Cassiodorus must have possessed very exceptional adaptability of character, not to say elasticity of conscience, to be able, during a period extending over nearly half a century, to retain the favour of so many of the successive rulers of Italy and apparently to make his services necessary to each one of them. It is certain, however, that Italy benefited largely by the fact that through the various contests and changes of monarchs, it had been possible to preserve a certain continuity of executive policy and of administrative methods. The further fact that the “perpetual” or at least the continuing minister was at once a Greek and a Roman, and not only a statesman but a scholar, and that he had succeeded in preserving through all the devastations of civil wars and of foreign invasions a great collection of classic books and a persistent (even though restricted) interest in classic literature, exercised an enormous influence upon the culture of Europe for centuries to come. The career of Cassiodorus had, as we have seen, been varied and honourable. It was, however, his exceptional fortune to be able to render the most important and the most distinctive service of his life after his life’s work had apparently been completed. Shortly after his withdrawal to Bruttii, and when, as said, he was already more than sixty years old, he retired to his monastery, Vivaria, and during the thirty-six years of activity that remained for him, he not only completed a number of important literary productions of his own, but he organised the literary work of the monastery _scriptorium_, which served as a model for that of Monte Cassino, and, through Monte Cassino, for the long series of Benedictine monasteries that came into existence throughout Europe. It was the hand of Cassiodorus which gave the literary impetus to the Benedictine Order, and it was from his magnificent collection of manuscripts, rescued from the ruins of the libraries of Italy, that was supplied material for the pens of thousands of monastic scribes. After his retirement to Bruttii, Cassiodorus founded a second monastery, known as Mons Castellius, the work of which was planned for a more austere class of hermits than those who had associated themselves together at Vivaria. Of both monasteries he retained the practical control, and, according to Trithemius (whose opinion is accepted by Montalembert) of Vivaria he became abbot.[13] Hodgkin, while himself citing the extract from Trithemius, thinks it possible that Cassiodorus never formally became abbot, but says that the direction and supervision of the work of the two monasteries rested in any case in his hands.[14]