BOETHIUS

BOETHIUS (c. 475–c. 525), more fully, Anicius Manlius (Torquatus) Severinus Boethius, late Roman philosopher, theologian, and statesman. Because of the paucity of sources concerning Boethius's life, no more than the most shadowy biographical sketch is possible. A member of one of the great Roman families, Boethius was almost certainly born at Rome. The Rome in which he lived had lost much of its importance—imperial control had given way to the reign of the barbarian king Odoacer about the time of his birth—but the prestige of the Anician family remained intact, as shown by the consulship of Boethius's father in 487. Upon completing his schooling, which he presumably received at Rome, Boethius continued his education by studying philosophy, probably at Alexandria, but possibly in his native city. Of his public life, it is known only that he served as consul in 510 and that, about 523, he became master of offices, one of the highest civil officials in the court of the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric. While master of offices, Boethius was implicated in a treasonable conspiracy with the Eastern emperor, which apparently centered upon a plot to overthrow Theodoric. Although Boethius resolutely maintained his innocence, he was imprisoned. During his imprisonment he wrote On the Consolation of Philosophy, his most famous work, which he completed only shortly before his execution.

Much more important than his public career, which was not unusual for a person of his standing, was his literary career. In one of his early works, he described his projected program of philosophical writings: in a world in which the Latin West was rapidly losing its knowledge of Greek, Boethius wished to translate into Latin all the works of Plato and Aristotle and to show, through a series of commentaries on these works, that there was no essential conflict between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. He did not realize this plan in its entirety, but he did translate a number of the logical works of Aristotle (the so-called Organon ) and wrote (or possibly only translated from the Greek) several commentaries on these writings. In doing so, he rendered a very important service to the early medieval West by providing the only Latin translations of Aristotle available until the gradual introduction of the "new learning" in the late Middle Ages.

Despite his failure to translate any of the works of Plato, Boethius did provide the medieval world with one of its most important source books of Neoplatonic thought, On the Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. Cast in the form of a cosmological revelation by Lady Philosophy to the imprisoned and perplexed Boethius, the Consolation presents a highly sophisticated and systematic Neoplatonic worldview. The curious fact that Boethius, who was certainly a Christian, looked to Neoplatonism rather than to Christianity to console him is inex-plicable.

Boethius's chief creative contribution to the intellectual tradition of the West comes in his five brief Christian theological works. Although these works are highly Augustinian in their content, Boethius established his independence from Augustine in matters of terminology and method. In On the Trinity, he employed the term theology for the first time as a technical Christian term denoting the philosophical inquiry into the nature of God. Methodologically, his contribution lies in the use of formal Aristotelian demonstrative logic for the first time in the service of Christian theology. In doing so, he anticipated the fundamental character of the Thomistic method of "scientific" theology by some five and one-half centuries.

Bibliography

Most of Boethius's works have not been translated into English, but The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand, are widely available in a Loeb Classical Library edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1926). The best work in English on Boethius's writings in general is Pierre Courcelle's Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, translated by Harry E. Wedeck (Cambridge, Mass., 1969). For specific discussion of the Christian theological works, see my study titled "Boethius Conception of Theology and His Method in the Tractates" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974).

A. Rand Sutherland (1987)