The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 1

The Letters of Ca.s.siodorus.

by Ca.s.siodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Ca.s.siodorus Senator).

PREFACE.

The abstract of the 'Variae' of Ca.s.siodorus which I now offer to the notice of historical students, belongs to that cla.s.s of work which Professor Max Muller happily characterised when he ent.i.tled two of his volumes 'Chips from a German Workshop.' In the course of my preparatory reading, before beginning the composition of the third and fourth volumes of my book on 'Italy and Her Invaders,' I found it necessary to study very attentively the 'Various Letters' of Ca.s.siodorus, our best and often our only source of information, for the character and the policy of the great Theodoric. The notes which in this process were acc.u.mulated upon my hands might, I hoped, be woven into one long chapter on the Ostrogothic government of Italy.

When the materials were collected, however, they were so manifold, so perplexing, so full of curious and unexpected detail, that I quite despaired of ever succeeding in the attempt to group them into one harmonious and artistic picture. Frankly, therefore, renouncing a task which is beyond my powers, I offer my notes for the perusal of the few readers who may care to study the mutual reactions of the Roman and the Teutonic mind upon one another in the Sixth Century, and I ask these to accept the artist's a.s.surance, 'The curtain is the picture.'

It will be seen that I only profess to give an abstract, not a full translation of the letters. There is so much repet.i.tion and such a lavish expenditure of words in the writings of Ca.s.siodorus, that they lend themselves very readily to the work of the abbreviator. Of course the longer letters generally admit of greater relative reduction in quant.i.ty than the shorter ones, but I think it may be said that on an average the letters have lost at least half their bulk in my hands. On any important point the real student will of course refuse to accept my condensed rendering, and will go straight to the fountain-head. I hope, however, that even students may occasionally derive the same kind of a.s.sistance from my labours which an astronomer derives from the humble instrument called the 'finder' in a great observatory.

A few important letters have been translated, to the best of my ability, verbatim. In the not infrequent instances where I have been unable to extract any intelligible meaning, on grammatical principles, from the words of my author, I have put in the text the nearest approximation that I could discover to his meaning, and placed the unintelligible words in a note, hoping that my readers may be more fortunate in their interpretation than I have been.

With the usual ill-fortune of authors, just as my last sheet was pa.s.sing through the press I received from Italy a number of the 'Atti e Memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna' (to which I am a subscriber), containing an elaborate and scholarlike article by S. Augusto Gaudenzi, ent.i.tled 'L'Opera di Ca.s.siodorio a Ravenna.' It is a satisfaction to me to see that in several instances S. Gaudenzi and I have reached practically the same conclusions; but I cannot but regret that his paper reached me too late to prevent my benefiting from it more fully. A few of the more important points in which I think S. Gaudenzi throws useful light on our common subject are noticed in the 'Additions and Corrections,' to which I beg to draw my readers' attention.

I may perhaps be allowed to add that the Index, the preparation of which has cost me no small amount of labour, ought (if I have not altogether failed in my endeavour) to be of considerable a.s.sistance to the historical enquirer. For instance, if he will refer to the heading _Sajo_, and consult the pa.s.sages there referred to, he will find, I believe, all that Ca.s.siodorus has to tell us concerning these interesting personages, the Sajones, who were almost the only representatives of the intrusive Gothic element in the fabric of Roman administration.

From textual criticism and the discussion of the authority of different MSS. I have felt myself entirely relieved by the announcement of the forthcoming critical edition of the 'Variae,'

under the superintendence of Professor Meyer. The task to which an eminent German scholar has devoted the labour of several years, it would be quite useless for me, without appliances and without special training, to approach as an amateur; and I therefore simply help myself to the best reading that I can get from the printed texts, leaving to Professor Meyer to say which reading possesses the highest diplomatic authority. Simply as a a matter of curiosity I have spent some days in examining the MSS. of Ca.s.siodorus in the British Museum.

If they are at all fair representatives (which probably they are not) of the MSS. which Professor Meyer has consulted, I should say that though the t.i.tles of the letters have often got into great confusion through careless and unintelligent copying, the main text is not likely to show any very important variations from the editions of Nivellius and Garet.

I now commend this volume with all its imperfections to the indulgent criticism of the small cla.s.s of historical students who alone will care to peruse it. The man of affairs and the practical politician will of course not condescend to turn over its pages; yet the anxious and for a time successful efforts of Theodoric and his Minister to preserve to Italy the blessings of _Civilitas_ might perhaps teach useful lessons even to a modern statesman.

