Hithero the career of Theodoric has
been one of almost unbroken prosperity, and the reader
who has followed his history has perhaps grown somewhat
weary of the monotonous repetition of the praises of
his mildness and his equity. Unfortunately he
will be thus wearied no longer. The sun of the
great Ostrogoth set in sorrow, and what was worse
than in sorrow, in deeds of hasty wrath and cruel injustice,
which lost him the hearts of the majority of his subjects
and which have dimmed his fair fame with posterity.
Many causes combined to sadden and
depress the king’s heart, as he felt old age
creeping upon him. Providence had not blessed
him with a son; and while his younger rival, Clovis,
left four martial sons to defend (and also to partition)
his newly formed kingdom, Theodoric’s daughter
Amalasuentha was the only child born of his marriage
with Clovis’ sister.
In order to provide himself with a
male heir (for the customs of the Goths did not favour,
if they did not actually exclude, female sovereignty),
Theodoric summoned to his court a distant relative,
a young man named Eutharic, descended from the mighty
Hermanric, who was at the time living in Spain.
Eutharic, who was well reported of for bodily vigour
and for statesmanlike ability, came to the Ostrogothic
court, married Amalasuentha (515), four years afterwards
received the honour of a consulship, which he held
along with the Emperor Justin, and exhibited games
and combats of wild beasts to the populace of Rome
and Ravenna on a scale of unsurpassed magnificence.
But he died, probably soon after his consulship, leaving
two childrena boy and a girl,and
thus Theodoric’s hope of bequeathing his crown
to a mature and masculine heir was disappointed.
Still, however, he would not propose a female ruler
to his old Gothic comrades; and the little grandson,
Athalaric, though under ten years of age, was solemnly
presented by him to an assembly of Gothic counts and
the nobles of the nation as their king.
The proclamation of Athalaric was
made when the king felt that he should shortly depart
this life, probably in the summer of 526. I have
mentioned it here in order to complete my statement
as to the succession to the throne, but we will now
return to an earlier period-to the events which immediately
followed Eutharic’s consulship. Coming as
he did from Spain, the Visigothic lords of which were
still an aristocracy of bitter Arians in the midst
of a cowed but Catholic Roman population, Eutharic,
who, as we are expressly told, “was too harsh
and hostile to the Catholic faith”, may have
to some extent swayed the mind of his father-in-law
away from its calm balance of even-handed justice between
the rival Churches. But the state of affairs at
Constantinople exercised a yet more powerful influence.
Anastasius, who, though no Arian, had during his long
reign been always in an attitude of hostility towards
the Papal See, was now dead, and had been succeeded
by Justin. This man, a soldier of fortune, who
had as a lad tramped down from the Macedonian highlands
into the capital, with a wallet of biscuit over his
shoulder for his only property, had risen, by his
soldierly qualities, to the position of Count of the
Guardsmen, and by a judicious distribution of gold
among the soldiersgold which was not his
own, but had been entrusted to him for safe-keeping,he
won for himself the diadem, and for his nephew,
as it turned out, the opportunity of making his name
forever memorable in history. Justin was absolutely
illiteratethe story about the stencilled
signature is told of him as well as of Theodoric,but
he was strictly orthodox, and his heart was set on
a reconciliation with the Roman See. This measure
was also viewed with favour by the majority of the
populace of Constantinople, with whom the heterodoxy
of Anastasius had become decidedly unpopular.
Thus the negotiations for a settlement of the dispute
went prosperously forward. The anathemas which
were insisted upon by the Roman pontiff were soon
conceded, the names of Zeno, of Anastasius, and of
five Patriarchs of Constantinople who had dared to
dissent from the Roman See were struck out of the
“Diptychs” (or lists of those men, living
or dead, whom the Church regarded as belonging to
her communion); and thus the first great schism between
the Eastern and Western Churchesa schism
which had lasted for thirty-five yearswas
ended.
