Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2013
The work of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (one of the leading commentators of the delicate transformation period between the 5th and 6th centuries) is analysed in its many aspects of convergence with the birth of modern awareness of Restoration and Conservation of the legacies of the past, by tracing his life and work through the various positions held at the court of the Gothic kings and then at his retreat in Squillace. Emphasis is given to the connections between the ancient Roman Laws examined in the previous chapters and the laws quoted by Cassiodorus in the text of his Variae. The figure of Cassiodorus is presented, in fact, as the trait d’union between the legacies of the ancient world, the Law and the new Christian ethics. Numerous aspects developed from this remarkable combination which in turn favoured the establishment of the modern sensitivity for artworks of the past. This also came about due to the fact that Cassiodorus was one of the first to express a modern but nostalgic sensitivity, conscious as he was of the overwhelming distance separating the ancient, in extinction, from the modern in gestation. After an extensive presentation of a number of passages taken from the Variae (quoted in the Latin original with a modern translation by the author) a certain number, particularly related to the subject of Restoration, have been chosen from Cassiodorus’s later works, written after retirement from political activity and now occupied with the study of sacred texts and the classics. Especially pertinent are the sections regarding the instructions for early copyists of manuscripts (Institutiones divinarum et saeculariu litterarum) at work in the Benedictine monastery of Vivarium which Cassiodorus himself founded on his estate at Scolacium (modern day Squillace in Calabria). By teaching the monks to copy the precious manuscripts without altering them, Cassiodorus has to his credit the preservation of many ancient documents and, what is more, it is through his example based on philological principles that the art of amanuensis was taken up in many monasteries during the Middle Ages, resulting in the perpetuation of almost all classical writings.
This paper is based on a number of reuses of Cassiodorus' Variae that have been found in notarial documents written in Rome and Lazio between the tenth and eleventh century. Given that the manuscript tradition of the Variae becomes visible only from the twelfth-thirteenth centuries onwards, these reuses are a good starting point to reflect on a specific question: what were the practical and contingent motivations that, in Lazio, stimulated the intellectual elites to research and reuse the Variae? By following an alternative path to that of the manuscript evidence, it is thus possible better to identify the contexts of preservation, circulation, and practical use of the Variae underlying the more evident late medieval revival.
2021 •
The book under review offers a complete English translation of Cassiodorus' Variae, a work which-undeservedly-has played little role in the scholarly debate about late antique letter collections and the way they shape (and are shaped by) the political, cultural, and social landscape of the so-called 'successor states' in the Mediterranean. The twelve books of the Variae contain 468 official letters mainly issued by the rulers of Ostrogothic Italy (507-537). Five books were written in the name of Theoderic the Great (Cassiod. var. 1-5), three in that of his successors Athalaric, Amalasuintha, Theodahad, and Vitiges (Cassiod. var. 8-10). Books six and seven contain template letters (formulae); the last two books (Cassiod. var. 11-12) were written in Cassiodorus' own name in his capacity as praefectus praetorio. The letter collection is complemented by a philosophical treatise on the soul (De anima), which Cassiodorus intends to be understood as the thirteenth book of the Variae (pp. 16-17). Michael Shane Bjornlie's book is the first full English translation of all letters of the Variae. It does not include the treatise entitled De amina.
In Christiana Sogno, Bradley Storin and Edward Watts, eds., A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide to Late Antique Letter Collections (University of California Press, 2016), 433-48
The Letter Collection of CassiodorusA small constellation of epistolary collections survives from sixth-century Italy, allowing a comparatively detailed picture of the transition from classical to postclassical society. For the sixth century, in particular, the personal letters of Ennodius of Pavia, the Collectio Avellana, and the administrative and pastoral letters of Gregory the Great (Regis-trum epistolarum) combine to offer a rich social-historical perspective. 1 The Variae of Cassio-dorus similarly contribute to this sixth-century Italian landscape by acting as witnesses to more than three decades (ca. 507–540) of government under the Gothic rulers of Italy. Few studies of sixth-century Italy have failed to avail themselves of the tessellated contents of the Variae. As a collection depicting the legal, administrative, and diplomatic activities of the late antique chancery at Ravenna, the Variae have always enjoyed a peculiar legitimacy as " documentary " sources. Their authenticity as " records " has been almost universally accepted in studies of late antique political culture, economy, and administration, agrarian and urban history, religious and social history, prosopography, intellectual and legal culture, and ethnography. By contrast, comparatively few studies have examined the Variae as a coherent whole, particularly as a text with authorial aims and compositional strategy. 2 This is partially a result of the assumed documentary nature of the letters and their potentially enormous historical utility, which has made them impervious to the same kind of literary analysis that has proven so useful to understanding presentational aspects of epistolography in earlier classical settings. 3 Ironically, the documentary nature of the letters—as opposed to their rhetorical and literary nature—has been privileged precisely because of the lacunose nature of the collec-tion's historical context. 4 The obscurity of important issues such as the date of the collec-tion's completion, Cassiodorus's relationship to actors in the great political and religious
2018 •
2023 •
The fate of Cassiodorus’ Variae during the Early Middle Ages is largely unknown, since the manuscript tradition begins with the eleventh century and long quotations taken from them are attested only from this period. However, words or expressions reminiscent of the Variae occur more than once in Charlemagne’s letters to Byzantium, in the works of Paschasius and in the Donation of Constantine. The author of the epistles sent by Charlemagne’s to the East Roman emperor was aware of the ideological context of Variae 1.1 and the same is true for the Donation of Constantine. On the other hand, Paschasius used Cassiodorus as a source of elegant words and expressions, thereby treating him like a classical author. It is impossible to ascertain whether Carolingian writers had access to all books of the Variae or to a substantial selection of letters (similar for instance to the manuscript containing the Epistolae Austrasicae), but there is a high degree of likelihood that they knew quite a few epistles of Cassiodorus and were able to appreciate the political messages conveyed by them.
