NOT THREE GODS
A TREATISE BY
ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS
BOETHIUS
MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF
EN-CONSULS, PATRICIAN
TO HIS FATHER-IN-LAW, QUINTUS AURELIUS
MEMMIUS SYMMACHUS
MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF
EX-CONSULS, PATRICIAN
2 e.g. Aug. De Trin.
3 The terms differentia, numerus, species, are used expertly, as would be expected of the author of the In Isag. Porph. Commenta. See S. Brandt's edition of that work (in the Vienna Corpus, 1906), s.v. differencia, etc.
4 This metthod of mental abstraction is employed more elaborately in Tr. iii. (vide infra, p. 44) and in Cons. v. pr. 4, where the notion of divine foreknowledge is abstracted in imagination.
5 By Cicero (Tusc. v. 7. 19).
6 Cf. the similar division of philosophy in Isag. Porph. ed. Brandt, pp 7 ff.
7 Sb. Though they may be separated in thought.
8 , of Aristotle. Cf. (Alexander Aphrod. De Anima, 17. 17); (id. De anima libri mantissa, 124. 77).
9 This is Realism. Cf. "Sed si rerum ueritatem atque integritatem perpendas, non est dubium quin uere sint. Nam cum res omnes quae uere sunt sine his quinque (i.e. genus species differentia propria accidentia) esse non possint, has ipsas quinque res uere intellectas esse non dubites". Isag. In Porph. ed. pr. i. (M. P.L. lxiv. Col. 19, Brandt, pp. 26 ff.). The two passages show that Boethius is definitly commited to the Realistic position, although in his Comment. In Porphyr. A se translatum he holds the scales between Plato and Aristotle, "quorum diiudicare sententias aptum esse non duxi" (cp. Haureau, Hist. De la philosophie scolastique, i. 120). As a fact in the Comment. in Porph. hemerely postpones the question, which in the De Trin. he settles, Boethius was ridiculed in the Middle Ages for his caution.
10 e.g. if I say "one, one, one," I enounce three unities.
11 The same words are used to illustrate the same matter in the Comment. in Arist. 2nd ed. (Meiser) 56. 12.
12 Gilbert de la Porree in his commentary on the De Trin. Makes Boethius's meaning clear. "Quad igitur in illo substantiam nominamus, non est subiectionis ratione quod dicitur, sed ultra omnem quae accidentibus est subiecta substantiam est essentia, absque omnibus quae possunt accidere solitaria omnino" (Migne, P.L. lxiv. 1283). Cf. Aug. De Trin. vii. 10.
13 i.e. according to their substance.
14 The doctrine is Augustine's, cf. De Ciu. Dei, xi. 6, xii. 16; but Boethius's use of sempiternitas, as well as his word-building, seem to be peculiar to himself. Claudianus Mamertus, speaking of applying the categories to God, uses sempiternitas as Boethius uses aeternitas. Cf. De Statu Animae i. 19. Apuleius seems to use both terms interchangeably, e.g. Asclep. 29-31. On Boethius's distinction between time and eternity see Cons. v. pr. 6, and Rand, Der dem B. zugeschr. Trakt. De fide, pp. 425 ff, and Brandt in Theol. Littzg., 1902, p. 147.
15Dominus and seruus are similarly used as illustration, In Cat. (Migne, P.L. lxiv. 217).
16 i.e. which is external to the master.
17 i.e. which is external to the whitened thing.
18 Cf. Cons. v. pr. 4 and 5, especially in pr. 5 the passage "quare in illius summae intellegentiae acumen si possumus erigamur."