The Consolation of Philosophy as a No-Man s Land

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY BY BOETHIUS AS A NO MAN’S LAND
BETWEEN BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY

by

Boris Grechin

Je Tsongkapay Ling Buddhist College, 2022

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the title of Buddhist scholar (Phar-phyin-rab-‘byams)

Edited by Alice Farmer

(www (dot) alicefarmerproofreader (dot) com)

Approved:
Chairperson of the Examination Committee

Je Tsongkapay Ling Buddhist College, 2022
© Boris Grechin, 2022

ISBN 978-1-005932-626

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In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the title of Phar-phyin-rab-‘byams at Je Tsongkapay Ling Buddhist College, I agree that the College shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Director of the College or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Date: October 6, 2022

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ABSTRACT

This thesis represents a study of The Consolation of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480 – 524 AD) and is an attempt to read this text through the prism of the Buddhist doctrine. It contains an Introduction, five Chapters, and a Conclusion.

Taking the divisions in order: Chapter One explores the reasons for which the focus of both public and scholarly attention is gradually being shifted from the Consolation towards more contemporary texts. Boethius’ universalism, his wish to regard philosophy as a spiritual path rather than purely intellectual training, today’s consumerist approach to spiritual texts, and self-confident sectarianism of Boethius’ later fellow-believers, as opposed to his own broad worldview, are named as some of the possible explanations for this.

Chapter Two is concerned with the status of Lady Philosophy, being the central image of the Consolation. The range of scholarly opinions on who she might be varies greatly. We present our own interpretation of this figure, equating it to that of Prajna Paramita who is a Buddhist deity of wisdom; this vision is then supported with arguments.

Chapter Three gives a closer look at the parallels between ‘Boethian’ teaching, as it is presented in his final work, and the Buddhist doctrine. Boethius’ ontological views, his epistemology, and his soteriological notions are given full attention.

Chapter Four, being a logical extension of Chapter Three, focuses more specifically on Boethius’ concept of Divinity. It is stated that Boethius’ vision of God as a Path, his statement that God does not intervene with human affairs, as well as his unique theodicy, while being rather unorthodox for later Christianity, are not dissimilar with the Buddhist understanding of the Ultimate Reality.

In Chapter Five, the issues of Boethius’ personal faith are handled. While being decidedly a Christian, the author of the Consolation avoids specifically Christian language. Some reasons underlying it are discussed; it is also suggested to read the Consolation as a polyphonic text (in the definition of Mikhail Bakhtin) whose characters become as philosophically weighty as its own author, while holding dissimilar opinions. It is argued that Boethius, a Christian, saw Christianity as only a part of the universal truth, that he wanted to avoid a sectarian attitude, and he also clearly wished to create a text aimed at anyone seeking answers to any of the major philosophical problems.

The Conclusion, while attempting to see the Consolation as a meeting ground between the followers of Christianity and Buddhism, also concentrates on two specifically Boethian ideas which may be regarded as ‘bridge piers,’ or philosophical foundations, for the interreligious dialogue to be initiated.

The Bibliography includes sixty-six sources in English, German, and Latin.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
1. FALLING INTO OBLIVION
2. THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
3. RUNNING PARALLEL COURSES
4. THE VISION OF GOD
5. BOETHIAN FAITH
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY


INTRODUCTION


Overview of the Topic


Some philosophical works enjoy a truly long life and an extremely fruitful commentatorial legacy, Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius’1 De Consolatione Philosophiae2 being one of them. Written in 523 or 524 AD, it has never stopped to attract the attention of thinkers, scholars, and religious leaders who would comment on its obscure places, speculate on its ideas, or feel inspired by its spirit.3

Does this situation still hold true? Even though new scholarly articles on the philosophical work in question appear each year, do not we feel that the focus of public attention is shifted towards more contemporary texts? ‘We shall move on from the Bible,’ to remember an impatient response of a student, produced by the author’s invitation to talk about the introductory verses of Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H. Having ‘moved on from the Bible’ to, say, the Handbook of Gender Studies, we are clearly ‘moving on’ from the Consolation as well. Who, but a very limited number of medievalists would now remember a fifth-century Roman Christian philosopher when the Bible itself is ‘being revisited’—has been as good as rejected in today’s public opinion?

Have we arrived at the point at which it is reasonable, commendable even, to erect a tombstone for Boethius’ intellectual efforts; to say to his Consolation, ‘Let us now part our ways, ours is to live, yours is to die, thank you for the company?’ ‘Books, like their authors, are mortal,’4 to remember a sad phrase by C. S. Lewis, even though he himself was an ardent admirer of this particular book.

The author of this thesis does not have a ready-made answer to the questions above, even if he is extremely reluctant to pronounce this final ‘good-bye.’ His reluctance to part company with Boethius can be easily attributed to his own feelings and preferences which leave little, if any, room for an unbiased research. Be it as it may, our intention is to adhere to the strictest standards of unbiasedness. The Consolation’s gradual falling into oblivion, its failure to spark an interest of contemporary intellectuals will therefore be one of the points we will focus on in the very first chapter of our work.


Main Objective


The main focus of this thesis, though, will be Boethius’ ideas, as they can be seen and interpreted through the lens of Buddhist philosophical doctrine(s), such an interpretation being the main objective of our research. Why would anyone want to do such a thing, that is, to look at the Consolation at this angle? Is it a purely intellectual exercise, allowing the author to show off with his ingenuity? Does not it look too much like a wish to read a novel by Charles Dickens in the light of Confucianism, or any such similar effort?

The answer is ‘no.’ In the following chapters, we will argue the vision of the Consolation as a doctrinal bridge between Christianity and Buddhism, or, taken more generally, between the views of the Western and Eastern worlds. Such bridges shall necessarily be built, and it is perhaps not our fault that we people of today prove ourselves unable to build the new ones. For that matter, we might as well to have a thorough look at one of the old conceptual constructions, to see if it still can do some good service. In other words, it is Boethius’ final work that can show to both Christians and Buddhists new ways of mutual understanding. Even though the title of our work, slightly provocative as it is, suggests that the philosophical text in question may be seen as a ‘no man’s land’ between the followers of two major religions, we do not want it to remain the ground between two fighting parties, ‘the darkling plain <...> [w]here ignorant armies clash by night,’ to remember concluding lines of Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.


Research Problems, Structural Overview, and Thesis Statement


Chapters Two through Five of our thesis will seek to provide answers to the following questions.

— Who or what is Philosophia? How shall we interpret the central female figure of the text? (Chapter Two)

— Are the philosophical ideas articulated in the Consolation consistent with the Buddhist doctrine? Do they coincide with orthodox Buddhist views on the same subjects? (Chapter Three)

— Does Boethius’ theodicy have a ‘specifically Buddhist tinge’? What is it that makes his theodicy truly unique? (Chapter Four)

— Is Boethius’ God a Christian deity? Are Boethius’ views on Divinity pro-Buddhist? (Chapter Four)

— Is Consolation a pagan, a Christian, a crypto-Buddhist text, or neither of the three? (Chapter Five)

— Is the work in question a ‘no man’s land’ between two (or more) major religions? Can this no man’s land be turned into a bridge connecting their followers rather than dividing them? (Conclusion)

The academic convention is to give a thesis statement, sometimes also defined as a hypothesis, immediately after the description of the research problem(s). Whereas a positive answer to the two final questions (stating that Boethius’ opus magnum is a disputed ground between Buddhism and Christianity which, however, can be turned into a bridge connecting the two religions) can technically be seen as our hypothesis, the author is very reluctant to elaborate this statement in a more detailed manner. It would go against his ideas of intellectual honesty. A thesis statement is, after all, only an intellectual assumption proposed for the sake of argument. To insist that our argument is necessarily true (or false) at this early stage of our research would be to show divinatory powers that the author does not possess. It would also be the opposite of an unbiased attitude.


Methodology and Style


The main method of our research is, as indicated before, to see the ideas of the text through the optic of Buddhist teachings—which implies textual analysis, contextual analysis, comparative analysis, and philosophical interpretation, to use more traditional terms. In some cases, we will be tempted to turn ourselves to thought experiments (the ‘What If’ method) as an auxiliary for our research, even though such experiments and their outcomes shall be regarded as purely speculative.

A few notes about the style. The author of this thesis is aware of the conventions of an academic writing that the majority of scholars prefer to follow rather than to struggle with. Someone who entered ‘the noble path of learning’ relatively recently would do his, or her, best to provide an impression of an academic professional. The result of this endeavour is that many a research paper disappointingly fails to be interesting for a wider, non-professional, readership. The author believes the subject of his thesis to be of a considerable importance and would feel very disheartened if the public interest in Consolation—as well as in the problems that this thesis endeavors to discuss—were hindered by the unnecessary complexity of his style. It is because of this concern that we intend to make the chapters that follow as clear and readable as possible, even at the expense of our probable failure to produce an impression of someone who is a sophisticated scholar.

It was Agnes Heller, a contemporary Hungarian philosopher,5 who once insightfully remarked:

“No wonder then that philosophy, the only objectivation of rationality of intellect, has always raised precisely the childish questions.”6

As long as our true aim is to look for answers to core philosophical questions that the Consolation so abundantly raises7, we must risk looking unsophisticated and almost childish: after all, it is children who bravely explore new meanings and are concerned with the most basic categories of human existence. Boethius’ magnificent work addresses precisely those categories. Using a generally understood vocabulary when speaking about the Consolation may therefore be entirely appropriate.


1. FALLING INTO OBLIVION


Introductory


Throughout the Middle Ages, the Consolation enjoyed immense popularity. Almost four hundred manuscripts of this text have survived until now8—a truly great number. In the twelfth century, Boethius’ works—including, of course, his last one—became central in nearly every school syllabus, state both Henry Chadwick9 and Sophia Compton.10 It was King Alfred of Wessex, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I of England, no less, who translated this book from Latin into their contemporary versions of English, not to speak of translations into other languages, including even Hebrew. Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy placed Boethius among the twelve lights in the heaven of the Sun, and he also mentioned that Boethius’ final work gave him the greatest consolation after the death of Beatrice.11 ‘Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it,’12 believes the author of the Discarded Image.

‘The masterpiece of Boethius still speaks in the twentieth century to those who grapple with the perennial problems of evil, freedom, and providence,’13 says Henry Chadwick somewhere in the concluding lines of his famous monograph. ‘To those few who still busy themselves with those problems,’ one is tempted to add. Over the last three centuries, the situation has clearly changed. The Consolation is still read by scholars and a limited number of those who feel enthusiastic about early Christian literature. It is not completely forgotten. And yet, it would be both dishonest and na;ve not to be able to face the simple fact, that this magnificent book is gradually shifting into oblivion.

‘Since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century ... Boethius has come to seem a rather lonely and forgotten foreigner in a world grown strange,’14 to quote again from Henry Chadwick. ‘Most educated readers, willy-nilly, are aware of its [the Consolation’s] later fortuna,’15 confirms Danuta Schanzer. Sanderson Beck in his essay on Boethius’ masterpiece raises a question: ‘Why has the work been so ignored in recent times?’—the question he himself never answers, except for saying that ‘in times of adversity consolation from Philosophy is much appreciated.’16 Indeed, it should be much appreciated, but, apparently, it is not much sought for.

One cannot fail to notice that the majority of Boethian researchers feel very uneasy about, if not actually ashamed of, the Consolation falling into ‘public disgrace.’ (A most natural feeling in someone who is a lover of early medieval heritage.) However, this ‘disgrace’ is a phenomenon that deserves our unbiased attention. We may reasonably expect that exploring its causes will be helpful in our further understanding—if not of Boethius, then, at least, of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir in her interesting if doubtful article entitled ‘The Torn Robe of Philosophy: Philosophy as a Woman in the “Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius’ shares some personal details of her first encounter with the Consolation that shed some light on why the modern reader is not easily getting along with this text.

“When I was in my first year of studying philosophy, my mother gave me a book. It was one of the classics of medieval philosophy, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (480–524). The title did not appeal to me at the time. The concept of consolation sounded to me too theological. I wanted to avoid that … Truth in theology seemed to be consoling truth, and my young self felt it needed more questioning and critique of truth rather than consolation.”17

To paraphrase it, we people of today do not want philosophy to be associated with something that must be simply taken on faith, and we also reject all sorts of ‘cheap,’ that is, unquestioning consolation. The consolation that Boethius’ text can give is anything else but cheap: after all, this is a book ‘pervaded by gaping and painful honesty.’18 But who is able to appreciate if one never gets as far as the title, and when the title itself, as it seems, poses a problem?

In the paragraphs that follow, we will concentrate on other reasons for our misunderstanding and misjudging of this literary gem. The ‘we’ below in all cases stands for ‘we contemporaries of the early twenty-first century.’


Universalism vs. Specialisation, Science vs. Art


Boethius was someone who in a much later period would be called ‘a Renaissance man’ (considering, of course, the metaphorical use of the term, not its literal meaning). The Consolation shows him as a philosopher of the Neoplatonic school, a Christian theologian, a diligent reader of ancient myths, a logician, a mystic (in all probability), a preacher, even a poet.19 His way of thinking is truly holistic which is already an important disadvantage for today’s intellectual climate, characterised by ‘the specialization that divides philosophers, literary scholars and historians and makes them each seek in the figures from the past only what relates to their own discipline.’20

In other words, we are suspicious towards the texts that try to be ‘all in one’ because we do not believe their authors to be truly expert in our highly specialised field of research. We reject the encylopaedic approach, and we do not even know what use to make of somebody else’s encyclopaedism. And more than that: we have drawn strict boundaries between different types of mental activity, and we do not think it proper to overstep them. The result is that a modern ‘creative professional’ will in most cases fail to appreciate poetic texts that are too heavily loaded with meaning, ‘too philosophic’—and this is what almost all the hymns of the Consolation are; a philosophy professor or a theologian, on the other hand, will be all at sea with a complicated poetic text for the very same reason.

We have unlearnt to treat the intelligible world21 as a whole, so much so that we unconsciously avoid those ancient authors who knew how to do that. It is much easier to label them as ‘amateurs’ and to proclaim that their ‘modest intellectual achievements’ are centuries behind the actual state of contemporary science, or art, or religion. In the case of Boethius, it is simply not true. Christian theology is still grappling with the problem of theodicy, and its modern solutions do not sound more convincing than the one provided in the Consolation. Poets of today have not beaten Boethius the poet—much the other way around: their sad attempts at beauty sound juvenile, when compared with his majestic hymns. Contemporary philosophy has still not found a key to universal happiness, and its adherents, very much unlike Boethius, do not even try to produce an impression of persons looking for it.


Philosophy as a Way of Life vs. Philosophy as Pastime


We may ask ourselves why they do not (see above). The answer may be that philosophy-as-a-way-of-life—in fact, a path of spiritual improvement—is essentially different from philosophy-as-intellectual-pastime or, as its best, as a harmless theoretical discipline whose students do not impose on themselves any ethical obligations.

