494 Lizzi Testa
its cultural activity than Vivarium, the monastery that Cassiodorus founded
on his property at Squillace in Calabria sometime after the mid 6th century.77
South of the Alessi River and the ancient town, this centre was located directly
above the sea and included a church dedicated to St Martin and a hermit
age called Castellense, which was placed in a defensive position atop Monte
Castello.78 Having failed in the proposal made to Pope Agapitus around 536
to create a school of higher sacred studies in Rome,79 Cassiodorus established
his monastery as a centre of religious and cultural formation, according to the
ratio studiorum espoused in his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning.
This plan of study included the profane sciences and Greek literature, in addi
tion to biblical exegesis, and placed the seven liberal arts side by side with the
disciplines of history, geography, natural science, and medicine.80 The mor
phology of medieval monastic culture was fundamentally linked to the struc
ture that Cassiodorus gave it at Vivarium. No less influential were the monks at
Vivarium, who excelled at the accurate transcription of texts and were aided in
their endeavours by the instructions provided in Cassiodorus’ De orthographia.
Indeed it is likely that Cassiodorus’ monastic centre helped to refuel all the
great western libraries of the Middle Ages through the intermediary of the
Lateran Library, where the best manuscripts of Vivarium’s scriptorium were
collected in the early 7th century,81 when the monastery was in decline.
According to Pope Pelagius, there were also a number of monasteries in
Lucania and Samnium, although their extent and nature are unknown.82 The
settlements in the central region of the peninsula, especially to the northeast
of Rome, however, were mostly hermit centres. Among the Italian Fathers that
populate Gregory the Great’s Dialogues,83 for instance, are many unforgettable
viri Dei residing in Monteluco near Spoleto, in the Val Castorina not far from
Norcia, or in the mountains of Abruzzo, around Amiternum, near l’Aquila. Here,
in particular, Equitius (480/490–571) is said to have founded several monas
tic centres.84 The second book of the Dialogues, however, is entirely dedicated
to St Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–550), vir Dei, thaumaturge, healer, seer, and
77 On the history of the diocese at the end of the 5th century: Cracco Ruggini, “Società pro
vinciale”, p. 246; Otranto, Per una storia dell’Italia tardoantica, pp. 445–51. Discussions of
the foundation of Vivarium include O’Donnell, Cassiodorus.
78 Cass., Inst. 1.29, ed. Mynors, pp. 73–5; Fiaccadori, “Calabria tardoantica”, pp. 417–18.
79 Cass., Inst. I, praef. 1.2–13.
80 Condorelli, Cassiodoro, pp. 17–116.
81 Pricoco, “Spiritualità monastica”, pp. 357–77.
82 Pelag., Ep. 87, ed. Gassò/Battle, pp. 212–13; Otranto, Italia meridionale, p. 76.
83 Rousseau, “Monasticism”, pp. 774–7; Brown, “Holy Men”, pp. 789–94.
84 Penco, Storia del monachesimo in Italia, p. 30; Otranto, Italia meridionale, p. 76.