It was probably foreseen by the statesmen
of Ravenna that this reconciliation between Pope and
Emperor, a reconciliation which had been celebrated
by the enthusiastic shout of the multitude in the great
church of the Divine Wisdom at Constantinople, would
sooner or later bring trouble to Theodoric’s
Arian fellow-worshippers. In point of fact, however,
an interval of nearly six years elapsed before any
actual persecution of the Arians of the Empire was
attempted. The first cause of alienation between
the Ostrogothic king and his Catholic subjects seems
to have arisen in connection with the Jews. Theodoric,
on account of some fear of invasion by the barbarians
beyond the Alps, was dwelling at Verona. That
city, the scene of his most desperate battle with
Odovacar, commanding as it does the valley of the Adige
and the road by the Brenner Pass into the Tyrol, was
probably looked upon by Theodoric as the key of north-eastern
Italy, and when there was any danger of invasion he
preferred to hold his court there rather than in the
safer but less convenient Ravenna. There too he
may probably have often received the ambassadors of
the Northern nations, who went back to their homes
with those stories of the might and majesty of the
Ostrogothic king which made “Dietrich of Bern”
(Theodoric of Verona) a name of wonder and a theme
of romance to many generations of German minstrels.
While Theodoric was dwelling in the city of the Adige,
tidings came to him, apparently from his son-in-law
Eutharic, whom he had left in charge at Ravenna, that
the whole city was in an uproar. The Jews, of
whom there was evidently a considerable number, were
accused of having made sport of the Christian rite
of baptism by throwing one another into one of the
two muddy rivers of Ravenna, and also, in some way
not described to us, to have mocked at the supper of
the Lord. The Christian populace of the city
were excited to such madness by these rumours that
they broke out into rioting, which neither the Gothic
vicegerent, Eutharic, nor their own bishop, Peter III.,
was able to quell, and which did not cease till all
the Jewish synagogues of the city were laid in ashes.
When tidings of these events were
brought to Verona by the Grand Chamberlain Triwan
(or Trigguilla) who, as an Arian, was suspected of
favouring the Jews, and when the Hebrews came themselves
to invoke the justice of the King, Theodoric’s
righteous indignation was kindled against these flagrant
violations of civilitas. It was not, indeed,
the first time that his intervention had been claimed
on behalf of the persecuted children of Israel.
At Milan and at Genoa they had already appealed to
him against the vexations of their neighbours,
and at Rome the mob, excited by some idle story of
harsh punishments inflicted by the Jews on their Christian
servants, had burned their synagogue in the Trastevere
to the ground. The protection claimed had always
been freely conceded. Theodoric, while expressing
or permitting Cassiodorus to express his pious wonder
that a race which wilfully shut itself out from the
eternal rest of Heaven should care for quietness on
earth, was strong in declaring that for the sake of
civilitas justice was to be secured even for
the wanderers from the right religious path, and that
no one should be forced to believe in Christianity
against his will. Nor was this willingness to
protect the Jews from popular fanaticism peculiar
to Theodoric. Always, so long as the Goths, either
the Western or Eastern branch, remained Arian, the
Jews found favour in their eyes, and Jacob had rest
under the shadow of the sons of Odin. Now, therefore,
the king sent an edict addressed to Eutharic and Bishop
Peter, ordaining that a pecuniary contribution should
be levied on all the Christian citizens of Ravenna,
out of which the synagogues should be rebuilt, and
that those who were not able to pay their share of
this contribution should be flogged through the streets,
the crier going behind them and in a loud voice proclaiming
their offence. The order was doubtless obeyed,
but from that day there was a secret spirit of rebellion
in the hearts of the Roman citizens of Ravenna.
From this time onward occasions of
difference between Theodoric and his Roman subjects
were frequently arising. For some reason which
is not explained to us, he ordered the Catholic church
of St. Stephen in the suburbs of Verona to be destroyed.
