whose full name was ANICIUS
MANLIUS
SEVERINUS
BOETHIUS (to which a few MSS. of his works add the name of Torquatus, and commentators prefix by conjecture the praenomen Flavius from his father's consulship in Consol. Phil. 1.1). The Anician family had
for the two preceding centuries been the most illustrious in Rome (see Gibbon, 100.31), and
several of its members have been reckoned amongst the direct ancestors of Boethius. But the
only conjecture worth notice is that which makes his grandfather to have been the Flavius
Boethius murdered by Valentinian III. Consol. Phil. 2.3.)
He was famous for his general learning (Ennodius, Ep. 8.1) and his
laborious translations of Greek philosophy (Cassiodor. Ep. 1.45) as well
as for his extensive charities to the poor at Rome, both natives and strangers. (Procop. Goth. 1.1.) In his domestic life, he was singularly happy, as the husband of
Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus (Consol. Phil. 2.3, 4; Procop. Goth. 3.20), and the father of two sons, Aurelius Anicius Symmachus, and
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who were consuls, Consol. Phil. 2.3, 4.) He naturally rose into public notice, became
patrician before the usual age (Consol. Phil. 2.3), consul in Bibl. Lat. 3.15), and princeps senatus. (Procop.
Goth. 1.1.) He also attracted the attention of Theodoric, king of the
Ostrogoths, was appointed (Anonym. Vales. p. 36) magister officiorum in his court, and was
applied to by him for a mathematical regulation of the coinage to prevent forgery (Cassiod.
Ep. 1.10), for a sun-dial and waterclock for Gundebald, king of the
Burgundians (ib. 1.45), and for the recommendation of a good musician to
Clovis, king of the Franks. (Ib. 2.40.) And he reached the height of his
prosperity when, on the inauguration of his two sons in the consulate, Consol. Phil. 2.3.)
This happiness was suddenly overcast. He had resolved, on his entrance into public life, to
carry out the saying of Plato, "that the world would only be happy when kings became
philosophers, or philosophers became kings." He protected and relieved the provincials from
the public and private rapine to which they were exposed, defended the Campanians against the
praefect of the praetorium, saved Paulinus from "the dogs of the palace," and restrained the
oppressions of the barbarian officers, Triguilla and Conigastus. (Consol.
Phil. 1.4.) This unflinching integrity naturally provoked enmity in the court of
Theodoric; and the boldness with which he pleaded the cause of Albinus, when accused of
treason by the informer Cyprianus, seems to have been the plea on which Gaudentius, Opilio,
and Basilius charged him and Symmachus with the intention of delivering Rome from the
barbarian yoke,--to which was added the charge of sacrilege or magic. A sentence of
confiscation and death was passed against him unheard (Consol. Phil.
1.4), and he was imprisoned at Ticinum in the baptistry of the church, which was to be seen at
Pavia till 1584 (Tiraboschi, vol. iii. lib. 1. c.4), during which time he wrote his book
With the facts stated above have been mixed up various stories, more or less disputed, which seem to have grown with the growth of his posthumous reputation.
The story of his eighteen years' stay at Athens, and attendance on the lectures of Proclus, rests only on the authority of the spurious treatise
The three consulships sometimes ascribed to him are made up from that of his father in 487, and that of his sons in 522.
Besides his wife, Rusticiana, later and especially Sicilian writers have supposed, that he
was previously the husband of a Sicilian lady, Elpis, authoress of two hymns used in the
Breviary (" Decora lux," and " Beate Pastor," or according to others, " Aurea luce," and
"Felix per omnes"), and by her to have had two sons, Patricius and Hypatius, Greek consuls
in Consol. Phil. 2.3, refers not to two fathers-in-law, but
to the parents of Rusticiana; and the epitaph of Elpis, which is the only authentic record
of her life, contradicts the story altogether, by implying that she followed her husband
(who is not named) into exile, which would of course leave no time for his second marriage
and children. (See Tiraboschi, vol. iii. lib. 1. c.4.)
Paulus Diaconus (book vii.), Anastasius (Vit. Pontif. in Joanne I.),
and later writers, have connected his death with the embassy of pope John I. to
Constantinople for the protection of the Catholics, in which he is alleged to have been
implicated. But this story, not being alluded to in the earlier accounts, appears to have
arisen, like the last-mentioned one, from the desire to connect his name more distinctly
with Christianity, which leads to the last and most signal variation in his history.
He was long considered as a Catholic saint and martyr, and in later times stories were
current of his having been a friend of St. Benedict, and having supped at Monte Cassino
(Trithemius, apud Fabric. Bibl. Lat. 3.15), and again of miracles at
his death, as carrying his head in his hand (Life of him by Martianus, apud Baron. Annual.