‘By the time of Boethius,’ writes John Moorhead, ‘people were coming to look more to religion to supply guidance as to how to live, but in the ancient world it was seen as the job of philosophy to provide this. The practice of philosophy was thought to make a person ethical, so that, far more than is the case today, philosophy in the ancient world can be seen as a way of life [italics mine].’22

Sophia Compton describes this gap between the ancient and the actual understanding of what philosophy should be, using even more heavily-loaded terms.

“Today, we generally do not think of philosophy as having a direct connection to salvation, because we consider philosophy as belonging more to the sphere of science; however, for Boethius and the medieval world which followed him, even Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, although essentially science, was not merely a science but a [way of] life.”23

Regarding philosophy as a spiritual path obviously requires much more inner strength24 than simply studying it or even defending a dissertation which would allow one to proudly present him- or herself as a ‘professional philosopher.’ (A Platonist or a Stoic would most likely question this vision of someone with a PhD degree in philosophy as a philosopher and say that, in his opinion, a philosopher is he who makes other people better human beings.) Do we possess this strength? Have we ever tried to morally reform others or, at least, ourselves? An unpleasant discovery about ourselves too often is that we disappointingly fail to ‘be a good philosopher’ in Boethian terms. Having found it out, we instinctively shun the author who, speaking figuratively, tries to freight our brittle ship with more goods than we can bear.


Consumerist Approach to Religious Texts


The challenge that lies before us is to regard the Consolation as a religious text rather than merely a philosophical treatise, much in the same way in which we would see the teachings of Sri Sathya Sai Baba25, or H. H. Trinley Thaye Dorje26, or another fashionable guru. The problem is that this approach also fails to do its job. Over the last decades, we have grown to be consumers of sacred texts who would easily consume away any number of spiritual truths shared with us. Further examples and quotations may show why it is so.


Prison Literature Has No Chances With Us


The Consolation is a specimen of prison literature, a text whose author ‘was stripped of everything he once knew as his own, and who surely knew his death might be as near, and as brutal, as it was.’27 For this reason or another, the image of an author who will be tortured to death after his book is finished is very disquieting. To take his text at face value would perhaps mean to empathise with its author, to mentally suffer along with him, as he is being strangled by his torturers. This is an effort that we feel we are unable to make, an image that we are incapable of getting over ourselves. Our na;ve neo-Paganism28 somehow makes us believe that ‘good people’ shall not, and will not, suffer. A hero who suffers for a good cause, let alone a victim of an unjust accusation, is a ‘mistake’ that we prefer to ignore. We are tempted to ask ourselves what can be gained from reading a book whose own author was unable to profit from it—after all, writing it did not save Boethius from execution. In other words, we do not want to learn from, or about, someone else’s pain, spiritual consumerists as we are.


Efforts That We Do Not Want to Make


A religious text is implicitly aimed at the spiritual transformation of its readers. It invites them to take a certain amount of responsibility upon themselves, so that this aim could be achieved. It challenges our moral integrity; it exposes the lies that we tend to tell ourselves; at the very least, it asks us to meditate on what we have read rather than to simply process a certain amount of new information. ‘Meditation’ in this context may equally mean a religious practice and an intellectual effort that is required in order to grasp the structure of the text. It is in this latter sense in which Robert McMahon speaks about ‘a full understanding’ of early medieval texts which ‘demands not merely our reading but our meditation.’29 However, we prove ourselves incapable of a superfluous intellectual effort. It is also obvious that we do not want to be challenged or lectured upon our moral flaws. We do not detect them—which leads us to the third point of this section.


Failure of Self-Diagnosis


The Consolation is full of medical metaphors. Lady Philosophy treats the prisoner as a (spiritually) sick man and promises to deliver a cure for his diseases. The very poems this text is interspersed with, argues Stephen Blackwood, must be seen ‘as medicaments of the healing Philosophy.’30

It might be not very wrong to say that we modern readers of the Consolation do not want to be cured, first because we do not want to treat ourselves as sick persons. Our self-diagnosis turns out to be wrong, as it often happens with any self-diagnosis. To benefit from our reading of the Consolation, we should be able to acknowledge our faults as such, starting perhaps from our attachments to the so-called worldly goods, explained by Lady Philosophy in Chapter Three of the text. This is exactly what we cannot do, though, not because we disagree on Lady Philosophy in principle, but because we do not believe we are attached to anything. A strange aberration of our mind makes us see ourselves as better human beings than the Prisoner, perhaps than Boethius himself. The only way to find out if we are what we pretend to be, is to face tortures and painful death. It is only on the verge of an execution that we may find out the real price of our imaginary virtues.


Broad Approach vs. Self-Confident Sectarianism


The ‘we’ of the paragraphs above applies to atheists or, at least, to religious agnostics. What about faithful Christians? It was St Thomas Aquinas who gave a lengthy commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate.31 In 1883, a decree of the Congregation of Rites formally recognised Boethius as a martyr for the Catholic faith.32 Is it really so that a philosophical masterpiece, written by someone who was both a martyr and one of the most prominent theologians of his time, fails to spark interest in his contemporary fellow believers?

Unfortunately, it does fail in this capacity. (The previous sentence is, of course, perhaps too bold an oversimplification, as there are exceptions to each rule.) For one thing, Boethius’ Christianity still comes into question.33 ‘Scholars have argued about whether Boethius’ last work is Platonic or Christian for centuries,’34 remarks Sophia Compton. True enough, and they still do. The most prominent Church leaders tend to resolve the issue of Boethius’ personal faith in his, or their, favour, as if not a slightest doubt of his being a covert Pagan has ever existed, but the fact is that Boethius’ religious beliefs are too complex a problem to be handled in this straightforward manner. Assuming that all doubts are eliminated, modern Christians still do not know how to begin with the Consolation, the book which is ‘too broad’ for a member of a local parish and ‘somewhat too na;ve’ for an erudite theologian.

‘Modern students of theology have often been ... encouraged to believe that significant theological thinking is a product of the nineteenth century,’35 remarks John Marenbon in the introduction to his Boethius. The idea of early Christian texts being not important for a theologian is, of course, thoroughly absurd, but Marenbon’s poignant remark is true none the less. Early Christian texts are long overshadowed by the sophistication of the later doctrinal arguments. In their light, Boethius’ Christianity—if Christianity, indeed, it is—feels as too human, too rational, too general a text to be truly inspiring for someone whose interests in Christianity are other than strictly spiritual. It is too insipid to be spicy, too tasteless to be ‘hot.’ It pales against the thriving vitality of later Church scandals and schisms. It promptly refuses to support one specific sect or Church movement. We must bear in mind that it is mostly sectarians and Church politicians who serve as ‘red blood cells’ of Christianity—in fact, of any religion. The Consolation has nothing to say to them, maybe because it speaks in a gentle voice most of them are unable to hear.


Conclusive Ideas


Nothing in the pages above sounds as an optimistic prediction. The Consolation is gradually shifting into oblivion, and, as it seems, there is not much we can do to reverse the process. None the less, the question remains: what are we to do in the face of this fact?

In 2013, Jill Paton Walsh36 wrote The Late Scholar, a detective story which may serve as a further illustration of today’s public indifference to Boethius’ final work. The plot of her story is turning around a manuscript of the Consolation in possession of an Oxford college. The copy is valuable, not so much in itself (we know that quite a few of them were preserved until now), but because of the marginal glosses that, as it is supposed, may belong to King Alfred of Wessex. To sell the copy to a rich anonymous purchaser may considerably improve the college’s financial affairs. The faculty is split over the issue, so much so that mysterious deaths—or murders—begin to take place...

In the end, the real murderer is, of course, found out, and justice prevails. The manuscript in question is as good as forgotten, though: it is not sold, but the faculty members have never come to rethink its value. Nobody cares if the physical copy will be preserved in the college library, except for few enthusiastic researchers, and it is at least in this sense that we can call The Late Scholar a highly realistic piece of fiction.

Put in the imaginary settings of a detective novel, the Consolation fails to be sensational. To be certain, it is incapable of competing with any detective story, not just this one. After all, none of its characters died in reality, did they?

Yes, they did—and this is where our humorous digression shall end. We know for certain that the interlocutor of Lady Philosophy died and that his death was terrible. But we also know that being aware of his approaching execution, perhaps days before it, he was able to overcome his mortal anguish and to reach up to the inner strength of a true philosopher. Philosophy that has a quality of inspiring such power of spirit can never be called trivial, and this fact alone would make the message of the Consolation important enough to be transmitted to the generations to come.

Today’s intellectual climate may well be unfavourable for such a transmission, but, in a sense, it matters nothing. In the twenty-first century, the Consolation’s poems and logical reasonings are as new and brilliant as on the day they were written. It is only we who have stopped paying attention to them, perhaps because we cannot ascend to their complexity any longer. But ‘this, too, shall pass.’ Any effort to preserve—and to spread—the message of the Consolation is undoubtedly worth being made. Preservation of some books must be seen as our duty towards humanity’s collective memory, and it might be entirely appropriate to finish this chapter with a quotation from Mary Carruthers, who in the Book of Memory clearly states [all italics mine]:

“T]he choice to train one’s memory or not, for the ancients and medievals, was not a choice dictated by convenience; it was a matter of ethics. A person without a memory, if such a thing could be, would be a person without a moral character and, in a basic sense, without humanity.”37


2. THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR


Meeting Lady Philosophy


The Consolation opens with a poem in which the prisoner bemoans what has happened to him. And then, all of a sudden, a majestic and mysterious female figure appears in the prison cell. Here is how she makes her first appearance (we hope to be excused for the lengthy quotation below).

“I was writing this in a silence broken only by the scratchings of my quill as I recorded these gloomy thoughts and tried to impose upon them a certain form that in itself is curiously anodyne, when there was a presence of which I gradually became aware looming over my head, the figure of a woman whose look filled me with awe. Her burning gaze was indescribably penetrating, unlike that of anyone I have ever met, and while her complexion was as fresh and glowing as that of a girl, I realized that she was ancient and that nobody would mistake her for a creature of our time. It was impossible to estimate her height, for she seemed at first to be of ordinary measure, but then, without seeming to change, she appeared to be extraordinarily tall, so that her head all but touched the heavens. I was certain that if she had a mind to stretch her neck just a little, her face would penetrate the skies, where it would be utterly lost to human view. Her dress was a miracle of fine cloth and meticulous workmanship, and, as I later learned, she had woven it herself. But it had darkened like a smoke-blackened family statue in the atrium as if through neglect and was dingy and worn. I could see worked into the bottom border the Greek letters ; (pi—for practice) and slightly higher ; (theta—for theory) with steps that were marked between them to form a ladder by which one might climb from the lower to the upper. Some ruffians had done violence to her elegant dress, and clearly bits of the fabric had been torn away. In her right hand she held a few books, and in her left she carried a scepter.”38

The rest of the text is the conversation between the prisoner and the mysterious woman who in different English translations of the Latin text is referred to as Philosophy, Philosophia or Lady Philosophy.

Danuta Shanzer in ‘Interpreting the Consolation’ remarks:

“The status of Philosophy poses important questions. Not divine, not strictly human, presented as an external epiphany in all her strange glory, she is ... a type of figure taken for granted in serious didactic medieval literature, but not in classical.”39

Sophia Compton was able to phrase the natural embarrassment with which almost every researcher approaches Lady Philosophy in even more straightforward terms.

“Who is the Wisdom Woman in the Consolation? Is the lady a literary device, a philosophical abstraction, or a personification of the goddess: in essence, a revelation?”40


Defining the Problem


This question, once full attention is given to it, falls into two parts: (1) Who, or what, is Lady Philosophy, as the author of the Consolation wants us to believe? (2) Who is she in reality? (To paraphrase it: has the revelation Boethius so vividly describes actually taken place?)

Those two parts of the same problem, albeit interwoven, are not identical: one can imagine at least the four following possibilities.

(1) Lady Philosophy is an abstraction, an allegory, a ‘literary trope,’ and this is precisely how her author wants us to see her.

(2) The encounter was an imaginary one, but the author still wants us to believe he had a mystical experience.

(3) Boethius did have a mystical experience, but he deliberately wants to describe his experience in an ambiguous manner, so that we could take his vision as a simple allegory if we wish to do so.

(4) Boethius had a visionary encounter with a supernatural being, and this also is what he tells us in clear and plain words.

It would be very wrong to suppose that the solution of the problem, as it is stated above, has only a theoretical value. A piece of literary fiction is not the same as a revelation from a deity, as it was written down by a mystic—not, at least, for a believer. It is only the latter that can claim the authority of a sacred text. The Consolation definitely is a literary product, written by a skilled stylist, ‘so elegant and urbane a work,’ states Henry Chadwick, that some researchers reject the very idea such a work could ‘have emerged from a dank subterranean gaol.’41 It is more than just that?

A considerable number of Boethian researchers have suggested their own solutions of the problem. To say that none of these solutions agree with each other would be an exaggeration, and yet, the opinions vary greatly. It may be advisable to give a selective overview of the already given answers before we will try to suggest our own explanation of (1) who Lady Philosophy really may be and (2) what Boethius wants us to believe she is.


Literary Fiction or Epiphany?


Seth Lerer42, Victor Watts43 and Joel C. Relihan44 clearly state that the depiction of Lady Philosophy shall be understood as a literary device.

‘He [the prisoner] appears stupefied by her [Philosophy’s] appearance. But his silence is neither the dumbfoundedness of the visionary, nor the speechlessness of the awed,’45 claims Lerer. He goes on to argue that the prisoner’s stupefaction must be interpreted as his initial inability ‘to communicate in any form.’46 ‘[T]he Consolation must be seen primarily as a literary creation,’ confirms Relihan.47 The boldness of these assumptions is truly astounding, especially when we consider that their authors never support their opinions with anything which resembles valid arguments. One might almost believe both Lerer and Relihan were visionaries who could easily tell apart a vision from a literary mystification—which they are not, even though their deep involvement with the Consolation cannot be denied.48

Both Stephen Blackwood and Sophia Compton use quite a different language when speaking about Lady Philosophy’s first appearance. Blackwood points out that the prisoner ‘uses the language of divine epiphany’49—a stark term, even though it remains unclear whether the researcher himself regards Philosophia’s visit as ‘das Auftreten einer Gottheit,’50 to use an expression by Joachim Gruber. Compton agrees that ‘[t]he description of Philosophia at the beginning of the text is painted in visionary language, e.g., her dreamlike changes in size and appearance, her burning eyes or her combination of youth with great age [italics mine].’51 A pointed observation, even though those ‘dreamlike changes in size and appearance’ can be explained as symbolic.52

A number of researchers, rather than holding any view on what has happened in Boethius’ cell, prefer to concentrate on the question of how the central image of the Consolation shall be regarded, and it is their views that will be presented in the following section.


