein
(371n2, discussing exp. Ps. 106.520 and 107.1-2, see Halporn, REAug 30(1984),
122n54
J. Muldoon, History Reviews (1980)
A. Momigliano, Medium Aevum (1981)
J.M. May, Quarterly Journal of Speech (1981)
W.H.C. Frend, ?Histor. Assoc.

222
G.W. Bowersock, The American Scholar (Autumn 1981)
?, AJP
Averil Cameron, JRS 71(1981) 183-186
F.J. Witty, CHR 68(1982)
S. Jenks, Historisches Jahrbuch, 103(1983), 435-7
P. Schaff, Church History
W. Lawless, Augustinianum
W. Goffart, EHR (1981)
Orlando, SMed 1981 No 1.67-71

475. O'Donnell, James J.

'The Aims of Jordanes'
Historia 31(1982) 223-40

476. O'Donnell, James J.

'Liberius the Patrician'
Traditio 37(1981) 31-72

477. Olivadotti, G.
'Il paesaggio di Squillace al tempo di Cassiodoro'
CaLet 25, 4-6 (1977), 8-9

478. Opelt, I.
'Materialien zur Nachwirkung von Augustins Schrift De Doctrina Christiana'
JbAC 17 (1974) 64-73.

479. Orlandi, G.
'Problemi di ecdotica alto-medievale'

La cultura in Italia fra tardo antico e alto medioevo (Atti del Convegno . . . 1979: Rome,
1981), 1.333-56

480. Orlandi, G.
'Testi cassiodorei e moderni editori'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 135-53

481. Palanque, J.-R., ed.

Le Christianisme et l'occident barbare
Paris, 1945
Saints? articles on Ste. Genevieve, St. Remi, E. Delaruelle on Saint Avit, Saint Cesaire
d'Arles (two?), Fulgentius of Ruspe, G. Bardy on Ennodius, Boethius (two?), A.M.
Jacquin on Cassiodorus, and Benedict

482. Palermo, G.
L'itinerario di un anima
Catania Centro di studi sull'antico cristianesimo, 1978

223
intro, txt, trans., de anima
also in Orpheus 23(1976), 41-143

483. Palmer, Robert B.

'Bede as a Textbook Writer: A Study of his De Arte Metrica'
Speculum 34 (1959) 573-84

484. Paradisi, B.
'Critica e mito nell'Editto Teodericiano'
Bollettino dell'Istituto di Diritto romano 68(1965), 1-47

485. Patlagean, E.
Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance 4e-7e siècles
(Paris/The Hague, 1977), 84-92, 427-30
on the plague of the 540s as 'watershed between epochs' (Herrin, 45n67)

486. Pavan, M.
'I valori della tradizione classica nell'insegnamento del Vivarium'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 392-405

487. Pérez y Urbel, F.J.

'Florencio, el miniaturista famoso del monasterio de Valeranica'
APh 1976.5629

488. Peter, H.
'Der Brief in römischen Literatur'
Abhandlungen der Königlichen Sächsischen Gessellschaft der Wissenschaften.
Philologisch-historische Klasse 20.3 (Leipzig, 1901), 202-12

489. Peter, H.
Wahrheit und Kunst. Geschichtsschreibung u. Plagiat im klassischen Altertum
Leipzig-Berlin, 1911, 416-55 (Cass. 461-63)

490. Peterson, E.
Das Buch von den Engeln
Munich, 1955 (2nd ed.)

491. Petitmengin, P.
'Que signifie la souscription 'contuli'?'
Les Letters de saint Augustin decouvertes par Johannes Divjak. Communications
presentes au colloque des 20 et 21 September 1982, 365-74
Paris, 1983

492. Petrucci, A.
Scittura e libro nell'Italia altomedievale
1969

224
493. Petrucci, A.
'La concezione cristiana del libro fra VI e VII secolo'
Libri e lettori nel medioevo. Guida storica e critica, ed. G. Cavallo (Bari, 1983), 18ff;
also at Studi medievali 14(1973), 961ff

494. Pewesin, W.
Imperium, Ecclesia universalis, Rom. Der Kampf der Afrikanischen Kirche um die
Mitte des 6. Jahrhunderts
Stuttgart, 1937
Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte, ed. Seeberg, Weber, Holtzmann,
Elfter Band, Geistige Grundlagen Römischer Kirchenpolitik

