A newly identified Scottish Boethius manuscript: rethinking Scotland's intellectual and literary culture in the Middle Ages

Journal article

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (c.480- 524 AD) was pivotal in the formation of Western intellectual and literary culture, and second in influence only to the Bible. A repository of information on classical history, myth, the natural world, and the human psyche, this work’s legacy endured across medieval and early-modern Europe in myriad forms and languages. Its interrogation of free-will, fate, and mankind’s place in the world, most acutely focused by its allegorical imagery of the wheel of fortune, was staple reading material for kings, academics, clerics, and poets, and came to underpin medieval university curricula. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, authors of the French love-vision, the Roman de la Rose (c.1225-75), were acquainted with the Consolation, and Dante read and reflected upon the Consolation in 14thcentury Italy. Chaucer translated the Consolation into English in the late-14th century, as did John Walton, a near contemporary in the early 15th. Scotland, however, has been almost entirely omitted from considerations of Boethius’s European reception. The few existing studies assume that it was primarily from the 15th century onwards that Boethius’s work reached Scotland, and predominantly through an English Chaucerian filter.

Authors: Murray, K

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: British Academy
• Journal: British Academy Review
• Volume: 26
• Issue: Summer 2015
• Pages: 58-63
• Publication date: 2015-08-01
• Acceptance date: 2015-07-08
• EISSN: 2047-1874
• ISSN: 2047-1866
• Keywords: Scotland; Monastic Culture; Twelfth Century; Medieval Manuscripts; Boethius