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{"content": "Allas I am compelled to begin verses of sorrowful matter. Once, in flourishing study, muses inspired poets to write delightful things for me. Dry verses of wretchedness wet my face with very tears. At last, no fear nor might could overcome the muses, they followed my way, that is to say. When I was exiled, those who were once my companions, wealthy and gracious, welcomed the harms that have befallen me. And sorrow has commanded his age to be in me. Shadows hide openly upon my head. And the slack skin trembles of my empty body. That death of men is welcome which does not come in sweet years, but comes to wretches often, called. Alas, Alas, with how deaf and erect death cruelly tears away from wretches. And yet, in the past, the unfaithful favored me with light goods. The sorrowful hour, that is to say, the death had almost drained my strength.\nBut now, fortune has turned her fickle demeanor / my unhappy life draws a long, unwelcome dwelling / O ye my friends, what comfort did you expect from me, generous as you were / He that has, in the meantime, recorded these things with me and marked my weepy complaint with an office above the height of my head, a woman of great reverence in appearance, her eyes burning and clear, shining above the common might of men with a lively color, and with such vigor and strength that it could not be emptied. Although she appeared to be of great age, men would not have believed it. In no way did she seem of our age / Her stature was of uncertain height, and sometimes it seemed that she touched the heavens with the height of her head. And when she lifted her head higher, she surpassed the self-heaven, so that the sight of men was in vain / Her clothes were made of delicate threads and the subtle craft of perishable material.\nThe woman wore clothes she had woven with her own hands, as she declared and showed me. The clothes had been darkened and obscured by Elda, as is wont with smoked images. In the lowest depths, there were ladders, by which men could climb from the lowest letter to the uppermost. However, some men had torn those clothes by force or strength. Each man took away such pieces as he could. And indeed, this woman carried small books in her hand. In her left hand, she held a scepter. When she saw these poetic muses approaching my bed, and speaking encouraging words to my weeping, she was a little amused and glowed with cruel eyes.\nWho said she has suffered approaching this sick man, these comestrophes, of which is the place that men call Theatre, the which only eases not his sorrows with remedial foods and nourishes him with sweet poison. Indeed, you are those who, with thorns and pricking of talents or affections, which are nothing fruitful nor profitable, destroy the corn plentiful of fruits of reason. For they hold hearts of men in use. But they deliver no one from malady. But if the Muses had withdrawn from me with your flattering ones, any unprofitable man as is commonly found among the people, I would well endure the less grievously. For in such an unprofitable man, my intentions were not harmed. But you withdrew from me this man, who has been nourished in my studies or schools of eloic and Academic, but now rather goes away, healed and cured by my muses. That is to say,\nby my meticulous sciences.\nAnd thus this woman, in a wrathful manner, cast herself down to the earth, passing sorrowfully over the threshold. I, who beheld her, was struck dumb with awe, unable to recognize her imperial authority. I grew abashed and stunned, casting my gaze down to the earth. I began to fear what she would do next. Then she came near and sat down on the very corner of my bed, and, beholding my face, which was cast down in grief, she spoke these words, lamenting the perturbation of my thoughts:\n\n\"Alas, how the thoughts of this man are driven by his own desires into deep darkness, abandoning his former clarity. This is driven by worldly winds. Once a man was free, to whom the heavens were open and known, accustomed to treading heavenly paths and gazing at the stars of the cold moon. \"\nAnd which star in heaven wanders. Comprehends this by the noble art of astronomy, and over this he was wont to seek the causes. When the swelling winds move and behold the smooth water of the sea. And what spirit turns the stable heavens. And why the star rises out of the red east to fall in the western waves. And what tempers the lusty hours of the first summer season. And names and adorns the earth with rosy flowers. And who makes the plentiful autumn in full years fleeting with heavy grapes. And this man was accustomed to tell the diverse causes of nature that were hidden. Alas, how lightly is emptied the light of his thought. And his neck is pressed with heavy chains. And bears his face inclined down for the great weight. And is compelled to look upon the foul earth. But time is now of more medicine than complaint said she.\nShe looked at me intently and said, \"Art thou not the one I once nursed with my milk and fed with my food, who has escaped and come to the courage of a perfect man? I gave you such armor that, if you had not cast them away yourself, they would have ensured your safety, which cannot be overcome. Do you not recognize me? Why do you stand there, mute and astonished? It would please me more if it were for shame. But it seems that astonishment has overwhelmed her when she saw me not only still, but rather speechless and mute. She placed her hand softly on my chest and said, \"There is no peril, she said. He has fallen into a lethargy, which is a common affliction for deceived hearts. He has forgotten himself a little, but he will soon remember himself if he has known me or not. And to help him remember, I will veil him in the cloud of mortal things.\"\nThese words she spoke, and with the lap of her garment she hid her face, drying my eyes that were filled with the waves of my weeping. When that night had passed away, darkness forsook me. And to my eyes returned again, just as the sun is hidden when the stars are covered with cloud and the firmament stands darkened by heavy, clinging clouds. And that the stars do not appear upon the heaven. So that the night seems spread upon the earth. If then the wind that is called Boreas blew out of the cause of the country of Trac\u00e9, it chased this night away, and discovered the closed day. Then Phoebus shone, shaken with sudden light, and struck with his beams in marveling eyes. Just so, and in no other way, the clouds dispersed and disappeared. I took heaven and received my mind to know the face of my friend, fixed my gaze. I beheld my noble philosophy in whose house I had conversed from my youth.\nI said, \"O thou mistress of all virtues, why should you reproach me for neglecting my noble sister, or for abandoning the common travel we have shared, bearing the burden you have shouldered out of envy of my name? It would not be becoming or befitting philosophy for one who is innocent to travel alone. Should I then fear blame and seem to be undergoing a new trial? Do you truly believe that philosophy is now first assailed in perils by wicked people? Have I not struggled with great strife against folly in olden times before the age of Plato? And even Plato himself, living, deserved victory against unjust death in my presence. The heritage of which Socrates speaks - the doctrine of Socrates, in his opinion the path to happiness - I have won over the Stoics and many others to follow it.\"\nEvery man who would defend his opinion with the words of Socrates tried to drown me in debate. They tore and rent my clothes, which I had made with my own hands. With the clothes they had torn from my body, I traced and stepped in some traces and footprints of my habituation, and the Stoics and their followers, this multitude of them, declared, \"This is Philo to be slain.\" If you are considering Anaxagoras or the poetry of Socrates, or the torments of Socrates and Soranos, whose renown is neither ever old nor unsympathetic, but only because they seemed most unlike the wicked people. Therefore, you should not be surprised that, in the tumult, I have this as my main purpose.\n\nThat is, to displease wicked men. Of all shrews, the host is never great.\nIt is disdainful, for it is not governed by any leader of reason but is ruled only by fleeting error and folly. And if they sometimes make a hostility against us, assailing us as stronger, our leader draws his riches to himself and they are intent on trifles or unprofitable sacks. But we, who are securely above all tumult and noise, are warned and enclosed in such palaces. Where clattering or annoying folly may not reach us, we scorn such ravagers and intruders of foulest things.\n\nWhoever it is that is clear of virtue and well-ordered in living has subjected the proud words and looked uprightly upon either fortune he may hold his cheer undismayed. The rages and manaces of the sea coming and chasing away the unwary, neither smoking fires nor the way of thunder will lay hold.\nthat is not willing to strike high towers shall not move that man who dreads the wretches tyrants, wood and felonious with any strength. Hoop And so shall you disarm the ire of this unmighty tyrant, but who quakes or desires anything unstable from his right. That man who does so, has cast away his shield, and is removed from his place. And enchains him with the which he may be drawn. with the which he may be drawn\nFelistow said these things. And they ought to enter your heart, art thou like an ass to the harp. Why weepest thou, why spillest thou tears. If thou abidest and seekest help from thy leech, the wound should be discovered. Though I had courage in my heart to answer and said, And need it not of rehercing or of amonition. And shew it not enough by himself the sharpening that grows woody against me. It does not move him to see the face or the manner of this place.\nIs this the library that you had chosen for a right certain siege in my house, where you disputed with me about the science of things, touching divine and touching humanity? Was my habit such as it is now? Was my face or countenance such as it is now, when I sought with the secrets of nature, and when you informed my manners and the reason of all my life to the sample of the order of the leuen? Is not this the reward that I refer to the one to whom I have obeyed? Indeed, you informed by the mouth of Plato this sentence: \"He who is entirely devoted to wisdom governs these things, or if it so happened that the governors of commonwealths strove for wisdom, you also said by the mouth of the same Plato that it was a necessary cause for wise men to take and desire the governance of common things.\"\nfor the governments of cities to remain in the hands of felonious torturers, citizens should not bring pestilence and destruction upon good people. And therefore, following those authors, I desired to put into execution and in act of common administration the things that I had learned among my secret resting-places. Thou and God, who put thoughts in the minds of wise men, know this: nothing brought me to mastery or dignity but the common study of all goodness. And hence, between wicked people and me, there have been grievous discords which could not be released by prayers. For this liberty has the freedom of conscience, which the wrath of more mighty people has always been despised by me for the sake of right. How often have I resisted and withstood that man called Coniugast, who continually made assaults against the prosperous fortunes of poor, weak folk. How often have I put him off or cast him out, Trigwille, provost of the king's house.\nBoth of the wrongs that I had begun to do. And indeed, I had fully performed them. How often have I been covered and defended by the authority put against me by others. That is to say, I put my authority in peril for the wretched poor. The covetousness of strangers tormented them continually with my diseases and griefs beyond number. Never man yet drew me from right to wrong. When I saw the fortunes and riches of the people of the provinces harmed and used either by cruel raids or by common tributes or carriages, I was as sorry as they who suffered the harm. When Theodoric, King of the Goths, in a deed year had his granaries full of corn and commanded that no man should buy any corn until his corn was sold, and at a grievous dear price, Boethius opposed that order and overcame it. Knowing all this, King Theodoric himself came to an agreement or made a truce.\nthat were established upon the people by such a manner of imposition: a bushel of corn, he must yield the king the fifth part. When it was in the sour hungry time, there was established grievous and unwelcome compulsion that men saw well. It should greatly torment and damage all, and the knowing of it, I overcame it, so that the compulsion was not asked for nor took effect. Pauline, a counselor of Rome, the riches of whom Pauline, the houses of the palaces. That is to say, the officers would have devoured by hope and covetise. Yet I drew out of the Iowes of hand, for as much as the pain of the accusation aggravated beforehand should not suddenly hent nor punish wrongfully Albyn, a counselor of Rome. I put myself against the hates and indignations of the accuser Cyprian. Is it not then enough that I have caused great discord against myself.\nI ought to be more assured against other people, as I never reserved anything for myself, towards the king's hall, by which I would be more secure. But through the same accusers accusing, I have been condemned. One of whom, who was once chased out of the king's service, is now compelled to accuse me. For need of foreign money, Opilion and Gaudencius have also accused me. Although the royal justice had once deemed both of them to go into exile for their treachery and frauds without number. They refused to obey this judgment, but defended themselves by the secrecy of holy houses. Then, when this was discovered by the king, he commanded that if they departed from the city of Ravenna by a certain day, that men should mark hand-chasing, which might be likened to this cruelty. For truly, on that same day, the accusing of my name by those same accusers was received. What can be said hereof.\n\"hath my study and my conduct deserved this? Or else, was not fortune ashamed that Innocence was accused? Not all would have been ashamed that Innocence was accused. Yet, she should have been ashamed of the filth of my accusers. But ask thou in some of what guile I am accused / They say that I wished to save the company of the Senators. And dost thou wish to hear in what manner I am accused, that I should have distracted the accuser from bearing letters / by which he should have made the senators guilty again against the king's royal majesty / O mistress, what do you think of this? Shall I forsake this blame, that I may not be a shame to thee? Indeed, I would have it. That is to say, the salvation of the senate, I shall not let it go unwilling. And the intent of the accuser to be distracted shall cease.\"\nI desired the salvation of the order of the senate, and they had carried out this same senate's decrees and judgments as if it were a sin and a felony - that is, to silence the voices of the wise men. Of this matter, all remember, touching the falsely made letters by which I am accused of having the freedom of Rome. What pertains to me to speak of these letters? The fraud had been clearly shown if I had been allowed to confront my accusers. I would then have answered by the words of a man named Camus. For when he was accused of conspiring against Caesar Germain's son, he answered thus: \"If I had known it, you would not have known it. In this matter, sorrow has not so dulled my wit that I only play the part of a shrewd man who accuses virtue of felonies.\"\nBut I wonder greatly how they can perform things that they have hoped to do against Innocents. I found it marvelous how such things could be achieved and performed in the presence of God, as every malicious man has conceived in his thoughts against Innocents. One of your family members asked me this question. If God is present, when will wicked things come? But it would have been better if felonious folk, who now desire the blood and death of all good men, were not present. And also, some of the senate wished to continue destroying me, whom they have always seen battling and defending good men and also all the senators who had not deserved the fathers' wrath - that is, the senators, who should have willed my destruction. You remember well, as I suppose, that when I wanted to do or say anything, you yourself were always present, ruling me. At the city of Verona, when the king, greedy for common slaughter, cast himself to transport upon all the order of the senate the guilt of his royal majesty.\nOf the white thing that Albyn was accused, I defended it with great certainty of danger to me before the senate. You know well that I speak the truth. I never boasted about myself or my works. Whenever anyone receives great renown, he mentions the good judges so often. I would have confessed and polluted my conscience with sacrilege for the desire of dignity, had you not chased out of the siege of my heart all desire for earthly things. You, who are planted in me, had no place in me before your eyes, for you dropped every day in my mind and were not convenient or necessary for me to seek help from the foulest spirits. You, whom you have ordained and set in such excellence, made me like God. And outside this the truly clean secret chamber of my house, that is to say, my wife and the company of my honest friends.\nMy wife's father, as holy and worthy as he was to be revered for his deeds, defended me from all suspicion of such blame. But out of malice, those who accuse me take me for a follower of the philosophy of great blame, because they believe that I have had an affinity to malefice or enchantment, since I am filled and satisfied with your teachings and informed of your manners. And it does not suffice that your reverence avails me nothing; but if you, of your own free will, are tarnished by my offense, the harms that have befallen me yet increase. And the judgments and opinions of many people look to nothing but the accidents of fortune. They judge that only such things are provided by God which temporal willingness commands. Gloss: He who has prospered is a good man and worthy to have that prosperity. And he who has adversity is a wicked man, and God has forsaken him, and he is worthy to have that adversity.\nThis is the opinion of some people, and thereof comes that good guessing. First of all, forsaken wretches, it grieves me right now in diverse sentences that the people say of me. And so much I say that the last charge of contrary fortune is this: that when any blame is laid upon a culprit, men believe that he has deserved that he suffers. I, who am put away from good men and despoiled of dignities, and defamed of my name by gossip, have suffered torments for my good deeds. Certainly it seems to me that I see the felonious counsels of wicked men held in joy and gladness. And I see that every lord shapes himself to find new frauds to accuse good folk.\nI see that good folk are overthrown for fear of my peril, and every luxurious tormentor dares commit all felony unpunished and is excited to it by bribes. And innocents are not only deprived of certainty but of defense. And to this I wish to cry out to God in this manner:\n\nThou maker of the wheel that binds the swift to thy perpetual chariot. And tormenting Swift, thou restrainest the starry host with her full horns meeting with all the Andromeda, and sometimes when the pale moon wanes, and the even star Hesperus arising comes after, is pale by the morning act rising of the sun. And then it is called Lucifer. Thou restrainest the day by shorter dwelling in the time of the cold winter that makes the leaves fall. Thou dividest the swift tides of the night when the hot summer is come. Thy might tempers the variant seasons of the year. So that Zephyrus the debonair wind brings again in the first summer season.\nThe leaves that the wind Boreas carries away in autumn, that is, the last end of summer. And the seeds that the star Arcturus sows have grown high cornfields. There is nothing unbound from this old law, nor does anything forsake the work of its own estate, O governor governing all things by a certain end. Why do you refuse only to govern the works of men in a due manner? Why do you allow sliding fortune to bring great changes to things? So that painful penalties should punish felons, punish the Innocents, and people of wicked manners sit in high chairs. And annoying people tread and unrightfully on the necks of holy men. And virtue clear and shining.\nNaturally is hidden in dark darkness, and the rightful man bears the pain and the blame of the felons. Not the forswearing or the fraud covered and kept with a false color, nor does it annoy excessively. When they please, these shrewd ones rejoice in putting under them the sovereign kings, whom the people without number fear. O thou, what some one art thou that knittest all the bonds of thine own self, look upon these wretches on earth. We men who are not troubled in this sea of fortune. Thou Governor, withdraw and restrain the raging floods. And fasten and firm these earths stable with that bond. With which thou governest heaven, which is so large.\n\nWhen I had continually sobbed or broken out with these things, she, with her peaceful countenance and nothing moved by my complaints, said thus: when I saw the queen she was sorrowful and weeping, I knew at once that thou wert a wretch and exiled, but I knew not how far thy exile was if thou wouldst tell me.\nbut if you are certain of your way and have gone amiss, and if you think that you are to be put out of your country, then you have put yourself out rather than any other, for no one but you yourself could have done that to it. For if you remember from what country you are born, it is not governed by emperors nor by the rule of the multitude, as were the countries of Athand, one king, and that is God who reigns over your country. Which lord it is a freedom to be governed by his bridle and to obey his justice. Have you forgotten that old law of your city? In that city, it is ordained and established that any man who has founded his seat or his house therein may not be exiled from that place by any right. For whoever is contained within the walls of that city, there is no fear that he may deserve to be exiled.\nWho lets the will reside there abides not so much by this place as by your own face. I do not ask for the walls of your library adorned and worked with yours and glass, but for the content that makes books valuable or precious. I mean the sentences of your books and certainly your merits bestowed in common good. You have spoken truthfully, but after the multitude of your good deeds you have said few. And of the honesty or falseness of things opposed to you, you have remembered things known to all. Of the felonies and frauds of your accusers, it seems you have touched upon them rightfully and briefly. Anyone could have expressed these things more abundantly in the mouth of the people who know all this.\nThou hast greatly blamed and complained of the wrongful deed of the Senate. And thou hast sorrowed for my blame. Thou hast wept for the damage to thy reputation that is apparent and thy last sorrow increased again, that he who governs the heavens should govern us. And sorrow and anger and weeping draw the diversely, as thou art now weak of thought. Mightier remedies shall not yet touch thee, for which we will use somewhat lighter medicines. So that the passions that have become hard in swelling by perturbations flowing into thy thought may become easy and soft to receive the strength of a more mighty and more bitter medicine by an easier touch.\n\nWhen the heavy star of Cancer, enchained by the beams of Phoebus, trusting that it had to its corn, takes God's token and assigns the times accordingly,\n\nhas divided and constrained to be imposed together.\nFor whoever abandons certain ordinances in action through outsourcing, he has no happy outcome or end to his works. First, may I be allowed to probe and examine the nature of your thought through a few questions, so that I may understand the manner of your cure? You asked me, at your will, and I shall answer. She replied, \"Whether do I believe that this world is governed foolishly by a head [I], I do not think that I would be moved by fortuitous fortune, but I know well that God is the governor of His work. Never was there a day that could put me out of the consolation of that sentence. P. So it is asked, for the same thing, whether you sang a little here before and bemoaned and wept, that only men are put out of the care of God. For of all other things, do you not doubt that they are governed by reason? But, indeed, I greatly wonder. Why are you sick? Since you have been put in such a wholesome sentence.\nBut let us seek deeper. I suppose that there is a lack of clarity in what you mean. Tell me this. Do you not doubt that this world is governed by God? With which governance do you take heed that it is governed? I do not know I the meaning of your question, so that I may not yet answer your demands. I was not deceived, I suppose, that there was something lacking by which the malady of perturbation crept into your thought. So, tell me this. Do you remember what the end of things is, and whither their intention of all kind tends? I have heard it told sometime that I. But my memory has been dulled by drink. Certainly, if you know when all things have come and proceeded, I know it and answered that God is the beginning of all. And how can this be, you say, that though you know the beginning of things, you do not know what the end of things is? But such are the customs of perturbation and this power they have.\n\"that they may move a man to fear that thou wilt not remember I. Philos asked whether I am a reasonable mortal beast. I well know and confess that I am it. Yet she did not ask me. Now we well know I asked her other cause of your malady, and it is a great one. You have recovered from it. For you are troubled on account of your own goods. And you do not know what things are. For you think that felonious and wicked men are mighty and powerful. And you have forgotten by which governments the world is governed. For you think that these mutations of fortune flee without governance. These are the causes of your affliction. & that is the true sentence of the governance of the world, that you believe that the governing of it is not subject to the folly of these chances, but to the reason of God.\"\nAnd therefore doubt the nothing, for this little spark's heat of life shall shine, but since it's not yet time for faster remedies, and the nature is of thoughts thus deceived. That as often as they cast away soth opinions, they clothe them in false opinions. The darkening that darkens I shall somewhat attempt to make thin and weak by light and gentle remedies. So that after the darkenings of deceiving things are done away, thou may know the shining of true light.\n\nThe stars covered with black clouds no longer yield down light, if the troubling wind that is called Auster prevails. Tourning and walking the sea disturbs the boiling up from the bottom. The waves that were once clear as glass and like the fair bright days. Nevertheless, the sight of men is obstructed by the filth and ordure that is resolved.