Afterword: Boethius in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

The person and works of Boethius are incomprehensible outside the historical and cultural atmosphere in which his drama-filled biography must be situated. In the early Middle Ages, the traditions of the past were taken up mechanically, until the time, when, through a process of in-depth study and reflection, the actual ancient texts were available. The theological treatises of Boethius, already known to Alcuin, are used in the works written in the wake of the debates concerning the soul during the mid-9th century by Ratramnus of Corbie, Gottschalk, and Paschasius Radbertus. The grouping together of the Consolatio with works such as Priscian's or Martianus Capella's have the advantage of presenting together authors connected by their common origin, as representatives of that Latin aristocratic culture of Late Antiquity in which the knowledge of the past seems to be recapitulated and condensed, almost with the obscure awareness of an imminent ending. Keywords:Boethius; Consolatio ; early Middle Ages; late antiquity