Antiqua in nitorem pristinum contineas et nova simili antiquitate producas
Restoration and modernization in the Rome of Cassiodorus
p. 403-420
Résumés
This paper explores ideas about conservation of buildings expressed in the sixth-century official letters (Variae) of Cassiodorus. In the context of the general neglect of Greek and Roman ideas of conservation by modern conservation theorists, the arguments recently put forward (by Alessandro Pergolesi Campanelli) that Cassiodorus in fact anticipates much of modern conservation theory and practice are of particular interest. This paper argues that the sixth-century context means that much in Roman thinking was based on rather different premises from those of modern conservation theory, while welcoming a renewed interest in a neglected field.
En se fondant sur les lettres officielles de Cassiodore (Variae), cette contribution étudie la manière dont est envisagée la restauration des bâtiments au VIe siècle. Alors que cette période est généralement présentée comme une période de recul des idées antiques sur la restauration, la thèse récemment avancée, notamment par Alessandro Pergolesi Campanelli, selon laquelle Cassiodore aurait anticipé la théorisation et les pratiques modernes de restauration, est particulièrement stimulante. Il s’agira toutefois de nuancer cette thèse, en montrant que la pensée de la restauration dans la Rome du VIe siècle repose sur des principes qui diffèrent en grande partie de la théorie moderne de la restauration.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : Cassiodore, Rome, théorie de la restauration, modernité
Keywords : Cassiodorus, Rome, conservation theory, modernity
Note de l’auteur
This paper has been researched and written in the context of an ERC Advanced Grant Project on the Impact of the Ancient City (ImpAncCit). I gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 693418); my colleagues in this project have been fundamental to the development of my ideas. I am also grateful to participants in the colloquium organized by the École française de Rome, and particularly to the editors of this volume, for helpful comments. I am further indebted to colleagues at the Scuola Normale di Pisa engaged in the Cassiodorus edition, especially to Fabrizio Oppedisano, for their suggestions.
Texte intégral
1Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the nineteenth-century founder of modern architectural conservation, roundly declared that Latin lacked the vocabulary to express the modern concept of conservation.
Restauration, s.f. Le mot et la chose sont modernes… Les Romains restituaient, mais ne restauraient pas, et la preuve, c’est que le latin n’a pas de mot qui corresponde à notre mot restauration, suivant la signification qu’on lui donne aujourd’hui. Instaurare, reficere, renovare ne veulent pas dire restaurer, mais rétablir, refaire à neuf.1
2Following his lead, conservationists have rarely looked to the literature of antiquity for the history of the idea of conservation. An exception, but only a partial one, is the compilation of Jukka Jokilehto for ICCROM listing all historical documents relating to conservation: it gives pride of place to a single letter of Cassiodorus, thereafter rapidly passing to 1492 with a Bull of Pius II.2 Yet this letter of Cassiodorus is just one of a series issued on behalf of the Ostrogothic government of Italy in the early sixth century AD which emphatically proclaim not only that conservation is a priority, but that it should take precedence over the construction of new buildings.
The revival of Cassiodorus
3Cassiodorus is an author who has benefited from a surge of scholarly interest in recent years. As the best, or at least the most eloquent witness to the aims and self-projection of the regime of the Gothic king Theoderic and his successors in Italy in the first half of the sixth century, he has attracted the attention of many historians of late antiquity.3 There have been important studies of his treatment of buildings and restorations.4 He has been rendered significantly more accessible to Anglophone scholarship by the full translation of his letters, the Variae, by Shane Bjornlie, replacing the helpful but highly selective translation of Sam Barnish.5 Above all, the great enterprise under the direction of Andrea Giardina of commenting in detail and translating the Variae into Italian in six volumes opens up the critical understanding of this essential text.6 All of this makes it possible to reach a fuller and more nuanced understanding of late Roman attitudes to conservation than was possible when Jukka Jokilehto wrote.
4What makes Cassiodorus such a valuable witness is that he straddles two worlds. On the one hand, descendant of a high-born Roman family, and son of one who served the Gothic court as Praetorian Prefect, he is immersed not only in Latin literary culture but specifically in the legal culture of the late Roman administration: the Theodosian Code is rich with parallels to his language and ideas. On the other hand, he is self-consciously the spokesman for a regime which was open about its non-Roman identity (‘barbarian’, however, is a word Cassiodorus does not apply to Goths): its use of a Germanic language, a variant of Christianity (‘Arian’) regarded by Romans as heretic, and even alterities of dress and hairstyle (instance the long moustaches paraded on their coinage). If Theoderic and his family felt themselves in some ways ‘other’ than Romans like Cassiodorus, a central function of Cassiodorus as their spokesman (his first office, as Quaestor Sacri Palatii, has precisely this role, as he spells out)7 was to demonstrate that a Gothic king could be a worthy successor to the Roman Principes of the past, continue, without disruptive innovation, their legislation, and protect the interests and rights of the Roman population, for whom the Gothic soldiery were to be seen as protectors, not oppressors.
