ANICIUS
MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, of the famous Praenestine family of the Anicii, was
born about 480 A.D. in Rome. His father was an ex-consul; he himself was consul
under Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 510, and his two sons, children of a great
granddaughter of the renowned Q. Aurelius Symmachus, were joint consuls in 522.
His public career was splendid and honourable, as befitted a man of his race,
attainments, and character. But he fell under the displeasure of Theodoric, and
was charged with conspiring to deliver Rome from his rule, and with
corresponding treasonably to this end with Justin, Emperor of the East. He was
thrown into prison at Pavia, where he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, and
he was brutally put to death in 524. His brief and busy life was marked by
great literary achievement. His learning was vast, his industry untiring, his
object unattainable - nothing less than the transmission to his countrymen of
all the works of Plato and Aristotle, and the reconciliation of their apparently divergent views. To form
the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was
more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished much. He
translated the 
Boethius was the last of the Roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastic theologians. The present volume serves to prove the truth of both these assertions.
The Consolation of Philosophy is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio isnot, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of translations from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Rather it is the supreme essay of one who throughout his life had found his highest solace in the dry light of reason. His chief source of refreshment, in the dungeon to which his beloved library had not accompanied him, was a memory well stocked with the poetry and thought of former days. The development of the argument is anything but Neoplatonic; it is all his own.
And if the Consolation
of Philosophy admits Boethius to the company of Cicero or even of Plato,
the theological Tractates mark him as the forerunner of St. Thomas. It
was the habit of a former generation 
to regard Boethius as an eclectic, the transmitter
of a distorted Aristotelianism, a pagan, or at best a luke-warm Christian, who
at the end cast off the faith which he had worn in times of peace, and wrapped
himself in the philosophic cloak which properly belonged to him. The
authenticity of the Tractates was freely denied. We know better now. The
discovery by Alfred Holder, and the illuminating discussion by Hermann Usener,1
of a fragment of Cassiodorus are sufficient confirmation of the manuscript
tradition, apart from the work of scholars who have sought to justify that
tradition from internal evidence. In that fragment Cassiodorus definitely
ascribes to his friend Boethius "a book on the Trinity, some dogmatic chapters,
and a book against Nestorius."2
Boethius was without doubt a Christian, a Doctor and perhaps a martyr. Nor is
it necessary to think that, when in prison, he put away his faith. If it is
asked why the Consolation of Philosophy contains no conscious or direct
reference to the doctrines which are traced in the Tractates with so
sure a hand, and is, at most, not out of harmony with Christianity, the answer
is simple. In the Consolation he is writing philosophy; in the Tractates
he is writing theology. He observes what Pascal calls the orders of things.
Philosophy belongs to one order, theology to another. They have different
objects. The object of philosophy is to understand and explain the nature of
the world around us; the object of theology is to understand 
and explain doctrines delivered by divine
revelation. The scholastics recognized the distinction, and the corresponding
difference in the function of Faith and Reason. Their final aim was to
co-ordinate the two, but this was not possible before the thirteenth century.
Meanwhile Boethius helps to prepare the way. In the Consolation he gives
Reason her range and suffers her, unaided, to vindicate the way of Providence.
In the Tractates Reason is called in to give to the claims of Faith the
support which it does not really lack. Reason, however, has still a right to be
heard. The distinction between fides and ratio is proclaimed in
the first two Tractates. In the second especially it is drawn with a
clearness worthy of St. Thomas himself; and there is, of course the implication
that the higher authority resides with fides. Butthe treatment
is philosophical and extremely bold. Boethius comes back to the question of the
substantiality of the divine Persons which he has discussed in Tr. I. from a
fresh point of view. Once more he decides that the Persons are predicated
relatively; even Trinity, he concludes, is not predicated substantially of
deity. Does this square with catholic doctrine? It is possible to hear a note
of challenge in his words to John the Deacon, fidem si poterit rationemque
coniunge. Philosophy states the problem in unequivocal terms. Theology is
required to say whether they commend themselves.
One object of
the scholastics, anterior to the final co-ordination of the two sciences, was
to harmonize and codify all the answers to all the questions that philosophy
raises. The ambition of Boethius 
was not so soaring, but it was sufficiently bold.
He set out, first to translate, and then to reconcile, Plato and Aristotle; to
go behind all the other systems, even the latest and the most in vogue, back to
the two great masters, and to show that they have the truth, and are in
substantial accord. So St. Thomas himself, if he cannot reconcile the teaching
of Plato and Aristotle, at least desires to correct the one by the other, to
discover what truth is common to both, and to show its correspondence with
Christian doctrine. It is reasonable to conjecture that Boethius, if he had
lived, might have attempted something of the kind. Were he alive to-day, he
might feel more in tune with the best of the pagans than with most contemporary
philosophic thought.
In yet one more respect Boethius belongs to the company of the schoolmen. He not only put into circulation many precious philosophical notions, served as channel through which various works of Aristotle passed into the schools, and handed down to them a definite Aristotelian method for approaching the problem of faith; he also supplied material for that classification of the various sciences which is an essential accompaniment of every philosophical movement, and of which the Middle Ages felt the value.3 The uniform distribution into natural sciences, mathematics and theology which he recommends may be traced in the work of various teachers up to the thirteenth century, when it is finally accepted and defended by St Thomas in his commentary on the De Trinitate.
A
seventeenth-century translation of the Consolatio Philosophiae is
here presented with such alterations as are demanded by a better text, and the
require
ments of
modern scholarship. There was, indeed not much to do, for the rendering is most
exact. This in a translation of that date is not a little remarkable. We look
for fine English and poetry in an Elizabethan; but we do not often get from him
such loyalty to the original as is here displayed
Of the author "I. T." nothing is known. He may have been John Thorie, a Fleming born in London in 1568, and a B.A. of Christ Church, 1586. Thorie "was a person well skilled in certain tongues, and a noted poet of his times" (Wood, Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 624), but his known translations are apparently all from the Spanish.
Our translator dedicates his " Five books of Philosophical Comfort" to the Dowager Countess of Dorset, widow of Thomas Sackville, who was part author of A Mirror for Magistrates and Gorbodu and who, we learn from I. T.'s preface, meditated similar work. I. T. does not unduly flatter his patroness, and he tells her plainly that she will not understand the philosophy of the book, though the theological and practical parts may be within her scope.
The Opuscula Sacra have never before, to our knowledge, been translated. In reading and rendering them we have been greatly helped by two mediaeval commentaries: one by John the Scot (edited by E. K. Rand in Traube's Quellen und Unterschungen, vol. i. pt. 2, Munich, 1906); the other by Gilbert de la Porr�e (printed in Migne, P.L. lxiv. We also desire to record our indebtedness in many points of scholarship and philosophy to Mr. E. J. Thomas of Emmanuel College.
H.F.S.
E.K.R.
1 Anecdoton Holderi, Leipzig, 1877.
2 Scripsit librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium. On the question of the genuineness of Tr. IV. De fide catholica see note ad loc.
3 Cp. L. Baur, Gundissalinus: de divisione, M�nster, 1905.