Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

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(b Rome, c 480; d c 524). Roman writer and statesman. He wrote on the mathematical disciplines (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy), logic, theology and philosophy. In De institutione musica he identified music as an all-pervading force in the universe (musica mundana) and a principle unifying the body and soul of man as well as the parts of his body (musica humana); music is also found in certain instruments (musica instrumentalis). Boethius provided a Perfect System of Greek theory with its tetrachord theory, the Pythagorean doctrine of consonances, the mathematics to rationalize musical consonances and the principles of monochord division. His treatise became the most widespread theoretical one on music in the Middle Ages.

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Boethius (Severinus) (c.475–524), philosopher and reputed martyr. A Roman of the famous gens Anicia, Boethius was orphaned early in life and was brought up by Q. Aurelius Symmachus, whose daughter he married. A scholar who devoted himself to translating Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Euclid into Latin (and generations of scholars in the early Middle Ages knew these authors only through Boethius), he also wrote theological works on the Trinity and the Incarnation. His most famous work, the Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison at the end of his life, was the most widely diffused of all and its manuscripts provide his iconography. This work was translated into numerous vernacular languages, including Old and Middle English by King Alfred and Geoffrey Chaucer respectively. Alfred interpolated some passages to make them more explicitly Christian. Dante referred to Boethius in the Paradiso.

Boethius was also a statesman. Under the Ostrogoth emperor Theodoric he and his two sons became consuls. But the emperor (an Arian) suspected a political plot involving the Eastern emperor Justin and arrested a senator and ex-consul called Albinus. Boethius quite properly defended him in court, but for this he was accused of treason, also of sacrilege or studies for impious purposes, was imprisoned and eventually executed. As a victim of blatant injustice he was regarded as a martyr and his ancient cult was confirmed by Leo XIII in 1883. His feast is still kept at Pavia, where he is buried, as well as in some churches in Rome, on 23 October.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• AA.SS. Maii VI (1739), 47–54; works in P.L., lxiii and lxiv; V. E. Watts (ed.), The Consolation of Philosophy (1969); general studies of Boethius by H. M. Barrett (1940), P. Courcelle (1967), M. Gibson (1981), H. Chadwick (1981). B.L.S., x. 157–8; Bibl. SS., iii. 218–27

The Roman logician and theologian Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480-c. 524) is best known for his influential work "The Consolation of Philosophy." He also wrote theological treatises and transmitted to the Middle Ages portions of Aristotle's writings.

Born in Rome of an ancient family, Boethius probably received schooling in Athens or possibly in Alexandria. In any case he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Greek language and the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. He undertook to translate the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin with the aim of reconciling the two philosophies. This task was never completed, but Boethius did translate Aristotle's logical works and wrote commentaries on two of them.

Boethius's most important purely philosophical work is his second and longer commentary on Porphyry's Eisagoge (Introduction) to Aristotle's Categories. Therein he discusses the status of universals in a text that was to become a classic in the late Middle Ages. Concerning universals, Porphyry had raised three questions. First, are species (for example, man), genera (for example, animal), and other universals realities or mental conceptions? Second, if they are realities, are they corporeal or incorporeal? Third, if universals are incorporeal, do they exist apart from sensibles or in union with them?

In his discussion Boethius presents Aristotle's solution on universals, as explained by Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca. A. D. 200). Briefly this solution states that species and genera are realities as well as mental conceptions. As realities, they are incorporeal and exist in union with sensible things. Accordingly, individual men exist with substantial likenesses to one another, but what they have in common does not exist in reality apart from them. On the basis of substantial likenesses, the mind conceives of the species of man. The abstract conception is a true one, and it applies to individual men, though no species exists apart from individuals.

Plato's thesis that universals are realities that are incorporeal and exist apart from sensible things is mentioned by Boethius as an alternative but not necessarily as a preferable one. Boethius's neutrality is all the more striking when we realize that he was very much a Platonist in The Consolation of Philosophy.