Interpretation of the Central Figure


It might be superfluous to quote at full length all the opinions on how we shall read the central feminine figure of Boethius’ last work. Rather than doing that, we will give a brief outline, a selective list of short definitions. Lady Philosophy is interpreted as

— ‘the sum of philosophical knowledge’ (Danuta Shanzer);53
— ‘an incarnated personification of human reason’ (Danuta Shanzer54 who in all possibility refers to Pierre Courcelle55);
— ‘the personification of philosophy’ (John Marenbon);56
— ‘a symbolic figure of philosophy’ (Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir);57
— a [pagan] goddess (Danuta Shanzer);58
— ‘simply Sapientia,’ ‘simply wisdom, all and young,’ ‘all philosophy, which in its highest speculative form is called theology’ (Robert Crouse);59
— ‘the Biblical Wisdom’ (John Marenbon);60
— Boethius’ ‘own version of Wisdom’ (Joel Relihan);61
— ‘the personification of Sophia’ (Sophia Compton);62
— ‘the persona of the anima mundi63’ (Sophia Compton);64
— ‘the angel of God’ (Friedrich Klingner);65
— God the Father or, at least, a person associated with Him (Seth Lerer);66
— a figure ‘identified with Christ’ (John Marenbon)67 or even Christ himself: ‘a moment of the divine activity that takes human form, the Word made flesh’ (Stephen Blackwood);68
— God the Holy Spirit (Sophia Compton, who in this case refers to Peter Abelard, an eleventh-century French scholastic philosopher and theologian).69

Even to read this list was tiresome, and a doubt of whether this enlisting of contradictory descriptions can make us any wiser is entirely justifiable, for ‘contradictory’ is exactly what they are. A ‘personification of human reason’ certainly cannot be an angel; and to say that the same figure can personify both the Creator and the Holy Spirit would perhaps be too bold a reading of Christian dogmas. It is extremely tempting to say that the very multiplicity of opinions makes us unable to determine the correct one and that we shall abstain from any speculations on the nature of Philosophia altogether. Let us, however, start with rejecting the assumptions that cannot, in all probability, be true, and see whether this approach may do some good service.


Rejecting Untrustworthy Assumptions


Whatever else we think she is, Lady Philosophy cannot possibly be a symbol of human secular knowledge. Her visual image, the hymns she recites, the way in which the prisoner himself treats her and speaks of her appearance, the subjects of her soliloquies—everything defies such an assumption. There is nothing secular or mundane about this figure. Philosophia is, at the very least, a supernatural being. Only the extreme rationality of our secular age can treat Boethius’ Mysterious Visitor as ‘the sum of philosophical knowledge in Boethius’ own head.’70 To assume such a notion almost amounts to describing the manifold world of Dante’s Divine Comedy as ‘the sum of creative images and political antipathies in Dante’s own head.’ A linear vision or Dante’s or Boethius’ masterpieces cannot, of course, be prevented, but it would be very short-sighted to reduce our perception of these complex works to such simplistic optic.

Neither would it be reasonable to regard Lady Philosophy as an Ancient Greek deity. What sort of Christianity Boethius’ religion was still can be hypothesised about, but the actual state of Boethian research leaves very little room for doubt about the fact that Boethius was a Christian.71 ‘If the Consolation contains nothing distinctively Christian, it is also relevant that it contains nothing specifically pagan either,’72 states Henry Chadwick in his milestone monograph, and he goes on to say that ‘everything specific [i. e. specifically Christian or specifically pagan] is absent [from this book], and probably consciously avoided [italics mine].’73 Boethius’ acute sensitiveness to the issues of faith can hardly be questioned. His sensitivity to religious matters, combined with his Christianity (and his sainthood74), makes the reading of Lady Philosophy as a pagan goddess almost impossible.

Nobody can be more convincing about Philosophia being opposed to everything pagan than she himself.

“As she caught sight of the Muses of Poetry standing by my bed, giving me words to suit my tearful mood, the Lady was angry for a moment and her eyes flashed with savage fire. She spoke: ‘Who let these whorish stage girls come to see a sick man?’”75

(It is interesting to note that David R. Slavitt translates scenicas meretriculas76 of the Latin text as ‘chorus girls’77; P. G. Walsh—as ‘harlots of the stages,’78 and Victor Watts—as ‘hysterical sluts.’79 Whatever linguistic option we prefer, the fact that Philosophy’s description of pagan muses is clearly pejorative can hardly escape our attention.)

Having defined the pagan goddesses that we normally associate with the Ancient Greek religion as ‘hysterical sluts,’ Lady Philosophy drives them out from the prisoner’s cell. Our ideas about herself being a sacred figure of the Greek polytheism must be driven out from our minds in the same resolute manner.


Our Hypothesis


We may be rightfully criticised for our approach being too apophatic. Describing what Lady Philosophy is not will not get us far as long as we do not define who, or what, she really is. Below comes our own definition.

Philosophia in the Consolation is a supernatural entity pertaining to the knowledge of all things, a spirit of a female nature. It would be improper to call her a deity of a local cult: she is more than just that. She is the Wisdom of the Bible, Sophia of the Orthodox Eastern Tradition, the ‘tsaritsa wrapped in azure’80 of Vladimir Solovyov,81 Prajna Paramita of Buddhists. Boethius’ mystical encounter with this powerful entity took place in his prison in Pavia.

It is scarcely possible to believe, though, that such an encounter lasted for many hours and that the dialogue between Lady Philosophy and the prisoner follows the conversation between Sophia and the historical Boethius en toutes lettres. The vision could have vanished after a few minutes. However, those few minutes sufficed to give Boethius hope and consolation he needed so much, and they also inspired him to elaborate his momentary insight, received through the meditative trance (or a vision, or a dream) at more length, to transmit it to future generations.

The statement given above in italics may appear very questionable, not to say dubious. It cannot—or such is the first impression of it—be easily defended or reasonably argued for. But neither can be any of the assumptions about the nature of Boethian Philosophia that were listed a few pages afore,82 and this is where modern science betrays us. We do not have the necessary data, or, rather, methods to investigate spiritual phenomena, and the very terms we use to speak of them are wanting a definition. What is an epiphany, and in what way does it differ from a theophany? What is, exactly, a meditative trance? What is the quality that sets a wakeful vision apart from a dream vision (besides the obvious fact of the former happening in a wakeful state of mind and the latter occurring in a dream)? Science gives us no intelligible answers to these questions. To give them, a bold step shall be made: spiritual world shall be recognised as an existing reality, not looked down upon as the mythological legacy of the ancient nations or the product of the artistic imagination. Before this step is made, all guesses about the nature of visions and mystical insights—including, of course, ours—are doomed to remain purely speculative.

Two arguments, however, seem to confirm our hypothesis rather than deny it. The first is as follows: people do not usually play intellectual games when they are on the verge of death. Anticipating their death, they tend to be honest, as honest as one can be. Otherwise, if they still amuse themselves with creating literary mystifications knowing that their brutal end is near, the integrity of their mind or perhaps their mental sanity comes into a serious question. The Consolation does not produce an impression of a book written by a sickish man who wants to suppress his mortal horror with the fairytales he tells himself. It is Boethius’ best work, and it is also a book that was a true source of inspiration for several generations. To suspect its author of wishful thinking or of boasting with supernatural power he in reality did not possess is beyond our imagination, even if someone is still willing to easily accept such interpretation.

It was Stephen Blackwood who first drew our attention to the second argument in favour of our hypothesis. A quotation from his monograph follows below.

“In what may be the most beautiful moment of the Consolation, Philosophy gathers her dress into a fold and wipes away the tears that cloud the prisoner’s eyes. She does this so tenderly and simply—not only without being asked but even before the prisoner has regained himself enough to make asking possible—that it can be understood only as a moment of pure gift, from a giver who knows what he needs before he can ask, a purely divine intervention.”83

À beautiful moment it is, indeed, and we also take the liberty to believe that there is something very genuine here. Fyodor Dostoyevsky never mentioned any of the numerous female characters of his early books to wipe away his tears when he stood on a black-draped scaffold on the Semyonov square, awaiting his execution by firing squad.84 Neither do we know anything of Natasha Rostov visiting Leo Tolstoy during his stay in Arzamas85 and wiping the sweat of his mortal anguish from his brow. It seems that literary characters do not have the power to console people on their death row. Lady Philosophy is a character in a book, which to some extent makes her a literary character. But she also is Boethius’ Mysterious Visitor, and we must take the very fact of her visit for real—or, else, to deny this book’s ability to inspire inner strength that it undoubtedly has.86


Lady Philosophy as Prajna Paramita


Our suggestion to identify Philosophia with Prajna Paramita87, a Buddhist female deity, may be understood as a figure of speech, as, at its best, a rhetoric trope. It is not. The Great Mother of All Knowledge, revered under different names in different religions, either exists or does not. Provided that she does, her influence most certainly transcends all temporal, linguistic, national, or cultural limitations.

At least two arguments88 make this reading of Lady Philosophy not wholly improbable. We owe the first to Stephen Blackwood who in The ‘Consolation’ of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy writes:

“Finally able to return this woman’s gaze and look steadily upon her face, the prisoner recognizes her as the nurse who reared him from his youth, magistra virtutum (teacher of virtues), whose name is Philosophia.”89

The p;ramit; in the name of the Buddhist deity, usually translatable as ‘perfection,’ means as much as ‘transcendental virtue.’90 Prajn; stands for ‘wisdom’ (literally, ‘understanding or intellect.’91) The similarity of descriptions is perhaps too remarkable to simply ignore it.

The second can be found on the pages of the Consolation. In its Chapter Four, Lady Philosophy makes the following solemn promise to her interlocutor:

“I shall show you the way home, and your mind will have wings to carry it aloft so that, untroubled, you can return home under my guidance, on my path, and in my carriage.”92

The traditional Buddhist mantra of Prajna Paramita, as it is given in the Heart Sutra, reads as follows.

“[T]adyatha gat; gat; paragat; parasamgat; bodhi svaha!”93

H. H. Dalai-lama the Fourteenth thus explains the mantra.

“[T]he entire mantra itself can be translated as “Go, go, go beyond, go totally beyond, be rooted in the ground of enlightenment.” We can interpret this mantra metaphorically to read “Go to the other shore,” which is to say, abandon this shore of samsara, unenlightened existence, which has been our home since beginningless time, and cross to the other shore of final nirvana and complete liberation.”94

In both cases, in the Latin text as much as in the Tibetan Buddhist scripture, we come across the same meaning of crossing over, carrying over an obstacle, and bringing safely home. An astonishing coincidence—if we want to see this parallel as coincidence only. A perfectly natural similarity, if we agree that Lady Philosophy of the Consolation and Prajna Paramita of the Hridaya Sutra are, or may be, essentially the same.


In Lieu of a Partial Conclusion


One might find all the speculations above ingenuous enough, but still wonder whether to draw such comparisons is justifiable. Can two spiritual phenomena that show distinct marks of similarity be validly identified as the same spiritual entity? The question is almost as old as the world itself. It was raised by the Peripatetic school in Ancient Greece. ‘The Peripatetic commentators,’ writes Henry Chadwick, ‘disagreed among themselves whether different societies which use different words mean the same thing and whether individuals have identical mental experiences. ... Alexander of Aphrodisias95 felt such relativistic doctrines to threaten the possibility of rational communication. He asserted that, though our languages may differ and speech conventions vary, nevertheless all minds find identical rational considerations valid. On this issue Boethius gratefully follows Alexander.’96 There is no need to explain that on this particular issue we gratefully follow Boethius. It is also needless to say that any holder of a holistic view will always tend to answer the questions as the one above in the affirmative, whereas any defender of sectarianism will give a negative answer. The question is thus open, and open it will remain.

We would be entirely misunderstood if our wish to identify Lady Philosophy of the Boethian text with the Buddhist deity of Wisdom were interpreted as an attempt to prove that the author of the Consolation was a Buddhist. A Buddhist, of course, he was not—not doctrinally so, at least.97 He was a man of extreme intelligence and literary talent that towards the very end of his life were enriched and deepened by his mystical experience. He was a man of universal knowledge in whose mind logic and theology, science and art, rationality and mysticism, Platonism and Christianity peacefully coexisted. It might be time for us contemporary people to finally learn how to adapt both his worldview and his intellectual attitude.


3. RUNNING PARALLEL COURSES


Defining the Problem


The following chapter, as its title also suggests, will be devoted to a thorough examination of parallels between the Consolation and the Buddhist doctrine.98 Who will benefit from such an enterprise? Does not our endeavour look too much like an intellectual game?

For those who approach Boethius or, for that matter, Buddhism from the rational side only, it certainly does. Those who, like the author of this thesis, believe that ‘[r]eligion still may gain back its spiritual and social influence it had once’99 would perhaps see drawing such comparisons in a more favourable light. It is a banality to say that interfaith dialogue fosters mutual understanding between different societies and nations—and it is of vital necessity to have points of agreement between Christianity and Buddhism for such a dialogue to be fruitful.

The Consolation of Philosophy seems to provide these points to both parties. It probably gives us Buddhists an opportunity to say, ‘This particular Buddhist notion is not incongruous with Christianity, for it was Boethius the Christian thinker who held it.’100 It perhaps invites faithful Christians to reconsider some of their own doctrinal views.

It may well be that Boethius’ final work does not do that, though. What we imagine to be points of agreement can, upon closer inspection, turn out to be superficial similarities which will never be able to mask the fundamental disagreement between the two religions in question. Without being too sanguine about the Consolation as an interreligious mediator, we would rather ask ourselves the following problematic questions:

(1) Are the parallels between the text of the Consolation and the Buddhist teaching regular or accidental?

(2) Are the parallel ideas truly identical, or shall they be given the name of ‘accidental similarities,’ accountable to linguistic, cultural, or other such reasons?

(3) Do Boethius’ ideas comprise the minimum of the Buddhist teaching, its corpus fidei? Is Buddhism (re)constructible from what we can find in the Consolation?

The ideas of Boethius’ major work can, for the sake of convenience, be categorised into four main groups, being Lady Philosophy’s (or Boethius)101 views on

(a) ontology (i.e., the nature of existing phenomena, both material and spiritual),
(b) epistemology (ideas of, or pertaining to, the theory of knowledge),
(c) soteriology (Philosophy’s doctrine of salvation or, in Buddhist terms, of the ‘spiritual path’),
(d) Divinity.

It might be pertinent to handle the issue of Boethius’ views on the Supreme Being in a separate chapter, thus limiting the scope of this chapter to the first three groups of parallel ideas.


Ontological Views


Wheel of Samsara

In Book II of the Consolation, Lady Philosophy speaks of the Wheel of Fortune—and the image that she draws is clearly readable as the Buddhist cycle of aimless drifting through this mundane existence.

“You want to try farming and sow your seeds in the earth, then you must expect barren years as well as years of abundance. If you worship her [the Fortune], then you are her slave and cannot question her. Would you presume to stop that wheel of hers from turning? If you could do that, it would no longer be the wheel of Fortune, would it?”102

The parallel to the Buddhist Wheel of Samsara as well as to the Buddhist Bhavacakra, the Wheel of Life, is too obvious to be overlooked. The same graphic (we should rather say, ‘dynamic’) symbol is used to express essentially the same idea: human existence here on earth is full of ups and downs that tend to repeat themselves life after life; and yet, it is still within our power to abandon Samsara, to reach the end of all sorrows, to, literally, ‘stop the wheel ... from turning.’ The Buddhist metaphor of cyclic existence thus receives the Boethian wording.

