Thermopylae, Tours, Vienna—throughout the West’s history were a number of battles that scholars can point to and say ”this was the moment the West was saved.” Rescued from destruction at the last minute with the fate of a continent resting on a knife’s edge, battles offer a discrete point of separation between a culture’s continuation and annihilation. It’s exhilarating to define the history of the West as a series of pivotal moments that were decided by the strength of sword arms and courageous hearts. Though epic clashes sometimes did decide the fate of Western civilization, its survival often came down to less glorious means.
Speaking of glory—in the 6th century, western Europe had experienced a recent fall from glory. Barbarians had deposed the Roman emperor within living memory. Age-old institutions were left in a state of decay. After centuries of cultural dominance, the light of Rome had nearly been extinguished. Literacy was falling, infrastructure crumbling, and the connectedness of the empire was fractured. Preserving a one-thousand-year-old culture was not a priority for denizens who merely wanted protection from the next barbarian raid. Chaos was triumphing over order.
But on the cold stone floors of a monastery nestled in the hills of Calabria, Italy, monks toiled silently, grasping at civilization like a wisp—it would be gone soon if they failed to catch it. Hunched over pieces of parchment, their ink-stained hands formed letters, painstakingly recreating faded texts. The monks at Vivarium, and the thousands more like them who unceremoniously copied manuscript after manuscript by hand, were just as much heroes and defenders of the West as Charles Martel or Leonidas.
It was in the quiet confines of a monastery that the West was preserved. And it all started with a monk named Cassiodorius.
The Inheritance of Rome
Born in 485 A.D. to a prominent family of government officials, Cassiodorus had no problem rising through the ranks of the Roman political scene. His father reached positions in close vicinity to the emperor as comes rerum privatarum, or “count of the private fortune,” the manager of the emperor’s estates, and finally Praetorian Prefect, the chief administrator to Theodoric the Great. Under the shadow of his father, Cassiodorus soared to equal heights as consul and eventually Praetorian Prefect.
Cassiodorus’s imperial duties, along with his proximity to the greatest minds in the empire, fostered in him an interest for education. He endeavored to create a plan for the continuation of Roman education during uncertain times—the chaos of the last half-century left many Romans uneasy about the survival of their cherished institutions. It is for this reason Cassiodorus looked beyond the emperor’s aid in his educational pursuits; he entreated an even higher power—the Pope—for assistance in conserving Roman culture.
Cassiodorus worked under the auspices of Pope Agapetus I to establish a collection of Greek and Latin texts that would be used in a new Christian school based in Rome—a beacon of light in an increasingly darkening world. Though a devout Christian, he found Greek and Latin texts immensely valuable in their conveyance of transcendent truths. Cassiodorus saw no problem quoting Cicero or Aristotle in a time when pagan authors might be looked at with suspicion. Unfortunately, his assembly of texts proved fruitless initially, as the school was never built. But Cassiodorus’ work in education wasn’t over, and his life’s work had yet to begin.
It’s impossible to ascertain why Cassiodorus chose to become a monk upon retirement; nonetheless, in 540 he donned the cloth intent on leading a life of simplicity after decades amidst opulence. On a family estate along the coast of the Ionian Sea, he founded the Benedictine monastery of Vivarium, a monastic school that would ultimately transform the West.
At Vivarium he got to work developing his educational program. He composed a guide, the Institutiones, introducing learners to both scripture and secular works. He believed by studying the texts his guide recommended, a student could obtain a great education without a formal teacher—the texts were the teacher:
“I was moved by divine love to devise for you, with God’s help, these introductory books to take the place of a teacher. Through them I believe that both the textual sequence of Holy Scripture and also a compact account of secular letters may, with God’s grace, be revealed.”
Cassiodorus
Reading was a transformative act for Cassiodorus. In Institutiones, the monk laid out his framework for a well-rounded education with a focus on reading: first, Christian texts with an initial focus on the Psalms—these could be understood even by untrained readers due to their raw emotional appeal; then, grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. It should be noted that he encouraged study of secular topics as aides to further understand sacred scripture. Hence, Cassiodorus provided students with a telos for his plan: education should be pursued in order to deepen one’s understanding of God—it was, after all, geared toward monks. In addition to liberal arts, pupils were encouraged to study medical scripts of ancients like Hippocrates and Galen, making the monks at Vivarium learned in scientific knowledge that was largely unknown to the West at the time.
It wasn’t just Cassiodorus’ educational plan that had a profound impact on the preservation of Western culture. He also created a daily regimen for copying ancient manuscripts. Monks had been copying manuscripts long before Vivarium, though it was a task mostly reserved for disabled or novice monks, i.e. those that “didn’t have anything better to do.” Cassiodorus made it a priority. He obliged all monks to make copying texts a regular practice, widening their availability and ensuring their existence for future generations. His goal was to safeguard classical history and literature while creating discipline within his monastic school. This approach was later replicated by other monastic groups, and resulted in the proliferation of previously obscure texts all across Europe and beyond. Monks from the British Isles and Germany in particular were among the most productive copyists and replicated a massive quantity of literature.
Beauty was paramount to Cassiodorus. Having been influenced by Christian neoplatonism, he believed that beauty and goodness were intertwined. Therefore his program encouraged the aesthetic enhancement of manuscripts—paint and calligraphy beautified texts and embodied the idea that the knowledge contained within was a treasure. This was not a brand new practice, but Cassiodorus made it widespread.
The Preservation of Fire
It’s nearly impossible to overstate Cassiodorus’s impact on the West. His influence within the monastic community contributed to the preservation of countless classical and theological texts. It’s possible we would know less of ancient Greece and Rome without Cassiodorus. Moreover, his scholastic program and insistence that reading was the foundation of a good education laid the groundwork for what is today known as “classical education.”
Today, we find ourselves entering a second “dark age.” Though we don’t suffer from a lack of information like in the 6th century, the West is struggling to remember its roots. We’ve become disinterested and ultimately disconnected from the foundational ideas and thinkers that built our civilization. Our task is not unlike Cassiodorus’ and the monks’ of Vivarium. Just as they sought to safeguard Roman culture during chaotic times, so too must we strive to protect the riches of our heritage from forces dead set on erasing the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Western corpus of literature and philosophy.
We’ll conclude with a reminder from Sir Roger Scruton:
“We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship…Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born.”
Sir Roger Scruton