495. Pfeiffer, R.
'Humanitas Benedictina'
Ausgewaehlte Schriften, 175-82.
Munich, 1960

496. Pferschy, B.
Formular und Formeln. Studien zur Typologie der Variae des Cassiodorus Senator
Diss. Wien 1983, 232p.

497. Pietri, Charles

Roma Christiana. Recherches sur l'Eglise de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son
idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311-440)
Rome and Paris, 1976
BEFAR 224

498. Pietri, Charles

'Aristocratie et société cléricale dans l'Italie chrétienne au temps d'Odoacre et de
Théodoric'
MEFR 92(1981), 417-67

499. Pietz, Wilhelm M.

Dionysius Exiguus-Studien
Berlin, 1960

500. Pizzani, U.
'Il filone enciclopedico neela patristica da S. Agostino a S. Isidoro di Siviglia'
Augustinianum 14 (1974), 667-96

501. Pizzani, U.
'Boezio consulente tecnico al servizio dei re barbarici'
Romanobarbarica 3(1978), 189-242

502. Pizzani, U.

225
'Cassiodoro e le discipline del quadrivio'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 49-71

503. Plaine, B.
'De veris Breviarii Romani originibus et prima eius forma'
Studien und Mitteilungen 16(1895), 3-10, 216-23, 386-90

504. Pomilio, Mario

Il quinto evangelio
Milan, 1975
novel; ch. 2 (pp. 53-84) traces mentions in fictional history of 'il manoscritto di Vivario'

505. Pontieri, Ernesto

Le invasioni barbariche e l'Italia del V a VI secolo
Naples, 1959-60

506. Pricoco, S.
L'isola dei santi. Il cenobio di Lerino e le origini del monachesimo gallico
Rome, 1978

507. Pricoco, S.
'Il monachesimo in Italia dalle origini alla regola di San Benedetto'
La Cultura in Italia, 2.621-41

508. Pricoco, S.
'Spiritualità monastica e attivita culturale nel cenobio di Vivarium'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 357-77

509. Prinz, F.
Askese und Kultur: vor- und frühbenediktinisches Mönchtum an der Wiege Europas
Munich, 1980

510. Quacquarelli, A.
Lavoro e ascesi nel monachesimo prebenedettino del IV e V secolo
Bari, 1982
Quaderni di Vetera Christianorum, 18

511. Quacquarelli, A.
'La elocutio di S. Agostino nelle riflessioni di Cassiodoro'
Augustinianum 25(1985) 385-403; repr. in Vetera Christianorum 25(1988), 177-98

512. Quacquarelli, A.
'Riflessioni di Cassiodoro sugli schemi della retorica attraverso i Salmi'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 313-34; repr. in Vetera Christianorum 25(1988), 67-93

226
513. H. Quentin, Mémoire sur l'établissement du texte de la Vulgate
Rome and Paris, 1922
[Collectanea biblica Latina, 6]

514. Rahlfs, A.
'Lehrer und Schüler bei Iunilius Africanus'
NGG 1891, 241-6

515. Rallo Freni, R.

"'Divisio" e "partitio" da Cicerone e Quintiliano a Boezio, Cassiodoro ed Ennodio'
Sileno, 3 (1977), 269-74

516. Rallo Freni, R.A.

'Arnobio il Giovane, fonte di Cassiodoro'
APh 1986.603

517. Rand, E.K.

review of Schurr
Speculum 11(1936), 153-6

518. Rapisarda Lo Menzo, G.

'Il tema dei quattro cavalieri in Cassiodoro, Apoc. 6,1-8'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 434-41

519. Rasi, P.
'Sulla paternità del c.d. Edictum Theoderici regis'
Archivio Giuridico 145(1953), 113ff

520. Rasi, P.
'Ancora sulla paternità del c.d. Edictum Theoderici regis'
Annali di storia del diritto 5/6 (1961-62), 113-36

521. Recchia, V.
Sisebuto di Toledo: il 'carmen de luna'
Bari, 1971
Quaderni di "Vetera Christianorum", 3
transmitted with inst.