Several Christian theologians would definitely disagree with our equating the two wheels and insist that those metaphors are substantially different, namely, in that the Wheel of Fortune does not suppose numerous rebirths. This notion can hardly be sustained. The doctrine of metempsychosis was certainly known to Boethius through Plato. It was known—and deliberately left in parenthesis: nowhere in Boethius’ five Opuscula Sacra (his theological works), is it referred to as either a correct view or a heresy. The Consolation itself never supports the doctrine and never rejects it. We may almost safely assume that Boethius deliberately wanted not to articulate his views on the issue of human rebirths. We will try to come clear with Boethius’ reasons for doing so in Chapter Five of this thesis.

Hell is Within Us

In Poem 3, XII103, Lady Philosophy recalls Orpheus who descended into hell to recover Eurydice.
“Alas, alas! At the very
verge of the dark kingdom,
Orpheus had his moment
of doubt, and turned and saw,
and lost the woman forever.
This old and familiar tale
is yours, as you make your ascent
leading your mind to the light,
for if, in a moment of weakness,
you should look back on the darkness,
the excellence you have achieved
you will lose, looking back, looking down.”104

Seth Lerer, comparing Seneca’s and Boethius’ reading of the Ancient Greek myth, arrives at the following meaningful conclusion.

“Seneca's Hell remains a prison and a courtroom, and his Orpheus enters only as another plaintiff. Boethius' Hell becomes a state of mind, and in order to avoid the weakness of Orpheus, his prisoner must reject the display of legalism and instead seek that knowledge granted the mind alone. For Seneca, finally, the “upper world” and “bright day” which stand to welcome Orpheus are but the details of this life. For Philosophy, however, the “higher day” is lit not by the sun and stars but by the light of reason and the glow of heaven [italics mine].”105

Lerer makes abundantly clear that Boethius’ vision of Hell transcends its common understanding in Ancient Greek and Roman mythology. In the Consolation, both Hell and Heaven cease to be external realms, both of each a human being is made to involuntarily enter, dragged by the ‘legalistic’ force of his/her deeds. They become the dimensions of our mind and the matter of our choice or, rather, of our ability to see the true nature of things. Both Heaven and Hell are, to put it in very simple terms, within us. Someone who is not familiar with Asian religions would perhaps be tempted to portray this understanding of Hell as ‘humanistic’ or even ‘solipsistic.’ In reality, it is just a common Buddhist vision of the intermediate state between two rebirths that a religious practitioner can either recognise as clear light—and be liberated from suffering existence—or, failing to do so, to enter Hell.106

Boethius’ vision of Hell has nothing to do with solipsism. We cannot leave Hell by simply refusing to believe in its existence. What we can do, though, is ‘to make our ascent, leading our mind to the light,’ to illuminate our mind with the light of reason and never ‘to look back on the darkness.’ It is, of course, arguable whether this understanding of Hell by an early Christian theologian is orthodox Christian doctrine. That it is very much in the spirit of Buddhism, is hardly doubtful.


No Creation Ex Nihilo


In Book Five of the Consolation, Lady Philosophy states:

“It is an obvious truth that nothing comes from nothing, and none of the ancients ever took issue with that view.”107

Henry Chadwick describes this notion as Aristotelian.108 Be it as it may, Boethius was very free not to mention it at all or, at least, not to ascribe it to his semi-divine interlocutor who was Wisdom itself—which was the contrary of what he did. Nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit)—and so the common Christian tenet of the creation of the world ex nihilo, established as such in 3rd century AD, is apparently not supported by the late Boethius. Victor Watts in the introduction to his own translation of the Consolation argues that ‘the implicit denial of creation ex nihilo ... is not of fundamental significance.’109 The author of this thesis, not being a Christian theologian, refrains from any judgment on whether this tenet is important or not. What is significant in the light of our research is that Boethius’ tacit rejection of creatio ex nihilo is in full accordance with traditional Buddhist views on that matter.

Pre-existence of the Soul

In Poem 4, I of the Consolation, Lady Philosophy thus encourages the prisoner:

“Philosophy has wings with which you can fly, ascending
as an exaltation of larks to heaven
(...)
There you will at last remember yourself,
on the road back, the road home,
and you will say, ‘Yes, I recall it all,
where I was born, where I belong.
Here I shall stay!’”110

The general convention is to interpret this place as Boethius’ belief in pre-existence of the soul111—and, indeed, it is difficult to read those lines in another way.

The concept of pre-existence is Platonic,112 and it is not easily compatible with Christianity, but there is nothing which could make it incompatible with Buddhism. The very fact of finding this concept on the pages of the Consolation does not necessarily prove Boethius’ acceptance of the idea of metempsychosis, but neither does it prove the contrary.


Boethius’ Epistemology


Four Types of Mental Activity and Five Skandhas

In Book V, Lady Philosophy enlists four types of mental activity, or, rather, four modes of cognition, each next more subtle than the previous one.

“[M]an is perceived in different ways—by sense perception, imagination, reason, and intuitive intellect. The senses perceive his shape as made up of matter, while imagination considers his shape without paying attention to matter. Reason then transcends imagination and with a universal consideration looks at the specific form itself of each individual. The point of view of intuitive intellect is higher still, for instead of passing around a man from different angles, piece by piece, it takes in all at once with the mind’s eye focused on the thing itself.”113

For every Buddhist that comes across this passage, it is extremely tempting to identify those four modes with four upper skandhas.

A skandha (literally meaning ‘heap,’ ‘collection,’ or ‘multitude’) is one of the five material and mental aggregates which constitute human personality.

“They [the skandhas] are: (1) matter, or body (r;pa), the manifest form of the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water; (2) sensations, or feelings (vedan;); (3) perceptions of sense objects (Sanskrit: sa;j;;; P;li: sa;;;); (4) mental formations (sa;sk;ras/sankh;ras); and (5) awareness, or consciousness, of the other three mental aggregates (vij;;na/vi;;;;a).”114

Of the five skandhas, r;pa, being the matter of human body, is material; the remaining four can be described as mental processes. A table drawing a parallel between the four Boethian modes of cognition and the four intellectual skandhas suggests itself.

Table 1

Boethius’ terms - Buddhist terms
sensus (sense perception) - vedan; (sensations
imaginatio (imagination) - sa;j;;115 (perception of objects)
ratio (reason) - sa;sk;ra (mental formations)
intelligentia (intuitive intellect) - vij;;na (consciousness)

It is very difficult to resist the temptation to state that both lists of terms apply to the same processes, or phenomena, and are therefore identical. To proclaim it with certainty would perhaps be too bold an assumption on our side, but the similarity between sense perceptions and sensations, or between intellect and consciousness, is unmistakable.116


Soteriology of the Consolation


Salvation for a Christian is, as most theologians would have it, only possible through Jesus Christ. We probably should reserve any opinion on whether it was true for Boethius. Jesus might or might not be the central figure of Boethius’ personal faith, but, in every case, the path to salvation, as it is given in the Consolation, never mentions the Son of Man. Instead, it shows a system of spiritual training which is clearly unusual for a Christian thinker and martyr. In the subsections that follow, we will try to demonstrate why almost any Buddhist would have no problems in regarding this system as something he or she is familiar with.

Salvation as a Path

A good place to start is looking for the core soteriological concept which for Boethius’ final work seems to be the path. As Seth Lerer insightfully puts it,

“[t]he image of the way (via) permeates the work. I show how the term originates in the logical writings of Cicero and Boethius—how it originally stood for a method of inquiry, often translating the Greek methodos. ... The via is also, of course, a moral term, and Boethius transforms the word to show how the education in a method leads towards the awareness of higher truths [extended character spacing mine].”117

We cannot simply attribute the image of the way to the previous tradition, since the Greek methodos was normally interpreted as a method of philosophical inquiry rather than as a spiritual path. Boethius’ charging the term with a moral meaning can be seen as truly innovative. It might be superfluous to remind the reader that ‘the Path,’ often referred to as ‘the Noble Eightfold Path’ (Sanskrit: ;ry;;;;;gam;rga) or ‘the Middle Way’ (Sanskrit: Madhyam;pratipada118), is the most common Buddhist metaphor for spiritual progress—which is a parallel that should not be ignored.

For a Buddhist who also is a reader of Opuscula Sacra, it is even more astonishing to come across Boethius’ concept of the middle way.

“Along this path [argues Boethius in one of his theological tractates] we may find the middle way, media via, between heresies, just as, in ethics ... virtue is the mean between vices [extended character spacing mine].”119

We may want to see this striking similarity between a Buddhist term and Boethius’ way to express his doctrinal ideas as purely accidental, but the truth is that it is precisely the Consolation which shows a deliberate effort of its author to ‘follow the middle way,’ to consciously avoid explicitly pagan or explicitly Christian phrasing of his thoughts. Boethius’ reasons to do so will be discussed later.

But what, exactly, is the spiritual path that his final work has to offer? Let us look more closely at some of its components.

False Goods and Eight Worldly Dharmas

In Book Two of the Consolation, Lady Philosophy speaks at length about the so-called false goods. (John Marenbohn names four of them: wealth, status (high office), power, and fame.120) We shall, according to Philosophy, never attach ourselves to those goods, as they (1) are transitory, and (2) have no inherent moral value; neither shall we grieve when we lose them.

Essentially the same objects of rejection are known in the popular Buddhist tradition as the eight worldly concerns, or eight worldly dharmas (Sanskrit: a;;alokadharma). This is how the eight concerns are phrased in Verse 29 of the Letter to a Friend by Nagarjuna (c. 150—c. 250 CE) who was a Mahayana Buddhist thinker, scholar saint, and philosopher:

“You who know the world, take gain and loss,
Or bliss and pain, or kind words and abuse,
Or praise and blame—these eight mundane concerns—
Make them the same, and don’t disturb your mind.”121

The teaching on the eight concerns must be even older than the second century AD—it probably goes back to the time of Buddha Sakyamuni.

It is only natural to draw a table of correspondence between the false goods of the Consolation and Buddhist worldly dharmas (please find it below).

Table 2

Boethian ‘false goods’ - Nagarjuna’s ‘worldly concerns’
wealth (and poverty) - gain and loss
status (and its loss) - good and bad reputation
power (and its absence) (?) - pleasure and pain (?)
fame (and disgrace) - fame and disgrace

The only strained parallel in the table above is that between power (and its absence) and pleasure (pain), even though someone might argue that power gives pleasure. It should perhaps be noted that the false goods of the Boethian text are not given as a clear list of enumerated items: the Consolation is, after all, a literary work, not a scientific textbook. Pleasure is mentioned at another place of the text, though, and Lady Philosophy’s attitude to pleasure leaves little room for doubt as to whether it should be considered a transitory good either.

“If you still hold that position, it is difficult to see how you would argue that bodily pleasure can bring happiness, if every kind of mortal thing is fated to descend into misery and death.”122

Including pleasure (and pain) into the list of Boethius’ false goods is, in the light of the quotation above, perfectly justifiable, which makes us arrive at the following table.

Table 3

Boethian ‘false goods’ - Nagarjuna’s ‘worldly concerns’
wealth (and its loss) - gain and loss
status (and its loss) - good and bad reputation
power (and its absence) – [not defined]
fame (and disgrace) - fame and disgrace
pleasure (and pain) - pleasure and pain

It would be now very obstinate to deny that both Boethius and the popular Buddhist tradition speak the same conceptual language when they address the issue of false goods of Fortune, or worldly dharmas—which perhaps is the same.

Meditation as a Method

Rejecting of the false goods, growing unattached to them, is seen—by both Lady Philosophy and Buddhist clergy—as a teaching for beginners, a ‘milder remedy’ in Boethian terms. Once the correct view on the transitory goods is established, one might want to apply a stronger medicine as well.

For Boethius, it is meditation—a remarkably Buddhist tool of spiritual training—that proves to be such a medicament. As Seth Lerer explains in his monograph,

“Philosophy begins with an attempt to explain her purpose in words, [but] her final poem points towards a form of self-knowledge accessible only through individual meditation [italics mine].”123

It would be wrong to assert that meditation as a method of ascetic work is completely alien to Christianity. Christian meditation was practiced, among others, by St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis de Sales, and St Teresa of Avila, the third of them describing the process as follows.

“By meditation I mean much discursive reflection with the intellect in the following way: We begin to think about the favor God granted us in giving us His only Son, and we do not stop there, but go on to the mysteries of His whole glorious life; or we begin to think about the prayer in the garden, but the intellect doesn’t stop until He is on the cross; or we take a phase of the Passion like, let us say, the arrest, and we proceed with this mystery considering in detail the things there are to think of and feel about the betrayal of Judas, the flight of the apostles, and all the rest; this kind of reflection is an admirable and very meritorious prayer.”124

Meditation for a typical Christian mystic—if speaking about mysticism allows typicality assertions—is, as can be seen from the passage above, reflection on God the Father, God the Son, the apostles, and other great figures of the New Testament. Not so for Boethius, though, whose Consolation never mentions Jesus Christ or Virgin Mary. Our claim is that meditation in Boethian terms is (a) argumentative reflecting on philosophical truths, such as the futility of all worldly goods, (b) a silent withdrawal into one’s own inner self, accompanied by concentration on inner light.

One might oppose such a reading of Boethius’ final work and ask for textual proofs. Below are some of them.

In Book Two, Lady Philosophy invites the prisoner to do the following.

“To understand how happiness cannot depend on fortuitous external circumstances, think about the question this way. If happiness is the highest good of a rational man, and if whatever can be taken away cannot be the highest good (because that which can’t be taken away must be a higher good), then it makes no sense to say that good fortune can supply happiness.”125

This is just one of numerous similar passages, taken from the text more or less at random. In fact, the whole of Boethius’ work can be read as discursive meditation. Philosophy admonishes, explains, and strongly argues her points—in other words, she does precisely what a faithful Buddhist reflecting on death, disadvantages of anger, or other such matters is also supposed to do.

There is almost nothing in the Consolation that would directly confirm Boethius’ understanding of meditation in a less rational and more properly meditative, more ‘Eastern’ sense. However, indirect hints that seem to justify our assertion can be found at various places of the text. Please consider the meaningful quotation below.

“Whoever with profound contemplation seeks the truth and wants to avoid misleading paths must turn his vision inward, so that his quest may circle back, and, instead of wandering far, seek that treasure stored in his own heart. What error’s dark clouds had covered over will then blaze forth with Apollo’s own brightness. That light of the mind was never altogether dimmed by the heavy flesh that causes men to forget the seeds of truth that were never lost and that teaching can revive to blossom again [italics mine].”126

Turning one’s own gaze inward, metaphorically or literally so, is a prerequisite for a specific Buddhist meditation known as ;amatha (Sanskrit), samatha (Pali), or zhi gnas (Tibetan; transliteration), the essence of this meditation being ‘calm abiding,’ pacification of one’s own mind. ‘The meaning of peace or pacification in this context,’ writes Reginald Ray, ‘is that normally our mind is like a whirlwind of agitation. The agitation is the agitation of thought. Our thoughts are principally an obsessive concern with past, conceptualization about the present, and especially an obsessive concern with the future [italics mine].’127 Please compare it with Stephen Blackwood’s description of the spiritual effort that the prisoner of the Consolation should take upon himself:

“The fickleness of Fortune’s wheel is overcome when mind withdraws upon its own self-revolution: when mind recollects itself from externality, bending its movements back upon its own inner circle, it moves away from the whirling circumference of Fortune’s wheel.”128

;amatha may also result in the vision of the inner light, especially at advanced stages of meditation, but not necessarily so. Imagining light is recommended to a Buddhist practitioner as a special meditative technique to overcome laxity,129 even though there must be a difference between the light that a practitioner naturally discovers within him/her true self and the one s/he simply imagines. The Consolation, too, has numerous references to the ‘light of the mind’ (or ‘divine light’) that can be found inside us.130 Again, we are left puzzled as to whether those remarkable parallels may be more than just similarities.