Then came suspicion, the child of rancour. An
order was put forth forbidding the inhabitants of Roman
origin to wear any arms, and this prohibition extended
even to pocket-knives. In the excited state of
men’s minds earth and heaven seemed to them
to be full of portents..There were earthquakes; there
was a comet with a fiery tail which blazed for fifteen
days; a poor Gothic woman lay down under a portico
near Theodoric’s palace at Ravenna and gave
birth (so we are assured) to four dragons, two of which,
having one head between them, were captured, while
the other two, sailing away eastward through the clouds,
were seen to fall headlong into the sea.
More important than these old wives’
fables was the changed attitude and the wavering loyalty
of the Roman Senate. From the remarks made in
an earlier chapter, it will be clear that a conscientious
Roman citizen might truly feel that he owed a divided
allegiance to the Ostrogoth, his ruler de facto,
and to the Augustus at Constantinople, his sovereign
de jure. Through the years of religious
schism this conflict of duties had slumbered, but
now, with the enthusiastic reconciliation between
the see of Rome and the throne of Constantinople,
it awoke; and in that age when, as has been already
said, religion was nationality, an orthodox Eastern
emperor seemed a much more fitting object of homage
than an Arian Italian king.
There were two men, united by the
ties of kindred, who seemed marked out by character
and position as the leaders of a patriotic party in
the Senate, if such a party could be formed.
These men were Boethius and his father-in-law Symmachus,
both Roman nobles of the great and ancient Anician
gens. Boethius, whose name we have already
met with as the skilful mechanic who was requested
to construct a water-clock and a sun-dial for the
king of the Burgundians, was a man of great and varied
accomplishmentsphilosopher, theologian,
musician, and mathematician. He had translated
thirty books of Aristotle into Latin for the benefit
of his countrymen; his treatise on Music was for many
centuries the authoritative exposition of the science
of harmony. He had held the high honour of the
consulship in 510; twelve years later he had the yet
higher honour of seeing his two sons, Symmachus and
Boethius, though mere lads, arrayed in the trabea
of the consul.
Symmachus the other leader of the
patriotic party in the Roman Senate had memories of
illustrious ancestors behind him. A century before,
another Symmachus had been the standard-bearer of the
old Pagan party, and had delivered two great orations
in order to prevent the Christian Emperors from removing
the venerable Altar of Victory from the Senate-house.
Now, his descendant and namesake was an equally firm
adherent of Christianity, a friend and counsellor of
Popes, a man who was willing to encounter obloquy
and even death in behalf of Nicene orthodoxy.
He had been consul so long ago as in the reign of Odovacar,
he had been an “Illustrious” Prefect of
the City under Theodoric; he was now Patrician and
Chief of the Senate (Caput Senatus).
The last two titles conferred honour rather than power;
the headship of the Senate especially being generally
held by the oldest, and if not by the oldest, by the
most esteemed and venerated member of that body.
Such was Symmachus, a man full of years and honours,
a historian, an orator, and a generous contributor
of some portion of his vast wealth for the adornment
of his native city.
Boethius, left an orphan in childhood,
had enjoyed the wise training of his guardian Symmachus.
When he came to man’s estate he married that
guardian’s daughter Rusticiana. Though there
was the difference of a generation between them, a
close friendship united the old and the middle-aged
senators, and the young consuls sprung from this alliance,
who were the hope of their blended lines, bore, as
we have seen, the names of both father and grandfather.
Up to the year 523, Boethius appears
to have enjoyed to the full the favour of Theodoric.
From a chapter of his autobiography we learn
that he had already often opposed the ministers of
the crown when he found them to be unjust and rapacious
men. “How often” says he, “have
I met the rush of Cunigast, when coming open-mouthed
to devour the substance of the poor! How often
have I baffled the all but completed schemes of injustice
prepared by the chamberlain Trigguilla! How often
have I interposed my influence to protect the unhappy
men whom the unpunished avarice of the barbarians
was worrying with infinite calumnies! Paulinus,
a man of consular rank, whose wealth the hungry dogs
of the palace had already devoured in fancy, I dragged
as it were out of their very jaws”. But
all these acts of righteous remonstrance against official
tyranny, though from the names given they seem to have
been chiefly directed against Gothic ministers, had
not forfeited for Boethius the favour of his sovereign.
