(b Scylacium [Scylletium; now Squillace, Calabria], c485 ce; d Vivarium [now Stalleti], nr Scylacium, c580 ce.Roman statesman and writer. A member of an ancient patrician family, Cassiodorus was a representative of the Roman senatorial class who worked with Ostrogothic rulers in their administration of Roman government during the 6th century ce. He spent the early part of his life trying to preserve Greco-Roman cultural traditions even though the necessary institutions were crumbling at every hand. His Roman education in the liberal arts prepared him well, for shortly after 500 he entered public life, holding office for more than a third of a century during a stormy and dangerous period. His rhetorical flair won him favour with Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and in 506 he was made quaestor sacri palatii; in 514 he became consul, and when Boethius fell from favour in 523, Cassiodorus was appointed magister officiorum in his place. In 533 Athalaric made him praefectus praetorio, a post he held until the fall of Italy to Byzantium between 537 and 540.
Like several other patricians of the 6th century (including his contemporary Boethius), Cassiodorus was a Christian humanist committed to the cultivation of Greek and Latin learning. He had originally hoped to found a Christian university in Rome, modelled on the Didascalia of Alexander and the Hebrew school at Nisibis; he even discussed this idea with Pope Agapetus (535–6) but his plans never came to fruition. Thus, after the fall of Italy and the other ravages of the 6th century, he returned to his familial estate at Scylacium and founded a monastery, which he named Vivarium. There Cassiodorus assembled a community that included Christian scholars who collected and copied an extensive library of books dedicated to the preservation of Greek and Latin Christian scholarship and secular learning. Cassiodorus, who lived to the remarkable age of 95, spent the last four decades of his life teaching and writing at Vivarium.
Cassiodorus’s works can be divided into three groups. During his political career he wrote a history of the Goths (now lost) and a Chronicle, and in 537 he edited his official correspondence in 12 books under the title Variae. Shortly after he left public life he wrote a De anima, which was followed by a compendium on ecclesiastical history and exegetical works on the Psalms, Romans and the teachings of the apostles. Finally, for the monks at Vivarium he wrote the Institutiones divinarum et humanarum litterarum: it consists of two books, the first concerning sacred letters, and the second the seven liberal arts of classical Roman education. In his 93rd year he wrote a De orthographia, which may be considered a supplement to the Institutiones.
Although Cassiodorus can hardly be considered an original or speculative thinker, his works always exhibit an interest in both Greek and Latin speculative thought. A letter in his Variae (ii.40) praises Boethius for his translations of Greek mathematical authors and contains a learned discussion of the harmony of the spheres. His Expositio in psalterium contains numerous erudite references to arithmetic, music and geometry; in several passages he raises music to a special place in Christian observance, for the concord expressed in human worship – particularly the singing of psalms – reflects the metaphysical harmony of the Creator.
Cassiodorus’s most complete discussion of the arts is found in the second book of his Institutiones, where humane (secular) learning is presented within the context of the seven liberal arts. Cassiodorus, following Ammonius of Alexandria, groups music with the mathematical disciplines of arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. In the general preface to the section on mathematics he defines music as that discipline treating numerical relationships (numerus ad aliquid). Yet in the chapter entitled ‘De musica’ he fails to develop the mathematical aspect of music and even errs concerning the proportion of the 11th. He discusses the power of music, drawing on biblical passages as well as pagan legend, and divides music into three parts – harmonica, rhythmica and metrica. Musical instruments are also divided into three categories, which he named percussionalia, tensibilia and inflatilia. A brief survey of musical consonances follows, along with a discussion of the modes in the Aristoxenian fashion and a basic bibliography of Greek and Latin music theory.
In the chapter on music theory Cassiodorus cites a Latin translation of Gaudentius by Mutianus; this work, supplemented by Censorinus’s De die natali and the lost work of Albinus, was probably the central source of the musical knowledge displayed in the Institutiones. He also knew and cited Augustine (De musica), Euclid, Ptolemy and Alypius; although he was aware of the existence of Martianus Capella’s allegorical treatise on the liberal arts, he remarked that he had been unable to find a copy. While, in a letter written during his early years, Cassiodorus had cited Boethius as an authority on mathematics and Boethius’s writing on music, the presence of Boethius’s mathematical treatises at Vivarium remains open to question: Boethius’s De geometria appears to be the basis for Cassiodorus’s chapter on geometry, and Boethius’s translation of Nicomachus’s arithmetical work is cited in the chapter on arithmetic (along with the translation of Madaurensis Apuleius). No evidence is found to place Boethius's musical treatise in Cassiodorus’s 6th-century library; the work is not cited in the Institutiones.