5The Gothic court displayed notable linguistic gifts. Theoderic, raised in Constantinople, clearly spoke Greek and Latin, though it is his daughter, Amalasuntha, to whose trilingual fluency Cassiodorus most explicitly testifies.8 One might hope that Cassiodorus himself took the trouble to learn Gothic, and indeed that his father saw to it that he did so, as did another Roman official who followed in a father’s footsteps, Cyprian, son of Opilio, whose trilingual fluency gave him significant advantages as an ambassador, and who made sure that his sons learnt Gothic.9 Multilingualism allows bridge-building, and therein lay Cassiodorus’ function and his skill. For that reason, it becomes impossible to disentangle the voice of the Gothic ruler, in whose name he frequently writes, and that of the Roman spokesman, for the function of a good spokesman is to persuade the ruler to say what his subjects will respond to positively.10 The consequence is that when we ask what a Gothic ruler felt about the preservation, maintenance and restoration of the built fabric inherited from the Roman past, we are looking at a rich complex of traditional, inherited, Roman views, and the accommodation of those views to the changed circumstances of a new, postRoman world.
Conservation in Cassiodorus
6So Theoderic writes to all Goths and Romans, stating as a principle that the restoration of ancient cities is a matter of high concern to him as king:
Digna est constructio civitatis, in qua se commendet cura regalis, quia laus est temporum reparatio urbium vetustarum…
The construction of a city is a worthy object of a king’s care, because the glory of the times is the restoration of ancient cities (Variae, 1, 28).11
7He goes on to request that any old stonework left lying around should be handed over for the repair of the city walls and thereby contribute to the utility of the city.
8Another letter belonging to the same period (507-511, when Cassiodorus held the office of Quaestor Sacri Palatii) is addressed to the vir spectabilis Sabinianus concerning the production of bricks in a factory on the banks of the Tiber at the port of Licinius. Theoderic has previously allotted money for restoration of the factory to bring its output up to 25,000 bricks a year, to be used repairing the walls of Rome. Now Sabinianus is required to restore the nearby docks and the whole water-front. All the king’s commands are to be respected, but particularly those regarding the appearance of the city. Conservation is a priority:
Atque ideo maior in conservandis rebus quam in inveniendis adhibenda cautela est, quia de initiis praedicatio debetur invento, de custoditis adquiritur laudata perfectio.
And therefore greater caution needs to be shown in conservation than in making new buildings, because even if celebration is due at the initial creation, the final praise is won through protection (Variae, 1, 25).
9The town council of a city called Estuni (its identification remains uncertain)12 are urged to collect the fragments of columns and marble decorative architecture that apparently lie scattered around the city, and transport them to Ravenna, where they can be redeployed in the building of the royal palace. From the point of view of the citizens of Estuni, this might seem more like pilfering than restoration, but restoration is how Theoderic represents it:
Propositi quidem nostri est nova construere, sed amplius vetusta servare, quia non minorem laudem de inventis quam de rebus possumus adquirere custoditis. Proinde moderna sine priorum imminutione desideramus erigere.
It is our intention to construct new buildings, but even more to conserve ancient ones, because we gain no less credit from making new than from protecting ancient material. Hence we wish to put up modern buildings without reduction to previous ones (Variae, 3, 9).
10A little later (AD 510/511), the king writes to the City Prefect, Argolicus.
Romanae civitatis cura nostris sensibus semper invigilat. Quid est enim dignius, quod tractare debeamus, quam eius reparationem exigere, quae ornatum constat nostrae reipublicae continere?
The care for the City of Rome is ever awake in our senses. For what could be more worthy of our attention than to achieve the repair of the city which is agreed to embody the ornament of our state? (Variae, 3, 30).
11For this reason, he has appointed the vir spectabilis Johannes to take care of the sewers of Rome, which are indeed an amazing feature of the city, surpassing the wonders of other cities.
12Cassiodorus drafts a formulaic letter for the appointment of the Palace Architect, cura palatii nostri (Theoderic had palaces in Rome and Ravenna, but also elsewhere, like Verona). The architect is urged to pay no less attention to the convincing restoration of old structures than to the construction of new ones:
Hinc est quod spectabilitatem tuam ab illa indictione curam palatii nostri suscipere debere censemus, ut et antiqua in nitorem pristinum contineas et nova simili antiquitate producas.
For this reason we believe that you should take on the responsibility for Our Palace from such and such a date, with the aim that you maintain ancient structures in their pristine splendour and produce new ones to match antiquity (Variae, 7, 5).
13From all these passages and more, it emerges that Theoderic and his spokesman Cassiodorus attached the highest importance to the conservation of old buildings alongside the creation of new ones that respected the historical fabric of the cities of Italy, and above all Rome.
Ancient and modern conservation theory
14Together with a broader surge of interest in the Variae, there has been specific interest in Cassiodorus’ views of conservation. Alessandro Pergoli Campanelli’s Cassiodoro alle origini dell’idea di restauro13 draws on the passages I have just quoted and more to argue that in many ways he anticipates some of the basic tenets of modern conservation theory:
Con circa millecinquecento anni d’anticipo sulle moderne teorie del cosiddetto restauro urbano Cassiodoro inquadra magnificamente i termini del problema e coerentemente con i princìpi espressi dalle antiche leggi romane, propone la soluzione più semplice: la bellezza e la consistenza delle città devono sempre aumentare, mai decrescere.14
15Again and again, Campanelli suggests that Cassiodorus precisely anticipates the language and principles of conservation practice current today:
In ogni caso Cassiodoro, con perfetta padronanza di un vocabolario assai ricco come quello della lingua latina, pone sempre l’attenzione sulla compatibilità di un’azione rivolta su due fronti, uno innovativo e l’altro conservativo, uno rivolto al nuovo l’altro alle opere del passato.15
16In this he flatly contradicts Viollet-le-Duc’s denial that Latin lacked the vocabulary to express the modern concept of conservation: on the contrary, he argues, Latin has a wide and nuanced vocabulary to express an issue which was of great importance to them.16
17The authority of Campanelli’s argument, at least on matters of conservation, is the greater because he writes not from a Faculty of Classics or Humanities but from that of Architecture at La Sapienza, and his work is introduced by Professor Giovanni Carbonara, formerly director of the School of Architectural Conservation at La Sapienza. Here we have a welcome revolution, for the entire modern discussion of conservation, one going back to Viollet-le-Duc, has long ignored antiquity, preferring to start in the renaissance.17 But surely, exactly as Campanelli argues, the numerous discussions in Cassiodorus both of conservation of past buildings, and of the relationship between past and present in the urban fabric, deserved attention in the heritage conservation debate. Campanelli makes a significant contribution in calling the attention of his colleagues to this source. However, Cassiodorus is an unusually complex author and his texts deserve sophisticated readings; and I think that the position that Cassiodorus actually anticipates modern conservation theory deserves a little more nuance.
