Thus, in collecting an ample library--in diffusing copies of ancient MSS.--in verbal instructions, written lectures, and the composition of voluminous works--he closed, in the service of religion and learning, a long and meritorious life.
The example of Cassiodorus was followed in other convents. About half a century after his death, Columbanus founded a monastery of Benedictines at Bobbio, a town situated among the northern Apennines. This religious society, as Tiraboschi informs us, was remarkable, not only for the sanctity of its manners, but the cultivation of literature. It was fortunate that receptacles for books had now been thus provided, as otherwise the treasures of classical literature in Italy would, in all likelihood, have perished during the wars of Belisarius, and Narses, and the invasion of Totila. It is in the age of Cassiodorus,--that is, the beginning and middle of the sixth century,--that Tiraboschi places the serious and systematic commencement of the transcription of the classics(518). He mentions the names of some of the most eminent copyists; but a fuller list had been previously furnished by Fabricius(519).
In Gregory the Great, who was Pope at the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, literature, according to popular belief, found an enemy in the west, as fatal to its interests as the Caliph Omar had been in the east. This pontiff was accused of burning a classical library, and also some valuable works, which had replaced those formerly consumed in the Palatine library. John of Salisbury is the sole authority for this charge; and even he, who lived six centuries after the age of Gregory, only mentions it as a tradition and report: "Fertur Beatus Gregorius bibliothecam combussisse gentilem, quo divinæ paginæ gratior esset locus, et major auctoritas, et diligentia studiosior(520);" and again, "Ut traditur a majoribus, incendio dedit probatæ lectionis scripta, Palatinus quæcunque tenebat Apollo(521)." Cardan informs us, that Gregory also caused the plays of Nævius, Ennius, and Afranius, to be burned. That he suppressed the works of Cicero, rests on the authority of a passage in an edict published by Louis XI., dated 1473, and quoted by Lyron in his _Singularitéz Historiques_(522). St Antonius, who was Archbishop of Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, is cited by Vossius as the most ancient author who has asserted that he burned the decades of Livy(523). These charges have been strenuously supported by Brucker(524), while Tiraboschi, on the other hand, has endeavoured to vindicate the memory of the pontiff from all such aspersions(525). Bayle has adopted a prudent neutrality(526). Dendina(527) and Ginguené(528), the most recent authors who have touched on the subject, seem to consider the question, after all that has been written on it, as still doubtful, and not likely to receive any farther elucidation. It appears certain, that Gregory disliked classical, or profane literature, on account of the oracles, idolatry, and rites, with which it is associated, and that he prohibited its study by the clergy(529);--whence may, perhaps, have originated the reports of his wilfully destroying the then surviving libraries and books of Rome.