SOURCE: “The New Cassiodorus,” in Speculum, Vol. 13, No. 4, October 1938, pp. 433-47.

In the following essay, Rand examines textual issues related to Cassiodorus's Institutiones, focusing on the work's title; the “archetype” of the various extant manuscripts and the categories into which the manuscripts may be placed; and the history of the earliest manuscript, as well as that of the codices.

The significance of Cassiodorus in the history of the transmission of Classical and patristic texts and thus in the history of mediaeval education has long been duly acclaimed. It is he who made sound learning and the copying of books a part of monastic discipline. It is he who saved the ancient Latin authors and the Fathers of the Church for the Middle Ages. He built, of course, on foundations that others had laid.¹ Without his aid, the Church might have somehow transmitted its two-fold culture to the ages...