\nAnd the streaming stream that flows differently from high mountains is often checked and resisted by the surrounding of a stone that has fallen from some rock. And if you will look and judge truly with clear light and keep the way with a right path, drive away fear. Flee from hope, let no sorrow approach; that is to say, let none of these four passions and darkness be that thought. And hold with bridles.\n\nAnd here ends the first book. \u00b6 Next follows the second book.\n\nAfter this she sang, after she had gathered by reaction styles. My attention.\nas anyone might say, after she perceived by your steadfast stare that I was listening to her, she began to speak in this way: \"I have understood and known utterly the causes and the habit of your malady. You languish and are defeated for the desire and talent of your heart. She, who alone changes as you feign to the ward, has perverted the clarity and state of your courage. I understand the full fold of colors and deceits of this marvelous monstrous fortune. And how she uses excessive flattering familiarity with them, compelling them to beguile. So long until she has conquered us with insufferable sorrow. Those whom she has left in despair, unpitying.\" If you remember well the kind, manners, and desert of that fortune.\nthou shalt well know that in her you never lost anything fair, but I shall not greatly trouble myself to remember and despise her with many words, when she was blushing and present. And I was deterred from the peas of your thought, but now is the time that you drink and taste some soft and delightable things, so that they may make way for stronger drinks of medicines. Come now forth therefore, and with rhetoric come forth, a damsel of our house, who sings now of lighter modes or prolusions. What ails the man? What is it that has cast him into mourning and weeping? I believe that you have seen some new and unpleasant thing. You think that fortune has changed against me. But if you think that I always behave according to her manners.\nShe has rather kept her promises as guardian of her own behavior, such was she when she flattered and deceived you with unkind likings and false friendly gestures. You have now seen and experienced the doubtful or double nature of this blind goddess Fortune. She who hides and veils herself to others has shown herself unchangeable to the beholder, if you approve of her and think she is good, use her manners and play along with her false facade. If you agree that her deceitful threshold is the cause of peace and joy, she has forsaken the one who no man may be certain she will not forsake. But unhelpful Fortune, as desired, is fickle.\n\nTherefore, it is necessary for you to endure with willing patience all that Fortune does within her sphere, that is, in this world. Since you have once put your neck under her yoke freely, choosing her to be your lady. If you wish to write a law of serving and dwelling with Fortune, which you have freely chosen to be your mistress.\nArt thou not wrongful in that, and makest Fortune angry and impatient because of thine impetuosity, and yet thou canst not control her? If thou comest and takest thy sails to the wind, thou shalt not be shown where thou wouldst like to go, but where the wind takes thee. If thou cast off thy rudder in the field, thou shouldst remember that sometimes the years are plentiful, and at other times they are not. It is necessary for thee to be obedient to the whims of thy lady. If thou dost force her to halt or slow down the swiftness and speed of her turning wheel, oh fool of all fools, if fortune had begun to dwell steadily, she ceased then to be fortune.\n\nWhen fortune, with a proud right hand, overturned her changing stands, she behaves like the manner of the ebbing and flowing sea. Gloss: Ebbing and flowing is an arm of the sea that recedes and advances, and sometimes the stream flows one way, and at other times it flows the other way.\n\nCruel fortune casts down kings who once were feared.\nAnd she deceives and enhances the humble countenance of him who is discomfited. She neither hears nor reckons with wretched weeping, and she is so hard that she laughs and scorns the weeping of those whom she has made to weep with her free will. Thus she plays and thus she proves her strengths, and she shows a great wonder to all her servants, if a wretched man is seen to be prosperous and overthrown in an hour.\n\nCertes, I would plead with thee about insignificant things, using the words of Fortune. Had I done what goods had I, and if thou canst show me that any mortal man has ever received any of those things as his own. Then I will grant freely that they are thine, which thou askest. When nature brought thee forth from thy mother's womb, I received thee naked and needy of all things. And I nourished thee with all my riches. That is why you are now impatient with me.\nAnd I have surrounded you with all abundance and shining of all goods that are in my right. Now it seems to me to withdraw my hand. You have had grace as one who has used foreign goods. You have no right to complain. Why do you then plead? I have done you no wrong. Riches, honors, and such other things are mine. My servants know me as their lady. They come with me and depart when I will. I dare well affirm hardly that if those things of which you plead that you have forsaken had been yours, you would not have learned them. Shall I then be defended only to use my right? Certainly it is leaveful to heaven to make clear days, And after that to overcome those same days with dark nights. The year also has leave to array the countenance of the earth. Now with flowers and now with fruit.\nAnd to confound them at times with rains and with cold,\nThe sea has its right to be calm and bluish with smooth water,\nAnd sometimes to be horrible with waves and tempests.\nBut covetousness of men that cannot be quenched,\nShall it bind me to be steadfast? Since steadfastness is unfamiliar to my manners. Such is my strength,\nAnd such is the game I commonly play. I turn the whirling wheel with the turning circle.\nI am glad to change the lowest to the highest,\nAnd the highest to the lowest. Worthy up if you will,\nIf it be by this law that you do not hold that I do wrong.\nThough you descend down,\nWhen the reason of my play asks for it,\nWist not how Cresus, king of Lydians, was sore afraid,\nA little before he was caught by Cyrus and led to the fire,\nBut that a rain descended from heaven that rescued him.\nAnd yet I recall how Paulus, consul of Rome, wept pitifully when he had taken the king of Percia. What other thing but the deeds of fortune can bring about the weeping of tragedies, tearing apart the realms of great nobility with an awkward stroke?\n\nGloss: Tragedy is to signify a prosperity for a time that ends in wretchedness. Did you not learn in Greece when you were young that one is full of good, the other of harm? What right have you to complain if you have taken more abundantly of the good side - that is, of riches and prosperity? And what more, if I am not entirely detached from it? What more, if my mutability is such?\n\nAnd you who are put in the common realm, do not all desire to live by your own proper right, though you may be shielded by a downpour of powerful blasts, or else as many riches as there are shining stars in the starry nights.\nYet for all mankind's unwillingness to cease weeping and praying to God, and though He receives their prayers and grants them much gold and fine apparel to covetous people, it seems they have gained nothing but cruel ravages that consume all they have acquired. They continue to gap and desire more riches. What could restrain the disorder of human covetousness, which grows the more it is fed by large gifts? The more it possesses, the stronger its lust for having. Indeed, he who trembles and is dreadful in his own mind considers himself poor. He no longer lives for himself if he is rich.\n\nTherefore, if Fortune spoke to herself in this manner:\n\n\"Forsothe thou haddest not what thou mightest answer,\nAnd if thou hast anything with which thou mayest rightfully defend thy complaint.\nIt behooves thee to show it to me,\nAnd I will give thee leave to tell it, Boethius.\"\nCertainly, I then find these things fair and anointed with honey sweeteners of rhetoric and music. But only while they are heard and sound in ears, they are delicious. But to wretches, it is a deeper feeling of harm. This is to say, wretches feel the harms they suffer more grievously than the remedies or the delights of these words can gladden or comfort them. So that when these things cease to sound in ears, the sorrow that is inflicted grows stronger. P. Right so it does, says she. For these are no remedies for the disease but they are a manner of nursing your sorrow that always rebels against your cure. For when the time is, I shall move and adjust such things that pertain to them deeply. But not land the manner of your well-being, B / I hold myself still, P. How the sovereign men of the City took you in care and keeping, when you were orphaned of father and mother, and were chosen in affinity of Princes of the city.\nAnd you began to be more dear to me than a neighbor. This is the most precious kind of any propriety or alliance that may be. Who is it that did not say that you were well-equipped with such great nobility as your fathers in law, and with the chastity of your wife, and with the opportunity and noblesse of your masculine children - that is, your sons. And over all this, I wish to pass on commendable things. How you had in your youth dignities that were warned to old men, but it delights me now to come to the singular upheaval of your well-being. If any fruit of mortal things can have any weight or price of well-being, could you ever have made Counselors, and build houses under such a great semblance of senators, and under the bliss of the people.\nWhen you see them seated in the court in high chairs of dignitaries, / you, rhetorician or pronouncer of kings' praises, deserved glory of wit and eloquence. When you sat between your two sons, counselors, in the place called Cyrco, and filled the building with such praising and laudation as men sing in victories. Though you gave to Fortune, as I believe, / that is, though you were feasted by Fortune with glorious words and deceived her. When she approached and nourished you as her own delights, you bore away from Fortune a gift, that is, such a reward that she never gave to a private man. Will you therefore reckon with Fortune? She has now first turned her allured eye upon you. If you consider the number and manner of your blessings and sorrows, you cannot abandon that which is not yet blissful.\nIf you feel unwelcome towards things that once seemed joyful, there is no reason for you to appear wretched. For things that now seem sorrowful pass away as well. Are you not a sudden guest in the shadow or tabernacle of this life? Or do you believe that anything is steadfast in human affairs, when a swift hour often dissolves the same man - that is, when the soul is separated from the body. Though faith is the only thing that fortunate things would dwell in, still the last day of a man's life is a kind of death to fortune, and also to him who has dwelt there. So what do you dare to reckon? If you forsake her in dying, or if she forsakes you in flying away.\n\nWhen Phoebus the sun begins to spread his clear brightness with rosy chariots.\nthen the star dimmed pales her white and calm with moving floods, and often the horrible wind Aquilon mobilizing temperatures and overwhelming if it tears by so many tumbling fortunes of men. Will you trust in fleeting goods? It is and established by law that pen is steadfast and stable. But to me it wonderfully and quickly passes, but this is a thing that greatly pains me when I remember, for in all adversities of fortune, the most unsely kind of contrary fortune is to have been helpful. P. But that you ask thus, she said, the torment of your false opinion, that may you not rightfully blame nor accuse things. As one says that you have yet many possessions of things. For all that the idle name of adventurous wealth moves the now. It is clear that you reckon with me. Of how many things you have yet plenty. Therefore, if that thing which you had for more precious in all your riches of fortune is kept to you yet by the grace of God unwounded and undefiled.\nMost then rightfully possesses that which is rightfully yours, despite the cruelty of fortune. Though your best things still live in good health, that precious honor of mankind, Simachus, your wife's father, remains. He, a man of all wisdom and virtue, is a man you would buy with your own life. He endures the wrongs done to him, not for himself, and lives secure from any sentence brought against him. Yet your wife remains, full of wit and surpassing other women in purity of chastity. I will not long conceal her virtues; I tell you that she despises this life and keeps only to her spirit, overcome by weeping and sorrow for longing of the one thing. In this alone I grant you, that your well-being is consoled.\nWhat shall I say further of your two counselors, whose likenesses in wisdom show the inheritance of your father and your grandfather? Since the sovereign duty of all mortals is to save their own lives, if you know yourself, your goods become more valuable. Yet there are things belonging to them that no one doubts are more precious to them than your own life. Therefore, dry your hand towards Ne or Ne's messenger and let annoyance or discomfort pass from me. P. I have given you Ave and farewell. If you do not annoy or comfort her further.\nFor a man's goods are not all gathered to one person or they do not last perpetually. Some men are ashamed of their uncivil lineage, while others are renowned for their noble kinship. But some are enclosed in such great need that they would rather be unknown. Some men have both riches and nobility, but they mourn their chaste life because they have no wife. Some men are happily married but have no children and do not nurture their riches on strangers. Some men are glad with children but weep sore for the transgressions of their son or daughter. And for this, no one easily agrees with the condition of his fortune, for every man has something that is said, \"he knows not about that.\" Or else he fears that he has tried it.\nEvery man who is entirely fortunate has a keen, delicate feeling; he is displeased by anything that does not happen at his own will. Even little things can throw him down almost to hell. If he could reach the least remnant of your fortune, this place you call exile, I and you are wretched only when we think so, as one might say, \"you yourself, and no one else, are a wretch, not by any external representation, but by the state of your own heart.\" On the contrary, all fortune is blissful to a man because of its agreeableness or equality to him who endures it. What man is there who would not change his estate when he has lost his peace? The sweetness of human fortune is tainted with many bitternesses.\n\nThough this fortune seems sweet and joyful to him who experiences it, it cannot be withheld when it chooses to depart.\nThen it is well seen how wretched is the blessedness of mortal things, which neither endures with them that every fortune receives agreeably and equally. Nor does it delight in all things for those who have been anguished. O ye mortal folk, what seek ye then blessedness from yourselves? Which is put within yourselves. Error and folly confound you. I shall show you shortly the point of sovereign blessedness. Is there anything more precious than your life? You will answer no.\nThen if it be that thou art mighty over thyself, that is, if thou canst know that blessedness cannot stand in things that are good by nature and live by reason, or that this thing is not sovereign good which may be taken away in any way, for a more worthy and more dignified thing is that which may not be taken away. Then shew this to the man who leads this tumbling, wretched life. Either he knew that it is changeable or he did not. And if he did not, what blessed fortune might there have been in the bliss! And if he knew that it is changeable, he is more afraid that he may lose that which he does not doubt but that he may lose it. For which the continual fear that he has does not suffer him to be happy, or else if he loses it.\nHe is despised and forgotten, yet one who is born with a good heart when it is lost. That is to say, men derive no more force from the lost than from the having. Since you yourself are the one to whom it has been shown and proven by many demonstrations, it is clear and certain that souls of men cannot die in any way. And since it is clear and certain that fortunate well-being ends with the death of the body, it may not be doubted that if death can take away blessedness, then all kinds of mortal things descend into wretchedness by the end of death. And since we know well that many a man has sought the fruit of blessedness not only by suffering of death but also by pains and torments, how then can this present life make men blessed, since life itself ends?\nIt makes no men folk wretches\nWhich kind of people are stable and willing to found a perpetual settlement, and will not be cast down by the low blasts of wind Eurus. And will despise the sea, meaning it with floods, Let him avoid\nTo build on the top of the mountains. or in the moist sides. For if the fell wind Auster torments the top of the mountains with all its strengths, and the loose sands refuse to bear the heavy weight, and if you want to flee the perilous adventure, that is to say of the world.\nHave in mind certainly to set thy house in a low, stone foundation. For though the wind troubling the sea thunderously with overthrowing, thou that art put in quiet and well-being by the strength of thy palace, shalt lead a clear age, scorning the wodens and the iras of the air.\nBut since the necessities of my reason descend into the present, I believe it is time to use a little stronger medicines. Now understand here, all were it so that the gifts of fortune were not brutally taken and considered peremptorily. Riches and gold or might of money assembled, certes that gold and that money shine and yield better renown, and are transferred from one man to another.\nOne may not dwell with no man; certes then is that money precious when it is translated into other folk. And standing still to be had by usage of large yielding of him that hath yielded it, and also if all the money that is in the world were gathered toward one man.\nIt should make all other men needy as for that, and indeed a wise man whole, that is to say, one who gathers the hearing of many people. And when they have passed, necessities make them pour out their former riches. I call these riches \"strait and needy,\" since many people cannot have it all. Nor can it come to one man without the power of all other people. And the shining of precious stones does not draw the eyes of people to them. That is to say, not for their beauty, but indeed if there were beauty or delight in the shining of stones, this clarity is of the stones themselves and not of men. For which I wonder greatly that men marvel at such things, for what thing is it that, if it lacks the joining of soul and body, it has no right to pleasure.\nmight seem a fair creature to one who has a soul of renown / For although gems draw to themselves a little of the least beauty of the world through the intent of their creator / and through the distinction of themselves / yet since they have been placed under your excellence / they have not deserved in any way that you should marvel at them / and the beauty of fields does not delight you much / B / why should it not delight us / since it is a right fair portion of the right fair work that is to say of this world / & rightly are we pleased sometimes with the face of the sea when it is clear\nAnd also let us marvel at the heavens / and the stars / and the sun / and the moon / P / Belongs to any of these things to her?\nWhy do you glorify yourself in such things? Are you distinguished and embellished by the spring flowers of the first summer season, or do you swell with plenteous fruits of summer? Why are you carried away with idle joys? Why do you embrace strange goods as if they were yours? Fortune shall never make such things be the nature of things that nature has made before. It is certain that the fruits of the earth are meant for the nourishment of beasts. And if you will fulfill your need according to what nature requires, then it is sufficient. But if you will choke the fulfillment with something to shine with diverse clothing, of which clothing if it causes a great annoyance to the Lord himself, and if they are good men, how shall strange and foreign goodness be put in the number of your riches? Therefore, by all these aforementioned things, it is clearly shown that none of these things that you acquired for your goods were good, if there is no beauty to be desired in them.\nWhy should you sorrow to lose them or rejoice to hold them? If they are fair in their own kind, what does that pertain to you? For they should have been fair by themselves, though they were deprived from all your riches. Why were they not fair and precious for that they came among your riches? But because they seemed fair and precious to you, therefore you had rather reckon them among your riches. But what do you desire of fortune with such great adversities? And indeed, they have need of many things than many things have. Again, of little thing does one who measures his daughter need. According to the need of kindred and not the outrage of covetousness, it is thus that you men have no true good set within you. For such you must seek outwardly in foreign lands and subject them down. A man who is a divine beast by the merit of his reason thinks that he himself is neither fair nor noble.\nIf it is through possession of hostilities that they have no souls, and certainly all other things have been paid for by their own beauty. But you, men who are like God through rational thought, desire to adorn your excellent kind with the lowest things. Do you not understand how great a wrong is done to your creature? For he willed that mankind be most worthy and noble of any other earthly thing. And you thrust down your dignities beneath the lowest things. For if all the good of every thing is more precious than that thing whose good it is, then you deem that the foulest things are your goods. Therefore, you submit yourselves and put yourselves under the foulest things through your estimation. And certainly, this does not befit you without your deserts. For certainly such is the condition of all mankind. That only what it knows of itself passes in nobleness above all other things.\nAnd when it reveals itself, it comes amongst all beasts; for all other living beasts, by nature, do not know themselves. But when men forsake self-knowledge, it comes to them from vice. But broadly, this error and folly of yours is shown, who believe that anything can be adorned with strange adornments; for truly, that cannot be done. For if a person shines with things put upon him, as it were, if those things shine with which a man is adorned, certainly those things are commended and praised. But nevertheless, the thing that is covered and hidden beneath that dwells in his filth, and I deny that that thing is good which annoys him who has it. Give I you this. You will say no; indeed, riches have annoyed many who have had riches.\nSyn, every wicked man is driven by his wickedness for gold or precious stones, and deems himself most worthy who has them. You, who so eagerly desire now the sword and the spear, if you had entered the path of this life, a wandering man would have sung before the thief. A poor man who bears no riches with him on the way may boldly sing before them, for he has nothing wherewith to be robbed. O precious and right clear is the bliss of mortal riches. Then, when you have obtained it, then you have lost your security.\n\nBlessed was the first age of men, they were content with the provisions that the true fields brought forth. They neither destroyed nor deceived themselves with excess. They could not easily quench their hunger at evening with acorns of oaks. They could not mingle the gift of Bacchus with the clear honey, that is to say. They could not make payment or clear payment.\nThey could not mix the bright flies of the country of Syria with the venom of Tyre - that is, they could not kill white flies of the Syrian country with the blood of a certain shellfish that men find in Tyre. With this blood, men die purple. They slept soundly on the grass and drank of the running waters. And they lay under the shadows of the high pine trees - neither gesture nor stranger nor care yet troubled the high sea with oars or ships. Nor had they yet seen new shores to lead merchandise into diverse countries.\n\nThough the cruel clarions were full hushed and full still, neither blood had yet boiled with bitter hate nor had arms dyed. For where or which weddings of enemies would first mean arms when they saw cruel wounds. Nor were any medicines of blood boiled - I would that our times should turn again to the old manners - but the insatiable love of having brethren more cruelly than the fire of the mountain of Etna that always burns.\nAllas, he who first dug up the goblets or the weights of gold covered under the earth, and the precious stones that were to be hidden, he dug up precious pearls. That is to say, he who first dug them up. He dug up precious perils. Why? Because the preciousness of such things has put many a man in peril.\n\nCounselors. And for that same reason, your elders before that time had taken away the king's name from the City of Rome. That is to say, they no longer had a king. But now, if it be that dignities and powers are given to good men, what agreeable things are there in these dignities and powers, except for the goodness of people who use them? And therefore, honor does not come to virtue because of dignity, and an upward-looking honor comes to dignity because of virtue.\nBut which is that clear and requisite power that you have, O ye earthly beasts, consider not that which seems that you have power over? If you saw a mouse among other mice that challenged itself in regard to itself and power over all other mice, how great scorn would you have for it? Glosa says so by men. The body has power over the body. For if you look well upon the body of a creature, what will you find more free than mankind? Men are often slain by the biting of flies or else with entering or creeping worms into the privates of man's body. But where shall men find any man who may exercise or have any right upon another man except on his body or else upon things that are lower than the body. Which I call fortuitous possessions. Mayest thou have ever any commandment over a free will? Mayest thou remove from the state of his own rest a thought that is clinging to gather in himself by steadfast reason.\nA tyrant once tried to intimidate a man of courage, intending to torture him into revealing and accusing people who knew of a conspiracy against this tyrant. But this man only spoke in the face of the tyrant. Thus, the tortures that the tyrant intended to inflict for cruelty, this wise man turned into virtue. But what can a man do to another man that he cannot receive the same thing from others towards himself? Or what can a man do to people that people cannot do to him? I have heard told of Busirides, who was wont to kill his guests. He was killed by Hercules, who was his guest. Regulus had taken many men of Africa in captivity and put them in chains. But soon after, he had to give his own hand, which had once overcome.