De Ravenne à Constantinople: les deux vies de Cassiodore

Cassiodorus was a senator and politician in Ravenna from 503 to 537/538 AD in the loyal service of the Ostrogothic kings. He gave up politics between 538 and 540 AD. It is not certain where Cassiodorus resided in the decade 538-549 AD. In 550 AD he appears as vir religiosus in the retinue of Pope Vigilius in Constantinople during the dispute over the ‘Three Chapters’ against the emperor Justinian. During that stay he was contacted by the historian Iordanes, who was composing his Getica. Contrary to the opinion of A. Momigliano and some scholars to date, this paper assumes that Cassiodorus abandoned politics for good around 537/538 AD and that the former dignitary of the Ostrogothic kings placed himself under the tutelage of Pope Vigilius towards the end of the first phase of the Gothic War. In this way he escaped the reprisals of the Byzantines and Ostrogoths. Cassiodorus had no ambitions of reintegration into the ruling elite and became vir religiosus in the Pope’s retinue, whose strategy he espoused. He followed Vigilius to Constantinople, not as a fugitive, nor as a prisoner, but as a collaborator of the pope. In the dispute over the ‘Three Chapters’ (544-553 AD), Cassiodorus supported the pope’s position against the emperor Justinian. His collaboration with the Gothic kings, his long senatorial career, which spanned all the way up to the highest levels of the praetorian prefecture, the ordinary consulate and the patriciate during the Ostrogothic monarchy, and his age did not allow him to carry out political activity at Justinian’s side. In his ‘second life’ Cassiodorus was an exegete and writer, a builder of libraries, an educator, and a supporter of the pope from 539/540 to 554 AD.