The proof of this is furnished by the almost unexampled
honour conferred upon himcertainly with
Theodoric’s consentby the elevation
of his two sons to the consulship. The exultant
father, from his place in the Senate, expressed his
thanks to Theodoric in an oration of panegyric, which
is now no longer extant, but was considered by contemporaries
a masterpiece of brilliant rhetoric.
So far all had gone well with the
fortunes of Boethius; but now, perhaps about the middle
of 523, there came a great and calamitous change.
We must revert for a few minutes to the family circumstances
of Theodoric, in order to understand the influences
which were embittering his spirit against his Catholicthat
is to say, his Romansubjects. The
year before, his grandson Segeric, the Burgundian,
had been treacherously assassinated by order of his
father, King Sigismund, who had become a convert to
the orthodox creed, and after the death of Theodoric’s
daughter had married a Catholic woman of low origin.
In the year 523 itself, Thrasamund, king of the Vandals,
died and was succeeded by his cousin Hilderic, son
of one of the most ferocious persecutors of the Catholic
Church, but himself a convert to her creed. Notwithstanding
an oath which Hilderic had sworn to his predecessor
on his death-bed, never to use his royal power for
the restoration of the churches to the Catholics,
Hilderic had recalled the Bishops of the orthodox party
and was in all things reversing the bitter persecuting
policy of his ancestors, amalafrida, the sister of
Theodoric and widow of Thrasamund, who had been for
nearly twenty years queen of the Vandals, passionately
resented this undoing of her dead husband’s work
and put herself at the head of a party of insurgents,
who called in the aid of the Moorish barbarians, but
who were, notwithstanding that aid, defeated by the
soldiers of Hilderic at Capsa. Amalafrida
herself was taken captive and shut up in prison, probably
about the middle of 523.
Thus everywhere the Arian League,
of which Theodoric had been the head, and which had
practically given him the hegemony of Teutonic Europe,
was breaking down; and in its collapse disaster and
violent death were coming upon the members of Theodoric’s
own family. If Eutharic himself, as seems probable,
had died before this time, and was no longer at the
King’s side to whisper distrust of the Catholics
at every step, and to put the worst construction on
the actions of every patriotic Roman, yet even Eutharic’s
death increased the difficulties of Theodoric’s
position, and his doubts as to the future fortunes
of a dynasty which would be represented at his death
only by a woman and a child. And these difficulties
and doubts bred in him not depression, but an irascible
and suspicious temper, which had hitherto been altogether
foreign to his calm and noble nature.
Such was the state of things at the
court of Ravenna when, in the summer or early autumn
of 523, Cyprian, Reporter in the King’s Court,
accused the Patrician Albinus of sending letters to
the Emperor Justin hostile to the royal rule of Theodoric.
Of the character and history of Albinus, notwithstanding
his eminent station, we know but little. He was
not only Patrician, but Illustristhat
is, in modern phraseology, he had held an office of
cabinet-rank. On the occasion of some quarrel
between the factions of the Circus, Theodoric had
graciously ordered him to assume the patronage of
the Green Faction, and to conduct the election of a
pantomimic performer for that party. He had also
received permission to erect workshops overlooking
the Forum on its northern side, on condition that
his buildings did not in any way interfere with public
convenience or the beauty of the city. Evidently
he was a man of wealth and high position, one of the
great nobles of Rome, but perhaps one who, up to this
time, had not taken any very prominent part in public
affairs. His accuser, Cyprian, still apparently
a young man, was also a Roman nobleman. His father
had been consul, and he himself held at this time
the post of Referendarius (or, as I have translated
it, Reporter) in the King’s Court of Appeal.
