SOURCE: "Philosophy in the Sixth Century," in The Gateway to The Middle Ages, The Macmillan Company, 1938, pp. 142-212.

[In the excerpt below, Duckett provides a general overview of Boethius's life and influence, asserting that "it was he who fanned the flame of conflict that was to occupy philosophical minds through all the Middle Ages -the struggle between Nominalism and Realism in their various forms. "]

[Boethius's] Consolation of Philosophy has been the meat of souls in distress, of minds in doubt, of editors, commentators and students in mediaeval browsings, all down the years from the sixth century to modern times. It was every whit as popular in the Middle Ages as Martianus Capella's famous text-book on the Seven Liberal Arts, and reaped a far more varied harvest of readers; it is still studied in our times, largely because of its influence upon Chaucer. But it loses some of its interest if it be not seen first in the picture of its own century.

For the name of Boethius has been the centre of many problems, as many as the varied sides of his extraordinary genius. He was skilled in mathematics and in logic, he was a musician and a poet; he was, above all, learned in the philosophy of Greece and Rome. So far all is serene. From this point scholars have started in the examinationpaper they have set themselves to answer. Was Boethius a pagan? Or a nominal Christian? Or a convinced champion of the Catholic Church? Was he a martyr to his religious or to his political creed? Or did he fall justly in punishment for treason against his King? Did he write the Theological Tractates which have been ascribed to him? Above all, did he compose that confession of the Catholic Faith known as Tractate Four?

He was of aristocratic birth and tradition, of the great line of the Anicii, as his name tells. In 487, when he was about seven years old, his father held the consulship, but died not long after, and the boy, as he himself relates, was brought up and educated by the leading men of Rome. Very probably his guardian was Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, destined to be his chief friend and his father-in-law, whom he describes as "the richest glory of the human race." Symmachus had himself been consul in 485, and it was his daughter Rusticiana whom Boethius married. A worthy lady, it would seem. Boethius calls her "modest, singularly chaste and pure—in a word, the image of her father." Long afterwards she reappears in the pages of Procopius at that crisis in the Gothic War when the Romans were suffering agonies through Totila's siege of their city in 546. This was twenty years after her husband's death, and Rusticiana was living in Rome. She had spent all her resources in helping the worst cases of misery, and now with other Roman citizens and even senators was driven by sheer starvation to beg for a little bread and other necessities from the barbarian enemy. Dressed as servants or country folk they would knock at door after door of the Gothic visitors after these had entered the city in triumph, so pressed by hunger that they could feel no shame. But the Goths one day seized her and carried her before Totila, with the charge that she had bribed the Roman generals to allow her to overthrow the statues of Theodoric in revenge for the fate of her father Symmachus and her husband Boethius. Let her be put to death, they urged. It is to the credit of Totila that he did not permit his soldiers in the first flush of conquest to hurt her or any other Roman woman.

From his childhood Boethius was devoted to learning, and as he grew older was looked on as one of the rising men by intellectual and political circles in Rome and in Ravenna. Ennodius, in his Instruction on liberal culture, written about 511 for two young friends, Ambrosius and Beatus, speaks of him as a master and model for these disciples: "so young and yet he knows enough to teach."

More significant were three letters written to Boethius by Cassiodorus in the name of King Theodoric. Two are dated by Mommsen in 507 and show not only the high place Boethius had earned at the age of twenty-seven in the confidence of the King but also his achievements in intellectual work at this time. In one of them Theodoric asks him to send a water-clock to Gundobad, King of Burgundy, who has earnestly requested this favour. Cassiodorus writes thus for his royal master: "I know that you understand the inner workings of the arts which men commonly practice in ignorance, for your mind is packed full of learning. From afar you have entered the schools of Athens, you have united in your learning the toga and the pallium, you have turned into Roman doctrine the dogmas of the Greeks. Now, thanks to your translations, Pythagoras the musician and Ptolemaeus the astronomer are read in Latin; the arithmetic of Nicomachus and the geometry of Euclid are heard just as if their writers were Italians. Now Plato discusses theology and Aristotle treats of logic in the language of the Quirinal; you have even restored to the Sicilians their mechanician Archimedes in a Latin form. And more. It is you, Boethius, who have entered into the famous art of noble disciplines through the fourfold doors of learning."

The second letter asks Boethius to choose out a player on the harp, requested from Theodoric by Clovis, King of the Franks. Only Boethius could fulfil this office, writes the King, because he is skilled in music. The third, written at some time between 507 and 511, asks him to attend to a complaint from the infantry and cavalry of the Royal Household, who have been defrauded of part of their pay by receiving coins of illegal weight: "Let your sagacity, trained by your learned researches in philosophy, drive out this accursed falsehood from its partnership with truth." This request shows, it seems, that Boethius held at the time superintendence over the domestic payroll in virtue of the office of Count of the Sacred Largesses.

Lastly, Cassiodorus gives us another glimpse of Boethius in the fragment we still possess of his Family History of the Cassiodori, the little collection of short notices describing members of his own clan and some "learned citizens" who had distinguished themselves by their writings. Here we read that Boethius "held the highest offices, and was an orator deeply versed in both Greek and Latin"; that "in translating works of logic and in mathematical studies he was so distinguished that he equalled or surpassed the writers of antiquity."

In 510 Boethius held the consulship alone, and twelve years later, in 522, he had the supreme joy of seeing his two sons installed as consuls on the same day. There was a grand procession of Senators escorting the two young men from their home to the Senate House amid the shouting of the people who lined the streets. In the Senate House they sat in the famous chairs of their office while Boethius himself made an oration of praise and thanksgiving to Theodoric and earned great applause for his eloquence. Afterward in the Circus the crowd of citizens thronged around him as he stood between his two Consuls, repaying eager cheers of the public to the full by his splendid gifts of bounty. In the same year the King promoted him to be Master of Offices and his cup of political prosperity seemed full.

But even patriotic and public life was not so dear as the meditations of his study. In one of his works he tells his readers of his aim in writing: "If God grant it me of His power and grace, my fixed purpose is this: The whole of Aristotle's writings, so far as they shall be accessible to me, I will translate into Latin and interpret by a commentary in Latin. All the subtlety of the logical skill of Aristotle, all the weight of his moral philosophy, all the keenness of his physical science as contained in his writings, I will arrange in due order, will translate and illuminate in some sort by observations. Furthermore, I will translate and comment on all the dialogues of Plato. And after finishing this I would not disdain, indeed, to bring the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato into some kind of harmony, to show that most people are wrong in maintaining that the two disagree at all points; that, rather, in most matters, and these the most important, they are in agreement with each other. These tasks, if sufficiency of years and leisure be given me, I would accomplish with great advantage and also with much labour."

Of the work on Plato we possess nothing, and we may believe that the untimely death of Boethius entirely frustrated this part of the great plan. In the labours on Aristotle the work at least reached and included the writings on logic, in which Boethius was pre-eminently interested.

But first there must be preparation. He would approach his life-work through the "fourfold gates of learning." The sixth century was an age of compendious science, when students craved rather a view of universal learning, carefully and conveniently digested by some scholar, than the browsing for their own sake on the great works of antiquity. Were not these written by pagans? And, therefore, how could such avail for pilgrims following the star of Christianity through the dark desert of this present life? The development of the Christian life, whether in the world or, in its most prized degree, within the hermitage or the cloister, had driven from men's esteem the lingering joy of prose and poetry written by those who knew not the Catholic Church. Far better, surely, to absorb in comprehensive form and far swifter manner the cold substance of these heathen works, in order that the knowledge thus gained might be used for the glory of the Faith, not for the intellectual delight of the human mind.

Moreover, pagan ideals and Christian virtues were diametrically opposed. The old Latin tradition of independence, self-respect, and a sane enjoyment of this world's bounty could not be reconciled with a training in self-abnegation, in ascetic renunciation of temporal things for the fruits of eternity.

Already in the days before Christ the condensing of science in encyclopaedic form had been begun. In the welter and hurry of political life the rising statesmen of Caesar's Rome, who were also her students, had gladly turned to Varro's Nine Books of Disciplines, dealing with the seven liberal arts as we know them and in addition with medicine and architecture. The two last were omitted in the far more famous handbook of Martianus Capella, written in the fifth century under form of an allegory to describe the "Nuptials of Mercury and the Lady Philology." Here the seven liberal arts attend the bride as maids of honour, and each in turn expounds the principles of her department of learning. Neither was this book of Christian character, though perforce it was eagerly read by Christian schools for the training of scholars who were to argue with skill and reason for the faith within them.

Boethius, then, was in sympathy with his age when he desired to educate young men in the liberal arts. We shall see later on that his friend Cassiodorus pursued the same ideal in the labours for education which filled his advanced years. But it was on the four arts which afterwards formed the higher division of culture among Renaissance scholars that Boethius chose first to write. The study of these would presuppose some acquaintance with the other three: the art of grammar, including literature, the art of dialectic, mainly concerned with logic, and the art of rhetoric, embracing composition both written and oral. To the influence of Boethius was due in great part the establishing in later days of the four arts of the higher course as an integral and fixed part of liberal education. It was to him, indeed, that we owe the famous name of this fourfold training: in arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. "Among all the scholars in ancient days," he boldly declared, "who were renowned for reasonings of pure intellect as disciples of Pythagoras, it is certain that no one reached the height of perfection in the schools of philosophy except he had sought such noble prudence by what I may call a fourfold path (quodam quasi quadruvio)..… By this fourfold path the student must travel whose mind, already endowed with promise, rises from the natural senses to the surer certainties of intelligence." The name "Quadrivium" thus runs back to Boethius.

He began his work naturally with a treatise on arithmetic, "the first-fruits of my labour," he himself tells us. It was dedicated to Symmachus, to whose fatherly criticism he earnestly commended his toil. There is little trace of originality in any part of the work on the "Quadrivium," and in this first section the source was the Greek mathematician, Nicomachus of Gerasa (probably the city in the Decapolis of Palestine). Some time between 50 and 150 A.D. Nicomachus had won lasting fame by his Introduction to Arithmetic, and he was the obvious model for one who, like Boethius, was no master in the field. So closely did Boethius follow his lead that scholars have not hesitated to call this Latin treatise a translation. And worse still, severe criticism has been dealt him for marring his rendering by the repeated omission of valuable portions of the original. He declared in the Preface that he was not "binding himself by the most narrow law of translation but was roaming freely in the path, not in the actual footprints" of his source, intending to condense parts of his material and in other parts to make small additions. This plan he carried out, though it is agreed that the additions were of little, if any, value to later generations; and his work only interests us here because through it many of his own countrymen, and the vast majority of students of mathematics in the Middle Ages, learned Greek principles of arithmetic.