\nWe then suppose that he is mighty who has the power to do that which others cannot do in him, and yet moreover, if these dignitaries or powers had any proprietary or natural inclination to govern, nature refuses that contrary things be joined. And so, since I am certain that wicked people have diginity often, then it shows well that dignitaries and powers are not good of their own kind, since they suffer themselves to be cleaved or joined to shrews. And the same thing may I most significantly judge and say of all the gifts of fortune that plentifully come to shrews. Of which gifts I believe it ought to be considered that no man doubted that he is strong in whom he sees strength, and in whom swiftness is. It is indeed so that he is swift. Also, music makes musicians, and physics make physicians, and rhetoric makes rhetoricians. For why, the nature of every thing makes its own property. It is not intermeddled with the effect of contrary things.\nBut certainly riches cannot restrain unchecked avarice, nor can power make a man mighty over himself, who is held captive by vices that cannot be tamed, and dignities given to shrewd people not only make them unworthy, but openly show that they are, and it is thus: for certainly you have joy in calling things by false names that are commonly used for the same things. Therefore, these riches should not rightfully be called riches. Nor should such power be called power. Nor such dignity be called dignity. And finally, I may conclude the same thing about all the gifts of fortune, in which there is nothing desirable or inherent in themselves, as is well seen. For they do not always join themselves to good men.\nHe made all harm to those joined to him: we have well known how many great harms and destructions were caused by Emperor Nero. He burned the city of Rome and slew the senators, and he cruelly killed his brother. He was made moist with his mother's blood. That is to say, he slew and slit open his mother's womb to see where he was conceived. He looked on every limb of her cold body without tears wetting his face, but he was so hard-hearted that he could be both judge and dominus over her dead deeds, and yet Nero was governed by this, until he hid his beams (rays) under the waves.\nThat is to say, he governed all peoples with an imperial scepter, those who dwell around the East and also those governed by the cold stars, those under the northern party, and those in the south. But his power could not turn the wickedness of this Nero. Alas, it is a grievous fortune. For a wicked sword is often joined to venomous cruelty, that is, cruel rule.\n\nThen he said, \"You know well yourself that the desire for material things never had lordship over me, but I have well desired matters to rule over commonwealths. For virtue should not grow old, that is, before it grows old.\"\nHis virtue, which now lies dormant, should not perish without exercise in the governance of a commonwealth. For which men might speak or write of his good governance. P. Forsooth, quoth she, and that is a thing that can draw men to governance who are worthy and noble by nature. But nevertheless, it is renowned to have well administered common things or done good deeds for the profit of the commonwealth. For consider now how little and how wide in price is that glory, a certain thing as you have learned from the demonstration of astronomy, that all the environs of the earth about us hold in regard only the reason of a prick, at the regard of the greatness of heaven. That is to say, if there were made a comparison of the little region of this world to the greatness of heaven, men would judge in all things and hold no space. Of the whych little region of this earth, the fourth part is inhabited by living beings that we know. As thou hast thyself learned from Ptolemy, that proves it.\nAnd if you had drawn back and lessened your thoughts from the fourth party by the space of the sea and the marches, and exceeded that which is called the region of drought, where dwells a very narrow place for human habitation. And you who are surrounded and enclosed by the smallest part of this, think you manifest or published your reputation.\nAnd yet your glory, though narrow and confined to small abodes, contains much in largeness and great deeds. And furthermore, many diverse nations, of different tongues and manners, inhabited the land. Why are they diverse, and why, due to lack of intercourse, had they not yet passed or climbed over the mountains? And yet Rome was growing and respected by the parts and also by other peoples dwelling around it. Do you not see then how compressing this glory to multiples, and how the manners of diverse peoples praise that which is worthy of torment?\nAnd hereof comes this: A man who delights in the prizes of his reputation cannot bring it forth or spread it among many kinds of people in any way. Therefore, every man should be appeased by his glory that is published among his neighbors, and this noble reputation shall be restrained within the bounds of that people. But how many a man who was once noble in his time has had the wretched and needy forgetfulness of writing do away with both him and his authors? But you seem to gain a perishability when you think in coming times your fame will last. But no less, if you will make comparison to the endless spaces of eternity. What have you haste?\nFor if the duration of a moment were compared to ten thousand winters, since both spaces have ended, yet the moment has some portion of it, though it be little. But nevertheless, the self-same number of years, and as many years as may be multiplied thereafter, cannot be compared to the perpetuity that is endless. For things that have an end may be compared, but things that are without end to things that have an end cannot be compared. And it is that reputation, though renowned for as long a time as ever the desire to think existed, should not only seem little, but plainly nothing. But you seem certainly to be able to do nothing right. But if it is for the entertainment of the people and for idle rumors, and you forsake the great worthiness of conscience and virtue.\nAudience, seek your rewards from the small words of strange people. Have here and understand, in the light of such pride and vain glory, how a man scornfully and merrily tried with striking words another man. The latter, who had falsely assumed the name of a philosopher, this man suspected he would endure patiently the wrongs done to him. This man had received words of outrage. He, as in striking back, rejoiced well and understood it if you had held your tongue still. But what is it to this noble, worthy man? For certainly, what brings fame to such people when the body is resolved by the death act lasts for none, that is, is not right in any way.\nIf the soul which has been unbound from its prison in good works\nwanders freely towards heaven, it does not despise all earthly occupations. And being in heaven, it rejoices that it is exempt from all earthly things. As one says then, the soul never cares for the glory or fame of this world.\n\nWhoever, with overthrowing thought, seeks only glory and fame, and believes that it is supreme good, let him look upon the broad showy courts of heaven and upon the strict seat of this earth. And he shall be ashamed of those passing away people who have gone by diverse tongues. And although great houses of kinships shine by clear titles of honors, yet nevertheless, the idle names of the dead are marked with a few letters. But although we have known the far-off words of their fame, it is not given to us to know them who are dead and consumed. They lie then still altogether unknown.\nYet if you think that to live longer is the goal for the wind of your mortal frame, when the cruel day shall rage you, then comes the second dwelling to you. The first death he calls here the parting of the body. And the second death, the ceasing of the renown of fame.\nBut though you may not think so, she who bears an unyielding battle against fortune sometimes deserves great praise from men. This happens when she herself reveals herself and discloses her true nature, which is changing. Capricious fortune deceives people. Contrary fortune teaches. Capricious fortune blinds the hearts of people with the beauty of her false goods. Contrary fortune unfetters them with the knowledge of free, beneficial fortune. Capricious fortune is unknowable in all her ways.\nThe contrary fortune is tempered and restrained through exercise of her adversity. At last, amiable fortune with her flatteringis draws misleading men from the sovereign good. The contrarious fortune leads often people again to steadfast goods and heals them again with a hook / you discovered this to the thoughts of your true friends. For why this like fortune has departed and turned to both the certain faces and the doubtful faces of your fellows / when she departed from them, she took away her friends / and left you with how much would you have bought the full knowing of this. That is to say, the knowing of your very friends. Now play the not then of riches lost Since you have found the most precious kind of riches, that is to say, your very friends\n\nThe world with stable faith varies according to changing circumstances.\nthat the contrary qualities of elements hold alliance durable,\nphebus the son brings forth the rosy day with his golden chariot,\nmoon has commanded the night,\nwhich nights are expected the even star has,\nthe sea longs to flow and has commanded,\nalso the heavens,\nAnd if this love loosened the reins,\nall things that now bind them together would make continual battle,\nstriving to destroy the fashion of this world,\nwhich they now lead in accordant faith.\nThis love holds together people joined with a holy bond,\nand love knits the sacrament of marriage of chaste loves.\nLove ends laws for true law-abiding men.\n\"Of wonderful was mankind if that love which governs the heavens had governed your courage. Explicit, second book begins, third book. By this she had ended her song, when the sweetness of her voice had, through me who was desirous, reached and astonished me, that is to say, to listen to the following: O thou that art sovereign comfort for anguished hearts, so thou hast removed and nourished me with the weight of thy sentences and with the delight of singing, so that I believe not that I am unprepared for the strokes of fortune. As one says, I dare well now suffer all its assaults and defend myself from her. And the remedies which you said before, those were not only not distasteful to me now, but I desire greatly to hear them again. Then she said: I felt it well when you entered and stilled my words.\"\nAnd I stayed until you had such a disposition in your thoughts as you have now, or until I myself had made it so. And truly, the remaining things that are yet to be said are such that when men taste them, they are bitter. But when they are received within a mind, then they are sweet. But since you say that you are so eager to hear them, with what great burning would you have me reveal them? If I knew where I would lead you, where is that question I? To that very question which your heart yearns for, but since your sight is occupied and distracted by earthly things, you cannot yet see that self-same welfare. Tell me what that bitter welfare is, I pray you, without delay. I will gladly reveal it to you for that reason.\nBut I will first make clear by words, and I will enforce myself to inform you of the false cause of your blessedness, so that when you have beheld those false goods and turned your eyes to the other side, you may know the clarity of true blessedness.\n\nWhoever wishes to sow a field plentifully, let him first deliver it of thorns. And clear a separate path with his hook through the bushes and the distant ones, so that the corn comes up heavy with tasted wicked sauces. The stars shine more agreeably when the north wind lays its blustering blasts. And after that Lucifer, the day star, has chased away the dark night, the day leads the rosy horse of the sun more fairly. And just as you, beginning to withdraw from the false goods, withdraw your neck from their allurements. And afterward, true goods will enter your hearts.\n\nShe lit a light and withdrew her right hand as if into the narrow seat of her thought. And began to speak thus.\nAll those who acquire the thing that is called mortal folk, which brings happiness, have obtained such a good thing that they cannot desire anything more over it. And this thing is indeed so sovereign good that it contains within itself all manner of goods. If there were anything lacking in this sovereign good, it could not be sovereign good; for there would be some good of this sovereign good that could be desired. Now it is clear and certain that happiness is a perfect state by the congregation of all goods. This happiness, as I have said, all mortal folk are inclined to acquire in various ways. For why the desire for every good is naturally planted in the hearts of men, but the misleading error leads them into false goods. Of which men some think that sovereign good is to live without need of anything. And other men think that sovereign good is worthy of reverence, and they enforce reverence among their neighbors by the honors they have obtained.\nAnd some people there have held that high power is sovereign good, enforcing them to reign or joining them to those who reign. It seems to other people that nobility of renown is the sovereign good, hastening them to obtain a glorious name through the arts of war or peace. And many people believe and seek that sovereign good is joy and gladness, and deem it a blissful thing to plunge into voluptuous delights. And there are some who engage in the causes and ends of these aforementioned goods. Those who desire riches have power and delights, or else they desire power for money or for the sake of renown. In these things and such other matters, all men's intentions and works are turned towards this. Nobility and favor of the people, which they yield to all as it seems to them a cleansing of renown. And wife and children, which men desire for the sake of delight and merits.\nFriends should not be counted among the goods of fortune, but of virtue. For all these other things, friends are taken for a cause of power or else for a cause of delight. Now I am ready to refer the goods of the body to the one who seems to yield delight and beauty, swiftness, and health. In all these things, it seems that blessedness is desired. But that thing which every man desires good, I have defined as supreme good, for which every man forms the intention and endeavors to acquire and establish that delight. For all other things are not that thing which is truly good, that it is also worthy of honor and reverence. Nay, that thing is not foul nor worthy to be despised. Nearly all the intentions of mortal people labor to obtain it, and power should not be counted among the goods.\nWhat Elis / For it not be thought that that thing most worthy of all things be feeble and without strength and clarity of reputation. That ought not to be despised. Certes, there may no man forsake / that all thing right excellent and noble, it not seem clear and reputed. For certes, it needeth not to say that blissfulness be anxious or dreary or subject to grief or sorrows, Since in right little things people seek to have and to use that may delight them / Certes these be the things that men will and desire to obtain / and for this cause desire they riches, dignities, reigns, glory, and delights / For there by think they to have sufficiency, honor, power, reputation, and gladness.\nThen it is good that men seek in various studies, in which desire it may not easily be shown how great is the strength of nature. Though men have diverse sentences and disagreements, yet they all agree in leaning towards the end of good. It pleases me to show, through subtle song with slack and delightful sound of strengths, how nature naturally inclines and bindingly restrains all things by a bond that cannot be broken. Though the lions of the countryside bear the fair chains and take meals from the hands of people who have given it to them. Her courage, which has passed the time that has been idle and rested, repairs and loosens her necks from her chains that cannot be broken, and her master first tries to tear with bloody teeth the wood wrapped in a serpent cage. Despite the playing business of men.\nYou, men, enjoy honeyed drinks and lament only the wood and the twittering bird, desiring the wood with her sweet voice, which is pulled down by mighty hands that let it go again. Immediately the crop looks upright towards the heavens. The sun, Phebus, which falls at evening in the western waves, returns again to its proper course, and all things rejoice on its returning again to its nature, and no order is taken to things, but that which has joined the end to the beginning. And has made the course of itself stable, so it does not change from its proper kind.\n\nCerts, you men who are earthly beasts, dream your beginning all the way through, though it be with a thin imagination. And by a manner of thought, though it not be clearly or perfectly. You look from a far to that very end of blissfulness. And therefore natural intention leads you to that very good. But many manner of errors mislead you therefore. Consider now if that is the thing which no good nor failure comes to them nor seems to come to them.\n\"certes then I grant that they be made blessed by things that they have obtained, but if those things cannot perform what they promise and there is a lack of many goods, it is not clearly shown that the false beauty of blessedness is known and attained in those things. First and foremost, you who had possession of riches not long ago, I ask you, in the possession of all these riches, were you never anxious or sorrowful in your heart about any wrong or grief that befell you on any side? B. I do not remember that, and she woke up because of that lack, or else you had that. thou wouldst not have lacked that. B. Right, I say, you desire the presence of that one and the absence of that other. B. I grant it, I say. P. Indeed, she then needs something that every man desires, B. you need it, P. Certes, she and he who lack or need anything, is not always the case that I say, P.\"\n\"And though she asked in all the placards I.p., riches cannot make a man sufficient to himself, nor prevent him from being in need. Yet that was it that they beseeched and, indeed, I truly believe that this is worth considering: money has not in its own kind that it may be called that of those who have it taken from the weaker by the stronger, from whence come all these foreign complaints or quarrels or pleadings, but because men ask for their money that has been taken from them. Right so it is asked of I.p., and she certainsly needed no help if she had no money that she might lose. That is doubtless asked of I. For riches that men think should make a sufficiency\"\nThey make a man have need of foreign help / which is the manner or custom of one who drives a way need / the rich may neither have hunger nor thirst / These rich men may feel no cold on their limbs in winter / But you will answer that rich men have enough with which they can satisfy hunger and quench their thirst and remove cold. In this way, need can be comforted by riches. But certainly need cannot be completely done away. For if this need that always gapes and is greedy is filled with riches and anything else yet dwells that might be fulfilled / I hold myself still and tell not how that little thing suffices to nature.\nBut certainly, avarice is not enough for anyone, for riches cannot provide for all needs, and they create their own need. What then can it be that you think riches can give you sufficiency?\n\nEven if a noble, covetous man had a river or a gutter flowing with gold, it would never satisfy his covetousness. And though his neck were encircled with precious stones from the red sea, and though his fields were plentiful with a hundred oxen, neither his biting desires nor the light riches would abandon him while he lives. Nor would they keep him company when he is dead.\n\nBut dignity, when it comes to them, makes them honorable and reverent. Have they not great strength that they can put virtue in the hearts of people who use their lordship? Or else, can they do away with vices?\n\nCertainly, they are not accustomed to doing away with wickednesses, but rather, they are accustomed to showing wickedness.\n\"And the wicked man Catullus called a consul of Rome named Nomyus, whom a postume labeled with a congregation of vices on his breast. As a postume is full of corruption, so were Nomyus set in a chair of dignity. Certainly, then, your king Theudric, you should not have harbored the wicked heart of a licentious shrew and an accuser. I may not deem or hold such men worthy of reverence for such honors. Now, if you saw a man filled with wisdom, to the honor or else to the wisdom of which he is filled, B. no question I / P / certainly questioned dignity. And for as much as the honors of people cannot make folk deserving of honor, it is clearly sensible that they have no proper beauty of dignity. Yet men ought to take more heed in this matter.\"\nIf a person is extremely outcast and despised by most, so that dignity cannot make shrews worthy of respect, then dignity makes shrews more despised than respected. Such shrews, respected by many, and not unpunished, inwardly on account of dignity, for as you now know, such reverence cannot come from these shadowy, transitory dignities. That is, if a man had used and held many kinds of dignities, such as consulships, and had come among strange nations, such honor would make him worshipful and redoubtable to strange folk. Indeed, if the honor of people were a natural gift to dignities, it could never cease among any manner of people to do its office. Just as a fire everywhere goes unrecognized and extinguished by people, but among them it is born and endures. However, among them, they do not recognize those dignities and their honors vanish away immediately. But among them, they were not born and did not last forever.\nThe dignity of the Roman prostitute was once great power / now it is nothing but an idle name. And the rent of the senatorial office a great burden. If a man once held the office, he was among the people great. But what is more outcast than that prostitute, as I have said a little before, that which has no propriety of itself receives sometimes price and shining, and sometimes loses it by the opinion of usages. Now if those dignities cannot make people respect, and if those dignities become foul from their own will by the filth of scoundrels.\nAnd if dignitaries appear ungrateful by changing of times and if they become foul by estimation of people, what is it that they have in their heads? As one says, it is so that the proud Nero, with all his wild luxuries, adorns and apparels himself with fair purples of Tyre and with white pearls. Yet, despite his wickedness, Nero had great lordship. And he once gave to the reverent senators the contemptible seats of dignity. He calls these contemptible seats here because Nero, who was so wicked, gave these dignitaries toreasonably think then. But the reigns and familiarities of kings can make a man mighty. How else? When her blissful state lasts perpetually, but certainly the old age of time passes and that of the present time now is full of examples, how kings have been changed into wretchedness out of their prosperity. Oh, what a noble thing and a clear thing is power that does not fail, and certainly on that same side, power fails which makes people blissful.\n none power entreth vndernethe that maketh hem wretches / In this manere thenne mote Kynges han mo\u2223re porcion of wretchednesse thanne of welefulnesse. A\ntyran\u0304t that was kyng of sesille that had assayed the pa\u2223ril of his astate shewed by simylitude the dredes of royau\u2223mes by gastnes of a swerde that henge ouer the heede of his famylier / what thing is then\u0304e this power that may not don\u0304 away the bytinges of besines. ne eschewe the prickis of drede And certes yet wolden they liuen in sikernesse. but they may not / And yet they glorifien hem in her power / holdest thou then\u0304e that thilk man\u0304 be mighty that thou seest that he wold done that he may not done. And holdestow hym a myghty man\u0304 that hath enuironned his sides with men\u0304 of armes or with sergeantes. And drede more hem that he makith agast than they drede him / And that is put in the shold I telle the ony\nI have shown you that I, myself, restrained the Romans from destroying Seneca's family and master. Autonyms commanded the knights to remain among them for a long time. Yet, they both wished to renounce their power. Seneca compelled them to yield to Nero all their riches and go into exile. But when the great power or fortune, that is, of lords or of fortune, draws those who shall fall, neither of them can hold on to it. That thing is then the very power that one may have it but is not certain to keep it, and if one wishes to let go of it, one cannot avoid it. But whether such people are friends in need, as are influenced by fortune rather than virtue, certainly such people whom fortunate fortune makes friends, contrary fortune makes enemies.\nWhat pestilence is more grievous to a person than a familiar enemy? Whoever wishes to be mighty must tame his cruel corages and not place his neck under the cruel regimes of lechery. For all that your lordship may stretch and rule the isle in the sea that is called Tyle, yet if you do not put away your foul desires and drive them out from the wretched complaints. Indeed, it is no power that you have.\n\nBut glory how foul and deceitful it often is. For which thing is not a tragedian, that is to say, a maker of tragedies, called and said \"Glory, glory,\" if he were not something else to thousands of people but a great sweller of egos? For many have had great renown by the false opinion of the people, and what thing is more base than such praises? And if the people have given them thanks or praise for their deserts, what price has that brought or increased for the conscience of wise men who measure their good not by the rumor of the people.\nBut by the swiftness of conscience. And if it seems a fair thing for a man to have and spread his name, then follows that it is deemed to be a foul thing if it is not spread and increased. But as I said a little here before, since there may be needs for many people whose renown seems in the next party to these things I do not think that the price and grace of the people is either worthy of being remembered nor comes from wise judgment, nor how painful a thing it is. For if the name of gentility is referred to renown and clarity of lineage, then there is something that comes of the desertions of ancestors. And if praise makes gentility, then they must necessarily be gentle who are praised.\n\nFor which reason, if you have no gentility of yourself, that is to say, price that comes from foreign gentility does not make you gentle. But certainly, if there is any good in gentility, I believe it is a long-lasting thing.