2022 •
Cassiodorus wrote a Gothic History in twelve books, which was lost shortly after the middle of the sixth century. It is known only thanks to an epitome written by Jordanes (the so-called Getica). The reasons of this loss have never been fully investigated, because it is generally believed that there would have been little interest in preserving the history of the Goths after the end of their kingdom. Cassiodorus’ Variae, however, survived and the same is true for his Chronica, an historical work written on behalf of the Gothic court, and for Jordanes’ Getica. This paper argues that the loss of the Gothic History was by no means accidental: it was decided by Cassiodorus himself, who did not want to circulate a book written mainly to please the Gothic kings. Moreover, he was not interested any more in a work serving a political purpose after his conversion. He preserved the Variae because they were a source of epistolary formulas and his chronicle because it helped to understand Biblical chronologies, but he hoped that his Gothic History would fall into oblivion, because it was a testimony of the original sin of its author, the long years spent by him at the court of Ravenna while pursuing a glittering but fallacious secular career.
Frühmittelalterliche Studien
The Letters of Gregory the Great and Cassiodorus’ ‘Variae’, in «Frühmittelalterliche Studien», 56 (2022), pp. 1-14.2022 •
The authorship of the letters included within the ‘Registrum’ of Gregory the Great has been a matter of scholarly debate for decades, since it is unclear whether the pope left all administrative documents to his secretaries, writing only personal letters, or drafted the whole of his correspondence himself. A study of the occurrences of eleven expressions attested only or almost only in the letters of Cassiodorus and Gregory can contribute to a better knowledge of both the circulation of the ‘Variae’ in sixth-century Italy and the authorship of the letters included within the ‘Registrum’. Those who wrote Gregory’s correspondence in all likelihood used the ‘Variae’ as a model, closely imitating a few sentences, which are present in both letter collections within similar documents. Moreover, these expressions are not evenly distributed throughout the ‘Registrum’, but occur mostly (or solely) in letters written in a short time-span and addressed to a single recipient or group of recipients. It is therefore possible to identify at least two different secretaries who drafted a few administrative letters on behalf of the pope, as well as to show that the ‘Variae’ circulated in the Lateran chancery during the papacy of Gregory the Great.
Fascination for antiquity had different aspects in medieval Italian comuni. Medieval cities could claim a Trojan or a Greek origin; ancient stones and epigraphs were reused for the construction of churches or public buildings. Relics of ancient times were recombined to transfer the glory of the past into the spirit of a new age. This operation of rearrangement had its parallel in the construction of literary or historical texts. Antiquity stood before the Italian city-dwellers not just in the shape of colossal ruins, but also in the form of historical narratives that celebrated the glory of the Romans and the Greeks. Excerpts from these ancient narratives were reinserted to transmit the deeds of the classical heroes to the new urban elite. Perhaps the most interesting case is Pisa in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this important maritime city Guido, most probably a deacon of the Cathedral, gave his compatriots a reconstruction of the ancient deeds by compiling his Liber de variis historiis, a compilation of historical and geographical texts. This paper will analyse Guido's strategies in compiling his work against the political and cultural background of this medieval comune.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Journal of Helminthology
Infection levels of the eyeworm Oxyspirura petrowi and caecal worm Aulonocephalus pennula in the northern bobwhite and scaled quail from the Rolling Plains of Texas2016 •
Advances in Human-Computer Interaction
Afan Oromo Speech-Based Computer Command and Control: An Evaluation with Selected CommandsAnais do III Congresso Nacional de Microbiologia Clínica On-line
Dermatoses Pediátricas - Dermatite AtópicaRevista Didatica Sistemica
Meio ambiente como tema transversal na 5ª série do ensino Fundamental (Salvador – BA): um estudo de caso2010 •
2018 •
Scientific Reports
Abdominal pain patterns during COVID-19: an observational study2004 •
Surface and Interface Analysis
A noninvasive complementary study of an Egyptian polychrome cartonnage pigments using SEM, EPMA, and Raman spectroscopy2020 •
Revista de Investigación , Formación y Desarrollo: Generando Productividad Institucional
La Importancia de la Lectura de Textos en Inglés para los Procesos Formativos Universitarios2019 •
Turkiye Klinikleri Journal of Case Reports
Repair of a First Trimester Uterine Dehiscence with Continuation of Pregnancy: Case Report2017 •
English Education Journal
Realization of Speech Acts of Suggestion by EFL Learners of Universitas Negeri Semarang2018 •
2008 •
Australasian Journal of Dermatology
Prevalence of Perineural Invasion in keratinocyte cancer in the general population and among organ transplant recipients2020 •
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
Dynamic Service Placement in Geographically Distributed Clouds2013 •
2016 •
Solid-State Electronics
DC and RF performances of InAs FinFET and GAA MOSFET on insulator2019 •