The same is true with regard to music, on which Boethius wrote a treatise, De Institutione Musica, in five books, the last of which lacks eleven chapters in its present state. Music, he begins, holds its special power, not only over the intellect, but over the character and behaviour of men of every age of life and of every class and race. That, therefore, which is of such universal importance, for which humanity possesses a natural affection, must not only be enjoyed from without, but must be learned and understood in its inner rhythms and harmonies. It must be learned, moreover, as a philosophical and mathematical science. Of the three classes into which Boethius divided students of music: those who play upon instruments, those who compose tuneful melodies, and those who understand the theory and harmony of this subject, only the third class, according to him, really deserves the name of musician. Those who play musical instruments are but the servants of scholars of musical science in his view, and composers of tunes are led, not by speculation and reasoning, but by some natural instinct.

It was this stress upon music, as training in mathematics rather than as a practical art, which Boethius bequeathed to the Middle Ages. Martianus Capella had handed on the teaching of Aristides Quintilianus; Boethius summarized as best he could the wisdom in matters musical of Pythagoras, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Aristoxenus, and Nicomachus, whom he had used for his arithmetic. At times, it is true, he misunderstood his authorities, and so theoretical was his treatment that he tarried in his discussion to deal with matter long obsolete in actual practice. But this legacy of his was meat and drink to humanity long after his death, prescribed by statutes of Europe's Universities as part of their fixed course of higher learning.

The next treatise of Boethius in logical order, that on geometry, has enjoyed its own dispute. Scholarship has been divided as to whether two books on geometry which we still possess under the name of Boethius are really by him. The consensus of opinion now holds them spurious. That Boethius did translate Euclid into Latin we know from Cassiodorus, and, indeed, Greek scholarship was naturally his model; Roman experts were not interested in the theory of geometrical mathematics and only used the science for practical purposes of surveying land. The question of the authenticity of the extant work in two books is of interest in connection with that noted mathematician of the tenth century, Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester the second. For this work, whether genuine or spurious, contains information regarding the nine Hindu numerals. If it was Boethius who told of these, they must have been known to the western world in the sixth century, perhaps before. If Boethius did not write the books, it would seem that these numerals were not known to the Christian world, at least outside trading circles, before the time of Gerbert, who was well acquainted with them. Gerbert tells, in a letter written by him as Abbot of the monastery of Bobbio in 983 A.D., that he has found "eight volumes of Boethius on astrology, and also some splendid books on geometry." If these were the work of Boethius, as has been thought, Gerbert could have obtained his knowledge of the matters mentioned above from him, as this knowledge is found in no other European authority before the end of the tenth century. But that Boethius was not the author is the more likely theory.

No eight books of Boethius on "astrology," or, as we should call it, "astronomy," are extant, though from the importance which he attributes to the study of all four divisions of his "Quadrivium" it is highly probable that he did complete his introduction to philosophy by a traetise on this subject. We have seen, also, that Cassiodorus writes of a translation of Ptolemaeus the astronomer, made by Boethius from Greek into Latin.

We have now passed through the fourfold outer courts of mathematical science and can look at the more direct interests of Boethius in philosophy. Now, when he begins his labours in earnest, it is logic, above all, that attracts him. And, therefore, in accordance with his aim, he turns to the Organon of Aristotle. Here, again, problems have engaged students of his writings. Did he translate all or only the greater part of the Organon? And what knowledge did the Middle Ages have of his work?

For the benefit of those to whom the name of Aristotle is more familiar than his works, we may note that Organon, meaning "instrument" of scientific knowledge and argument, was the title given long after Aristotle's time to the collection of the following writings by him: Categories; On Interpretation; Topics; Sophistici Elenchi; Prior and Posterior Analytics.

From his own words we learn that Boethius was occupied with the Categories of Aristotle in the year of his consulship, 510. For he writes at the beginning of the second book of his Latin rendering of this work: "And if the burdens of consular office hinder me from devoting all my leisure and all my labour to these studies, yet to instruct citizens in this doctrine does seem to be part of a magistrate's care for the State. Nor should I deserve ill of my fellow-countrymen if, seeing that the vigour of early times transferred to this One City of ours the rule and governing of other states, I should at least do my part in informing the manners and morals of our City by the methods of Greek philosophy." Translation alternated with comment in the four books which Boethius gave to this task.

The De Interpretatione of Aristotle was translated and expounded by Boethius in two commentaries: the first, comparatively brief and simple, in two books; the second, intended for those who wished to go more deeply into the subject, in six books. The chief sources on which he drew in this second commentary were the Aristotelian scholars Porphyry, whom he calls elsewhere a "man of the highest authority," and Syrianus. He tells us, moreover, in the midst of the second work that he is making an abridged edition of it. If he ever did, it is now lost to the world. This second commentary is regarded through its learning and intellectual power as the high-water mark of the labours of Boethius on logic.

The influence of Porphyry lies also on another work of Boethius, which, again, took two forms. The first was a commentary on a translation which the rhetorician C. Marius Victorinus had made of Porphyry's Introduction (Isagoge) to the Categories of Aristotle. We are given to suppose in the beginning of this commentary that it is winter-time, and that Boethius and a student friend of his are enjoying a vacation in the "mountains of Aurelia." As the north wind howls outside the house they settle down comfortably before the fire to entertain themselves by trying to unravel the knotty tangles of dialectics. "Now we have made all our Christmas calls and done our duty to our families," young Fabius pleads, "can't we have a real holiday? Won't you please keep your promise and explain to me what that frightfully learned Victorinus meant in his translation of Porphyry's Introduction?"

So in those good old days Boethius and his undergraduate gladly whiled away two evenings in philosophical chat. The dialogue is given here in two books, one for each evening.

Not content with this exposition, some time afterward Boethius made a much longer commentary on the same Introduction of Porphyry. This time he accomplished five books of interpretation, and in his zeal for clearness and accuracy made for their basis his own translation of Porphyry's Greek. It was a very close and literal rendering and somewhat wounded his literary conscience, though his scientific mind felt that the charm of words must be ruthlessly disregarded in dealings with logic. His decision must have comforted many since his day! Continuous narrative in this work replaces the easier form of dialogue, and the interpretation is intended for students far more advanced than young Fabius. At its beginning Boethius maintains that logic is indeed part of philosophy.

One more labour of annotation remains for our Boethius. This is a commentary made by him on the Topica of Cicero, a work on rhetorical questions. The commentary, as we have it, is incomplete. Only five books and the greater part of a sixth are to be found, though Boethius states clearly elsewhere that he "sweated over his seven books." He aimed in this work to supplement another commentary on the same Topica, made by the same Marius Victorinus.

But Boethius was not only translator and commentator. We have a whole series of independent works of his, mostly dealing with his beloved logic: On the Categorical Syllogism; An Introduction to Categorical Syllogisms; On the Hypothetical Syllogism; On Division; On Topical Differences. Originality, again, was not the chief characteristic of these books. So far as was possible, they harked back to Aristotle, to Porphyry, to Theophrastus, Eudemus, Themistius and Cicero. At the beginning of the On the Hypothetical Syllogism there are some pleasant words on the joy of sharing the fruits of one's research with a friend, though the friend addressed here is unknown to us. Nothing lay to hand in Latin on this difficult subject, and a clear-minded sympathy must have been gladness untold.

So much, then, for the Boethian logical corpus as we have it, duly certified. References in some of his extant works point to other writings of his, now lost to us, and still others have been wrongly listed under his name.

Before we discuss the appearing of the other parts of Aristotle's Organon in Latin translation, it will be necessary to turn for a moment to the tradition of Aristotle's works. Only two of his treatises on logic, the Categories and the On Interpretation, were in general use in the eleventh century, and these not in their original Greek, but in the translations of Boethius. These, and the original works of Boethius on logic, with the work done by him on Porphyry's Isagoge, and the books of Marius Victorinus, with, also, the legacies left to scholars by Augustine, by the Pseudo-Augustine, by Martianus Capella in his Nuptials of Mercury and Philology, by Cassiodorus and by Isidore of Seville, in writings which held most valuable matter from works of Aristotle, lost since the time of these borrowers, made up for this time the sum in practice of its library on logic. Two-fifths alone, then, of the Organon were known fully or generally to students during the lapse of centuries, as Abelard in his Dialectica, written about 1121, bears mournful witness. Subsequent scholarship described this two-fifths as the Logica Vetus, the "Old Logic." The remaining three parts of Aristotle's Organon—the Topics, the Sophistici Elenchi, and the Analytics, Prior and Posterior, were still in any complete form, either in Greek or Latin, generally unknown in the first two decades of the twelfth century.

We may trace to two sources the introduction, a little later on in this same century, of these remaining parts, called in distinction the Logica Nova, the "New Logic." One source centred in Toledo of Spain, whither Arabs had carried the writings of Aristotle in Arabic version. There, from about 1135 onward, scholars, attracted by this rich treasure, were busily engaged in translating many of Aristotle's works on logical and on physical science.

Yet before this time the "New Logic" had come into the hands of scholars in the West. Under the year 1128 we find inserted in the chronicle of Robert de Torigny, Abbot of Mont Saint Michel, a statement that "James the Clerk of Venice translated from Greek into Latin and annotated some books of Aristotle: namely, the Topica, the Analytica (Priora and Posteriora,) and the Elenchi, although there was available an older translation of these books."

Is this older version that of Boethius, and, if so, what had become of it since it was made in the sixth century? And was the version of these three works which was used by the later Middle Ages the genuine work of Boethius himself?

Some critics are of the opinion that the version which was circulated in later mediaeval days as the work of Boethius was not really by him. James of Venice, they believe, was its author. On the other hand, the theory that the translation of these three books used by scholars of the twelfth century onward was, indeed, the genuine work of Boethius finds support from Charles Homer Haskins [in his Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science, 1927]. He has brought forward a piece of evidence from a thirteenth century manuscript in the library of the chapter of Toledo. This manuscript contains three different renderings into Latin of the Analytica Posteriora: one from the Arabic, and the one current under the name of Boethius, and another not found elsewhere, so far as we know. A preface accompanies this last version, in which we are told that the writer, whose name is not given, has been invited to make a translation of the Posteriora. "For the translation of Boethius which we have is incomplete and its text is bad. Moreover, professors in France say that although they do possess a translation and commentary by James, yet this translation is little used and they do not dare to employ it in their lectures." This was due, no doubt, to the difficulties of the poor text.

This Preface bears witness to the version of James of Venice, to a lack of its use, and to the existence of an older text, here definitely assigned to Boethius. From evidence given us by Boethius himself we may believe that he did translate the Analytica, as he twice refers to such a rendering, mentioning expressly both the Priora and the Posteriora. He also speaks repeatedly of his "Analytics," in such terms as in Analyticis nostris and in Analyticis diximus, which seems to point to a commentary by him on this work, and he mentions a translation and a commentary made by himself for the Topica. Not one of these commentaries has come down to us, and there is no reference to either translation or commentary for the Sophistici Elenchi in any work assigned to Boethius. Since, however, as soon as the treatises of the New Logic gained currency in Latin form early in the twelfth century, they were regularly known under the name of Boethius, and since later writers, such as John of Salisbury, in quoting a Latin translation as "of Boethius" used a version similar in the parts quoted to that printed by Migne, we may think, not without reason, that we still have in the Patrologia the rendering, much corrupted in places, which Boethius made of the three works in question, in spite of the necessity of assuming that it was not used from the sixth till the twelfth century. Possibly it was discarded for this long period through discouragement on account of its bad text and through lack of interest in the higher branches of dialectic.

