St. Cassiodorus

St. Cassiodorus was born Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus about 485 in the region of Calabria in southern Italy, of a noble family, and rose to the highest offices in the service of the Ostrogothic kings of Italy, most notably as an administrator and secretary to King Theodoric. In this role he strove to preserve Roman culture and law and to reconcile Goths and Romans, and he compiled an important collection of state documents and a history of the Goths.

Withdrawing from public life in his later years, he founded on his family estates the monastery of Vivarium, where he set the monks to the copying and study of both sacred and classical texts, making the preservation and transmission of learning a monastic labor. His handbook the Institutions guided this work, and by joining scholarship to the monastic life he helped ensure that the treasures of ancient literature and the Scriptures would survive the collapse of the ancient world and be handed on to later ages. He died about 585, in great old age, and is venerated as a saint.