The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 6

The reader will observe that in many, in fact most of the letters, which were meant to serve as credentials to amba.s.sadors or commissions to civil servants, no names are inserted, but we have instead only the tantalising formula, 'Illum atque Illum,' which I have generally translated, 'A and B.' This circ.u.mstance has also been much commented upon, but without our arriving at any very definite result. All that can be said is, that Ca.s.siodorus must have formed his collection of State-papers either from rough drafts in his own possession, or from copies preserved in the public archives, and that, from whichsoever source he drew, the names in that source had not been preserved: a striking comment on the rhetorical unbusinesslike character of the Royal and Imperial Chanceries of that day, in which words were deemed of more importance than things, and the flowers of speech which were showered upon the performer of some piece of public business were preserved, while the name of the performer was forgotten.

[Sidenote: Treatise 'De Anima.']

As soon as he had finished the collection of the 'Variae,' the Praefect--again in obedience to the entreaties of his friends--composed a short philosophic treatise on the Nature of the Soul ('De Anima'). As he said, it seems an absurd thing to treat as a stranger and an unknown quant.i.ty the very centre of our being; to seek to understand the height of the air, the extent of the earth, the causes of storms and earthquakes, and the nature of the wandering winds, and yet to leave the faculty, by which we grasp all this knowledge, itself uncomprehended[72]. He therefore sets himself to enquire, in twelve chapters:

[Footnote 72: 'c.u.m jam suscepti operis optato fine gauderem, meque duodecim voluminibus jactatum quietis portus exciperet, ubi etsi non laudatus, certe liberatus adveneram, amicorum me suave collegium in salum rursus cogitationis expressit, postulans ut aliqua quae tam in libris sacris, quam in saecularibus abstrusa compereram de animae substantia, vel de ejus virtutibus aperirem, cui datum est tam ingentium rerum secreta reserare: addens nimis ineptum esse si eam per quam plura cognoscimus, quasi a n.o.bis alienam ignorare patiamur, dum ad anima sit utile nosse qua sapimus' (De Anima, Praefatio).]

1. Why the Soul is called Anima?

2. What is the definition of the Soul?

3. What is its substantial quality?

4. If it is to be believed to have any shape?

5. What moral virtues it has which contribute to its glory and its adornment?

6. What are its natural virtues [or powers], given to enable it to hold together the framework of the body?

7. Concerning the origin of the Soul.

8. What is its especial seat, since it appears to be in a certain sense diffused over the whole body?

9. Concerning the form and composition of the body itself.

10. Sufficient signs by which we may discern what properties the souls of sinners possess.

11. Similar signs by which we may distinguish the souls of righteous men, since we cannot see them with our bodily eyes.

12. Concerning the Soul's state after death, and how it will be affected by the general resurrection.

The treatise ends with a prayer to Christ to preserve the body in good health, that it may be in tune with the harmony of the soul; to give reason the ascendancy over the flesh; and to keep the mind in happy equipoise, neither so strong as to be puffed up with pride, nor so languid as to fail of its proper powers.

[Sidenote: Ca.s.siodorus retires to the cloister.]

The line of thought indicated by the 'De Anima' led, in such a country as Italy, at such a time as the Gothic War, to one inevitable end--the cloister. It can have surprised none of the friends of Ca.s.siodorus when the veteran statesman announced his intention of spending the remainder of his days in monastic retirement. He was now sixty years of age[73]; his wife, if he had ever married, was probably by this time dead; and we hear nothing of any children for whose sake he need have remained longer in the world. The Emperor would probably have received him gladly into his service, but Ca.s.siodorus had now done with politics. The dream of his life had been to build up an independent Italian State, strong with the strength of the Goths, and wise with the wisdom of the Romans. That dream was now scattered to the winds. Providence had made it plain that not by this bridge was civilisation to pa.s.s over from the Old World to the New. Ca.s.siodorus accepted the decision, and consecrated his old age to religious meditation and to a work even more important than any of his political labours (though one which must be lightly touched on here), the preservation by the pens of monastic copyists of the Christian Scriptures, and of the great works of cla.s.sical antiquity.

