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  1. Home
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  3. Politics and Tradition Between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople
  • Cited by 9
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2012
Print publication year:
2012
Online ISBN:
9781139236171
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139236171
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies, British History 1066-1450, Area Studies, History, European Studies, European History 450-1000
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series (89)
Information

Book description

The Variae of Cassiodorus have long been valued as an epistolary collection offering a window into political and cultural life in a so-called barbarian successor state in sixth-century Italy. However, this study is the first to treat them as more than an assemblage of individual case studies and to analyse the collection's wider historical context. M. Shane Bjornlie highlights the insights the Variae provide into early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs and the influence of the political and military turbulence of Justinian's reconquest of Italy and of political and cultural exchanges between Italy and Constantinople. The book also explores how Cassiodorus revised, updated and assembled the Variae for publication and what this reveals about his motives for publishing an epistolary record and for his own political life at a crucial period of transformation for the Roman world.

Reviews

'M. Shane Bjornlie explores with a depth of analysis unparalleled in previous studies of Cassiodorus … in his most original contribution, [he] argues that the Variae cannot be understood apart from the themes of political discourse then current in Constantinople, where oblique criticisms of Justinian’s autocratic style of rule filled the air. By treating the Variae as a sophisticated literary enterprise written to salvage the tenuous worth of northern Italian palatines during the regime change heralded by the Gothic Wars of Justinian, Bjornlie provides us with new insights both into the rhetorical purpose of this well-known text and into the polemical context that informed its content.'

Source: Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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