BOETHIUS: A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR STUDENTS
Philip Edward Phillips
Middle Tennessee State University
This bibliography includes selected works—mostly in English translation—on the life, thought, works, and influence of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c.A.D. 480-524/25). It is intended primarily for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the humanities. Those desiring a more extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works—including the range of primary texts in Latin as well as secondary literature in various languages—are advised to consult Luca Obertello, “Biografia boeziana. Bibliographia generale,” in Severino Boezio, Vol. 2 (Genoa, 1974); Joachim Gruber, “Boethius 1925-1998,” in Lustrum. Internationale Forschungsberichte aus deim Bereich des klassichen Altertums 39 (1997): 307-83, 40 (1998): 199-259, and 52 (2010): 161-80; John Magee and John Marenbon, “Appendix: Boethius’ Works,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 303-39; and, most recently, Philip Edward Phillips, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius: A Chronology and Selected Annotated Bibliography,” in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 551-589.
PRIMARY WORKS
Complete Latin Works
Manlii Severini Boethii Opera omnia, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. 63 (Paris, 1882) and 64 (Paris, 1891). [Latin text only]
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius: De consolatione philosophiae; Opuscula theologica. 2nd edition. Edited by Claudio Moreschini. Munich: K.G. Saur, 2005. [Standard Latin text]
Boethius: The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated and edited by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester. Loeb Classical Library 74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. [Facing Latin and English texts]
The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Version of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae. 2 Vols. Edited by Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Boece. In The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Edited by Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 395-469.
The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae. Edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Medieval and Rennaissance Texts and Studies 366. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009.
Sharples, R.W., ed. Cicero, On Fate, and Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy IV 5-7, V. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1991.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by P.G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Boethius. Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by Joel Relihan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
De institutione arithmetica
Boethian Number Theory: A Translation of the “De institutione arithmetica.” Translated and edited by Michael Masi. Studies in Classical Antiquity 6. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983.
De institutione musica
Boethius: Foundations of Music. Translated by Calvin M. Bower and edited by C.V. Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
The Logical Works
Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii “De divisione liber.” Edited and Translated by John Magee. Philosophia Antiqua 77. Leiden, Brill, 1998.
Ammonius: On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 9; with Boethius: On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 9, first and second commentaries. Translated by David Blank and Normann Kretzmann. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica. Translated by Eleonore Stump. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Boethius’s De topicis differentiis. Translated by Eleonore Stump. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
The Theological Works
Boethius: The Theological Tractates; The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated and edited by H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester. Loeb Classical Library 74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Boethian Commentaries
George, David B., and John R. Fortin, O.S.B., ed. The Boethian Commentaries of Clarembald of Arras. Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture 7. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
Schultz, J.L., and E.A. Synan, ed. An Exposition of the “On the Hebdomads” of Boethius by St. Thomas Aquinas. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001.
SECONDARY WORKS
Astell, Ann W. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Asztalos, Monika. “Boethius as a Transmitter of Greek Logic to the Latin West: The Categories.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 95 (1993): 367-407.
Balint, Bridget K. Ordering Chaos: The Self and the Cosmos in Twelfth-Century Prosimetrum Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Barrett, Helen M. Boethius: Some Aspects of his Times and Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1965.
Belli, Margherita. Il Centro e la Circonferenza: Fortuna del De consolatione philosophiae di Boezio tra Valla e Leibniz. C.L.S.E., Subsida 14. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2011.
Benedict XVI. “On Boethius and Cassiodorus,” catechesis given at St. Peter’s Basilica at the weekly general audience in Paul VI Hall on March 12, 2008; Zenit.org, March 13, 2008. Available online at http://www.zenit.org/article-22041?l=english
Bower, Calvin. “Boethius and Nichomachus: An Essay Concerning the Sources of De institutione musica.” Vivarium 16 (1978): 1-45.
Brancato, Dario. “Readers and Interpreters of the Consolatio in Italy, 1300-1550.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 357-411.
Casey, John Patrick. “Boethius’s Works on Logic in the Middle Ages.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012.193-219.
Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
_____. “Theta on Philosophy’s Dress in Boethius.” Medium Aevum 49.2 (1980): 175-79.
Chamberlain, David S. “Philosophy of Music in the Consolatio of Boethius.” Speculum 45.1 (1970): 80-97.
Cherniss, Michael D. Boethian Apocalypse: Studies in Middle English Vision Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1987.
Classen, Jo-Marie. Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
Courcelle, Pierre. La Consolationde philosophie dans la tradition littéraire : antécédents et posterité de Boèce. Paris : Études Augustiniennes, 1967.
_____. Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, translated by H. E. Wedeck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Cropp, Glynnis M. “Boethius in Medieval France: Translations of the De Consolatione Philosophiae and Literary Influence.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 319-55.
