Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator) , c.485-c.585, Roman statesman and author. He held high office under Theodoric the Great and the succeeding Gothic rulers of Italy, who gave him the task of putting into official Latin their state papers and correspondence. These he later collected as Variae epistolae (tr. by Thomas Hodgkin, 1886). After retiring he founded two monasteries; in one of these the monks devoted leisure time to copying old manuscripts, which were thus preserved. Among Cassiodorus's works were his History of the Goths, preserved in the abridgment by Jordanes , and a treatise on orthography.

Bibliography: See J. J. O'Donnell, Cassiodorus (1979).

Cassiodorus, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (c.485/90–c.580), Roman statesman, author, and monastic founder. He held high office under the Ostrogothic rulers at Ravenna. In 537, when Ostrogothic rule collapsed, he withdrew from public life. He went to Constantinople but in 554 he returned to a pacified Italy and established the monastic community of Vivarium on his estate near Naples. He built up an important library, arranged for the copying of manuscripts, and had Greek texts translated, including the histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret which served as the basis of his own Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita.