La seconda vita di Cassiodoro e la "Collectio Avellana"

From 503 to 537/538 Cassiodorus was a senator and politician in Ravenna.There he pursued a long and prestigious career in the loyal service of the Ostrogothic kings. He gave up politics between 538 and 540, when he was around 55 years old. It is not certain where Cassiodorus resided in the decade 538-549. In 550 he appears as vir religiosus in the retinue of Pope Vigilius who was residing in Constantinople and was debating with Emperor Justinian (the dispute concerning the ‘Three Chapters’). Contrary to the opinion of A. Momigliano and some scholars to date, we assume that Cassiodorus abandoned politics for good around 537/538 and that towards the end of the first phase of the Gothic War the former dignitary of the Ostrogothic kings placed himself under the tutelage of Pope Vigilius: in this way he escaped the reprisals of the Byzantines and Ostrogoths. Cassiodorus had noambitions of reintegration into the ruling elite and became vir religiosus in thepope’s retinue, whose strategy he espoused. He followed Vigilius to Constantinople, not as a fugitive, nor as a prisoner, but as one of pope’s collaborators and supporters. Finally, we suggest that between 545 and 547 Cassiodorus was collecting in Rome the selection of documents that were to become the Collectio Avellana, in the aim of supporting the pope in the dispute of the ‘Three Chapters’ in the East. The Collectio was not intended for publication, and after the return of the defeated pope from Constantinople the Collectio lost interest for its author and was neither updated nor published.