Found guilty of treason and other charges, Boethius was imprisoned, awaiting execution. Boethius accepted, but his determination to root out corruption soon made him enemies, and Theodoric was willing to believe that Boethius was plotting against him. In the early 520s, he invited Boethius to become Master of Offices, his most important official.

Theodoric, the Gothic king, wanted good relations with the native Roman aristocrats, but they remained a threat to him. But his birth had coincided with the beginning of Ostrogothic rule in Italy. Born around 476 CE, Boethius belonged to a rich, prestigious Roman family, and he lived most of his life enjoying the privileges of his class, participating in the ceremonies of the Senate, writing works and commentaries on mathematics, music and logic with the help of his education in Greek culture, and, though not a priest, taking part in theological controversies. The Consolation is the product of the dramatic circumstances that ended its author’s life. While the medieval audience, for the most part, responded to its more obvious features, its hidden complexities and subtleties are what can open its appeal to readers now.

The Consolation is a far more subtle work than it at first seems to be. But, if read carefully, in its historical and literary context, it should do. Unlike Plato’s dialogues, for instance, or René Descartes’s Meditations, it no longer seems to carry a broad philosophical appeal. Yet now the work is the preserve of scholarly medievalists. Although Aristotle’s texts shaped the university curriculum, and Augustine’s thought was ubiquitous, in the period from 800 until about 1600 no other philosophical text could compete with the Consolation in its appeal – not just to the intellectual elite but to a much wider audience too.

It was read not only by those who could understand its 6th-century Latin original but also those who studied it in any of a multiplicity of translations, into Old and Middle English, Old French, Old High German, Italian, Spanish and many other languages, including Greek and Hebrew. For nearly a millennium, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius was a bestseller throughout Europe.

The consolation of philosophy