Logic vs. Scriptural Authority; Unaided Salvation through Reason

‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast,’131 writes Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (Ephesians 2:8-9). The concept of the ‘only Grace that saves’ may be regarded as one of the cornerstones of Christianity. For Boethius, however, the scriptural authority is not enough; it necessarily must be backed with logical arguments.132 And more than that, for him, it is not Grace that saves.

‘It seems strange, nevertheless, that writing in the presence of death Boethius still prefers reason to faith, and makes no mention of what must be the only fully meaningful consolation for a Christian, the Incarnation of Christ and the doctrine of grace,’133 notices Victor Watts. (One might want to argue that Boethius does not reject grace in itself—it is cheap grace, in terms of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that he is opposed to.134) On the same page of his introduction, Watts arrives at the following conclusion:

“[T]he Boethian doctrine of salvation, the ascent of the unaided individual by means of philosophical introspection and meditation to the knowledge of God ... is essentially pagan in inspiration [italics mine].”135

We dare say it is not completely true—not in the part where the author of the Consolation is labelled as a pagan. After all, ‘[w]e need to have a more nuanced view of spectrums of belief and practice that leave a place for people such as Boethius. They cannot simply be pigeon-holed under monolithic labels, such as “Christian” or “pagan,” ’136 as Danuta Shanzer puts it (on which point we wholeheartedly agree with her). However, Boethius’ intention to achieve his salvation without supernatural aids can hardly be denied. Boethius the prisoner does receive a revelation—but for him, it is not the supernatural character of his revelation that matters. To be certain, his wish to ‘honestly work his way through’ to salvation by logical reasoning and meditative efforts may be ascribed to the influence of Stoicism. Whatever influences can be discovered in the Consolation, though, unaided spiritual ascend though reason is a soteriological attitude that Boethius’ final work and Buddhism obviously share.

Deification

Deification, also known as theosis (Greek: ;;;;;;), is, literally, becoming God-like. Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite defines the process as follows.

“Deification (the theosis) is the attaining of likeness to God and union with him so far as is possible.”137

The Eastern Orthodox Archimandrite George gives a more elaborate definition.

“Having been endowed “in His image,” man is called upon to be completed “in His likeness.” This is Theosis. The Creator, God by nature, calls man to become a god by Grace.”138

The idea is not completely unknown in Western Christianity either. The Imitation of Christ, written by a German-Dutch canon regular Thomas ; Kempis between 1418 and 1427, suggests by its very title that a faithful Christian should imitate Christ rather than simply worship Him, thus finally becoming one with God. Western theological thought has developed a reserved to negative attitude to theosis, suspecting its ‘Hellenistic’ origin; although in the past few decades ‘deification is not only recognized as a theological concept but also reluctantly embraced across many traditions,’139 as Joshua Bloor shows in his monograph.

‘Reluctantly’ in the quotation above seems to be the key characteristic: deification is not in the mainstream of Western theology; from whatever side we approach it. The Consolation being, too, very much out of the contemporary theological mainstream, we may suspect that Boethius would embrace the idea of theosis more eagerly. And he really does. ‘The idea of deification ... is ultimately unproblematical for the Christian Boethius,’140 writes John Magee. A place in Book Three of the Consolation makes it very clear.

“But as men become just by the acquisition of justice, and wise by the acquisition of wisdom, so it is necessary by the same reasoning that men who have acquired divinity become gods. Each blessed man is therefore a god, but indeed in nature God is one; by participation there is nothing to prevent there being as many gods as you like [italics mine].”141

This place has been suspected of heresy many times, so much so that David Slavitt hesitates to give it in the indicative mood and translates instead, ‘[T]his logic would lead us to conclude that ... they would become gods, which is awkward [italics mine].’142

For those who prefer to stick to literal definitions, deification has no parallels within the Buddhist doctrine, since ‘the Buddha is not regarded by Buddhists as (a) God.’ This scholar’s notion proves to be rather erroneous, as the most recent research demonstrate.143 The Buddha in popular Buddhism performs all the functions of a (or even the) deity. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is not unusual to give the name of Adi-Buddha, the ‘First Awakened One,’ to the supreme reality, the dharmakaya, which has neither beginning nor end and is self-existent.144 Attaining Buddhahood in this light becomes essentially the same as theosis, especially if we consider that for Boethius, the process does not require any supernatural interventions (see also previous subsection). One becomes a god by avoiding vice and cultivating virtue, by developing a stoic145 attitude to worldly goods, by freeing oneself ‘from joys and sorrows, as well as hopes and fears,’146 by recollecting oneself from externality, by growing one’s own inner light. None of these efforts can, of course, be called antichristian, but neither are they specifically associated with Christianity. Such an understanding of deification and of its methods bears a Buddhist tinge.


Parallels Left Untouched


For the sake of intellectual honesty, we must briefly mention some ideas of the Consolation that were (perhaps unjustly) left ignored in this chapter. Those are as follows:

— Boethius’ vision of how names apply to things;147
— his view on impermanence of all things (‘nothing born can last’);148
— his use of the reductio ad absurdum;149
— his understanding of cognition as dependent on the abilities of the cognizant subject;150
— his notion that ‘nothing is inherently miserable, unless you think it is’;151
— his wish to regard suffering as a spiritual exercise;152
— the only passage is the Consolation which may be read as a cautious acceptance of metempsychosis.153

(We do not present this list as exhaustive.)

Discussing the ideas listed above would involve the use of more technical vocabulary; besides, it is not possible to state with absolute certainty that the Buddhist counterparts of those Boethian ideas are shared by all Buddhist schools without exemption; we have, therefore, chosen to exclude them from our analysis.


Partial Conclusion


The first two of the questions put at the beginning of this chapter can be answered positively with confidence. Parallels between the Consolation and the Buddhist doctrine are numerous and, in some cases, truly astonishing. To call them just external similarities would be an underestimation. To believe that the teaching of the Buddha is completely reconstructible from Boethius’ final work might be, on the other hand, an overstatement. Indeed, it would be perhaps too bold to compare the genius of Boethius with that of the founder of Buddhism—a comparison the Roman author himself would in all probability reject.

The Consolation, judged as a sacred text or as a presentation of true doctrine by Buddhist standards, has a metaphorical similarity to the Venus of Milo or to the Winged Victory or Samothrace: the figure is recognisable, but its essential parts are missing. We may be dissatisfied by the incompleteness of the work. Or, instead, we may choose to admire how much is still there and what a great effort was made to create it. Being on his death row, having no access to books, helped by no one (save perhaps by his Mysterious Visitor), Boethius was able to develop a philosophical and moral teaching that almost amounts to an early Western version of Buddhism. To recognise the greatness of his ordeal is the very least we modern scholars can do.


4. THE VISION OF GOD


Stating the Problem


It would be a triviality to say that Buddhism and Christianity—like, perhaps, any two major religions—disagree in their views on God. (The very term ‘God’ is very dubious when applied to Buddhism a number of whose followers reject it for doctrinal reasons;154 we may therefore want to replace it with ‘the Supreme Reality’ or any such similar term when referring to the Buddhist concept of divinity. On the pages that follow, these two terms will be used as interchangeable synonyms.)

Boethius is a Christian theologian and philosopher who at the same time is very much outside the mainstream of the later theological thought, as was demonstrated in Chapters One and Three. We may find out that his own intelligible vision of God is not disagreeable with that of Buddhism, which then would allow for a ‘doctrinal bridge’ between the two religions to be built. Alternatively, we may discover that the two concepts of God—the Boethian and the Buddhist one—are too profoundly different to be comparable.

In this chapter, we will try to provide some unbiased answers to the two following questions:

(1) What is God for Boethius?
(2) Is Boethius’ vision of the Supreme Reality compatible with the Buddhist doctrine?


God as Still Point


Christian mystics, starting perhaps from Apostle Peter, perceive God in His glory,155 as their ‘commanding, overriding, dominating’156 Lord. Boethius, though, prefers to see God as the ‘still point of the turning world’157—a phrase that has almost become a linguistic clich; over these fifteen centuries, but which must have sounded very deep and uncommonly insightful at the time when it was written. Probably it still does: some thoughts do not fade.

At the end of Hymn 3, IX, Lady Philosophy addresses God in what can be called a very Buddhist voice:

“[Y]ou are the sole serene,
goal in which we may rest, satisfied and tranquil.”158

God is, as another translation has it, a ‘tranquil resting place’159 in the middle of the unresting world and, as such, very similar to—maybe identical with—the Buddhist nirvana.160

A scrupulous Buddhist scholar might want to oppose this point by stating that nirvana shall never be understood as the final rest, since the Buddha actively helps his followers even after having passed into it. Whatever a meticulous scholar may say, though, nirvana still is seen as ‘a tranquil resting place for the good’ in the popular Buddhist tradition.


God as Source, Path, and Destination


The last two lines of Hymn 3, IX of the Consolation describe God as

“... finis,
principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem.”161

God is the end (finis), the beginning (principium), the one who carries along the way (vector), the guide (dux), and the Path (semita), these terms being the same (terminus idem). All those definitions should not be objectionable for a Christian, but they do have something subtly Buddhist about them. For, if the Path shall be seen as that of a peaceful meditation (see previous chapter), God, too, is discernible within us. God is not an external entity to be mechanistically worshipped. He is the source of all good, the end of our Path, and our internal guide to be slowly discovered within the quietude of our mind. He is, to paraphrase it, the tathagatagarbha162 of the Mahayana Buddhism which, very much like the God of Hymn 3, IX, can be regarded as (a) the potentiality (garbha) of our Buddhahood (tathagata), (b) as the final goal of our spiritual journey, once fully developed, and (c) as our inward guide.


God as Non-Interventionist


Boethius’ vision of God should have something rather awkward for his later fellow-believers. Does not it amount to a heresy to say that God exists only, or even predominantly, within us? For, if God truly is omnipotent—a notion which the Consolation does not contradict—he also is the ruler of the Universe who, at times, intervenes to punish the wicked and to reward the just?

And here is where Boethius is slightly—or significantly—at odds with the popular Christian teaching. John Marenbon gives air to the very natural astonishment with which an average Christian reads the Consolation in the passage that follows.

“The account of God’s government of the world, given with such a show of logical power in III.10–12, is a striking and very unusual one ... God is seen as completely non-interventionist [italics mine].”163

It is perhaps redundant to say that the Supreme Reality for a Buddhist, be it known as dharmakaya, dharmata, nirvana, tathagatagarbha, parinispanna, or by whatever other name, does not interfere with human affairs either—not, at least, in the way in which the God of the Old Testament punishes and rewards nations and individuals. The ‘supreme state of absolute knowledge’164 clearly has neither power nor will, to do so. The Buddhist Absolute is nor personal. It looks as if the same may also be true for the pater165 of the Consolation: Boethius’ having defined God as ‘the still point of the turning world,’ ‘the end,’ ‘the beginning,’ and ‘the Path,’ their readers might justifiably ask whether the word ‘father’ when applied to God does not belong to the same chain of epithets; in other words, whether it, too, must be interpreted metaphorically rather than in the anthropomorphic sense.

The Boethian God does not intervene. Assuming that God is omnipotent (all-powerful) and all-good, why does not he? How can he possibly be both? To deny God’s omnipotence would probably equal to denying one of the key Christian dogmas—we can imagine that such a thorough theologian as Boethius was, should be aware of this fact. Assuming that God is not all-good, how are we to live with this tension? And this is where Boethius’ unique theodicy comes to our rescue.


A Unique Theodicy


A theodicy is often defined as an ‘explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits evil.’166 Both the term and the controversy about it must be at least as old as Christianity itself—older perhaps, considering that the first arguments for the justification of God were developed within the Platonic school.167 It would be superfluous to give here a summary of all Christian approaches to theodicy, as such a task is clearly beyond the scope of our thesis. For our purpose it suffices to state that the Boethian theodicy, elaborate and elegant as it is, is not exactly ‘Christian.’ At least, this is the impression of Stephen Blackwood who in his monograph asks:

“But why, if the central question of the Consolation is framed in the terms of a specifically Christian debate, does it not offer a more specifically Christian solution? Why, for example, does the resolution of the theological aporia not employ the language of the Trinity and the Incarnation, that is, the Christian names for the divine substance and its mediation?”168

This question, being a part of a more general problem, will be handled in the next chapter; for now, it is time to look at Boethius’ theodicy more closely in order to understand whether it really is out of the Christian way of thinking.


Boethius’ Theodical Arguments


All the reasonings for the justification of God, provided by Lady Philosophy, are reducible to two basic arguments:

(1) God does not really foreknow things—not in the sense with which we can load this verb.169 He cannot, therefore, be called truly omniscient, even though Boethius never articulates the idea in precisely these terms. There is no predestination and no determinism.

(2) God does not punish the wicked. They punish themselves by being evil and thus removing themselves from God who is the only source of true happiness.170 Evil is nothing, when seen ultimately. Being disconnected from God, it lacks [moral] power and eventually collapses onto itself.

This latter argument, writes Clive Staples Lewis, ‘is one of the most vigorous defences ever written against the view, common to vulgar Pagans and vulgar Christians alike, which “comforts cruel men” by interpreting variations of human prosperity as divine rewards and punishments, or at least wishing that they were.’171 As such, it is not easy to grasp—not because it has no logic, but simply because it is based on a weltanschauung which is radically different from what Lewis describes as a ‘vulgar’ worldview. The reward for being good is being good, as this effort makes us closer to God. External rewards only deserve the name of false goods.

This is a genuinely philosophical way to see things, a very Stoic and a very Buddhist position: for a Buddhist, good deeds must be done to purify his (or her) karma, which is a prerequisite for further steps on the Path, and it is achieving the Buddhahood at the very end of the Path which shall be seen as the main reward of the practitioner for behaving morally.

We are not trying to argue the point of Boethius’ theodicean argument being non-Christian, but, at least, it is not very easily compatible with Christianity or, rather, with the notion of ‘God’s grace that only saves.’ Growing closer to God by doing good deeds does not make much sense, as long as the gap between us and God can be bridged by Grace only, since God’s Grace is not something we can compel. It makes perfect sense, though, when we reject the idea of God as an external, personal, and rather wilful being who is at liberty to bestow his gifts upon us or to withdraw his favours. For the author of the Consolation, deification is achieved through labour, it is not given as a present172—and there is absolutely nothing which makes this concept incongruous with the Buddhist doctrine.

