Boethius of Dacia

BOETHIUS OF DACIA. - Scholastic philosopher of the 13th century about whom very little is known. He was not a Dominican, nor a religious, nor a priest, but a simple cleric, a professor in the faculty of arts of the University of Paris where, together with Siger of Brabant, he taught Averroism. Involved with the latter in the condemnation of Latin Averroism issued by the bishop of Paris Stephen Tempier in 1277, he had to appear at the Roman court. Tried and condemned to perpetual imprisonment as a heretic who had abjured, he died in prison before 1284.

According to some he commented on the whole of Aristotle, but he is known chiefly as the author of various Questions on grammar, logic and natural philosophy such as De modis significandi, Sophismata logica, Quaestiones super Topica Aristotelis, Super librum physicorum quaestiones. Grabmann discovered two other treatises, the De somno et vigilia and the De summo bono sive de vita philosophia, where the study of philosophy is presented as the supreme happiness of man, with the omission, if not indeed the exclusion, of the supernatural aspect of beatitude.