te 106: In the Paraenesis.]

[Footnote 107: Usener's suggestion (pp. 38, 39) that he obtained this
honour in consequence of having filled the place of _Comes Sacrarum
Largitionum_ seems to me only to land us in the further difficulty
caused by the entire omission of all allusion to this fact both in the
Paraenesis and in the Anecdoton Holderi.]

[Footnote 108: See Var. i. 10 and 45; ii. 40.]

[Sidenote: His theological treatises.]

So far, then, we have in the 'Anecdoton Holderi' only a somewhat
meagre reiteration of facts already known to us. But when we come to
the statement of the literary labours of Boethius the case is entirely
altered. It is well known that in the Middle Ages certain treatises on
disputed points of Christian theology were attributed to him as their
author. They are:--

1. A treatise 'De Sancta Trinitate.'

2. 'Ad Johannem Diaconum: Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de
Divinitate substantialiter praedicentur.'

3. 'Ad eundem: Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint cum non
sint substantialia bona.'

4. 'De Fide Catholica.'

5. 'Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.'

It may be said at once that in the earlier MSS. the fourth treatise is
not attributed to Boethius. It seems to have been included with the
others by some mistake, and I shall therefore in the following remarks
assume that it is not his, and shall confine my attention to the first
three and the fifth.

[Sidenote: Difficulty as to religious position of Boethius.]

Even as to these, notwithstanding the nearly unanimous voice of the
early Middle Ages (as represented by MSS. of the Ninth, Tenth, and
Eleventh Centuries) assigning them to Boethius as their author,
scholars, especially recent scholars, have felt the gravest possible
doubts of their being really his, doubts which have of late ripened
into an almost complete certainty that he was not their author. The
difficulty does not arise from anything in the diction or in the
theology which points to a later age as the time of their composition,
but from the startling contrast which they present to the religious
atmosphere of the 'Consolation of Philosophy.' Here, in these
theological treatises, we have the author entering cheerfully into the
most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of
Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the
Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and
in disgrace, with dea