The year AD 476 marks the end of the Roman Empire in the West. In that year, the last Roman Emperor to reside in the West was deposed and Italy became an Ostrogothic kingdom. (By contrast the Eastern Empire lasted for many hundreds of years longer. It finally disappeared when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453).

When the so-called barbarians overran much of the Western Empire, the new rulers realized that in order to operate their regimes smoothly, they needed Roman supporters and administrators. They therefore found it profitable to work closely with the well-established structures and systems of Roman life. That necessitated the retention of some Roman administrators and civil servants so that the bureaucracy could function properly.

Many Romans were thus able to prosper under the new administration, among them, the aristocratic Christian family of Boethius, whose father was consul in the year 487. He died shortly after this and Boethius was brought up by another aristocratic family whose head had also previously been consul.

Boethius was born near Rome around 480. His full name was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. He was extremely well educated, was fluent in Greek and was familiar with the works of the great Greek philosophers. He rose quickly to the top of the political establishment and became consul in 510. (He was immensely proud when both of his sons served a term together as consuls in 522).

Boethius became chief minister to the Ostrogoth, Theodoric, who had become king in 493. He gave Italy more or less thirty years of peace and good governance. At this time, Ravenna, not Rome, was the political, cultural and religious centre of the West. Its great palaces and churches with their magnificent art works remain a testament to the period’s greatness.

By 522, Boethius was the most important figure in the administration, aside from the king. But in 524 he fell from favour, was suddenly accused of treason and imprisoned in a small town near Pavia. There he was tortured for months, condemned to death on evidence that was more-or-less cooked up by his accusers and finally put to death (probably by strangulation), all in the same year.

One of his ambitions as a young man was to translate all the works of Plato and Aristotle from Greek into Latin. This was a time when the knowledge of Greek was becoming rare in the Latin world. But as well as philosophy, he also paid attention to other subjects like theology, mathematics, astronomy and music.

In fact, it can be said that he became the teacher of the Middle Ages in many of these subjects. A work of his on arithmetic was a textbook in medieval schools. His book on music was even more widely known and was still a textbook used in Oxford up to the 18th century.

He achieved part of his original ambitious plan by translating Aristotle’s writings on logic and it was through his scholarship that the knowledge of Aristotle survived in Western Europe. His work was the primary source of material on logic up to the 12th century, while his translation of philosophical terms made a new philosophical vocabulary available to medieval philosophers.

Hence he is often referred to as the last of the Romans and the first of the scholastics. Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy says of him –
“He would have been remarkable in any age, in the age in which he lived he is utterly amazing”.

In the Christian world he was often venerated as a Saint, and Leo XIII approved his cult for the diocese of Pavia, where the feast of St Severinus Boethius is celebrated on 23 October.

His last book, written in the final months of his life while he was in prison, is the one that made him famous. This is his masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy, which was translated into many languages including Old English (by King Alfred) and Middle English (by Chaucer).

Aside from the Bible, it was the single most important book in the West in Medieval and Renaissance times. Written in prose and poetry, it is cast as a dialogue between himself, bitter and despairing over his imprisonment and torture, and the spirit of philosophy, depicted as a woman of wisdom and compassion.

In the course of the discussion he attempts to come to grips with his Christian faith and how it could help him to understand what has happened to him. Why should he, an innocent man, have to suffer as he does? The book was written as he struggled with this problem, trying to make some sense of and explain his suffering and the existence of evil in a world created by God.

From a philosopher’s point of view the final sections of the book (four and five) are the most interesting for they deal with problems that are still widely discussed by philosophers of religion. His discussion of the problem of evil and divine providence leads on to an inquiry into the relation between time and eternity.

This in turn gives rise to a fascinating account of the problem that arises when we consider God’s knowledge of future events and how this can be reconciled with human freedom of action. His ideas on these topics still stand as a major contribution to these debates.

Boethius ends his book with these words:
“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 placed 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”.