BRIDGING THE GAP: BOETHIUS' CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

by

Sam Harrelson

Church History

Prof E. Stepp

M. Christopher White School of Divinity

Gardner-Webb University

December 7, 2008
 The Consolation of Philosophy is not a Christian text in a first reading, but an

attempt to bring Neo-Platonic ideas to an intended audience. Even though the work has

been appropriated by the Christian tradition and has influenced countless theologians and

writers, it is helpful to remember that the title is not the Consolation of Theology or

Christology or Soteriology. Instead, by laying claim to the book as a consolation of

Philosophy, Boethius is working with two strands of tradition to achieve his ultimate

goal, an examination of life, death and being human. These two strands, Greek/Roman

philosophy and Christianity, need not be seen as competing pipelines of tradition, and

have numerous points of synthesis. Earlier writers such as Augustine, Eusebius, Justin

Martyr, and even Paul and to a certain extent the fourth Gospel all worked consciously

within the framework of both Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity, with various

results.

However, the Consolation of Philosophy uses “pagan” philosophy very closely

with Christian ideas and insights, and the result is a strange hybrid of the two traditions,

one having roots in Plato and the other in the life of a Palestinian peasant. Boethius

accomplishes this feat by employing Lady Philosophy and scores of authors from earlier

Roman and Greek texts. The text is full of clear references to these pagan authors who

stood apart from, and frequently contradict, Christian orthodoxy in the context of

Boethius’ place and time (and especially in later readers’ contexts, making this work

particularly scandalous to those keeping with strict orthodoxy of theological ideas).

However, after reading Boethius’ other works besides The Consolation of Philosophy,
such as the Theological Tractates,1 it becomes clear that to him, orthodoxy of faith,

particularly in concern to the problem of the natures of Christ,2 was important.

The Arian controversy, which engulfed the Lombardy region of northern Italy,

was of particular interest and passion to Boethius. Indeed, in Tractate II, Boethius ends

with a plea to John the Deacon to “examine with some care these words of mine, and if

possible, reconcile faith with reason.”3 This seems at once in symmetry with what is

going on in The Consolation, yet it is still at odds with some of the conclusions.

Therefore, the text lies in a creative tension where dual realities, one Christian and one

Cultural, collide and rebound off one another, offering insights to the other, yet always

pulling and tugging. The very structure of the Consolation echoes this. In the form of a

Menippean satire (more on that later), the Consolation is written both in prose and

poetry.4 These two forms play off of each other, just as the Christian and pagan traditions

used. Augustine also uses this form of satire in the composition of The Confessions.5 In

effect, Boethius seeks to find what Athens has to do with Jerusalem through prose, poetry

and ultimately philosophy.

In his dealings with the themes of Christianity, it is clear the tradition to which

Boethius belongs is Augustinian.6 His style of arguments, use of Platonist and Christian

1
P.G Walsh, "Introduction," in The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. P.G. Walsh, xxviii
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2
The Fifth Tractate has Boethius writing against the teachings of Eutyches and
Nestorious. Their theologies would be deemed heretical. Boethius actually attended a
council in Rome with his teacher, John the Deacon (who may have been Pope John 1),
where this matter was discussed according to J. Mair, "The Text of the Opuscula Sacra,"
in Boethius, His Life, Thought, and Influence, ed. M.T. Gibson, 207ff (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1981).
3
Walsh, xxix
4
S. Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue (Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 1985).
5
Walsh, xl
6
Walsh, xxxii
themes, and his ideas of original sin and free will all draw from the same general tradition

as Augustine, especially in the Tractates I-V generally accepted to be authored by him.

The history of Boethius’ trouble around A.D. 523 or 524 in the royal court of Theodoric

at Ravenna (where Boethius had been Magister Officiorum) because of his renunciation

of the accusation against the Senator Albinus is well documented. Whether Theodoric

was using Boethius as a scapegoat or as a bargaining chip with the emperor Justin of the

Eastern empire is generally debated.7 What is known is that Boethius did meet the

executioner (whether by cord and club or by the sword) shortly before or shortly after a

failed trip by the Pope (arranged by Theodoric to end the persecution of Arians in the

East) to Constantinople in the late autumn of 525. Theodoric’s enterprise of making the

churches of the West more Arian in their nature ultimately failed because of his untimely

(or timely depending on one’s theological persuasion) death in 526. In 554, Justinian, the

nephew of Justin, conquered Italy and re-united the empire for a short time under the

umbrella of the accepted theology of Constantinople, which rejected Arian precepts.

