Cirilla Appointed Co-editor of Journal

The International Boethius Society (IBS) is pleased to announce the promotion of Dr. Anthony G. Cirilla (College of the Ozarks) from the position of Associate Editor to the position of Editor (alongside Kenneth C. Hawley, Editor) of Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society, effective July 10, 2025.

Carmina Philosophiae (CarmP) is an annual, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of Boethius, his age, and his influence, now in its thirty-fourth year of production. It is published by the Society in cooperation with the Association for Textual Studies and Production and with the generous support of Lubbock Christian University. The journal features full-length articles, review essays, manuscript editions, translations, and book reviews. As of 2018, all back issues of the journal are available on JSTOR and EBSCO.

Dr. Cirilla, who earned his Ph.D. at Saint Louis University, is associate professor of English at College of the Ozarks (Branson, MO). In addition to serving most capably as the journal’s associate editor, he has published widely in Boethian studies, including essays in The Journal of the Medieval Association of the Midwest (2015), The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England: The Consolation and its Afterlives, ed. A. Joseph McMullen and Erica Weaver (2018), and Carmina Philosophiae’s special issue (2023/2024) commemorating the 1500-year anniversary of Boethius’s death. That volume was the product of the mini-conference that he organized on behalf of the Society at Saint Louis University in conjunction with the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 

He is currently completing a book on the topic of Boethius’s Christianity, Sanctifying Philosophy: Boethius and the Consolation of a Quiet Faith, which is forthcoming from Davenant Press. 

Philip Edward Phillips, Ph.D.
Executive Director, International Boethius Society

Phillips Named Executive Director of the International Boethius Society

The International Boethius Society welcomes Philip Edward Phillips (Middle Tennessee State University) as its new Executive Director. Upon accepting his appointment by outgoing Executive Director Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., on July 9, 2025, he named Professor Kaylor Executive Director Emeritus and promoted Anthony G. Cirilla from associate editor to co-editor (with Kenneth C. Hawley) of Carmina Philosophiae. A charter member of the Society, Professor Phillips has served as its Corresponding Secretary (1992-1996), editor of the IBS Newsletter (1995-2002), co-editor (with Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr.) of Carmina Philosophiae (1996-2014), and Secretary (1996-2025). The author of “Boethius” in Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies (Oxford, 2017) and editor of Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana (Palgrave, 2014), Professor Phillips was co-editor (with Professor Kaylor) of five books on Boethius. He is grateful to Professor Kaylor for his lifelong commitment to the advancement of Boethian studies, from founding the Society to supporting emerging scholars, and he looks forward to working with the officers, trustees, and members of the Society to continue to promote the study of Boethius worldwide.

Kaylor Retires as Executive Director of the International Boethius Society

The International Boethius Society expresses its profound respect and appreciation to Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., upon his retirement as Executive Director of the IBS and co-editor of Carmina Philosophiae, effective July 8, 2025. Professor Kaylor founded the Society and ratified its Constitution at Kalamazoo on May 9, 1992. He subsequently served as the Society’s Executive Director from 1992-2025 and as the co-editor of its journal (with Philip Edward Phillips) from 1996-2014 (Volume 5/6 to 23) and (with Kenneth C. Hawley) from 2015-2025 (Volume 24 to 32/33). His contributions to the field of Boethian studies have been enormous, from the publication of his foundational The Medieval Consolation of Philosophy: An Annotated Bibliography (Garland, 1993) to his many important co-edited collections and editions, especially The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I (ACMRS, 2009) and A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (Brill, 2012), as well as numerous articles and editions related to Boethius and Chaucer. He appointed Professor Phillips to succeed him. Professor Kaylor, now our Executive Director Emeritus, is devoting his time to the completion of an important book, The Trojan War Tradition, and to other book-length projects in progress.

The International Boethius Society Welcomes Ian Johnson as New President

The International Boethius Society (IBS) warmly welcomes longtime member and Boethian scholar, Professor Ian Johnson, as our new president. Johnson accepted his new position at our IBS business meeting held on June 10, 2025, at the Twelfth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SMRS) at Saint Louis University.

Johnson is Professor of Medieval Literature and a member of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of St Andrews. He co-directed the Queen’s Belfast-St Andrews AHRC-funded project Geographies of Orthodoxy (2007-11). With Alastair Minnis, he edited The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume II. The Middle Ages (2005). His other major publications include The Middle English Life of Christ (2013), The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, ed. with Allan Westphall (2013), The Impact of Latin Culture on Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing, ed. with Alessandra Petrina (2018), Geoffrey Chaucer in Context (ed. 2019), and Literary Theory and Criticism in the Later Middle Ages, ed. with Ardis Butterfield and Andrew Kraebel. 

A contributor to Brill’s A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (2012) and Vernacular Traditions of Boethius’s De consolation philosophiae (2016), both edited by Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips, he is currently working on a study of the translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae in late medieval England and Scotland. Ian Johnson is our fifth president—following Margaret Gibson, Michael Masi, J. Keith Atkinson, and Paul E. Szarmach—since the Society’s founding in 1992.

Philip Edward Phillips, IBS Secretary

Fabio Troncarelli - New Book

International Boethius Society Trustee Fabio Troncarelli has just published a volume on Living Memory: Boethius, Cassiodorus, and the Consolation of Philosophy, Brill - V&R Press, 2025, with 63 figures.

Fabio Troncarelli examines the Late Antique Cassiodorus edition of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius in this study consisting of five chapters. The first one is a brief sketch of the biography of the two protagonists of the story. The second is about the medieval copies of the edition, some very close to the original archetype, preserving even its formal aspect and the indication of its first transcription in Ravenna in the 6th century. The third chapter establishes a comparison between some typical rhetorical, philosophical or editorial methods by Cassiodorus and the ones we find in the Boethius' edition. The fourth chapter explains what could have been the reasons for Cassiodorus to make such an edition, in the years of the breakdown of the Osthrogotic rule in Italy. The last chapter is about the afterlife of Boethius' reputation in Vivarium and the relationships between his murder and Amalsuntha's murder established by the Vivarian monks. (from the publisher's description: available on Amazon)