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. The
notable characteristic of his rule was a sanctifying of intellectual
labour. In abandoning the world, he by no means renounced his
interest in its civilization. Statesmanship having failed to stem
the tide of Oriental tyranny and northern barbarism, he set himself
to save as much as possible of the nobler part, to secure for
happier ages the record of human attainment. Great was the
importance he attached to the work of his Antiquarii - copyists who
laboured to preserve the manuscript literature which was in danger
of utterly perishing. With special reference to their work upon the
Scriptures, he tells them that they "fight against the wiles of
Satan with pen and ink." And again:
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