So much for the purely philosophical works of Boethius. As an original authority on logic he has little claim for renown. He founded no new school. He has even been blamed, with Martianus Capella and Cassiodorus, for much of the blundering of the logic of the Middle Ages. Yet his worth is inestimable for his tradition of Aristotle, both by direct translation and by quotation and interpretation in those "original" works in which he depended so greatly upon Porphyry and other Greek exponents of Aristotle. Without Boethius Aristotle would have been lost to the West in the Dark Ages before the revival of learning in the twelfth century. As we have seen, their knowledge of the "Old Logic" was derived in pre-eminent degree from his work; the introduction of the "New Logic" into the West was due at first, we may think, to his labours, reappearing after long lapse of time. As has often been remarked, he was the last of the Romans to hand on from his own familiar knowledge of their original the great wealth of the Greeks in science logical and mathematical; in a way worthy of his great predecessor Cicero he brings to an end the direct transmission by the Romans of their magnificent inheritance of culture. The barbarian races who occupied Italy knew no Greek and depended, when they know of things Greek at all, upon a Latin intermediary.

But, in his pre-occupation with Aristotle and logic, Boethius meant far more to Churchmen of the earlier Middle Ages than did Cicero. For logic, or dialectic, as it was commonly called, was a safe and valuable instrument for the Christian pilgrim in this naughty world. Study of pagan writings on other branches of philosophy, arguing of God and His dealings with men, of men and their dealings with one another, was regarded as waste of time, or worse, in this Christian era. Far better to elevate the soul, if not the mind, by studying and digesting the countless miracles laid to the credit of saintly prayers, or heroic deeds of austere life. The devil surely lurked in pages written on ethics and moralities by heathen philosophers, waiting to ensnare the unwary by his bait of delicate words. Logic was impersonal and far removed from charm of style. Moreover, it sharpened the intellect for battle against the adversaries of the Lord. A weapon was a weapon, whether used for good or for evil, and a Christian must fight well-armed. Further, this armour did not turn its edge inwards against him who used it; for was not Christianity based on ultimate truth?

In a far different way the same result obtained for the barbarian. Logic was far better suited for the young energy of the barbarian mind than the ancient refinements of matter and style of pagan classics. Here was something on which the "new man" could exercise his own mind in argument, easier than the effort of bringing his cruder thought into harmony with an ancient civilization already dead and gone. The subtle ponderings of Aeschylus on Divine justice, of Sophocles on human fate, the rebellious mind of Euripides, the intellectual searchings of Plato and the Neo-Platonists after God, did not specially concern the young students of Gothic and Frankish and Lombard blood, descended from men of practice and achievement rather than of meditation on mysteries. It warmed their blood to argue, as long as the argument was the chief thing rather than abstruse metaphysics.

In either case logic was a tool, whether of apologetics or of education. And Boethius fully deserved the gratitude of all future students, readers of the Latin tongue, for the care with which he shaped this Latin weapon of logic. Roger Bacon remarks in his Opus Majus that "alone of translators did Boethius thoroughly understand both the language into which and the language from which he was translating." To the philosophers of the Middle Ages it was one of his great services, and this time an original one, that he made most valuable additions in his translations from Aristotle to their Latin philosophical vocabulary and fixed the meaning in Latin equivalents of Greek philosophical terms.

The influence of the secular science of Boethius on mediaeval times is, indeed, a subject more meet for volumes than for paragraphs. The "Quadrivium" owed far more than its name to him. Its curriculum of education depended on his treatises, as did that of the preliminary "Trivium," the course of the three arts. Of these, whether in England, France or Germany, dialectic or rhetoric required Aristotle, translated or summarized by Boethius, or Isidore of Seville, borrowing from Boethius. In the fourfold courses, arithmetic, music and geometry required Boethius, together with Martianus Capella. In the early years of the thirteenth century the course for the Master's degree in Arts at Paris prescribed in Rhetoric the third book of the Ars Major of Donatus and the Topics of Boethius; later on we find the Divisions of Boethius prescribed together with the Topics. At Oxford late in the same century candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts were required to have heard once the logical works of Boethius with the exception of the Topics, Book IV.

Again, Boethius was both food and stimulant to those who sat in the professorial seats of the mediaeval schools. He gave them both the words they used and the dialectical form of argument in which they expounded their matter by way of mouth or pen. Already in his works the dubitationes, the quaestio, the solutio, so beloved of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Schoolmen, play their logical part. Already in the eighth century Alcuin was busy with him. He included Boethius among the writers he proudly listed as stacked on the shelves of the Library of his Cathedral School at York. He drew on Boethius in his dialogue, On Dialectic, a conversation with Charles the Great, who had called him to preside over his Palace School at Aachen. He taught his pupils there from this same source, and in the early years of the ninth century he instructed in Boethius his monks in the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours.

Among these was Raban, who carried his vast erudition to the School of Fulda in Germany, including his study of Boethius On Arithmetic. In Reims late in the tenth century Richer, of fame as chronicler, was listening to the mighty Gerbert disentangling dialectical knots of the Introduction and the Topics as explained by Boethius. We can imagine Gerbert ever and anon taking up his Boethius on Aristotle and on Porphyry as he passed from his teacher's chair at Reims to his abbey at Bobbio and finally to his Papal See in Rome. In St. Gall early in the eleventh century Notker Labeo was drawing crowds of enthusiastic listeners as he expounded Boethius on the mysteries of dialectic.

Perhaps most famous of all homes of training in dialectic in the eleventh century was the Cathedral School at Chartres, brought into renown by the labours of Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres, who had himself been Gerbert's disciple in liberal studies. Under him and under the three great Chancellors of Chartres who in the twelfth century in turn continued his work, Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert de la Porrée, and Thierry of Chartres, the courses of the trivium and the quadrivium as expounded by Boethius were carried on from day to day and hour to hour. Fulbert speaks [in his On the Acts of the Apostles] of Boethius as one "read in the secular schools" and quotes his poetry in company with that of Vergil himself. Gilbert de la Porrée imbibed so well the principles of Aristotelian dialectic in the current Latin mediaeval rendering, that of Boethius, as we may think, that he proceeded further to rival his master in his Book of the Six Principles, held afterward in the schools of logic a worthy successor to the Boethian treatises. Thierry of Chartres discussed through its Latin version all of the Organon of Aristotle in his Library of the Seven Arts, the two great tomes he bequeathed at his death for the guidance of future students in his Cathedral School.

The same fountain of Aristotelian dialectic, bubbling through the channel of Boethius, sparkled in the twelfth century in the Cathedral School of Notre Dame at Paris, established at the beginning of this period by William of Champeaux. Here and later on near Paris at Saint Victor were sown the seeds of the University of Paris as students flocked to hear William discussing thorny dilemmas; here the foundation was laid of that passion for logical precision which has always been characteristic of French studies in liberal arts. Here Abelard, already impatient to argue the points debated by his master, sat under William of Champeaux; here Abelard in his turn made Paris far more renowned as the centre par excellence of logical training. Hither John of Salisbury was drawn by Abelard's renown to study in his lecture-room. We can picture to ourselves the hungry desire of Abelard to learn more of Greek philosophy than the prevailing ignorance of Greek and the scanty volume of Latin translations available for himself and his students would allow.

But John of Salisbury could not be held permanently by logic alone, however sparkling. Chartres soon called him away from Paris to sit at the feet of Richard "l'Évêeque" and of William of Conches, "second only to Bernard of Chartres in his rich store of literary learning." William himself wrote a commentary on Boethius's last work. The method of teaching at Chartres, John tells us, had been developed by Bernard, and he praises with enthusiasm its day's work with its alternation of literary exercise and religious devotion as laid down by the master. It was literature which John loved above all, and in his Metalogicon he rebelled against the passion for logic for its own sake which ran like fire in the schools of Europe of the earlier twelfth century. "Just as the sword of Hercules is of no use in the hand of a pigmy or a dwarf, but lays low all it meets like lightning in the hand of Achilles or Hector, so dialectic, if stripped of the might of other disciplines, is so to speak, maimed and useless. But if it be vigorous with their power, it avails to destroy all falsehood." Dialectic, then, or logic, which came to the same thing, must be firmly supported by a thorough training in her sister art of grammar, which, of course, involved long study of literature.

John knew his Boethius from end to end and his Aristotle both through Boethius and through other source, as the pages of the Metalogicon prove. As we have seen, he knew the whole Organon when he published the Metalogicon in 1159. He wonders why the Topica, the Analytica, and the Sophistici Elenchi of Aristotle have been so long lost to the world, and rejoices that the Topica has at length "been as it were raised from death or, at least, from sleep by some diligent and zealous student of our age to recall the erring and to open to its seekers the way of truth." Among the logical treatises of Boethius he especially admires the On Division for its "singular grace of vocabulary and nicety of expression." As Fulbert did, he quotes the verses of Boethius in company with those of Vergil, and calls Boethius "more excellent in faith and in knowledge of the truth." Yet the way of truth to John did not mean the disquisitions of Boethius on Aristotle as a substitute for straight translations of the text of Aristotle itself, and he blames bitterly those who rest on the inferior authority without striving to get as near as may be to the fountain head: "Against those who set aside the judgment of the ancients and dismiss the books of Aristotle, content for the most part with Boethius alone, many things could be said. But no matter, for it is pathetic to all men to see the imperfection of those who scarcely know anything, because they have spent their time and substance on Boethius alone."

But among the professors of these times Boethius had a yet deeper effect. It was he who fanned the flame of conflict that was to occupy philosophical minds through all the Middle Ages—the struggle between Nominalism and Realism in their various forms. The distinction between Aristotle and Plato had already been made by Cassiodorus in writing to Boethius: Plato theologus, Aristoteles logicus. The question turned for Boethius, as for later philosophers, on the reality of the existence of genera and species. Aristotle held that as universale and incorporeal they existed only in bodies apprehended by the senses; Plato believed that as universale they had a real existence apart from sensible bodies. Porphyry had refused to give judgment on this problem: "For it is a very deep matter and needs further enquiry." At first Boethius decided in favour of Plato and Realism, when he was writing his first commentary on Porphyry's Introduction. But later on he changed his mind. In the second and more learned commentary on the same work of Porphyry, after carefully pondering the doctrines of both Plato and Aristotle in this matter, he declared: "I have not thought it fitting to decide between their positions; it would need too deep probings into philosophy."

From this observation springs the picture given of Boethius in the twelfth century by Godefroi of Saint Victor. He is describing in rhymed verse the crystal streams of the seven liberal arts as distinct from the foul waters of mechanical sciences, and the progress of philosophical enquiry in the great figures of its history: Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, Donatus, Boethius, Priscian. Here, then, Boethius sits hesitating between the claims of Aristotle and Plato:

Assidet Boethius, stupens de hac lite,
Audiens quid hie et hie asserat perite,
Et quid cui faveat non discernit rite,
Nee praesumit solvere litem definite.