Curley, T. F. “The Consolation of Philosophy as a Work of Literature.” American Journal of Philology (1987): 343-67.
De Rijk, Lambert M. “On the Chronology of Boethius’ Works on Logic. I and II.” Vivarium 2 (1964): 1-49; 125-62.
De Vogel, Cornelia J. “Boethiana I.” Vivarium (1971): 59-66
_____. “Boethiana II.” Vivarium (1972): 1-40.
Discenza, Nicole Guenther. The King’s English: Strategies of Translation in the Old English Boethius. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Donaghey, Brian. “The Post-Medieval English Translations of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius, 1500–1800.” In The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, vol. 5, edited by Roger Ellis and René Tixier. Turnhout: Brepols, 1996. 302–21.
Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Dürr, Karl. The Propositional Logic of Boethius. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1951.
Dwyer, Richard A. Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French Versions of the Consolatio Philosophiae. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1976.
Ebbesen, Sten. “Boethius as an Aristotelian Commentator.” In Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Richard Sorabji. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. 373-92.
Elliott, Elizabeth. Remembering Boethius: Writing Aristocratic Identity in Late Medieval French and English Literatures. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.
Frakes, Jerold C. The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 23. Leiden: Brill, 1988.
Fuhrmann, Manfred, and Joachim Gruber, eds. Boethius. Wege der Forschung 483. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984.
Galonnier, Alain, ed. Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs : Actes du colloque internationale de la Fondation Singer-Polignac Paris, 8-12 juin 1999. Philosophes Médiéveaux 44. Leuven: Peeters, 2003.
Gibson, Margaret, ed. Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.
Glei, Reinhold F, Nicola Kaminski, and Franz Lebsanft, ed. Boethius Christianus?: Transformationen der Consolatio philosophiae in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit [Boethius Christianus? The Reception of Boethius’ “Consolatio Philosophiae” in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age]. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.
Green-Pedersen, Niels Jørgen. The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages: The Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ Topics. Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1984.
Gruber, Joachim. “Boethius 1925-1998.” Lustrum. Internationale Forschungsberichte aus deim Bereich des klassichen Altertums 39 (1997): 307-83: 40 (1998): 199-259; and 52 (2010): 161-80.
_____. Kommentar zu Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. Texte und Kommentare 9. 2nd edn. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006.
Gualtieri, Angelo. “Lady Philosophy in Boethius and Dante.” Comparative Literature 23.2 (1971): 141-50.
Guillaumin, Jean-Yves. “Boethius’s De Institutione Artithmetica and its Influence on Posterity.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 135-161.
Hawley, Kenneth Carr. “The Boethian Vision of Eternity in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English Translations of De Consolatione Philosophiae.” PhD Diss., University of Kentucky, 2007.
Hehle, Christine. “Boethius’s Influence on German Literature.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 255-318.
Hoenen, Maarten, and Lodi Nauta, ed. Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the Consolatio Philosophiae. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
Jefferson, Bernard L. Chaucer and “The Consolation of Philosophy.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917.
Johnson, Ian. “Making the Consolatio in Middle English.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 413-46.
Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr. The Medieval Consolation of Philosophy: An Annotated Bibliography New York: Garland, 1992.
_____ and Philip Edward Phillips, ed. A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
_____ and Philip Edward Phillips, ed. New Directions in Boethian Studies. Studies in Medieval Culture 45. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007.
Lerer, Seth. Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in the Consolation of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Love, Rosalind C. “The Latin Commentaries on Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae from the 9th to the 11th Centuries.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages. Edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 75-133.
Magee, John. “The Boethian Wheels of Fortune and Fate.” Medieval Studies 49 (1987): 524-33.
_____. “Boethius’ Consolatio and the Theme of Roman Liberty.” Phoenix 59 (2005): 348-364.
_____. Boethius on Signification and Mind. Philosophia Antiqua 52. Leiden: Brill, 1989.
_____. “The Good and Morality: Consolatio 2-4.” In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 181-206.
_____. “On the Composition and Sources of Boethius’ Second Peri Hermeneias Commentary.” Vivarium 48 (2010): 7-54.
Marenbon, John. Boethius. Great Medieval Thinkers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
_____, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Masi, Michael, ed. Boethius and the Liberal Arts: A Collection of Essays. Utah Studies in Literature and Linguistics 18. Bern: Peter Lang, 1981.
McCluskey, Stephen. “Boethius’s Astronomy and Cosmology.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 47-73.
McInerny, Ralph. Boethius and Aquinas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990.
Minnis, Alastair J. Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1993.
_____, ed. The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of De Consolatione Philosophiae. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987.
Moorhead, John. “Boethius’ Life and the World of Late Antique Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 13-33.
_____. Theodoric in Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Moyer, Ann E. “The Quadrivium and the Decline of Boethian Influence.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 479-517.
Nash-Marshall, Siobhan. “Boethius’s Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to c.1500.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 163-191.