THOS. HODGKIN.

NOTE.

The following Note as to the MSS. at the British Museum may save a future enquirer a little trouble.

(1) 10 B. XV. is a MS. about 11 inches by 8, written in a fine bold hand, and fills 157 folios, of which 134 belong to the 'Variae' and 23 to the 'Inst.i.tutiones Divinarum Litterarum.' There are also two folios at the end which I have not deciphered. The MS. is a.s.signed to the Thirteenth Century. The t.i.tle of the First Book is interesting, because it contains the description of Ca.s.siodorus' official rank, 'Ex Magistri Officii,' which Mommsen seems to have looked for in the MSS.

in vain. The MS. contains the first Three Books complete, but only 39 letters of the Fourth. Letters 40-51 of the Fourth Book, and the whole of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Books, are missing. It then goes on to the Eighth Book (which it calls the Fifth), but omits the first five letters. The remaining 28 appear to be copied satisfactorily. The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Books, which the transcriber calls the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth, seem to be on the whole correctly copied.

There seems to be a certain degree of correspondence between the readings of this MS. and those of the Leyden MS. of the Twelfth Century (formerly at Fulda) which are described by Ludwig Tross in his 'Symbolae Criticae' (Hammone, 1853).

(2) 8 B. XIX. is a MS. also of the Thirteenth Century, in a smaller hand than the foregoing. The margins are very large, but the Codex measures only 6-3/4 inches by 4-1/4. The rubricated t.i.tles are of somewhat later date than the body of the text. The initial letters are elaborately illuminated. This MS. contains, in a mutilated state and in a peculiar order, the books from the Eighth to the Twelfth. The following is the order in which the books are placed:

IX. 8-25, folios 1-14.

X. " 14-33.

XI. " 33-63.

XII. " 63-83.

VIII. " 83-126.

IX. 1-7, " 126-134.

The amanuensis, who has evidently been a thoroughly dishonest worker, constantly omits whole letters, from which however he sometimes extracts a sentence or two, which he tacks on to the end of some preceding letter without regard to the sense. This process makes it exceedingly difficult to collate the MS. with the printed text. Owing to the Eighth Book being inserted after the Twelfth, it is erroneously labelled on the back, 'Ca.s.siodori Senatoris Epistolae, Lib. X-XIII.'

(3) 10 B. IV. (also of the Thirteenth Century, and measuring 11 inches by 8) contains, in a tolerably complete state, the first Three Books of the 'Variae,' Book IV. 5-39, Book VIII. 1-12, and Books X-XII. The order, however, is transposed, Books IV. and VIII. coming after Book XII. These excerpts from Ca.s.siodorus, which occupy folios 66 to 134 of the MS., are preceded by some collections relative to the Civil and Canon Law. The letters which are copied seem to be carefully and conscientiously done.

These three MSS. are all in the King's Library.

Besides these MSS. I have also glanced at No. 1,919 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Like those previously described it is, I believe, of the Thirteenth Century, and professes to contain the whole of the 'Variae;' but the letters are in an exceedingly mutilated form. On an average it seems to me that not more than one-third of each letter is copied. In this manner the 'Variae' are compressed into the otherwise impossible number of 33 folios (149-182).

All these MSS., even the best of them, give me the impression of being copied by very unintelligent scribes, who had but little idea of the meaning of the words which they were transcribing. In all, the superscription V.S. is expanded (wrongly, as I believe) into 'Viro Senatori;' for 'Praefecto Praetorio' we have the meaningless 'Praeposito;' and the Agapitus who is addressed in the 6th, 32nd, and 33rd letters of the First Book is turned, in defiance of chronology, into a Pope.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

LIFE OF Ca.s.sIODORUS.

The interest of the life of Ca.s.siodorus is derived from his position rather than from his character. He was a statesman of considerable sagacity and of unblemished honour, a well-read scholar, and a devout Christian; but he was apt to crouch before the possessors of power however unworthy, and in the whole of his long and eventful life we never find him playing a part which can be called heroic.

[Sidenote: Position of Ca.s.siodorus on the confines of the Ancient and the Modern.]