\nIt seems that a necessity is imposed upon gentlemen, that they should not outrage or forsake the virtues of their noble kindred. All lineages of men on earth are of similar birth. One alone is the father of all things, one alone ministers to all things; he gave to the son his beams, to the moon her horns, he gave men to the earthseed. Why do you noise or boast of your elders? For if you look at your beginning and honor your father as your author and maker, but if he nourished his temperament into vices and forsook his proper birth. But what shall I say of the delights of the body, of which delights the desiring are most anguished, and the fulfilling of them most painful? They are as great sicknesses and great sorrows, unbearable, like a kind of fruit of wickedness. However, of these delights I note what joy may be had in their coming.\nBut this I well believe, he who ever remembers him of his luxuries, he shall well understand that the issues of delights are sorrowful and sad. And if these delights could make people blissful, then by the same cause, beasts are called blissful of which all intention hastens to fulfill their bodily pleasure. And the gladness of wife and children was an honest thing. But it has been said that it is overwhelmingly against nature that children have been found tormentors to their fathers. I note how many of which children how bitter is every condition, it is not necessary to tell him that haste yet at this time experienced it, and you are still now anguished. In this time, I approve the sentence of my disciple Euridippus, who said that he who has no children is fortunate by fortune.\n\nEvery delight has this long held sway\nHow is it not then these ways no doubt not a means of leading to bliss, nor can they not lead people there as they promise.\nBut with how great harms these foreseen ways are engaged, I shall show you shortly. For why, if you enforce the assembly of money, you must reimburse him who has it. And if you wish to shine in dignities, you must beg and supply them who grant you those dignities. And if you covet honor to go before others, you shall defile yourself through humility of asking. If you desire power, you shall be subject to your subjects. If you would load your life with delights, every man shall despise you and forsake you as one who is thrall to that which is rightfully foul and brutish \u2013 that is to say, a servant to your body. Now is it then well seen how little and how brutish possession those are who put the goods of the body above their own reason. For masters may surmise these offenses in greatness or weight of body, or may be stronger than the bull. For masters may be swifter than the tiger.\nBehold the spaces and stability, and the swift course of heaven,\nAnd cease sometimes to wonder at foul things. The things which heaven certainly is not more worthy of wonder for than for the reason by which it is governed,\nBut rather for the shining of your form. That is to say, the beauty of your body, how swiftly passing and transitory it is, is more alluring than the mutability of flowers in the summer season. For as Aristotle tells us, if men had the eyes of a beast called \"looking-at-people,\" they could perceive through things that obstructed it; whoever looks at the inner parts of Altibiadis' body, which was beautiful on the surface, it would seem right ugly; and if you seem fair, your nature does not make it so, but the deception of the weaknesses of the eyes that look. But praise the goods of the body as much as you please, knowing that they are goods of the body.\nAll that you wonder about may be destroyed or else dissolved by the heat of a fire of three days. I can summarize this as follows: All those who seek ignoble things do not search for gold in green trees, nor gather precious stones in vines, nor hide their genes in high mountains to catch fish. With these, you can make rich feasts. And if you like to hunt, do not go to the shores of the water called Tyrene. Men know well the crags and caves hidden in the depths of the sea, and they also know which water is most plentiful in white pearls and which water holds the most red purpurate, that is, a kind of shellfish with which men die in a purple state. They also know which shores hold the most tender fish or the sharp fish called echynnes. But people suffer themselves to be so blind that they do not even consider where those goods are hidden which they covet.\nbut they plunge him in earth and seek there that which surpasses the heaven that bears the stars / what prayer may I make that is worthy of men's lofty thoughts. But I pray that they renounce riches and honors / so that what they have obtained, though they have acquired false goods with great toil, they may come to know the true goods.\n\nIt is sufficient that I have shown you so far the form of false well-being. From now on, the order of my intention requires me to show the true well-being. B / forsooth, I see now that sufficiency cannot come from riches, nor power from kingdoms, nor reverences from dignities, nor gentleness from glory, nor joy from delights. P. And have you well understood why it is so, B?\n\nB. Indeed, it seems to me that I see them clearly, but I would rather know them more openly. P\nCertes, if the reason is ready for this thing, which is one thing without any division, the error and folly of mankind separates and confuses it, leading it away from true and perfect good to false and unperfect goods. But do you say this, that he who has need of power lacks nothing? Nay, I say. Certes, if there is a thing that in any way is weaker in power, it necessarily needs foreign help. Right so it is, I say. Sufficiency and power are of one kind, I believe. So it seems to me. And do you believe that a thing of this kind, that is to say, mighty, ought to be despised? Or do I not respect sufficiency and power so that we deem that these three things are all one? I asked you late about this. Then, is anything and not noble.\nThat is sufficient, reverent, and mighty or rightly clad she, as we have granted, for he who is sufficient, mighty, and reverent, cleanness of reputation follows from these things. He has it all ready, I deny it not but I must grant that this thing is rightly celebrable by cleanness of reputation and nobility. Then follows, \"we add cleanness of reputation to the aforementioned things so that there is no difference.\" Boece. \"This is a consequence,\" I said. \"Philosophia. This thing then, which has no need of any foreign thing and which can do all things by its strength, and which is noble and honorable, is it not a merry and joyful thing?\" But whence might sorrow come to this thing that is such, I may not think, Philosophia. Then we must grant that this thing is full of gladness.\nIf the foregoing is true and we grant that sufficiency, power, nobleness, reverence, and gladness are merely named differently but have no real distinction in substance, then I, Philosophia, say that this is what I mean: That which is one and has no parts - neither the party that is nonexistent nor the thing in its entirety that they do not desire. Boethius. In what manner, I said, Philosophia, does he who seeks riches kill poverty? He does not labor to acquire power, for he would rather be dark and vile. Moreover, he withdraws from himself many natural delights, for he would not lose the money he has amassed. But certainly, in this manner,\nhe acquires no true sufficiency from the power that forsakes and bothers him, and from the filth that makes him an outcast. And certainly, he who desires only power wastes and scatters riches and despises delights. Indeed, you see this clearly: Many things fail him.\nFor he has at times lacked many necessities and endured much suffering. He cannot remove these defects by giving up what he most desires. And so I can make comparable reasons for honor and glory and pleasures, for each of these things is the same as the others. Whoever asks me, I would say that they bring him supreme blessedness. But he will not find this in sheds that do not yield me. Therefore, men should not seek blessedness in such things as they desire above all else. And none other thing may be said. P. Now have you then the form and cause of false well-being? Now turn and fight again to your thought, I said, though it were to a blind man.\nAnd you showed me a little here before, when you compelled me to show me the causes of the false well-being. For if I am deceived, then that is the true blissful and perfect one that perfectly makes a man sufficient, honorable, and full of gladness. And you will surely know that I have well understood these things within my heart. I know well that that blissful thing which men give one another when they have been all one. I doubtless know that that thing is full of bliss. P / O my noble questioner, by this open question I say that you are blissful. If you put this to it that I shall say, B / what is that question I. P. do you believe that there is anything in this earthly, mortal, transient things that can bring about this state? B. Certainly, I do not. And you have shown me well that there is nothing good beyond that. P / These things then, my questioner, that is to say, earthly sufficiency and power and such things earthly.\nThey seem like representations of true good, or else it seems they offer a manner of goodness that is not perfect but that true and perfect goodness. They cannot offer this, I agree. I, P, then agree that you, she, have understood which is that very blissful thing and which are the things that falsely appear blissful. That is to say, by deceit they seem very good. Now you must know when and where to seek that very blissful thing. B. Indeed, I who desire it greatly and have waited a long time to hear it. P. But as for her, as it pleases my disciple Plato in his book in Timeo, right in little things men should ask for God's help. What do I suggest we do now so that we may deserve to find the seat of that sovereign good? B. Indeed, I say. I believe we should call upon the Father of all goods, for without Him there is nothing found rightly. P. You speak truly, she said.\nAnd began anon to sing:\nO Thou sovereign and creator of heaven and earth,\nthat governest this world by perpetual reason,\nThou commandest the times to go on\nsince that age had beginning. Thou that dwellest\nthyself steadfast and stable, and makest all other things\nmore fluid. Never did foreign causes necessitate\nthe composition of works of fleeting matter,\nbut only the form of sovereign good set within,\nwithout envy, meandered the freely created things,\nwhich thou art fairest in forming, shaping this world\nto the likeness of that fair world in thy thought.\nThou dearest all things on thy sovereign example,\nand commandest them to have freely and absolutely\ntheir perfect parts. Thou bindest the elements\nby proportionable numbers, so that cold things\nmay accord with hot things, and dry things with moist.\nThou knittest together the mean soul of triple kind, forming all things and dividing it by number. When it is thus divided, it has assembled a forming into two and envelops a full deep thought, and tears the heavens by similar image. Thou enhancest the souls and lesser lives and enable them to heighten by light ways or carts. Thou sowest them in heaven and in earth, and when they are converted to thee by thy benign law, thou makest them return again to thee, leading fire. O Father, give him good thought. And the light thou hast given him, grant him to fix the clear sight of his heart in thee. And share with him and break the weights and clouds of earthly heaviness, and shine thou by thy brightness, for thou art clearness.\nFor as much as you have seen, what is the form of good that is not perfect, and what is the form of good that is perfect? I believe it would be good to show in what this perfection of blissfulness is set, and in this thing. I believe that we shall first inquire whether any such good as the good that you have defined exists. That is to say, sovereign good may be found in the nature of things. For our vain imagination of thought does not deceive us and put us out of the truthfulness of that thing which is submitted to us. But it may not be denied that this is so, and that is right as well as all goods. For all things that are called imperfect are proved imperfect by the absence of the perfection of that which is perfect. And here comes the reason that in every imperfect thing, getting the perfection that is in it.\nCertes in this thing there must be something perfect / For if perfection is done away, / men cannot think or say from whence that is called imperfect, / for nature did not take its beginning from things imperfect and incomplete, / but it proceeds from things that are complete and fruitful. But as I have shown a little here before, if there is a perfect and steadfast thing, B. This is concluded. P. Consider also that in whom this blessedness dwells, / The common accord and concept of men proves and grants that God is good. For so nothing may be thought better than God.\nIt may not be doubted then that he who is not good is not as good as God. Reason shows that God is so good that it is proven by absolute force that perfect good is in Him. For if God is such, He cannot be the prince of all things. For certainly, something possessing perfect good in itself should be more worthy than God. And it would seem that that thing were first and older than God. For we have shown apparently that all things that are perfect are first or things that are imperfect are later. And since my reason or my process does not go away without an end, we must grant that the sovereign good is full of sovereign perfect good. And we have established that the sovereign good is true bliss. Therefore, it is necessary that true bliss is set in sovereign good.\n\nBut I accept what you say, I / This cannot be said in any way / P. But I pray you, see now how you may prove holily and without corruption.\nThis is what we have said, that the sovereign god is full of supreme good. I. P. Wenestow argues that she who is the father of all things has taken this sovereign good only from himself. Of this sovereign good, men prove that he is full. Rightly, as you might think, the god who has blessedness within himself and this blessedness that is in him are distinct in substance. For if you were to think that God has received this good from himself, you would be more worthy than God. I acknowledge and confess, and it is rightly so, that God is worthy above all things. And if this good is in him by nature, but it is distinct from him by willing reason, since we speak of God as the prince of all things. Who then combined these things together? And finally, that which is distinct from one thing, that thing is not the same thing for which it is understood to be under it. By his nature, it is distinct from sovereign good.\nthat thing is not supreme good, but certainly it would be felonious and cursed to think so of him, for all ways of all things, the names of them may not be better than their beginnings. For which I may conclude by right true reason, that the thing that is beginning of all things is supreme god in his substance. They said rightfully, I granted that the good is blessedness. I said, \"she that is good is blessed.\" They asked, \"do we need to grant and concede that it is good?\" I purposefully replied, \"yes, I would see if this is proven yet more among them, for certainly the goods that are diverse among them, one is not the good nor more by any way.\" But I have well concluded that blessedness and God are the supreme good. For which it must be that supreme blessedness is supreme dignity. They said, \"nothing is other than God may not be concluded.\" Phia.\nUpon these things then I shall give you, as geometricians do when they have proposed things, propositions or declarations of the aforementioned things. For just as bliss and blissfulness are dignity, it is manifest and clear that men become blissful by the acquisition of dignity, just as they become wise by the acquisition of sapience. By the same reasoning, when they have attained divinity, every blissful man is a god. But certainly, by nature, there is but one God. Yet, by the participation in divinity, nothing is hindered or disturbed that there may not be many gods. B. I say this is a fair thing and precious.\nYou shall call me Corallarie or Porrisme or Mede of Crown, or I, Phia, declare that nothing is fairer than the thing that should be added to these aforementioned things. B. What thing do you mean, Phia? I. So she replied, seeming to mean that one of all these things is such that it accomplishes by itself the substance of bliss, and all the other things are referred and brought to bliss, that is to say, the chief of them. B. I would ask that you make it clear to me what you mean and what you record as the aforementioned things. P / Have I not judged that bliss is good? B. Yes, indeed I have, and that it is sovereign good. P / Add then the good that makes bliss to all the aforementioned things, for the same bliss that is deemed to be sovereign sufficiency.\nThis is a sovereign power, a sovereign reverence, a sovereign clan, and these other things referred to and brought to sovereign good, right as all things which I intend to seek. But I desire to know if all these things are the nature of parties or members, that diverse members compose a body. Boethius replied here that all these things are one thing, Philosophia. Then are they no members which she is not? For otherwise it would seem that blessedness were joined all of one membership, which may not be done, Boethius thence is not doubtful. But I await to hear the remainder of your question. P: This is open and clear that all other things are to be referred and brought to good. For this reason is sufficiency required. For it is deemed to be good, and for this there is power required. For men believe also that it is good, and this same thing may be thought and conjectured of reverence, nobility, and delight.\nThen there is something supreme, the sum and cause of all that should be desired. For that which brings no good in itself or semblance of good, it may not truly be desired or required. Conversely, though things may not be good by nature, they are still desired as if they were. And they said that men should deem it right that the source be the supreme fine and cause of all things that are to be required. But certainly that which is the cause for which men require anything seems most desired. For example, if a man rides for the sake of health, he does not desire to ride as much as the effect of his health. Since all things are required for the sake of good, they are not desired by all people more than that same good. But we have granted that blessedness is that very thing for which all these other things are desired.\nThen it is clear that only blessedness is truly required and desired, showing that good and blessedness are one and the same substance. Boethius and I have demonstrated that God and true blessedness are one thing. Therefore, we can conclude safely that the substance of good is located in that same God and nowhere else. Come now, you who are bound by wicked chains, inhabiting your earthly bodies and deceived by worldly delights, this refutes those who wish to come to Him. All the things that the river Tagus gives you with its golden sands, or all the things that the river Hermus gives with its red banks, or that the Indus gives, which do not clear the looking of your thoughts but rather hide your blind heart, excite and move your thoughts.\nThe earth has nourished it within its low causes. But the shining light by which heaven is governed, and when that its strength which escapes the dark overthrowing of the soul, he who knows that light of blessedness will see that the white beams of the sun are not clear. Boethius / I assent, I said, to all things, for all things are strongly bound by right firm reasons. P. How much will you praise it, she asked. If you know what this good is, P. I will praise it, she said, by price without end if it shall be granted to me to know also to guide God who is good, P. Indeed, she asked, what shall I do by true reason if those things which I have come a little before dwell only in her gracing, B / They dwell graced to the quotidian.\nThat is to say, as I grant to your foregoing conclusions, I have shown that the things required of many people are not very good or perfect, as each of them is lacking in the other and therefore have no power to bring a complete and absolute good. But at first, when they are gathered together into one form and into one working, that thing which is respect, nobility, and mirth - and indeed, if all these things are one and the same, they have no way to be put in the category of things that ought to be required and desired. b. It is shown that I need not doubt this. p. The things that are not goods when they are diverse, and when they begin to be all one thing, then they are goods - this does not come about then by the acquisition of unity, b. So it seems to me, p. But all things that are good, according to her.\nI grant that it is good by the perception of good or not. I grant that I. p. Then I grant that she grants that one and good are the same thing, for of things whose effect is not naturally different, their substance must be identical, I. p. if she who is that which has or has had such dwelling and substance for so long as it is one. But when it ceases to be one, it must necessarily die and corrupt, I. p. just as in the case where the soul and body are joined and dwell together. It is called a unity, and when its unity is destroyed by the disjunction that one is from that other, it is no longer one. The body of a living being while it dwells in one form by the conjunction of members, and if the parties of the body are denied and dissolved, they destroy the unity.\nThe body allows itself to be what it was before, and whoever would act in the same manner should see that every thing is in its substance, as long as it remains one. And when it allows itself to be one, it dies and perishes. B / When I consider this, I see no other P / Is there anything that she has, which in as much as it lives naturally, allows the talent or appetite of its being to fade and desire to come to death and corruption? B / If you consider this, the beasts that have any manner of willing and feeling, I find no other but one that lets go or despises the intention to live and endure, or that hastens itself to die. For every beast strives to defend and keep the salvation of its life and shuns death and destruction. But certainly I doubt myself about herbs and trees that have no souls or natural working appetites like beasts have.\nWhether they have an appetite to dwell and endure. Indeed, if she has no doubt, now look upon the herbs and trees, for they grow first in such places as are suitable to them. In which places they cannot wither nor dry up as long as their nature can protect them. For some of them grow in fields and some in mountains, and others in marshes and others on rocks, and some grow plentifully in sands. And if any person forces them to be taken to other places, they wither. For Nature gives to every thing that is suitable to it, and travels that they do not die as long as they have the power to dwell and live. What will you say of this? That they draw all their nourishment by their roots, just as if their mother's milk had been plunged into the earth and they shed their wood and bark through their marrow? And what will you say of this, that thing which is so soft as the marrow is?\nthat is always hidden within and that it is defended from without by steadfastness of wood, and that the outer bark is placed against the disturbance of the heuene as a mighty defender able to suffer harm, and thus certainly maystow well see, how great is the diligence of nature, for all things revolve and publish them with seed, yielding abundance. there is no man who knows not that they are a foundation and an edifice to endure, not only for a time, but also enduringly by generation.\nAnd the things that men neither have souls nor desire, according to their nature, to keep that which is his, that is, what belongs to him in conservation of his being and enduring. For where the weight presses the earth down, but just as those places and those more so, every thing keeps that which is accordant and proper to him, as enemies corrupt. And yet the hard things, such as stones, cleave and hold their parts together right fast and hard and defend themselves with standing, so that they do not depart lightly and yield place to them. But fire flees and refuses all division. I do not treat now of willful knowing. but of the natural intention of things. Just as we swallow the food that we receive and do not think about it, and as we draw our breath in sleeping that we know not while we sleep. For certainly, in beasts, the love of their livings, not of their beings, comes not from the willingness of the soul.\nBut of the beginnings of nature. For certainly, through constraining causes, will often desires and embraces death that nature dreads. That is to say, a man may be constrained by some cause to desire and take the death which nature hates and fears greatly. And sometimes we see the contrary, that the will of a being disturbs and constrains that, and nature always desires and requires this - the works of generation. By which generation only dwells and is sustained the long durability of mortal things. As this: This charity and this love that every thing has for itself comes not from the motion of the soul, but from the intention of nature. For the providence of God has given to things that are created by him this: a great cause for living and enduring, for which they naturally desire her life.\nas long as they mow (for which thou might not fear by any means that all things which are anywhere require the far stability of permanent dwelling and also the showing of destruction) Boethius\nNow I confess I see clearly and without doubt the things that seemed uncertain to me before. But she asked, what is it that desires to be and dwell permanently? He desires to be one, for if one were destroyed, there would be no being left for anyone. She asked, and I agreed, that all things desire to be one. I assent, I said. And I have said she is that same one which is good. You agree, she said. Then she asked, what do all things require? I replied, good is that which every being desires.\nFor every thing that is referred and brought to nothing, and the governor deprived of one as if of her own head, or if there is only one thing to which all things tend, and that thing must be the sovereign good of all good things in your heart, which the mind has been disposed to them, I ask you, I. P. Whether you knew who she was, and what that thing is which is the good of all. Whoever seeks truth in deep thought and covets not to be deceived by false eyes, let him roll and tread within himself the light of his inward sight, and let him gather again inclining into a compass the long meandering of his thoughts. And then that thing which the black clouds of error once covered shall shine more clearly than Phoebus himself. Gloss: Whoever seeks the deep grounds of truth in his thought.\nLet not be deceived by false appearances that come amiss from the truth. Let him well examine and roll within himself the nature and properties of the thing, and let him yet examine and roll his thoughts by good deliberation or that he deem. And let him teach his soul that it has by natural principles hidden within it all the truth which he imagines to be in things without, and then all the darknesses of his misunderstanding shall be more evidently seen to the sight of his understanding than the sun seems to the sight without. For certainly the body, bringing the weight of forgetting, has not chased out of your thoughts all the clarity of your knowing. For certainly the seed of truth holds and clings within you, and it is awakened and excited by the winds and by the blasts of doctrine. For why else do you of your own will assert the rights when you are asked? But if so were that the nourishing of reason and life did not dwell in the depths of your heart.