Wednesday, June 18, 2025

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

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

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)


Tuesday, October 1, 2024

12th Annual SMRS - 2025 CFP

Boethius at the 12th Annual Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Saint Louis University

June 9-11, 2025


The International Boethius Society seeks papers for panels on Boethian scholarship to be hosted by the Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, at Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, MO, on June 9-11, 2025. We are particularly interested in papers which examine The Consolation of Philosophy in translation and literary reception, as well as papers which explore teaching Boethius in a variety of contexts. However, papers exploring any aspect of Boethius's corpus and influence are welcome. 

Please submit paper abstracts of about 300 words to Anthony G. Cirilla at acirilla@cofo.edu by December 25, 2024. Also please consider joining the International Boethius Society to help support our efforts to promote Boethius scholarship.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

11th Annual Symposium on Medieval & Renaissance Studies

 Boethius 2024: The 1500 Year Memorial Conference

St. Louis University - June 10-12, 2024 


We had some wonderfully insightful and engaging presentations at our Boethius Mini-Conference.
Below are a few photos, and the program for our sessions is provided on our Conferences page.

Plenary Address, Stephen Blackwood, Ralston College

William Christian, Anthony G. Cirilla, Jane Maschue, & Gary Hartenburg

Discussion

Ethan Smilie, Madeline Fox, & Camarie Cirilla

Ian Johnson, Jennifer Arch, Abigail Palmisano, & Nicholas Babich

Jane Maschue, William Christian, Joshua Keatley, & Savannah Xaver

Megan Murton, Ian Johnson, Melinda Nielsen, & Ian Cornelius

Lea Luecking Frost

Margaret Trenchard-Smith

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Boethius 2024: The 1500 Year Memorial Conference at SMRS


11th Annual Symposium on Medieval & Renaissance Studies

Boethius 2024: Mini-Conference Sponsored by the International Boethius Society

In 524, Boethius authored the Consolation of Philosophy on the eve of his unjust execution. Fifteen centuries later, Boethius remains a figure of inspiration and fascination in his own right, and as a profoundly influential figure through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. In 2024, this memorial conference will consider that wide ranging legacy, hosted at the Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies held annually at St. Louis University in June. The International Boethius Society has had a presence at the SMRS since the symposium started and is pleased to organize this memorial to the life, works, and influence of a writer who shaped medieval and Renaissance thinkers so profoundly.

We look forward to this special mini-conference at the Symposium and will be providing updates soon on the featured presentations and sessions that the International Boethius Society is organizing for this event.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

58th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2023)

Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae in the Middle Ages


Sponsoring Organization: International Boethius Society

Organizer: Philip Edward Phillips (Middle Tennessee State University)

Presider: Philip Edward Phillips (Middle Tennessee State University)


Lindsay Ruth Ragle-Miller (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill), Fate and Fortune: Word Choice in the Old English Boethius

Ricardo Matthews (California State University - Fullerton), The Missing Song: Boethius and the Prosimetric Tradition

Matthew W. Brumit (University of Mary), Boethius's Four Modes of Knowing in Pearl

Sarah R. Kyle (Iowa State University), "To mount the narrow seat": A Physician's Transformation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae in a Fifteenth-Century Illustrated Herbal


It was so rewarding to be back in person on the Western Michigan University campus--what a great and enjoyable session! The presentations were just fantastic, and they fit together so very well. Here are a few photos of our session: the preliminary remarks about the Society, the panel taking Q&A, and the presenters posing with our organizer and presider, Dr. Philip Phillips. 

Kenneth Discussing our Journal, Carmina Philosophiae


Q&A with Ricardo, Lindsay, Sarah, and Matthew


Philip, Ricardo, Lindsay, Sarah, and Matthew


57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2022)

The Alfredian or Old English Boethius: Authority, Authorship, and Influence - In Memory of Paul E. Szarmach

Sponsoring Organization: International Boethius Society

Organizer: Philip Edward Phillips (Middle Tennessee State University)

Presider: Rhonda L. McDaniel (Middle Tennessee State University) 


Ruta Sileikyte Zukiene (Vilniaus University/Vytauto Didžiojo University), The Authority of Reason in the Old English Boethius

Kenneth C. Hawley (Lubbock Christian University), The Power and Personality of the Eternal God in the Alfredian Boethius


We had a wonderful Zoom session again this year and enjoyed a lively and interesting discussion with our attendees after the presentations. We are grateful for the support staff who made this remote gathering possible.