The manuscript tradition of the Institutiones during the Middle Ages shows that several versions of the text were in existence shortly after Cassiodorus’s death and that the two books often circulated independently of each other. Although there is little evidence that book ii was widely read before the Carolingian renaissance, it formed the principal source for the discussion of the liberal arts in the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville (d 636). During the reign of Charlemagne (768–814), however, one particular tradition of book ii (the Δ version; see Mynors, 1937) became one of the cornerstones for the study of the liberal arts among scholars at the Frankish court. In these manuscripts, extracts from Augustine concerning the arts, and passages from Boethius’s De arithmetica, formed a supplement to Cassiodorus’s text, and the tradition as a whole became an impressive apology for the inclusion of secular learning in Christian eduction. Cassiodorus thus became one of the pivotal authorities in the Carolingian development of music theory; his categorizations of music and instruments were used repeatedly, and passages from his chapter on music in the Institutiones appear in most theoretical compilations between the 9th and the 12th centuries.
Cassiodorus’s importance to the development of music theory within the context of liberal education can be summarized in three principal areas: he (along with Martianus Capella) was pivotal in establishing the number of arts at seven (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy); he (along with Augustine of Hippo) was one of the principal apologists for the cultivation of humane learning in Christian education; and he was among the first to articulate the relationship between music in Christian observance and classical concepts of musica, thereby laying the foundation for the development of a music theory rooted in classical scientific definitions yet applied to Christian musical practice.
H. Thiele: Cassiodor, seine Klostergründung Vivarium und sein Nachwirken im Mittelalter (Munich, 1932)
R.A.B. Mynors, ed.: Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones (Oxford, 1937; Eng. trans., 1946)
J. Wolf: ‘Die Musiktheorie des Mittelalters’, AcM, iii (1940), 53–64
A. van de Vyver: ‘Les Institutiones de Cassiodore et sa fondation a Vivarium’, Revue bénédictine, liii (1941), 59–88
M.F. Bukofzer: ‘Speculative Thinking in Medieval Music’, Speculum, xvii (1942), 165–80
M. Adriaen, ed.: Cassiodorus: Expositio psalmorum (Turnhout, 1958; Eng. trans., 1990)
K.G. Fellerer: ‘Die Musica in den Artes liberales’, Artes Liberales: Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, v (1976), 33–49
J.J. O’Donnell: Cassiodorus (Berkeley, 1979)
C.M. Bower: ‘The Role of Boethius' “De institutione musica” in the Speculative Tradition of Western Musical Thought’, Boethius and the Liberal Arts, ed. M. Masi (Berne, 1981) 162–205
Y.M. Duval: ‘Cassiodore et Jérôme: de Bethléem à Vivarium’, Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro: Cosenza-Squillace 1983, ed. S. Leanza (Squillace, 1986), 335–56
J. Fontaine: ‘Cassiodore et Isidore: l'évolution de l'encyclopédisme latin du VIe au VIIe siècle’, ibid., 72–91
L. Holtz: ‘Quelques aspects de la tradition et de la diffusion des Institutiones’, ibid., 281–312
U. Pizzani: ‘Cassiodoro e le discipline del quadrivio’, ibid., 49–71
H. Thurn: ‘Handschriftenstudien zu Cassiodorus “Institutiones”’, Codices manuscripti, xii (1986), 142–4
M. Huglo: ‘Study of the Ancient Sources of Music in Medieval Universities’, Music Theory and its Sources: Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Notre Dame, IN, 1987, 150–89
N. Phillips: ‘Classical and Late-Latin Sources for Ninth-Century Writings on Music’, ibid., 100–135
A. Fridh: ‘Cassiodorus' digression on music, Var. II 40’, Eranos, lxxxvi (1988), 43–51
F. Troncarelli: ‘I codici di Cassiodoro: le testimonianze più antiche’, Scrittura e civilità, xii (1988), 47–99
M. Bernhard: ‘Überlieferung und Fortleben der antiken lateinischen Musiktheorie im Mittelalter’, Rezeption des antikens Fachs im Mittelalter, ed. M. Bernhard and others (Darmstadt, 1990), 1–35
J. Bellingham: The Development of Musical Thought in the Medieval West from Late Antiquity to the Mid-Ninth Century (diss., U. of Oxford, 1998)
CALVIN BOWER