The Hope Proved Vain.
Theodoric's Successors, No Longer Kings, But Mere Gothic Chieftains,
Strove Obscurely Against Inevitable Doom, Until The Generals Of
Juistinian Trod Italy Into Barren Servitude.
Only when the purpose
of his life was shattered, when - Theodoric long dead - his still
faithful service to the
Gothic rule became an idle form, when
Belisarius was compassing the royal city of Ravenna, and voice of
council could no longer make itself heard amid tumult and ruin, did
Cassiodorus retire from useless office, and turn his back upon the
world.
He was aged about sixty. Long before, he had written a history of
the Goths (known to us only in a compendium by another hand), of
which the purpose seems to have been to reconcile the Romans to the
Gothic monarchy; it began by endeavouring to prove that Goths had
fought against the Greeks at Troy. Now that his public life was
over, he published a collection of the state papers composed by him
under the Gothic rulers from Theodoric to Vitigis: for the most part
royal rescripts addressed to foreign powers and to officials of the
kingdom. Invaluable for their light upon men and things fourteen
hundred years ago, these Variae of Cassiodorus; and for their own
sake, as literary productions, most characteristic, most
entertaining. Not quite easy to read, for the Latin is by no means
Augustan, but after labour well spent, a delightful revelation of
the man and the age. Great is the variety of subjects dealt with or
touched upon; from the diplomatic relations between Ravenna and
Constantinople, or the alliances of the Amal line with barbaric
royalties in Gaul and Africa, to the pensioning of an aged
charioteer and the domestic troubles of a small landowner. We form a
good general idea of the condition of Italy at that time, and, on
many points political and social, gather a fund of most curious
detail. The world shown to us is in some respects highly civilized,
its civilization still that of Rome, whose laws, whose manners, have
in great part survived the Teutonic conquest; from another point of
view it is a mere world of ruin, possessed by triumphant barbarism,
and sinking to intellectual darkness. We note the decay of central
power, and the growth of political anarchy; we observe the process
by which Roman nobles, the Senatorial Order when a Senate lingers
only in name, are becoming the turbulent lords of the Middle Ages,
each a power in his own territory, levying private war, scornful of
public interests. The city of Rome has little part in this turbid
history, yet her name is never mentioned without reverence, and in
theory she is still the centre of the world. Glimpses are granted us
of her fallen majesty; we learn that Theodoric exerted himself to
preserve her noble buildings, to restore her monuments; at the same
time we hear of marble stolen from palaces in decay, and of temples
which, as private property, are converted to ignoble use. Moreover,
at Rome sits an ecclesiastical dignitary, known as Papa, to whose
doings already attaches considerable importance. One of the last
acts of the Senate which had any real meaning was to make a decree
with regard to the election of this Bishop, forbidding his advance
by the way of Simony. Theodoric, an Arian, interferes only with the
Church of Rome in so far as public peace demands it. In one of his
letters occurs a most remarkable dictum on the subject of
toleration. "Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut
credat invitus - we cannot impose a religious faith, for no one
can be compelled to believe against his conscience." This must, of
course, have been the king's own sentiment, but Cassiodorus worded
it, and doubtless with approval.
Indeed, we are at no loss to discern the mind of the secretary in
these official papers. Cassiodorus speaks as often for himself as
for the king; he delights to expatiate, from an obviously personal
point of view, on any subject that interests him. One of these is
natural history; give him but the occasion, and he gossips of
beasts, birds, and fishes, in a flow of the most genial
impertinence. Certain bronze elephants on the Via Sacra are falling
to pieces and must be repaired: in giving the order, Theodoric's
minister pens a little treatise on the habits and characteristics of
the elephant. His erudition is often displayed: having to convey
some direction about the Circus at Rome, he begins with a pleasant
sketch of the history of chariot racing. One marvels at the man who,
in such a period, preserved this mood of liberal leisure. His style
is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse, ornate, amusingly
affected; altogether a precious mode of writing, characteristic of
literary decadence. When the moment demands it, he is pompously
grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes
involved and obscure. We perceive in him a born courtier, a proud
noble, a statesman of high purpose and no little sagacity;
therewith, many gracious and attractive qualities, coloured by
weaknesses, such as agreeable pedantry and amiable self-esteem,
which are in part personal, partly the note of his time.
One's picture of the man is, of course, completed from a knowledge
of the latter years of his life, of the works produced during his
monastic retirement. Christianity rarely finds expression in the
Variae, a point sufficiently explained by the Gothic heresy, which
imposed discretion in public utterances; on the other hand, pagan
mythology abounds; we observe the hold it still had upon educated
minds - education, indeed, meaning much the same thing in the sixth
century after Christ as in the early times of the Empire.
Cassiodorus can never have been a fanatical devotee of any creed. Of
his sincere piety there is no doubt; it appears in a vast commentary
on the Psalms, and more clearly in the book he wrote for the
guidance and edification of his brother monks - brothers
(carissimi fratres), for in his humility he declined to become the
Abbot of Vivariense; enough that his worldly dignity, his spiritual
and mental graces, assured to him the influence he desired.
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