_____. Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian Metaphysics. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000.
Obertello, Luca A.M. Severino Boezio. 2 vols. Genoa: Academia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere, 1974.
_____. ed. Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani, Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980. Genoa: Academia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere, 1981.
O’Donnell, James J. The Ruin of the Roman Empire. New York: Ecco, 2008.
O’Daly, Gerard. The Poetry of Boethius. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Papahagi, Adrian. Boethiana Mediaevalia: A Collection of Studies on the Early Medieval Fortune of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2010.
Patch, Howard Rollin.“Fate in Boethius and the Neoplatonists.” Speculum 4 (1929): 62-72.
_____. The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927.
_____. “Necessity in Boethius and the Neoplatonists.” Speculum 10 (1935): 393-404.
_____. The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1935.
Payne, F. Anne. King Alfred and Boethius: An Analysis of the Old English Version of the Consolation of Philosophy. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Phillips, Philip Edward. “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius: A Chronology and Selected Annotated Bibliography.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 551-89
_____. “Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and the Lamentatio/Consolatio Tradition.” Medieval English Studies 9.2 (2001): 5-27. Available online athttp://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/mesak/mes092/01Phillips.htm
_____. “The English Consolation of Philosophy: Translation and Reception.” Carmina Philosophiae 17 (2008): 97-126.
_____. “Lady Philosophy’s Therapeutic Method: The ‘Gentler’ and the ‘Stronger’ Remedies in Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae.” Medieval English Studies 10.2 (2002): 5-26. Available online at http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/mesak/mes102/Phillips.htm
Radding, Charles M. “Fortune and Her Wheel: The Meaning of a Medieval Symbol.” Mediaevistik 5 (1992): 127-38.
Rand, E.K. Founders of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928; repr. New York, 1957.
Reiss, Edmund. Boethius. Twayne’s World Authors 672. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Relihan, Joel C. The Prisoner’s Philosophy: Life and Death in Boethius’s Consolation, with a contribution on the Medieval Boethius by William Heise. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Rimple, Mark T. “The Enduring Legacy of Boethian Harmony.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 448-78.
Robinson, Phoebe. “Dead Boethius: Sixth-Century Accounts of a Future Martyr.” Viator 35 (2004): 1-19.
Scott, Jamie. Christians and Tyrants: The Prison Testimonies of Boethius, Thomas More, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
Shanzer, Danuta. “The Death of Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy.” Hermes (1984): 352-66.
Shiel, James. “Boethius’ Commentaries on Aristotle,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958): 217-44; repr. in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Richard Sorabji. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. 349-72.
Silk, E. T. “Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae as a Sequel to Augustine’s Dialogues and Soliloquia.” Harvard Theological Review 32 (1939):19-39.
Silvestre, H. “Review of F. Troncarelli, Tradizione perdute.” Scriptorium 38 (1984):170-72.
Suto, Taki. Boethius on Mind, Grammar, and Logic: A Study of Boethius’ Commentaries on Peri Hermeneias. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Speca, Anthony. Hypothetical Syllogistic and Stoic Logic. Philosophia Antiqua 87. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Stewart, Hugh Fraser. Boethius: An Essay. Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1891.
Szarmach, Paul E. “Boethis’s Influence in Anglo-Saxon England: The Vernacular and the De Consolatione Philosophiae.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 221-54.
Troncarelli, Fabio. “Afterword: Boethius in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 519-49.
_____. “Forbidden Memory: The Death of Boethius and the Conspiracy of Silence.” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 183-205.
Stump, Eleonore. “Boethius’s Work on the Topics.” Vivarium 12 (1974): 77-93.
Usener, Hermann. Anecdoton Holderi: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostogothischer Zeit. Bonn: C. Georgi, 1873.
Von Albrecht, Michael. “Boethius.” In A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997. 1.1708-38.
Wickham, Chris. The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages. New York: Viking, 2009.
Wiltshire, Susan Ford. “Boethius and the Summum Bonum.” The Classical Journal 67 (1972): 216-20.
Encyclopedia Articles
Magee, John. “Boethius.” In The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, 2 vols. edited by Lloyd Gerson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 2:788-812.
Marenbon, John. “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2005; Fall 2008 Edition). Available online:http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/boethius/.
Stump, Eleonore. “Boethius.” In Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, edited by Donald Zeyl, Daniel Devereux, and Phillip Mitsis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 114-17.
Szarmach, Paul E. “Boethius’s Influence in Anglo-Saxon England: The Vernacular and the De Consolatione Philosophiae.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages. Edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 221-254.
Academic Journal
Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society (ISSN 1075-4407), edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips. Web site of the journal:http://boethius.blogspot.com/p/carmina-philosophiae.html.
Online Boethian Resources
LAST UPDATED: May 15, 2013
