Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus

BOETHIUS, ANICIUS MANLIUS TORQUATUS SEVERINUS. - I. LIFE. - B. was born in Rome of the noble stock of the Anicii, around the year 480, when the kingdom of Odoacer was about to succumb under the blows of the Ostrogoths. His father having died while he was still of tender age, he was probably educated in the house of his friend Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, consul, whose daughter Rusticiana he later married. Entering public life while still young, at 25 he was already a senator, in 510 consul without a colleague, an honor rather rare, even for a protégé of Theodoric. To the dignity of the consulate were also elevated in 522 his two very young sons Symmachus and Boethius. Even amid the duties of public office, B. devoted himself with passion to study, particularly of Greek philosophy, to which he had dedicated himself since his youth. Political events unfortunately came to cut short very early that life already so fruitful and still rich in great promise. In 523, for having defended the senator Albinus, accused of secret understanding with the emperor Justin to the harm of Theodoric, B. was involved in the same accusation, exiled and shut up in prison, and finally tried and condemned to death on 23 Oct. 524. To this tragedy the national and religious motive does not seem extraneous, since Theodoric was a barbarian and an Arian, while B. was a champion of Catholicism and of Romanity. By tradition B. was always venerated as a martyr. Leo XIII approved his cult for Pavia by decree of the S. Cong. of Rites of 25 Dec. 1883. His feast is celebrated on 21 July in Pavia, where he was killed, and in Rome in the church of S. Maria in Portico a Campitelli which, according to legend, has special ties with the family of B. for having been endowed by his sister-in-law St. Galla.

II. WORKS

B., a genuine scholar by temperament and in love with classical culture although he had not studied in Athens as was erroneously asserted by some, left a great number of writings, despite the distractions of politics and the brevity of his life. We have from him treatises on arithmetic, on music, and a doubtful Institutio geometrica, although it is certain, as the contemporary and friend Cassiodorus testifies, that B. also wrote on geometry. Then come the versions of Porphyry's Isagoge and of various logical treatises of Aristotle, as well as commentaries on Porphyry himself, on Aristotle, and on Cicero's Topica. But above all the original works are to be noted, which are five short treatises on questions of logic, the theological opuscules, and the masterpiece De consolatione philosophiae. The theological opuscules, which enjoyed enormous vogue throughout the Middle Ages, are: 1) Liber de sancta Trinitate, or: Quomodo Trinitas unus Deus et non tres Dii; 2) Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de divinitate substantialiter praedicentur, in the form of a letter to the deacon John; 3) Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint, bonae sint, cum non sint substantialia bona, a reply to a question of the deacon John concerning the goodness of substances. It is the very well-known opuscule called by the scholastics De habdomadibus because of the allusion that B. makes in it to a work of his (now lost) on the Weeks; 4) De Fide catholica, which today, however, is not held authentic; 5) finally Liber contra Eutichen et Nestorium, also called in the Middle Ages Liber de persona et duobus naturis. The Boethian authorship of these opuscules cannot reasonably be called into doubt, both because of the unanimous tradition of the manuscripts and because of the testimony of Cassiodorus, who expressly attributes to B. a book "de sancta Trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium" (Anecdoton Holderi, ed. H. Usener, Bonn 1877, p. 4). The chronology of these writings is very uncertain; it seems, however, that they must be assigned to the last period of B.'s life and probably to the year 520. The text can be found in PL 64; critical editions, after the general one of Venice (1491-92), that of Leipzig edited by R. Peiper in the Teubneriana collection (1871) and that of H. F. Stewart (London 1926), with the English translation facing.

Particular mention is deserved by the De consolatione, to which the name and fame of B. are bound through the centuries. The Consolatione philosophiae, or rather Philosophicae consolationis libri V, is a philosophical poem, a mixture of prose and verse, which B. composed in prison (523-24) for the relief of his calamities. Already in the De hypothesis syllogismis B. had declared that he placed the supreme consolation of life in the study of philosophy. Here now is how he develops this thought of his.

In Book I B. complains bitterly to Philosophy, who appears to him in the guise of a most beautiful matron, about his misfortunes, the story of which he recounts. In Book II Philosophy shows B. that he complains wrongly of fortune, which is unstable by nature. Moreover, Philosophy continues in Book III, true happiness does not consist in earthly goods nor is it granted to experience it here below. The supreme Good is God alone and He alone is true beatitude; let us therefore turn our gaze to heaven. Books IV and V are devoted to resolving the principal objections that B. raises against Philosophy, arguing from the existence of evil and from free will.

