Medieval · AD 477–524
Who influenced Boethius?
Influences and legacy
His Consolation, written awaiting execution, handed logic to the early medieval West.
Boethius was influenced by Aristotle and Porphyry, and went on to influence Christine de Pizan. That is 3 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown author, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Boethius?
Born in Rome soon after the last Western emperor was deposed, Boethius became a senator at 25, consul at 33 and an adviser to the Ostrogothic king Theodoric. He set out to translate all of Greek philosophy into Latin and to reconcile Plato and Aristotle with Christian theology; the work stayed unfinished, but much of Aristotle reached the Renaissance through it.
His attacks on corruption made him enemies at court, and after he defended the consul Albinus against a charge of conspiracy, Theodoric imprisoned him around 523. In prison he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most copied books of the early Middle Ages. He was executed in 524.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Boethius?
2 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
Who did Boethius influence?
1 thinker on this map draws directly on Boethius.
- Christine de Pizan c. 1364–1430
The line of teachers behind Boethius
The longest documented line of influence ending at Boethius runs 8 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Boethius
Indirect influences
Contemporaries of Boethius
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Boethius, with no direct line between them.
- Pseudo-Dionysius c. 5th–6th c.
Boethius by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 2
- Direct followers
- 1
- Thinkers upstream
- 17
- Thinkers downstream
- 1
- Wikipedia languages
- 73 — #19 of 58 among medieval philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Boethius
- Who influenced Boethius?
- Aristotle and Porphyry.
- Who did Boethius influence?
- Christine de Pizan.
- When did Boethius live?
- AD 477–524. The map files Boethius under the medieval period.
- How rare is the Boethius card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Boethius in 73 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More medieval philosophers
- Augustine of Hippo AD 354–430
- Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274
- Avicenna 980–1037
- Ibn Khaldun 1332–1406
- Al-Ghazali c. 1058–1111
- Averroes 1126–1198
- Erasmus 1466–1536
- Hypatia c. 355–415