The fire of conflict burned on merrily, fed by his doubt. Fuel was added in the eighth and ninth centuries, on the side of Aristotle by Raban, on the side of Plato by Johannes Scottus. Thence it flared up into the fierce conflagration which from the twelfth till the fourteenth century blazed in every great European school and set the disciples of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic to battle for intellectual truth.

Here, then, we have a tiny view of the work of "Boethius, last of the Roman philosophers," for the professors, for the secular thought of the Middle Ages. But only half of this famous description has yet been quoted. It concludes with "Boethius, first of the scholastics." The term implies the union in harmony of secular and spiritual learning and dates its rise from 787 when Charles the Great, in a letter to the Bishops of France, sounded the call for a revival of secular learning among her clergy. Clerical training in the seven liberal arts was diligently pursued in the Palace School of Aachen. From thence it slowly spread, till many Cathedrals possessed their own Schools, in which the courses of the "Trivium" and the "Quadrivium" were taught in subordination to the principles of the Christian creed. This called forth a new technique on the part of Catholic scholars, the using of secular learning for the confirming and the elucidating of Christian doctrine in the minds of thinking men at large. In this, once more, Boethius had already led the way.

The Statement rests on his Sacred Treatises: four, or, we may think with reason, five in number. Furthermore, on them hangs the belief that Boethius was a Christian, and, withal, an earnest adherent of his faith.

In the nineteenth century there was much scepticism as to the genuineness of all these writings. It was held that, as Boethius undoubtedly wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in uttermost stress and in the last crisis of his life without giving any direct evidence of a Christian belief, he could not have been author of a number of theological treatises dealing with this. Such feeling was strong enough to conquer the clear ascription to Boethius of four such brief works. The publication, however, in 1877 by Usener of that fragment from the Family History of Cassiodorus known as the Anecdoton Holderi has settled the question with regard to these four in the minds of all except the determinedly sceptical.

This fragment tells us concerning Boethius that "he wrote a book on the Holy Trinity and some chapters on dogma and a book against Nestor." Now Cassiodorus, as a contemporary and friend, must have known what Boethius wrote. Both internal evidence and the testimony of manuscripts have confirmed this view, and with belief in the authenticity of at least four of the five Theological Tractates extant under his name we may confidently look upon Boethius as a Christian philosopher and theologian.

How, then, does the philosopher who longed to harmonize Plato and Aristotle for the world of scholars approach the Queen of sciences? Exactly as we should expect, so far as these four treatises go, Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5. Here he seeks another and an even higher harmony. At the beginning of the first one, known as On the Trinity, he writes to his father-in-law, Symmachus, to whom he dedicates the work: "I have long pondered this problem with such mind as I have and all the light that God has lent me. Now, having set it forth in logical order and cast it into literary form, I venture to submit it to your judgment, for which I care as much as for the results of my own research. You will readily understand what I feel whenever I try to write down what I think if you consider the difficulty of the topic and the fact that I discuss it only with a few—I may say with no one but yourself. It is indeed no desire for fame or empty popular applause that prompts my pen; if there by any external reward, we may not look for more warmth in the verdict than the subject itself arouses. For, apart from yourself, wherever I turn my eyes, they fall on either the apathy of the dullard or the jealousy of the shrewd, and a man who casts his thoughts before the common herd—I will not say to consider but to trample under foot, would seem to bring discredit on the study of divinity. So I purposely use brevity and wrap up the ideas I draw from the deep questionings of philosophy in new and unaccustomed words which speak only to you and to myself, that is, if you design to look at them. The rest of the world I simply disregard: they cannot understand, and therefore do not deserve to read. We should not, of course, press our inquiry further than man's wit and reason are allowed to climb the height of heavenly knowledge." And at the end a similar hope is expressed: "We must not in speaking of God let imagination lead us astray; we must let the Faculty of pure Knowledge lift us up and teach us to know all things as far as they may be known.

I have now finished the investigation which I proposed. The exactness of my reasoning awaits the standard of your judgment; your authority will pronounce whether I have seen a straight path to the goal. If, God helping me, I have furnished some support in argument to an article which stands by itself on the firm foundation of Faith, I shall render joyous praise for the finished work to Him from whom the invitation comes."

The keen desire to make trial of his long devotion to Aristotelian dialectic in its application to the mysteries of theology was natural, once we admit that Boethius was a Christian, whether he wrote these works in his eager youth or in his riper age. It is here that we see him as the forerunner of Saint Thomas and the Schoolmen of the thirteenth century in their passion to relate after their due order the things learned by men of natural reason and the things revealed to them from without of supernatural faith.

The scholastic method is already foreshadowed through the treatment in this first pamphlet of the doctrine "That Trinity is One God, not three Gods." After the aim of the work has been set forth, we find, next, a statement of the Catholic Faith regarding this doctrine; then a description of the scientific method of theological enquiry, based on Aristotle; then the application of this method to that particular doctrine.

The treatise On the Trinity was well known throughout the Middle Ages. Alcuin praised its author in the eighth century as "learned in tomes both philosophic and divine"; in the ninth Hincmar, Bishop of Reims, referred to it and to Tractates II and V in his De una et non trina Deitate; Johannes Scottus, the great Irishman who presided over the Palace School at Aachen in the time of Charles the Bald, and his pupil, Remigius of Auxerre, toward the end of the same century wrote commentaries on it and on others of these Sacred Treatises. In the twelfth century Abelard studied it, in the thirteenth it was in the hands of Albertus Magnus, and was made the subject of a special commentary by his great pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas [Opusculum LXIII]. Especially interesting is another commentary written by Gilbert de la Porrée, Bishop of Poitiers from 1142, "the one saint whom Bernard of Clairvaux unsuccessfully charged with heresy." Certain statements in this exposition of Boethius, On the Trinity, brought upon Gilbert the displeasure of the Church. He was tried before Pope Eugenius III at the Council of Reims in 1148 and discharged without punishment on his promise to satisfy his accusers with regard to the text of his book. John of Salisbury, who cites these theological works of Boethius in his Metalogicon, was present, he tells us, at the Council of Reims. We can picture him watching the fiery zeal of Saint Bernard there, declaring against Gilbert that in his Commentary on Boethius were found "certain things worthy of condemnation by the wise because they accorded not with the precepts of the Church or were unseemly by reason of their strange novelty of language." Gilbert was also roundly accused in Commentaries on the same work of Boethius written in this twelfth century by the "Pseudo-Bede," possibly Gottfried of Auxerre, and by Clarembaud, Archdeacon of Arras, himself a pupil of Thierry of Chartres.

In the sculptures which make beautiful the West, Front of the Cathedral of Chartres the Seven Liberal Arts are represented, together with their greatest exponents: Priscian, Aristotle, Cicero, Pythagoras, Nicomachus, Euclid and Ptolemy. At least, so experts have been content to believe. Boethius has not been discovered, perhaps, it has been thought, because of a shadow cast on his work by this Commentary of Gilbert de la Porrée. But Martianus Capella has not been identified there, either, and Saint Bernard himself defended Boethius.

The second of these Theological Treatises is also concerned with the Holy Trinity. It is dedicated to "John the Deacon" and was frequently known by that title. Attempts have been made without any definite result to identify this John with Pope John I (523-526) or Pope John II (533-535). He, whoever he was, exchanged letters with Ennodius and with Avitus, Bishop of Vienne in the fifth century. We have an interesting letter by him on the Baptismal Office, written at the request of Senarius, the friend of Ennodius, for his instruction. Boethius addresses this John with great respect at the end of this little work as one expert in the doctrine of the Church: "If my words are true and in keeping with the Faith I beg you tell me so. But if peradventure you disagree in any point, look carefully at what I have written and try to bring into harmony both faith and reason." Here again Boethius strikes the key-note of his purpose. The authenticity of this second treatise is attested, not only by superscription but by reference in later writers, as in Hincmar of Reims and St. Thomas Aquinas. The pamphlet is essentially logical in spirit, and its beginning tersely states its aim: "The question before us is whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be predicated of the Divinity substantially or otherwise. And I think that the method of our inquiry must be borrowed from what is admittedly the surest source of all truth, namely, the fundamental doctrines of the catholic faith."

The third treatise, addressed to "the same," is equally logical in treatment. It is often referred to briefly as "The Hebdomads" of Boethius, since he writes to John at its beginning: "You ask me to state and explain somewhat more clearly that obscure question in my Hebdomads, concerning the manner in which substances can be good in virtue of existence without being absolute goods.… I confess I like to expound my Hebdomads to myself, and would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing."

The meaning of the word "Hebdomads" has been variously explained: as the name of a society in which Boethius and his friends, such as John and Symmachus, and probably Cassiodorus, met periodically for philosophical discussion, or as a work in seven parts, after the manner of the Hebdomads of Varro. The scientific method is next introduced: "As is the custom in treatises on mathematics and other sciences I have set forth terms and rules throughout in developing my argument." Thus we have in orderly sequence the introduction, the statement of general principles, the quaestio or question in point, and, lastly, the solutio or conclusion, arrived at by means of the general principles laid down before. Saint Thomas Aquinas made also a detailed commentary on this work, which attracted him through this very scientific method.

More famous in antiquity was the fifth of these treatises, much longer than any of the others, a reasoned argument against the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius. It, also, is dedicated to "John the Deacon, his revered Father, by his son Boethius." Boethius states at the beginning that he has lately been present at a meeting to hear a letter, no doubt the one sent in 512 by Eastern Bishops to Pope Symmachus asking for direction regarding these errors, and that the reading of the letter has stirred up a theological turmoil in his mind. No one else, however, of all who were present seemed to be worried, and he concluded with much disgust that they must all be very stupid! After thinking things over for a long time he has decided to write down his own conclusions and to submit them for judgment to this director of his mind in matters of faith. Once again he argues in logical course: First, the terms to be used, Person and Nature, must be defined; then the two opposing heresies, of Nestorius and of Eutyches, must be overthrown; lastly, what is of Catholic belief on this matter must be clearly set forth.

It is in this treatise that Boethius laid down his wellknown definition of "Person," a definition finally accepted, after full discussion, by St. Thomas Aquinas and still regarded as valid: "Person is the individual substance of a rational nature." After the unfolding of the various points of attack against the heresy of Nestorius, that there were Two Natures and Two Persons in the Christ, and that of Eutyches, that in Him were Two Persons but only One Nature, Boethius finds the solution of the problem in the Aristotelian mean between two extremes: the belief in the One Person and Two Natures which is the creed of the Catholic Church.