Whatever may be thought of these details, the question of his Christianity itself is beset
with difficulties in whichever way it may be determined. On the one hand, if the works on
dogmatical theology ascribed to him be really his, the question is settled in the
affirmative. But, in that case, the total omission of all mention of Christianity in the
"Consolatio Philosophiae," in passages and under circumstances where its mention seemed to
be imperatively demanded, becomes so great a perplexity that various expedients have been
adopted to solve it. Bertius conjectured, that there was to have been a sixth book, which
was interrupted by his death. Glareanus, though partly on other grounds, with the
independent judgment for which he is commended by Niebuhr, rejected the work itself as
spurious. Finally, Professor Hand, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclophädie, has with much ingenuity maintained the opposite hypothesis, viz.
that Boethius was not a Christian at all, and that the theological works ascribed to him
were written by another Boethius, who was afterwards confounded with him; and hence the
origin or confirmation of the mistake.
In favour of this theory may be mentioned, over and above the general argument arising
from the Consolatio Phlosophiae, (1.) The number of persons of the name
of Boethius in or about that time. See Fabric. Bibl. Lat. 3.15. (2.)
The tendency of that age to confound persons of inferior note with their more famous
namesakes, as well as to publish anonymous works under celebrated names; as, for example,
the ascription to St. Athanasius of the hymn
After all, however the critical question be settled, the character of Boethius is not much
affected by it. For as it must be determined almost entirely from the " Consolatio," in which
he speaks with his whole heart, and not from the abstract statements of doctrine in the
theological treatises, which, even if genuine, are chiefly compiled with hardly an expression
of personal feeling, from the works of St. Augustin, on the one hand the general silence on
the subject of Christianity in such a book at such a period of his life, proves that, if he
was a Christian, its doctrines could hardly have been a part of his living belief; on the
other hand, the incidental phrases above quoted, the strong religious theism which pervades the whole work, the real belief which it indicates in prayer and
Providence, and the unusually high tone of his public life, prove that, if a heathen, his
general character must have been deeply tinged by the contemporaneous influence of
Christianity.
He would thus seem to have been one of a probably large class of men, such as will always be found in epochs between the fall of one system of belief and the rise of another, and who by hovering on the confines of each can hardly be assigned exclusively to either,--one who, like Epictetus and the Antonines, and, nearer his own time, the poet Claudian and the historian Zosimus, was by his deep attachment to the institutions and literature of Greece and Rome led to look for practical support to a heathen or half-heathen philosophy; whilst like them, but in a greater degree, his religious and moral views received an elevation from their contact with the now established faith of Christianity.
The middle position which he thus occupied by his personal character and belief, he also
occupies in the general history and literature of the world. e.g. he is thus described (Parad. 10.124):--
After the introduction of the works of Aristotle into Europe in the 13th century,
Boethius's fame gradually died away, and he affords a remarkable instance of an author, who
having served a great purpose for nearly 1000 years, now that that purpose has been
accomplished, will sink into obscurity as general as was once his celebrity. The first author
who quotes his works is Hincmar (1.211, 460, 474, 521), Eng. Poet. 2.342,
343.) Of four classics in the Paris library in Bibl. Heb. 1.229, 1092, 243, 354, 369;
Fabric. Bibl. Lat. 3.15), into old High German at the beginning of the
11th century, by St. Gallen; into French by J. Meun, in 1300, at the order of Philip the
Fair; but above all, that into Anglo-Saxon by Alfred the Great, which is doubly interesting,
(1.) as one of the earliest specimens of Anglo-Saxon literature; (2.) as the chief literary
relic of Alfred himself, whose own mind appears not only in the freedom of the translation,
but also in large original insertions relative to the kingly office, or to Christian history,
which last fact strikingly illustrates the total absence of any such in Boethius's own work.
(Of this the best edition is by J. S. Cardale, with notes and translation, 1828.)
Of imitations may be mentioned:
1. Chaucer's Testament of Love. (Warton's Eng. Poet. 2.295.)
2.
3.
4.
5. An Imitation, by Charles, Duke of Orleans, in the 15th century.
Boethius's own works are as follow:--
Of its moral and religious character no more need be said. In a literary point of view, it is a dialogue between himself and Philosophy, much in the style of the Pastor of Hermas,--a work which it resembles in the liveliness of personification, though inferior to it in variety and superior in diction. The alternation of prose and verse is thought to have been suggested by the nearly contemporary work of Marcianus Capella on the nuptials of Mercury and Philology. The verses are almost entirely borrowed from Seneca.
The chief ancient authorities for his life are the Epistles of Ennodius and Cassiodorus,
and the History of Procopius. The chief modern authorities are Fabric. Bibl.
Lat. 3.15; Tiraboschi, vol. iii. lib. 1. cap. 4; Hand, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie ; Barberini, Crit. storica Exposizion
della Vita di Sev. Boezio, Pavia, 1783; Heyne, Censura ingenii, &c.
Boethii, Gottin.1806.