Boethius’ theodicy seems to be immaculate in purely logical terms. John Marenbon still believes, though, that ‘it is hard to read Philosophy’s long and varied defence of the justice of human affairs without finding it incomplete.’173 Victor Watts expresses it even more straightforwardly:

“To the modern reader this use of dialectic will probably seem the least successful part of the Consolation. ... [T]he argument at the end of Book III that ‘evil is nothing’ on the grounds that ‘God who can do all things cannot do evil’ and that ‘what God cannot do is nothing’, and the further conclusion that evil men are powerless, will fail to convince.”174

We may want to ascribe this ‘failure’ to the fact that any researcher with a Christian cultural background unconsciously rejects the idea of ‘working one’s own way to God’—and therefore proves him- or herself unable to understand a reasoning based on it, but the issue might be even simpler than this. Boethius arguments seek to defend God. However, the Boethian God is not an external being irrevocably separated from man. He is the Supreme Reality that does not intervene—but which can be found within us as our spiritual potentiality. As such, he does not need any defence or justification.


Partial Conclusion


The God of the Consolation, when seen through the prism of the Buddhist doctrine, is not dissimilar with Nirvana (being the ‘extinction of desire, hatred and ignorance and, ultimately, of suffering and rebirth’175), with parinispanna-sbabhava (the self-sufficient Ultimate [Non-]Nature)176, and with tathagatagarbha (our Buddha-nature, being both the beginning and the end of our spiritual journey) of Mahayana Buddhism. He is non-interventionist and lacks any explicitly Christian features, such as being one in three persons or, indeed, being personal at all. As both the Path and the vehicle, he is discoverable within the sancta sanctorum of our own minds. Boethian theodicy is truly unique in (1) that it rejects the ‘vulgar’ solution of seeing the external rewards as goods granted by God and of suffering as his punishment, (2) that it defends the concept of God which, strictly speaking, does not require any defence.

The idea that the Boethian vision of God may become a doctrinal bridge between the Christian teaching and the Buddhist doctrine suggests itself. The question of whether such a bridge can hold its own weight will, among some others, be explored in the final chapter of this thesis.


5. BOETHIAN FAITH


Boethius’ Personal Beliefs


Boethius’ ontology, epistemology, soteriology, and his views on divinity, seen through the lens of the Buddhist doctrine, display several remarkably ‘Buddhist’ features. Shall we understand the inverted commas in the previous sentence metaphorically or literally? Who was Boethius in terms of his religious conscience? Is the author of Consolation a good Christian, a person with murky views who was dangerously close to a heresy, a literal heretic, a potential founder of a new Christian sect that never was established, a strict Platonist, a crypto-Buddhist177, a Latin pagan, or the originator of an independent ‘Boethian religion’?

We would have never asked those questions had not they already been posed by many a researcher, theologian, and Church leader, the first of them being perhaps Bovo II, an abbot of a Saxon monastery in Convey from 900 to 916, who expressed his annoyance with the Consolation in following terms.

“It is astonishing ... that a man who wrote such correct doctrine on the Trinity and on the person of Christ ... should also have written the Consolation of Philosophy in which he is not only silent about the teaching of the Church but also wide open to philosophical and especially Platonic doctrines.”178

In his commentary on the Consolation, Bovo II goes so far as to warn his fellow brethren ‘against the dangers of Boethius.’179

The question of Boethius’ religious allegiance is far from being purely academic. This thesis aims to provide a small contribution to building doctrinal bridges between Buddhism and Christianity. Such bridges, however, cannot be built if we do not know one of the shores to be connected as solid ground. A similarity between Buddhism and a minor schismatic sect can easily be proven but is of relatively little significance.

The specific purpose of this chapter is to explore three questions, namely, (1) whether Boethius really was a Christian, (2) whether he, when seen at a specific angle, may also be regarded as a Buddhist, (3) why his final book and the moral teaching encapsulated in it are not exactly consonant with the personal faith of their author—provided it is really the case.


Boethius as a Christian


It may be proper to start this section with a list of selective opinions on Boethius’ personal religious beliefs. In the progress of our research, we have come across the following statements as to Boethius’ faith:

— a Christian theologian (St Thomas Aquinas);180

— ‘undoubtedly a Christian,’ even though his philosophy or, rather, its compatibility with Christian doctrine ‘might be questioned’ (Clive Staples Lewis);181

— someone whose Christianity cannot be doubted, while its quality ‘is still a matter on which there is disagreement’ (Victor Watts);182

— a Roman Christian whose social milieu regarded Christianity as easily compatible with the archaic pagan ceremonies and rituals (Henry Chadwick);183

— a pagan Christian, somebody who attempted to combine ‘a genuine Christian faith with a devotion to all that was pagan in Roman tradition’ (Arnaldo Momigliano).184

In Chapter One of this thesis, we have already mentioned that the question of Boethius’ religious allegiance was resolved by the supreme Catholic authorities, and it was resolved positively. Boethius is recognised as a martyr for the cause of faith and a local saint. No more can be required from a Christian author. All that having been written, there remains an amount of uncertainty about the consonance between Boethius’ final work and the Christian teaching. True enough, the Consolation is ‘nowhere glaringly incongruous with basic Christian values,’185 to borrow an expression from Sophia Compton. However, it clearly ‘avoids explicitly Christian language,’186 and does so deliberately. It is a book whose ideas are ‘essentially pagan in inspiration’187 and whose author didn’t even bother to Christianise its central figure which, too, is ‘unabashedly pagan.’188

Why might Boethius want to do all this? Was he actually a crypto-Platonic or, for that matter, a crypto-Buddhist philosopher?


Boethius as a Buddhist


The idea of the Consolation’s author being a Buddhist appears ridiculous at first sight. Boethius’ knowledge of the Buddhist doctrine is, of course, not wholly improbable.189 What is improbable is the assumption that a remote Eastern religion whose doctrine in its broken and incomplete form he indeed might have learned through either Pyrrho or Democritus would impact Boethius’ last work to a substantial degree.

As far as Boethian researchers know, the author of the Consolation never formally took the Buddhist refuge in the Buddha, his Teaching, and his community, which ceremony includes the recitation of the special refuge formula in the presence of fellow believers. He cannot therefore be recognised as a Buddhist, when seen doctrinally.

Or can he? The Gopaka Moggallana Sutta, an early Buddhist text190, clearly emphasises the role of the Dhamma, the Teaching, which is the most important of the Three Refuge Objects. There is little doubt as to Boethius’ taking refuge in philosophy in the face of his approaching execution—it was writing his Consolation that helped him survive the last agonising months of his life. His philosophy showing—as far as we were able to demonstrate in Chapters Three and Four—no incongruence with the Buddhist doctrine and almost being its early Western version, are not we Buddhists able to recognise Boethius as our co-religionist? This predominantly depends on the viewpoint that we want to assume. A formal and sectarian approach would be to resolutely respond in the negative; a consideration from a broader perspective, on the other hand, might provide a cautious affirmative answer. The larger Buddhist community shows no agreement on the issue of recognising certain Christian authors as Buddhists—even if their works demonstrate ‘so exclusively non-Christian inspiration,’191 to remember a tenth-century Saxon abbot once again. We see our task in raising this question—and in leaving it open.


Avoiding Religious Specificity: Reasons and Hypotheses


‘[I]n this profoundly religious book there is an evidently conscious refusal to say anything distinctively Christian,’192 writes Henry Chadwick on the Consolation. A few pages later in his monograph, he adds:

“Everything specific is absent, and probably consciously avoided. The ambiguity seems clearly to be deliberate. ... The ‘Consolation’ is a work written by a Platonist who is also a Christian, but is not a Christian work [italics mine].”193

Indeed, Boethius’ efforts to avoid anything notably Christian in his final work are recognisable for any unbiased reader—which cannot be said about his reasons for doing so. Below, we have collected several hypotheses which essay to explain those.

(a) While being incarcerated, Boethius became progressively disappointed in Christian clergy and, as a result, in Christianity itself.194 He was, in fact, ‘on his way out’195 of Christianity, and was ‘consciously exploring an alternative route.’196

(b) Boethius wanted to limit the scope of his book to argumentative logic only, leaving all revelational arguments outside. Their exclusion automatically resulted in his book becoming ‘non-Christian.’197

(c) ‘[H]is statement of faith in several earlier works stood in no need of repetition.’198

(d) The author of the Consolation wished to demonstrate the inadequacy of purely intellectual arguments, when applied to faith—therefore it is the voice of pagan Philosophy that we hear throughout the text.199 Boethius’ final work is, in other words, a deliberate philosophical failure. His author desired this book to be pagan and to fail in this capacity.

(e) Boethius chose a pagan approach to philosophy for ‘aesthetic’ reasons, wishing to dissociate himself from ‘Theodoric and his huge, fair-skinned, beer-drinking, boasting thanes [who were Christians].’200

All those justifications for Boethius’ wish to suppress everything specifically Christian in his text may be true to a certain degree—even though if some of them appear to be rather doubtful. ‘Few have grappled more honestly with the problems of good and evil, fate and freewill [than Boethius],’201 writes Victor Watts. One might want to add that the Consolation is a book of colossal inner strength whose author can hardly ever be suspected of petty dishonesty about his religious beliefs. Reducing the scope of the book to rational logic only does not explain the omission of all Christian names in it. An attempt to see this work as a conscious intellectual failure is extremely dubious: something that enjoyed such an influential afterlife shall not be categorised as one. To summarise, the reasons given above cannot, in all probability, be recognised as central for Boethius’ motivation to mute his Christian voice. We must, therefore, seek another explanation for it.


A Polyphonic Text


John Marenbon in his Boethius articulates an idea which appears to be truly illuminative.

“The Consolation is a dialogue between a figure who is recognizably a Christian—Boethius—and a figure who is not—Philosophy. The reasons for making this assertion are almost too obvious to remark.”202

It cannot be denied that Boethius’ last work is a dialogue between two distinctly different persons who probably hold different religious views. It is, in terms of its literary genre, a Menippean satire.203 Having written this, we cannot ignore the reading of this genre by Mikhail Bakhtin who, while defining Dostoyevsky’s great novels as specimen of Menippean satire, also describes them as polyphonic.204 It might be pertinent here to quote Bakhtin’s definition of polyphonism at full length.

“In his [Dostoyevsky’s] works a hero appears whose voice is constructed exactly like the voice of the author himself in a novel of the usual type. A character’s word about himself and his world is just as fully weighted as the author’s word usually is; it is not subordinated to the character’s objectified image as merely one of his characteristics, nor does it serve as a mouthpiece for the author’s voice. It possesses extraordinary independence in the structure of the work; it sounds, as it were, alongside the author’s word and in a special way combines both with it and with the full and equally valid voices of other characters [italics mine].”205

We would like to claim that Bakhtin’s description of Dostoyevsky’s literary breakthrough entirely applies to the Consolation which, despite its not being a novel, is a polyphonic text. Lady Philosophy’s words are as authoritative and as fully weighted as those of Boethius-the-prisoner—weightier, perhaps—which produces an impression of a text created by two writers. Philosophia’s voice does possess ‘extraordinary independence’ from the actual author of the text. It is only proper to ask why Boethius decided ‘to look at a question from two opposite sides’206 and to write a polyphonic book some thirteen centuries before The Brothers Karamazov.


Christianity as Part of the Universal Truth


Our answer to the question above is as follows: Boethius was a Christian who also was a Platonist, to slightly paraphrase Henry Chadwick.207 Being a man of remarkable erudition and moral integrity, he was definitely able to recognise certain advantages of Platonism that fifth-century Christianity simply did not possess; or rather, he could observe both the strong and the weak points of these two religions208, when compared with each other. He should, in all likelihood, have believed that ‘[t]he concept of a Supreme Being is a universal phenomenon.’209 He was, in other words, fully and wholeheartedly, but not exclusively, a Christian—so much so as to regard the Christian doctrine as only a part of the Universal Truth. ‘It is not fitting for men,’ if we use Lady Philosophy’s own words, ‘to understand intellectually or to explain verbally all the dispositions of the divine work.’210 Absolute knowledge cannot be grasped by limited human minds, which almost amounts to saying that the totality of the Ultimate Truth cannot be embraced by one particular religion either.211 In his final work, written some months before his execution, Boethius wanted to be a universal philosopher, not a sectarian, and he also clearly wished to create a text ‘aimed at anyone seeking answers to any of the major philosophical problems.’212 This is precisely why he carefully avoided specifically Christian terms and arguments in it. This also explains why the Consolation is written as a Dostoyevskian novel in which a hero who is not its author becomes as authoritative as the author himself. In this, Boethius’ last work is uncommonly contemporary—nay, it is a work which may be ahead of our time. It is utterly due for us to cultivate the same broad vision of spiritual truths which allowed Boethius to write his final masterpiece—and it is precisely this vision which would enable us to call ourselves true followers of Boethian faith.


CONCLUSION


An Abrupt Ending


The Consolation ends rather abruptly. The reader expects a concluding poem which perhaps would serve as a short summary of the text. There is none. Instead of it, Lady Philosophy sternly admonishes the author to do good deeds and not to lie to himself.

“Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope, and put forth 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.”213

This is probably the best conclusion to any book ever written. One almost becomes envious in the face of these three lines whose laconism and force cannot be rivalled. All in all, Boethius’ final work produces an impression of a book whose author clearly did not want to waste time on a recapitulation of what was already said. Each single line of the Consolation is used to deliver to its readership what its author thinks to be more significant than a simple repetition. It might be pertinent for us to do the same in the way of honouring the subject of our research.


The Consolation as a No Man’s Land


We shall begin with the metaphor already used in the introduction: that of a text being a disputed ground between two armies. Buddhism and Christianity are not at war with each other, neither are their followers. And yet, the metaphor seems to be at its proper place. A no man’s land is a piece of ground between two armies where any soldier from the other side would be easily targeted, which ends in nobody walking over it. This largely applies to the Consolation whose theology is too ‘non-Christian’ to find its way into textbooks of theological universities or weekly parish sermons but is still too Christian to be undoubtedly Buddhist. The Consolation is—in practice, not hypothetically—a terra n;ll;us, a philosophical land not claimed by any religion, since no religion would know what to begin with it.


The Consolation as a Meeting Ground


All that having been said, it also is—in potentia, if not in actu—a meeting ground for the followers of Christianity and Buddhism; a bridge connecting them. During his lifetime, Boethius was known—figuratively, of course—as a builder of bridges. ‘A detailed study of the fifth tractate shows Boethius building a bridge to the ecclesiastical policy of reconciliation between Chalcedonian and Monophysite which Justinian would pursue throughout his career,’214 states Henry Chadwick in his monograph. The Consolation itself can be looked upon as a reconciliatory bridge between early Christianity and Platonism. It is almost safe to suppose that Boethius, should he be alive nowadays, would welcome a doctrinal reconciliation between Christianity and Buddhism.

