Editing Scriptorium (section)

===Cassiodorus' ''Institutes''===
Although it is not a monastic rule as such, [[Cassiodorus]] did write his ''Institutes'' as a teaching guide for the monks at Vivarium, the monastery he founded on his family's land in southern Italy. A classically educated Roman convert, Cassiodorus wrote extensively on scribal practices. He cautions over-zealous scribes to check their copies against ancient, trustworthy [[exemplar (manuscript)|exemplars]] and to take care not to change the inspired words of scripture because of grammatical or stylistic concerns. He declared "every work of the Lord written by the scribe is a wound inflicted on Satan", for "by reading the Divine Scripture he wholesomely instructs his own mind and by copying the precepts of the Lord he spreads them far and wide".<ref>Cassiodorus, Institutes, I, xxx</ref> It is important to note that Cassiodorus did include the classical texts of ancient Rome and Greece in the monastic library. This was probably because of his upbringing, but was, nonetheless, unusual for a monastery of the time. When his monks copied these texts, Cassiodorus encouraged them to amend texts for both grammar and style.<ref>James O. O'Donnell, ''Cassiodorus,'' University of Californian Press, 1979. Postprint online (1995), [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/cassbook/chap6.html Upenn.edu], accessed 2 May 2007.</ref>