522. Reifferscheid, A.
'Anecdotum Cauense de notis antiquorum'
Rheinisches Museum 23(1868), 131-2

523. Reiss, Edmund

'The Fall of Boethius and the Fiction of the Consolatio Philosophiae'
CJ 77(1981), 37-47

227
524. Reitter, N.
Der Glaube an die Fortdauer des römischen Reiches im Abendlande während des 5. und
6. Jahrhunderts
Münster, 1900, pp. 8-10, 24-34

525. Renucci, P.
'La rovina dei codici culturali (secoli IV-VII)' in
Storia d'Italia 2/2 (Dalla caduta dell'Impero romano al secolo XVIII)
TUrin, 1974, 1096-7

526. Reydellet, M.
La royauté dans la littérature latine de Sidone Apollinaire à Isidore de Séville
Rome, 1981

527. Riché, P.
Les écoles et l'enseignement dans l'occident chrétien de la fin du Ve siècle au milieu du
XIe siècle
Paris, 1979

528. Riggenbach, E.
Historische Studien zum Hebräerbrief I. Die ältesten lateinischen Kommentare zum
Hebräerbrief
Leipzig, 1907
Also Siegmund überlieferung 98; Lowe on Mutianus uncial

529. Rocca, R.
'Cassiodoro e la historia ludorum'
Romano-Barbarica 5(1980), 225-237

530. Roda, S.
'Alcune ipotesi sulla prima edizione dell'epistolario di Simmaco'
La Parola del Passato 184(1979), 31-54
--first ed. dated c. 500

531. Rohlfs, G.
Scavi linguistici nella Magna Grecia
Rome, 1933
T. Franceschi, 'Quant'è antico il greco di Calabria?' Stud. Urb. 47(1973), 61-118; F.
Nicosia, 'Un'epigrafe cristiana del territorio di Acate', ASS 5-6 (1959- 60), 125-8; A. Di
Vita, 'Una nuova testimonianza di latino "volgare" dalla Sicilia sud- orientale: l'epitaffio
di Zoe', Kokalos 7(1961), 199-215; C. Gallavotti, 'Basso latino nell'epitaffio siciliano di
Zoe', Riv. Fil. Istr. Cl. 90(1962), 186-90; A. Varbaro, Lingua e storia in Sicilia (Palermo
1981), 68-70

532. Roisl, H.N.

228
'Totila und die Schlacht bei den Busta Gallorum, Ende Juni/Anfang Juli 552'
Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 30(1981), 25ff

533. Romano, D.
'Cassiodoro panegirista'
Pan 6(1978) 5-35

534. Rondeau, M.
Les commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe e VIe siècles)
Rome, 1982
Orient. Christ. anal. 219

535. Roth, Cecil

'Jewish Antecedents of Christian Art'
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953) 37-44.

536. Rothenhöfer, Dieter

'Untersuchungen zur Sklaverei in den ostgermanischen Nachfolgestaaten des römischen
Reichs'
diss. Rübingen, 1967

537. Rouche, M.
L'Aquitaine: des Wisigoths aux Arabes, 418-781: Naissance d'une région
Paris, 1979

538. Rousseau, P.
'In Search of Sidonius the Bishop'
Historia 25(1976), 356-77

539. Rouville, S.
Cassiodore de l'ame
Paris, 1874.

540. Rüting, W.
Untersuchungen über Augustins Quaestiones und Locutiones in Heptateuchum
Paderborn 1916
Forschungen zur christl. Literatur u. Dogmengeschichte 13,3.4

541. Salamon, M.
'Priscianus und sein Schülerkreis in Konstantinopel'
Philologus 123(1979), 91-6

542. Salvo, L. de
'Rifornimenti alimentari e trasporti marittimi nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 409-20

229
543. San Martin, J.
'La prima salus del papa Hormisdas'
Revista española de teologia 1(1941), 767-812

544. Scardigli, Piergiuseppe

Die Goten: Sprache und Kultur
Munich, 1973
rev. V. Bierbrauer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur
96(1974), 339ff

545. Schäfer, Christoph

Der weströmische Senat als Träger antiker Kontinuität unter den Ostgotenkönigen (490-
520 n. Chr.)
St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 1991. Pp. viii + 388.
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546. Schaefer, K.T.