His ordinary duty was to ascertain from the suitor
what was the nature of his plea, to state it to the
king, and then to draw up the document, which contained
the king’s judgment. It was an arduous
office to ascertain from the flurried and often trembling
suitor, in the midst of the hubbub of the court, the
precise nature of his complaint, and a responsible
one to express the king’s judgment, neither
less nor more, in the written decree. There was
evidently great scope for corrupt conduct in both
capacities, if the Referendarius was open to bribes;
and in the “Formula”, by which these officers
were appointed, some stress is laid on the necessity
of their keeping a pure conscience in the exercise
of their functions. Cyprian seems to have been
a man of nimble and subtle intellect, who excelled
in his statement of a case. So well was this
done by him, from the two opposite points of view,
that plaintiff and defendant in turn were charmed to
hear each his own version of the case so admirably
presented to the king. Of later years, Theodoric,
weary of sitting in state in the crowded hall of justice,
had often tried his cases on horseback. Riding
forth into the forest he had ordered Cyprian to accompany
him, and to state in his own lively and pleasing style
the “for” and “against” of
the various causes that came before him on appeal.
Even, we are told, when Theodoric was roused to anger
by the manifest injustice of the plea that was thus
presented, he could not help being charmed by the graceful
manner in which the young Referendarius, the temporary
asserter of the claim, brought it under his notice.
Thus trained to subtle eloquence, Cyprian had been
recently sent on an embassy to Constantinople, and
had there shown himself in the word-fence a match
for the keenest of the Greeks. Lately returned,
as it should seem, from this embassy, he came forward
in the Roman Senate and accused the Patrician Albinus
of outstepping the bounds of loyalty to the Ostrogothic
King in the letters which he had addressed to the
Byzantine Emperor.
In this accusation was Cyprian acting
the part of an honest man or of a base informer?
The times were difficult: the relations of a Roman
Senator to Emperor and King were, as I have striven
to show, intricate and ill-defined; it was hard for
even good men to know on which side preponderated
the obligations of loyalty, of honour, and of patriotism.
On the one hand Cyprian may have been a true and faithful
servant of Theodoric, who had in his embassy at Constantinople
discovered the threads of a treasonable intrigue,
and who would not see his master betrayed even by
Romans without denouncing their treason. As a
real patriot he may have seen that the days of purely
Roman rule in Italy were over, that there must be
some sort of amalgamation with these new Teutonic
conquerors, who evidently had the empire of the world
before them, that it would be better and happier,
and in a certain sense more truly Roman, for Italy
to be ruled by a heroic “King of the Goths and
Romans” than for her to sink into a mere province
ruled by exarchs and logothetes from corrupt and distant
Constantinople. This is one possible view of
Cyprian’s character and purposes. On the
other hand, he may have been a slippery adventurer,
intent on carving out his own fortune by whatever
means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the noblest
of his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition.
In his secret heart he may have cared nothing for
the noble old Goth, his master, with whom he had so
often ridden in the pine-wood; nothing, too, for the
great name of Rome, the city in which his father had
once sat as consul. Long accustomed to state
both sides of a case with equal dexterity, and without
any belief in either, this nimble-tongued advocate,
who had already found that Greece had nothing to teach
him that was new, may have had in his inmost soul
no belief in God, in country, or in duty, but in Cyprian
alone. Both views are possible; we have before
us only the passionate invectives of his foes
and the stereotyped commendations of his virtues penned
by his official superiors, and I will not attempt
to decide between them.
When Cyprian brought his charge of
disloyalty against Albinus, the accused Patrician,
who was called into the presence of the King, at once
denied the accusation. An angry debate probably
followed, in the course of which Boethius claimed
to speak The attention of all men was naturally fixed
upon him, for by the King’s favour, the same
favour which in the preceding year had raised his
two sons to the consulship, he was now filling the
great place of Master of the Offices. “False”,
said Boethius in loud, impassioned tones, “is
the accusation of Cyprian; but whatever Albinus did,
I and the whole Senate of Rome, with one purpose,
did the same. The charge is false, O King Theodoric".The
inter-position of Boethius was due to a noble and generous
impulse, but it was not perhaps wise, in view of all
that had passed, and without in any way helping Albinus,
it involved Boethius in his ruin. Cyprian, thus
challenged, included the Master of the Offices in his
accusation, and certain persons, not Goths, but Romans
and men of senatorial rank, Opilio (the brother of
Cyprian), Basilius, and Gaudentius, came forward and
laid information against Boethius.
