Fe w scholarly books have so well defined an anatomy as does Boethius in the Middle Ages, which consists of three very distinct parts: 1) The Latin Tradition, 2) The Middle Dutch Tradition, and 3) Other Vernacular Traditions: English, French, Italian, and German. To some degree, the unusual assemblage of parts can be understood best with reference to the critical tradition in Boethian studies to which this volume is the latest addition.
In 1981, Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Margaret Gibson, appeared as a multi-authored collection of articles that attempted to present the state of Boethian studies in each of its most logical areas: 1) Boethius Life and Circumstances, 2) The Scholastic Writings, 3) The De Consolatione Philosophiae, and 4) Boethius in the Renaissance. The articles contained in this book focussed primarily on the significance of the Latin works by Boethius and on the traditions of vernacular translations of the Consolatio in medieval England, France, and Germany.
Gibson's book appeared against a background of scholarship that had been developing for a century and longer. Among other things, it expanded, updated, and reorganized material found in such earlier single-authored volumes as Hugh Fraser Stewart's Boethius: An Essay of 1891 and Howard Rollin Patch's The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture of 1935, or in such summary articles as A. van de Vyver's "Les Traductions du De Consolatione philosophiae de Boece en litterature comparee" of 1939.
Gibson's very systematic and well-focused volume was followed in 1987 by The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations ofDe Consolatione Philosophiae, edited by Alastair J. Minnis. Minnis's book contains such valuable summaries of Boethian scholarship as Ronald G. Keithley's "Boethius in Spain: A Classified Checklist of Early Translations" and such important additions to more well-known areas of scholarship as J. Keith Atkinson's "A Fourteenth- Century Picard Translation-Commentary of the Consolatio philosophiae." Minnis's book was not produced as a comprehensive and systematic approach to the whole field of Boethian studies. Rather, it was created to address areas of Boethian scholarship that had been omitted in Gibson's volume, and thus it complements the earlier book.
The Hoenen and Nauta volume of 1997 is the latest worthy addition to this tradition of multi-authored collections that brings the extent and importance of Boethian studies to the attention of contemporary scholars. As the editors state in their "Preface": Two areas in the wide field of Boethian studies, in particular, have been well researched: the Latin commentary tradition of the early medieval period, and some major renditions in the vernacular, most notably those by King Alfred, Notker Labeo, Jean de Meun, and Chaucer. This has resulted in a comparative neglect, on the one hand, of Dutch, German, and Italian vernacular traditions, and, on the other hand, of the different ways in which the consolatio was interpreted and employed in the Latin context of the later medieval period. In this way, the volume, like those that preceded it, acts, to some degree, as a reference work on areas of Boethian scholarship that had not been addressed in the earlier collections and works.
In the first part of the three-part book, the opening article by Lodi Nauta investigates the development of natural philosophy in the works of William of Conches, who authored an early commentary of the Consolatio. It also examines the glossa, the form in which the commentary is cast, as a genre. The article reveals little about Boethius per se, but it demonstrates the value of William's commentary as a literary and cultural artifact. The second article, also by Nauta, examines the commentary by Nicholas Trevet as it represents a Thomistic interpretation of the Neo-Platonic Boethius. This article will be of interest to Chaucerians, who will discover that the author of Troilus and Criseyde derives his Thomistic inclinations from Trevet as well as from Dante. The third, and final, article of Part 1, by Marguerite Chappuis, focuses on one element, question 2, in the argument in "Le Traite de Pierre d'Ailly sur La Consolation de Boece": "Plus que la premiere question du traite, la deuxieme question devait exercer les etudients a la logique et devait les armer contre les 'fantaisies' des scotistes." Thus, this first section of the book presents studies in the tradition of the Latin commentaries on the Boethian corpus, and most specifically on the Consolatio.
The second part of the volume could easily stand alone as a self-contained study on the medieval Dutch tradition of the Consolatio. The first article, by Paul Wackers, serves as a general introduction to the section. The second article, by Thom Mertens, studies the essential or existential grounds particular to both the religious and secular Dutch consolation literature in the later Middle Ages. The third article, by Mariken Goris and Wilma Wissink, then summarizes exactly what its title promises: "The Medieval Dutch Tradition of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae." The author's conclusions concerning why the Dutch tradition appears relatively late within the larger European tradition are lucid: the development of a Dutch vernacular tradition was impeded by earlier political and cultural forces that favored the use of existing Latin and French traditions. The fourth article, by Maarten J.F.M Hoenen, examines the Ghent Boethius, an unusual and extremely important element in the medieval Boethian tradition. Focusing specifically on the question of divine foreknowledge, Hoenen shows that the commentaries contained in this work take a conservative approach (as taken by Boethius and Thomas) to discuss the problem of God's foreknowledge [rather then a more current, academic approach (as taken by Bonaventura and Grosseteste)], which reflects the intellectual threshold of the audience intended by the work.
The third part of the book opens with an article by Ian Johnson, in which the achievement of John Walton as a translator of the Consolatio is praised; Walton's translation too often remains relatively ignored among the critics, primarily due to its comparison with Chaucer's earlier translation, the Boece, which was a source that Walton relied upon quite heavily. The second article, "The Medieval French Tradition," by Glynnis Cropp, makes intelligent sense out of the sometimes mind-boggling complexity of the many Consolatio translations that appeared in French during the Middle Ages. The difficulties in systematizing this formidable material are enormous, but Cropp presents a most welcome comprehensive approach to the tradition. The third article, "Die Consolatio Philosophiae in Norditalien," by Thomas Ricklin, traces the translation tradition of the Consolatio and of Trevet's Commentary, and some influences of each, in northern Italy. This article represents a valuable contribution to general knowledge on a relatively neglected area of the European Boethian tradition. A final article, by Nigel Palmer, contextualizes the 1473 printed, bi- lingual edition of the Consolatio within the German Boethian tradition.
An appendix, by Bregje van Dommelen and Dirk-Jan Dekker, offers an "Edition of the Ghent Boethius, Book V, Prose 3, Latin Text, Middle Dutch Translation and Commentary." For scholars relatively unfamiliar with the Dutch tradition, this appendix represents a clear window into an important Boethian text that could otherwise remain generally obscure. There follow a bibliography and an index, which are essential elements in any such scholarly study as this, which must also serve as a reference work to the Boethian tradition.
If Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the Consolatio philosophiae is to be faulted, the fault would lie the attempt to combine in one volume articles of encyclopedic breadth with articles very narrowly focused on specific elements within certain texts. Both sets of articles are important to our understanding of the European Boethian tradition, but their appearance, side-by-side within one book, indicates a mixture of goals in assembling the collection. It would be difficult to separate the articles into two volumes, but in spite of their undeniable individual merit, they do not all seem "at home together."
The volume's distinctive anatomy clearly indicates, however, two directions of interest that have always co-existed in the field of Boethian scholarship, each of which is of value. On the one hand, there has been the work of seeking out and categorizing the primary sources (the Latin manuscripts of Boethius's works as well as the manuscripts of the vernacular translations and the Latin and vernacular commentaries on them, which is preliminary to providing printed editions of this material to the scholarly community. On the other hand, there has been the work of studying these documents in order to understand affiliations and influences between them and within the larger European intellectual tradition. The appearance of this timely volume, in which the two approaches to the Boethian tradition appear together, causes me to look forward to future studies that will bring such terra incognita as the Scandinavian and Eastern European Boethian traditions more generally to the attention of Boethian scholars.