'Der Paulustext des Pelagius'
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Rome, 1963
(=Analecta Biblica 18)

547. Schäferdiek, Knut

'Der germanische Arianismus: Erwägungen zum geschichtlichen Verständnis'
Miscellanea historiae ecclesiasticae 3(1970), 71-83

548. Schäferdiek, Knut

Die Kirchen in den Reichen der Westgoten und Suewen bis zur Errichtung der
westgotischen katholischen Staatskirche
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Berlin, 1967

549. Schaffran, E.
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österreichisches archäologisches Institut in Wien. Jahreshefte (Beiblatt) 42(1955), 111-
30

550. Schäublin, C.,

Herkunft und Methode . . .
...

551. Scheele, J.
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230
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552. Schildenberger, J.
'Die Itala des hl. Augustinus'
in Colligere Fragmenta, 84-102.
Beuron, 1952

553. Schindel, U.
Die lateinischen Figurenlehren des 5. bis 7. Jahrhunderts und Donats Vergilkommentar.
AbhGoett 3. Folge Nr. 91,
Goettingen, 1975.

554. Schindel, U.
'Textkritisches zu lateinischen Figurenlehren'
Glotta 52(1974), 95-114

555. Schindel, U.
'Die Quellen von Bedas Figurenlehre'
Classica et Mediaevalia 29 (1968) 169-86

556. Schlieben, R.
'Die schulwissenschaftlichen Methoden der Psalmenexegese Cassiodors'
APh 46.p 74
Rev. AB 95(1977), 225

557. Schneider, A.M.

'Gotengrabsteine aus Konstantinopel'
Germania 21(1937), 175-7

558. Schreckenberg, Heinz

Die Flavius-Josephus-Tradition in Antike und Mittelalter
Leiden, 1972

559. Schubert, H. von

Die Unterwerfung der Alamannen unter die Franken
Strassburg, 1884, pp. 26-67

560. Schwarcz, A.
Reichsangehörige Personen gotischer Herkunft: Prosopographische Studien
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561. Schwartz, E.
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also his Gesammelte Schriften 4(Berlin, 1960), 276-328

231
562. Schwartz, E.
Drei dogmatische Schriften Iustinians
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1939)

563. Schwartz, Jacques

'Jordanès et l'Histoire Auguste'
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Antiquitas Reihe 4.15 (Bonn 1983) 275-84

564. Scivoletto, N.
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GIF 38(1986) 3-24
appendix: 'Civilitas nelle Variae'

565. Simon, R.
'Cassiodore'
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Paris, 1730.
criticism of Garet

566. Simonetti, G.
'Romulus iunior. Iordanes, Romana 52'
Romano-Barbarica 2(1977), 259-65

567. Simonetti, M.
'Arianesimo latino'
Studi Medievali, ser. 3, no. 89 (1967), 663-744

568. Simonetti, M.
La politica religiosa di Giustiniano
forthcoming: Settimana su Cassiodoro 239n88

569. Simonetti, M.
'Haereticum non facit ignorantia. Una nota su Facondo di Ermiane e la sua difesa dei
Tre Capitoli'
Orpheus n.s. 1(1980), 76-105

570. Sinnigen, W.G.

'Comites consistoriani in Ostrogothic Italy'
Classica et Mediaevalia 24(1963), 158-65

571. Sirago, Vito Antonio

'La Calabria nelle "Variae" di Cassiodoro'
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232
572. Sirago, Vito Antonio
'La Puglia nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Studi Storici Meridionali 6(1986), 131-57

573. Sirago, Vito Antonio

'Il Samnio nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Studi Storici Meridionali 6(1986), 275-300

574. Sirago, Vito Antonio

'La Campania nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Studi Storici Meridionali 7(1987), 3-22

575. Sirago, Vito Antonio

I Cassiodori: una famiglia calabrese alla direzione d'Italia nel V e VI secolo
Soveria Mannelli (CZ): Rubbettino, c. 1983
123 pp.; at Dumbarton Oaks

576. Sirago, V.A.

Puglia e Sud Italia nelle Variae di Cassiodoro
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577. Sirago, V.A.

