ABSTRACT
Western civilization began to assume an independent identity in the fourth century with the removal of the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople and the separate development of the Greek East and Latin West. Learning had declined greatly, much of the Roman cultural achievement that gave such qualitative satisfactions to life had disappeared. Three particular developments stand out: the final appearance of pagan learning in the work of Boethius, the attempted mediation of sacred and secular studies by Cassiodorus, and the foundation of the monastic rule of Benedict. The need for the maintenance of a proper social order and the restoration of learning was obvious to Cassiodorus; to his conception of the new order he gave the special designation civilitas. Cassiodorus represented the ideal of the cultured, scholarly individual, one pursuing learning with an intense personal zeal, determined to preserve and share that learning as part of the process of its cultivation.
