The Letters of Cassiodorus
greater part of cap. xxviii. is an argument against 'respuere
saecularium litterarum studia.']
[Sidenote: Bookbinding.]
[Sidenote: Mechanical appliances for the convent.]
Cassiodorus then goes on to describe the care which he has taken for
the binding of the sacred Codices in covers worthy of the beauty of
their contents, following the example of the householder in the
parable, who provided wedding garments for all who came to the supper
of his son. One pattern volume had been prepared, containing samples
of various sorts of binding, that the amanuensis might choose that
which pleased him best. He had moreover provided, to help the nightly
toil of the _scriptorium_, mechanical lamps of some wonderful
construction, which appears to have made them self-trimming, and to
have ensured their having always a sufficient supply of oil[82].
Sun-dials also for bright days, and water-clocks for cloudy days and
the night-season, regulated their labour, and admonished them when it
was time to unclose the three fingers, to lay down the reed, and to
assemble with their brethren in the chapel of the convent for psalmody
and prayer.
[Footnote 82: Paravimus etiam nocturnis vigiliis mechanicas lucernas,
conservatrices illuminantium flammarum, ipsas sibi nutrientes
incendium, quae humano ministerio cessante, prolixe custodiant
uberrimi luminis abundantissimam claritatem; ubi olei pinguedo non
deficit, quamvis flammis ardentibus jugitor torreatur.]
[Sidenote: Relation to the Benedictine Rule.]
Upon the whole, though the idea of using the convent as a place of
literary toil and theological training was not absolutely new,
Cassiodorus seems certainly entitled to the praise of having first
realised it systematically and on an extensive scale. It was entirely
in harmony with the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict, if it was not
formally ordained in that document. At a very early date in the
history of their order, the Benedictines, influenced probably by the
example of the monastery of Vivaria, commenced that long series of
services to the cause of literature which they have never wholly
intermitted. Thus, instead of accepting the obsolete formula for which
some scholars in the last age contended, 'Cassiodorus was a
Benedictine,' we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining
that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were
Cassiodorians.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus as a transcriber of the Scriptures.]
In order to set an example of literary diligence to his monks, and to
be able to sympathise with the difficulties of an amanuensis,
Cassiodorus himself transcribed the Psalter, the Prophets, and the
Epistles[83], no doubt from the translation of Jerome. This is not the
place for enlarging on the merits of Cassiodorus as a custodian and
transmitter of the sacred text. They were no doubt considerable; and
the rules which he gives to his monks, to guide them in the work of
transcription, show that he belonged to the Conservative school of
critics, and was anxious to guard against hasty emendations of the
text, however plausible. Practically, however, his MSS. of the Latin
Scriptures, showing the Itala and the Vulgate in parallel columns,
seem to have been answerable for some of that confusion between the
two versions which to some extent spoiled the text of Jerome, without
preserving to us in its purity the interesting translation of the
earlier Church.
[Footnote 83: 'In Psalterio et Prophetis et Epistolis apostolorum
studium maximum laboris impendi.... Quos ego cunctos novem codices
auctoritatis divinae (ut senex potui) sub collatione priscorum codicum
amicis ante me legentibus, sedula lectione transivi' (De Inst.
Praefatio). We should have expected 'tres' rather than 'novem,' as the
Psalter, the Prophets, and the Epistles each formed one codex.]
Besides his labours as a transcriber, Cassiodorus, both as an original
author and a compiler, used his pen for the instruction of his
fellow-inmates at Vivarium.
[Sidenote: Commentary on the Psalms.]
(1) He began and slowly completed a Commentary on the Psalms. This
very diffuse performance (which occupies more than five hundred
closely printed pages in Migne's edition) displays, in the opinion of
those who have carefully studied it[84], a large amount of
acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers, and was probably looked
upon as a marvel of the human intellect by the Vivarian monks, for
whose benefit it was composed, and to whom it revealed, in the Psalms
which they were daily and nightly intoning, refutations of all the
heresies that had ever racked the Church, and the rudiments of all the
sciences that flourished in the world. It is impossible now for this
or any future age to do aught but lament over so much wasted
ingenuity, when we find the author maintaining that the whole of the
one hundred and fifty Psalms were written by King David, and that
Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun have only a mystical meaning; that the
first seventy represent the Old Testament, and the last eighty the
New, because we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on the eighth
day of the week, and so forth. A closer study of the book might
perhaps discover in it some genuine additions to the sum of human
knowledge; but it is difficult to repress a murmur at the misdirected
industry which has preserved to us the whole of this ponderous
futility, while it has allowed the History of the Goths to perish.
[Footnote 84: I take my account of this treatise chiefly from Franz
(pp. 93-100).]
[Sidenote: Commentary on the Epistles.]
(2) The 'Complexiones in Epistolas Apostolorum' (first published by
Maffei in 1721, from a MS. discovered by him at Verona) have at least
the merit of being far shorter than the Commentary on the Psalms.
