Linked below are audio recordings of a three-day seminar by Fr. Robert D. Crouse (1930–2011) on The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (480–c.524), given as part of the Elliott House of Studies series at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Savannah, Georgia. (These recordings were originally made available at lectionarycentral.com, but they are not visible there at the moment.)

Edward Gibbon called the Consolation “a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully [i.e., Cicero]” (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 39, ed. Bury, vol. 4 [2nd ed., 1925], p. 215, archive.org). C. S. Lewis said of it, “Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any who did not love it. To acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages” (The Discarded Image [1964], p. 75, archive.org).

Fr. Crouse guides his audience through this classic work of Western literature and thought, explaining not only its leading ideas, but also the theological background to the work. Because the argument makes no appeal to biblical revelation, it was long thought that Boethius, when facing execution on a trumped up charge of treason, had abandoned a superficial profession of Catholic Christianity to embrace the (pagan) philosophical creed that he had always implicitly held. But as Fr. Crouse shows, the work explores questions intimately linked to a major Christian theological problem of the period, namely, the Semi-Pelagian controversy over the Grace and Free Will. Boethius’s solution is substantially identical to the “Catholic” position formally adopted shortly after his death at the Second Council of Orange (529).

Boethius approaches these questions from the standpoint of pure reason, admitting only “proofs not fetched in from outside, but belonging within and native to our sphere, each one drawing its validity from another” (Cons. III.12.35). But when “Lady Philosophy” summarizes one of her arguments with words borrowed from scripture, the “Prisoner” responds, “How much does not only the conclusion, the sum of your arguments, delight me, but much more the very words you use!” (Cons. III.12.23).

Fr. Crouse’s views on the Consolation can also be consulted in two characteristically pithy scholarly journal articles:

• “Semina Rationum: St. Augustine and Boethius,” Dionysius 4 (December 1980), pp. 75–86, open access.
• “St. Augustine, Semi-Pelagianism and the Consolation of Boethius,” Dionysius 22 (December 2004), pp. 95–110, open access.

The translation referred to in the recordings is Boethius: The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Loeb Classical Library 74 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973). It can be purchased new directly from HUP and from online retailers like Amazon and Indigo. An excellent resource for the study of the Consolation is the online text and grammatical commentary by Prof. James J. O’Donnell.