The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 9

[Footnote 107: Usener's suggestion (pp. 38, 39) that he obtained this honour in consequence of having filled the place of _Comes Sacrarum Largitionum_ seems to me only to land us in the further difficulty caused by the entire omission of all allusion to this fact both in the Paraenesis and in the Anecdoton Holderi.]

[Footnote 108: See Var. i. 10 and 45; ii. 40.]

[Sidenote: His theological treatises.]

So far, then, we have in the 'Anecdoton Holderi' only a somewhat meagre reiteration of facts already known to us. But when we come to the statement of the literary labours of Boethius the case is entirely altered. It is well known that in the Middle Ages certain treatises on disputed points of Christian theology were attributed to him as their author. They are:--

1. A treatise 'De Sancta Trinitate.'

2. 'Ad Johannem Diaconum: Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de Divinitate substantialiter praedicentur.'

3. 'Ad eundem: Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint c.u.m non sint substantialia bona.'

4. 'De Fide Catholica.'

5. 'Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.'

It may be said at once that in the earlier MSS. the fourth treatise is not attributed to Boethius. It seems to have been included with the others by some mistake, and I shall therefore in the following remarks a.s.sume that it is not his, and shall confine my attention to the first three and the fifth.

[Sidenote: Difficulty as to religious position of Boethius.]

Even as to these, notwithstanding the nearly unanimous voice of the early Middle Ages (as represented by MSS. of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries) a.s.signing them to Boethius as their author, scholars, especially recent scholars, have felt the gravest possible doubts of their being really his, doubts which have of late ripened into an almost complete certainty that he was not their author. The difficulty does not arise from anything in the diction or in the theology which points to a later age as the time of their composition, but from the startling contrast which they present to the religious atmosphere of the 'Consolation of Philosophy.' Here, in these theological treatises, we have the author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him--a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity--the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of a Theist only; and from beginning to end, except one or two sentences in which an obscure allusion may possibly be detected to the Christian revelation, there is nothing which might not have been written by a Greek philosopher ignorant of the very name of Christianity. Of the various attempts which have been made to solve this riddle perhaps the most ingenious is that of M. Charles Jourdain, who, in a monograph devoted to the subject[109], seeks to prove that the author of the theological treatises referred to was a certain Boethus, an African Bishop of the Byzacene Province, who was banished to Sardinia about the year 504 by the Vandal King Thrasamond.

[Footnote 109: De l'Origine des Traditions sur le Christianisme de Boece (Paris, 1861.)]

Not thus, however, as it now appears, is the knot to be cut. And after all, M. Jourdain, in arguing, as he seems disposed to argue, against any external profession of Christianity on the part of Boethius, introduces contradictions greater than any that his theory would remove. To any person acquainted with the thoughts and words of the little coterie of Roman n.o.bles to which Boethius belonged, it will seem absolutely impossible that the son-in-law of Symmachus, the receiver of the praises of Ennodius and Ca.s.siodorus, should have been a professed votary of the old Paganism. It is not the theological treatises coming from a man in his position which are hard to account for; it is the apparently non-Christian tone of the 'Consolation.'

The fragment now before us shows that the old-fashioned belief in Boethius as a theologian was well founded. 'He wrote a book concerning the Holy Trinity, and certain dogmatic chapters, and a book against Nestorius.' That is a sufficiently accurate _resume_ of the four theological treatises enumerated above. Here Usener also observes--and I am inclined to agree with him--that there is a certain resemblance between the style of thought of these treatises and that of the 'Consolation' itself. They are, after all, philosophical rather than religious; one of the earliest samples of that kind of logical discussion of theological dogmas which the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages so delighted to indulge in. The young philosopher, hearing at his father-in-law's table the discussions between Chalcedonian and Monophysite with which all Rome resounded, on account of the prolonged strife with the Church of Constantinople, set himself down to discuss the same topics which they were wrangling over by the light--to him so clear and precious--of the Greek philosophy. There was perhaps in this employment neither reverence nor irreverence. He had not St.

Augustine's intense and almost pa.s.sionate conviction of the truth of Christianity; but he was quite willing to accept it and to discourse upon it, as he discoursed on Arithmetic, Music, and Geometry.

But when premature old age, solitude, and the loss of liberty befell him, it was not to the highly elaborated Christian theology of the Sixth Century that he turned for support and consolation. Probably enough the very fact that he knew some of the pitfalls in the way deterred him from that dangerous journey, where the slightest deviation on either side landed him in some detested heresy, the heresy of Nestorius or of Eutyches. 'On revient toujours a ses premiers amours;' and even so Boethius, though undoubtedly professing himself a Christian, and about to die in full communion with the Catholic Church, turned for comfort in his dungeon to the philosophical studies of his youth, especially to the ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle.

After all, the t.i.tle of the treatise is '_Philosophiae_ Consolatio;'

and however vigorous a literature of philosophy may in the course of centuries have grown up in the Christian domain, in the sixth century the remembrance of the old opposition between Christianity and Philosophy was perhaps still too strong for a writer to do anything more than stand neutral as to the distinctive claims of Christianity, when he had for the time donned the cloak of the philosopher.