Back to Boethius, the question remains, if Boethius is facing such a critical

moment as his impending death at the hands of the executioner, and is a staunch Christian

and member of the ecclesial institution, why retreat to Philosophy rather than Faith? As

stated earlier, there is no doubt concerning Boethius’ faith as a member of the Church.

Some specific Christian elements have been noticed in The Consolation, such as God

being creator and caring for God’s creatures rather than a supreme being incapable of

movement (IV.6.13). Boethius also reflects the Book of Wisdom (possibly from the

Augustinian tradition) in III.12.22, “So God is the highest good which governs all things

powerfully, and orders them sweetly.” Along with all of this, there is relatively little if
7
Walsh, Xii
any content in The Consolation that would directly oppose the evolving orthodox

Christianity in Boethius’ time and context. Ideas such as the infinite existence of the

universe rather than a creation in finite time (also a point strongly made in the writings

of Plato and Epicurus) had not been specifically discounted by orthodox Christian church

councils at the time of Boethius (V.1.9). In short, there is little to suggest that Boethius

favored either pagan philosophy or Christianity over one another based on the text of The

Consolation itself. The text is largely, and intentionally, neutral in its approach. Whether

it is because of his educational background, which largely saw no conflict between

‘pagan’ philosophy and Christian revelation, or because of his reluctance to make his

political situation worse by arguing potentially contentious theological points while the

executioner knotted the rope or sharpened the blade outside his window, is up for

argument. By looking to the Greek and Roman (though more Greek than Roman…more

on this point later) authors Boethius employed in The Consolation, further elucidation

about the text can be made.

Boethius made the concession early in his career that he would translate

Aristotle’s works from Greek into Latin8. Not only would this be a difficult task because

of the wealth and large amount of Aristotelian material Boethius would have had access

to, but also the grammar and syntax of Aristotle’s Greek is inherently difficult. The task

had been taken on before, as in the case of Marius Victorinus (who Boethius is quite

critical of due to his technique).9 Boethius never did succeed in completing the

translation of the Aristotelian corpus into Latin, but did get through the logical works

(such as the Organon). He also completed a work on Porphyry’s Eisagoge, considered a

8
C. Meiser, Second Commentary on Aristotle (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880). Commentary on
Aristotle (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880).
9
Walsh, xxi.
forerunner of study to the works of Aristotle.10 Boethius’ translation of the Aristotelian

works on logic is composed of cramped and cumbersome Latin, necessarily a reflection

of the difficult Greek he encountered and decidedly different than the prose and poetry

employed in the Consolation. Why did Boethius focus on Aristotle? What role did that

play in the Consolation? These questions are important because most of the textual

allusions and paraphrases Boethius includes in the Consolation are not Roman, but rather

Greek and largely from Aristotle and Plato and the traditions they directly influenced.

In one of the crucial points of The Consolation (V.1.13-19), the moment where

Lady Philosophy unveils the nature of chance as a preliminary to her explanation of free

will and divine providence, she rests totally on the arguments of Aristotle in Metaphysics,

‘So is there nothing’, I asked, ‘which can rightly be called chance or

accident? Or is there something hidden from the public gaze for which
these terms are appropriate?’
‘My Aristotle’, she replied, ‘in his Physics has offered a succinct account
of it which approximates to the truth.’
‘How does he put it?’ I asked.
‘Whenever something is done with a particular purpose in mind’, she said
‘and as a result of certain causes something other than was intended
occurs, it is called chance…Thus we can define chance as the unexpected
outcome of a conjunction of causes in actions carried out for some
purpose. What causes the conjunction and the coincidence of these causes
is that order which unfolds in an irresistible chain, descending from its
source in Providence, and allocating all things to their due place and time.

What this passage in particular does express is Boethius’ employment of the Neo-Platonic

use of a concurrence of causes and using Aristotelian texts in different contexts than

Aristotle originally had in mind. In this crucial Chapter 5 of the Consolation, there are

constant reverberations of Aristotelian ideas reflected through Platonic lenses.