Here the reader will naturally ask,
“Of what did these informers accuse him?”
but to that question it is not possible to give a satisfactory
answer. He himself in his meditations on his trial
says: “Of what crime is it that I am accused?
I am said to have desired the safety of the Senate.
‘In what way?’ you may ask. I am accused
of having prevented an informer from producing certain
documents in order to prove the Senate guilty of high
treason. Shall I deny the charge? But I did
wish for the safety of the Senate and shall never
cease to wish for it, nor, though they have abandoned
me, can I consider it a crime to have desired the
safety of that venerable order. That posterity
may know the truth and the real sequence of events,
I have drawn up a written memorandum concerning the
whole affair. For, as for these forged letters
upon which is founded the accusation against me of
having hoped for Roman freedom, why should I say anything
about them? Their falsehood would have been made
manifest, if I could have used the confession of the
informers themselves, which in all such affairs is
admitted to have the greatest weight. As for
Roman freedom, what hope is left to us of attaining
that? Would that there were any such hope.
Had the King questioned me, I would have answered
in the words Canius, when he was questioned by the
Emperor Caligula as to his complicity in a a conspiracy
formed against him. If I, said he, had known,
thou shouldest never have known.”
These words, coupled with some bitter
statements as to the tainted character of the informers
against him, men oppressed by debt and accused of
peculation, constitute the only statement of his case
by Boethius which is now available. The memorandum
so carefully prepared in the long hours of his imprisonment
has not reached posterity. Would that it might
even yet be found in the library of some monastery,
or lurking as a palimpsest under the dull commentary
of some mediaeval divine! It could hardly fail
to throw a brilliant, if not uncoloured light on the
politics of Italy in the sixth century. But, trying
as we best may to spell out the truth of the affair
from the passionate complaints of the prisoner, I
think we may discern that there had been some correspondence
on political affairs between the Senate and the Emperor
Justin, correspondence which was perfectly regular
and proper if the Emperor was still to them “Dominus
Noster” (our Lord and Master), but which
was kept from the knowledge of “the King of the
Goths and Romans”, and which, when he heard
of it, he was sure to resent as an act of treachery
to himself. That Boethius, the Master of the Offices
under Theodoric, should have connived at this correspondence,
naturally exasperated the master who had so lately
heaped favours on this disloyal servant. But
in addition to this he used the power which he wielded
as Master of the Offices, that is, head of the whole
Civil Service of Italy, to prevent some documents
which would have compromised the safety of the Senate
from coming to the knowledge of Theodoric. All
this was dangerous and doubtful work, and though we
may find it hard to condemn Boethius, drawn as he
was in opposite directions by the claims of historic
patriotism and by those of official duty, we can hardly
wonder that Theodoric, who felt his throne and his
dynasty menaced, should have judged with some severity
the minister who had thus betrayed his confidence.
The political charge against Boethius
was blended with one of another kind, to us almost
unintelligible, a charge of sacrilege and necromancy.
At least this seems to be the only possible explanation
of the following words written by him: “My
accusers saw that the charge ’of desiring the
safety of the Senate’ was no crime but rather
a merit; and therefore, in order to darken it by the
mixture of some kind of wickedness, they falsely declared
that ambition for office had led me to pollute my
conscience with sacrilege. But Philosophy had
chased from my breast all desire of worldly greatness,
and under the eyes of her who had daily instilled
into my mind the Pythagorean maxim ‘Follow God,’
there was no place for sacrilege. Nor was it
likely that I should seek the guardianship of the
meanest of spirits when Divine Philosophy had formed
and moulded me into the likeness of God. The friendship
of my father-in-law, the venerable Symmachus, ought
alone to have shielded me from the suspicion of such
a crime. But alas! it was my very love for Philosophy
that exposed me to this accusation, and they thought
that I was of kin to sorcerers because I was steeped
in philosophic teachings”.