\nThat is to say, how should men determine the thing that was asked. And if there were a route of truth sunk and hidden in natural principles. The which truth lived within the depths of thought. And if so be that the muse and the doctrine of Plato then said I thus: I greatly agree with Plato. For you record and remember, and afterwards when I least expected it, I found it confirmed by the charge and by the burden of my sorrow. P. And then she said thus: if you seek what I first questioned, it will not be far from that which you will not remember. B. What thing did I question. P. By which government did she govern. B. I remember it well that I said, and I confess well that I did not know she was here before that men should doubt that this world is governed by God. B. Certainly I yet do not doubt it, nor do I wish to doubt it. As one says.\nBut I know well that God governs this world, and I shall briefly answer you by what reasons. I am brought to this world, I said, of so many diverse and contrary parties, never able to be assembled in one form unless there were one that combined them. The same diversity of their natures, which so discord that one from another must depart and divide the things that are combined, and yet the certain order of nature should not bring forth such disorderly motions, by places, by times, by doings, by spaces, by qualities. If there were not one that was steadfast dwelling and ordered and disposed these diversities, I call him God, a word used to all people. Then she said, \"Since you feel thus about these things, said she.\"\nI believe I have little more to do than to show you, of great well-being, the things we have proposed here before. Have I not named and said that the one who brings sufficiency is in bliss, and we have agreed that God is that same one? P. And that to govern this world, he shall never have need of help from without. For if he had needed any help, he would not have been good. P. Then he alone ordered all things that cannot be denied, P. And I have shown that God is the same good, B. It reminds me well that I, P, have agreed that the good is that which we have called good. He governs all things by himself. And he is a key and a steer by which the edifice of this world is kept stable and without chaos. B. I greatly agree, I.\nAnd I have perceived a little head she / For as I believe / thou leadest nothing that I shall tell, P / So it may be she and that rightfully that God gave / And all the good, there may be no man doubt that they are governed by / And that the good will to her or ordain her / As that they have been according and inclining to ruling / B. It must needs be so, I for the realm should not seem blind she that keeps his nature, that enforces P and me. And if anything enforced him to withstand God, it might not avail him at all I al utterly.\nP. Then there is nothing that she either may or will withstand to her sovereign God / B / I believe not she is that sovereign god that said I, thus I delight me, I P. not only in the ends or in the some of the reasons that thou hast concluded and proved / but those words that thou used delight me much more. So that at last fools that sometimes shame themselves.\nthat is to say we are ashamed of ourselves, as I who said that God refuses only the worker, when she relates the fables of the poets. But will you that we rejoice in the same reasons, for the endurance of such connection may stir up some fair spark of truth. B. did I as the list says. Phia. Do you think that God is not almighty? B. No man doubts it, indeed I do. P No one doubts it. But if He is in His mind, there is nothing that He cannot. That is true, I say / P / may God do evil, she said. B / Nay, indeed I say. P. Then evil is nothing, she said / since He may do no evil that may do all things. b. do you scorn me, she asked, or play with me or deceive me, having won me over with your reasons.\nthe house of Dedalus so intricately linked that it is unable to be unraveled. There you issue your requests, and there you are issued to. Do not gather by repetition of words a wonderful circle or encompassing of the divine simplicity, for truly a little here beforehand when you began in blissful states. You said that it is sovereign good, and that God is the source of bliss, for which you gave me as a worthy gift - that is, no one is blissful unless they are good as well. And you also said that the form of good is the substance of God and of bliss, and that this one is the same as that which is required and desired of all kinds of things. You proceeded in disputing that God governs all things in the world by the governance of wisdom and providence. And you know this homely.\nThe problems are not extremely rampant in the text. Here is the cleaned text:\n\nThe problems draw us to themselves and said, \"I show thee that which is greatest over all things by the gift of God that we welcome. The movable circle of things while this divine substance keeps itself without movings, that is to say, he moves never, yet it moves all other things. But if I have stirred reasons that are not taken from without the compass of the thing which we treat, but reasons that were bestowed within its compass, there is no reason why you should shrink from the sentence of Plato. Blessed is that man who may sing. Blessed is he who may unbind himself from the heavy bonds of there. The poet of Tracy Orpheus had great shame made by his weeping songs. The words were movable to run, and had made the rivers stand still.\nAnd had made the hands of the hounds join their dreadeles to cruel lions, to herkene his song; and had made that the hare was not afraid of the hound which pleased by his song. So when the most ardent love of his wife burned the entrails of his breast, neither the songs that had overcome all things could assuage her lord Orpheus. He beseeched the heavenly Goddesses, who were cruel to him, and went to the houses of Helle. And he tempered his soothing songs by the resonance of strings.\n\nAnd he spoke and sang in weeping all that ever he had received and praised out of the noble wells of his mother Calliope, the goddess. And he sang with as much hand and as much love that doubted his sorrow might yield him and teach him. And he came to the hell and required and beseeched and was granted permission.\nThat is to say, all about the land and the three goddesses, the Furies and avengers of felonies, who torment and aggrieve Ixion, tormented by the underworld and Tantalus by the wood, the floods to dry up. The true Lord and Judge of souls was mocked and his deed and covenant in the left hand. And a stronger one and his wife were almost at the term of the night. Orpheus looked back on Eurydice, his wife, and lost her and was dead. This fable pertains to you all. Whoever desires or seeks to lead his thought into the sovereign day, that is, to clarity of sovereign good. For whoever is overcome and fixes his eyes into the pit of hell, that is, whoever sets his thoughts on earthly things, he leaves behind whatever he has drawn from the noble, celestial good.\nThis is to signify the following concerning earthly matters.\n\nExplicitly, the third book ends and the fourth begins.\n\nWhen philosophy had softly and delicately addressed the aforementioned things, keeping the dignity of her countenance and the weight of her words, I then, who had not utterly forgotten the weeping and mourning that was in my heart, responded: \"You who have spoken to me so clearly and shown me, by the divine looking of them and by reason, that all these things are such that I had once forgotten them for the sorrow of the wrongs done to me; yet nevertheless, they were not entirely unknown to me. But this very thing is a great cause of my sorrow. Therefore, as the governor of things is good, if evils have arisen in any way, or if they pass without punishment, it is worthy of wonder.\" You consider this well yourself certainly.\nBut yet there is another thing joined to this, worthy of wonder. For felony is empire and flourishes with riches, and virtue is not only without means but is cast down and trampled under the feet of felonious people. God knows all things, and it endures the torments instead of wicked felons. Then she said, \"Indeed, she who is a great marvel and an abashing sight, and far more horrible than all monsters, if it were as you, an ordainer of mine, that the foul and vile vessels should be honored and buried, and the precious vessels defiled and made vile, but it is not so. For if the things that I have concluded here were kept unharmed and unharmed, you shall well know by the authority of God that good people are and shrews are always cast out and weak. Nor does vice ever come to good people, and misfortune comes only to wicked people.\nAnd you shall well know many things of this kind that shall cease your complaints. And for you have seen the form of true blessedness by me, who have formerly shown it to you, and you have known where it is treated. Therefore, I shall show you the way that shall bring it back to you / And I shall fix fasteners in your thought by which it may arise in height, so that all tribulation may not drive it away by my guidance and by my path. And by my footprints shall you mowen return whole and sound into your country.\n\nThen for your swift feet that surmount the height of heaven, when the swift thought has clothed it in those feet. It despises the hateful earth and surmounts the roundness of the great air. And it sees the clouds behind its back / and passes the height of the region of the fire that enchanting of the firmament. Until it arises into the houses that bear the stars.\nand it joins the way with the sun, Phoebus, and feels the path of the old, cold Saturn. And he made a knight of the clear star, that is to say. When the thought is made God's knight by the seeking of the clergy. And that soul runs by the circle of stars in all the places where the shining night is depicted, that is to say, the cloudless night. For one night that is cloudless. It seemed that the heaven was painted with diverse images of stars. And when he has done enough there, he shall find and present and perfect. God Thou hast attempted the shining jug of things of the sand if thy way leads thee among such wretched people thence.\n\nThen I said: O I wonder me that thou dost question me of such great things. I neither doubt nor dispute that thou canst perform what thou dost question, but I pray thee not to tarry too long to tell me these things.\nFirst, you must know that good people are always strong and mighty, and shrews are always feeble and deserted, naked of all strengths. And of these things, certainly each of them is declared and shown by others. For if good and evil are two contrasts, then the weakness of evil is shown openly. And if you clearly know the freedom of evil, the steadfastness of good is known. But since the faith of my sentence will be the more firm and steadfast, I will go by that way and by that other. And I will confirm the things that are proposed on this side and on that side. There are two things in which thieves have power. And if one of these two fails, there is no thing that can be done. For if will lacks, there is no one who undertakes to do what he will not do. And if power fails, the will is but idle and stands for nothing and comes from it. Therefore, if you would, B. This is open and clear, I said.\n\"ne it may not be denied in any manner. P. And if thou say she who has done that he would have done, thou wilt not doubt that he had the power to do it, b / no question I / p. And in that which every rightful person may, in some cases where a man is rightful to do a thing, in so much as men hold him rightful, and in that which he cannot, I. P. Remember the quote she who I have gathered and shown for said reasons. That all the intention of the will of mankind, which is led by diverse studies, hastens to come to blood, I say that it has been shown, Phia. And it records not what she said, that bliss is that same good that men require so much that when bliss is required of all, it records me not what I said for I have it all the way in my memory fixed, Phia / All folk then said she was good and also bad, enforcing them without difference. B. This is a true consequence. And it is said that she who obtains good makes good. B. That is asked of me.\"\nPhia: Then good men say that I, P. But wicked folk say if they get the good that they desire, they cannot be wicked. B: That is what I say, P. And that other says she desires good and nothing wicked, and only the good people get it. And over this, she asks if there are two things, one of which pursues and performs that same thing by natural office, and the other cannot do that office naturally but follows by another manner, making it kindly accomplish its purpose, yet it does not accomplish its own purpose, whether you consider these two as more powerful. B: If I infer correctly, you would agree. Alas, I still wish to hear it more plainly from you. P: You do not deny then that she asserts that the movement of going is in men by kind. B: Indeed, I agree, P. I do not doubt that the natural office of going is not that of feet. Boethius: I do not doubt it, I agree, Philosophia.\nThan she asked if a being could move and go on its feet, and another being clinging to its hand: which of these two should be held more mighty by right, B. Knight replied: I answer for the remainder, P. / For no one doubts that the one who can go by the natural office of his feet is more mighty than the one who cannot. But the sovereign good, she asked, which is equally disposed to the good and the bad, is sought by good people by the natural office of virtues, and shrews enforce themselves to get it by various desires of earthly things, which is not a natural office to get that sovereign good. Do you think it is any other way, Boethius? No, I replied. For the consequence is clear and shows things that I have granted: that is, good people must be mighty, and shrews must be weak and powerless. Philosophy, you run away from me, she said, and this is the judgment.\nThat is to say,\nI judge according to right, as these leches have hoped to comfort sick people when they perceive that nature has been restored and opposes the disease. But since I see that it is now all ready to oppose, I shall show more reasons for this, and continuous ones. Look how greatly the weakness and infirmity of wicked people is shown, who cannot come to help, yet natural intention compels them. And what would be said then of scoundrels if that natural help had forsaken them? Its power is so great that it cannot be overcome. Consider then the great defect of power and the great weakness of wicked, felonious people. As the great-hearted and the desire not accrue to the less might, nor do these wretches come to good. The reason for this power of good people, men may conclude, that we wicked men seem bare and naked of all strength.\nFor why do they forsake virtues and follow vices? Is it not because they do not know the goods? But what is more feeble and more captive than the blindness of Ignorance? Or else they know well which things they ought to follow, but lechery and covetise overcome them. And indeed, distemperance does the same to weak men. Those who can't wrestle against these vices, and don't know well that they forsake the good willingly and turn willingly to vices, forsake not only being mighty but all utterly in any way. For those who forsake and seem to some to be shrews, who contain the more parts of men, have no being; but I deny simply and plainly that they are not. They have no being.\nFor right as you might see, a man who acts cruelly is a man of great wickedness. But I cannot absolutely and simply grant that they are. For that which restrains or keeps nature in check, that is and has being. But what fails, that is to say, he who lets go of natural order, he lets go of the being that is set in his nature.\n\nBut you would say that shrews have power. Indeed they do not deny it. But their power does not descend from strength but from weakness. For they can do wickedness, which they could not. If they could dwell in the form and in the doing of good people, and that power would clearly show that they can do nothing right. For as I have gathered and proven a little before. Evil is not, and so are shrews. They can only have shrewdness. This conclusion is clear.\nthat shrews may not rightly do anything and have no power. But if you understand why a shrew's power is strong, I have distinguished a little here before. That nothing is mightier than sovereign good. B. That is true, I say. P. Is there anyone who believes that she who thinks that men can do all things, B. no one, I say. But he is out of his mind. B. Would you grant, I ask, that they might do none, P. Then she asked, as he may do good things, and those who are mighty to do evil things, cannot do all things. Therefore, it is an open and manifest thing that those who can do evil are of lesser power. And to prove this conclusion, I have shown it here before. That all power should be numbered among things that men ought to require.\nI have shown that all things desired are referred to God as if to a higher authority, for if God is not the referent of the desire, then it is not evil among the things that ought to be desired and required. It is clear and obvious that the power or the moving of shrews is not power. And among these things, it shows well that the good folk are certainly mighty, and the shrews undoubtedly unmighty. It is clear and open that Plato's sentence, \"that they may come to sovereign good,\" shows that they may haunt those who like it. But they have no power to accomplish that, for shrews do what is good that they desire, but they neither get nor attain it. Vices do not come to blissfulness.\n\nWho can strip the coverings of their vain apparel from these proud kings?\nthat thou sees a high seat glittering in shining purple, surrounded by sorrowful armored men with cruel mouths blowing fiercely from wickedness of heart. He should see that these lords bore within their courts strict chains, for lechery torments them on one side with greedy venoms and troublesome Ire that raises in them the flood of trouble. Therefore, since you see one head, that is to say one tyrant, ruling over many tyrants. And with what clarity these good folk shine / In this it is shown well that to good people there never lacks more medicine, nor shrews more torments, for of all things that are done, that thing for which any thing is done.\nIt seems that the thing which is good is the reason for all things being done. The same good is intended for human works. For no one, as rightfully called good, forsakes his mede or ever will, for all good people. Yet, the crown of wise men shall not fall or fade for foreign shrewdness. Nor shall they lose their honor from the heart of good people, but if any man rejoices in goodness bestowed upon him from without. For instance, if a man had his goodness from any other man than himself, then the one who gave him that goodness, or some other, might claim it as their own. However, to every man, his own bounty gives him his due. Therefore, he will fail in his due when he forsakes being good, and men believe that good is he who does not refuse it.\nHe who is rightfully mighty and good is entitled to fair and great reward. And what reward should he receive? Certainly, fair and great reward above all others. Remember the noble correlation I gave you a little before, and grant it to God himself, for it is his bliss. Then it is clear and certain that all good people are made happy, for they are good. And those who are happy, it is fitting and agreeable to be God's. Therefore, the reward of such people is that no day will ever end it, nor will wickedness darken it, nor will any power or malice diminish it. That is to say, they are made gods, and since good and evil, pain and rewards are contrary, the pain of fools never departs from them.\nWhoever is entangled and defiled by pain, he has no doubt that he is entangled and defiled by evil. If shrews wish to praise themselves, it may seem to them that they are without party to torment since they are such wicked beings. Look at shrews, who are the contrary party to good men, and see how great fellowship and foulness afflicts and torments them. For all that is and being is one, and this same one is good. That is to say, being, unity, and goodness are all one.\nAnything that fails to be good turns into malice and is transformed beyond the nature of humankind, but a shrew, who has cast out shrewdness from the condition of humankind, must be put under the mercy and deserving of men. If you see a man transformed into vices, you should not think that he is a ravager due to the violence of foreseen riches. You shall see that he is like a wolf, and if he is felonious and without rest, and exercises his tongue to chiding, you shall liken him to the hound. And if he is deceitful and hiding, and reigns and rules, and if he is distempered and quaking for fear of things which ought not to be feared, men shall hold him like the heart. And if he is slow and stunned and latent.\nmen shall hold him like an ass, and if he is light and unsteady, changing his studies; men shall hold him like birds. And if he is plunged in foul and unclean luxuries, he is withheld in the foul delights of the foul sow. Then follows it, that he who forsakes bounty and prowess, he forsakes being a man, since he cannot pass in the condition of God, he is turned into a beast.\n\nArrived the sails of Ulixes with enchantments. And after that, her hand mightily changed her gestures into diverse manners. One of them is covered with the form of a boar, that other is changed into a lion of the counterfeit of marble, and his teeth were. That other was changed into a dog of mercury, called the Boar's Head, with deceitful drinks. They that were waxen swine, bred to eat acorns of oaks. None of them touched the body.\nOnly the thought stable dwells with them that weep and bewail the monstrous change that we undergo, as one might say: O feeble and light is the bond of Circe the enchantress, who changes the bodies of people into beasts. To observe and compare the mutation wrought by vices, neither the herbs of Circe nor mighty are they. For although they may change the limbs of bodies, yet they cannot change the hearts. For within is hidden the strength and vigor of men in the secret recesses of their hearts, that is to say, the strength of reason. But these poisons of vices draw a man more powerfully than the poison of the enchantress Circe. For vices are so cruel that they penetrate and wound the soul within, and although they do not harm the body, yet vices would destroy men by the wound of thought.\n\nThen I said: I confess and acknowledge this, Q.D. I do not see that men can truly say: as shrews are changed into beasts.\nDespite the quality of their souls, if they keep the form of human body, I would not allow cruel and wood-driven shrews, whose thoughts incessantly lead to the destruction of good men, to do as they please. But if such shrews were named, and not an annoyance or harm to good men, a great part of their pain would be alleged and released. For although it may seem an incredible thing to seemly folk that it needs be that shrews are more wretched and silly when they can fully do and perform that which they covet, than if they could not accomplish it. For if wretchedness lies in willing to do evil, then more wretchedness lies in doing evil without which moving wretched will languish without effect.\nThand is constrained by the unseland mown and commits felonies and shrewdness. B / I am told that I have been dispensed from mowing to do evil P / So shall they quote, she soon perishes nothing so late in such a short band, high compassing of shrewdness is most easily destroyed. by a sudden end / or they are aware And that thing almost captives and unwise if her shrewdness were not finished at least by the outermost concluded sothe of the unseland\nThis wretchedness which is certain to be enduring / B. Indeed I grant this conclusion is hard & wonderful to grasp. But I know well that it agrees much with things I have granted here, for she right estimation of these / But what agreement can he have with a conclusion.\nIt is right that he shows that some of the premises are false or, alternatively, he most shows that the collation of propositions is not specific to a necessary conclusion. And if it is not so, but the premises are granted, there is no reason why he should have the argument. I will now tell you something else. It is not less wonderful that things taken are necessary, as he says, \"it follows that which is proposed by I.P.\" That is, if wicked shrews were not punished by justice or chastised and chastised by vengeance, and if they were not brought to the right way by the fear of torture. Nor for the example they give to others to flee from vices. But I understand it in another manner.\nthat shrews are more unwisely when they are not punished / If he is hit so that there is no reason for law or correction or example of looking / And what manner should that be, I ask, other than it has been told here before / P. Have we not granted / then she said. that good people are blessed / and shrews are wretches / B. I. P / then she said, if any good is added to the wretchedness of any one, is he not miserable in his solitary wretchedness. B. So it seems to me, I. P. & what do you mean then, she asked / of that wretch who lacks all goods / so that no good is mixed in his wretchedness for which he is a wretch / that there is yet another evil attached and knitted to him / shall not men deem him more unwisely than that wretch of whom the wretchedness is shared by the participation of some good. B / why should he not, I. P. then, certainly, she asked, if she has shrews when they are punished somewhat with good annexed to their shrewdness, by the reason of justice. and when that same shrewish woman, I. Phia,\nMore than she would if they were punished justly and clearly for what they had done. It is wickedness and wrong not to punish them. Boethius / Who might I be, Phaedrus. But she said that all that is right is good, and wrong is wicked. Boethius said I, these things are clear enough. But I ask you, do you agree that no torment should be allowed to souls after the body has ended with death, that is, do you understand that souls have any torment after the death of the body? P. Certainly, she replied, and of those souls, I believe that some are tormented by the pang of pain. And I believe that souls are exercised by a purging meekness. But it is not my advice to determine these punishments. I have only traversed and told you this so far, for you should know that the punishment of shrews.\n\"Although moving seemeth unworthy now, and those very shrews of whom you complained, they should not have escaped the punishment you desired to see, or never have been without the torment of her wickedness. And concerning the license of moving, that you prayed it might soon end, and you would pretend to learn that it should not last long, and shrews are more unbearable if they are of longer duration, and most unbearable if they are enduring. And after this I have shown that shrews have been more unbearable when they escape without their rightful punishment. than when they are punished with rightful vengeance. And from this sentence follows that then shrews are constrained at last with grievous tormentes, when men believe that they are not punished.