However much Boethius’ sources are examined for their influences, the original

notions that Boethius introduces into the genre of consolation literature cannot be
10
Walsh, xxii.
overlooked. In the most Aristotelian part of this very Platonic/Aristotelian book (chapter

5), Boethius brings together other interpretations (and his own) of Aristotle’s work to

produce a profoundly new and interesting composite of human free will and destiny. For

instance, in V.6.25, Boethius writes:

At this point you may say that what God sees will happen must inevitably
happen, and that what must inevitably happen, happens of necessity …
But God sees in the present the future events which proceed from free
choice. So these things become necessary as related to God’s observation
of them, through the condition of his divine knowledge; but considered in
themselves they do not forfeit the total freedom of their nature. So the
future events, which God foreknows will all undoubtedly come to pass,
but some of them proceed from free choice. Though these do take place,
their occurrence does not mean that they surrender their own true nature,
which would have allowed the possibility of their not happening before
they took place.

Specifically, as alluded to in this passage, Boethius combines the notions that the

nature of knowledge depends on that of the knower rather than on the object known, a

thing’s being necessary in itself and its being necessary under some condition is

differentiated (as in God’s foreknowledge of it) and the idea that all time is the present to

God. The sense given is that God’s knowledge of our future actions is like our

knowledge of the present. This is important because Boethius seems to be the first to

combine these different notions.11 By saying that our knowledge of present events

doesn’t render them necessary like God’s knowledge of our future does not make them

necessary, Boethius is saying something new combining the Platonic interpretations of

Aristotelian thought with the Augustinian theological tradition. It is interesting that

Boethius only tackles the issue of divine foreknowledge in this sense. He does not try to

tackle the issue of humanity’s free will and God’s omnipotence. Unlike Augustine and

11
Walsh, xxxvii
Cicero (in On Divination),12 who are concerned with the implications of divinity,

prophecy and immediate human freedom, Boethius is concerned with philosophical

issues raised by Aristotle on his logical writings, which he did translate and knew very

well.

In describing his work as a consolation, Boethius is invoking an established genre.

However, Boethius’ unique contribution would last into Medieval Europe through Dante,

Petrarch, Chaucer, and the Pearl Poet into Elizabethan England (Queen Elizabeth I even

translated the Consolation), Shakespeare and into the modern world.13 Interestingly, the

setting of the Consolation is to himself about his own misfortune. And this is not merely

a consolation in the normal terms of the more ancient genre, but a prescription to study

and achieve the principles of Philosophy. In this way, the Consolation closely follows the

model of Plato’s Phaedro where Socrates, at the end of his life, concerns himself with the

higher realities and even begins to compose poetry about his situation in his cell.14

Consolations, as stated, have a long history in Greek and Roman literature. Some

of the most common and most read are; the Consolatio ad Apollonium, the Pseudo-

Platonic Axiochus, Seneca’s Ad Polybium de Consolatione and Ad Marciam de

Consolatione, Cicero’s Tusculans, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, and Plutarch’s

Consolatio Ad Uxorem (Consolation to His Wife).15 Along with these, the tradition of

consolation literature goes back through Plato’s works (such as Phaedro with the dying

Socrates) to public funeral orations in Athens (Thucydides’ funeral oration about Pericles

12
Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Sourcebook, ed. Wayne
Meeks (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1989).
13
Walsh, xlvii - xlviii
14
Plato, Phaedo, trans. Benjamin Jowett, MIT, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html
(accessed 12 6, 2008).
15
Walsh, xxxvi
in The Peloponnesian War) to early Greek writers such as Hesiod16 and even bits and

pieces of Homer.17

Generally speaking, the main issue these consolations deal with is the question of

what becomes of the eternal soul after death. The inevitable answer given in each one of

these writings is tied to the author’s particular philosophical leaning. Epicureans saw

death as an inevitable part of life and the end to being, so life must be enjoyed. Stoics

also saw death as a part of life, but death is not an evil. Sceptics questioned both of these

schools and challenged what an individual can know about death/life/afterlife.18 In

Cicero’s writings (especially the Tusculans)19 death is not seen as evil whether or not the

soul survives. Lucretius, on the other hand, maintains that the soul perishes and the

atomic structure that composes it disbands into the larger scheme of the universe, so

death is no evil but a natural part of the life process.20

Plutarch, however, is closer to Boethius’ model because the consolation he writes

to his wife concerns the death of their young daughter.21 He treats the traditional

consolation genre themes with great freedom and flexibility. The letter is written to his

wife on hearing the news of the death of their daughter Timoxena while he is traveling.

The letter is hastily written and it is questionable as to whether Plutarch published it, as

was the custom with consolation literature.

