Wings and Crosses: Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and More’s Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation and Other Writings

Abstract

Thomas More was deeply affected by Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and made the work part of his innermost being. His use of specific topics and topoi – in particular, the idea of Fortune and arguments against it – has long been recognized. But his responses to the Consolation of Philosophy were often more holistic and experiential, as he responded to the deeper, metaphysical, and transcendent movement of the work. More, like Boethius, understood that the entire world is a prison, and hungered for his true home, which is above. He paraphrased Boethius’s Consolation in his early English poems, while citations became overt in later writings. When More later found himself, like Boethius, a prisoner of conscience, he too wrote a dialogue that grew out of the reality of his imprisonment and testified to the values and beliefs he embraced. Boethius’s dialogue has a cosmic and vertical orientation: Philosophy is a supra-mundane figure (and a personification allegory) representing the mind within, while More’s Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation combines the transcendent with a vision of Christ crucified. And More’s interlocutors are more grounded in time and space; besides the cognitive therapy that Philosophy administers to the prisoner in Boethius’s dialogue, the two very human figures in More’s Dialogue of Comfort struggle with their temptations and fears. But both works depend upon grasping the difference between matters temporal and the illusory or deceptive goods of this world (fortune, wealth, fame, etc.) and the true good, which is eternal. And both Boethius and More witness the reality of human finitude and the mysteries of a divine purpose that orders the universe and shapes our ends.