But Benedict was not the only leader, though he was the greatest, in the monastic revival of the sixth century. With another great name his work may be placed to some extent in contrast. [Sidenote: Scholarship and learning.] S. Benedict was no advocate of exclusively ecclesiastical study. He adapted the ancient literatures to the purposes of Christian education. It is true that the main subjects of study for his monks were the Holy Scriptures, and the chief object the edification of the individual by meditation and of the people by preaching; but the monks learnt to write verse correctly and prose in what had claims to be considered a style. Yet what he himself did in that direction was little indeed. Perhaps the most that can be said is that he left the way open to his successors. And of these the greatest was Cassiodorus. [Sidenote: Cassiodorus.] Cassiodorus, the statesman, the orthodox adviser and friend of the Arian Theodoric, lived to become a Christian teacher and a monk. The friend of Pope Agapetus, he endeavoured with his sanction in 535 to set up a school in Rome which should give to Christians "a liberal education." The pope's death, a year later, prevented the scheme being carried out. But a few years later, in the monastery of Vivarium near Squillace, he set himself to found a religious house which should preserve the ancient culture. Based on a sound knowledge of grammar, on a collation and correction of texts, on a study of ancient models in prose and verse, he would raise an education through "the arts and disciplines of liberal letters," for, he said, "by the study of secular literature our minds are trained to understand the Scriptures {39} themselves." That was the supreme end at Squillace, as it was at Monte Cassino; and though Cassiodorus looked at letters differently from Benedict, his work, too, was important in founding a tradition for Italian monasticism. [Sidenote: Weakness of the papacy under Pelagius, 555-60.] While monasticism was transforming Italy and placing Catholicism on a firm basis in the Western lands of the Empire, the power of the papal see, when Rome was reconquered by the imperial forces from Constantinople, seemed to sink to the lowest depths. The papacy under Vigilius (537-55) and Pelagius (555-60) was the servant of the Byzantine Caesars. The history of the controversies in which each pope was engaged, the scandal of their elections, there is no need to relate here. Suffice it to say that the decisions of the Fifth General Council were in no way the work of either, but were eventually accepted by both. The self-contradictions of Vigilius are pitiable; and the acceptance of Pelagius by the Romans was only won by his rejecting a formal statement of his predecessor.