Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

CASSIODORUS (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator). - Born around 485 at Scyllacium, in Bruttium, present-day Squillace, into a family of powerful officials of Syrian origin. To the high standing of the family (since his father, praefectus praetorio, soon took him on as consiliarius), and to his own qualities as an orator, displayed in a panegyric to King Theodoric, C. owes the rapid fortune that made him, perhaps not yet twenty years old, quaestor and secretary to the king, and then led him to the summit of the ladder of honors: consul ordinarius in 514, then magister officiorum, then praefectus praetorio in 533, and finally patricius. Four Gothic kings — Theodoric, Athalaric, Theodahad and Witigis — had him as their minister. Through his long political life, C., the most prominent representative of that part of the Romans who collaborated with the barbarian domination, carried intact his own conception, tending toward a political rapprochement between barbarians and Romans and therefore coinciding with what was for a long time the linchpin of Theodoric's domestic policy. When the dominant problem became that of relations with the Eastern Empire, the Roman minister did not cease to counsel agreement and peace. But in 540, under the reign of Witigis, C. turned the course of his long life onto new paths, abandoning the court and founding on his own lands in Calabria, which constituted its endowment, the monastery and hermitage of Vivarium. Contributing to this decision were the substantial failure of his political ideals, which was taking shape with the intervention and triumph of the Empire in Italy, and the very spectacle of the tragic events with which history filled those years before his eyes. The monastery was the first to give him shelter and work, in the long twilight of his life; he was its abbot. For the monks, who soon flocked there in numbers, the rule, anticipating the Benedictine one, imposed, among other things, application to the study of sacred and profane letters, and the transcription of texts. In the monastery he died, probably, in 583. His Variae are the principal source for his biography.

C. had been born to assert at one and the same time through action and through writings his own civil and religious ideals; thus it happens that his writings can, like his life, be divided into two classes, adhering to the two dreams, of earthly and heavenly glory, that belonged to his spirit.

To the first belong the speeches delivered at the court of the Gothic kings, of which the memory and a few fragments have survived. The Chronica, which has come down to us, was written in 519 and runs from Adam to the times of the author. Up to the Roman age it draws on Eusebius, then on Livy, Aufidius Bassus, Victor of Aquitaine and Italian chroniclers, especially for the list of consulships, around which a few notices are interspersed. In the background is the theme of the praise of the Goths. This theme is openly developed in the De origine actibusque Getarum, composed in 12 books under Athalaric and of which the meager compendium of Jordanes (v.) remains to us. C. contrived to identify the Goths with the Getae and therefore with the Scythians, attributing to them all the deeds and legends of those peoples. Thus he succeeded in clothing barbarian history not only in the majesty of the language of Rome, but also in the charm of its ancient origins and legends. The Variae, which have been transmitted to us, are a collection of 468 letters, divided into 12 books, gathered in 537. They are the letters he wrote as a statesman; but the sixth and seventh books appear to be mere formularies. Toward the end, the collection takes on the appearance of an encyclopedia, because of its digressions on subjects of morals, law, politics, art and natural history. In the Variae the author's attention seems at times directed principally to style, which is ample and bombastic, reflecting a characteristic of the times; the title refers to style as well as to content. The work did not have, in the author's intentions, but does have for us, the character of historical information. The Ordo generis Cassiodorum, which has in part survived, is finally a genealogical memoir of Cassiodorus' family.

Shortly after the Variae was written the brief treatise, in twelve chapters, De anima, which already represents a turning of the author's spirit toward different problems. Following St. Augustine, Tertullian and Claudianus Mamertus, he first distinguishes the various meanings of the word "soul"; then he defines it: created by God, spiritual and of a special substance, vivifying the body, rational and immortal, capable of turning to good or to evil. It is made of light, as God is made of light, and it is without form and incorporeal. Its four cardinal virtues are completed by other moral virtues: "contemplatio", "iudicialis" (for distinguishing good from evil), and "memoria"; it also possesses five natural virtues for the control of the body. It is created by God, as faith teaches us, and has its seat in the head but is spread throughout the whole body, a wondrous and harmonious temple created for it. There follows a discussion of the particular signs by which the good and the wicked are recognized, and the book ends with a prayer.

