The Schoolmaster of the West

In a German city on the River Rhine there is a fortress called Porta Negra (the Black Gate), a remnant of the time when this city was a Roman Colony and defensive against the Teutonic hordes which assailed, and finally vanquished it. Nearby, from a hotel named St Severin, I would emerge in the early morning to do my usual fitness run, going over the bridge of the same name, northwards towards the magnificent Dom (Cathedral) and return, exhausted but refreshed!

During these times I do much of my thinking, and on these occasions I mused on the identity of St Severin*, who seemed quite obscure. In the course of my researches I found a Saint Severinus, who was not the same as my original focus but who seemed to offer much greater scope for scrutiny. It was to the latter which I directed my attention.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born of a Roman Patrician family. Born cAD480 he could boast of ancestors including two emperors and a pope. He was regarded as an infant prodigy with a deep and abiding passion for study. It is stated that he was master of all the liberal arts - from rhetoric to logic, music and astronomy. He was stylish and eloquent and rapidly came to the notice of the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, who gave him investigatory commissions and elevated him to the rank of consul - at the young age of 30.

In the course of his meteoric rise in status he incurred the wrath of enemies. Like many gifted men of political and academic stature he had, through envy or malice, his detractors. They were determined to discredit him. Boethius himself may have been a little indiscreet for letters to Constantinople were intercepted, which aroused the suspicions of the king that he was plotting treason. Flung into prison this ‘Schoolmaster of the West’ as he has been titled because of his dissemination of learning in many disciplines, he was condemned to death. The sentence was cruelly carried out in the year AD524 or 525.

Boethius was a Christian at a time when the Church was undergoing turmoil. Moreover he was an Arian (a sect which denied the co-equal status of God the Father and God the Son). Our current Archbishop of Canterbury has written a scholarly (and difficult to read) text on Arianism. In 1883 the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the local cult of St Severinus Boethius. This cult had some significant following at least from the 9th century. In the 13th century Dante is known to have visited the church of San Pietro, Pavia, the resting place of Boethius and in his Divine Comedy echoes the literary trick of speaking wisdom by means of a muse.

The major work of Boethius, titled De Consolatione Philosophae, was translated by many people, amongst whom is numbered King Alfred and Geoffrey Chaucer. Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have done a translation into the English of the time, doing so at a phenomenal speed - less than 27 hours! One can be rather sceptical of this assertion but nevertheless the fact that the great and good of the past have deep acquaintance with the work and its significance speaks volumes for the profundity of its author. The great analytical writer Edward Gibbon (of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire fame) praised the literary power of Boethius.

De Consolatione Philosophae (the Consolation of Philosophy) is cast in the form of a dialogue, part prose and part poetry, in which the author describes how some divine power or spirit, reveals to him further wisdom, at first hidden, then progressively shown by means of the female muse called ‘Philosophy’. The process is a sort of psychiatry (‘psyche’=soul), ‘iatros’=physician), the point being not solely the acquisition of knowledge but to enable the individual to become a better person. Ignorance and illusion, especially about what is true and what is evil, are vices and lead to great unhappiness.

Unhappiness is cured by taking steps to dispel ignorance, and to determine what is good and what is evil. The whole text is a delight to read, even in translation. This has been most competently done by V.E.Watts in his book published in 1998, and it preserves the poetic beauty of the original. The Consolation concludes with these uplifting words:

“Avoid vice therefore, and cultivate virtue. Lift up your mind to the right kind of hope and put humble prayers on high. A great necessity is laid upon you if you will be honest with yourself, a great necessity to be good, since you live in the sight of a Judge who sees all things.”

Rod Dawson

* St Severin was a German Archbishop.
• St Severinus Boethius feast day is 23rd October.