[Sidenote: The Bucolic Poem of Boethius.]

We learn from the fragment before us that Boethius also wrote a 'Bucolic Poem.' This is an interesting fact, and helps to explain the facility with which he breaks into song in the midst of the 'Consolation.' It may have been to this effort of the imagination that he alluded when he said at the beginning of that work--

'Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi Flebilis, heu, moestos cogor inire modos.'

We would gladly know something more of this 'Bucolic Poem' indited by the universal genius, Boethius.

[Sidenote: Ca.s.siodorus.]

III. As for _Ca.s.siodorus_ himself, the additional information furnished by this fragment has been already discussed in the foregoing chapter. That he was _Consilarius_ to his father during his Praefecture, and that in that capacity he recited an eloquent panegyric on Theodoric, which was rewarded by his promotion to the high office of the Quaestorship, are facts which we learn from this fragment only; and they are of high importance, not only for the life of Ca.s.siodorus but for the history of Europe at the beginning of the Sixth Century, because they make it impossible to a.s.sign to any letter in the 'Variae' an earlier date than 500.

CHAPTER III.

THE GRADATIONS OF OFFICIAL RANK IN THE LATER EMPIRE.

[Sidenote: Official Hierarchy introduced by Diocletian.]

It is well known that Diocletian introduced and Constantine perfected an elaborate system of administration under which the t.i.tles, functions, order of precedence, and number of attendants of the various officers of the Civil Service as well as of the Imperial army were minutely and punctiliously regulated. This system, which, as forming the pattern upon which the n.o.bility of mediaeval Europe was to a great extent modelled, perhaps deserves even more careful study than it has yet received, is admirably ill.u.s.trated by the letters of Ca.s.siodorus. The _Not.i.tia Utriusque Imperii_, our copies of which must have been compiled in the early years of the Fifth Century, furnishes us with a picture of official life which, after we have made allowance for the fact that the Empire of the West has shrunk into the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy (with the addition of Dalmatia and some other portions of Illyric.u.m), is almost precisely reproduced in the pages of the 'Various Letters.' In order that the student may understand the full significance of many pa.s.sages in those letters, and especially of the superscriptions by which each letter is prefaced, it will be well to give a brief outline of the system which existed alike under Theodosius and Theodoric.

[Sidenote: n.o.bilissimi.]

In the first place, then, we come to what is rather a family than a cla.s.s, the persons bearing the t.i.tle _n.o.bilissimus_[110]. These were the nearest relatives of the reigning Emperor; his brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. The t.i.tle therefore is not unlike that of Royal or Imperial Highness in modern monarchies. I am not sure whether any trace can be found of the survival of this t.i.tle in the Ostrogothic Court. Theodahad, nephew of Theodoric, is addressed simply as 'Vir Senator[111],' and he is spoken of as 'praecelsus et amplissimus vir[112].' It is not so, however, in respect of the three great official cla.s.ses which follow--the Ill.u.s.tres, Spectabiles, and Clarissimi--whose t.i.tles were rendered as punctiliously in the Italy of Theodoric as ever they were in the Italy of Diocletian and Constantine.

[Footnote 110: The existence of this t.i.tle is proved not only by the language of Arcadius in the Theodosian Code x. 25. 1, concerning 'n.o.bilissimae puellae, filiae meae,' but also by Zosimus (ii. 39), who says that Constantine bestowed the dignity of n.o.bilissimus on his brother Constantius and his nephew Hannibalia.n.u.s ([Greek: tes tou legomenou n.o.belissimou par' autou Konstantinou tuchontes axias aidoi tes syngeneias]); and by Marcellinus Comes, s. a. 527, who says: 'Justinus Imperator Justinianum ex sorore sua nepotem, jamdudum a se n.o.bilissimum designatum, participem quoque regni ani, successoremque creavit.' It is evident that the t.i.tle did not come by right of birth, but that some sort of declaration of it was necessary.]

[Footnote 111: Var. iii. 15.]

[Footnote 112: Var. viii. 23.]

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.tres.]

I. The _Ill.u.s.tres_ were a small and select circle of men, the chief depositaries of power after the Sovereign, and they may with some truth be compared to the Cabinet Ministers of our own political system. The 'Not.i.tia' mentions thirteen of them as bearing rule in the Western Empire. They are:

1. The Praetorian Praefect of Italy.

2. The Praetorian Praefect of the Gauls.

3. The Praefect of the City of Rome.

4. The Master of the Foot Guards (Magister Peditum in Praesenti).

5. The Master of the Horse Guards (Magister Equitum in Praesenti).

6. The Master of the Horse for the Gauls (per Gallias).

7. The Grand Chamberlain (Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi).

8. The Master of the Offices.

9. The Quaestor.

10. The Count of Sacred Largesses.

11. The Count of the Private Domains (Comes Rerum Privatarum).

12. The Count of the Household Cavalry (Comes Domesticorum Equitum).

13. The Count of the Household Infantry (Comes Domesticorum Peditum).