[139] Lavollée, as cited, p. 92. Cp. St. Chrysostom’s Picture of his Age, p. 112, and the admissions of Milman, bk. iv, ch. i. [↑]
[140] As to the spirit of hatred roused by controversy among believers, see Gieseler, § 104, vol. ii, pp. 64–67; and Ullmann’s Gregory of Nazianzum, Eng. tr. 1851, pp. 177–80. [↑]
[141] H. Fraser Stewart, Boethius: An Essay, 1891, pp. 100–101. [↑]
[142] Cp. Beugnot, Destruction du Paganisme, ii, 282–83. [↑]
[143] Id. p. 159. Mr. Stewart in another passage (p. 106) argues that “The Consolation is intensely artificial”—this by way of explaining that it was a deliberate exercise, not representing the real or normal state of its author’s mind. Yet he has finally to avow (p. 107) that “it remains a very noble book”—a character surely incompatible with intense artificiality. [↑]
[144] This is the view of Maurice (Medieval Philosophy, 2nd ed. 1859, pp. 14–16), who decides that Boethius was neither a Christian nor a “pagan”—i.e., a believer in the pagan Gods. This is simply to say that he was a rationalist—a “pagan philosopher,” like Aristotle. But, as is noted by Prof. Bury (ed. of Gibbon, iv. 199), Boethius’s authorship of a book, De sancta trinitate, et capita quædam dogmatica, et librum contra Nestorium, is positively asserted in the Anecdoton Holderi (ed. by Usener, Leipzig, 1877, p. 4), a fragment found in a 10th century MS. [↑]