\"\nIf I turn again to the studies of men, who am I to whom it seems that he should not not only leave these things but gladly hear of them? But men cannot, for they have eyes so accustomed to the darkness of earthly things that they cannot lift up to the light of clarity. But they are like birds, of which the night lights up their looking, and the day blinds them. For when men look not to the order of things but to their lusts or trivialities, they think that either the leave of moving to do wickedness or else the escaping without penalty is well-pleasing. But consider the judgment of the eternal law. For if you confirm your courage to the best things, you have no need to give any judgment or payment, for you have joined that thing.\nAnd if you have encountered the study of wicked things, seek no wicked things like you might be able to look at the foul earth and heaven, and if all other things cease from without, so that you say nothing more. Then it would seem to me, by only looking at this, that you were now in the stars and now in the earth. But the people do not look at these things. What then? Shall we approach this to show that they are land, would you have forgotten that he was both the author and the one who wanted nothing to fail him of the perfect world we do not believe. That is to say, that more unjustly do those who do wrong to other people suffer than those who suffer the wrong. B / I would quote the same reason here / P / Do you deny that all shrews are not worthy of torment? B / No, I do not / P\nBut I am certain, for many reasons, that shrews are unwisely called so. It agrees with what I, Phia, say. Then you do not doubt, I take it, that those people who are worthy of punishment should not be wretches. It agrees well with what I say. P. If you were then set as a judge or a knower of things, would you believe that men should punish him who has done wrong or else him who has suffered wrong. B. I doubt not what I say, that I would not do sufficient satisfaction to him who has suffered wrong through the sorrow of him who has done wrong. Phia. Then it seems that what she says is that the doer of wrong is more wretched than he who has suffered wrong.\nBoccius said I, Phia, then she said that by these causes and other causes enforced by the same root, filth or sin by its nature makes them wretches. And she showed well that she, these orators or advocates, did all the contrary for they enforce them to commence the judgments that have pity on those who have and received the things which are grievous and harsh. Yet men should have more rightfully have pity on those who do the cruelties and wrongs. The shrews it would be a more commendable thing that the accusers or advocates, not angry but pitiful and demeanor, leading shrews who have done wrong to the judgment. Like men lead sick men to the leech, for they should seek out the cause and by this covenant, either the intent of the advocates should cease in all.\nIf the office of the advocates were more properly turned into the habit of accusation, that is, they should accuse shrews rather than excuse them. And it would be becoming for shrews themselves to see, at any point, the virtue which they have forsaken. They deem and hold that those pains were torments to them, and they well refuse the attendance of her advocates and take up the cause of her accusers. For this reason, there is no place left for good men. But if he were overly foolish, and hated sin as a malady of courage, and so we do not deem that those who are sick in body are worthy of hate but rather of pity. But those who are hated are of the sort who are compelled by felonious wickedness.\nthat is more cruel than any lingering of body. What delights you to excite such great showings of hatreds & hasten and busy the fatal disposition of your death with your own hands. That is to say, by battles or contests. For if you ask the death, it hastens him of his own will, neither death nor does he tarry his swift horse. And the men that the serpents and the lion and the tiger and the bear & the boar seek to slay with their discordant teeth and cruel battles and will to perish by entering engagements. But the reason for the cruelty is not enough rightful. Will you then yield a commendable reward to the desertions of men? Love rightfully good men and have pity on scoundrels\n\nThis I see well, quoth I either what blissfulness or what unfelicity is established in the deserts of good men and of scoundrels.\nbut in this like fortune of the people I see something of good and something of evil. For no wise man would rather be exiled poor and needy than to dwell in his city and flourish in riches and be revered for honor and strong in power. In this way, the office of wise men is more clearly and witnessably treated than the blissfulness of power and governors is, as it were shaded among the peoples that are neighbors and subjects. Since, indeed, prison, law, and these other tortures of lawful penalties are rather owed to felonious citizens. For the which felonious citizens the penalties are established more than for good people. B. Then I greatly lament that things are so misentangled that tortures for felonies press and confound good people, and shrewd ones rush medicines of virtue, and are in honors and great estates.\nAnd I desire to know what seems to be the reason for this so wrongful a confusion. I would wonder less if I thought that all things were governed by fortunate happenings. But now my astonishment increases. God governs things, as He often grants goods and pleasures to good men and evils and misfortunes to shrews. If men do not know the cause, why it is so, it is no marvel that they think there are some confused and disordered things when the reason for such great disorder is unknown. Nevertheless, since God, the good Governor, attempts and governs the world, have no doubt that all things are done rightly. Whoever does not know the cause of the stars' erratic motion, that is, their deviation from the sovereign center or point, and does not know why the star Boetes passes or gathers its ways and drenches its late flames in the sea.\nAnd why does Boetes unfold his swift-rising stars, then one should wonder about the law of the high air. And likewise, if he does not know why the horns of the full moon grow pale and infected by the bounds of the dark night, or how the dark and confused moon reveals the stars that she had covered with her clear face, the common error more often deceives people and makes their brass basins very hot with those strokes. That is to say, there is a certain people called Coribandes who believe that when the moon is in eclipse, it is enchanted. Therefore, to rescue the Moon, they strike her basins with those strokes.\n\nAnd no one wonders when the blasts of the wind shake the shores of the sea with quaking floods, or when the weight of the snow hardened by the cold is resolved by the burning heat of Phoebus the sun. For here we see men readily the causes.\nbut the causes hidden, that is to say, trouble the breasts of men. The movable people are astonished by all things that come silently and gradually in your age. But the troubling error of our ignorance kept us from knowing why such things befall us. If they knew the hidden causes, certainly they would cease to seem wonders. Thus it is that I. But so, as thou hast given or allowed me to unravel the hidden causes of things and to discover the reasons concealed in darkness, I pray thee, devise and judge me in this matter. And that thou dost make me understand it. For this miracle of this wonderful trouble greatly perplexes me. And then she said with a little smiling, Thou askest me what is greatest of all things. And to which question there is not enough to answer. As one says.\nThere is only one thing to answer perfectly to your question. For the matter of hand and cut away other doubts, just as the heads of Idre the serpent became which serpent Hercules sloughed off, there was neither manner nor end, but if a weighty one constrained the doubts by a right living and quick fire of thought. That is to say, by the vigor and strength of wit. For in this matter, men were accustomed to make questions about the simplicity of the providence of God and the order of destiny and sudden happenings. And of knowing of divine predestination and the liberty of free will. The which things you yourself perceived well of what weight they were.\nBut for as much as the knowing of these things is a manner portion or medicine to all be it so, that I have had little time to do it yet nevertheless I would enforce me to show some of it. But though the nourishings of the delights of music delight thee, thou must suffer and endure a little of this delight. While I think to quote I so do Phia. She spoke rightly, as another beginning and said rightly thus. The engendering of all things quoth she and all the progressions of movable nature and all that moveth in any manner, takes its causes, its order and its forms from the stability of divine thought. And that divine thought which is set and put in the tower, that is to say, in the height of the simplicity of God, stabilizes many manners to the things that are to be done. The which manner, when men look at it in the pure cleanness of the divine Intelligence, is called purveyance.\nBut when such matters are referred to things that seem or dispose of themselves, as opposed to what the old men called it, destiny. These two things, if anyone looks carefully in his thought, will easily discern their difference. For providence is that divine reason, established in the sovereign prince of things, which providence disposes of all things. But certainly destiny is the disposition and order clear to movable things, by which disposition providence binds all things in order. For providence encompasses all things to help them all, though they be infinite. But destiny certainly departs and orders all things singly and divides and conjoins in the looking of the divine thought, which is called providence. And this same assembling, dividing, and unfolding late is called destiny.\nAnd yet, although all these things are so, those who commit such acts have never been hanged for it one against the other. For the order is determined by the simplicity of pursuit. A thing that brings about the effect of the one who willed it in thought, simply and immediately, is corporeally connected to that one, whether desire is exercised by some divine spirits serving the divine pursuit, or by some soul, or by all nature serving God, or by the celestial movements of stars, or by the virtue of angels, or by subtle deceit of devils, or by any of them, or by them all. The deterministic order is woven and accomplished.\nCertes, it is an open thing that the pursuit is an unmovable and simple form of things to do. And the meaningful bond and the temporal order of things which are to be done are necessary for this, for which reason all things that are put under necessity are certainly subject to those that stable remain near the first godhead, they surmount the order of destinal movability. For right as circles turn about the same center or about a point surrounded by a larger enveloping, it is unfolded by larger spaces; and if there is anything that binds and fellowships itself to this middle point, it is constrained into simplicity. That is to say, into unmovability.\nIt ceases to be shy and to wander, just as that which withdraws furthest from the first thought of God is more free and base from dignity. That is to say, to God. And if the thing clings to the steadfastness of God's thought and is without movement, certainly it is drawing nearer to understanding and of that which was engineered to that which is from time to eternity. And of the circle to the center, rightly is the order of movable destiny arranged among them, and it transforms them by endowing them. And this same order now grows and falls down, by a likeness of sex, That is to say, female. And he who governs this simplicity dwells within. And this order constitutes itself, and it is steadfastly presented to us men. For we cannot consider this order. Nevertheless, the proper man, dressed for evil, disposes all things.\nfor the thing that is denoted by wicked folk is not done for evil / the which shrews, as I have shown fully, seek good. But wicked error misleads them. Neither the order coming from the point of sovereign good nor inclines towards its beginning. But you may say what unrest may be a worse confusion than this, that good men sometimes have adversity and sometimes prosperity, & shrews have things that they desire and things that they hate. Whether men live now in such holy folk or shrews, it is necessary that men be such as they seem. In this manner, the judgments of men discord. That is, those men whom some people deem worthy of reward, others deem worthy of torment. But let him then know and see the inner determination of courage as it has been said of bodies. As one may say, a man's complexion and the temperament of his body are not a matter of dispute. Nor is it a marvel or miracle to them who know it not.\nWho is it that sweet things are suitable for some bodies, and bitter things for others, and why some people are helped by light medicines, while others by bitter ones? But those who know the manner and disposition of health and disease wonder at nothing, but what seems to be the health of the heart but bounty, and what seems to be the disease of the heart but vices? Who else keeps guard over good and drives away evil but God, the governor and ruler of thought? When God, who knows all things, does such things of which ignorant people are astonished, this miracle occurs, as described in the following.\nbut for conveying a few things about the divine nature, which human reason may comprehend. That man who thinks he is to be righteous and equitable. The contrary seems to divine providence that all know. Lucan, my acquaintance, tells us that the victorious cause pleased the gods, and the vanquished pleased Caton. Therefore, whatever you may see done in this world, unexpected or unknown, certainly it is the right order of things. But according to your wicked opinion, it is a confusion. I suppose, however, that some men are so well endowed that divine judgment and human judgment agree concerning them. But he is so unsteady in courage.\nif only adversity comes to him, he may perhaps continue Innocence, by which he cannot help but yield to fortune. Then the wise dispensation of God spares him, the man who might have endangered him so close to God, such that the providence of God would deem it a felony if he were touched by any adversities. So he will not suffer such a man to be afflicted with any bodily ailment. But, as the philosopher says, the more excellent is the virtue that I speak of in great men, and it often happens that the same things that are meant to govern good fortune are abated, and God gives and takes away prosperity and adversity to others, according to the quality of their courage, and reminds some people through adversity.\nFor they should not grow proud through prolonged prosperity, and other people suffer hardships so that they may confirm the virtues of courage through the exercise of patience. And those people, God lets them experience themselves through adversity and sorrowful things. Many other people have gained honorable reputations in this world through the price of glorious death. Some men, who cannot be overcome by torture, have given examples to others that virtue cannot be overcome by adversities. And of all these things, there is no doubt that they have been done rightfully and orderly for the perfect good of those to whom we see these things befall. For certainly adversity comes sometimes to scoundrels, and sometimes they desire it for the aforementioned causes and for sorrowful things that befall scoundrels. Certainly no man wonders, for all men believe that they have deserved it and that they are of wicked merit.\nof which shrews the torment sometimes drives some to commit felonies, and sometimes reforms those who suffer. It shows a great argument: a household might tempt a man to commit felonies, and God grants him riches as a remedy for his malady. Some men, beholding their conscience defiled with sins, make amends for their fortune and themselves, and fear perhaps that the bliss which is joyful to him will be taken away and deservedly so. And to some others is granted the power to punish for that which will cause continuation among them. And why not? For shrews often disdain things they have done, which things they deem should not have been done. For this reason, sovereign power has made miracles.\nshrews have made shrews good men, for when some shrews saw that they suffered wrongfully at the hands of other shrews, they became eager to hate them and turn to the fruit of virtue. They then strove to be unlike those they had hated. Indeed, only this is the divine might. To this might, evils become good when it works with evils and draws out the effect of any good, as one says that evil is good in the eyes of God. For the might of God ordains and governs all things in this world. It is not fitting for men to comprehend by wit or unfold by word all the subtle order and disposition of the divine intent. For it is sufficient to have looked that God himself, maker of all natures, ordains all things to good while hastening to withhold the things he has made into his semblance, that is, nothing of evil.\nbut I see now that you are charged with the weight of the question and weary with the length of my reasoning. If you will judge wisely in your pure thought the rights or the laws of the highest heaven, that is to say of God, look and behold the heights of the sovereign heaven, there called the bear that bears and And Autumn comes, and the fleeting thing that bears life in this world, and that same actemperance rousing, hiding and drenching under last death, all things that are born among these things, sloth, well, and beginning, law and wise judgment, and governs and inclines the bridles of things, and those things that he stirs to go by moving with him, he withdraws and restrains and affirms the movable or wandering things. For if he did not call back the right going of things, and if he did not constrain them afterwards into enclined roads.\nThe things that should be removed from her well, according to stable ordinance, are those that began and fell, bringing torrents into nothingness. This is the common love for all things, and all things ask to be held by the fine of good. For else, they could not endure if they did not return to the cause that has given them being. That is to say, God.\n\nIf she entirely gave up all fortune, what then would that be? P. Indeed, what would that be, P? Now, I understand what she means, P, that all fortune, whether it be joyful or adversarial, is either given as reward or else as an exercise for good people or because to punish or chastise the shrews. Therefore, fortune is good. The certain fortune is that it is either rightful or profitable, B.\n\"Forsooth this is a full very reasonable question. If I consider the pursuit and the destiny that you taught me a little here before, this sentence is sustained by steadfast reasons. But if it were she, for the common word of men I would use the manner of speech of fortune and say of time that the fortune of some is wicked. Would she not want me to approach almost to the words of the people so that it seems not to them that I am utterly departed from the usage of mankind? But as you will have it, P. you do not think she would say that all that profits is good. B. yes, P. certainly all that exercises or corrects me, P. then is it good, B. no, P, but this is the fortune of her head I, P. but what is wicked about it, B. nay, I but they deem as it is, good. P. what do they say, she, that although it may be harsh and restrain shrews by right, B. no, I, but the people deem it most wretched of all things that may be thought.\" Phia.\nWare now and look well, for she listeth to follow the opinion of the people. Boethius has confessed and concluded that which is unable to be welcomed by the people. What is that, I ask?\n\nP. Indeed, if it follows or comes from things that are granted to those who either possess virtue or are purchasing virtue, then that fortune is good. And all fortune is rightly wicked to those who dwell in shrewdness. As one says, and the people do not think so. B. That is true, I reply. Although no man dares to confess it or know,\n\nP. why so, she asks,\nfor a strong man seems not to abash or disdain as often as he hears the noise of battle. Nor does it seem to the wise man to bear it grievously as often as he is led into strife of fortune, for both to that one man it is the matter of increase of his glorious renown, and to that other man it is to conserve his wisdom.\nthat is to say to the aspirants of his estate. For this reason it is called virtue, for it sustains and enforces by his sand and has no part in its travel, for it is set in your hand. As one says, it lies in your power. What fortune you are least. That is to say, good or evil. For all fortune that seems sharp or harsh, if it does not exercise the good people nor chastise the wicked people, it punishes.\n\nThe wrecker rides, that is to say, Agamemnon, who initiated and continued the battles for ten years, recovered and purged in wreaking by the destruction of Troy. The lost chambers of marriage in his brother, that is, Agamemnon won again Helen, Menelaus' wife, his desired one, and brought her back by sailing with the Greeks' navy, and unclothed him of pity for his father.\nAnd the story goes that Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter's wretched life, that is, he let the priest cut her throat to make an alliance with Iphigenia for his unappealing face to yield joy to Ulysses through his sorrowful tears. That is, Athena blinded the eye of Proteus for which Athena had rejoiced when she saw Polyphemus weeping and blind. Hercules encountered the proud Centaur Chiron, half man half horse, and met Metal. He passed through Cerberus's house of hell by the triple chains. He is said to have put an unyielding lord's food before his cruel horse. That is, Hercules slew Cerberus and made his horse restless, and Hercules slew the Hydra and burned the venom. Achilles was defiled in his forehead by the Flood, and he hid his shamefaced visage. And as he fought with Hercules at last, he turned him into a bull. Hercules broke off one of his horns. And for shame, he hid himself in his river.\nOver him Hercules cast down Antaeus the giant in the strides of Libya, and Cacus appeased the wrath of Apollo with that death, the wrath of Euander being appeased. And the boar marked with horns the shoulders of Hercules, those shoulders upon which the high circle of heaven would thirst. And the last of his labors was that he sustained the heavens upon his neck. Unbowed, he deserved afterward to be made worthy of the heavens.\n\nExplicit liber quartus.\n\nShe had said and turned and was to be sped. Then I said, \"Certes, your admonishing is rightful and fully worthy by authority. But that you once said that the question of divine providence is enmeshed with many other questions, I understand and prove it by the same thing. But I may ask, if you think that anything happens, what is it?\" I am hastened by I see to yield and answer, \"It is to be doubted that you may not be able to say it.\"\nTo know this, I began to speak, and she asked if anyone disagreed in hand. I utterly declare that there is not, nor does anything have being of nothing. To this sentence, none of these old folk replied, although they may not have understood it, but they cast it aside as a mere form of words, coming from no causes. Then it will seem that this thing is coming or has come from nothing. But if this cannot be done, then it is not possible that anything I have defined here before, b, is either chance or fortune, or anything else. Although it may be hidden from the people to whom these words apply, p. My Aristotle asks in the book of his physics, b, what manner of thing I mean. p.\nas men did anything make happen. For if the plowman of the field didn't delve in the earth, and if the hider of the gold hadn't hidden the gold in that place, the gold would not have been found. These were then the causes of the abbreviating of fortune's happiness. This abbreviating of fortune's happiness comes from causes encouraging or drawing them towards themselves, not by the intention of the doer. Neither the hider of the gold nor the deliverer of the field understood that the gold should have been found, but as I said, it was fated and ran to gather that he delved there where the other had hidden the gold.\nNow may I thus differentiate happiness / Happiness is an unwarranted conjunction of causes assembled in things that are done for some other reason / but this order proceeding by an unnecessary event that arises from the well of providence which orders all things in their places and in their times makes the causes run and assemble / Tigris and Euphrates resolve and stir up battles in the breasts of those who follow them / And soon after the same rivers, if they are summoned and called to one place, meet and gather / which the water of the encountering flood brings together and the strokes are raised with that the flood assembles and the waters mixed wrap or imply many fortunes or manners / the which wandering fortunes, declining lowliness of the earth and the flowing order of the sliding water govern.\nRight, so fortune seems to guide us as if with slack or unwound reins. It suffers reins, that is, it is governed, and passes under this law, that is, by divine ordinance. I understand this well, I replied. And I agree that it is right as you say. But I ask, is there any freedom of will in this order of causes that cleave to themselves, or else I would know. If the divine decree constrains the moving of men's hearts, is there freedom of will? For every thing that naturally uses reason, it has some desire by which it is moved, asking or desiring, and flees that which it believes should be fled from. Therefore, in all things where reason is, there is also freedom of willing and of refusing. But I do not order, as if I do not grant that this freedom be equal in all things.\nFor why in the divine substances, that is to say, in spiritual judgement, is more clear and looks in speculation, or looking of the divine thought. But the last service is when they are given to vices and have fallen from the possession of their proper reason. For after that they have cast away their eyes from the light of the sovereign truth, they darken by the cloud of ignorance and are troubled by felonious talents.\nTo those who consent and approve, and increase the service they have joined to themselves, in this manner they are crafty from their previous freedom. These things notwithstanding, the divine providence sees that all things behold and see from eternity and ordains them. It is said in Greek, Homer with the sweet mouth, that is, Homer with the sweet voice. And this god, for he looks and sees all things alone, thou mayest say that he is the true sun. Then I said, \"Now I am confused by a harder doubt than I was before. P. What doubt is that, you ask? For certainly I conjecture now by such things you are troubled.