[Footnote 73: Fifty-eight, if the retirement was in 538.]

[Sidenote: He founds two monasteries at Scyllacium.]

It was to his ancestral Scyllacium that Ca.s.siodorus retired; and here, between the mountains of Aspromonte and the sea, he founded his monastery, or, more accurately, his two monasteries, one for the austere hermit, and the other for the less aspiring coen.o.bite. The former was situated among the 'sweet recesses of Mons Castellius[74],'

the latter among the well-watered gardens which took their name from the Vivaria (fish-ponds) that Ca.s.siodorus had constructed among them in connection with the river Pellena[75]. Baths, too, especially intended for the use of the sick, had been prepared on the banks of the stream[76]. Here in monastic simplicity, but not without comfort, Ca.s.siodorus ordained that his monks should dwell. The Rule of the order--in so far as it had a written Rule--was drawn from the writings of Ca.s.sian, the great founder of Western Monachism, who had died about a century before the Vivarian monastery was founded. In commending the writings of Ca.s.sian to the study of his monks, Ca.s.siodorus warns them against the bias shown in them towards the Semi-Pelagian heresy, and desires them to choose the good in those treatises and to refuse the evil. Whatever the reason may have been, it seems clear that Ca.s.siodorus did not make the Rule of Benedict the law of his new monastery; and indeed, strange as the omission may appear, there is, I believe, no allusion to that great contemporary Saint, the 'Father of Monks,' in the whole of his writings.

[Footnote 74: 'Nam si vos in monasterio Vivariensi divina gratia suffragante coen.o.biorum consuetudo competenter erudiat, et aliquid sublimius defaecatis animis optare contingat, habetis mentis Castelli secreta suavia, ubi velut anachoritae (praestante Domino) feliciter esse possitis' (De Inst. Div. Litt. xxix.).]

[Footnote 75: 'Invitat vos locus Vivariensis monasterii ... quando habetis hortos irriguos, et piscosi amnis Pellenae fluenta vicina, qui nec magnitudine undarum suspectus habetur, nec exiguitate temnibilis.

Influit vobis arte moderatus, ubicunque necessarius judicatur et hortis vestris sufficiens et molendinis.... Maria quoque vobis ita subjacent, ut piscationibus variis pateant; et captus piscis, c.u.m libuerit, vivariis possit includi. Fecimus enim illic (juvante Deo) grata receptacula ubi sub claustro fideli vagetur piscium mult.i.tudo; ita consentanea montium speluncis, ut nullatenus se sentiat captum, cui libertas eat escas sumere, et per solitas se cavernas abscondere.']

[Footnote 76: 'Balnea quoque congruenter aegris praeparata corporibus jussimus aedificari, ubi fontium perspicuitas decenter illabitur, quae et potui gratissima cognoscitur et lavacris.']

[Sidenote: Probably never Abbot.]

Though the founder and patron of these two monasteries, it seems probable that Ca.s.siodorus never formally a.s.sumed the office of Abbot in either of them[77]. He had probably still some duties to perform as a large landholder in Bruttii; but besides these he had also work to do for 'his monks' (as he affectionately called them)--work of a literary and educational kind--which perhaps made it undesirable that he should be burdened with the petty daily routine of an Abbot's duties. Some years before, he had endeavoured to induce Pope Agapetus[78] to found a School of Theology and Christian Literature at Rome, in imitation of the schools of Alexandria and Nisibis[79]. The clash of arms consequent on the invasion of Italy by Belisarius had prevented the fulfilment of this scheme; but the aged statesman now determined to devote the remainder of his days to the accomplishment of the same purpose in connection with the Vivarian convent.

[Footnote 77: But the words of Trithemius (quoted by Migne, Patrologia lxix. 498), 'Hic post aliquot conversionis suae annos abbas electus est, et monasterio multo tempore utiliter praefuit,' _may_ preserve a genuine and accurate tradition. Ca.s.siodorus' mention of the two Abbots, Chalcedonius and Geruntius (De Inst. Div. Litt. cap. x.x.xii.) shows that at any rate in the infancy of his monasteries he was not Abbot of either of them.]