18It is above all essential to bear in mind that the Variae are carefully crafted ideological documents.18 Cassiodorus was after all a spin doctor: a government spokesman hired to put the actions and decisions of the government in the best possible light. For Cassiodorus as spokesman, the challenge was to represent the regime as a deep continuity with the Roman past, rather than a barbarian rupture. Cassiodorus does this for Theoderic in numerous ways, especially in the development of a quite novel ideal of civilitas, representing the rule of Roman law, ius civile, among a society of citizens, cives, living in cities, civitates. The concept was an innovation because previously none of these matters had been in question.19 The armed presence of Goths in Italy put all that in doubt, a doubt which Cassiodorus went to some lengths to refute: “the boast of the Goths is the defence of civility”, Gothorum laus est civilitas custodita.20 His Goths were not a threat, but the protectors of civilized values. Exactly the same arguments were placed by Procopius into the mouth of Totila’s ambassadors in his long struggle with Belisarius: the Gothic regime had protected Roman values, not threatened them (below).21 It was exactly this that many in the court of Justinian doubted, especially since the brutal execution of Boethius. When Cassiodorus talks about the conservation of buildings, it is a sensitive topic because buildings were the metonym for and embodiment of the Roman values of civilitas potentially at risk. So if Theoderic affirms, laus est temporum reparatio urbium vetustarum, it is not because he had followed a heritage management course, but because it was essential to represent himself as the Goth who protected the Roman past.
19The consequence is that in reading any of the Variae, some nuance is required in distinguishing the substance of a decision from its presentation. Cassiodorus is anxious to present Theoderic in the best of lights, but of course Theoderic is equally anxious to be so presented, and that is why he employed Cassiodorus, first as his quaestor then his Magister Officiorum, and finally as Praefectus Praetorio, as the ideal person to find the right colours in which to present him. I doubt in this sense whether we can draw a line between Cassiodorus’ ideal of civilitas and the conscious intention of the Gothic king.
20There is a complication. The Variae stretch until 538, and the reigns of Theoderic’s successors Athalaric, Theodahad and Witigis. Belisarius finally defeated Witigis at Ravenna in 540, and Cassiodorus was surely one of the members of Witigis’ court who were taken off to Constantinople (though treated with surprising respect). Mommsen thought that the Variae were put together between 538 and the defeat of Witigis; but as Bjornlie has controversially argued, this early date can be questioned.22 It is possible to suppose that the Variae were put together in exile in Constantinople, and that they served a purpose as an apology for the Gothic regime and for the role of Roman collaborators like Cassiodorus. If this is right, the letters serve a doubly persuasive purpose: both at the time of original writing to present the regime in the best light, and afterwards, and more apologetically, to defend its record. Bjornlie goes on to argue that the letters were heavily rewritten and sometimes simply invented to serve this new apologetic purpose. Cassiodorus is candid in admitting that he edited and polished the letters. But to be honest, it makes little difference for our purpose whether the audience was the Roman elite under Gothic rule or the Byzantine elite under Justinian: in both cases, the message that Theoderic cared about preserving the past was the vital one to get across.
The politics of Gothic conservation
21For all these reasons, it is prudent to treat Cassiodorus’ assertions of the priority given to conserving past buildings with more than a touch of scepticism. The Theoderic we know from surviving buildings is of course the Theoderic of Ravenna, from Sant’Apollinare to the Arian baptistery to his massive tomb. He built in an idiom that continued seamlessly from the house of Theodosius, and which Justinian subsequently had no difficulty in making his own. But works of conservation are in their nature harder to document. Archaeological evidence for repairs is frustratingly hard to pin down, and the first step is to look at what the letters actually document.23
22The letter to the city council of Estuni (above) illustrates nicely the potential gap between honeyed words and action. The sentiment that their king preferred to protect old buildings than erect new ones must have been reassuring, and in line with previous imperial tradition.24 But gradually it emerges that while the erection of new buildings would benefit the palace at Ravenna, their own historic buildings were little more than a quarry. The king has heard that in their municipium, columns and stones lie around unused. It is the fault of old age – vetustatis invidia demolitos. But despite his conservationist credentials, the only benefit the king offers them is to remove the embarrassment of useless ruins. Better, he claims, to let them enjoy a sort of resurrection in the adornment of a new building than put on show the grief of the memory of past centuries. Whereas a modern conservationist treasures his ruins precisely because of the nostalgic memory they preserve, for Theoderic they demand removal. He adds a small proviso: if it is true what they say that they no longer contribute to public embellishment, then they should have the aforesaid columns and marble slabs transported to Ravenna. There a sort of miracle of restoration can take place: what was dark with neglect can now recover the quality of their ancient shine. So, despite the fact that these unspecified pieces of marble are treated as spoils for an entirely new construction in an entirely different location, the leading citizens of Estuni are expected to rejoice in their loss of their heritage (for what else does memoria praecedentium saeculorum mean?)