Any of the concepts that find their expression on the pages of the Consolation can, indeed, do its duty of bringing the two religions in question closer together—not excluding each single one of Boethius’ ontological, epistemological, soteriological, or theosophical215 ideas. Two216 of them, however, are especially remarkable for their interfaith quality and can, in our opinion, be regarded as ‘bridge piers,’ or philosophical foundations, for the interreligious dialogue to be initiated. They deserve, each of them, a special paragraph, even if a short one.

Absolute Truth is Transcendental

It is impossible for a man, if we remember once again Lady Philosophy’s own words, to comprehend all the ways of the divine work.217 True enough, Boethius’ Philosophy is a character in a polyphonic text, whose beliefs and ideas its author does not necessarily have to share. It seems that he does share this conviction, though. ‘Boethius,’ writes Henry Chadwick, ‘liked to repeat the axiom that the infinite is unknowable.’218 And it truly is, since the knowledge of a limited mind can be only finite and since human minds are limited by definition. The Absolute is infinite—otherwise, it does not deserve its own name. The Ultimate Truth is, in the ultimate sense, transcendental. We humans still can, to a degree, cognise it—we would be faced with the epistemological nightmare in the opposite case. What we cannot do is to cognise it in its full complexity. ‘God is,’ to use an excellent phrase by Lady Philosophy, ‘beyond human comprehension and his powers cannot be expressed in words.’219

This philosophical standpoint, once we have agreed to hold it, mitigates any imaginable disagreements between Christianity and Buddhism or, for that matter, between any two major religions of the world, as it defies the right of any religious community, however large, or any Church authority, however authoritative, to be the monopoly holder of the supreme spiritual truth. Those disagreements are not, of course, automatically reduced to naught, but they become a subject of the interfaith dialogue as long as each of its participants is willing to admit that he or she is not God and can therefore err.

There Is No Contradiction between Faith and Reason

Boethius would, in all probability, be indignant about the idea of blind, unreasoning faith, and would be appalled by the wish of today’s religious leaders to sacrifice common sense in favour of their dubious revelations. He, who was a mathematician and logician as much as he was a theologian saw faith and reason as ‘parallel ways of discerning reality.’220 Christianity, he would argue, must be defended rationally if it wants to persist; Christian theology, he would say, must be argumentative and logically irrefutable in order to be convincing. The idea of argumentative theology is, of course, very Buddhist-like, but apart from it having a specifically Buddhist colouring, it also welcomes dialogue more than any theology based on revelation does. A supernatural experience cannot be refuted—unless of course we degrade to downright accusations of dishonesty and calling names—and it also leaves very little room for discussion, but a logical argument can be handled rationally and thus becomes an invitation to an exchange of opinions.


Roads Not Taken


The two philosophical positions mentioned above do not just lay the foundation for the interfaith dialogue. One almost perceives them as missed opportunities, as roads that early Christianity could have taken—and never did. ‘The Christianity of the Consolation is of a curious, non-N[ew]T[estament] based, sapiential and philosophic, sort, with its strongest parallels in the syncretism of a much earlier period,’221 writes Danuta Shanzer. True, but it is ‘curious’ merely in the light of the later development of Christian doctrine. We may only wonder what could become of (Western) Christianity had it agreed to ‘take the Boethian turn’ in the fifth century. Most likely, it would grow to be a more Eastern, more meditative, more concessionary, and a much less ‘cesaropapistic’ religion than its actual historic version.

Can the image of Christianity still change? Can Church leaders agree to explore the roads discarded by their predecessors? We do not know. Still, an optimistic approach is recommendable. ‘God truly knows the future as a future of open possibilities,’222 says Henry Chadwick when characterising Boethius’ views on God. It is only sensible to accept the future of both Christianity and Buddhism as that which is still open.


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NOTES


1 We prefer this genitive form of his name for purely phonetic reasons.

2 Latin for ‘On the Consolation of Philosophy.’ We are going to refer to this work as to Consolation further on throughout the text.

3 Among the accomplished scholars who over the last half-century have given their full attention to Boethius’s Consolation by writing their own monographs on it we shall name

— Stephen Blackwood (s. Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 338 pp.),

— Henry Chadwick (s. Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 313 pp.),

— John Marenbon (Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 252 pp.),

— Seth Lerer (s. Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in The Consolation of Philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 264 pp.).

It would be ‘a sin against gratitude’ not to mention The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 232 pp.) by Clive Staples Lewis and Lost Icons: Reflections on a Cultural Bereavement by Rowan Williams (London, New York: T&T Clark Ltd, 190 pp.) as two main sources of our inspiration for writing this thesis, even though both books would not meet today’s criteria of an academic paper.

Four translations of the source text (by Scott Goins and Barbara H. Wyman, David R. Slavitt, P. G. Walsh, and Victor Watts) were used; in some case, we found it proper to quote from the Latin original, edited by Claudio Moreschini (Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 263 pp.)

Further numerous sources (mainly research papers of medium length) can be found in Bibliography. We hope that this footnote, short as it is, will perform its function of a literary review.

4 Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 83.

5 Agnes Heller (1929—2019) was a Hungarian philosopher and lecturer, and a core member of the so-called Budapest school.

6 Heller, Agnes. The Power of Shame: A Rational Perspective. London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. 184.

7 ‘Is lumen the light of his eyes or the light of his mind? And what might be the relation between these two? Boethius’ intention is clearly to raise, not answer, these questions: he introduces the ambiguity without commentary’ Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 54.

See also Danuta Shanzer: ‘Who has solved the problems raised by Boethius?’ (Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-54, at 235.)

8 Beck, Sanderson. ‘The Consolation of Boethius.’ https://www.san.beck.org/Boethius.html. Accessed: August 27, 2022.

9 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 252.

10 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 7.

11 Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xii.

12 Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 75.

13 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 253.

14 Ibid., 223.

15 Schanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 228.

16 Beck, Sanderson. ‘The Consolation of Boethius.’ https://www.san.beck.org/Boethius.html. Accessed: August 27, 2022.

17 Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur [;orgeirsdo;ttir, Sigri;;ur]. ‘The Torn Robe of Philosophy: Philosophy as a Woman in the “Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius.’ In Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy. Springer, 2020. 83-95. at 83.

18 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 242.

19 ‘As a poet, Boethius may not merit the highest acclaims, but his best is remarkably good.’ Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 24.

20 Marenbon, John. ‘Introduction: Reading Boethius whole.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 1-10, at 1.

21 The world of intelligible realities (lat. mundus intelligibilis), or Plato’s realm of ideas.

22 Moorhead, John. ‘Boethius’ life and the world of late antique philosophy.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 13-33, at 23.

23 See Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 12. Here she is paraphrasing Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, transl. by A. H. C. Downes. London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1936. 28.

24 ‘However, a careful analysis of certain passages of book one tells us a different story: Boethius [i.e. the protagonist of the text, the ‘prisoner,’ not the actual author] forgot not only a specific set of philosophical doctrines but also the ability to conduct his life with the inner strength typical of a philosopher [italics mine].’ Donato, Antonio, ‘Forgetfulness and Misology in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2013), Vol. 21, Iss. 3, 467.

25 Sri Sathya Sai Baba (1926—2011) was an Indian spiritual teacher, credited by his believers with miracles.

26 Trinley Thaye Dorje (born 1983) is a claimant to the title of the Seventeenth Karmapa; the Karmapa is head of one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

27 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 242.

28 This term is used in the vein of Allan David Bloom’s legacy. Here and elsewhere, it does not specifically mean the movements that attempt to revive the ancient polytheistic religions, including such practices as ritual magic. It rather stands for our adherence to ‘finite goods’ and ‘fashionable gurus’ of today as well as our wish be an ‘enlightened person’ without shouldering the responsibility that such an enlightenment would require.

29 McMahon, Robert. Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006. 3.

30 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 23.

31 Aquinas, Thomas, St. Faith, Reason, and Theology: Questions I-IV on his Commentary on the ‘De Trinitate’ of Boethius. Transl. by Armand Mauer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987.

32 See Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 68.

33 In Chapter Five of this thesis, we will come to deal with the question of whether Boethius really was a Christian at some more length.

34 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 11.

35 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ix.

36 Jill Paton Walsh (1937—2020) was an English novelist and children’s writer.

37 Carruthers, Mary J., The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd edn. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14.

38 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 2.

39 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 231.

40 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 14.

Sophia Compton is by far not the only researcher who has posed this question. See, for instance, John Marenbon’s Boethius: ‘[W]ho, exactly, is Philosophy? What does this personification represent?’ (Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 153.)

41 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 226.

42 See Seth, Lerer. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 264 pp.

43 See Watts, Victor. ‘Introductory’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi

44 See Relihan, Joel C. ‘Old Comedy, Menippean Satire, and Philosophy's Tattered Robes in Boethius' “Consolation” ’, Illinois Classical Studies (Spring 1990), Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 183-194.

45 Seth, Lerer. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 102-103.

46 Ibid.

47 Relihan, Joel C. ‘Old Comedy, Menippean Satire, and Philosophy's Tattered Robes in Boethius' “Consolation” ’, Illinois Classical Studies (Spring 1990), Vol. 15, No. 1. 193.

48 A more reserved critique of Lerer’s ‘postmodern’ approach can be found in Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the ‘Consolation’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 236.

49 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

50 German for ‘the appearance of a deity.’ (Gruber, Joachim. Kommentar zu Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. 2nd edn. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. 62.)

51 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 14.

52 See, for instance, Victor Watts: ‘Her varying height in I, 1 is symbolic: sometimes she is of average height offering the practical philosophy of Book II; sometimes she pierces the sky leading back to God from Whom she came.’ (Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxv.)

53 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the ‘Consolation’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 231.

54 Ibid, 243.

55 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 156

56 Ibid., 174.

57 Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. ‘The Torn Robe of Philosophy: Philosophy as a Woman in the “Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius.’ In Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy. Springer, 2020. 83-95, at 84.

58 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the ‘Consolation’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 232.

59 Crouse, Robert. ‘The Doctrine of Creation in Boethius: The De hebdomadibus and the Consolatio’, Studia Patristica, 17 (1982), 417–21, at 418.

60 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 174.

61 Relihan, Joel. The Prisoner's Philosophy. Life and Death in Boethius's Consolation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. 128.

62 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 16.

63 Latin for ‘the [Platonic] World-soul.’

64 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 17.

65 Klingner, Friedrich. De Boethii, Consolatione Philosophiae. 2. Unver;nderte Auflage. Z;rich, Dublin, 1966.

66 ‘[S]he [Philosophy] metaphorically associates her authority with that of the Creator.’ Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 207.

67 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 174.

68 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 240.

69 ‘Abelard identified the World-soul as a “beautiful figure of involucrum”, the allegorical veil for divine truth, in this case meaning the third person of the Holy Trinity.’ Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022. 9

70 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the ‘Consolation’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 231.

71 In Chapter Five of this thesis, we will treat the problem at more length.

72 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 249.

73 Ibid.

74 Boethius’ cult is held in Pavia, where Boethius’ status as a saint was confirmed in 1883, and in the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Rome.

75 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Scott Goins and Barbara H. Wyman. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. 17.

76 Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005.

77 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 4.

78 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 47.

79 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 4.

80 See Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch. ‘Solov'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah.’ Slavic Review, Autumn 1991, Vol. 50, Iss. 3. 487-96, at 488.

81 Vladimir Solovyov (1853—1900) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early-twentieth century.

82 See pp. 18-9.

83 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 51.

84 This event took place on December 23, 1849. The condemned men, Dostoyevsky among them, were reprieved by the order of the Tsar which arrived at the very last moments, some seconds before the command for their execution should be given.

85 See Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel. ‘The Arzamas Horror: a Sample of Tolstoy’s Psychopathology.’ In: Tolstoy on the Couch. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. 10-32.

86 ...or used to have for previous generations.

87 Prajna Paramita (Sanskrit: ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;) means ‘the Perfection of Wisdom’ or ‘Transcendental Knowledge’ in Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. Prajna Paramita refers to a perfected way of seeing the nature of reality, as well as to a particular body of Mahayana scriptures which discusses this wisdom. It also refers to the female deity Praj;aparamita Devi, a personification of wisdom also known as the ‘Great Mother’ (Tibetan: Yum Chenmo).

88 Those two selected arguments are far from being exhaustive: more similarities between the two figures in question can be discovered, and more parallels drawn.

89 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 57.

90 See https://sanskritdictionary.com/p;ramit;/133856/1. Accessed: August 25, 2022.

91 See Accessed: August 25, 2022.

92 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 107.

93 Gyatso, Tensin (the Fourteenth Dalai Lama). Heart Sutra: the Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005. 110.

94 Ibid., 111.

95 Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 AD) was a Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle.

96 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 155-6.

97 The Buddhist influence on the Ancient Greek Philosophy will be discussed in Chapter Five of this thesis. The question of whether Boethius can be recognised as a Buddhist will be explored in the same chapter.

98 ‘The Buddhist doctrine’ is understood here in the most general sense, as a minimum minimorum of Buddhism, in other words, as views shared by the majority of Buddhist schools. We will try to leave aside all marginal/sectarian notions.

99 Khenpo Kyosang Rinpoche. Snow Lion Meets Europe and Other Teachings. Sevenoaks: Je Tsongkapay ling Buddhist College, 2021. 171.

100 One might imagine a Buddhist theologian or religious leader who would allow Christians to apply this approach to some Christian doctrines. Finding such a theologian and exploring his/her intellectual legacy is, of course, beyond the scope of this thesis, however interesting such a research may be.

101 John Marenbon in his monograph argues that ‘[t]he Consolation is a dialogue between a figure who is recognizably a Christian and a figure who is not,’ that we shall not, therefore, accept everything said by Lady Philosophy at face value. See Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 157

102 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 30.

103 I.e., in the twelfth poem of Book Three of the Consolation.

104 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 105.

105 Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 163-4.

106 ‘O nobly—born (so and so by name), the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. At this moment, know thou thyself; and abide in that state. I, too, at this time, am setting thee face to face.’ (Evans-Wentz, Walter Yeeling (ed.). The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 134.)

107 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 147.

108 See Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 244.

Chadwick might be slightly mistaken about the origin of the idea: ex nihilo nihil fit goes back to Parmenides (c.540-480 BC) who preceded Aristotle (384–322 BC).

109 Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxxii.

110 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 107-8.

111 See Walsh, P. G. ‘Notes.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 227.

112 See Givens, Terryl L. When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 31-33.

113 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 161.

114 See Skandha. In Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/skandha. Accessed: August 31, 2022.

115 Also, translatable as ‘consciousness, clear knowledge or understanding or notion or conception.’ See sa;j;; in Sanksrit Online Dictionary.

Accessed: August 31, 2022.

116 Please consider also the two following statements.

’Sa;j;; [is] sensory and mental process that registers, recognizes and labels (for instance, the shape of a tree, color green, emotion of fear).’ Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 56-7.

‘[I]magination considers his shape without paying attention to matter.’ Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 161.

It seems that both quotations describe the process of abstraction/ideation, i. e. the same mental process.

117 Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 8

118 Whereas both terms describe the path of Buddhism, the former has a more technical meaning.

119 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 200.

120 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 104.

