Little is known with certainty about the details of the life of Dionysius Exiguus (c. 465–c. 545 CE). His own writings, however, and one effusive chapter of Cassiodorus’ Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum (Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning) provide a basic framework. Dionysius was a Scythian by birth, Cassiodorus says, but was nevertheless wholly Roman by custom (Scytha natione sed moribus omnino Romanus; Cassio. Inst. 1.23.2). While some scholarship suggests Dionysius may have been ethnically Gothic (Goth…