23There is a good reason for Cassiodorus representing what might on the face of it appear an act of spoliation as both justified and in line with good conservationist credentials. It was illegal to rob old buildings for recovery of building materials (and Theoderic made much of the fact that he respected the laws of what he called his predecessors, the previous principes, a word that cleverly elides the gap between an imperator and a rex). So the emperors Leo and Majorian in 458 issue an edict to the Praefectus Urbis remonstrating against the practice of removing building material from ancient buildings with the excuse that the materials are needed for public works. Judges are taking bribes from private individuals to help themselves to public property. The emperors ban any further damage to temples and buildings founded by the ancients, and impose steep fines on any judge who permits it, and even issue dire threats against any of their staff who obey orders to facilitate such spoliation: their will have their hands mutilated.
Emperors Leo and Majorian Augustuses to Aemilianus, Prefect of the City. While We rule the state, it is Our will to correct the practice whose commission we have long detested, whereby the appearance of the venerable city is marred. Indeed, it is manifest that public buildings, in which the adornment of the entire city consists are being destroyed everywhere by the punishable recommendation of the office of the prefect of the City. While it is pretended that the stones are necessary for public works, the beautiful structures of ancient buildings are being scattered, and in order that something small may be repaired, great things are being destroyed.25
24This insistence on the protection of public buildings runs through imperial legislation from Claudius onwards.
25Of course, protecting the monuments of Rome is one thing; those of an obscure corner of Italy like Estuni could be more easily sacrificed. Yet we meet exactly the same double-speak for Rome. Three letters later he is writing to the patrician Festus ordering him to convey the marbles from the domus Pinciana to Ravenna, and that without delay26. Now the domus Pinciana was an imperial palace and as such belonged to the king; the law did not forbid him recycling his own property.27 However, the domus Pinciana was scarcely abandoned and neglected: it could serve as Belisarius’ base a few years later during the siege of Rome in 536/7.28 Theoderic’s priority was Ravenna, and that overrode any other consideration. But the point is that Cassiodorus could represent it as something positive: nobilissimi civis est patriae suae augmenta cogitare, “it is the mark of the noblest citizen to think of the improvement of his patria”, Festus is reassured. Yet patria by now tends to mean “home city”, rather than the common patria of the Roman state. Somehow the act of stripping marble cladding from one of the principal palaces of Rome is glossed as civic patriotism.
26One neat example of the danger of over-interpreting Cassiodorus is his letter on the need to repair the bronze elephants on the via Sacra (Var. 10.30). Written on behalf of Theodahad (king from 534 to 536) addressed to the Praefectus Urbis, it urges this official to see to the restoration of the great bronze elephants which are tottering and threatening total ruin. He is to repair the cracks with iron hooks and support their sagging bellies with masonry. In this, Pergoli Campanelli sees a remarkable example of modern best conservation practice:
Impressionante, per la sua anacronistica modernità, il tipo di intervento proposto: Teodato, infatti, o sarebbe meglio dire Cassiodoro, prescrive con molta competenza la realizzazione di opere che non intervengano minimamente sulle parti autentiche, evitando ogni reintegrazione arbitraria: molto più semplicemente propone di supportare le statue con sostegni laterizi («salvum quoque demissam subdito pariete corroboraret») e di consolidare le membra lesionate con ganci in ferro («uncis ferreis hiantia membra solidando»). Il rispetto dell’autenticità dell’opera è assoluto.29
27But the text of the letter gives little comfort to the idea that he is concerned with authenticity, rather than offering a low-cost practical solution. The great bulk of the letter is occupied with an excursus on the elephant, and a play on the relationship between the animal in nature and its bronze representation. Elephants live a thousand years (Cassiodorus indulges in conscious exaggeration, since his sources spoke of 200 or 300), so equal longevity must be assured for the statues. Elephants have remarkable legs, without joints: this means that they cannot kneel, but the legs provide enormously strong support to the heavy bodies, and for that reason are dependent on others to restore them to their feet: in nature as in bronzework, he suggests, it is a challenge to keep them standing. Indeed, they are like buildings:
ibi tanta mole prostrati sunt, ut tunc magis metallicos possis credere, cum se vivos aspicias non movere. iacent superstites similitudine cadaverum: mortuos putes, quos vivos esse non dubites et more cadentium fabricarum, nesciunt locum sponte relinquere, quem suis membris potuerint occupare.
There they lie with such a mass that you might rather think them to be made of metal, when you see that though living they do not move themselves. They survive lying like corpses: you think them dead though you have no doubt they are alive, and like fallen buildings they cannot by themselves leave the space thay occupy with their limbs. (Variae, 10, 30, 2).
28It is plausible enough to see Cassiodorus’ elephants as metaphors for the buildings of Rome itself: the City Prefect is staving off threatened collapse.30 Here as elsewhere in the Variae, Cassiodorus draws for lessons in natural history on Ambrose’s Hexameron, a reflection on the six days of creation heavily indebted to the work of the same title by Basil of Caesarea.31 Ambrose is the source of the misperception that elephants cannot bend their legs, which he says are like solid columns. He is also the source of the comparison of elephants to buildings:
itaque ut immensa aedificia ita helefanti fundamentis validioribus sustinentur; alioquin imparibus fulti pedibus intra brevem laberentur aetatem.
