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| Toynbee "Boèzio" |
Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius), Roman
statesman and philosopher, born at Rome c. A.D. 480, died at Pavia
(Ticinum) 524. Gibbon describes him as 'the last of the Romans
whom
Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman'. His
father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 and died soon
after. As a wealthy orphan Boethius inherited the patrimony and
honours of the Anician family, and was educated under the care of
the chief men at Rome. He also studied at Athens, and translated
or
commented on 'the geometry of Euclid, the music of Pythagoras, the
arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics of Archimedes, the
astronomy of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato, and the logic of
Aristotle, with the commentary of Porphyry'. To his works was due
to a great extent the knowledge of Aristotle up to cent. xiii. He
was no less distinguished for his virtue than for his learning,
and
was always ready to relieve the poor and oppressed. He married
Rusticiana, daughter of the senator Symmachus, by whom he had two
sons. From Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who was then master
of Italy, he received the title of patrician while still a youth,
and in 510 he was made consul, an honour which twelve years later
(522) was conferred upon his two sons. But his good fortune did
not
last; his powerful position and bold maintenance of justice
aroused
jealousy and hatred and he was accused by his enemies of
plotting
against Theodoric. The king, believing him guilty, threw him into
prison at Pavia, while the senate without a trial passed a
sentence
against him of confiscation and death. After he had spent some
time
in prison he was put to death by torture, a cord being fastened
round his head and tightened until his eyes were forced from their
sockets--he was then beaten with clubs until he expired. He was
buried in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, where in 722 a
tomb was erected to his memory by Liutprand, king of the Lombards;
this was replaced in 990 by a more magnificent one erected by the
Emperor Otto III, for which Pope Sylvester II wrote an
inscription.
The church was reconstructed in cent xii, and restored in 1899;
behind the altar in the crypt is a small marble sarcophagus of
cent. vi in Ravennate style, in which the bones of Boethius have
been preserved since 1923; below it is an inscription in Latin
elegiacs. It was during his imprisonment at Pavia that Boethius
wrote his most celebrated work, the De consolatione
philosophiae.
[Consolatione, De]. In the Middle Ages
Boethius
was regarded as a martyr who died in defence of the Christian
faith. Villani, in his record of the death of Theodoric, says of
him:
Questi fu quello Teodorico il quale mandò in pregione e fece poi
monre in Pavia il buono santo Boezio Severino, console di Roma,
perch'eg]i per bene e stato della repubblica di Roma e della fede
cristiana, il contrastava de' suoi difetti e tirannie opponendogli
false cagioni. Allora il santo Boezio compuose in pregione a Pavia
il libro della filosofica consolazione. ({Chron. ii. 5.})
D. places B. among the great doctors (Spiriti Sapienti)
in
the Heaven of the Sun,
[Par. x. 121-129]
[Sole, Cielo del]; his
spirit
is pointed out by Thomas Aquinas, who speaks of him as 'l'anima
santa che 'l mondo fallace / fa manifesto
([Par. x. 125-126]), and
alludes to his exile and torture, and to his burial at Pavia
([Par. x. 127-129]) [Cieldauro.]
B. is frequently mentioned by D. in his prose works, in connexion
with the De consolatione,
Conv. I. ii. 13,
Conv. I. xi. 8;
Conv. II. vii. 4,
Conv. II. x. 3,
Conv. II. xii. 2,
Conv. II. xv. 1;
Conv. III. i. 15,
Conv. III. ii. 17;
Conv. IV. xii. 4,
Conv. IV. xii. 7,
Conv. IV. xiii. 13,
Conv. IV. xiii. 14;
Mon. I. ix. 3;
Mon. II. viii. 13;
Epist. xiii. 89; he is spoken
of as lo Savio,
Conv. IV. xiii. 12 and is alluded to
perhaps (though the reference is most probably to Virgil) by
Francesca da Rimini (addressing D. in Circle II of Hell) as il
tuo dottore,
[Inf. v. 123]
[Virgilio]. In these well-known lines,
[Inf. V. 121-123],
Francesca quotes what is almost certainly a
reminiscence of a passage in the De consolatione:
ill omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii
fuisse felicem. ({Boethius. De Con. ii. 4}.)
This passage was imitated by Chaucer in his Troilus and
Criseyde (iii. 1625-1628):
For of fortunes sharpe adversitee
The worste kynde of infortune is this,
A man to han ben in prosperitee,
And it remembren, Than it passed is.
[F. N. Robinson ed. (2d ed.; London, 1957), p. 438.]
In his translation of Boethius he renders it:
in alle adversites of fortune the moost unseely kynde of
contrarious fortune is to han been weleful.
[Boece II, pr. 4, 7-9 (ed. cit., p. 333).]
Boethius obliged, by the nature of his book to speak of himself in
the De consolatione
Conv. I. ii. 13; his contempt for
popular glory,
Conv. I. xi. 8;
his book one of those wherein D.
sought consolation after the death of Beatrice
Conv. II. xii. 2;
Conv. II. xv. 1.
©Oxford University Press 1968. From A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee
(1968) by permission of Oxford University Press