The literary services of the earlier monks did not consist in original production, but in the reproduction and preservation of the classics.  This work was first begun as a part of the prescribed routine of European monastic life in the monastery at Vivaria, or Viviers, France, which was founded by Cassiodorus about 539.  The rules of this cloister were based on those of Cassian, who died in the early part of the fifth century.  Benedict, at Monte Cassino, followed the example of Cassiodorus, and the Benedictine Order carried the work on for the seven succeeding centuries.

Cassiodorus was a statesman of no mean ability, and for over forty years was active in the political circles of his time, holding high official positions under five different Roman rulers.  He was also an exceptional scholar, devoting much of his energy to the preservation of classic literature.  His magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued from the ruins of Italian libraries, “supplied material for the pens of thousands of monastic scribes.”  If we leave out Jerome, it is to Cassiodorus that the honor is due for joining learning and monasticism.

“Thus,” remarks Schaff, “that very mode of life, which, in its founder, Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its development an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the migration and the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures of antiquity for the use of modern times.”

Cassiodorus, with a noble enthusiasm, inspired his monks to their task.  He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to have been self-trimming, to aid them in their work.  He himself set an example of literary diligence, astonishing in one of his age.

Putnam is justified in his praises of this remarkable character when he declares:  “It is not too much to say that the continuity of thought and civilization of the ancient world with that of the middle ages was due, more than to any other one man, to the life and labors of Cassiodorus.”

But the monk was more than a scribe and a collector of books, he became the chronicler and the school-teacher.  “The records that have come down to us of several centuries of medieval European history are due almost exclusively to the labors of the monastic chroniclers.”  A vast fund of information, the value of which is impaired, it is true, by much useless stuff, concerning medieval customs, laws and events, was collected by these unscientific historians and is now accessible to the student.

At the end of the ninth century nearly all the monasteries of Europe conducted schools open to the children of the neighborhood.  The character of the educational training of the times is not to be judged by modern standards.  A beginning had to be made, and that too at a time “when neither local nor national governments had assumed any responsibilities in connection with elementary education, and when the municipalities were too ignorant, and in many cases too poor, to make provision for the education of the children.”  It is therefore to the lasting credit of Benedict, inspired no doubt by the example of Cassiodorus, that he commanded his monks to read, encouraged literary work, and made provision for the education of the young.