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Consolation of Philosophy

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophy

   This early printed book has many hand-painted illustrations depicting
   Lady Philosophy and scenes of daily life in fifteenth-century Ghent
   (1485)
   Enlarge
   This early printed book has many hand-painted illustrations depicting
   Lady Philosophy and scenes of daily life in fifteenth-century Ghent
   (1485)

   Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: Consolatio Philosophiae) is a
   philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year 524 AD. It has
   been described as the single most important and influential work in the
   West in medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the
   last great work that can be called Classical.

Consolation of Philosophy

                “A golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or
                Tully.” —Edward Gibbon

   Consolation of Philosophy was written during Boethius' one year
   imprisonment while awaiting trial, and eventual horrific execution, for
   the crime of treason by Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great . Boethius
   was at the very heights of power in Rome and was brought down by
   treachery. It was from this experience he was inspired to write a
   philosophical book from prison reflecting on how a lord's favour could
   change so quickly and why friends would turn against him. It has been
   described as “by far the most interesting example of prison literature
   the world has ever seen.”

   Boethius writes the book as a conversation between himself and the
   Queen of Science, Lady Philosophy. She consoles Boethius' failed
   fortunes by discussing the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and
   the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which she calls the
   “one true good." She says happiness comes from within, something that
   Lady Fortune can never take away: “Why, then, O mortal men, do you seek
   that happiness outside, which lies within yourselves?”

   Boethius discusses time-worn philosophical questions such as the nature
   of predestination and free will, why evil men often prosper and good
   men fall into ruin, what is human nature, and to define virtue and
   justice. He speaks about the nature of free will versus determinism
   when he asks if God knows and sees all, or does man have free will. To
   quote VE. Watts on Boethius, God is like a spectator at a chariot race;
   He watches the action the charioteers perform, but this does not cause
   them. On human nature, Boethius says that humans are essentially good
   and only when they give in to “wickedness” do they “sink to the level
   of being an animal.” On justice, he says criminals are not to be
   abused, rather treated with sympathy and respect, using the analogy of
   doctor and patient to illustrate the ideal relationship between
   criminal and prosecutor.

   Boethius sought to answer religious questions without reference to
   Christianity, relying solely on natural philosophy and the Classical
   Greek tradition. He believed in harmony between faith and reason. The
   truths found in Christianity would be no different from the truths
   found in philosophy. In the words of Henry Chadwick, “If the
   Consolation contains nothing distinctively Christian, it is also
   relevant that it contains nothing specifically pagan either...[it] is a
   work written by a Platonist who is also a Christian, but is not a
   Christian work.”

Influence

                “To acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalised
                in the Middle Ages.” — C.S. Lewis

   From a 1385 Italian manuscript of the Consolation: Minatures of
   Boethius teaching and in prison
   Enlarge
   From a 1385 Italian manuscript of the Consolation: Minatures of
   Boethius teaching and in prison

   From the Carolingian epoch to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond,
   this was the most widely copied work of secular literature in Europe.
   It was one of the most popular and influential philosophical works,
   read by statesmen, poets, and historians, as well as of philosophers
   and theologians. It is through Boethius that much of the thought of the
   Classical period was made available to the Western Medieval world. It
   has often been said Boethius was the “last of the Romans and the first
   of the Scholastics”.

   The philosophical message of the book fit well with the religious piety
   of the Middle Ages. Readers were encouraged not to seek wordly goods
   such as money and power, but to seek internalized virtues. Evil had a
   purpose, to provide a lesson to help change for good; while suffering
   from evil was seen as virtuous. Because God ruled the universe through
   Love, prayer to God and the application of Love would lead to true
   happiness. The Middle Ages, with their vivid sense of an overruling
   fate, found in Boethius an interpretation of life closely akin to the
   spirit of Christianity. The Consolation of Philosophy stands, by its
   note of fatalism and its affinities with the Christian doctrine of
   humility, midway between the heathen philosophy of Seneca the Younger
   and the later Christian philosophy of consolation represented by Thomas
   Aquinas.

   The book is heavily influenced by Plato and his dialogues (as was
   Boethius himself). Its popularity can in part be explained by its
   neoplatonic and Christian ethical messages, although current scholarly
   research is still far from clear exactly why and how the work became so
   vastly popular in the Middle Ages. Notably, the book has not received
   much attention in the recent modern era, possibly in part because of
   its foreign inward looking virtues and rejection of the modern emphasis
   on material productiveness. As Sanderson Beck says of the Middle Ages:
   Lady Fortune with her wheel in a medieval manuscript of a work by
   Boccaccio; Consolation of Philosophy was responsible for the popularity
   of the goddess of Fortune in the Middle Ages
   Enlarge
   Lady Fortune with her wheel in a medieval manuscript of a work by
   Boccaccio; Consolation of Philosophy was responsible for the popularity
   of the goddess of Fortune in the Middle Ages

          “Who can say that this inward period of humanity did not prepare
          the way for the productiveness of the Renaissance like a person
          quiets one's consciousness in contemplation and prayer before
          creating a great work of art or literature or science? The
          Middle Ages were difficult times politically and economically,
          but who can estimate how much happiness they inwardly received
          from the Consolation of Philosophy?”.

   Translations into the vernacular were done by famous notables,
   including: King Alfred (Old English), Jean de Meun ( Old French),
   Geoffrey Chaucer ( Middle English), Queen Elizabeth I ( Early Modern
   English), Notker Teutonicus ( Old German).

   Found within Consolation are themes that have echoed throughout the
   Western canon: the female figure of wisdom that informs Dante, the
   ascent through the layered universe that is shared with Milton, the
   reconciliation of opposing forces that find their way into Chaucer in
   The Knight's Tale, the Wheel of Fortune so popular throughout the
   Middle Ages.

   Citations from it occur frequently in Dantes Divina Commedia. Of
   Boethius, Dante remarked “The blessed soul who exposes the deceptive
   world to anyone who gives ear to him.”

   Boethian influence can be found nearly everywhere in Geoffrey Chaucer's
   poetry, e.g. in Troilus and Criseyde, The Knight's Tale, The Clerk's
   Tale, The Franklin's Tale, The Parson's Tale and The Tale of Melibee,
   in the character of Lady Nature in The Parliament of Fowls and some of
   the shorter poems, such as Truth, The Former Age and Lak of
   Stedfastnesse. Chaucer translated the work in his Boece.

   Many 19th century poets reference Boethius.

   Tom Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth says how “Boethian” much of the
   treatment of evil is in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Shippey says
   that Tolkien knew well the translation of Boethius that was made by
   King Alfred and he quotes some “Boethian” remarks from Frodo,
   Treebeard, and Elrond.

   Boethius and Consolatio Philosophiae are cited frequently by the main
   character Ignatius J. Reilly in the Pulitzer Prize winning A
   Confederacy of Dunces (1980).

   It is a prosimeter (and probably the most famous one), written in
   sections alternately of narrative prose and more contemplative verse,
   which display a virtuosic command of the forms of Latin poetry. It is
   classified as a Menippean satire, a fusion of allegorical tale,
   platonic dialogue, and lyrical poetry.

   In the 20th century there were close to four hundred manuscripts still
   surviving, a testament to its former popularity.

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