We come now to the controversy which has so long centred in the fourth tractate, On the Catholic Faith. For many years this has been held spurious, even after the fragment discovered by Alfred Holder spoke for the genuine authorship of Boethius in the case of the other four treatises, either by direct mention or by their indirect inclusion in "some chapters on dogma." The difficulties regarding No. 4 are both internal and external. From the point of internal evidence the great problems have been the simple style and content of the work, entirely different from the dialectical argument and scientifically logical form of the other four theological papers. We have here simply a plain statement of the Catholic faith, composed in easy language and popular manner. For this reason critics have suggested other authors: John the Deacon might have written it for one of his spiritual children; or another Severinus, possibly Saint Severinus of Noricum, who was, indeed, a missionary and not at all a philosopher. On the other hand, it is true that part of the fifth tractate is also written in plain style, that Boethius in his proven work was not always writing in scientific language. He wrote at times in simple and easy words; he wrote various kinds of verse in his Consolation of Philosophy. The man, whom the four tractates we have discussed reveal as a firm Catholic, might well have been content on occasion to write a plain statement of his faith, perhaps for some unlearned friend. If he could aid the learned of his time by his dialectic, he might well have been willing to help some younger or less educated reader. Moreover, the words of Cassiodorus, "some chapters of dogma," suit this fourth treatise much better than either the second or the third, to which they are generally applied. So far as the theological content goes, the work could quite reasonably be dated in the lifetime of Boethius.

With regard to external evidence the MS. tradition dates back to the ninth century. If Boethius did not write the tract, it may have been sent to him by a close friend, such as John the Deacon, his Father in the Church, or by some other man with whom he was accustomed to talk of Spiritual things. It would thus have been found among his papers at his death and published with them. We have such instances of the inclusion of the work of other men, as that of Marius Victorinus, in the corpus of Boethius. Serious ground for hesitation to assign it to Boethius comes from the fact that there is very little MS. evidence dating before the twelfth century for the author's name and the title of the work and that the paper holds no introduction, and no words of personal import at its end. All the other four treatises are expressly assigned to Boethius, either by name (I, II, V), or by the words "Of the Same" (III); all have a definite introduction, and all, except the third, some concluding words of a personal nature. Against this, various lines of defence have suggested that Tract IV might have depended, as one of a series, upon mention of the name of its author in the tracts preceding it in the same volume; or that Boethius himself deliberately omitted his name from this short composition. If it be spurious, it is difficult to see why it should have been inserted between Nos. 3 and 5, unless the Tractates were published in two parts. Much importance has been attached to the appearance of the words ACTENUS BOETIUS ("Here ends the work of Boethius") between Tractates III and IV in red capitals in the ninth century Codex Augiensis, inserted by the hand of the copyist or one of his assistants. This subscription, however, died with the copy, as this manuscript was not perpetuated. It may well have been due to a writer's error. Lastly, the lack of scholia and commentaries from which this particular tract has suffered may reasonably be explained by the eager interest of scholars in all matters of dialectic throughout the Middle Ages. A simple confession of faith hardly called for interpretation. This might explain its neglect by students like Abelard and Gilbert de 1a Porrée, though in the ninth century Remigius of Auxerre annotated all five tracts.

At least, MS. tradition does not render the authorship impossible, and it is pleasant to think that Boethius, as other learned men have done since his day, could lay aside his erudition to sum up his creed in the simple language of his own devotion, for the assurance of his own heart or the enlightening of some enquirer after God. His last words may be translated here as an indication of the character of the whole:

There are, therefore, three truths by which ye shall know the Catholic Church throughout the world. All she holds, she holds either by authority of the Scriptures, or by universal tradition, or of special and particular custom. Of these, the authority of the Scriptures and the universal tradition of the Fathers bind her whole body; particular rules and special governances support and direct her individual parts, according to differing locality and the counsel deemed expedient by each. Herein now lies the one great hope of the faithful: the coming of the end of this world, when all corruptible things shall pass away, and men shall rise again for judgment, each to receive his merits and to remain for ever and eternally where he has deserved to be. This alone is the reward of blessedness, the contemplation of the Creator, so far as the created may be able to contemplate its Creator. Then shall the ranks of Angels be filled again from the number of the blessed in that City on high, whose King is a Virgin's Son. There unto men for their eternal joy and delight, for their meat and for their work, shall be His perpetual praising.

But it is time that we look back again to the life of Boethius the man, whom we last saw prospering magnificently as Master of Offices in 522. He was now a ripe scholar as well as statesman, renowned not only in Rome and Ravenna but in East and West, wherever the Roman learning and the Latin tongue were still esteemed. He was still in his forties and might confidently look forward to many further years of his beloved research and successful administration. His great aim of harmonizing the Aristotelian and the Platonic philosophy was in steady progress, though still far from its goal; Theodoric needed supremely the support of wise and cultured men, and all looked well on the outside for his future career.

Within, however, things were far from well. Theodoric, in spite of his honest strivings after civilitas, after harmony, peace, order and beauty in his composite kingdom, was, after all, a Goth and an Arian—in other words, a barbarian and a heretic. He was proud of his race and of the religion of his fathers. Boethius belonged to the aristocratic circles of Rome; he had been trained from his childhood in Greek and Latin culture; he was a steadfast adherent of the Catholic Church. Friction was inevitable, even if sternly repressed and never allowed to escape in disloyal word or act. As Boethius felt, so did his fellow-Senators, and Theodoric must have been nervously aware in his heart of the gulf which separated him from the nobler of his subjects. As time went on, the fair record of the greater part of his reign seems to have been darkened by fear and suspicion. This was natural enough. Yet there is no need for us to press forward the story that this King, so keen on toleration and justice for his citizens, of whatever blood or religious faith, now began to yield to the devil's machinations, ordering a Chapel of Saint Stephen on the outskirts of Verona to be destroyed and forbidding any Roman to carry weapons, even as much as a knife. Undoubtedly the time was a difficult one for Theodoric, and it did not help matters for him that the Pope who succeeded Hormisdas in 523, John the first, was resolutely opposed to tolerance of any deviation from the Catholic belief.

The King's irritation, at first somewhat vague, was sharply stimulated by change in the religious attitude of the Imperial government in Constantinople. The Emperor Justin the first, who had followed Anastasius of Monophysite tendency in 518, was himself an orthodox Catholic and was steadily urged on against all forms of heresy by his nephew Justinian, the power behind his throne. At this time Justin was meditating, if not already declaring, strict legislation against the Arians, even an edict that their churches in the East must be surrendered to the Catholic See. When the edict did come, Theodoric was enraged at such an affront to his own creed. But we may think that he had been disturbed in mind long before, suspecting that Catholics in Italy were secretly yearning toward Constantinople. No doubt they were attracted by the orthodoxy of the East and the stability of its Emperor, who held his throne by a right of tenure to which the Goth could not lay claim. No doubt even those who felt it their duty to support Theodoric as one who had deserved well of them and their country did sometimes turn eager eyes eastward toward the traditional Emperor of Rome and the supporter of their faith. The King in the West must have tossed at times by night on his bed, dreaming uneasily of this very thing.

On the other hand, the position of Boethius had its own point of danger. Among the courtiers of the King in Ravenna, ever ready to flatter and acquiesce in the royal will, he stood out, we may imagine, as a rock of uprightness and stern virtue. Public life for such men forms a target of attack, and we find Boethius lamenting afterward to his Lady Philosophy the hard fight he had fought in the cause of honour:

Following, then, this authority (of Plato), I longed to transfer what I had learned at leisure in secret to the conduct of public administration. You and God, who has placed you in the minds of the wise, are my witnesses that nothing but the common aim of all good patriots brought me to public office. Thence have come to me grievous and implacable quarrels with wicked men, and in the free following of my conscience I have oftentimes right willingly given offence to the powerful by maintaining what is just.

How often I have checked Conigatus when he was attacking the fortunes of some weak man! How often I have turned aside Trigguilla, Chamberlain of the King's Palace, from some wrong he had plotted, or even set into action! How often I have protected those unhappy men whom the barbarian greed was vexing with endless slanders unrestrained, though thereby I exposed my own authority to peril. Never did anyone drag me from justice to injustice. I sorrowed for the ruin of people in the provinces by private robbery and public taxation as deeply as the victims themselves. I took up the cause of Campania in a season of dire famine when hard and inexplicable terms of purchase seemed likely to bring about a lack of food there. I opposed the Praetorian Prefect, I fought the matter out before the King, I won my case, and such terms were not exacted. When the dogs of the Palace had already eaten up in greedy hope the wealth of Paulinus, a man of consular rank, I dragged him from the very jaws of those seeking to devour him.

At times, too, Boethius could be very outspoken. He writes of a certain Decoratus as a "right worthless rogue and a spy," though Cassiodorus sang the official praises of Decoratus for Theodoric. Ennodius, also, wrote to Decoratus as his friend. But Boethius declared roundly he never would hold office in company with such a man. The man, nevertheless, was Quaestor under Theodoric, and, we may think, in the very year in which Boethius languished in prison. Apparently his enemy flourished in his disgrace.

The stage was set, prepared for tragedy if only a sufficient argument should present itself. It came suddenly. Certain letters, sent by a Senator named Albinus or by his friends to the Emperor Justin at Constantinople, were intercepted in Italy by an official named Severus, a most zealous minion of the law, as it would seem. In these letters were words which were interpreted as conveying a treacherous desire for negotiation with Justin, a hinting at the "freeing of Rome" from the Ostrogothic rule. The discovery was promptly reported by Severus to the officer whose business it was to collect all information relevant to cases brought before the royal Consistorium, or Court of trial for persons accused of treason. The officer (referendarius) of the moment was named Cyprian, and he was serving under Boethius himself, the Master of Offices. It was a difficult matter for Boethius. He would naturally be reluctant to press a charge against Albinus, a friend of his and a fellow-Senator; moreover, ex officio he was a member of the Court which would try the accused. We need not think that Boethius had had any hand in sending to Justin foolish letters of doubtful loyalty; such a course is in keeping neither with his scrupulous honesty both intellectual and moral nor with the sagacity which had raised him high in the King's counsels. But we may well imagine that he had keenly sympathised with Albinus and other Senators in a common desire to be ruled in those days from Constantinople rather than from Ravenna; he may possibly have known of correspondence with Constantinople.

At any rate, with or without the official consent of his superior, Cyprian referred the matter to Theodoric, who was at the time in Verona, and conscientious loyalty drove Boethius there at once to defend Albinus in his own person. We still have his words to Theodoric: "This accusation by Cyprian is false. But if Albinus did do this deed, then also I myself and all the Senate did it together with him. But the thing is false, Lord King."

His honesty was fatal to himself. For Cyprian after some hesitation, whether caused through his own reluctance or through fear of the consequences, went on to include his superior in the charge of treason, supporting the accusation, it was said, by evidence of false witnesses. It was certainly a shock for Theodoric to hear that two of the leading Romans, one of whom was his own Master of Offices, had been charged with treason against his throne. It was a greater shock to find good ground for fearing that members of the Senate, how many he did not know, were in league against him. In his angry mood he doubtless remembered that Justin had specially favoured Boethius in 522 when he allowed Theodoric to raise his two sons to the consulship. He may also have been told of a work which Boethius had lately published on the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. Was there on foot a movement of the Catholic Romans to drive his race from the throne of Italy? The fact that the accusers of Boethius, Cyprian and others, were themselves Catholics did not allay this fear. Someone must suffer, and in his rage he seized the victim ready to his hand, this man so calmly confronting his royal power with bold words, and eagerly he lent ear to the proceedings in the Consistorium.

