VIVARIUM. – CASSIANO (v.), who had withdrawn from politics, on his ancestral property at V., near Squillace, somewhat below the hermitage situated on Mount Castellum, so much so that Cassiodoro himself gave it both the designation Vivariensis and Castellensis (De positione monasterii Vivariensis sive Castellensis, in Instit. divin. litter., ed. Mommsen, in MGH, Auctores antiquiss., XXIX) and took pleasure in describing the locality and the advantages it offered (Institut., XII, 29; Variae, XII, 15; Expos. Ps., III, 17).
S. Gregorio calls the monastery Castelliniensis (Epist., VIII, 30 and VIII, 32 of the year 598). The monastery seems to have been founded by Cassiodoro in 555, on his return from Constantinople, thus enabling him to fulfill his longstanding aspiration of establishing a «schola christiana». And the scriptorium flourished immediately. Indeed, the Gospel Book of Echternach, now in the National Library in Paris (ms. lat. 9380), is a copy of a Gospel Book written at V. in 558.
The founder recommended that the monks transcribe and correct books not only for the monastery but also for sale (Instit. divin. litterarum, xv; xxx). In addition to the monastic Library, Cassiodoro’s personal library (mes o nostra: Instit. div. litter., xxxi) also found a place in the foundation and was subsequently donated by him to the monastery. The monastic Library contained biblical texts, commentaries on Sacred Scripture, some of them brought from Africa (Inst. div. litterarum, viii; xxix) or from other places (ibid., viii); in addition, it contained volumes on history, medicine, rhetoric, dialectic, agriculture, and music.
The Library was partly destroyed by political upheavals and partly dispersed between the 7th and 9th centuries. But opinions differ concerning the dispersion of the Library (R. Beer, Bemerkungen über den ältesten Handschriftenbestand des Klosters Bobbio, in Anzeiger der Königl-Abademie der Wissenschaft. Wien, Philolog.-historische Klasse, 48 [1911], pp. 78-104; id., Monumenta paleographica Vindobonensis, II, Lipsia 1913, pp. 15-26; W. Weinberger, Handschriften von Vivarium, in Miscellanea Fr. Ehrle, IV, Roma 1924, pp. 75-88; P. Lejay, in Bulletin d'ancienne littérature et d'archéol. chrétienne, 3 [1913], p. 265; G. Mercati in the introduction to the edition: M. Tullii Ciceronis De republica libri e codice rescripto Vaticano latino 5757 phototypice expressi, Città del Vaticano 1934; more recently V. L. W. Jones, Notes on the Style and Vocabulary of Cassiodorus Institutions, in Classical Philology, 50 [1945], pp. 24-31; P. Courcelles, Les lettres grecques de Macrobe à Cassiodore, 2e ed., Parigi 1948, pp. 313-88). Some volumes ended up in the Lateran Library, others at Jarrow, where they were taken by Benedetto Biscop, and at Montecassino, Bobbio, Milano, Verona, Firenze, Napoli, Bamberga, Karlsruhe, Colonia, Aquigrana, Luxeuil, Corbie, Lione, and S. Gallo; some have been identified by their palaeographical characteristics (E. A. Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, III, Oxford 1938, nn. 391-98).
From a study of the miniatures illustrating three manuscripts of the Institutions (Cod. Bambergensis Patr. 61 of the 8th century, Cod. Cassellanus Theol. of the 9th century, and Cod. Herbipalensis of the 10th century), P. Courcelle recognized in them faithful copies of Cassiodoro’s archetype, in which were represented a fishpond full of fish, a church with two towers, identified as SES MARTINUS, a stream identified as fluvius or fluctus pellei or apellena, and another church called Ilarius. In Calabria, P. Courcelle identified in the territory of Squillace, a little south of the present course of the waterway called Alessi, a district named S. Martino, attested as early as 1151, where a modern church stands a short distance from an earlier one, of which he found archaeological remains; furthermore, at the foot of the promontory where the church stands, among natural basins connected with the sea by a channel in which he recognized the fishpond, and approximately 800 m. away on a hill, there is a small church now called S. Maria de Vetere, where, as early as 1219, a Basilian monastery called S. Maria del vecchio Squillace is recorded.