16
A History of Greek Religion, Martin Nilsson (New York: The Norton Library, 1964).
17
Walsh, xxxvi
18
A. A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1987).
19
Long and Seedly, 318-321.
20
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, ed. William Ellery Leonard, MIT,
http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.2.ii.html (accessed 12 7, 2008).
21
Walsh, xxxix.
 Therefore, Plutarch and Boethius have in common the attempt to find consolation

for an immediate personal issue. Conversely, the common convention in consolation

literature was to compare the state of the deceased person with their state before birth.

Plutarch does refer to this issue, however he adapts it in such a way to describe the

grieving mother rather than the deceased child, telling her;22

“Do, however, try to carry yourself back in your thoughts and return again
and again to the time when this little child was not yet born and we had as
yet no complaint against Fortune; next try to link this present time with
that as though our circumstances had again become the same. For, my
dear wife, we shall appear to be sorry that our child was ever born if our
conduct leads us to regard the state of things before her birth as preferable
to the present (610 D).”

Plutarch deals with the common theme of giving comfort by dwelling on other’s losses,

as in Seneca and in Boethius’ treatment of Seneca’s death among others who died

unjustly. However, he personalizes this too, reminding his wife of her earlier sorrows in

life;

“On the other hand, you have already shown great steadfastness in
circumstances like the present, when you lost your eldest child and again
when the fair Charon [the eldest son] left us (609 D).”

Where most consolations settle on describing life as evil or a series of tests with

death being the final, joyous escape, Plutarch disagrees. Instead, he reminds his wife of

her many blessings and says that life isn’t so bad after all;

“Yet we must not obliterate the intervening two years from our memory;
rather, since they afforded us delight and enjoyment of her, we should
credit them to the account of pleasure; and we should not consider the
small good a great evil, nor, because Fortune did not add what we hoped
for, be ungrateful for what was given (610 E).”

22
Plutarch, Consolatio ad Uxorem, University of Chicago,
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Consolatio_ad_ux
orem*.html (accessed 12 7, 2008).
 In the end, Plutarch’s work accomplishes the feat of personalizing grief in such a

way as to compensate for his daughter’s death. His consolation, dealing with the death of

his daughter, is aimed at his wife more than himself. The long tradition of consolation

literature had dealt primarily with the death of others and consoled the memory of the

dead person. The exception is, of course, Seneca23, whose works were the major

influence on Boethius in terms of the consolation literature.24

However, Boethius removes himself from the world of the Western empire, and

much like Hoccleve,25 confines himself as character to his cell. Boethius’ originality lies

in his attempt to personalize the consolation in such a way as to turn himself, by the end

of the Consolation, into a student of Lady Philosophy. His consolation, unlike those of

the Greeks is radically personal and deals with his own impending death.

23
Seneca, Epistles, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. VI, in On Consolation to the Bereaved,
trans. Richard M. Gummere, 129-145 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
24
Walsh, xxxiv
25
Thomas Hoccleve, My Compleinte and Other Poems, ed. Roger Ellis (Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 2001).
 Bibliography

Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by P.G. Walsh, xxviii. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hoccleve, Thomas. My Compleinte and Other Poems. Edited by Roger Ellis. Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 2001.

Lerer, S. Boethius and Dialogue. Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 1985.

Long, A. A., and D.N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.

Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Edited by William Ellery Leonard. MIT.

http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.2.ii.html (accessed 12 7, 2008).

Mair, J. "The Text of the Opuscula Sacra." In Boethius, His Life, Thought, and Influence,
by M.T. Gibson, edited by M.T. Gibson, 207ff. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1981.

Malherbe, Abraham J. Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Sourcebook. Edited by

Wayne Meeks. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1989.

Meiser, C. Second Commentary on Aristotle. Leipzig: Teubner, 1880.

Plato. Phaedo. Edited by Benjamin Jowett. MIT.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html (accessed 12 6, 2008).

Nilsson, Martin. A History of Greek Religion. New York: The Norton Library, 1964.

Plutarch. Consolatio ad Uxorem. University of Chicago.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Consolatio
_ad_uxorem*.html (accessed 12 7, 2008).

Seneca. Epistles, Loeb Classical Library. Vol. VI, in On Consolation to the Bereaved,
translated by Richard M. Gummere, 129-145. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2000.

Walsh, P.G. "Introduction." In The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius, translated by

P.G. Walsh, xxviii. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.