Complete Works of Cassiodorus, Vol. I

among whose works that same book on Schemata figures of speech is reckoned; except that he borrows those tropes or figures from pagan writers, whereas Bede borrows them from Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers.

The ancient parchments of the Monastery of Fleury contain that same treatise which we read in Bede, and they attribute it to Cassiodorus with this title: Here begins the book of Cassiodorus on figures or modes of speech, which are called Schemata or tropes by the Greeks, sent to Galertus the Levite. Yet it is not certain from this that it is the genuine offspring of Cassiodorus the Senator. 1. It is certain that he directed this book to his own monks at Vivarium, and not intended for anyone else by name or specifically. 2. Gregory the Great, who wrote after the time of our Cassiodorus, is cited twice in it. 3. The Senator himself contradicts it, as he claims to have covered 98 schemata or tropes, of which the Fleury codex, stitched to the labors of Bede, touches upon barely half. Since that book is therefore left among the works of Bede, it seemed better to us, and more fitting to the mind of our Senator, to gather these same schemata—which are seen to be met with here and there in his Commentary on the Psalms—into one body according to the order of the alphabet. We have added one or more examples for each figure, a task which, for the sake of the Reader, we have extended not only to 98 tropes but to 120 and beyond, adding certain rhetorical passages that were found scattered throughout that same Commentary.

Regarding the book On the Soul.

Although Cassiodorus wrote the book On the Soul before he professed the monastic life, it seemed pleasing to place it immediately after those treatises which he published as an old man, reasoning that no place suited it better, if you consider the usual order of philosophical works, where a treatise on the nature of the soul does not poorly cohere with the others we have enumerated. We have wiped away the blemishes with the help of manuscript codices, namely our own from Saint-Ouen of Rouen and the Abbey of Noa; Juretus stood out significantly above all these with his observations and marginal notes on the works of Cassiodorus.

Book on Predestination, chap. 25.

Cassiodorus had written more, but they have fallen away from our diligence and the wishes of all. If that immense supply of books, which he had gathered in his Vivarium monastery to be of use to the studies of the monks, still existed, there is no doubt that this collection would be larger and more numerous. Perhaps it would be possible to see the book on Divisions, which is otherwise inscribed as A Memorial of the Holy Scriptures, brief Commentaries on the Epistles of the Apostles, their Acts, and the Apocalypse of John, a treatise on Etymologies, and certain others, of which we shall speak briefly in his life. Only Hincmar of Reims came to our attention, who testifies that he read the scholia of Cassiodorus on the Epistle to the Romans. Nor do we know of others to whom these treatises on sacred literature have become known.

Book on Divine Literature, chap. 28.

You will perhaps not infrequently come across other books to which the most celebrated name of Cassiodorus has been applied with the empty paint of falsehood, as in these two volumes which are preserved at Cambridge in the Library of Corpus Christi: the first On Ecclesiastical Offices, the other inscribed thus: Sentences of Cassiodorus from St. Cyprian. In the Oxford Library, and with a certain private Englishman, two copies are seen, marked with the name of Cassiodorus thus: A Spark-book of the Scriptures original: "Scintillarium Scripturarum"; and with Petrus de Natalibus, who, reviewing the labors of Cassiodorus, counts the book on the Trinity among his genuine offspring. But there is deep silence among all contemporary and peer writers regarding all these; nor does Cassiodorus the Senator support them, for nowhere in his lists of his own works did he mention these books. Nor do those stray less from the truth who think the lives of the saints Paphnutius, Spiridion, and others, which Lipomanus collected into the first part of his Legendaries, were first written by Cassiodorus; they are rightly owed to the first authors of the Tripartite History. The opinion of Gesner in his Library seems more improbable, where he attributes to our Cassiodorus sixteen books On Rural Affairs, which he suggests by idle rumor are found in the Library of the Monastery of Saint-Michel-en-l’Herm; for they should rather be ascribed to Columella, who wrote as many books on that subject, as Cassiodorus the Senator himself testifies. In codex 114 and 1469 of the Vatican Library, another book is found with this title appended: Etymology of the books of divine scriptures by Cassiodorus: but the contents, which are entirely about divine literature, disagree with that label.

A greater controversy can arise regarding the book On Friendship, which is ascribed to our Cassiodorus in certain printed copies and no fewer manuscripts; but the style of the entire book does not favor him, but significantly favors Bernard or Peter of Blois. Furthermore, this book On Friendship uses texts of the Holy Scripture from the Vulgate Edition, which Cassiodorus never used. 3. Our Senator mentions this book nowhere in his works. 4. The latest edition of his works, repeated not long ago, has sufficiently asserted this book to be the work of Peter of Blois as its true parent.