And so just as with immense buildings, so elephants are supported by stronger foundations, for otherwise propped on inadequate footings they would totter within a short lifespan.32
29That Cassiodorus saw the problems of propping up the crumbling edifice of Rome is plausible enough, and chose to make the bronze elephants on the via Sacra a symbol of that impending ruin can be read from the text. That he was concerned with the authenticity of the restoration is more visible to the eye of the contemporary conservationist.
30To be fair to Theoderic and Cassiodorus, there was a real problem. All buildings decay over time without maintenance, the more so in a period like the fifth century when Italy was repeatedly invaded and Rome repeatedly sacked. Whatever the noble ideals offered by Leo and Majorian, it was inescapable that buildings which no longer served a social function, especially temples and amphitheatres, should suffer neglect and dilapidation. So one sensible approach was to prioritise: use building material from unused buildings to repair essential ones. Thus the city council of Catania are urged to repair their walls, and given permission to do so to use stones from their amphitheatre, saxa…longa vetustate collapsa, “stones collapsed from long antiquity”.33 In fact, the priority is not to conserve old buildings as such, but to enhance the aesthetic appearance and utility of the city. The collapsed amphitheatre constitutes turpes ruinas, a public embarrassment.
31It was not just temples and amphitheatres which fell into disuse. The patrician Paulinus is permitted to take over some warehouses, horrea, which have decayed, longi temporis vetustate destructa, “destroyed by the antiquity of protracted time”, to construct a private building for himself. Here is a classic case of a private citizen taking over public property for his own benefit (the new building will belong to him and his descendants). Earlier imperial constitutions had explicitly banned private citizens from encroaching on imperial warehouses.34 But this is represented as a benefit to the state: confert magis rei publicae munus quisquis diruta maluerit suscipere reparanda, “anyone who chooses to undertake the repair of ruins makes a contribution to the state”. An act of private appropriation of public property, long forbidden by the emperor, is represented as a public-spirited act of restoration (diruta…reparanda), justified by the removal of the appearance of ruin (inter tot decora moenium deformis appareat ruina saxorum,”among so many graceful buildings, the ruin of materials gives an ugly appearance”).35 This is how Theoderic restores Rome to its proper splendour.
Ancient and modern in Cassiodorus
32Professions of respect for antiquity and its monuments can function in Cassiodorus’ rhetoric as a cover for distribution of state property to rich favourites, or fairly shameless spoliation of old buildings to the benefit of the monumentalisation of Ravenna. In one case, however, genuine restoration seems to be at stake. An elaborate and rhetorically complex letter to Symmachus urges on him the merits of the restoration of the theatre of Pompey and offers a subvention to cover the costs from Theoderic’s private purse (de nostro cubiculo).36 At the time of sending, this letter, like the letters to Boethius, clearly forms part of the strategy of recruiting and consolidating the support of the ancient Roman nobility for the Gothic regime. Who better than a noble with such lineage to restore one of the oldest standing monuments of Rome, and who better than the descendant of the letter pleading for the altar of Victory in the senate to restore a monument which in many ways symbolised the heart of pagan culture, decried by Tertullian as arx omnium turpitudinum37. Cassiodorus surely knew Tertullian’s de Spectaculis, but this did not deter him from a long and learned excursus on the origin of the theatre, and the character of the pantomime, now imitating Hercules and now Venus.
33This allows him to present Symmachus as a supreme example of Theoderic’s conservation principles. Symmachus by his previous private buildings in suburbanis has shown himself to be antiquorum diligentissimus imitator, modernorum nobilissimus institutor, “the most diligent imitator of the ancients, and the noblest innovator of the moderns”. The hallmark is the combination of deep reverence for the past with tasteful creation of the modern. This contrast of modernus and antiquus/vetustus/priscus is recurrent in the Variae. Even if Cassiodorus did not invent the word modernus, he is certainly the first surviving Latin writer to apply it systematically.38 It embodies his idea of the relation between past and present. The Gothic invasion has brought about so substantial a rupture that the modern (and Gothic) can be easily distinguished from the ancient (and imperial Roman). But his whole argument is that there is no rupture, that Gothic Rome is in seamless continuity with imperial Rome, and that in the vigorous programme of new buildings, the modern is a continuity with and revival of the old. This is why despoiling old monuments to build Ravenna is not an act of vandalism, but a loving revival of the beauties of the past. Symmachus is recruited to this programme, and thanks to his consolidation work in the theatre of Pompey we may see nostris temporibus… antiquitas decentius innovata, “antiquity innovated more gracefully in our own day”.
34But by the time Cassiodorus revised this letter for publication, it could be seen in a different light. The execution of Boethius and Symmachus for supposedly treacherous contact with Constantinople were the unforgiveable crimes that made Theoderic so much harder to defend. Bjornlie has suggested that Cassiodorus cooked up this correspondence in retrospect to defend his relations with the Gothic regime.39 I do not think we need go so far as to dismiss the letters as inventions ex post facto. Of course Theoderic courted the ancient Roman nobility; Cassiodorus has simply chosen to highlight the positive side of good relations, and suppress any reference to the later public relations disaster. But it had become all the more important for Cassiodorus to underline that the Gothic court had always wished to respect the old Roman nobility.
