340 Lozovsky
about “zealous and eager pursuit of secular learning” went back to the years
when he still was a government official. Concerned that secular disciplines
flourished while Christian instruction was neglected, Cassiodorus wanted to
found Christian schools in Rome after the model of Alexandria and Nisibis,
which would employ “learned teachers... from whom the faithful might gain
eternal salvation for their souls and the adornment of sober and pure elo-
quence for their speech”. Together with Pope Agapetus (535–6), Cassiodorus
made an effort to collect money, but the war and political instability impeded
the project.108
Cassiodorus also considered the place of secular learning in his De anima,
written after his public career came to an end. There he weighed the opinions
of ‘secular teachers’ about the nature of the soul against explanations provided
by Christians, mainly by Augustine.109 In the Expositio Psalmorum, probably
written while he lived in Constantinople after 540, Cassiodorus provided com-
prehensive explanations of the entire Book of Psalms, which he considered
fundamental for Christian education. In this exegetical work he asserted that
all wisdom, including secular learning, had its origins in the Scriptures and
consistently pointed out the uses of liberal arts within the Psalter. Particularly
focusing on rhetorical techniques employed in the Psalms, Cassiodorus pro-
posed a hierarchy of knowledge and a method of teaching in which secular
learning supported exegesis.110
Thus the educational programme for the monks of Vivarium that Cassiodorus
offered in his Institutions was building on his earlier ideas, especially inspired
by Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana.111 Book 2, on secular learning, may have
gone through earlier redactions as a separate text, but in what appears to be
its final form the two books of the Institutions were designed as an introduc-
tion to both the Scriptures and the secular letters.112 Book 1 discussed Christian
108 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1, Preface 1, p. 3, trans. p. 105: “in urbe Romana professos doc-
tores scholae potius acciperent Christianae, unde et anima susciperet aeternam salutem
et casto atque purissimo eloquio fidelium lingua comeretur”. See also O’Donnell,
Cassiodorus, pp. 179–80; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 22–27.
109 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 118–30, for the sources, p. 118; Vessey, “Introduction”, p. 20; also
above, p. 336.
110 O’Donnell, Cassiodorus, pp. 131–76; Astell, “Cassiodorus’s Commentary on the Psalms as
an Ars rhetorica”; Weissengruber, “L’educazione profana ncll’Expositio psalmorum di
Cassiodoro”; Halporn, “After the Schools”; Vessey, “Introduction”, pp. 28–35, 41; more bib-
liography in Heydemann, “Biblical Israel”, p. 152, n. 29. I have not been able to consult
Heydemann’s doctoral dissertation on the Expositio Psalmorum.
111 Vessey, “Introduction,” pp. 27–37.
112 Ibid., pp. 39–42.