Boethius tells us something about accusation and accusers. On behalf of the whole Senate he withstood the charge of traitorous action, brought, as he says, against that Order by the King. On his own behalf he resisted the statement, very probably pressed by his subordinate officer, Cyprian, that he had tried to obstruct justice by preventing the presentation of evidence against the Senate. He resisted, further, the charge of "sacrilege," in which commentators have seen an accusation of magic practice, possibly drawn from the skill of Boethius in mathematics and astronomy. In passionate words he protested afterward his innocence to his Mistress, the Lady Philosophy, both for her own assurance and for the knowledge of men to come.

The accusers were Cyprian and also three other men brought forward as witnesses; Basilius, Opilio, and Gaudentius by name. Of Cyprian Boethius tells us, continuing the defence of his own public life: "I faced the wrath of Cyprian, the informer, lest unfair accusation should condemn Albinus, once Consul. Do I seem to have piled up sufficiency of grievous enmities against myself?"

Cyprian appears, however, in another light in two letters of Theodoric, in which his merits as referendarius are sung and he is admitted to the office of Count of the Sacred Largesses. This was in 524. Like Decoratus, he flourished in his opponent's fall. Special stress is laid on his loyalty to the throne of Italy; it is just possible that we may detect here a covert reference, by contrast, to Boethius and his recent accusation.

The characters of the other three accusers are more directly attacked by their victim. He declares, continuing the argument quoted above: "But I ought to have been safer in the hands of other men, I who through my love of justice reserved for myself no refuge among the King's courtiers. Yet who were the men who by their informing struck me this blow? One was Basilius, who had been banished from the King's service and was forced by his debts to lay information against me. Others were Opilio and Gaudentius, men sentenced by the King to exile because of innumerable acts of dishonesty. When the King heard that they would not obey this order and had fled to sanctuary, he proclaimed that if they had not left Ravenna by a certain day they should be driven out with branded foreheads. What could be more severe? And yet on that very day information against me was accepted from these same men."

Here also we have contrary evidence in two letters of Cassiodorus written for Athalaric in the year 527. Opilio was a brother of Cyprian and, according to Cassiodorus, equally loyal to Theodoric. The two letters tell of his rewarding by bestowal of the same office of Count of the Sacred Largesses. In one of them we may very possibly see a reference to the trial of Boethius, by this time matter of history; Cassiodorus had had special cause to be concerned about the fate of his fellow-citizen. His words here seem rather to be the cautious expression of one who really sympathized with his friend, now condemned and dead in disgrace, than indication of judgment that Boethius had been guilty. They also appear to contain an implicit warning to Opilio to watch his official steps. "You are going to enjoy," the royal letter runs, as penned by Cassiodorus, "all the privileges and emoluments which fell to your predecessors, and we pray that those who stand firm in their own deeds may not be shaken by any contrivings of slander. There was a time when even judges were troubled by informers. But you have no bad conscience. Lay aside fear, therefore, and enjoy the fruits of your honours." If this does refer in any way to the fate of Boethius, the word delator, "informer" or "spy," is certainly a daring one. It was the word used, as we have seen, of Cyprian, Opilio's brother, by Boethius himself.

There lies a strange contradiction in the thought that Opilio, whom Boethius could describe in 523 or 524, when he was writing his Consolation, as one guilty of innumerable frauds, punished with exile and threatened with branding, should three or four years later be honoured with office in the State. Apparently Athalaric and his Regent Mother chose the officers whose aid they desired among their Gothic subjects without looking too closely into their history under Theodoric. Cassiodorus, we may suppose, wrote his missives of congratulation as an official servant of the Crown without allowing his private conscience to overrule obedience to the sovereign for whom he worked.

The evidence was found sufficient to arrest Boethius and to cast him into prison at Pavia together with Albinus. He was also stripped of his high dignity, and Cassiodorus himself was made Master of Offices in his place. But the King in his anger went further. He stopped the hearing before the Consistorium and cast aside legal procedure by assuming in his own person the conduct of the trial at Pavia, after summoning thither the Prefect of Rome to assist him in judgment. State magistrates and Senators who composed this Court of Treason were relieved of all responsibility concerning the matter; this rested by his own determination with Theodoric. The Senate was so terrified of implication in the charge of high treason after hearing of the words of Boethius that it passed special decrees of compliance, declaring him guilty.

Meanwhile Boethius remained in prison, ignorant of all that was happening, till the royal deliberations ended in sentence of death and confiscation of property. We do not know much about these deliberations or even how long they actually lasted; according to Boethius himself forged letters formed part of the evidence. By the time the sentence was carried out in 524 he had endured nearly a year of captivity. Records differ as to his end. Our chief authority declares that he was transferred from Pavia to another prison in Calvenzano, near Milan, and was there put to death with torture: "A cord was tied round his head and drawn so tightly that at length his eyes burst from their sockets, and he was then despatched by a blow from a club." Fortunately the horrible record is placed in doubt by two other versions, which state: one, that he was beheaded, the other, that he was killed by a sword.

The sequel of Theodoric's quarrel with Constantinople is interesting. According to evidence of chronicle, when the edict against the Arians had been published, he sent for the Pope John himself, and when he arrived at Ravenna, curtly bade him get to Constantinople and obtain from Justin relief for those who did not desire adherence to the Catholic faith. The Pope went reluctantly, but was received at Constantinople with all honour. He obtained the relief, except that Arians already converted to Catholicism were not permitted to return to their former creed. On his return, however, he was received by Theodoric in an angry mood and was actually cast into prison, where he died shortly after. His funeral was carried out with great distinction, and he was subsequently enrolled among the Saints of the Church. An honourable exception among terrified Senators at this time was Symmachus, who, while Boethius was still alive in prison, "grieved for his injuries." His grief cost him dear. He must have shown it clearly; for he, also, was arrested and put to death in 525.

Remorse, we read, came quickly to Theodoric for these hasty acts of spleen. He is described to us by a contemporary writer as beset by fears of conscience, doubtless aggravated by the sickness which troubled these last days of his life. After recording the aristocratic birth and the high standing in the State of both Symmachus and Boethius, the narrative goes on:

They were earnest disciples of Philosophy and foremost in love of Justice and they ministered of their substance to the need of many, both citizens and strangers. Thus they enjoyed great renown and brought to envy men of evil character, who with their lies persuaded Theodoric that the two were plotting revolution. So he slew them both and made forfeit their goods to the treasury. A few days later as he sat at dinner his servants placed before him the head of a great fish, and it seemed to him just like the head of Symmachus, lately killed. For it looked at him in a dreadful threatening manner with its teeth clenched on the lower lip and its eyes fixed in a grim and cruel stare. Sudden terror seized the King, and shivering with cold he hurried to his bed, where he buried himself in heap of blankets hastily brought by his servants at his call. The doctor, Elpidius, was summoned, and Theodoric confessed to him with tears the whole story of the crime he had committed; but his grief and pangs of conscience constantly tormented him till he died a little later. This was the first and the last wrong done by the King to his subjects in condemning both of these men without first trying their case as he was wont.

In years to come Boethius was honoured as a Martyr by the Church. Already in Paul the Deacon's History of Italy we read that while Pope John and his fellow-ambassadors "were tarrying to return from their mission to Constantinople, Theodoric, driven by the fury of his wickedness, slew with the sword Symmachus and Boethius, Catholic men," though we know that Pope John did not start for the East till after the death of Boethius. If Theodoric's fear of the alliance of Catholics in Italy with Constantinople and his vexation at the hostility toward the Arians of both the Pope in the West and the Emperor in the East can raise Boethius to the rank of martyr for his faith, then surely he merits a martyr's place. But since his prosecutors, Cyprian and the rest, were also Catholic, his trial could not actually have been based on religious grounds.

It is also true that a cult of "Saint Severinus Boethius" has continued down the ages, though here, again, it would be difficult to say how much the fame of another Severinus may be indirectly responsible for this, through confusion of persons. The Cathedral of Pavia still holds his relics, and the observance of his feast-day there on the 23rd of October was formally sanctioned by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the year 1883.

To the days when Boethius lay in torment of suspense and discouragement we owe the best known of his works, the Consolation of Philosophy. Many have asked why Boethius seemed to ask aid of philosophy rather than of his religious faith as he sat in the shadow of death, alone and imprisoned; many, as we have seen, have denied for this reason that he was a Catholic Christian at all. But surely a man's book need not show all his self. Boethius might well have written a treatise in like circumstances on mathematics or on music for the relieving of his mind while, unknown to the public of future days, morning and evening and at noontide he offered his prayers for the comfort of his soul and the keeping of his faith. He may well have wanted for years to write such a book, "In Praise of Philosophy," and have seized this time of enforced leisure, with the difference that she was now to stand forth as his friend in sorrow, as before in joy. There is nothing that is hostile to the Catholic religion in her counsel as given here. On the contrary, a man's faith might well find support from her reasoned argument.

To her, then, Boethius now turned, while the reserve of his inner soul in those last hours forbade the revealing of his colloquies with God. It may be that he desired further to use his knowledge of philosophy for the enlightening of others beset by problems like unto his own, men to whom the truths of religion would not so surely appeal. If this was his thought, he succeeded as he never dreamed. In the Middle Ages his book was read by all men, found everywhere, in places both sacred and secular. It trained the young, it comforted the old, it stayed the doubts of the vigorous and of the weaker brethren alike. Men, learned and simple, theologian and lay, marked and digested its pages for the sake of others as of themselves. Its pithy definitions gave food for argument to Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Schoolmen; its subtler passages gave thought to countless commentators. Already in the ninth century Asser, teacher of King Alfred, was busy at this work. In the same century Alfred made his famous version in Anglo-Saxon, the forerunner of translations into many other tongues. Among them those by Notker Labeo or his pupils into Old High German in the eleventh century and by the monk Maximus Planudes into Greek in the fourteenth, are perhaps of special interest for their language. Far better known is the prose rendering of Chaucer. He was ever devoted to his dear "Boëce," whatever he was writing, and especially in his tale of Troylus and Cryseyde. A little later came the translation of John Walton, and we may remember, also, a rendering by Queen Elizabeth of the year 1593. Among the innumerable recollections of Boethius in prose and poetry two shall be mentioned here: in English literature the brief summary of John Lydgate, in Italian the picture given by Dante. Lydgate wrote of him as slain for his faith:

But touching Boys, as bookis specefie,
Wrotte dyvers bookis off philosophie,
Off the Trynyte maters that were dyvyne,
Martyrd for crist and called Severyne.

Dante places him among the flaming spirits that make glorious music around the throne of God: "The sainted soul that from martyrdom and from exile came to this peace." His bones, as Dante told, were laid, long after his death, under the Golden Ceiling in Saint Peter's Church at Pavia.

And now to the book itself. It was written in a medley of prose and verse, such as Varro and Martianus Capella had used before and Bernard Silvestris of Tours and Alan of Lille were to imitate. Verse alternated with prose for the relief of the mind from application to logical argument, written in a variety of metres, with many traces of the influence of Seneca's tragedies. At times we find real poetry, at times mere versification. That Boethius was given to writing poems we know from his own and from other witness. The prose is clear and simple, easy to read, and of a Latin sufficiently pure and classical to cause no difficulty.