His position, however, which was in more senses than one that of a borderer between two worlds, gives to the study of his writings an exceptional value. Born a few years after the overthrow of the Western Empire, a Roman n.o.ble by his ancestry, a rhetorician-philosopher by his training, he became what we should call the Prime Minister of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric; he toiled with his master at the construction of the new state, which was to unite the vigour of Germany and the culture of Rome; for a generation he saw this edifice stand, and when it fell beneath the blows of Belisarius he retired, perhaps well-nigh broken-hearted, from the political arena. The writings of such a man could hardly fail, at any rate they do not fail, to give us many interesting glimpses into the political life both of the Romans and the Barbarians. It is true that they throw more light backwards than forwards, that they teach us far more about the const.i.tution of the Roman Empire than they do about the Teutonic customs from whence in due time Feudalism was to be born. Still, they do often ill.u.s.trate these Teutonic usages; and when we remember that the writer to whom after Tacitus we are most deeply indebted for our knowledge of Teutonic antiquity, Jordanes, professedly compiled his ill-written pamphlet from the Twelve Books of the Gothic History of Ca.s.siodorus, we see that indirectly his contribution to the history of the German factor in European civilisation is a most important one.

Thus then, as has been already said, Ca.s.siodorus stood on the confines of two worlds, the Ancient and the Modern; indeed it is a noteworthy fact that the very word _modernus_ occurs for the first time with any frequency in his writings. Or, if the ever-s.h.i.+fting boundary between Ancient and Modern be drawn elsewhere than in the fifth and sixth centuries, at any rate it is safe to say, that he stood on the boundary of two worlds, the Roman and the Teutonic.

[Sidenote: Also on the confines of Politics and Religion.]

But the statesman who, after spending thirty years at the Court of Theodoric and his daughter, spent thirty-three years more in the monastery which he had himself erected at Squillace, was a borderer in another sense than that already mentioned--a borderer between the two worlds of Politics and Religion; and in this capacity also, as the contemporary, perhaps the friend, certainly the imitator, of St.

Benedict, and in some respects the improver upon his method, Ca.s.siodorus largely helped to mould the destinies of mediaeval and therefore of modern Europe.

I shall now proceed to indicate the chief points in the life and career of Ca.s.siodorus. Where, as is generally the case, our information comes from his own correspondence, I shall, to avoid repet.i.tion, not do much more than refer the reader to the pa.s.sage in the following collection, where he will find the information given as nearly as may be in the words of the great Minister himself.

[Sidenote: His ancestors.]

The ancestors of Ca.s.siodorus for three generations, and their public employments, are enumerated for us in the letters (Var. i. 3-4) which in the name of Theodoric he wrote on his father's elevation to the Patriciate. From these letters we learn that--

[Sidenote: Great grandfather.]

(1) Ca.s.siodorus, the writer's great grandfather, who held the rank of an Ill.u.s.tris, defended the sh.o.r.es of Sicily and Bruttii from the incursions of the Vandals. This was probably between 430 and 440, and, as we may suppose, towards the end of the life of this statesman, to whom we may conjecturally a.s.sign a date from 390 to 460.

[Sidenote: Grandfather.]

(2) His son and namesake, the grandfather of our Ca.s.siodorus, was a Tribune (a military rank nearly corresponding to our 'Colonel') and Notarius under Valentinian III. He enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p of the great Aetius, and was sent with Carpilio the son of that statesman on an emba.s.sy to Attila, probably between the years 440 and 450. In this emba.s.sy, according to his grandson, he exerted an extraordinary influence over the mind of the Hunnish King. Soon after this he retired to his native Province of Bruttii, where he pa.s.sed the remainder of his days. We may probably fix the limits of his life from about 420 to 490.

[Sidenote: Father.]

(3) His son, the third Ca.s.siodorus, our author's father, served under Odovacar (therefore between 476 and 492), as Comes Privatarum Rerum and Comes Sacrarum Largitionum. These two offices, one of which nominally involved the care of the domains of the Sovereign and the other the regulation of his private charities, were in fact the two great financial offices of the Empire and of the barbarian royalties which modelled their system upon it. Upon the fall of the throne of Odovacar, Ca.s.siodorus transferred his services to Theodoric, at the beginning of whose reign he acted as Governor (Consularis[1]) of Sicily. In this capacity he showed much tact and skill, and thereby succeeded in reconciling the somewhat suspicious and intractable Sicilians to the rule of their Ostrogothic master. He next administered (as Corrector[2]) his own native Province of 'Bruttii et Lucania[3].' Either in the year 500 or soon after, he received from Theodoric the highest mark of his confidence that the Sovereign could bestow, being raised to the great place of Praetorian Praefect, which still conferred a semi-regal splendour upon its holder, and which possibly under a Barbarian King may have involved yet more partic.i.p.ation in the actual work of reigning than it had done under a Roman Emperor.