121 Nagarjuna. Letter to a Friend: with Commentary by Kangyur Rinpoche. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2005. 39.

See also the online Encyclopedia of Buddhism Accessed: September 1, 2022), where the eight worldly dharmas are formulated as follows:

— hope for gain and fear of loss,

— hope for pleasure and fear of pain,

— hope for good reputation and fear of bad reputation,

— hope for praise and fear of blame.

122 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 41-2.

123 Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 165.

124 Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle. Transl. by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. 147-8.

125 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 41.

126 Ibid., 97-8. This extract certainly has a very Buddhist colouring, including the invocation of the teaching to blossom again. Should ‘Apollo’ be removed from the text or, say, replaced by ‘Manjushree,’ the rest can be easily read as a standard Buddhist prayer.

127 Ray, Reginald A., ed. In the Presence of Masters: Wisdom from Thirty Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Teachers. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Shambhala Publications. 63.

128 Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 100.

129 See Tsong-Kha-Pa. The Great Treatise on the Stages to the Path to Enlightenment. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2000. Vol. 3. 63. ‘When you are overcome with lethargy and sleepiness, when there is a lack of clarity in your apprehension of the object of meditation and your mind has become lax, then meditate on the idea of light or bring to mind the most delightful things, such as the qualities of the Buddha.’ Tsongl-Kha-Pa refers here to Kamalasila’s Stages of Meditation.

130 See, for instance, lines 22-4 of Hymn 3, IX in Book Three of the Consolation.

Da, pater, augustam menti conscendere sedem,

da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta

in te conspicuos animi defigere visus.

(Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 80.)

The lux reperta in te of the Latin text is literally translatable as ‘the light, discovered in Thee.’

This divine light seems to be identical with lux propria, ‘[man’s] ‘own light.’ See lines 1-3 of Hymn 2, I:

Heu, quam praecipiti mersa profundo

mens hebet et propria luce relicta

tendit in externas ire tenebras.

(Ibid., 7.)

131 The Holy Bible: Old and New Testaments, King James Version. Duke Classics, 2012. 2617.

132 See Stephen Blackwood who in his turn refers to St Thomas Aquinas: ‘But neither can we distinguish the Consolation from the Tractates on the basis of method. In both cases, theology proceeds intellectualiter. As Thomas Aquinas noted concerning the Tractates, Boethius there proceeds not according to revelation but according to reason alone. Nowhere does Boethius argue on the basis of Christian auctoritates.’ (Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 231-2.)

133 Watts. Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxxiii

134 For ‘cheap grace,’ see Scalf, Brandon. Cheap Grace: Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship. Accessed: September 2, 2022.

135 Watts. Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxxiii-xxxiv

136 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-234, at 242.

137 Bloor, Joshua. ‘New Directions in Western Soteriology,’ Theology (May 2015), Vol. 118., Iss. 3. 179-187, at 180.

138 Archimandrite George. Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life. Mount Athos: Holy Monastery of St Gregorios, 2006. 21.

139 Bloor, Joshua. ‘New Directions in Western Soteriology,’ Theology (May 2015), Vol. 118., Iss. 3. 179-187, at 181.

140 Magee, John. ‘The Good and morality: Consolatio 2—4.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 181-206, at 195.

141 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Scott Goins and Barbara H. Wyman. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012.

142 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 89.

Consider also the Latin text of this passage: ‘Sed uti iustitiae adeptione iusti, sapientiae sapientes fiunt, ita divinitatem adeptos deos fieri simili ratione necesse est. [25.] Omnis igitur beatus deus. Sed nature quidem unus; participitatione vero nihil prohibet esse quam plurimos.’ (Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 84.) Omnis igitur beatus deus clearly shows that Slavitt’s translation could hardly be the most accurate one.

143 See, for instance, Purzycki, Benjamin Grant, Holland, Edward C. ‘Buddha as a God: An Empirical Assessment.’ In Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (October 2019), Vol 21, Iss. 4-5, 347-375.

144 See Sakya, Sudan. ‘The Interpretation of Adi-Buddha.’ Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (2010), Vol. 58, Iss. 3.144-150, at 148.

145 This adjective here is used in its more general sense and therefore not capitalised.

146 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 148.

See also lines 25-7 in Joel Relihan’s translation of Hymn 1,VII that read as follows:

Drive away pleasure

Drive away terror

Exile expectation . . .

(Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 77.)

147 See Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 135, and Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 22, 27.

148 See Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 115.

149 See Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 198-9.

150 See, for instance, Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 128.

151 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 40.

152 See Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 120.

153 ‘Then I said, “I agree, and I see the justice of saying that though they retain the outward appearance of the human body, wicked people change into animals with regard to their state of mind.” ’ (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999.. 96.)

154 Whereas it used to be an academic convention to describe Buddhism as a ‘godless religion,’ modern researchers discard this simplistic approach. See, for instance, Kieko Obuse: ‘Those who accept Adi Buddha or Vairocana as the personalized expression of dharmak;ya could equate dharmak;ya with God in terms of both personal and non-personal aspects.’ (Obuse, Kieko. ‘Finding God in Buddhism: A New Trend in Contemporary Buddhist Approaches to Islam.’ Numen (2015), 62. 408-430, at 415.)

155 See Matthew 17:1-8 and other places in the gospels that refer to the transfiguration of Christ.

156 See Williams, Rowan. Rowan Williams on Dostoyevsky. https://youtu.be/Dsswa-CFJhs. Accessed: September 11, 2022.

157 See, for instance, Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xxviii.

David Slavitt translates this famous definition at the end of Book Three of the Consolation as ‘the unmoving pivot on which the world turns’ (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008.)

The same visual image of a rotating wheel (the wheel of Samsara) which is stopped when the final goal is achieved can be thus found in both the Consolation and the Buddhist symbolic tradition.

158 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 85.

The Latin text reads as follows:

tu namque serenum,

tu requies tranquilla piis.

(Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 80.)

159 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 153.

160 See Nirvana. Encyclop;dia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/nirvana-religion. Accessed: September 9, 2022.

161 Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 80.

162 The Buddha nature, literally ‘embryonic tathagata,’ ‘the womb’ or ‘embryo’ (garbha) of the ‘One Thus Gone’ (tathagata).

On tathagatagarbha being identical with dharmakaya, see an illuminating quotation from the Mahayana-Uttaratantra-Shastra by Maireya

The cause for the Buddha to be seen in the mind

similar to pure lapis lazuli

is the purity of this ground,

[achieved] by a firm faculty of irreversible faith.

Since virtue arises and ceases,

the form of a buddha arises and ceases.

Like Indra, the Muni who is dharmakaya

is free from arising and ceasing.

(Arya Matreya (auth.), Jamg;n Kongtr;l Lodr; Thay; (comm.). Buddha-Nature: The Mayahana-Uttaratantra-Shastra with Commentary. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2000. 71.)

For further reading on tathagatagarbha, please see Brown, Brian Edward. The Buddha Nature: A Study of the Tath;gatagabha and ;layavij;;na. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1991. 356 pp.

163 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 114.

164 See Trikaya. In: Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/trikaya. Accessed: September 9, 2022.

165 Latin for ‘father.’

166 See Theodicy. In Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/theodicy-theology. Accessed: September 9, 2022.

167 See Henry Chadwick: ‘God must be exempted from the least responsibility for evil. Since the cosmos is held to mirror the ideal noetic realm above, some explanation is required for the fact that human experience of this cosmos produces pain and dissatisfaction. The Platonists offered a series of explanations [for that].’ (Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 229.)

168 Blackwood, Stephen. The ‘Consolation’ of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 231.

169 See, for instance, Michael Chase: ‘Boethius’ ingenious solution will consist in denying that God fore-knows or fore-sees anything at all.’ Chaze, Michael. ‘Time and Eternity from Plotinus and Boethius to Einstein.’ ;;;;; (2014), Vol. 8. Iss. 1. 67-110, at 100-1.

170 See Henry Chadwick: ‘[I]t is the mark of evil men that they cannot succeed in their aim of achieving happiness for which true goodness is an indispensable constituent. They suffer a diminution of their humanity, and fall to the level of beasts.’ (Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 240.)

See also Stephen Blackwood: ‘[G]oodness brings happiness, self-possession, and so on by its own nature, while wickedness leads to dissolution and non-existence [italics mine].’ (Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 195.)

171 Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 82.

172 See John Marenbon: ‘[N]ot only will they be rewarded by happiness but also, as was established in III.10, by becoming Gods [italics mine].’ (Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.)

173 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 121.

174 Watts, Victor. 'Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxvii.

175 Nirvana. In Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/nirvana-religion. Accessed: September 9, 2022.

176 On parinispanna, please see the following comment by Jeffrey Hopkins: ‘ “Ultimate-non-nature” [Tibetan: don dam pa ngo bo nyid med pa, Sanskrit: param;rthani;svabh;vat;] has two meanings. The first meaning refers to thoroughly established natures, which are the actual ultimate-non-nature since they are both (1) the ultimate as the object of observation by a path of purification and (2) the very non-nature, that is, the absence of the opposite of emptiness in phenomena. The second meaning refers to fact that other-powered natures are not the ultimate; just as other-powered natures are natureless in terms of (self-)production, so they are natureless in terms of the ultimate — that is to say, they lack being that nature which is the ultimate. Thus, thoroughly established natures are “ultimate-non-natures,” and other-powered natures are also “ultimate-non-natures” but for different reasons—the first is the ultimate and the second is not [italics mine].’ (Ñhristian Steinert’s Online Tibetan-English and English-Tibetan Dictionary. — Entry: don dam pa ngo bo nyid med pa. — Http://dictionary.cristian-steinert.de. Accessed: September 10, 2022.)

This long comment seems to prove that the Ultimate Nature in Buddhism can be seen positively.

177 I. e. ‘a covert Buddhist,’ ‘a secret follower of Buddhism’: a term which is used by a few scholars to describe religious beliefs of Adi Shankara (8th cent. CE) who was a most renowned exponent of the Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy. See Shankara. In Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shankara. Accessed: September 13, 2022.

178 See Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 247.

179 Ibid.

180 Aquinas, Thomas, St. Faith, Reason, and Theology: Questions I-IV on his Commentary on the ‘De Trinitate’ of Boethius. Transl. by Armand Mauer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987. 19-20.

181 See Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 76.

182 Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xviii.

183 ‘The senators valued the archaic ceremonies because they were a characteristically Roman thing to do, and they saw no reason why such festivities should be regarded as incompatible with Christian faith or offensive to a Christian conscience.’ (Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 13.)

184 See Momigliano, Arnaldo. ‘Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of His Time,’ Proceedings of the British Academy (1955), 46. 210-14.

185 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022.

186 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 241.

187 Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxxiv

188 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 232.

189 See, for instance, a review by Stephen Bachelor on a book by Christopher Beckwith entitled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015.)

In his review article, Bachelor assumes that ‘[i]f Democritus did reach India, then he would have done so prior to the invasion of Alexander and during the lifetime of the Buddha.’ (Bachelor, Stephen. ‘Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s encounter with early Buddhism in central Asia’ (review article). Contemporary Buddhism (January 2016), Vol. 17, Iss. 1. 1-20, at 14.) Democritus, according to Diogenes Laertius, is said to be acquainted with Socrates (Ibid., 15) whose philosophy had an impact on Plato. The ‘philosophical lineage’ is thus reconstructible as follows:

The Buddha — Democritus — Socrates — Plato — Boethius.

The readers of this thesis are invited to see the lineage above as a speculation which is hardly verifiable: it does not pretend to be anything more.

190 This sutta is part of Majjhima Nik;ya, the second of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the ‘three baskets’ that compose the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism.

191 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. vi.

192 Ibid., 224.

193 Ibid., 249.

194 See Henry Chadwick, ‘No doubt it is possible to speculate that at the crisis of his life Boethius may not have received from the higher clergy at Rome or northern Italy the support that he might have felt entitled to expect.’ (Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 248.)

195 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-54, at 243.

196 Ibid.

197 The following passage in the Consolation seems to support this idea: ‘You need not be surprised if we have mounted arguments not adduced from outside, but set within the boundaries of our subject, for you have learnt from Plato’s prescription that the language we use must be germane to the topics under discussion.’ (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 114.)

198 Compton, Sophia. ‘Boethius and Sophia: Early Awakenings of the Archetypal Feminine in Philosophy.’ https://www.academia.edu/12336782/Boethius_and_Sophia. Accessed: August 22, 2022.

199 See, for instance, John Marenbon, ‘It is no accident that scholars still debate the extent to which the Consolation is supposed to show the inadequacy of purely philosophical solutions. ... And so ... the Consolation problematized the cluster of issues about pagan philosophy and its relation to truth and to salvation: the paths of thought and writing it opened turned out, all too often, to lead not to the clarity of a plain, but to the darkness of a forest.’ (Marenbohn, John. ‘Introduction: reading Boethius whole.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 1-10, at 9.

200 See Lewis, Clive Staples. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964. 78-9.)

201 Watts, Victor. ‘Introduction.’ In Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. xi-xxxvi, at xxxi.

202 Marenbon, John. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 157.

203 See Relihan, Joel C. ‘Old Comedy, Menippean Satire, and Philosophy's Tattered Robes in Boethius' “Consolation” ’, Illinois Classical Studies (Spring 1990), Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 183-194.

For further reading on Menippean satire, see Menippean satire. In Encyclopedia Britannica (2013). https://www.britannica.com/art/Menippean-satire. Accessed: September 15, 2022.

204 See Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problem’s of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 390 pp.

205 Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 44.

206 Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in The Consolation of Philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 36

207 ‘The Consolation is a work written by a Platonist who is also a Christian.’ (Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 249.)

208 Which term can only be applied to Platonism only in a metaphorical sense.

209 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 156.

210 See Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in ‘The Consolation of Philosophy.’ Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. 212.

The Latin original reads: Neque enim fas est homini cunctas divinae operae machinas vel ingenio comprehendere vel explicare sermone. (Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 129.)

211 We will return to this idea in the Conclusion.

212 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-254, at 244.

213 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by Victor Watts. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 137.

The Latin original reads as follows: 47. Aversamini igitur vitia, colite virtutes, ad rectas spes animum sublevate, humiles preces in excelsa porrigite. 48. Magna vobis est, si dissimulare non vultis, necessitas indicta probitatis, cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis. (Boethivs, auth., Moreschini, Claudio, ed. De Consolatione Philosophiae. Opvscvla Theologica. 2nd revised edition. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2005. 161.)

214 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 25.

215 The term is used in the general sense of referring to the knowledge of God and the transcendent world, not in the more specific sense of pertaining to beliefs and doctrines of the Theosophical Society.

216 We are deliberately, if regretfully, leaving aside the idea of Church freedom or, rather, for the freedom of any local community of believers to lay down their own rules (see Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 179.) Mentioned in De Fide Catholica, it does not, however, appear in the Consolation.

217 See Chapter Five of both this thesis and the Consolation.

218 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 125.

In this notion, Boethius might follow Aristotle, writes Chadwick (ibid., 299).

219 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Transl. by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 139.

220 Ibid., 220.

221 Shanzer, Danuta. ‘Interpreting the Consolation.’ In Marenbon, John (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 228-54, at 242.

222 Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 159.