Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus (ca. 490–580s) appears in Reinventing Knowledge — From Alexandria To The Internet as a pivotal figure in the book’s account of how the monastery became the institution of knowledge built for “the absence of civilization.” As Roman civic culture collapsed, Cassiodorus drew “the next logical conclusion” — that monasteries must be deliberately designed to preserve ancient manuscripts — and established a new model for European monastic scriptoria. Drawing on and modifying Cassian’s writings, he issued his own Institutes, described in the book as “an extremely detailed annotated bibliography” and as poignant testimony to the collapse of learning around him; he warned his monks that books would have to serve “in place of a teacher,” since the broken links with Rome’s oral tradition meant “you have masters of a bygone generation to teach you not so much by their tongues as by your eyes.” Kyle’s marginal notes on these passages probe the durability of knowledge institutions (“How does an institution exist outside society in the internet age when ‘knowledge preservation’ can’t be a guiding light?”) and “the power of books.”

Context: Cassiodorus was a Roman statesman and writer who, after a career serving the Ostrogothic kings of Italy, founded the monastery of Vivarium in Calabria. His emphasis on copying and preserving classical and Christian texts in monastic scriptoria helped transmit ancient learning through the early Middle Ages.

Where this appears

• Reinventing Knowledge — From Alexandria To The Internet — architect of the manuscript-preserving monastic scriptorium; his Institutes and warning that books must stand “in place of a teacher.”