35Procopius, who must have known Cassiodorus in his Constantinople days (what historian could resist interrogating such a well-placed source on the Gothic regime?) entirely grasped the point. He could put into the mouths of the Gothic ambassadors to Belisarius a defence that is pure Cassiodorus:
(Gothic ambassadors speak) It was in this way, then, we took over the rule of Italy, and preserved both the laws and the form of government as strictly as any earlier Roman emperors, and there is absolutely no law, either written or unwritten, introduced by Theoderic or by any of his successors to the Gothic throne.40
36Equally striking is Procopius’ eloquent picture of Roman respect for the past:
Yet of all the men we know, the Romans are far the most loyal to their city (φιλοπόλιδες), and they are zealous in protecting and preserving all their ancestral traditions, so that nothing of the ancient glory of Rome may be lost. For even though they were for a long period under barbarian sway (βεβαρβαρωμένοι), they preserved the buildings of the city and most of its glories, in so far as could the excellence of their workmanship allowed them to withstand the passsage of time and such neglect. Even now many memorials of the past remain, including the ship of Aeneas, the founder of the city, and it lies there to this day, an utterly amazing spectacle.41
37One hopes that Cassiodorus was not Procopius’ source for the description of the mythical ship of Aeneas that follows; and yet in many ways that is symbolically appropriate for what Cassiodorus and Theoderic were trying to do. The game was to convince the Romans that their regime deeply respected their past, even if the evidence they produced was not always completely credible.
Conclusion: conservation theory in political context
38Where does this leave Cassiodorus as a theorist of conservation? It seems to me that his text is indeed highly relevant to discussion of conservation practice in the past. But to turn him into an exemplar of best modern practice is pushing our luck. What seems to me more interesting is to grasp the rather different ideologies that underpinned a sixth-century Roman attitude to conservation. One of the essential features of modern conservation theory is the importance attributed to authenticity. For us the surviving fragment of the past is irreplaceable, and what distinguishes conservation from restoration is the complete respect for the authentic with interventions that are reversible and so not simply replacing it with a copy. I am not convinced that it would ever have occurred to Cassiodorus to worry about such things. You could show your respect for the past by recycling its fragments in a wholly new construction in a different location. What he cared about was to heal the potential rupture between the ancient and the modern, to show that the modern was entirely compatible with the ancient, and constituted its continuity and even rebirth. As he formulaically instructed the Palace architect, Antiqua in nitorem pristinum contineas et nova simili antiquitate producas: “Keep antiquities in their pristine splendour, and make new buildings that match antiquity”. In many ways this was a highly traditional Roman way of thinking. But the presence of Gothic kings had indeed changed everything. The ‘modern’ took a new complexion, not of simple continuity, but of paradoxically asserted continuity.
Bibliographie
Primary sources
Cassiodorus, Variae = Cassiodori Senatoris Variae, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: auctores antiquissimi 12, recensuit Th. Mommsen, Berlin, Weidmannos, 1894.
Cassiodoro Varie = A. Giardina et al. (eds), Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro Senatore, Varie, Rome, L’Erma di Bretschneider, vol. II (2014), vol. III (2015), vol. IV (2016), vol. V (2015); vol. I and VI (forthcoming).
Dictionnaire raisonné = E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné d’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris, B. Bance, 1865.
Secondary sources
Amory 1997 = P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554, Cambridge, 1997.
Arnold 2014 = J.J. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration, Cambridge, 2014.
Arnold et al. 2016 = J.J. Arnold, M.S. Bjornlie, K. Sessa (eds), A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, Leiden-Boston, 2016.
Barnish 1992 = S. Barnish, Cassiodorus. Variae, Liverpool, 1992.
Bjornlie 2019 = M.S. Bjornlie, Cassiodorus, the Variae: the Complete Translation, Berkeley, 2019.
Bjornlie 2013 = M.S. Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: a Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527-554, Cambridge, 2013.
Costambeys 2016 = M. Costambeys, The legacy of Theoderic, in Journal of Roman Studies, 106, 2016, p. 249-263.
Dubouloz 2006 = Julien Dubouloz, Acception et défense des loca publica dans les Variae de Cassiodore. Un point de vue juridique sur les cités d’Italie au VIe siècle, in M. Ghilardi, J.-Ch. Goddard, P. Porena (eds), Les cités de l’Italie tardo-antique (IVe-VIe siècle). Institutions, économie, société, culture et religion. Actes du colloque de l’École française de Rome, 11-13 mars 2004, Rome, 2006 (Collection de l’École française de Rome, 369), p. 53-74.
Fauvinet-Ranson 2002 = V. Fauvinet-Ranson, Les valeurs idéologiques de la parure monumentale des cités en Italie chez Cassiodore, in H. Inglebert (eds), Idéologies et valeurs civiques dans le monde romain. Hommage à Claude Lepelley, Nanterre, 2002, p. 231-240.
Fauvinet-Ranson 2006 = V. Fauvinet-Ranson, Decor Civitatis, Decor Italiae. Monuments, travaux publics et spectacles au VIe siècle d’après les Variae de Cassiodore, Bari, 2006.
Giardina 2006 = A. Giardina, Cassiodoro politico, Rome, 2006.
Janvier 1969 = Y. Janvier, La législation du Bas-Empire romain sur les édifices publics, Aix-en-Provence, 1969.
Jokilehto 1990 = J. Jokilehto, Definition of cultural heritage. References to documents in history, in ICCROM Working Group “Heritage and Society,”, January 4-8, 1990.