The only reasonable explanation that
we can offer of these words is that mediaeval superstition
was already beginning to cast her shadow over Europe,
that already great mechanical skill, such as Boethius
was reputed to possess when his king asked him to
manufacture the water-clock and the sun-dial, caused
its possessor to be suspected of unholy familiarity
with the Evil One; perhaps also that astronomy, which
was evidently the favourite study of Boethius, was
perilously near to astrology, and that his zeal in
its pursuit may have exposed him to some of the penalties
which the Theodosian code itself, the law-book of
Imperial Rome, denounced against “the mathematicians”.
This seems to be all that can now
be done towards re-writing the lost indictment under
which Boethius was accused. The trial was conducted
with an outrageous disregard of the forms of justice.
It took place in the Senate-house at Rome; Boethius
was apparently languishing in prison at Pavia, where
he had been arrested along with Albinus. Thus
at a distance of more than four hundred miles from
his accusers and his judges was the life of this noble
Roman, unheard and undefended, sworn away on obscure
and preposterous charges by a process which was the
mere mockery of a trial. He was sentenced to
death and the confiscation of his property; and the
judges whose trembling lips pronounced the monstrous
sentence were the very senators whose cause he had
tried to serve. This thought, the remembrance
of this base ingratitude, planted the sharpest sting
of all in the breast of the condemned patriot.
It is evident that the Senate themselves were in desperate
fear of the newly awakened wrath of Theodoric, and
the fact that they found Boethius guilty cannot be
considered as in any degree increasing the probability
of the truth of the charges made against him.
But it does perhaps somewhat lessen his reputation
for far-seeing statesmanship, since it shows how thoroughly
base and worthless was the body for whose sake he
sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly
unfit the Senate would have been to take its old place
as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine Emperor and Ostrogothic
King could have been blotted out of the political
firmament.
Boethius seems to have spent some
months in prison after his trial, and was perhaps
transferred from Pavia to “the ager Calventianus”,
a few miles from Milan. There at any rate he
was confined when the messenger of death sent by Theodoric
found him. There is some doubt as to the mode
of execution adopted. One pretty good contemporary
authority says that he was beheaded, but the writer
whom I have chiefly followed, who was almost a contemporary,
but a credulous one, says that torture was applied,
that a cord was twisted round his forehead till his
eyes started from their sockets, and that finally
in the midst of his torments he received the coup
de grace from a club.
In the interval which elapsed between
the condemnation and the death of this noble man,
who died verily as a martyr for the great memories
of Rome, he had time to compose a book which exercised
a powerful influence on many of the most heroic spirits
of the Middle Ages. This book, the well-known,
if not now often read, “Consolation of Philosophy”,
was translated into English by King Alfred and by
Geoffrey Chaucer, was imitated by Sir Thomas More
(whose history in some respects resembles that of
Boethius), and was translated into every tongue and
found in every convent library of mediaeval Europe.
There is a great charm, the charm of sadness, about
many of its pages, and it may be considered from one
point of view as the swan’s song of the dying
Roman world and the dying Greek philosophy, or from
another, as the Book of Job of the new mediaeval world
which was to be born from the death of Rome. For
like the Book of Job, the “Consolation”
is chiefly occupied with a discussion of the eternal
mystery why a Righteous and Almighty Ruler of the world
permits bad men to flourish and increase, while the
righteous are crushed beneath their feet: and,
as in the Book of Job, so here, the question is not,
probably because it cannot be, fully answered.
