is due, if we leave out of view the learned monk Jerome, to Cassiodoeus, who in 538 retired from the honors and cares of high civil office, in the Gothic monarchy of Italy ,^ to a monastery founded by himself at Yi- varium ' (Yiviers), in Calabria in Lower Italy. Here he spent ' This Maurus, the founder of the abbacy of Glanfeuil (St. Maur sur Loire), i^ the patron saint of a branch of the Benedictines, the celebrated Maurians in France (dating from 1618), who so highly distinguished themselves in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, by their thorough archaeological and historical researches, and their superior editions of the Fathers. The most eminent of the Maurians are D. (Dom, equivalent to Domnus, Sir) Menard, d'Achery, Godin, Ma- billon, le Nourry, Martianay, Ruinart, Martene, Montfaucon, Massuet, Garnier, and de la Rue, and in our time Dom Pitra, editor of a valuable collection of patristic fragments, at the cloister of Solesme. ' He was the last of the Roman consuls — an ofBce which Justinian abolished — and was successively the minister of Odoacer, Theodoric, and Athalaric, who made him prefect of the prsetorium. ^ Or Vivaria, so called from the numerous vivaria or fish ponds in that region. TOL. II. — 15 226 . THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. nearly thirty years as monk and abbot, collected a large li- brary, encouraged the monks to copy and to study the Holy Scriptm-es, the works of the church fathers, and even the an- cient classics, and wrote for them several literary and theologi- cal text-books, especially his treatise De institutione dimnarum literarum, a kind of elementary encyclopaedia, which was the code of monastic education for many generations. Yivariuni at one time almost rivalled Monte Cassino, and Cassiodorus won tlie honorary title of the restorer of knowledge in the sixth century.' The Benedictines, already accustomed to regular work, soon followed this example. Thus 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. § 46. Opposition to Monastioism. Jovinian. r. CnRTSOSTOMUS : IIpos Tovi TToXefiovvras' toIs enl to /jLova^eiv (vdyovaiv (a vindication of monasticism against its opponents, in three books). TIiERONYMrs : Ep. 61, ad Vigilantium (ed. Vallars. toni. i. p. 345 sqq.) ; Ep. 109, ad Eiparium (i. 719 sqq.) ; Adv. Ilelvidium (a. d. 383) ; Adv. Joviniauum (a. d. 392) ; Adv. Vigilantium (a. d. 406). All these three ti-acts are in Opera Hieron. torn. ii. p. 206-402. Aurustinus : De hajres. cap. 82 (on Jovinian), and c. 84 (on Helvidius and the Ilel- vidians). Epiphanius : Haares. Y5 (on Aerius). II, Ohe. "W. F. Walch : Ketzerhistorie (1766), part ili. p. 585 (on Helvi- dius and the Antidikomarianites) ; p. 635 sqq. (on Jovinian) ;