1500 years after his death, this conference (in Italian) aims to illustrate the figure of Boethius in the context of the society of his time, and the influence of his writings on the culture of the Middle Ages and early modern Europe.
The wide scope of Boethius’ interests is reflected in a production that goes from philosophy to the sciences of the quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy); through his activity as translator and commentator of Aristotle’s Organon he transmits from Greek sources to Roman culture a wealth of knowledge that enriches its thesaurus traditionally learned from a scholastic teaching set on the arts of the trivium and provides early medieval intellectuals with knowledge that stimulates the revival of the study of logic and the mechanisms of mathematics and geometry (Abbon of Fleury, Gerbert of Aurillac), and procedures for investigating the mathematical structure of music (Ucbald of Saint-Amand, Musica e Scolica enchiriadis … ); contextual to this operation of cultural ‘transplantation’ is the adoption of the compositional practices of the masters of the school of Alexandria, which anticipates the medieval change in the status of the author and the dissolution of the concept of the original.
This anniversary is an auspicious occasion for an updated reflection, albeit necessarily by probing, on Boethius’ intellectual legacy, primarily on the unbroken fortune of the Consolatio, even in the Greek East.
Programme
Thursday, October 10
Chair: Loris STURLESE (Linceo, University of Salento)
- 10.00 President of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Greetings
- 10.15 Loris STURLESE (Linceo, University of Salento): Introduction
- 10.30 Rita LIZZI TESTA (Lyncean, University of Perugia): Boethius and Theoderic: the mad king and the martyred philosopher
- 11.15 Andrea GIARDINA (Lyncean, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa): The age of Boethius and Cassiodorus
- 11.45 Oronzo PECERE (Lyncean, University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale): The compositional and editorial dynamics of the commentary on the Categories and the Late Antique exemplar of the scribe Olibrio
- 12.15 Discussion
Chair: Rita LIZZI TESTA (Lyncean, University of Perugia)
- 15.00 John MAGEE (Toronto University): Further Observations on the Textual Tradition of Boethius’ First Peri Hermeneias Commentary
- 15. 30 John MARENBON (Cambridge University): Boethius on How Things are Related
- 16.15 Vincenzo DE RISI (CNRS-France): Boethius and the Origins of the Axiomatic Method
- 16.45 Danuta SHANZER (Universität Wien – Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften): Look who’s talking in Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae
- 17. 15 Discussion
Friday, October 11
Chair: Oronzo PECERE (Lyncean, University of Cassino and Latium Meridionale)
- 10.00 Enrico MALTESE (Lyncean, University of Turin): De consolatione in Byzantium
- 10.30 Maria Luisa MENEGHETTI (Lyncean, University of Milan), Stefano RESCONI (University of Milan): Boethius’ Prisons
- 11.15 Roberto ANTONELLI (President of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei): Boethius and Dante
- 11.45 Piero BOITANI (Lyncean, Sapienza University of Rome): Boethius in England: Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth
- 12.15 Discussion 12.30 Oronzo PECERE (Lyncean, University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale): Conclusions