It is the consolation of philosophy,
not of religion, or at any rate not of revealed religion,
which is here administered. So marked is the
silence of Boethius on all those arguments, which a
discussion of this kind inevitably suggests to the
mind of a believer in the Crucified One, that scholars
long supposed that he was not even by profession a
Christian. A manuscript which has been lately
discovered seems to prove beyond a doubt that
Boethius was a Christian, and wrote orthodox treatises
on disputed points of theology; but for some reason
or other he fell back on his early philosophical studies,
rather than on his formal and conventional Christianity,
when he found himself in the deep waters of adversity
and imminent death. He represents himself in the
“Consolation” as lying on his dungeon-couch,
sick in body and sad at heart, and courting the Muses
as companions of his solitude. They come at his
call, but are soon unceremoniously dismissed by one
nobler than themselves, who asserts an older and higher
right to cheer her votary in the day of his calamity.
This is Philosophy, a woman of majestic stature, whose
head seems to touch the skies, and who has undying
youth and venerable age mysteriously blended in her
countenance. Having dismissed the Muses, she
sits by the bedside of Boethius and looks with sad
and earnest eyes into his face. She invites him
to pour out his complaints; she sings to him songs
first of pity and reproof, then of fortitude and hope;
she reasons with him as to the instability of the
gifts of Fortune, and strives to lead him to the contemplation
of the Summum Bonum, which is God Himself,
the knowledge of whom is the highest happiness.
Then, in order a little to lighten his difficulties
as to the permission of evil by the All-wise and Almighty
One, she enters into a discussion of the relation
between Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free-will,
but this discussion, a thorny and difficult one, is
not ended when the book comes to an abrupt conclusion,
being probably interrupted by the arrival of the messengers
of Theodoric, who brought the warrant for the writer’s
execution.
The “Consolation of Philosophy”
is partly in prose, partly in verse. The prose
is generally strong, clear, and comparatively pure
in style, wonderfully superior to the vapid diffusiveness
of Cassiodorus and most writers of the age. The
interspersed poems are sometimes in hexameters, but
more often in the shorter lines and more varied metres
of Horace, and are to some extent founded upon the
tragic choruses of Seneca. It is of course impossible
in this place to give any adequate account of so important
a work and one of such far-reaching influence as the
“Consolation” but the following translation
of one of the poems in which the prisoner makes his
moan to the Almighty may give the reader some little
idea of the style and matter of the treatise.
THE HARMONY OF THE NATURAL WORLD:
THE DISCORD OF THE MORAL WORLD.
Oh Thou who hast made this
starry Whole,
Who hast fixed
on high Thy throne;
Who biddest the Blue above
us roll,
And whose sway
the planets own!
At Thy bidding she turns,
the changing Moon
To her Brother
her full-fed fire,
Dimming the Stars with her
light, which soon
Wanes, as she
draws to him nigher.
Thou givest the word, and
the westering Star,
The Hesper who
watched o’er Night’s upspringing,
Changing his course, shines
eastward far,
Phosphor now,
for the Sun’s inbringing.
When the leaves fall fast,
’neath Autumn’s blast,
Thou shortenest
the reign of light.
In radiant June Thou scatterest
soon
The fast-flown
hours of night.
The leaves which fled from
the cruel North
Are with Zephyr’s
breath returning,
And from seeds which the Bear
saw dropped in earth
Springs the corn
for the Dog-star’s burning.
Thus all stands fast by Thine
old decree,
Nothing wavers
in Nature’s plan:
In all her changes she bows
to Thee:
Yea, all stands
fast but Man.
Oh! why is the wheel of Fortune
rolled,
While guilt Thy
vengeance shuns?
Why sit the bad on their thrones
of gold,
And trample Thine
holy ones?
Why doth Virtue skulk where
none may see
In the great world’s
corners dim?
And the just man mark the
knave go free,
While the penalty
falls on him?
No storm the perjurer’s
soul o’erwhelms,
Serene the false
one stands:
He flatters, and Kings of
mighty realms
Are as clay in
his moulding hands.
Oh Ruler! look on these lives
of ours,
Thus dashed on
Fortune’s sea.
Thou rulest the calm eternal
Powers,
But thine handiwork,
too, are we.
Ah! quell these waves with
their tossings high;
Let them own Thy
bound and ban:
And as Thou rulest the starry
sky
Rule also the
world of Man!