The relation of Boethius to his sources is, again, a matter of varying judgment. These sources are undoubtedly the teachings of the Stoics, of Plato and the Neo-Platonists, and of Aristotle, and yet these component borrowings have been transfused into a whole which bears a new and original impress from the mind of the author himself. We have here the tree of a philosophy rooted in ancient theory, bearing a fruit all its own. And so, while we see the matter of the Timaeus and of the Gorgias, the thought of Proclus and of Plotinus, the substance of the lost Protrepticus of Aristotle clearly in evidence, we see them through the mind of the Roman philosopher and thinker and man of this sixth century. And more. We see the pagan doctrines through the mind of one who knew in his own religious experience something of that philosophic contemplation of God which Christian men have always held as part of their inheritance. Philosophic reasoning here led Boethius to the contemplation of the Divine, nurtured him in its high thought, till in this same book he passed beyond its ken to the vision of the Personal God whence springs Christian belief.

At the beginning of the work we find him in the full misery of his changed fortune, suffering the torments of reflection in his prison while he ponders on his injuries and dreads worse to come. As he sits in this deep sadness, he is suddenly amazed by the vision of a Lady, familiar and yet strange to him. Her face is vigorous as of one in youth, yet it bears the thought of untold time; her stature seems to vary, now of human height, now rising high beyond man's gaze. She is clad in a robe that carries in its lower part the Greek letter pi to mark her skill in practical meditation, in its upper part the letter theta, denoting her knowledge of contemplative science in ways beyond reason or intellectual imaginings. Steps fashioned in her dress lead from the lower to the higher part; but her clothing is torn by the violence of men in snatching fragments for their use.

It is the Lady Philosophy. She quickly perceives the unhappy mood of her disciple, so different from the earlier promise of his philosophie studies; but she determines rather to aid him by remedies than to waste time in complaints. Gradually the mist of depression clears a little from the mind of Boethius, and he recognizes his Mistress and Healer, long known to his life.

Now Philosophy begins her mission of succour. She reminds Boethius of the heroes of adversity in past time, of Socrates, of Zeno, of Seneca. Such as they care nothing for tyrants or adverse happenings; for a mighty fortress of philosophy stands ever ready to receive them in the hour of their need. Thither they may retire and laugh merrily from within at those who run after vain trifles outside. Philosophic indifference is their sure armour, dreading nothing, desiring nothing that may chain them to earth.

At her bidding Boethius opens his sorrow; he tells her of his upright administration and the wrongs done him by false charges, wails that the good are afflicted and the wicked rejoice. In answer Philosophy grieves that he has wandered in his complaining so far from his native country, the land of soul's content in God, and sets to work to bring him back:

If you truly remember your own native land, you know that it is not ruled by a democracy as the Athenians once were ruled. It owns

Unus Deus et Pater omnium,

Who rejoices in the multitude, not in the banishment of His citizens, Whose service is justice and perfect liberty. Are you ignorant of that most ancient law of your City, which ordains that none may be an exile who has willed to settle his dwelling within her? For there is no fear that he who is held safely by her rampart and fortifying should deserve to be an exile. But he who ceases to wish to dwell within her ceases also to deserve this.

And so the sight of this prison of yours does not concern me so much as the look upon your face. Not the walls of your library at home with their adornment of ivory and crystal matter to me so much as the house of your mind. There I have gathered, not books, but my ancient doctrines, for the sake of which books are prized.

The complaints that Boethius has made are true enough, and far more might be said, the Lady continues. But in his present state of distress remedies, mild remedies at first, must be applied for his healing. One or two questions then bring out the real trouble. He remembers, indeed, that God is the source and ruler of all the world, but he has forgotten how and by what means God governs it. "Now I know," replies Philosophy, "another, yes, and the greatest cause of your sickness. You no longer understand your true nature. Now, then, I have fully discovered the reason of your bitterness and so the means to win your rescue. You are confounded through forgetfulness of yourself, and for this reason you have grieved as an exile, robbed of your possessions. You do not know what is the real end of things, and so you think that worthless and wicked men are powerful and happy. You have forgotten by what helm the world is guided, and so you think that Fortune veers now this way, now that, without control. These are grave reasons, not only for sickness, but even for death."

Yet there is still hope. For Boethius, even in this great unhappiness, still knows that the world is ruled by divine reason. From this tiny spark the fire of life shall again blaze up in him. From this starting-point Philosophy will build up her cure of instruction.

First, then, it is entirely wrong to think that Fortune has shown a new and strange side of herself to him. For she is changeable of her own true nature and has ever been so. Why, then, be surprised when she shows herself in her true self? Everyone who takes Fortune as mistress must accept her as she shall be, bound by her own character to alter at some time, however constant she may be for a long period: "You have given yourself over to the will of Fortune. Then you must submit to the ways of your mistress. Do you want to stop her revolving wheel? But, most stupid of mortals, it is no longer the wheel of chance if it stays unmoved!"

The arguments which Fortune might bring forward in her own defence are now reviewed and found just and reasonable from her standpoint. Of her own she gave, of her own she has taken away. The turning of her wheel is within her own right, to swing up and down as she will. Why should Boethius expect treatment different from that meted out to other men? Further, Philosophy recalls all the blessings which have fallen to him in life, both domestic and political. Not now for the first time has he suddenly come as a stranger upon the stage of this world. To which Boethius answers in that cry which meets us again on the lips of Francesca, tossed in outer darkness upon the wind of torments, the grief of Tennyson for Arthur Hallam:

A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering
  happier things.

Yet, urges Philosophy, your wife still lives and your sons, dearer to you than your own existence. What man, moreover, that lives can boast of fortune that shall give to him unmixed joy, be it of wealth or ancient lineage or wife of children? He who is blessed in one respect ever cries for his lack in another, and no earthly happiness remains stable. The only true happiness of man is found within himself, the chief of his own possessions. While he remains ignorant of the ways of Fortune, he cannot rest in peace, fearing her fickle habit. And, come what may, earthly fortune must desert the soul at its passing from this world of time. Have not many men sought and attained happiness in the rejection of temporal fortune, deliberately choosing pain and torment, even death itself?

By this time the healing touch of Philosophy has begun to take effect in the sick soul, and she warms to her work with increased vigour of longing to expose the futility of false fortune. If a man's possessions are bad, she declares, they are but a trouble to him; if they are good, their goodness is inherently their own, not of the man who only possesses them from without. Beauty and riches can only adorn a person; they must always be external to his real self; and how can mere clothes or servants add to a man's inner store of blessedness?

Other creatures, truly, are happy in their own possessions. But you, with mind made in the image of God, do you seek the adornings of your high nature from the lowest things, and do not understand how great wrong you do your Creator? He willed that the human race should excel all earthly creatures; you thrust your dignity down below the very lowest. For if it be granted that what each man holds as his Good is more precious than the man himself, then you rank yourself inferior to the cheapest things by judging them to be your Good. And this is only what you deserve. For human nature is such that it only rises above other things when it knows its own true character, but is cast down below the beasts if it ceases to understands itself. Ignorance of self is natural to other living creatures; for men it is a sin.

The same is true regarding honours and offices of the State, which are the source of great harm when held by bad men and are only of profit in the hands of good citizens by reason of the personal virtue of their recipients: "So it comes about that public offices do not magnify virtuous men, but virtuous men magnify their offices." This desire of fame and glory is the special weakness, however, of great men. Yet how foolish it is! Reflect, observes Philosophy, that only a quarter of the world is inhabited by men, and much of this is taken up by seas and marshes and desert lands where no one may dwell. Why should anyone want to show forth his renown in this "tiniest point of a point"? Reflect, also, that in this little space there are assembled many races of different languages, manners and views of life—how can one man's fame reach very far? And what seems splendid to one race will seem blameworthy to another.

This is true enough of life. It is even more true when we think of death, which brings oblivion to most men's work in course of time. And what of a man's fame when brought face to face with eternity? Do men expect or desire earthly renown after death? Truly, we believe that the soul lives on. But will she crave to be still entangled in the things of this unstable world?

Yet, sometimes, Philosophy allows, Fortune does deserve well of men, and this, strangely enough, when she frowns upon them. For here, in changing, she not only shows her true self, but she reveals to those whom she deserts what store of happiness is really theirs in the friends that remain steadfast, the most precious of riches.

By now, through this method of reasoning, interspersed with the relaxation of song, Philosophy has cleared away the outer débris that had choked entrance to the happiness still latent in her patient's soul. And so, after a brief moment of recollection for the gathering of her resources, she now approaches more nearly to his higher self. Now she will teach him what is that happiness which is the end and aim of all men: "And that is the Good which utterly satisfies its possessor. It is truly the Highest Good, containing within itself all good things. If any good were absent from it, it could not be the Highest Good, for something to be desired would still be left outside it."

Yet men in their blindness do not recognize their true joy, and seek lower blessings, vainly supposing these to be the perfect good which they are all trying to attain by false paths. So "like drunken men they cannot find their way home." Such lesser goods are worldly wealth, honours, power, glory and pleasures, all of which men seek by natural inclination. Not one of these in itself can satisfy. They are prone rather to create their own craving for further possession and to bring with them their own sorrows, as being each and in their total union incomplete and lacking the sum of all goodness. They are but parts divided off from that undivided good which is the real desire of mankind. And this undivided perfect good is perfect happiness, a joy which in itself contains all gifts which a man can desire, and will render him in lack of nothing: neither wealth nor power nor reverence nor fame nor any manner of content.

Where, then, are we to seek this ideal happiness? Before trying to solve this problem Philosophy stays to ask help from the Father of all. Her petition is put in form of a hymn, from which students in the Middle Ages were gladly to regain much of the teaching of the Timaeus of Plato, still lost to them.

The final search is now entered upon, with the premise that the existence of every imperfect postulates a perfect. If there were no standard of perfection, nothing could be imagined as imperfect, spoiled of previous perfection and corrupted by this corrupt world.

We start in the certainty that God is good. Moreover, as such, He must be the Perfect Good, since He is chief of all things. That He could not be if there were anything more excellent or older than He; for the perfect must have existed before the imperfect. He must be the Perfect Good in Himself; for otherwise He must have received the Perfect Good from a source greater than Himself, in which case He would not be Him whom reason acknowledges as God. God, also, as God, is the beginning of all things, and as such the Author of all good. But the perfect good is in itself perfect happiness; therefore, God is both perfect happiness and perfect goodness alike.

If, then, continues Philosophy, we learn to know perfect goodness, we shall learn to know God. Perfect goodness is found in the union of all blessings and gifts which severally would be incomplete in virtue. Perfect goodness, moreover, possesses the quality of wholeness; for anything that is maimed or incomplete is so far lacking in good. Perfect goodness, we may therefore say, is identical with wholeness, with one-ness, with unity. But everything craves that wholeness for itself, that soundness and completeness of its parts, which is unity. Therefore everything strives after perfect goodness, and this goodness is the goal and end of all things.

