Cassiodorus founded a monastery, Vivarium, where he worked extensively the last three decades of his life.
19 Facts About Cassiodorus
2.
Cassiodorus was born at Scylletium, near Catanzaro in Calabria, Italy.
3.
Cassiodorus's ancestry included some of the most prominent ministers of the state extending back several generations.
4.
Cassiodorus's great-grandfather held a command in the defense of the coasts of southern Italy from Vandal sea-raiders in the middle of the fifth century; his grandfather appears in a Roman embassy to Attila the Hun, and his father served as comes sacrarum largitionum and comes rerum privatarum to Odovacer and as Praetorian Prefect to Theoderic the Great.
5.
Cassiodorus began his career under the auspices of his father, about in his twentieth year, when the latter made him his consiliarius upon his own appointment to the Praetorian Prefecture.
6.
Evidently, therefore, Cassiodorus had received some education in the law.
7.
Cassiodorus's culminating appointment was as praetorian prefect for Italy, effectively the prime ministership of the Ostrogothic civil government and a high honor to finish any career.
8.
Cassiodorus collaborated with Pope Agapetus I to establish a library of Greek and Latin texts that were intended to support a Christian school in Rome.
9.
Cassiodorus notably met Junillus, the quaestor of Justinian I there.
10.
Cassiodorus spent his career trying to bridge the 6th-century cultural divides: between East and West, Greek culture and Latin, Roman and Goth, and between an orthodox people and their Arian rulers.
11.
Cassiodorus speaks fondly in his Institutiones of Dionysius Exiguus, the calculator of the Anno Domini era.
12.
Cassiodorus composed the Institutiones as a guide for introductory learning of both "divine" and "secular" writings, in place of his formerly planned Christian school in Rome:.
13.
Cassiodorus devoted much of his life to supporting education within the Christian community at large.
14.
Beyond demanding the pursuit of discipline among his students, Cassiodorus encouraged the study of the liberal arts.
15.
Cassiodorus encouraged the Benedictine monks to study the medical texts of that era, the known herbals and texts of Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen.
16.
Cassiodorus is rivalled only by Boethius in his drive to preserve and explore classical literature during the 6th century AD.
17.
Cassiodorus found the writings of the Greeks and Romans valuable for their expression of higher truths where other arts failed.
18.
Cassiodorus connected deeply with Christian neoplatonism, which saw beauty as concomitant with the Good.
19.
Cassiodorus' programme helped ensure that both classical and Christian literature were preserved through the Middle Ages.