The Latin Commentaries on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae from the 9th to the 11th Centuries

Abstract

This chapter focuses very precisely on the manuscripts dateable from the medieval period up to around the year 1100 that transmit commentary and glosses on the De consolatione philosophiae (Consolatio) in Latin. It asks what can be recovered about their complex relationships, surveys the variety of content these scholia cover, and summarizes scholarly debate concerning the authors and centers which have been connected with the commentary tradition. There is a divide between those scholars who have examined the manuscripts of the Consolatio in order to establish Boethius's text and those interested in its reception and thus in the glossing. Editors of the Consolatio have commented on the large number of copies in existence but have been able, each in their turn, to find a reasonable justification for limiting their collation, on the grounds that later copies have nothing more to contribute to reconstructing the author's text. Keywords:Boethius; De consolatione philosophiae (Consolatio) ; glossing; Latin