" If we leave out Jerome, it is to Cassiodorus that
the honor is due for joining learning and monasticism.
"Thus," remarks Schaff, "that very mode of life, which, in its founder,
Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its development
an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the migration and
the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures of antiquity
for the use of modern times."
Cassiodorus, with a noble enthusiasm, inspired his monks to their task.
He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to have been
self-trimming, to aid them in their work. He himself set an example of
literary diligence, astonishing in one of his age.
Putnam is justified in his praises of this remarkable character when he
declares: "It is not too much to say that the continuity of thought and
civilization of the ancient world with that of the middle ages was due,
more than to any other one man, to the life and labors of Cassiodorus."
But the monk was more than a scribe and a collector of books, he became
the chronicler and the school-teacher. "The records that have come down
to us of several centuries of medieval European history are due almost
exclusively to the labors of the monastic chroniclers." A vast fund of
information, the value of which is impaired, it is true, by much useless
stuff, concerning medieval customs, laws and events, was collected by
these unscientific historians and is now accessible to the student.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125