Boethius is then allowed to catch his breath while philosophy sings a song, of interest for its Platonic doctrine that human learning is but a remembrance of light given to the soul before her descent to this earth.

Now at last the disciple recalls his former knowledge, forgotten for the time under the burden both of the flesh in general and of his own sorrow in particular: that God rules the world and all within it by means of Himself, Who is Perfect Goodness. "He is, we may say, the rudder and the helm by which this world's body and its workings are kept stable and unspoiled."

From this there follows immediately another conclusion. Since all things of their own nature are striving after perfect wholeness, which is one-ness, which, as we have seen, is perfect goodness, or, under another name, perfect happiness, all things in following their natural desire must be really striving to find God.

Another thought also arises. Since God is all-powerful and can do all things, but is unable to do evil, we must conclude that evil is nothing and does not exist. This kindles a new spark of grief in Boethius, as he hears that evil is to be believed non-existent! So Philosophy leaves her logical instruction for a while to calm him in a song of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The listener, however, can hardly wait for the end, before he bursts out with the question: "Why, under God's rule, are wicked men powerful and good men lacking in power?" Philosophy answers that this is not true. Here he has touched upon a great matter, and its unfolding will lift him swiftly as it were on wings, to bear him once more to the native country of his soul.

We have seen, she begins again, that all men strive eagerly for happiness. As happiness is their chief good, both the virtuous man and the evil man strive equally after goodness, the one rightly, the other in mistaken fashion. Since, therefore, the virtuous man attains his object of goodness and the bad man fails, of necessity the virtuous possesses power and the bad lacks it. In proportion as a man's character is worse, so does he fall further short of his goal by his error of judgment, and so the more does he lack of power. He must either fall short through blind ignorance, weakest of qualities, or through frailty itself, in that he sees but is not able to compass that end of good which he really desires. No man, however, is wholly evil or he could do nothing at all. For evil is nothing, as we have said.

Further, we may argue thus: That all real power is to be desired, and that all desirable things are desired because of their goodness. But the possibility of committing crime is not desired because of its goodness, and accordingly the possibility of committing crime is not real power at all.

By these stages, therefore, we are brought to the conclusion of Plato in the Gorgias: "Only the wise are able to do what they want to do. The wicked are able to carry out their immediate pleasure, but they cannot fulfil their real desire. They do their pleasure and think to obtain the Good they desire by the things which please them. But they gain it in no sort at all, for the wicked cannot attain to happiness."

Now good and evil have opposite destinies, led thereto by their opposite qualities. Since goodness is the reward of the good, wickedness must be the reward of the bad. But, as goodness is happiness, so wickedness is misery. Therefore the bad man is miserable. And more. Since all that is exists in so far as it is whole, or, in other words, in virtue of its one-ness, and since the Perfect One-ness or Unity is the Perfect Good, therefore, all that exists is good. On the contrary, whatever has ceased to be good has ceased to exist; therefore, as evil has no existence, so bad men, in so far as they are bad, are not real men at all.

Presently Boethius, who is now feeling much better, sympathetically utters the pious wish that bad men had not this power of doing their imagined pleasure. Philosophy replies that this very power is in itself their punishment, since evil is misery. The bad man, indeed, who is punished is really happier than the bad man who escapes penalty. For penalty, in so far as it is just, is good, and, therefore, the bad man's badness is mixed with some proportion of good when he is bearing the penalty for his sin. On the contrary, the bad man unpunished is in a parlous state, for injustice is thereby added to his burden of badness. For this reason criminals should be brought to tribunals of justice, as sick men, even if unwilling, are brought to a doctor. Indeed, on reflection they ought to be glad to be punished that they may thus obtain something of goodness in their evil plight. Moreover, none should hate the wicked, but should rather regard them as sick souls in need of a physician. Hatred of the criminal is a sin against reason, seeing that crime is a disease of the mind.

Here the Lady Philosophy and her patient begin to find themselves in deep waters. For Boethius naturally wants to know why the good are punished and the bad are rewarded. Why do men sin here, in a world governed, not by chance, but by the Divine Will? Does God force men on to the destiny His foreknowledge sees awaiting them? The answer to this most difficult problem involves discussion of such weighty matters as the simplicity of Providence; the consequence of Fate; sudden accidents; the knowledge of God; predestination and free-will. Little time is now left to the two after so long talk. Yet Philosophy will try to treat of the question of Boethius in some brief sort.

From this point the colloquy takes a new turn, as its writer attempts some new step toward the harmonizing of the old, old connection in human thought between God's foreknowledge of man's destiny and the doctrine of man's predestination.

He begins with his famous definings of Providence and of Fate. They may best be given in a translation of his own words: "Providence is that very Divine Reason which is seated in the Most High Lord and disposes all things. Fate, on the other hand, is inherent in the things that are moved, and is the means whereby Providence intertwines all things in their own due order. Providence embraces all things alike, however different, to infinity; Fate moves things one by one, according to different places, forms and seasons. Therefore, the exposition of this temporal order of ours in one single view foreseen by the Divine Mind is Providence; the same view, when its various parts are arranged and displayed in their different times, is called Fate."

Whatever, then, the immediate agency by which things are done, "it is clear that Providence is the immovable and simple form of events that are to be; Fate is the movable intertwining and the order in time of the events which the Divine Simplicity has bidden come into being. Therefore, all things which are under Fate are also subject to Providence, to which even Fate itself is subject. Some things, indeed, under the will of Providence rise above the ordered sequence of Fate."

What, then, is chance? Here we find another definition of note in later times. "Chance is the unforeseen result of a combination of causes in acts done for some purpose." It is brought about by Fate emanating from Providence in accordance with the will of God.

This brings us to the final enquiry: whether men have free will or are constrained by necessity? The answer is unhesitating: human nature, in so far and in such degree as it is endowed with reason and guided by it, is, indeed, possessed of free will. But not, therefore, in equal measure. Supernatural and divine beings have clear judgment and pure will and efficient power for the carrying out of their wishes. Human souls are less free when they descend from the heavenly vision into bodies, still less when they forsake the light of reason through weakness or vice.

But God in his Providence foresees all things, embraced in one simple view. Then must not all that God foresees as going to happen, happen of necessity? And how can man be free to act as he would, caught in this chain of inevitable sequence? For we cannot believe that God sees uncertainty in His gaze, lest we bring down His foreknowledge to the level of human opinion.

The cause of this dilemma of man, Boethius asserts, rests on an initial error, "the belief that knowledge of things is only derived from the character and nature of the things themselves. The truth is just the opposite. Knowledge of each thing known depends, not upon its own character, but upon the varying faculties of those who know it." The different faculties, ranging from lower to higher—sense, imagination, reason, intelligence—know and understand things in a corresponding degree of gradually ascending power. The higher faculty includes in its knowledge of any object all the knowledge of the faculty or faculties below it in power; so that, finally, intelligence must be said to possess all the powers of apprehension owned by sense, imagination and reason together.

It would, therefore, be foolish of the lower faculties of knowledge, which can but grasp the sensible or the imaginable, to deny that reason has a higher power, seeing that it can grasp the universal. And in like manner it would be foolish of human reason to refuse to yield in comprehension to the Divine intelligence. For reason cannot by her own light see the things of the future which lie open to the mind of God.

If, then, we would understand somewhat of the Knowledge of God, we must also understand somewhat of His nature. God is Eternal. And if we can understand in some degree the meaning of eternity, we shall know of the nature and thus of the knowledge of God. Eternity, we may say, is the whole and perfect possession at one and the same moment of everlasting life, whereas whatsoever lives in time is constantly passing from past to present, and so on to the future. There is nothing in time which can embrace at one and the same moment the whole space of its life: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But that which at one and the same moment embraces and holds the whole plenitude of everlasting life, to which nothing of the future is wanting nor anything of the past is lost or gone, that rightly is called eternal. Of necessity the Eternal is always present and in possession of itself; of necessity it has present with it and before its mind the infinity of moving time.

It is true that the perpetual movement of temporal things by its constantly passing periods tries to imitate the infinite presentness of the unmoving eternity of the Divine Mind. But time, the perpetual, can never be eternity embracing all knowledge, past, present and future, in each moment of its consciousness. For we have observed that every judgment comprehends the things subjected to its knowledge by means of its own nature and comparative power. So the knowledge of God, being both Eternal and One, embraces in its one-ness, in its perfection, all things, that have been, that are, and that shall be, ever and always, at one and the same time. These things are in perpetual motion, while God, seeing all from beginning to end, is Himself unmoved, is unaffected by the passage of time. We may regard, then, His power not so much as foreknowledge, but rather as never-failing perfect allknowledge, surveying the plain of human experience in its totality as from some lofty height.

Why, therefore, should we think that those future things which the Divine Mind includes in its comprehensive grasp of all time are necessarily bound upon man's will, any more than we think that the things which men see every day must necessarily happen merely because men see them happening? We see the sun rise, and call it necessary; we observe other men walking, and call it voluntary. Neither event is constrained to happen just because we see it happen. So with God, Who sees, without compelling them, both the necessary and the voluntary things that shall be. For with Him present, past and future are all one.

This is the end of this meditation in captivity, and Boethius now places on the lips of his Mistress the thoughts that were staying his soul as he awaited, he knew not what, in those months before his death: "There remains, therefore, freedom of will unspoiled for men, and the laws are not unjust which hold out prizes and penalties for wills freed from all necessity. God ever abides in His foreknowledge, spectator on high of all things; and eternity, ever present to His vision, concurs with the judgment our actions shall gain for us, awarding prizes to the good and punishments to the wicked. Hopes and prayers laid up in God are not in vain; if they be rightful they cannot fail of fruit. Fight, then, against sins, cultivate virtues, lift up your mind to rightful hopes, stretch out to the highest your humble prayers. A great constraint toward good life is declared unto you, if you will not to deceive, in that you live before the eyes of a Judge Who beholds all things."

Cassiodorus, Ennodius, Boethius: these are the three last sounds from the train of Italy's culture before it plunges into the long tunnel of the Dark Ages. Flashes of light may occasionally illuminate its buried course, but they do little save reveal the darkness. Italy recked little of ancient culture in the time of Gregory the Great, and it was in Spain and in Celtic lands, in Ireland and in Britain, in Gaul nurtured by Ireland, that classical learning still found its lovers when these three were dead and gone. Even already, if the metaphor be not too strained, the rising cliffs that mark the tunnel's approach have cut off from these three much of the freshness and the radiance of the open horizon. Yet all three worked on in the twilight of Roman letters, fearing the coming night, hoping for a new dawn, if from the barbarians themselves. All refused to despair. There is something courageous even in the rhetoric of Ennodius; something higher, perhaps, than the careless blindness of Sidonius Apollinaris. Cassiodorus only retired when he felt he had nothing more to offer his country in political service; from his retirement and his old age he was to offer her a legacy far greater than any of his workings in active life. The scientific translations and commentaries of Boethius were to influence mightily the coming Schoolmen. But the work that influenced the world and is always connected with his name came from his prison, written without books, without scholars, in loneliness and weariness of life. These are strange things; yet not strange, to those who know the world's history.