Perhaps the only points of interest in them, even for theological
scholars, are that Cassiodorus evidently attributes the Epistle to the
Hebrews without hesitation to the Apostle Paul, and that he notices
the celebrated passage concerning the Three Heavenly Witnesses (1 John
v. 7) in a way which seems to imply that he found that passage in the
text of the Vulgate, though on examination his language is seen to be
consistent with the theory that these words are a gloss added by the
commentator himself.
[Sidenote: Historia Tripartita.]
(3) In order to supply the want of any full Church History in the
Latin tongue, a want which was probably felt not only by his own monks
but throughout the Churches of the West, Cassiodorus induced his
friend Epiphanius to translate from the Greek the ecclesiastical
histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and then himself fused
these three narratives into one, the well-known 'Historia Tripartita,'
which contains the story of the Church's fortunes from the accession
of Constantine to the thirty-second year of the reign of Theodosius II
(306-439). The fact that the numerous mistranslations of Epiphanius
have passed uncorrected, probably indicates that Cassiodorus' own
knowledge of Greek was but slight, and that he depended on his
coadjutor entirely for this part of the work. The 'Historia
Tripartita' has probably had a larger circulation than any other of
its author's works; but Cassiodorus himself thought so little of his
share in it, that he does not include it in the list of his writings
prefixed to the treatise 'De Orthographia.' And, in fact, the
inartistic way in which the three narratives are soldered together,
rather than recast into one symmetrical and harmonious whole, obliges
us to admit that Cassiodorus' work at this book was little more than
mechanical, and entitles him to scarcely any other praise than that of
industry.
[Sidenote: Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum.]
(4) Of a different quality, though still partaking somewhat of the
nature of a compilation, was his chief educational treatise, the
'Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum[85].' About the year
543, some three or four years after his retirement from public life,
while he was slowly ploughing his way through the Commentary on the
Psalms, twenty of which he had already interpreted, he seems to have
laid it aside for a time in order to devote himself to this work,
which aimed more at instruction than at religious edification. In the
outset of this book he describes that unsuccessful attempt of his, to
which allusion has already been made, for the establishment of a
theological school in Rome, and continues that, 'as the rage of war
and the turbulence of strife in the Italian realm[86] had prevented
the fulfilment of this desire, he felt himself constrained by Divine
charity to write for his monks' behoof these _libri introductorii_, in
which, after the manner of a teacher, he would open to them the
series of the books of Holy Scripture, and would give them a
compendious acquaintance with secular literature.' As the book is not
written for the learned, he undertakes to abstain from 'affectata
eloquentia,' and he does in the main keep his promise. The simple,
straightforward style of the book, which occasionally rises into real
and 'unaffected eloquence' where the subject inspires him to make an
appeal to the hearts of his readers, presents a striking and
favourable contrast to the obscure and turgid phraseology in which the
perverted taste of the times caused him generally to shroud his
meaning[87].
[Footnote 85: Printed hitherto as two works, De Institutione Divinarum
Litterarum, and De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum. But,
as Ebert has shown (i. 477), the Preface to the Orthographia makes it
probable that these two really formed one book, with a title like that
given above.]
[Footnote 86: 'In Italico regno.' These words seem to favour the
conjecture that Theodoric may have called himself King of Italy.]
[Footnote 87: As a specimen of this better style of Cassiodorus, I may
refer to his praises of the life of the literary monk, and his
exhortation to him who is of duller brain to practise gardening:
'Quapropter toto nisu, toto labore, totis desideriis exquiramus ut ad
tale tantumque munus, Domino largiente, pervenire mereamur. Hoc enim
nobis est salutare, proficuum, gloriosum, perpetuum, quod nulla mors,
nulla mobilitas, nulla possit separare oblivio; sed in illa suavitate
patriae, cum Domino faciet aeterna exsultatione gaudere. Quod si
alicui fratrum, ut meminit Virgilius,
"Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,"
ut nec humanis nec divinis litteris perfecte possit erudiri, aliqua
tamen scientiae mediocritate suffultus, eligat certe quod sequitur,
"Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes."
Quia nec ipsum est a monachis alienum hortos colere, agros exercere,
et pomorum fecunditate gratulari; legitur enim in Psalmo centesimo
vigesimo septimo, "Labores manuum tuarum manducabis; beatus es et bene
tibi erit."']
In the first part of this treatise (commonly called the 'De
Institutione Divinarum Litterarum') Cassiodorus briefly describes the
contents of the nine Codices[88] which made up the Scripture of the
Old and New Testaments, and mentions the names of the chief
commentators upon each. After some important cautions as to the
preservation of the purity of the sacred text and abstinence from
plausible emendations, the author proceeds to enumerate the Christian
historians--Eusebius, Orosius, Marcellinus, Prosper, and others[89];
and he then slightly sketches the characters of some of the principal
Fathers--Hilary, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. This part of
the work contains an interesting allusion to 'Dionysius Monachus,
Scytha natione, sed moribus omnino Romanus,' of whom Cassiodorus
speaks as a colleague in his literary enterprises. This is the
so-called Dionysius Exiguus, who fixed (erroneously, as it now