'Gli Ostrogoti in Gallia', REA 89(1987), 63-77

578. Sirago, V.A.

'I Goti nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 179-205

579. Soraci, Rosario

Aspetti di storia economica italiana nell' etá di Cassiodoro
Catania, 1974
158 pp.
Rev. Orpheus 23(1976) 177-8

580. Souter, A.
Rev. Mynors JThS 38(1937), 194-6

581. Sposato, P.
'Sinodi Romani e concili orientali e la partecipazione dei vescovi del Brutium byzantino'
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582. Staab, Franz

'Ostrogothic Geographers at the Court of Theodoric the Great: A Study of Some Sources
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Viator 7(1976) 27-58

233
583. Steidle, W.
'Das erste Buch der Institutionen des Cassiodor'
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584. Stein, E.
Histoire du Bas Empire, II
Paris etc. 1949
Excursus R, 'La date du Liber contra Mocianum de Facundus d'Hermiane', pp. 824- 826

585. Steinhauser, K.B.

Bemerkungen zum pseudo-hieronymischen Commemoratorium in Apocalypsin'
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586. Stockmeier, P.
'Aspekte zur Ausbildung des Klerus in der Spätantike'
APh 1976.10431

587. Stone, H.
'The Polemics of Toleration: The Scholars and Publishers of Cassiodorus' Variae'
JHI 46 (1985), 147-65

588. Straub, J., ed.

Concilium Universale Constantinopolitanum sub Iustiniano Habitum
Berlin/New York, 1971

589. Stroheker, K.
Germanentum und Spätantike
Zurich, 1965

590. Stroux, J.
'Vier Zeugnisse zur römischen Literaturgeschichte der Kaiserzeit: IV'
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591. Sundwall, Johannes

Weströmische Studien

592. Syme, Ronald

Historia Augusta Papers, 209-223, 156-67
Oxford 1983

593. Taylor, J.J.

'The Early Papacy at Work: Gelasius I'
Journal of Religious History 8(1974-75), 317-32

594. Teillet, S.
Des Goths à la nation gothique

234
Paris 1984
pp. 280-305 on Cassiodorus, ending a long post-Courcelle survey of the Goths in the
literary history of fourth and fifth centuries

595. Teitler, H.C.

Notarii and Exceptores: an inquiry into the role and significance of shorthand writers ( .
. . to c. 450 A.D.)
Amsterdam, 1985

596. Telfer, W.
'The Codex Verona LX (58)'
Harvard Theological Review 36(1943), 169-246

597. Le temps chrétien de la fin de l'Antiquité au Moyen Age

Colloques Internationales du CNRS, 604
Paris, 1981

598. Thiele, W.
'Die Stellung von Sapientia und Sirach im Alten Testament'
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Freiburg, 1977-1985.

599. Thompson, E.A.

'The Settlement of the Barbarians in Southern Gaul'
JRS 46(1956), 65ff

600. Thompson, E.A.

Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire
Madison, Wisc., 1982

601. Thurn, Hans

'Handschriftenstudien zu Cassiodors Institutiones'
Codices Manuscripti 12(1986), 142-44.
Correcting Mynors' collations of W and X.

602. Tjäder, J.O.

'Der Codex argenteus in Uppsala und der Buchmeister Viliaric in Ravenna'
Studia Gotica, ed. U.E. Hagbert (Stockholm, 1972), 144-64

603. Tolomio, I.
L'anima dell' uomo. Trattati sull'anima dal V a IX secolo
Milan, 1979.

604. Tonnies, Bernhard

Die Amalertradition in den Quellen zur Geschichte der Ostgoten: Untersuchungen zu
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235
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605. Tränkle, H.
'Philologische Bemerkungen zum Boethiusprozess'
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606. Troncarelli, Fabio

'Decora correctio: un codice emendato da Cassiodoro?'
Scrittura e civiltà 9(1985), 147-68
Vat. lat. 5704 (!)