[Footnote 78: Agapetus was Pope in 535 and 536.]

[Footnote 79: 'Nisus sum ergo c.u.m beatissimo Agapeto papa urbis Romae, ut sicut apud Alexandriam multo tempore fuisse traditur inst.i.tutum, nunc etiam in Nisibi civitate Syrorum ab Hebraeis sedulo fertur exponi, collatis expensis in urbe Romana professos doctores scholae potius acciperent Christianae, unde et anima susciperet aeternam salutem, et casto atque purissimo eloquio fidelium lingua comeretur'

(De Inst. Praefatio).]

In the earliest days of Monasticism men like the hermits of the Thebaid had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrawing from all human voices to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts while still keeping their main ends in view.

St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might be obtained for the Church of all ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally St. Benedict, in that Rule of his which was to be the code of monastic Christendom for centuries, had sanctified Work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic, bringing together _Laborare_ and _Orare_ in friendly union, and proclaiming anew for the monk as for the untonsured citizen the primal ordinance, 'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread.'

[Sidenote: The father of literary Monasticism.]

The great merit of Ca.s.siodorus, that which shows his deep insight into the needs of his age and ent.i.tles him to the eternal grat.i.tude of Europe, was his determination to utilise the vast leisure of the convent for the preservation of Divine and human learning and for its transmission to after ages. In the miserable circ.u.mstances of the times Theology was in danger of becoming brutified and ignorant; the great treasures of Pagan literature were no longer being perpetuated by the slaves who had once acted as _librarii_ to the Greek or Roman n.o.ble; and with every movement of the Ostrogothic armies, or of the yet more savage hordes who served under the Imperial standard, with every sacked city and with every ravaged villa, some Codex, it may be such as we should now deem priceless and irreplaceable, was perishing.

This being the state of Italy, Ca.s.siodorus resolved to make of his monastery not merely a place for pious meditation, but a theological school and a manufactory for the multiplication of copies, not only of the Scriptures, not only of the Fathers and the commentators on Scripture, but also of the great writers of pagan antiquity. In the chapter[80] which he devotes to the description of the _scriptorium_ of his monastery he describes, with an enthusiasm which must have been contagious, the n.o.ble work done there by the _antiquarius_: 'He may fill his mind with the Scriptures while copying the sayings of the Lord. With his fingers he gives life to men and arms them against the wiles of the devil. So many wounds does Satan receive as the _antiquarius_ copies words of Christ. What he writes in his cell will be scattered far and wide over distant Provinces. Man multiplies the heavenly words, and by a striking figure--if I may dare so to speak--the three fingers of his hand express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. The fast-travelling reed writes down the holy words, and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Saviour.'

[Footnote 80: The 30th of the De Inst.i.tutione Div. Litt.]

It is true that the pa.s.sage here quoted refers only to the work of the copyist of the Christian Scriptures, but it could easily be shown from other pa.s.sages[81] that the literary activity of the monastery was not confined to these, but was also employed on secular literature.

[Footnote 81: For instance, in cap. xv., after cautioning his copyists against rash corrections of apparent faults in the sacred MSS., he says: 'Ubicunque paragrammata in disertis hominibus [i.e. in cla.s.sical authors] reperta fuerint, intrepidus vitiosa recorrigat.' And the greater part of cap. xxviii. is an argument against 'respuere saecularium litterarum studia.']

[Sidenote: Bookbinding.]

[Sidenote: Mechanical appliances for the convent.]

Ca.s.siodorus 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-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, 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 a.s.semble 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, Ca.s.siodorus seems certainly ent.i.tled 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 doc.u.ment. 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, 'Ca.s.siodorus was a Benedictine,' we should perhaps be rather justified in maintaining that Benedict, or at least his immediate followers, were Ca.s.siodorians.

[Sidenote: Ca.s.siodorus 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, Ca.s.siodorus 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 Ca.s.siodorus 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 codic.u.m 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, Ca.s.siodorus, 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.]