Laccetti 2014 = D. Laccetti, Roma immaginaria. Sulle ceneri del più grande impero l’utopia di un nuovo Stato. Le Variae e l’Italia di Teoderico tra rimpianto e speranza, Rome, 2014.
Lafferty 2013 = S.D.W. Lafferty, Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great: A Study of the Edictum Theoderici, Cambridge, 2013.
La Rocca 1993 = C. La Rocca, Una prudente maschera ‘antiqua’. La politica edilizia di Teoderico, in Teoderico il Grande e i Goti d’Italia, Spoleto, 1993, p. 451-515.
La Rocca 2014 = C. La Rocca, Mores tuos fabricatae loquuntur: building activity and the rhetoric of power in Ostrogothic Italy, in The Hoskins Society Journal, 26, 2014, p. 1-13.
Marazzi 2016 = F. Marazzi, Ostrogothic cities, in Arnold et al. 2016, p. 98-120.
Moorhead 1992 = J. Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy, Oxford, 1992.
Moorhead 2006 = J. Moorhead, The word modernus, in Latomus, 65, 2006, p. 425-433.
Pergoli Campanelli 2013 = A. Pergoli Campanelli, Cassiodoro alle origini dell’idea di restauro, Trevi, 2013.
Saitta 1993 = B. Saitta, La Civilitas di Teodorico: rigore amministrativo, “tolleranza” religiosa e recupero dell’antico nell’Italia ostrogota, Rome, 1993.
Scivoletto 2000 = N. Scivoletto, Cassiodoro e la retorica della città, in Filologia e cultura latina, Naples, 2000, p. 325-344.
Siwicki 2020 = C. Siwicki, Architectural restoration and heritage in imperial Rome, Oxford, 2020.
Tabata 2009 = K. Tabata, Città dell’Italia nel VI secolo d.C., Rome, 2009 (Memorie Accademia nazionale Lincei, ser. IX, XXIII).
Thomas 1998 = Y. Thomas, Les ornements, la cité, le patrimoine, in C. Auvray-Assayas (ed.), Images romaines. Actes de la table ronde organisée à l’ENS (24-26/10/1996), Paris, 1998, p. 263-284.
Wallace-Hadrill 1982 = A. Wallace-Hadrill, Civilis princeps: between citizen and king, in Journal of Roman Studies, 72, 1982, p. 32-48.
Wallace-Hadrill forthcoming = A. Wallace-Hadrill, The cities of Cassiodorus: the resilience of urban values, in J. Martínez Jiménez, S. Ottewill-Soulsby (eds), Remembering the Ancient City, forthcoming.
Notes de bas de page
1Dictionnaire raisonné s.v. Restauration, vol. V, p. 14.
2Jokilehto 1990, p. 9.
3On Ostrogothic Italy in general, see Moorhead 1992; Amory 1997; Arnold 2014; Lafferty 2013; Bjornlie 2013; Arnold et al. 2016. Recent work on Ostrogothic Italy is incisively reviewed by Costambeys 2016, p. 249-63.
4See especially Fauvinet-Ranson 2002 and 2006; further Dubouloz 2006, Tabata 2009, Marazzi 2016.
5Bjornlie 2019; Barnish 1992.
6Cassiodoro Varie. At time of writing this paper, the first introductory volume is still anxiously awaited.
7Variae, 6, 5.
8Variae, 10, 4, 6 and 11, 1, 6-7.
9Variae, 5, 40, 5 and 8, 21, 6-7.
10In this I am unwilling to follow some of the argument of Bjornlie 2013.
11English translations are my own (unless otherwise indicated), though I have benefitted from consulting both Bjornlie and Giardina et al.
12See Cassiodoro Varie, vol. II, p. 216: Mommsen identified it as Sestinum (Sestino), other candidates include Histonium (Vasto).
13Pergoli Campanelli 2013. I have explored Cassiodorus’ thought on the city in Wallace-Hadrill forthcoming.
14Pergoli Campanelli 2013, p. 53.
15Pergoli Campanelli 2013, p. 63.
16See Pergoli Campanelli 2013, p. 66, identifying the vocabulary as follows: “la salvaguardia, la conservazione (custodire), il restauro conservativo (servare, conservare), il restauro di ripristino (instaurare, in statum pristinum revocare, reficere), il consolidamento e i rinforzi strutturali (solidare, continere, roborare, corrobarare), le riparazioni (reparare); addiritura riconosce quelle operazioni distinte dal restauro, quali le ricostruzioni (reconstruere), le nuove costruzioni (construere) e le innovazioni (innovare)”. It must be said that this mapping of Latin vocabulary onto specialised fields underestimates the fluidity of the language.
17For nuanced discussion of Roman attitudes to conservation by a Roman historian, see Siwicki 2020.
18This is a principal theme of Bjornlie 2013.
19On civilitas, see Scivoletto 2000; Saitta 1993; Amory 1997, p. 116-118; Giardina 2006, p. 35-39; Bjornlie 2013, p. 251-253; Arnold 2014, p. 126-130; Laccetti 2014, p. 61-71; on the value in the early empire, Wallace-Hadrill 1992.
20Variae 9.14.8
21See the paper of M. Emion, in this volume for close discussion of Procopius’ account.
22Bjornlie 2013, p. 28-33.