607. Troncarelli, Fabio

'I codici di Cassiodoro: le testimonianze più antiche'
Scrittura e civilità 12(1988), 47-99

608. Troncarelli, F.
'Il consolato dell'Antecristo'
Studi Medievali 3. Ser. 30 (1989), 567-92

609. Troncarelli, F.
"'Con la mano del cuore." L'arte della memoria nei codici di Cassiodoro'
Quaderni medievali 22 (December 1986), 22-58

610. Troncarelli, F.
Tradizioni perdute. La 'Consolatio Philosophiae' nell'alto medioevo.
Padova, 1981

611. Troncarelli, F.
'Tradizioni ritrovate? Risposta ad alcune obiezioni ad un libro recente'
REAug 31 (1985), 215-226

612. Troncarelli, F.
'Una pieta piu profonda. Scienza e medecina nella cultura monastica medievale italiana'
Dall' Eremo al Cenobio (Milan, 1987), 703-27

613. Troncarelli, F.
'L'Ordo generis Cassiodororum e il programma pedagogico delle Institutiones'
REAug 35(1989), 129-34

614. Troncarelli, F.
'La trasmissione dei testi: contributi recenti e appunti metodologici'
Quaderni medievali 26 (December 1988), 137-48

615. Troncarelli, F.
'La più antica interpretazione della Consolatio Philosophiae'

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616. Vanderhoven, H., Masai, F., Corbett, P.B.

Regula Magistri.
Bruxelles-Paris, 1953
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617. Vanderspoel, J.
'Cassiodorus as Patricius and ex Patricio.'
Historia 39(1990), 499-503

618. Van der Vyver, A.

'Clovis et la politique méditerranée'
études à la mémoire de H. Pirenne, 1937, 367-87

619. Várady, L.
Das letzte Jahrhundert Pannoniens (376-476_
Budapest-Amsterdam, 1969

620. Várady, L.
'Jordanes-Studien: Jordanes und das Chronicon des Marcellinus Comes; Die
Selbständigkeit des Jordanes'
Chiron 6(1976), 441-87

621. Várady, L.
Die Auflösung des Altertums
Budapest, 1978

622. Vidén, Gunhild

The Roman Chancery Tradition: Studies in the Language of Codex Theodosianus and
Cassiodorus' Variae
Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia, 46
Göteborg, 1984

623. Viscido, L.
Studi sulle Variae di Cassiodoro
Soveria Mannelli, 1987

624. Viscido, L.
'Cassiod., Var. XII 15,2 s.'
Koinonia 4(1980), 129-38

625. Viscido, L.
'Cassiod., Var. II,20'
Koinonia 4(1980), 51-2

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'De textus critici Ordinis generis Cassiodororum excerptorum quaestione quadam'
ViLa 104(1986), 32-4 (Ann. Phil. 57[1988] 67)

627. Viscido, L.
'Sulle cause delle fondazioni monastiche a Vivarium'
Riv. di Lett. e di Storia eccles. (Napoli Ed. Fiorentino) 12.1-2(1980), 55-9

628. Viscido, L.
Studi cassiodorei
Soveria Mannelli Rubbetino, 1983

629. Viscido, L.
'Sull'uso del termine barbarus nelle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Orpheus 7(1986), 338-344

630. Viscido, L.
'De textus critici Ordinis generis Cassiodororum excerptorum quaestione quadam'
VL 1986 no. 104.32-34

631. Viscido, L.
'Augustinian works available in the Vivarium library'
APh 1986.790-1; APh 1990.1012

632. Viscido, L.
'Note su una delle Variae di Cassiodoro'
Vetera Christianorum 16(1979), 105-9
Var. 12.12 (Lucretius and Vergil)

633. Viscido, L.
'Segni critici nelle opere cassiodoree'
Vetera Christianorum 21(1984), 157-62

634. Viscido, L.
'Norme per la trascrizione del testo biblico a Vivarium'
Vetera Christianorum 15(1978), 75-84

635. Viscido, L.
'De Vergilio apud Cassiodorum adnotationes quaedam'
Vox Latina 27(1991), 214-18

636. Vismara, G.
Edictum Theoderici
Ius Romanum Medii Aevi, pars 1, 2b, aa,
Milan, 1967
rev. H. Nehlsen, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Germ. Abt. 86(1969), 246ff

238
major attempt to deny authorship to our T.

637. Vitali, Maria Teresa

'Cesellio Vindice'
Studi e Ricerche dell'Istituto di Latino della Facoltà di Magistero di Genova 1(1977),
221-58
orthog.

