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Updated: May 21, 2025
To Boethius, weeping in prison, came Philosophy to console him. She found him surrounded by the friends of his youth, the Muses, who now were inspiring him to write dreary verses of complaint. But these poetical Muses Philosophy sent packing. "Who has allowed," said she, "these common strumpets of the theatre to come near this sick man?
The books that I have seen have not satisfied me, not even the famous Boethius, who meets with general approval. I know not whether he fully understood himself what he says of God's understanding, and of eternity superior to time; and I ask for your opinion on his way of reconciling foreknowledge with freedom.
So, not to waste the night, they dropped the dispute, and by the light of the blazing heather, turned to a chapter of Boethius. My readers may remember that Ian was on the point of acquainting his mother with an important event in his spiritual history, when they were interrupted by the involuntary call of the girls from the New House.
'I will not tell you that just yet; for then you would think that you knew Him when you knew next to nothing about Him. Look here! Look at this book! He pulled from his pocket a copy of Boethius. 'Look at the name on the back of it; it is the name of the man who wrote that book. Davie spelled it out. 'Now you know all about the book, don't you? 'No, sir, I don't know anything about it.
"Since," says good old Boethius, "no man can retain her at his pleasure, what are her favors but sure prognostications of approaching trouble and calamity?"
And it is seen to be so, for only of man and of the Divine substances is this Mind predicated, as can plainly be seen in Boethius, who first predicates it of men, where he says to Philosophy: "Thou, and God who placed thee in the mind of men;" then he predicates it of God, when he says: "Thou dost produce everything from the Divine Model, Thou most beautiful One, bearing the beautiful World in Thy mind."
While Boëthius was in prison at Pavia, he wrote a book called The Consolations of Philosophy, so beautiful that the English king Alfred translated it into Saxon four centuries later. An immense number of letters from Theodoric's secretary are preserved, and show what an able man his master was, and how well he deserved his name of "The Great." He died in 526, leaving only two daughters.
The execution of More was the most cruel and uncalled-for act of the whole reign, and entailed on its author the execrations of all the learned and virtuous men in Europe, most of whom appreciated the transcendent excellences of the murdered chancellor, the author of the Utopia, and the Boethius of his age. The fulminations of the pope only excited Henry to more decided opposition.
And here it is to be observed that, as Boethius says in his Consolation, each sudden change of things does not happen without some flurry of mind.
So in translating Boethius, he altered a good deal, to make the wise heathen speak like a Christian. So in translating Orosius, where Orosius gives an account of the world, Alfred greatly enlarged the account of all the northern part of Europe, of which Alfred naturally knew much more than Orosius did.
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