23For discussion of Theoderic’s building programme, see Fauvinet-Ranson 2006, p. 197-227; also Fauvinet-Ranson 2002, Tabata 2009, Marazzi 2016. The political importance of Theoderic’s building activity is discussed by Saitta 1993, 103-38. For a full discussion of Theoderic’s buildings, La Rocca 2014, p. 1-13; further, Bjornlie 2013, p. 234-53; Lafferty 2013, p. 206-39; Arnold 2014, p. 201-30.
24See Thomas 1998.
25Cited in the translation of C. Pharr. Majorian, Nov., 4: Impp. Leo et Maiorianus aa. Aemiliano praefecto urbi. Nobis rem publicam moderantibus volumus emendari, quod iam dudum ad decolorandam urbis venerabilis faciem detestabamur admitti. Aedes si quidem publicas, in quibus omnis Romanae civitatis consistit ornatus, passim dirui plectenda urbani officii suggestione manifestum est. Dum necessaria publico operi saxa finguntur, antiquarum aedium dissipatur speciosa constructio et ut parvum aliquid reparetur, magna diruuntur; see Janvier 1969.
26Variae, 3, 10.
27See the discussion of Thomas 1998.
28See Cassiodoro Varie, vol. II, p. 217.
29Pergoli Campanelli 2013, p. 80.
30So Bjornlie 2019, p. 418.
31So Cassiodoro Varie, vol. IV, p. 459. It is also points to Plin., N.H., 8, 1-11, but that has little or nothing in common with Cassiodorus.
32Hexameron, 6, 5, 34 (my translation).
33Variae, 3, 49.
34Such privatisation of horrea was explicitly forbidden in C.Th. 15, 1, 12 (Valentinian and Valens, AD 364).
35Variae, 3, 39: in ea praesertim urbe, ubi cuncta dignum est constructa relucere, ne inter tot decora moenium deformis appareat ruina saxorum.
36Variae, 4, 51. See Cassiodoro Varie, vol. II, p. 394-399 and Fauvinet-Ranson 2006, p. 135-141.
37Tertullian, de Spect., 10.
38Cf. Moorhead 2006; Moorhead 1992, p. 427-428; Giardina 2006, p. 43-44; La Rocca 2014; Cassiodoro Varie, vol. II, 202 and 394.
39See Bjornlie 2013, p. 138-144, 170-171.
40Procopius, de bello Gothico, 6, 6, 17: οὕτω τοίνυν παραλαβόντες τὴν τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀρχὴν τούς τε νόμους καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν διεσωσάμεθα τῶν πώποτε βεβασιλευκότων οὐδενὸς ἧσσον, καὶ Θευδερίχου μὲν ἢ ἄλλου ὁτουοῦν διαδεξαμένου τὸ Γότθων κράτος νόμος τὸ παράπαν οὐδεὶς οὐκ ἐν γράμμασιν, οὐκ ἄγραφός ἐστι.
41Procopius, de bello Gothico, 8, 22 Καίτοι ἀνθρώπων μάλιστα πάντων ὧν ἡμεῖς ἴσμεν φιλοπόλιδες Ῥωμαῖοι τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες, περιστέλλειν τε τὰ πάτρια πάντα καὶ διασώζεσθαι ἐν σπουδῇ ἔχουσιν, ὅπως δὴ μηδὲν ἀφανίζηται Ῥώμῃ τοῦ παλαιοῦ κόσμου. οἵ γε καὶ πολύν τινα βεβαρβαρωμένοι αἰῶνα τάς τε πόλεως διεσώσαντο οἰκοδομίας καὶ τῶν ἐγκαλλωπισμάτων τὰ πλεῖστα, ὅσα οἷόν τε ἦν χρόνῳ τε τοσούτῳ τὸ μῆκος καὶ τῷ ἀπαμελεῖσθαι δἰ ἀρετὴν τῶν πεποιημένων ἀντέχειν. ἔτι μέντοι καὶ ὅσα μνημεῖα τοῦ γένους ἐλέλειπτο ἔτι, ἐν τοῖς καὶ ἡ ναῦς Αἰνείου, τοῦ τῆς πόλεως οἰκιστοῦ, καὶ εἰς τόδε κεῖται, θέαμα παντελῶς ἄπιστον.
Auteur
Faculty of Classics, the University of Cambridge, aw479@sid.cam.ac.uk
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Le Thermalisme en Toscane à la fin du Moyen Âge
Les bains siennois de la fin du XIIIe siècle au début du XVIe siècle
Didier Boisseuil
2002
Rome et la Révolution française
La théologie politique et la politique du Saint-Siège devant la Révolution française (1789-1799)
Gérard Pelletier
2004
Sainte-Marie-Majeure
Une basilique de Rome dans l’histoire de la ville et de son église (Ve-XIIIe siècle)
Victor Saxer
2001
Offices et papauté (XIVe-XVIIe siècle)
Charges, hommes, destins
Armand Jamme et Olivier Poncet (dir.)
2005
La politique au naturel
Comportement des hommes politiques et représentations publiques en France et en Italie du XIXe au XXIe siècle
Fabrice D’Almeida
2007
La Réforme en France et en Italie
Contacts, comparaisons et contrastes
Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi et Alain Tallon (dir.)
2007
Pratiques sociales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes de l’Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge
Jacques Chiffoleau, Claude Gauvard et Andrea Zorzi (dir.)
2007
Souverain et pontife
Recherches prosopographiques sur la Curie Romaine à l’âge de la Restauration (1814-1846)
Philippe Bountry
2002