Customer Reviews

Cassiodorus

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This is an excellent book, and it is distressing to see here that it is not more readily available to those interested in the great Italian scholar Cassiodorus, who founded the famous monastery and library of Vivarium in Sixth Century Calabria. The book is relentless in de glamorizing Cassiodorus --- in proving through scrupulous research that Cassiodorus may not have had the profound influence on the Middle Ages that he is claimed to have had, and that Cassiodorus was not the great hero in preserving secular texts from the ancient world into the Dark Ages that we have thought him to be. He was a respected scholar, the author claims, but not an influential one. And he was more interested in church literature than pagan literature. --- Nevertheless the picture emerges, for me at any rate, of a great man --- the founder of what became a legendary monastery by the sea where monks could live amid beauty and plenty as they pursued their studies of Christian works and some pagan works as well. This monastery was not apparently part of the Benedictine movement and may have represented a different aesthetic in which the beauty of nature and some degree of comfort were not seen as incompatible with Christian dedication. That in itself is interesting. --- Cassiodorus was one of the last western scholars to read and write both Latin and Greek, even if he didn't know Greek as well as Latin. And I would love to know more about what actually happened to Vivarium, and how its great library was disseminated or preserved. ---- In sum, there are many mysteries still surrounding this man who still shines like a bright light in the gathering gloom of the Dark Ages. I will go on romanticizing him, I suppose, dreaming of him at work in his Scriptorium at Vivarium, preserving learning in a war torn and poverty stricken Italy, even though this work demands a more sober assessment. I recommend this book to all who want to study Cassiodorus. SUGGESTION: If this book cannot reprinted, may we look forward to a kindle version of it?