In 510 Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, had raised Boethius to the rank of consul. But by 523 Theodoric suspected that he was conspiring with Roman aristocrats and the Emperor in Constantiniple to overthrow him. Exactly what caused Boethius to fall out of favor with Theodoric has been the matter of some conjecture. It is known that there were Roman aristocrats interested in reuniting the Eastern and Western empires at the expense of Ostrogothic rule and that Boethius had made a contribution toward bridging the schism of East and West by writing four tracts between 512 and 522 on divisive theological issues. (In one of them, De Trinitate, Boethius made use of the Aristotelian categories of substance and relation to define the doctrine of the Trinity.) Whatever the precise details may be, Theodoric had Boethius put to death for treason in 524 or 525.

The Consolation of Philosophy was composed by Boethius during the last year of his life while he was imprisoned in Pavia. This work is a dialogue in prose and verse between the author and Philosophia, the personification of philosophy. In it Boethius maintains that happiness can be found in the most adverse of conditions. The underpinning for such an optimistic outlook is the contrast of providence and fate. A world created by a providential God contains no possibility of evil as a reality. In achieving a cosmic order, God uses the instrument of fate, which necessitates each individual occurrence. However unfortunate a fated event may seem to a person from his limited and peripheral point of view, he still has the freedom to turn his mind to a providential God at the center of things. A man will thereby rise above the apparent misery of his circumstances and find consolation.

Further Reading

Three specialized works on Boethius are Hugh Fraser Stewart, Boethius: An Essay (1891); Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture (1935); and Helen M. Barrett, Boethius: Some Aspects of His Times and Work (1940). For Boethius as a precursor of scholasticism see Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (1928; 2d ed. 1929). For the philosophical era in which Boethius lived, a monumental work is A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (1967).

Additional Sources

McInerny, Ralph M., Boethius and Aquinas, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990.

Reiss, Edmund, Boethius, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.

Stewart, H. F. (Hugh Fraser), Boethius: an essay, New York: B. Franklin, 1974.

Bōēthius (Anicius Manlius Sevērīnus Boethius) (c. AD 476–524), Latin philosopher and (Christian) theological writer, belonging to a family which had held many high offices of state in the fourth and fifth centuries. Boethius was himself consul in 510 and magister officiorum (head of the civil service) to Theodoric, the Ostrogothic ‘King’ of Italy (see GOTHS). However, in 523 Boethius was suspected of treachery, was imprisoned, and put to death in 524. He was buried at Pavia and was regarded as a Catholic martyr (because Theodoric was an Arian, i.e. a heretic) and canonized as ‘St Severinus’. His importance derives from his being the last Latin-speaking scholar of the ancient world to have a genuine mastery of Greek. After him no one in the West had firsthand acquaintance with Greek philosophy until the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth century (see TEXTS, TRANSMISSION OF ANCIENT 7).

In his early life Boethius' declared aim was to translate and write commentaries upon all the writings of Aristotle and Plato in order to construct a harmony out of the two philosophies. This huge task was never completed, but his translations of and commentaries on Aristotle's logical works and Porphyry's Introduction (Isagogē) to Aristotle as well as some logical works of his own played a highly influential role in medieval education and ensured that knowledge of Aristotle was never totally extinguished in the western world. His handbooks of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy (the quadrivium) were also much used in the medieval schools (the two former books survive). There also survive several Christian treatises, on the doctrine of the Trinity and on the Incarnation. His literary fame depends on the enormously influential book he wrote in prison, the Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue between himself and a personified Lady Philosophy. It consists of five books in prose interspersed with thirty-nine short poems in thirteen different (and metrically accurate) metres in the style of Menippean satire (see MENIPPUS). Philosophy, who ousts the Muses, comes to console the prisoner; she reminds him of the sufferings of other thinkers such as Socrates, and invites him to lay bare his troubles. Boethius describes the ingratitude with which his integrity has been met, and laments the triumph of injustice. Philosophy reminds him of the mutability of fortune and the vanity of those things which the world esteems good. The only real good is God. Boethius asks how, under a beneficent God, evil can exist or pass unpunished (book 4), and is answered by a justification of divine government followed by a discussion on free will. It is a moving work, written from the heart, and it provided comfort to innumerable readers of the Middle Ages, as is shown by the hundreds of manuscripts of it which exist today, and the fact that it was translated into more European languages than any other book except the Bible. Its translators include Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. Its tone, though theistic, is largely pagan and classical and it ignores the specifically Christian consolations, owing more perhaps to Stoicism and Platonism. Compare CASSIODORUS.

