The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy | Page 3

feel more in tune with the best of the pagans than with
most contemporary philosophic thought.
In yet one more respect Boethius belongs to the company of the
schoolmen. He not only put into circulation many precious
philosophical notions, served as channel through which various works
of Aristotle passed into the schools, and handed down to them a

definite Aristotelian method for approaching the problem of faith; he
also supplied material for that classification of the various sciences
which is an essential accompaniment of every philosophical movement,
and of which the Middle Ages felt the value.[5] The uniform
distribution into natural sciences, mathematics and theology which he
recommends may be traced in the work of various teachers up to the
thirteenth century, when it is finally accepted and defended by St.
Thomas in his commentary on the De Trinitate.
A seventeenth-century translation of the Consolatio Philosophiae is
here presented with such alterations as are demanded by a better text,
and the requirements of modern scholarship. There was, indeed, not
much to do, for the rendering is most exact. This in a translation of that
date is not a little remarkable. We look for fine English and poetry in
an Elizabethan; but we do not often get from him such loyalty to the
original as is here displayed.
Of the author "I.T." nothing is known. He may have been John Thorie,
a Fleming born in London in 1568, and a B.A. of Christ Church, 1586.
Thorie "was a person well skilled in certain tongues, and a noted poet
of his times" (Wood, Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 624), but his known
translations are apparently all from the Spanish.[6]
Our translator dedicates his "Five books of Philosophical Comfort" to
the Dowager Countess of Dorset, widow of Thomas Sackville, who
was part author of A Mirror for Magistrates and Gorboduc, and who,
we learn from I.T.'s preface, meditated a similar work. I.T. does not
unduly flatter his patroness, and he tells her plainly that she will not
understand the philosophy of the book, though the theological and
practical parts may be within her scope.
The Opuscula Sacra have never before, to our knowledge, been
translated. In reading and rendering them we have been greatly helped
by two mediaeval commentaries: one by John the Scot (edited by E.K.
Rand in Traube's Quellen und Untersuchungen, vol. i. pt. 2, Munich,
1906); the other by Gilbert de la Porrée (printed in Migne, P.L. lxiv.).
We also desire to record our indebtedness in many points of
scholarship and philosophy to Mr. E.J. Thomas of Emmanuel College.

Finally, thanks are due to Mr. Dolson for the suggestion in the footnote
on the preceding page, and also to Professor Lane Cooper of Cornell
University for many valuable corrections as this reprint was passing
through the Press.
H.F.S. E.K.R.
October, 1926.
[1] Anecdoton Holderi, Leipzig, 1877.
[2] _Scripsit librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et
librum contra Nestorium. On the question of the genuineness of Tr. IV.
De fide catholica see note ad loc_.
[3] Cp. H. de Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophie médiévale (Louvain and
Paris 1915), p. 332.
[4] See below, De Trin. vi. ad fin.
[5] Cp. L. Baur, Gundissalinus: de divisione, Münster, 1905.
[6] Mr. G. Bayley Dolson suggests with greater probability that I.T.
was John Thorpe (fl. 1570-1610), architect to Thomas Sackville, Earl
of Dorset. Cf. American Journal of Philology, vol. xlii. (1921), p. 266.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Editio Princeps:
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