Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, born probably in the 470's AD, died 524, has been the subject of great controversy from his lifetime to the present: Does he belong to late antiquity or to the Medieval period? Was he a Christian or a pagan? Was he guilty of plotting to overthrow Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic King of Italy, under whose regime he had risen to the rank of consul? Did he and other descendants of ancient Roman aristocracy wish to re-instate a non-Christian Roman Empire or Republic? Or were they simply cold toward the Christian faith, drawing no political consequences from this, and was this coldness enough to condemn Boethius and several of his friends? 

 

There is yet another conjecture: was Boethius conspiring with the Orthodox Byzantine Emperor Justinian to overthrow the Arian Theodoric and re-unite the entire Empire, from Britain to the Euphrates?

Theodoric apparently considered Boethius to be guilty of something, and had him imprisoned and executed. Perhaps Boethius really was conspiring against Theodoric. Or perhaps he was under suspicion for no other cause than his familial relations to the most prominent pagan holdouts of late 4th century and early 5th Rome. We really don't know why Boethius was imprisoned and executed.

While awaiting his execution, Boethius wrote De consolatione philosophiae, The Consolation of Philosophy. For all of the controversy surrounding Boethius in other regards, the high regard in which this last work of Boethous' has been held for nearly 1500 years seems remarkably unanimous. It was very widely read in the Middle Ages, and has not yet ceased to be widely read.

In the book, a man in prison laments his misfortunes, and is visited by a beautiful women who embodies philosophy. The man speaks in prose, and philosophy answers in beautiful verse, and convinces the man that the pursuit of wisdom is always an occasion for great joy and perfect comfort, no matter what happens in the physical realm, which doesn't matter much compared to the eternal and perfect realm of the mind.

This is Platonic philosophy, written so beautifully that one need not be the slightest be Platonically inclined in order to be swept up in it.

Among the most prestigious of the many translations of The Consolation of Philosophy, Alfred the Great (known until recently as the King of England) translated it into Angloe Saxon, Chaucer and Elizabeth I into English, Jean de Meun into French, Nottker into German, and Varchi and several other Renaissance humanists into Italian.

Boethius reminds me of Spinoza and Jesus in being so well-liked by all that almost every party -- theist, atheist, Christian, pagan, conservative, socialist, etc, etc -- wants to claim him as one of their own. I'm not free of this temptation myself, although I am trying not to let my emotions overcome what little good sense I possess. There are some contemporary scholars who seem convinced that Boethius was a Christian. With no offense meant to them, I have seen nothing which convinces me of this. Works of Christian theology which have been included in collection of Boethius' works have been shown to be spurious -- again, some would disagree -- and The Consolation of Theology, which has started this and a few other controversies, shows a very conspicuous absence of the name of Jesus and of anything else which is Christian. 

It's a pity that very little of Boethius' other writings has survived: some works on  music and arithmetic. His translations of and commentaries on Aristotle, Plato and Porphory might have shed great light on his own religion or lack of it. Perhaps that's why they haven't survived. PS: Thanks to qed1 at Reddit for pointing out that I was wrong, and that translations and commentaries by Boethius on Aristotle and Porphery have survived. See, for example, Migne, vol 64, online all over the place. Maybe after I've read more, the chances will improve that I will know what I'm talking about.