\"\nBut it seems to me that I strongly object and disagree that God knows all things beforehand and that there is only freedom or liberty. If God looks at all things beforehand and God cannot be deceived in any way, then it necessarily follows that all things which the pursuit of God has seen before must come to pass. If God knows not only the works of men but also their counsel and will, then there can be no arbitrate freedom or certainty. Indeed, there may be no other deed or will but that divine providence which cannot be deceived has provoked. Therefore, there should not be a steady science of things to come but rather an uncertain opinion. I deem it felony and unlawful not to believe this, nor do I prove the same reason. Whoever says I do not allow or praise this reason, by which some men believe that God has seen beforehand that it is to come, I rather hold the opposite. And this is it.\nthat for that the thing is to come, that therefore it may not be hidden from God's providence. And in this manner necessity slides against the contrary, It is not necessary that things given be withheld, but it is necessary that things to come be provided for, as it were, troubled. As one says, this answer proceeds rightly, as though men were troubled or eager to inquire which thing is the cause of which thing. Whether the prescience is the cause of the necessity of things to come, or else the necessity of things to come is the cause of the providence, But I also say, on the contrary, For if the opinion is true of any one before he sits, it is necessary by necessity that the other also assents. For in one there is the necessity of the one. And certainly in the other there is the necessity of the truth.\nBut therefore a weight does not sit, for the opinion of sitting is true, but the opinion is rather true because a weight sits before. And thus this is not of the true opinion. Yet there is a common necessity in this and that. Therefore I may make comparable skills in the pursuit of God and of things to come. Although the things are to come, therefore they are pursued, and not certainly for they are pursued. Therefore they should not be. Nevertheless, it is necessary that they be pursued by God, or else the things pursued by God would perish, and this thing alone is sufficient to destroy the freedom of our will. That is to say, the binding of temporal things is the cause of eternal presence, but to think that God pursues\n\n(Note: The text appears to be in Middle English. I have made some corrections based on context and grammar rules, but I have tried to remain faithful to the original content.)\nThe things that are to come are inevitable, as it was once decreed by the divine providence that is God. I add this further: whatever thing I come to know, it is necessary that the same thing occur. Therefore, the outcome of that which came before cannot be avoided. And finally, if anyone believes a thing to be other than it is, it is not only unreasonable but a deceptive opinion, diverse and far from the truth of science. If anything is to come that does not necessarily or certainly bring about its predicted outcome, who can know beforehand that it will come? As science cannot be mixed with falsehood, just as what I conceive in my mind about a thing cannot be other than how it is conceived by science.\nFor that is the reason why science requires certainty. Since wisdom receives no certainty from that which it knows, for it is necessary that every thing, by right, comprehends it before all other things come. If they are not certain, then he who thinks they are unchangeable may be deceived, and it is possible that they will not come into being. But if God knew this, then nothing would comprehend a certain or stable thing, or what difference would there be between a work of mankind and that which compels them to a coming by necessity? And if this is granted and received, great damage follows from things of mankind.\n\nFor there are idle purposes and exalted means for good people, and pains for bad people.\nWith no movement of free will, neither merit nor punishment has been deserved by them. That is to say, neither reward nor pain. And it seems even worse to them that which is now deemed most just and most rightful. That is to say, that shrews are punished, or else that good people are rewarded. The people who see that their own will neither consents to this nor that, neither to good nor to harm, but are compelled by certain necessities of things to come, should there never be. Nor ever were vice or virtue, but a confusion of all deserts mixed without discretion. And yet another inconvenience follows, of which there may be thought no more felonious or wicked than this:\n\nWhatever the order of things is led and comes from the providence of God. And that nothing wills or wants, then follows this: our vices are referred to the maker of all good. As one says, then follows it.\nthat God ought to have all the blame for our vices, since He compels us by necessity to commit them. Then there is no reason to hope in God or pray to Him. For what reason should anyone hope for anything from God or pray to God, since the order of necessity, which cannot be inclined or restrained, binds and controls all things that men desire? Therefore, such an alliance between God and men should be done away with - that is, the hope and prayers. But by the price of righteousness and true humility, we deserve the reward of divine grace, which is inestimable. That is to say, it is so great that it cannot be fully praised. And this is the only manner of speaking with God - hope and prayers. It seems that men will speak with God only through supplication, and they seek and implore this clarity, which is not approached nor attained by it.\nAnd if men never believed that hope or prayer received anything, what is there then by which we may be connected and united to this sovereign prince of things? For it is necessary that the departed and joined from their well and fallen from their beginning. That is to say, God.\n\nWhat discordant cause has rent and joined the binding or alliance of things? That is to say, the conjunctions of God and man / which God has established such great battle between these two sincere or true things, that is, between the good and the free, that are to be gathered and coupled together, but there is no discord of true things. But the thought of man, confounded and overthrown by the dark members / of the body, cannot / by the fire of his dark looking. That is to say, by the vigor of his insight while the soul is within the body, know the dark things hidden under the covers.\nI. Wote I ought to know this, as one who seeks to know things and if he knows them not, what does that restless thought desire? What is he who desires anything of which he knows nothing? As one says, \"He who desires anything good knows it in its sum and singularities, that is, its principles and each of them by itself. But now, while the soul is hidden in the cloud and in the darkness of the body's members, it has not entirely forgotten itself. But it wanders and forgets the singularities. Then it seeks counsel and ponders things deeply seen, that is, the great sum in his mind, so that he may add the parts he has forgotten.\n\nII. She said this. This is the old question of the pursuit of God. And Marcus Tullius, when he distributed the divination, that is, in his book on divinations, he moved greatly.\nBut yet it has not been determined and sped forthwith and diligently the cause of this darkness and also of the slowness of mankind's reason, nor may I apply or dwell on it entirely, without a doubt. The reason and cause of difficulties I shall attempt to show and to speed when I have first answered and responded to your reasons by which you are moved. For I ask why your wisdom is not necessary for things to come to pass\nAs someone says / any other way than this. But that the things which prescience knew beforehand. cannot be unwitnessed; that is, they must occur. But then, if prescience puts no necessity on things to come as you yourself have confessed earlier, What cause or what is it / as someone says / there may be no cause by which the voluntary ends of things might be constrained to certain betidings.\nFor by grace of position, so that you may better understand what follows: I suppose that there is no prescience. Then she asked, in as much as pertains to that. Should things that come from free will be concentrated to happen by necessity? B.: Nay, I said. P.: Then she again asked. I suppose that there is prescience, but that it puts no necessity to things. Then I believe that the same freedom of will shall dwell in its entirety and absolutely, unbounded. But you will say that although prescience is not the cause of the thing it signifies, it only shows and signifies what the thing is, it does not make the thing that it signifies. For this reason, it is first necessary to show that nothing happens that it does not happen by necessity, so that it may appear that prescience is a sign of necessity. Or else, if there is no necessity, certainly that prescience could not be a sign of something that is not.\nBut certainly, it is now certain that the proof of this y [thing] sustained by steadfast reason shall not be led nor proved by signs nor arguments, taken from without, but by causes sufficient and necessary. But you may say, how can it be that the things which the pursuit knew beforehand to come are not to be expected, but certainly, right as we believe. That the things which the pursuit formerly knew to be coming are not to be expected. But should we not deem, rather, that they shall be expected, yet they have no necessity of their kind to be expected. And this you may easily perceive by this that I shall show you. For we have seen many things when they were before our eyes. Just as men have seen the cart driver working in the tournament and in the addressing of his carts or chariots, and by this manner, whoever says, can you understand all other weak men? Is there then any necessity, as he says, in our looking that compels or constrains any of these things to be done so? B.\n\nCleaned Text: But certainly, it is now certain that the proof of this thing sustained by steadfast reason shall not be led nor proved by signs nor arguments, taken from without, but by causes sufficient and necessary. But you may say, how can it be that the things which the pursuit knew beforehand to come are not to be expected, but certainly, right as we believe. That the things which the pursuit formerly knew to be coming are not to be expected. But should we not deem, rather, that they shall be expected, yet they have no necessity of their kind to be expected. And this you may easily perceive by this that I shall show you. For we have seen many things when they were before our eyes. Just as men have seen the cart driver working in the tournament and in the addressing of his carts or chariots. Whoever says, \"can you understand all other weak men?\" Is there then any necessity, as he says, in our looking that compels or constrains any of these things to be done so?\n\"Nay, I say that which is idle and in vain is all thought of by the consent of our eyes or sight. Phia. The thing is, that when men deny them, they have no necessity that men do the same things first or they be done. And the becomings of them are absolute and quite free of all necessity. For certainly I do not believe that any man would say this, that the things that men do now, that they were not to betide first or that they were not denied. And yet they have free becomings. For just as the science of present things brings in no necessity to things that men do, so the prescience of things to come brings in none to things to betide. But you may say that of the same it is doubted, whether of those things that have no necessary issues and becomings, if there may be any prescience.\"\nfor certain they seem to discord; for you believe that if things are seen before necessity follows them, and if necessity fails them, they could not have been known before; and nothing can be comprehended by science if things are not certain. But if things are not truly certain, it is darkness of opinion, not the truthfulness of science. And you believe that it is diverse from the holiness of science that any man should judge a thing to be otherwise than it is; and the cause of this error is that all the things that every man has known, they believe are known only by the strength and by the nature of the things that are known. And it is all contrary to this, for all that ever is known is rather comprehended and known not after his strength and his nature, but after the faculty, that is to say, the power and the nature of him who knows. And for this thing to show by a short example the roundness of a body:\n\n(Note: The text appears to be in Middle English, and there are some errors in the OCR transcription. I have corrected the errors while maintaining the original meaning as much as possible.)\notherwise than the sight of the eye knows it / and otherwise the touching and looking by casting of his beam waits and sees from far the body together without moving itself / but the touching comprehends the round body and moves about the surroundings / and the man himself otherwise beholds him\nAnd otherways imagination / and otherways reason / and otherways intelligence. For the wit comprehends without the figure of the body of man. that is unstable / in the material subject. But the imagination comprehends only the figure without the matter. Reason surmises imagination. and comprehends by universal looking the common speech but the eye of Intelligence is higher / for it surmises the environment of the universe and looks over that by pure subtlety of thought.\nThis is a some simple form of man that is enduring in the divine thought, in which this should be greatly considered, that the highest strength, which comprehends and contains the lower strength, does not arise in any manner from the higher strength. For witte cannot comprehend anything that exceeds the form, it knows and understands all things that are under the form, but it knows them in that manner in which it comprehends this same simple form, which none of the three aforementioned strengths of the soul can ever know, because it knows the unity of reason and the figure of imagination, and the sensible material conceived by witte, and it does not use or employ reason, imagination, or witte without the other, but it beholds all things.\nSo as I shall say, by a stroke of thought firmly without discussion of comparison, indeed reason, when it looks at anything universal, it does not require imagination or wit, and yet it comprehends the imaginable and sensible things, for reason is that which defines the universality of its concept in this way. A man is a rational two-footed beast, and therefore this knowing is universal. Yet there is no one who knows well that man is a thing imaginable and sensible. And this same consideration is good, for it is not by imagination nor by wit, but it looks at it by rational conception. Also, imagination alone may take the beginning of wit to see and form figures. However, all things sensible comprehend all things, not by sensible reason of them, but by imaginative reason.\n\"Seest thou not then that all things in knowing use more of her faculty or of her power than they did of the faculty or power of things that are to be known? For so every judgment is the deed or doing of him who judges. It behooves every wise person to form his work and his intention, not of foreign power but of his own.\n\nThen the porch, that is to say, at the entrance of the town of Athens, there where philosophers had congregation to dispute, this porch sometimes brought old men who spoke darkly. That is to say, philosophers who were called Stoics, who held that images and sensibilities, or else imaginings of sensible things, were impressed into souls from bodies without.\n\nAs one says, these Stoics hold that the soul had been naked of itself, as a mirror or a clean perchment, so that all figures must first come from things forth into souls and be impressed into souls.\"\nBut Boethius argues against that opinion and says, \"If the thinking soul does not itself unfold anything by its own means, but rather submits and lies subject to the figures and notes of bodies without, and yields imaginations in the manner of a mirror; whence is the strength that beholds singular things, or whence is the strength and that strength which gathers to gather things divided and the strength which chooses the senses, that is to say, which it and when it turns back into itself, it refutes and destroys much more than that cause which suffers and receives the notes and figures in the manner of matter.\"\nThe passion, that is to say the suffering or exciting and moving the strengths of the thought, stirs up the mind just as clarity strikes the eyes and moves them to see or as voice or sound stirs up the ears, and then the strength of the thought is moved and excited, which in turn calls forth similar movements in the spaces it holds within itself and adds spices to the notes and things without, and mediates the images of things without to things hidden within itself. But what is it in bodies that can be felt? That is to say, in the taking and knowing of bodily things. And although the qualities of bodies that are objectively perceived may precede and the passion of the body, that is to say the wit or suffering, goes before the strength or working courage, this passion or suffering calls forth the deed of the thought within itself.\nAnd it moves and excites in this manner the forms that remain within us, and if our senseless hearts are not taught or imprinted by passion to know these things, but it deems and knows of its own strength the passion or suffering subject to the body much more than those things which are absolute and quite free from all talents or affections of bodies, such as God or His angels follow not in judging things objective. But they accomplish and spend the deed of their thought. Therefore, there come many manners of knowing to divers and to differing substances. For the wit of the body, which wit is made and disposed of all other knowing, comes to beasts; the which cannot move themselves here and there. But the imagination comes from removable beasts, which comprehends that which is sensible and singular as universal.\nIf that reason itself, that is to say wit and imagination, could answer against these two. That is, reason looking and comprehending by reason of unity, both wit and imagination cannot stretch themselves to the knowing of universals, for the knowing of them may not exceed or surpass the bodily figures. Certains, men ought rather to give more credence to the more striking than we who have the strength of reasoning and imagination and wit. That is to say, by reason and by imagination, we would rather praise the cause of reason than the cause of wit and imagination. The science of these things seems to be. And if we believe that sense is in these things, then there is nothing that happens by necessity.\nBut if we can grasp the divine thought as we perceive God sees all things and distinguishes them, though they have no certain bindings. This is not an opinion, but rather the simple truth.\n\nThe beasts pass by the earth. By various figures, some of them have their bodies straightened and crept in the dust, drawing after them a trace or a furrow, as hedgehogs and snails. Others, by the wandering lightness of their wings, beat the winds and overswim the spaces of the long after, flying most swiftly. And others gladden themselves to dig their traces or their steps in the earth with their going or with their feet.\nAnd to go either by the green fields or else to walk under the woods. And although then he seems heavy-headed and stands light with his upright body, and beholds the earth. But if they did not put low under foot since your body is so high arises. Therefore, as I have shown a little here before, all things that are known are not known by their own nature, but by the nature of those who comprehend them. Let us look now, as we may. Which is the state of the divine God is eternal. Let us consider then, what is eternity. For certainly that will show us to gather the divine nature and the divine science. Eternity then is perfect possession. And all to gather of life interminable, and that shows more clearly by the comparison or collision of temporal things. For all things that live in time are present and proceed from past into futures. That is to say, from past time into coming time.\nThere is nothing established in time that can encompass all the space of this life. For certain, it has not yet taken the time of tomorrow, and it has lost the time of yesterday. And certainly, you live no more than in this momentary and transitory instant. That which endures temporal condition, though it never began to be or ceased to be, as Aristotle deemed of the world. And though the life of it be stretched within infinite time, yet it is not such a thing as men might rightly believe to be eternal. For though it comprehends and embraces the space of infinite life, yet it does not embrace the space of life altogether. It has not the futures that are not yet, nor does it have the past any longer than what it has and comprehends to gather all the fullness of the interminable life.\nTo whom it faileth nothing of the future, and to whom there is nothing of the preterite escaped or passed, that is witnessed and proved by right to be eternal. It is necessary that such a thing always be present to himself, and be competent, as he who says always present to himself and so mighty that all be right at his pleasure. And that he have all present the infinite of the movable time. Wherefore some men wrongfully believe that when they hear that it seemed to Plato that this world had never beginning of time, that it shall never have an end. They believe in this manner that this world was made eternal with its maker.\nas that which is made is subject to the infinite changeness of temporal things, not by the qualitative nature of time, but rather by the prosperity of its simple nature. For this reason, such infinite change follows this present state of this life, which is immeasurable, and so it cannot be completely imitated or equaled by it, due to the immutable thing that is in eternity, that is, the thing that is in God. It fails and fades away and becomes dispersed. And so it cannot gather all the fullness of:\n\nYet, for as much as it ceases not to be in some manner, it seems to us that it follows and resembles that which it cannot attain to or fulfill, and binds itself to some manner of presence of this little and swift moment, which presence of this little and swift moment bears an image or likeness of the eternal dwelling of God. It grants such things as it befalls to, and seems to them as if they have been and are.\nAnd because such little moment cannot dwell, therefore it rushed and took the infinite way of time. That is to say, it continues and sustains the life of that which it might not be able to embrace in dwelling. And if we wish to give worthy names to things following Plato, then let us say sincerely that God is eternal, and that the world is perpetual. Then every judgment knows and comprehends by its own nature things subjected to it. There is to God an eternal and present estate. The sand encompasses and considers all the infinite spaces of past and future times. And in its simple knowing, it looks at all things of the past as if they were done presently. If you wish to consider and ponder the prescience by which it knows all things.\nthou shalt not deem it as prescience of things to come, but thou shalt deem more rightfully that it is science of presence or instance. That never fails. For which reason it is not called providence, but rather it should be called provision, which is established far from low things. And from a fierce beholden all things. Rightly as it were from the hand, thou knowest by the divine sight. Since men do not make such things necessary which men see done in her sight. For adding thy beholding any necessity to those things which thou beholdest presently. Nay said I, Phia. Indeed said she then, if men could make any worthy comparison or collation of the divine presence and the presence of mankind. Rightly so, God compares all things by his approximate likeness in time to come.\nAnd nothing confuses the hand of the one who knows this, yet you demand to discern that the one who knows this is necessary. Rightly then, the divine beholding looks toward all things, but as for the condition of time, they are future. For knowing strength through sovereignty, when God knows any thing to be, he is not unaware that it lacks necessity to be. That is to say, when God knows any thing to happen, he knows well that it has no necessity to happen. And if you see here that the thing which God sees to happen cannot not happen, as something of full sad truth, but under what condition will any one be able to see it or come to it, except he be the beholder of the divine thought? For I will answer thus: that which is future when referred to the divine knowing, then it is necessary. But the divine sight sees any thing present, then that thing may be by necessity.\nAlthough they have no necessity of their own nature, but certainly the future events that follow from freedom of arbitration, God sees them all as present. These things, if referred to the divine sight, are made necessary by the condition of the divine knowing. But certainly, if these things are not abandoned or ceased by them, then without a doubt all things should be done. Which God knew beforehand would come, and were decreed by free arbitration or free will. Although this is so, yet they should not lose their own nature in being. By which, first or they were done, they had the power not to have happened. B. What I said, that those things which I proposed a little here before, that is to say the sun rising and a man walking, that while these things are done, they may not be undone.\n\"Although one of them or it was necessary for it to occur without a doubt. And some of them derive from the power of the doers. As I have said, there is no wrong if these things are referred to the divine knowing. Then they are necessary. From the standpoint of necessity, they are absolute. For all things that appear or show themselves to the intellect, and if you look at it or consider it in itself, then it is singular. But now, if you say that if it is in my power to change my purpose, then I will void the pursuit of God. Perhaps I would have changed the things which he knew before. Philosophy then answers thus: Certainly you may change your purpose. But for as much as the present and whether you change it or not, and in what direction you turn it, you cannot escape divine prescience.\"\nRight so you cannot flee from the sight of the present time, though you turn yourself by your free will into diverse actions. But you must answer this: How shall it then be? Shall not the divine science be changed by my disposition? When I will one thing now and another thing now, and that prescience does not seem to know, as if someone says. Nor shall it seem to us that the divine prescience entangles its diverse stands of knowing, so that it knows something at one time one thing and at another time the contrary of that thing. Now indeed said she, For the divine sees all futures and calls them back to the proper presence of his own knowing; he does not entangle them as you think. And here is this thing that you put little by the way: it is to say that it is an unworthy thing to see that our futures are the cause of the prescience of God.