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boèce Boethius) (c.480-524/6), an aristocratic Roman, served Theodoric, the Ostrogothic ruler of Italy, until he was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of disloyalty and finally executed. His Latin translations of most of Aristotle's logical works became standard, and through his commentaries and textbooks he transmitted to medieval readers the late antique Greek logical tradition. His five short theological treatises provided medieval scholars with an example of how Aristotelian logic could be applied to Christian doctrine. Even more influential was his De consolatione Philosophiae, written in prison. In an imaginary dialogue, with verse interludes, a personification of Philosophy reasons the character Boethius out of initial despair at his unjust condemnation: honour, fame, riches, power, and pleasure are all transitory goods of fortune; only the Highest Good, on which all these depend, is stable; and it is identified with God. De consolatione was commented on frequently, from the 9th c. to the 14th. It influenced both Latin authors (for instance, Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille), and vernacular writers, such as Jean de Meun (who translated the work into French) and, outside France, Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer.

[John Marenbon]

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (c. 475/480-525/6) Roman philosopher and theologian. Born in Rome of an aristocratic family, the son of a consul (and father of two more), Boethius served as consul and the principal minister for Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who ruled Italy from 493 to 526. However, he fell out of favour, was exiled and imprisoned at Pavia, and executed a year later. It was while he was in prison that he wrote his masterpiece, De Consolatione Philosophiae (On the Consolations of Philosophy), but before that he had written extensively on mathematics, science, logic, and theology. His translations included Aristotle's Categories, Prior Ana-lytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations, whilst his translation of Porphyry's Introduction (Isagoge) to the Categories of Aristotle, together with his own commentaries, became the standard textbook for medieval logic, and initiated the enduring medieval controversy over the nature of universals. His own solution to the problem as it is raised by Porphyry, that universals ‘subsist in sensible things, but they are understood apart from body’, is Aristotelian, although there is also evidence that he inclined towards a more robust Platonism.

The Consolations of Philosophy, one of the most influential books of the Middle Ages, is a dialogue between Boethius, who writes in prose, and a personified Philosophy, who answers in verse. It divides into discussions of the fundamental purpose of the universe, the unreliability of fortune and the false promise of many ways of trying to achieve happiness, the goodness of God, and the compatibility of human freedom with his foreknowledge. This last leads Boethius to investigate the nature of time and the nature of God. The work is not, however, Christian in spirit, but more concerned with God as an abstract or Platonic idea: Boethius inclines to a kind of pantheism in which those who are happy or blessed participate in God. Its classical calm and freedom from sectarianism and superstition, coupled with the circumstances of its composition, give the Consolations an unmistakable moral authority.

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Roman politician born c.ad 480. He became senator and consul during the time of Theodoric the Great but was suspected of treason and imprisoned. During his time in prison he wrote his well-known work: On the consolation of philosophy. Executed in c.ad 524.

Boethius (bōē'thēəs), Boetius (bōē'shəs), or Boece (bōēs') (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius), c.475-525, Roman philosopher and statesman. An honored figure in the public life of Rome, where he was consul in 510, he became the able minister of the Emperor Theodoric. Late in Theodoric's reign false charges of treason were brought against Boethius; after imprisonment in Pavia, he was sentenced without trial and put to death. While in prison he wrote his greatest work, De consolatione philosophiae (tr. The Consolation of Philosophy). His treatise on ancient music, De musica, was for a thousand years the unquestioned authority on music in the West. One of the last ancient Neoplatonists, Boethius translated some of the writings of Aristotle and made commentaries on them. His works served to transmit Greek philosophy to the early centuries of the Middle Ages.

Bibliography

See H. F. Stewart, Boethius (1891); H. Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (1981); E. Reiss, Boethius (1982).