NOTE ON THE TEXT
NOTE ON THE TEXT
IN preparing the text of the Consolatio
I have used the apparatus in Peiper's edition (Teubner, 1871), since his
reports, as I know in the case of the Tegernseensis, are generally accurate and
complete; I have depended also on my own collations or excerpts from various of
the important manuscripts, nearly all of which I have at least examined, and I
have also followed, not always but usually, the opinions of Engelbrecht in his
admirable article, Die Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius in the
Silzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, cxliv. (1902) 1--60. The present
text, then, has been constructed from only part of the material with which an
editor should reckon, though the reader may at least assume that every reading
in the text has, unless otherwise stated, the authority of some manuscript of
the ninth or tenth century; in certain orthographical details, evidence from
the text of the Opuscula Sacra has been used without special mention of
this fact. We look to August Engelbrecht for the first critical edition of the
Consolatio at, we hope, no distant date.
The text of the Opuscula Sacra is
based on my own collations of all the important manuscripts of these works. An
edition with complete apparatus criticis will be ready before long for
the Vienna corpis Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latin orum. The history of
the text of the Opuscula Sacra, as I shall attempt to show elsewhere, is
intimately connected with that of the Consolatio.
E. K. R.
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 as 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 E of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's
Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the E, and commentaries
on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on
the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the
categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences.
He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on
various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern
times. His five theological Tractates are here, together with the
Consolation of Philosophy to speak for themselves.
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 view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his
mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, 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, 3 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 ways of Providence. In the Tractates
Reason is called in to give to the claims of Faith the support which it
does not really lack. 4 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. But the 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 con-ordination of the two sciences, was to harmonize and codify
all the answers to all the questions that philosophy raises. The ambition of
Bonethius 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 today, 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. 5 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 requirements 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 on
Philosophical Comfort" to the Dowager Countes of Dorset, widow of Thomas
Sackville, who was part author of A Mirror for Magistrates and
Gorboduc and who, we learn from I. T. `s preface, meditated similar
work. I. T. does not unduly flatter h 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 Opuscucla 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 Unten suchungen, vol. i. Pt. 2,
Munich, 1906); the other by Gilbert de la Porree (printed in Migne, P.L.
lxiv. We also desire to record our indebtedness in many points of
scholarship and philosophy to Mr. E. Thomas of Emmanuel College.
H.F.V.
E.K.R.
1 Anecdoton Holderi, Leipzig, 1877.
2 Scripsil 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. H. de WuIf, Histoire de la Philosophie medieval
(Louvain and Paris 1915), p. 332.
4 See below, De Trin. vi. ad fin.
5 Cp. L. Baur, Gundissalinus: de divisione, Munster,
1905.