The meditations on the soul are the bridge of passage from the secular works to the four principal works of the monastic period. These adhere to the concepts of cultural industriousness with which C. stamped the life he created for himself and for his monks: they are religious action, just as previously his writings had been political action. But they do not represent an ascetic detachment from the world, since the voice of the world is rather present through the attention devoted to the human culture of antiquity: only, this is no longer an end in itself or a ladder to worldly honors, but is subject to God and an instrument for the interpretation of His word.

The Complexiones in psalmos are above all inspired by St. Augustine's Enarrationes in psalmos, "a stream drawn from the sea," as the author says with a sense of high admiration for the master's work. A rich preface in 17 chapters on the character of the Psalter and its interpretation comes first. In this C. proceeds with a certain schematism, but gives the greatest preference to allegorical exposition. Every psalm is referred by him to the life of Christ or to the Church. Very similar are the Complexiones in Epistolas et Acta Apostolorum et Apocalypsin, not a continuous commentary, but exegetical notes which summatim dicendo diversa complectuntur quae sibi tangenda esse proponunt. But the principal work of C. as a monk is the Institutiones divinorum et saecularium litterarum. These too were born of a practical purpose. Since the stormy century had not permitted the planned foundation, with the help of Pope Agapetus (535-56), of a theological school in Rome for the study of the divine Scriptures, C. wishes to supply for it with these his Institutiones, or introduction to the study of the theological sciences and especially of Holy Scripture (ca. 544). The first book makes known to us the Latin authors, or Greek authors translated into Latin, preserved in the monastery's library, which can assist in the study of the individual sacred books; it deals with questions of textual criticism, gives outlines of biblical cosmography; it recommends manual labor as a diversion from study, especially that which consists in copying manuscripts. The second book, in seven chapters, sets out the elements of the seven liberal arts. The De orthographia is likewise a manual composed at the request of his monks, put together with extracts drawn from the writings of eight ancient orthographers. The Historia ecclesiastica tripertita was compiled with extracts from the histories of Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret which the monk Epiphanius had expressly translated from Greek for him. As such, the work has for us only the value of a version, often not even a well-executed one, but for C.'s posterity, who were ignorant of the originals, it represented a precious manual of ancient ecclesiastical history.

The figure of C. appears, on the whole, endowed with a singular harmony between intellectual and practical qualities, although these, by force of circumstances, seem in many respects to have the upper hand. The project of a fusion between barbarians and Romans, which is the foundation of the first part of his life, represents an attempt to reintroduce the Roman element among the active forces of politics. Having failed in this task, C. turns, with an act that appears to us marked by acute historical perception, to a different task, in which the surviving strength of Rome is bound instead to the Church. He thus resolves the long controversy between profane culture and Christianity. As a writer he reserved for himself the modest but useful task of compiler, forming with Dionysius Exiguus and Isidore of Seville that triad which contributed most to saving ancient culture in the Middle Ages. The transmission of this becomes in him a fervent and lucidly conscious work, just as the figure of the monk is lucidly seen in the Institutiones, whose three writing fingers, likened to the Trinity, "put the darkness to flight before them."

To his wise work as counselor and coadjutor of King Theodoric, medicine owed the restoration of its dignity. He reestablished the office of the archiatri, and instituted the post of Comes archiatrorum, the supreme authority in the medical legislation of the time, a kind of judge from whose decision there was no appeal, who could decide all questions that might arise among physicians. He was also the author of the formula of investiture of the Comes archiatrorum, in which medicine was defined as the "art first among the most useful that contribute to sustaining the indigence of human frailty." All this was quite significant, in the face of the all too humble condition of the physician and of medicine in Gothic legislation. Finally, even in his retirement at Squillace, he occupied himself greatly, together with his monks, with medicine and the care of the sick, both in practice and through the attention he gave to medical codices.

Adalberto Pazzini