The Monk Who Shaped Western Education

And kept the flame of civilization alight...

In the 6th century, Western Europe had experienced a recent fall from glory.

Barbarians had deposed the Roman emperor within living memory. Age-old institutions were left in a state of decay. After centuries of cultural dominance, the light of Rome was nearly extinguished.

Literacy was falling, infrastructure crumbling, and the connectedness of the empire fractured. Preserving a millennium-old culture was not a priority for people who merely wanted protection from the next barbarian raid. Chaos was triumphing over order.

But on the cold stone floors of a monastery nestled in the hills of Calabria, Italy, monks toiled silently, grasping at civilization like a wisp — it would be gone soon if they failed to catch it. Hunched over pieces of parchment, their ink-stained hands formed letters, painstakingly recreating faded texts.

It was in the quiet confines of a monastery that the West was preserved, and a monk named Cassiodorus created a scheme to ensure its survival for centuries to come...

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The Inheritance of Rome

Born in 485 A.D. to a prominent family of government officials, Cassiodorus had no problem rising through the ranks of the Roman political scene. His father reached positions in close vicinity to the emperor as comes rerum privatarum, or “count of the private fortune,” the manager of the emperor’s estates, and finally Praetorian Prefect, the chief administrator to Theodoric the Great. Under the shadow of his father, Cassiodorus soared to equal heights as consul and eventually Praetorian Prefect.

Cassiodorus’s imperial duties, along with his proximity to the greatest minds in the empire, fostered in him an interest for education. His mission was to create a plan for the continuation of Roman education during uncertain times — the chaos of the last half-century left many Romans uneasy about the survival of their cherished institutions.

It is for this reason Cassiodorus looked beyond the emperor’s aid in his educational pursuits; he entreated an even higher power — the Pope — for assistance in conserving Roman culture.

Cassiodorus worked under the guidance of the Pope Agapetus I to establish a collection of Greek and Latin texts that would be used in a new Christian school based in Rome — a beacon of light in an increasingly darkening world.

Though a devout Christian, he found classical texts valuable in their conveyance of transcendent truths. Cassiodorus saw no problem quoting Cicero or Aristotle in a time when pagan authors were often looked at with suspicion.

Unfortunately, his assembly of texts proved fruitless initially, as the school was never built, but Cassiodorus’ work in education wasn’t over, and his life’s work had yet to begin.

An Oasis of Education

It’s impossible to ascertain why Cassiodorus chose to become a monk upon retirement; nonetheless, in 540 he donned the cloth intent on leading a life of simplicity after decades amidst opulence.

On a family estate along the coast of the Ionian Sea, he founded the Benedictine monastery of Vivarium, a monastic school that would ultimately preserve the light of education in the West….