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PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH One of Theodoric’s ministers was Manlius Severinus Boethius, a member of a powerful Roman senatorian family Born shortly after the end of the Western Empire, he lost his father in childhood and was adopted into the family of the consul Symmachus, whose daughter he later married He himself became consul in 510 and saw his two sons become consuls in 522 In that year Boethius moved from Rome to Theodoric’s capital at Ravenna, to become ‘master of oYces’, a very senior administrative post which he held with integrity and distinction As a young man Boethius had written handbooks on music and mathematics, drawn from Greek sources, and he had projected, but never completed, a translation into Latin of the entire works of Plato and Aristotle He wrote commentaries on some of Aristotle’s logical works, showing some acquaintance with Stoic logic He wrote four theological tractates dealing with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, showing the inXuence both of Augustine and of the Wfth-century Christological debates His career appeared to be a model for those who wished to combine the contemplative and active lives Gibbon, who could rarely bring himself to praise a philosopher, wrote of him, ‘Prosperous in his fame and fortunes, in his public honours and private alliances, in the cultivation of science and the consciousness of virtue, Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man’ (Decline and Fall, ch 19) Boethius, however, did not hold his honourable oYce for long, because he fell under suspicion of being implicated, as a Catholic, in treasonable correspondence urging the emperor Justin at Constantinople to invade Italy and end Arian rule He was imprisoned in a tower in Pavia and condemned to death by the senate in Rome It was while he was in prison, under sentence of death, that he wrote the work for which he is most remembered, On the Consolation of Philosophy The work has been admired for its literary beauty as well as for its philosophical acumen; it has been translated many times into many languages, notably by King Alfred and by Chaucer It contains a subtle discussion of the problems of relating human freedom to divine foreknowledge; but it is not quite the kind of work that might be expected from a devout Catholic facing possible martyrdom It dwells on the comfort oVered by pagan philosophy, but there is no reference to the consolations held out by the Christian religion 19
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