The Consolatione, which enjoyed immense fortune, commentaries and translations without number down to our own days, is a work sui generis that bears strongly impressed upon it the whole rich personality of its author. Neither exclusively philosophical nor exclusively literary, the most varied motives flow together in it: philosophical, artistic, intellectual, moral, and they harmonize in it in a wholly particular way that cannot be called anything but Boethian. It is wrong, therefore, to consider the Consolatione as the synthesis of B.'s philosophical thought. It is rather the synthesis of his entire scientific ideal, which is naturally not restricted to philosophy alone and into which there also enters a noble practical intent. In short, the Consolatione is B. himself with his culture, his science, his love of art and philosophy, his mind, his heart, his moral uprightness. And against Usener, who held the Boethian masterpiece to be little more than a compilation, it must be said that originality there is in the Consolatione; and it consists precisely in having known how to fuse together in a most personal manner the most disparate elements to the point of making out of them an organic, varied and coherent whole that has resisted the wear of the centuries and even today is read with true spiritual delight. The Consolatione is therefore an original work that has no precedents, just as it had but scanty and unhappy imitators.

The same cannot be said of B.'s philosophy. First of all, we do not believe that one can speak of a Boethian philosophical system, nor even of a properly Boethian philosophy. B. is rather a concordist who wished to reconcile, as he himself tells us in the commentary on Aristotle's De interpretatione, the two poles of Greek philosophy: Plato and Aristotle: Plato noster, Aristoteles meus, B. often has Philosophy say with complacency. And Plato, who from time to time willingly assumes the Neoplatonic coloring (if not the spirit), prevails in the Consolatione, while Aristotle prevails in the logical and theological works. There could not be lacking, however, a more strictly Latin leaven, and this surfaces preferably in Boethian ethics, with its Stoic-Roman background.

Of the Platonic one may note B.'s insistence on the ineffability of the first principle, but above all the doctrine of participation, according to which all things participate in the divine goodness and return to it. This participation, however, despite some expressions of Neoplatonic flavor, is brought about according to the Christian doctrine of creation and not according to Plotinian emanatism. Pantheism is expressly rejected by B. in several places. Much more numerous and substantial are the Aristotelian elements that B. utilizes for his synthesis. In logic there is the problem of universals, of which B. became aware through Porphyry in the Isagoge, but the solution he gives of it, however hesitant and obscure, certainly remains oriented toward Aristotelian realism. Another Boethian theory, famous throughout the Middle Ages, is that metaphysical one of esse and quod est, whose genuine sense is even today the object of lively discussions. In any case, on this binomial of esse and quod est B. founds his metaphysical thesis of the simplicity of God (ipsum esse, pure form, simple, forma essendi) and of the composition of creatures, which are not pure being, pure form, but all include parts: either matter and form in bodies, or something similar in the angels (Liber de sancta Trin., II, 30; Stewart, p. 10).

Creatures, therefore, are, more than being, an image, a diminution of being. Boethian epistemology is likewise Aristotelian, but here and there Plato reappears, as also in poem IV of Book V of the Consolatione, where innate ideas surface. And B.'s Platonism becomes manifest also in the marked sympathy and mental affinity that he shows for St. Augustine, whose star was already high in the sky of philosophy. Minor influences are due to the Stoics and the Pythagoreans, but of the latter B. makes use more as ornamental and illustrative motifs than as building materials.

As can be seen, B. is not a simple compiler and repeater, but an intelligent treasurer of all the preceding culture, which he has well assimilated and which he handles with ease, giving it an unmistakable imprint, which assures him a notable place in the history of culture and of thought.

B. was venerated and most attentively listened to throughout the Middle Ages. For the Scholastics, including St. Thomas, who commented on his De hebdomadibus and in part on his De Trinitate, he was a true authority; and for centuries his works were, in the West, almost the only source from which ancient Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy was drawn. B. was also the first to teach the Scholastics how to make use of Aristotle, especially in his logic, for a rational synthesis of the Faith. Some of his definitions (those of beatitude, of eternity, of person) are truly classic and are still alive today. The Aquinate considers it an honor to cite B. often; according to some, Dante would call him his Doctor in Inf., V, 123. Cf. the high praise he gives him in Par., X, 121 ff.

At the beginning of the 18th century a certain criticism, especially German, sought to cast doubt on B.'s Christianity because in the Consolation he is completely silent about Christ and does not appeal to the comforts of faith, as one would naturally have expected from a Christian destined for death. Moreover, B.'s poem would openly betray a pagan spirit. But it is easy to reply that B.'s intent was well determined and precise: that of showing what philosophy (not faith and theology) can do in the misfortunes of life. B.'s paganism, then, if indeed it exists, is only superficial, of culture and of form, not of substance. Finally, and this is the principal and peremptory argument, B.'s non-Christianity, or a merely apparent Christianity, has no positive historical basis and is the fruit of a short-sighted and prejudiced criticism. Today, moreover, no one thinks any longer of seriously maintaining such a thesis after the exhaustive refutation made of it by Semeria in his valuable work, unfortunately almost impossible to find, Il cristianesimo di S. B. rivendicato (Rome 1900).

Umberto Degl'Innocenti