638. Vogüé, A. de
Le Maître, Eugippe et Saint Benoît: recueil d'articles
Hildesheim, 1984
many good things.

639. Vogüé, A. de
'Aux origines de l'interprétation bénédictine d'un texte classique'
APH 1975, s.v. Benedicti Regula

640. Volbach, W.F.

Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters
erd. ed. Mainz, 1976
cf. Delbrück

641. von Falkenhausen, V.

I Bizantini in Italia
Milan, 1982

642. Wagner, N.
'Bemerkungen zur Amalergenealogie'
Beiträge zur Namenforschung, n.s. 14(1979), 26ff

643. Wagner, N.
'Ich armer Dietrîch: Die Wandlung von Theoderichs Eroberung zu Dietrichs Flucht'
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 109(1980), 209ff

644. Wagner, N.
'Zu einigen Personennamen aus Quellen zur gotischen Geschichte'
Würzburger Prosastudien 2(1975), 27ff

645. Wagner, N.
'Herulische Namenprobleme'
APh 1981, 8875

646. Walsh, Patrick Gerard

'Why did Cassiodorus write his Expositio Psalmorum?'
Laurea Corona: Studies in honor of Edward Coleiro (Amsterdam 1987) 178-80

239
647. Ward-Perkins, B.
From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Oxford, 1984

648. Webber, J.L.

Notes on the Style and Vocabulary of Cassiodorus' Institutiones
s.l., 1945

649. Weissenberger, Paul

'Die Regula Magistri und die Regula Benedicti in ihrem Verhältnis zur Schreib- und
Lesekunst wie zum Buch'
Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1973, 51-62

650. Weissengruber, Franz

'Benutzung des Ambrosius durch Cassiodor'
Ambrosius Episcopus 2.378-98
Milan, 1976

651. Weissengruber, Franz

'Zu Cassiodors utrasque doctrinas;
Consuetudines monasticae. Festgabe für K. Hallinger
Rome, 1982
(Studia Anselmiana 85)

652. Weissensteiner, Johann

Quellenkundliche Abhandlungen zu Jordanes
diss. Vienna, 1980

653. Wenskus, Reinhard

Stammesbildung und Verfassung: das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen gentes.
Cologne, 2nd ed., 1977

654. White, H.J.

'The Codex Amiatinus and its Birthplace'
Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica 2(1890), 273-308

655. Whitby
The Emperor Maurice and his Historian
Oxford, 198x
Theophylact

656. Whittaker, I.
'Late classical and early mediaeval accounts of the Lapps'
APh 1983.10996

657. Wickham, Christopher

240
Early Medieval Italy
London, 1981

658. Wieacker, Franz

Allgemeine Zustände und Rechtszustände gegen Ende des weströmischen Reichs
Ius Romanum Medii Aevi I 2a
Milan, 1963

659. Wieacker, Franz

'Lateinische Kommentare zum Codex Theodosianus'
Symbolae Friburgenses in hnorem Ottonis Lenel, 259ff
Leipzig, 1931

660. Wieacker, Franz

Recht und Gesellschaft in der Spätantike
Stuttgart, 1964

661. Wieacker, Franz

Vulgarismus und Klassizismus im Recht der Spätantike
Sber. der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl. 3. Abhandlung.
1955

662. Winkelmann, F.
'Die Kirchengeschichtswerke im oströmischen Reich'
Byzantinoslavica 37(1976), 1-10, 172-90
Theodore Lector

663. Winkelmann, F.
'Einige Bemerkungen zu den Aussagen des Rufinus von Aquileia und des Hieronymus
über ihre übersetzungs-theorie und -methode'
KYRIAKON. Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 2.532-47.
Muenster Westf., 1970.

664. Wolfram, Herwig

'Theogonie, Ethnogenese und ein kompromittierter Grossvater im Stammbaum
Theoderichs des Grossen'
Festschrift für Helmut Beumann (ed. K.-U. Jäschke und R. Wenskus: Sigmaringen
1977) 80-97

665. Wolfram, Herwig

'Gothic History and Historical Ethnography'
Journal of Medieval History 7(1981) 309-19

666. Wolfram, Herwig

241
Geschichte der Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts.
Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie.
2nd ed., Munich 1980: trans. Thomas J. Dunlap as History of the Goths, Berkeley 1988.

667. Wolfram, H.
Die Geburt Mitteleuropas. Geschichte österreichs vor seiner Entstehung
Bienna/Berlin, 1987

668. Wolfram, H. and A. Schwarcz, edd.

Anerkennung und Integration. Zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen der
Völkerwanderungszeit (400-600) (Berichte des Symposions der Kommission für
Frühmittelalterforschung 7. bis 9. Mai 1986 Stift Zwettl, Niederösterreich: a lot to do
with Goffart)
Denkschriften der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Phil.-his. Kl.
193 (1988).

669. Wolfram, H. and F. Daim, edd.

Die Völker an der mittleren und unteren Donau im fünften und sechsten Jahrhundert
Vienna 1980
D. Claude, 'Die ostgotischen Königserhebungen', 149-86

670. Woloch, G. Michael

'A Survey of Scholarship on Ostrogothic Italy (A.D. 489-552)'
Classical Folia 25(1971), 320-56

671. Wood, I.N.

'Gregory of Tours and Clovis'
Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 63(1985), 249-72
putting baptism of Clovis to at least a decade later than 496; and suggesting that C. at
least flirted with Arianism; see also F. Prinz, Gruindlagen und Anfänge: Deutschland bis
1056. Neue Deutsche Geschichte, ed. P. Moraw, vol. 1 (Munich, 1985), pp. 63-4

672. Wood, I.N.

Avitus of Vienne
Unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Corpus Christi Coll. Oxon. 1980

673. Wood, I.N.

'The fall of the Western Empire and the end of Roman Britain'
Britannia 18(1986) 251-62

674. Wormald, Patrick

'The decline of the Western Empire and the survival of its aristocracy'
JRS 66(1976) 251-62
review of Matthews

242
675. Wozniak, Frank E.
'East Rome, Ravenna, and Western Illyricum: 454-536 A.D.'
Historia 30(1981), 351-82

676. Zangemeister, K.
'Rilievo di Foligno rappresentante diuochi circensi'
Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, 1870

677. Zecchini, G.
'I "Gesta de Xysti purgatione" e le fazioni aristocratiche a Roma alla metà del V secolo'
Riv. di St. delle Chiesa in Italia 34(1980), 60-74

678. Zecchini, G.
'La politica degli Anicii nel V secolo'
Atti del Congr. Int. di St. Boeziani, 123-38
Rome, 198x

679. Zeiss, H.
'Die Nordgrenze des Ostgotenreichs'
Germania 12(1928), 25ff

680. Zelzer, K.
'Cassiodor, Benedikt und dis monastische Tradition'
Wiener Studien, NF 19(1985), 215-37
RBS 14-15(1985-86), 99-114
also in Settimana su Cassiodoro without footnotes

681. Zetzel, J.
'The Subscriptions in the Manuscripts of Livy and Fronto and the Meaning of
Emendatio'
CP 75 (1980), 38-59.

682. Zilliacus
Zum Kampf der Weltsprachen im Oströmischen Reich
Helsingfors 1935

683. Zimmerman, Franz Xaver

'Der Grabstein der ostgotischen Königstochter Amalafrida Theodenanda in Genazzano
bei Rom'
Festschrift für Rudolf Egger, 2.330-54
Klagenfurt, 1953

684. Zinzi, E.
'Per una ricerca sulla scultura fra tardoantico ed altomedioevo in Calabria'
APh 1983.9858

243
685. Zinzi, E.
'Sui luoghi cassiodorei in Calabria'
APh 1986.10612

686. Zinzi, E.
'Linee e problemi nella letteratura sui luoghi cassiodorei in Calabria'
Settimana su Cassiodoro 453-68, plus illustrations with good bibliography

687. Zöllner, Erich

Geschichte der Franken bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts
Munich 1970

688. Zöpfel, F.
Didymi Alexandrini in epistolas canonicas brevis enarratio
Münster, 1914
inst. 1.8.6, trans. Epiphanius

689. Zwolski, Edward

Historia gocka, czyli scytyjska Europa: Kasjodor i Jordanes
Lublin, 1984
171 p., [6] p. of plates: maps; 24 cm.
Rozprawy Wydzialu Historyczno-Filologicznego, 49)

244