\nFor certain, the divine science, which encompasses all things through its present knowledge, establishes man and it does not owe later things. Since these things are thus - that is, unattainable to mortal men - neither laws nor unjust measures and penalties, nor the end of all necessity, exist. And God, as witness and protector, continually bestows or ordains means and rewards for good men, and chastises twice-turned men. Neither in appearance nor in reality should you shun vices, but arise your courage for righteousness and the high necessity of virtue is charged and commanded to you if you do not dissemble, since your deeds and works are before the eye of the Judge who sees and knows all things. Deo gratias\n\nExplicit Boethius, on the Consolation of Philosophy\nWhich Boethius made for his comfort and consolation, being in exile for the common and public good and having great sorrows and despair, he recalled in the same book how philosophy appeared to him, showing the mutability of this transient life, and also instructing how fortune and happiness should be understood, as far as may be naturally known, as is said in this same book. Boethius was an excellent author of various books skillfully and carefully made in prose and meter. He also translated various books from Greek into Latin, and had been senator of the noble and famous city of Rome. His two sons, Senators, were renowned for their prudence and wisdom.\n And for as moche as he withstode to his power the tyran\u0304ye of theodwold haue defended the sayde cite & Senate from his wicked hondes / wherupon he was conuict & putte in prison / in whiche prison\u0304 he made this forsaide boke of co\u0304so\u00a6lacion for his singuler co\u0304fort. and for as moche as the stile of it / is harde & difficile to be vnderstonde of simple {per}sones\nTherfore the worshipful fader & first fou\u0304deur & enbelissher of ornate eloquence in our englissh. I mene / Maister Geffrey Chaucer hath translated this sayd werke oute of latyn in to oure vsual and moder tonge. Folowyng the latyn as neygh as is possible to be vnderstande. wherein in mdeseruid a perpetuell lawde and thanke of al this noble royame of Englond / And in especiall of them that shall rede & vnderstande it. For in the sayd boke they may see what this transitorie & mutable worlde is And wherto euery man\u0304 liuyng in hit / ought to entende. Thenne for as moche as this sayd boke so translated is raspred ne knowen as it is digne and worthy\n For the and lernyng of suche as ben Ignoran\u0304t & not knowyng of it / Acte requeste of a singuler frende & gossib of myne. I william Caxton haue done my debuoir & payne tenprynte it in fourme as is here afore made / In ho\u2223pyng that it shal prouand kepe the better pacience in aduersitees And furthermore I deswold praye for the soule of the sayd worshipful man\u0304 Geffrey Chaucer / first transla\u2223tour of this sayde boke into englissh & enbelissher in making the sayd langage ornate & fayr. whiche shal endure perpe\u2223tuelly. and therfore he ought eternelly to be reme\u0304brid. of whom the body and corpburied in thabbay of west\u2223mestre beside london to fore the chapele of seynte benet. by whhongyng on a pylere himaad by a Poete laureat. whereof the co\u2223pye foloweth &c\nPyerides muse si possunt numina fle\nFu\u0304dere. diuinas at{que} rigare genas\nGalfridi vatis chaucer crudelia fata\n\u00b6Plangite. sit lacrinus abstinuisse nephas\nUos colu\nR\nGrande decus vobis. e\u0304 docti musa ma\n\u00b6Qua didicit meli{us} ling\nGrande nouu\u0304{que} dec{us} Chaucer\nfamaque pauit. Heu quam tu fueras prisca Britannia rudis,\nReddidit insignem maternis versibus. Ut iam\nAurea splendescat. Feria facta prius,\nHunc latuisse viru nil. Si tot opuscula vertes,\nDixeris. Egregii que decorata modis\nSocratis ingenium. Vel fontes philosophiae,\nQuidquid et archani dogmata sacra ferunt,\nEt quicquid velis te,\nHic vates. Puo conditus hoc tumulo,\nAh laudis quantum preclara Britannia perdis,\nDum rapunt tantum mors odiosa virum,\nCrudeles parce. Crudelia filae sorores,\nNon tamen extincto corpore. Fama perit,\nUiuet in aeternum. Viveat dum scripta poeta,\nUiuant aeterno tot monimenta die,\nSi qua bona carmina qui,\nHec sibi marmoreo scribentur,\nHee maneat laudis sarcina sum.\nGalfridus Chaucer rates. Et fama. Materne.\n\nPost obitum Caxton voluit te vivere cum,\nWillelmi. Chaucer clare poeta tuus,\nNam tua non solum compressit opuscula formis,\nHas quoque laudes.", "creation_year": 1478, "creation_year_earliest": 1478, "creation_year_latest": 1478, "source_dataset": "EEBO", "source_dataset_detailed": "EEBO_Phase1"},
{"content": "Little John, you still stand in the midst of indecision\nBetween vice and virtue, to choose or apply\nAnd in such an age, there is no providence\nNor commonly any sad intelligence\nBut as wax resists print or figure\nSo children are disposed by nature\nTo follow and embrace\nTherefore, I have composed for you, this little new\nInstruction, suitable to your age\nPlain in sentence, but simpler in language\nTake heed therefore, and give heed to my words\nLet not your ears be here, and your heart away\nBut put forth diligent effort\nLay aside all wanton idleness\nLearn to be virtuous, and well-wed\nHe who will not learn, must be led astray\nAbove all things, and principally\nIn the morning, when you rise\nTo worship God, have in memory\nWith Christ's cross, look and bless yourself thrice\nYour father's prayer, say in devout manner.\n\"Ave Maria with the holy creed,\nThen every day the better shall you proceed,\nAnd while you are about honestly,\nTo dress yourself and put on your attire,\nWith your fellow, well and tidily,\nOur Lady's matins, look that you say,\nAnd this observance use you every day,\nWith prime and orisons without fear,\nThe blessed lady will reward you,\nBend your head and look that you keep it clean,\nYour eyes two, suffer not foul to be,\nIn your visage, wait no spot be seen,\nPurge your nose, let no man in it see,\nThe vile matter, it is none honest,\nNor with your bare hand, no filth from it fetch,\nFor that is foul and an unseemly lesson,\nYour hands wash, it is a wholesome thing,\nYour nails look, they be not getting black,\nNor let them be overlong growing,\nTo your attire I warn you, good heed take,\nThat you fit it up and make\nYour hood, gown, hose, and also your shoe,\nWith all your attire, longing your body to\nKeep you clean and lose not your gear,\nAnd before you pass, out of your logging.\"\nEvery garment that you wear,\nWait well, that it be becoming,\nAs to your degree, seeming fitting,\nThen will men say, indeed, this child is he,\nWho is well taught and loves honesty,\nAnd as you walk and pass by the street,\nBe not nice of countenance, and look, my child,\nTo people that you meet,\nYou speak fair, with words of pleasure,\nDemure and courteous, of your demeanor,\nTo him that is your fellow and there,\nEye you fair language and friendly cheer,\nCast no stick nor stone at foul nor beast,\nAnd where you walk, beware you do not rage,\nFor if you do, you shall to prison's feast,\nTerrify not with your frown in field nor village,\nGo forth your way, denying your rage,\nIn sober wise, that men may of you say,\nA goodly child, there passes by the way,\nAnd when you come to the church, my little child,\nHoly water you shall upon you cast,\nBefore the cross, with meek and mild cheer,\nKneel down, and knock on your breast,\nThanking the good Lord that on it did rest.\nAnd for you, He suffers His sides to bleed\nSay you or you rise / Father, our Father, Aue / and believe\nAlso aid you well / for one thing\nThe church of prayer / is house and place\nBeware therefore / of clap or jangling\nFor in the church / it is a full great trespass\nAnd a token of such / as lack grace\nThere be ye devout / and keep silence\nAnd serve ye God / with all your diligence\nTo help the priest / when he says mass\nWhen it shall happen to you or betide\nRemain not far / nor from his presence pass\nKneel or stand ye / devoutly by his side\nAnd not too near to each other must be applied\nAnswer him / with boys full moderately\nAlso aid me / my little child always\nTo minister / with devout reverence\nLook you do / your humble observation\nGracefully / with due obedience\nCircumspectly / with every circumstance\nOf the poor and cheer / of goodly countenance\nRemembering well the Lord / above is He\nWhom to serve / is greatest liberty\nAnd when you speak / look men in the face\nWith sober cheer / and goodly semblance\nCast not your eye aside, in other place,\nFor that is a token of wanton inconsistency.\nWhoever has these things is not like a good man,\nIn heart he says, he who is inconstant,\nA wandering eye, gliding suddenly,\nFrom place to place, and afoot unstable,\nWho abides in no place, steadfastly,\nThese are the signs, the wise man says surely,\nOf such a man as is unmanerly nice,\nAnd is full likely disposed to vice.\nWait, my child, when you stood at the table,\nOf master or sovereign, whether it be,\nApply yourself, you, for to be servable,\nThat no fault in you be found,\nLook, he who does best, and him instruct you,\nAnd in especial, use attendance,\nWherein you shall best advance yourself,\nAs you are commanded, so do you altogether,\nBe not causeless, from the table absent,\nIt is a great pleasure, to the high estate,\nTo see his servants about him present,\nHaunt no hall, for then you will be shy,\nLet manner and measure be your guides twain.\nSo shall you best please / I dare sincerely say\nReward also the look and countenance\nOf your master / or of your sovereign\nSo shall you best prove. What is his pleasure\nOr else displeasure, this is surely certain\nThe cheer discovers, often both twain\nAnd the cheer, sometimes may you address\nIn these things, it may not them express\nAnd that you her look, keep always secret\nBusy report of mischief is chief noisy\nMuch language may not all faults be\nThen do my child, as teaches you the way\nWhich unto you, this lesson does devise\nHere and see, and be still in every press\nPass forth your way in silence & in peace\nAnd yet in adventure, if the case requires\nYou may speak, but you must then perchance\nSeek out six conditions to observe as you may now hire\nAid you well, what you say, & in what place\nOf whom, & to whom in your mind accommodate\nHow you shall speak, & when take good heed\nThis conceals the wise man without fear\nAwait my child, you be have you mannerly.\nWhen you are seated at the table,\nIn every press and in every company,\nDispose yourself to be so agreeable,\nThat men may find you commendable.\nFor trust well upon your bearing,\nMen will either blame or praise you,\nAnd truly print your memory,\nFor a principal point of fair manners,\nYou do not disparage any man especially,\nSaint Austin advises us with wise counsel,\nHow men at table should assure themselves,\nThat they escape from such language,\nWhich might harm others to disparage.\nThis courteous clerk writes in this way,\nRebuking the vice of vile detraction.\nWhat man is it that, through custom and guise,\nHarms with his tongue or by foul colusion,\nAbsent, we should forgive that abuse,\nSuch a detractor from the table,\nUnworthy and also reproachable.\nWhen you therefore sit at your repast,\nDo not annoy anyone present or absent,\nBut speak few words, for if you make waste,\nOf excessive language, truly you must be sent away,\nAnd when you speak, speak with good manners,\nOf matters suitable to pleasure.\nBut nothing that may cause men grief\nEschew also teachings of foul ravine,\nOf greedy lust with uncourteous appetite,\nDo not press for food restoration soon,\nYour hand a while with mannerly respite,\nFeed you for necessity, not for delight,\nDemean you with food and drink so soberly,\nThat you not be affected by gluttony,\nEmbroider not your vessel nor your napkin,\nOver manners and measure, but keep them clean,\nEnsure not your cup, but keep it cleanly,\nLet no fat farce be seen on your lips,\nFor that is foul, you know what I mean,\nOr than you drink for your own honesty,\nYour lips wipe and look cleanly,\nBlow not in your drink nor in your potage,\nNor force your dish to be full of bread,\nBear not your knife to guard your visage,\nFor therein is parcel and much fear,\nClaw not your visage, touch not your head,\nWith your bare hand, sitting at table,\nFor in nature, such things are reproachable,\nLose not your girdle, sitting at your meal,\nFor that is a teachings of uncourtesies.\nBut if you seem to be embraced tightly or sitting too close, amend it secretly, so coveredly that no one sees you. Be careful, no breath from you rebounds. Go up or down, lest you are shamefully found. Be hushed in chamber, silent in hall. Listen well and give good audience. If usher or marshal calls for any rumor, put the jesters to rebuke for silence. Be mild of language, demure of eloquence. Enforce him to conform to be the one who can do the most good and has humanity. Touch not with your food, salt the saltcellar. Lest folk appoint you of uncouthness. Dress it apart, upon a clean trencher. Do not force your mouth to be full, for gluttony. Do not lean on the table, for that is rude. And if I shall to you plainly say, over the table, you shall not spit. If you are served with delicate meals, depart with your fellow, in gentle wise. The clerk says, nature is content and satisfied With a moderate diet, and little shall suffice. Depart therefore, as I advise. Do not engross yourself, unto yourself.\nFor gentleness will always be generous,\nAnd when perhaps your service is not large,\nGrumble not with frowning countenance,\nNor make it a great burden,\nDispose yourself to good suffering,\nAnd what you have, take it in good grace,\nBe pleased with such as God has sent you,\nHe has enough that can hold himself contained,\nBurnish no bones with your teeth, beware,\nSuch hounds' taches fall of uncourtesy,\nBut with your knife, make the bones bare,\nHandle your meat so well and so cleanly,\nThat you do not offend the company,\nWherever you are set, as far as you can,\nRemember well that manners make man,\nAnd when that you eat your meat small,\nWith open mouth beware you do not eat,\nBut look your lips be closed as a wall,\nWhen to and fro you traverse your meat,\nKeep yourself so close that men have no cause,\nTo say of you any language or villainy,\nBecause you eat your meat unmanerely,\nBeware my child of laughing out of measure,\nNe at the board you shall not pare your nails,\nNe pick your teeth with knife, I assure you.\nEat at your table, and let others spare a glutton only exposes bones, and from enough, he pays no heed. He feeds more for pleasure than for need. And when your board is thin, as for service, nothing replenished with great diversity, of food and drink, good cheer may suffice. With honest talking, and also with glad, cheerful countenance, then full and content. The poet says, he who fills a poor board, men may enrich with cheerful will and word. And one thing, my child, you understand, in particular, for your own honesty. In the water, wash so clean your hands, that your towel never enfolded them, So foul, that it is loathsome to see. Wash with water your hands so clean, that in the towel no spot be seen. Let not your spoon, in your dish standing, lie upon the table, Let your trencher be clean for any reason. And if you have changed, yet honestly, Make a wide, manly manner, So that no fragment from your treachery falls. Do thus, my child, in chamber and hall.\nAnd when another man speaks at the table, be careful not to interrupt his language. For that is a discomfiting thing, and it is no sign of wise people to be overeager and outrageous in speech. The wise man himself said, \"He should be wise who gives audience, understand therefore or than you speak. Print in your mind clearly the sentence. Whoever breaks a man's tale uncurteously lets all the audience be hurt and harms himself for lack of knowledge. He may not give a convenient answer that does not finally understand what is meant. But beware, my child, also of rumors. Of matters which are at the table, it often causes trouble and displeases many a man. Evil things said are often made worse by reports. Such reports, my child, always avoid, for they can make old enemies new. I advise you well when you take your pleasure. Honest games and use, and refuse those of vile reputation. For you will not be excused if you trust them.\nFrom Brecheles fest [1] - if you see a child playing any game of ribaldry, it is pleasing to a godly child to engage in mirth and pleasure, to play the harp or lute, or sing lustily, or dance properly. When men see such a child, they say, \"May this child's freedoms be glad.\" To have a child of such behavior, exercise yourself in reading. In books adorned with eloquence, you will find both pleasure and learning. Therefore, in every good presence, find something to say that suits the occasion. It is fair for one to come prepared in matters according to purpose. So that a wise man seems to exercise himself, for it is a tedious thing, indeed, to hear a child multiply speaking, unless it is for a purpose and with good terms. Read Gower in his writing, the ancient father of memory, who reads his books called Confessional, along with many another virtuous treatise. [1] Brecheles fest: a medieval feast or festival.\nFull of sense / set full fruitfully\nThat hym to rede / shall give you courage\nHe is so full of fruit-full sense and language\nO father and founder of ornate eloquence\nWho enlightened hast all our Britain\nTo soon we lost / thy laureate science\nO lusty liquor / of that fullsome fountain\nO cursed death / why hast thou it poet slain\nI mean father Chaucer / master Galfryde\nAlas the while / that ever he from us did\nReadeth his works / full of pleasure\nClear in sense / in language excellent\nBriefly to write / such was his sufficiency\nWhatsoever to say / he took in his intent\nHis language was so fair and pertinent\nIt seems to man's hearing\nNot only the word / but truly the thing\nReadeth my child / readeth his books all\nRefuses none / they are expedient\nSense or language / or both find you shall\nFully delightful / for that good father's mind\nOf all his purpose / and his whole intent\nHow to please in every audience\nAnd in our tongue / was well of eloquence\nBehold Ockham in his translation.\nIn good language and wise sentence, he gives his prince such exhortation as to the highest, he could best devise, of truth, peace, mercy, and justice, and virtues, leaving for no sloth, to do his duty and quite him of his truth, required him, as against his sovereign, most dread and loved, was excellent advice. He advertised, by his writing plain, to virtue, belonging to nobles, of a prince, as there bears good witness. His treachery, entitled of regiment, compiled of entry true intent. Look also upon Dan John Lydgate, my master once, monk of Bery, worthy to be renowned as poet laureate. I pray to God in bliss his soul be mercy. Singing Yeux splendens that heavenly kyrie, among the muses nine celestial, before the highest Jubiter of all, passing the muses nine of Elysium, where is none parallel of harmony, thither I trust my master's soul is gone. The starry palaces, above the painted sky, there to sing sanctus incessantly, among the muses ix celestial, before the highest, Jubiter of all.\nRedeth his volumes that are large and wide,\nSeverely set in sadness of sentence,\nEnluminated with colors fresh on every side,\nI lack wit, I have no eloquence,\nTo give him praise, according to his excellence,\nFor I dare say, he left not a life\nThat could his crafting sufficiently describe,\nBut his works, his praise, must endure,\nThey may never, out of remembrance die,\nHis works shall convey and bear his name,\nAbout the world, almost eternally,\nLet his own works praise him and magnify,\nI dare not praise, for fear lest I offend,\nMy legacy should rather appear than amend,\nLook, my child, these fathers' ancient lines,\nRepent the fields, fresh with fulsome growth,\nThe flours gathered up and brought,\nOf silver language, the great riches,\nWho will it have, my little child, doubts,\nMust beg of them, there is no more to say,\nFor of our tongue, they were both look and key,\nThere is no man now who can distinguish\nThe enamored tongue and the golden sentence,\nMen get it now by cantelmele and gleyne.\nHere and there, with great diligence\nAnd freely would recite / my craft of eloquence\nAnd in whose field / the gleaners have bent\nAnd to me / age has brought a good morning\nI am not able to glean / clearly for my eyes\nNature delights in craft / borrowing her eyesight\nI lack clarity / in my two eyes\nBeg I may / glean, I cannot ensure\nTherefore, work / I will plainly remit\nTo the young folk / more passing clear of wit\nSeek therefore / and in case you find\nSuch gleaners / as have some appearance\nOf fair language / yet take them and unbind\nAnd prove you / what they are in existence\nColored in language / saucily in sentence\nAnd doubt not my child / without a deed\nIt will profit / to see such things and read\nYet again, my child / let us return\nTo the intent of your first matter\nWe have digressed somewhat / for we would report\nAnd revive the praise of them that were\nFamous in our language / these fathers dear\nWhose souls in bliss / God eternal advances\nThat listen / so our language to enhance\nThen I advise you, little John, to take heed of the nurture that men use, new or ancient, so that no man will refuse your courteous behavior. Excuse the guises and customs of men, for their works often change. What was once nurture is now laid aside, and new feet daily arise. Men's acts cannot abide in any steadfastness; they are changeable and often mislead. Things that were once allowed are now reproved, and after this, things will rise up. I mean to say, my child, that you should haunt the courteous behavior of those who do it most properly. But beware of unthrifty, rude gallants, counterfeiters of uncourteousness, their teachings are infected with villainy and vice. He seems to me a servant, nothing able, winter and summer, to his sovereign. Capron is hardy, no bone listens to his awakening. For every word, he gives his master two. Aventail, in every man's tale, Absalom, with disheveled hearers, small and like a prisoner of St. Malowis.\nA sonny bushel / able to go to the gallows\nO I pass nature by, for shame I might have said he should go hawk and shame\nFor that should be a gentleman's game\nTo such dispositions / gentle folk are accustomed\nI said to far / my language was too blunt\nBut yet, Sir Galate, what shall you bow or kneel?\nHe goes by compulsion, round as does a wheel\nBraced so strait / that he may not play\nBut gathers it / by manner of a windlass\nAnd he ought wrench a side / or a little writhe\nHis gear stands thence / mful parley cause\nHis shoe, his hose, doublet, point, and las\nAnd if it breaks / some tuves it be bad\nWill mock and say / a knave has broken a lad\nLet gallant go / I mean reckless ruskin\nTake heed my child to such as be cunning\nSo shall you best worship conquer and win\nEnforce you in all your dealing\nTo follow virtue / and from folly declining\nAnd wait well that you love honestly\nWhich is becoming unto humanity\nThat is for you / to understand and know\nThat your array / be mannerly reasonable\nNot apish / on to mock or to moan\nTo unnice array: that is not commendable. Fools have found new ones. They make the world plainly transform. Men seem almost enfeminate. Do not play Jack malapert: beware of presumption, beware of pride. Do not take the first place, my child, until others are seated. Presumptuous ones are often set aside. And he is set up who has humility. To conning folk, conning men, make your surmise. And as they do, you must devise yourself. For this, my child, is as the gospel is true. Who will be conning, he must you conning see. And one thing I warn you particularly: to womanhood, take heed always. And them to serve, look you have an eye. And their commandments that you obey. Pleasant words I advise you to them. And in all ways, do you your diligence. To do them pleasure and reverence.\nAnd at this time this treatise shall be sufficient for you,\nKeep in mind the doctrine which I have devised for you,\nI have no doubt that you will find it to your honor,\nTo enroll it and bind it in your breast, and at a riper age,\nI shall write to you concerning the surplusage,\nLittle John, and who do you oppose,\nSaying your quarrel, keep no accord,\nTell him as yet neither in rhyme nor prose,\nYou are expert, pray him of patience,\nChildren must be governed in childlike manner,\nAnd also they must be entertained gently,\nWith easy things and not with subtlety,\nLittle quarrel, submit yourself everywhere,\nUnder correction of benevolence,\nAnd where envy is, look you come not there,\nFor any thing, keep your treaty then,\nEnvy is full of froward reproaches,\nAnd how to hurt lies ever in wait,\nKeep your quarrel that it be not its bait,\nExplicit the book of courtesy.", "creation_year": 1478, "creation_year_earliest": 1477, "creation_year_latest": 1478, "source_dataset": "EEBO", "source_dataset_detailed": "EEBO_Phase1"},
{"content": "The great virtues of our elders are profitable to remember. An happy house is where prudence dwells, for where she is, reason is present. A temperate man, cool from haste, may not lightly measure a short season. Constancy and courage are formed in wisdom; he will in no way conform to vices. Where there is no justice - that land nor that country - it may not long reign in good prosperity. Without faith, no creature can be pleasing to God, as scripture says. A man cannot be properly worldly and acceptable to God. But he must be charitable. Hope does not keep promises in every way, yet in this world it guides many a wise man. In great estate, glory does not lighten the load, but virtue, which is worth remembering. A cruel prince grounded in avarice should not be trusted if he is wise. A young man who wisely reigns in his time makes one wealthy and in estate to reign. Now praise, now blame commonly by usage show folly and no manner of constance. A prince's court without a governor being prudent cannot last in honor.\nA man should show great diligence with good memory. A fool praises nothing due to lack of reason, and the wise man has no presumption. A mighty prince who listens to his counsel patiently cannot fail to prosper. He is prudent who makes provision for things to come before they fall into chance. A man proudly fixed with heart and mind casts no fear, yet he soon finds that fortune has happiness. A land that has a sad and true lord or king, and uses good living, is worthy. Lightly to hear and love flattery generates error and war. Wise is not he who thinks to be sure of his estate, though he may have it in reality. In sufficiency of this world's riches is surer rest than in great largesse. To handle virtues and vices to banish is what makes a man wise, and godly to finish. A benign prince of good conditions draws many to his opinions. He is happy who can take example from his neighbor seeing him make sorrows. Wisdom lacks those who do not fear fortune.\nFor many a person to trouble does she lead,\nIt is no thing profitable to inquire,\nNor to be greatly entertained,\nToo much trusting has hindered many a man,\nSo has winning, that well deceive one can,\nA railing man and for other knaves,\nUnited have trust. Though he tell as oath saw,\nHe is wise, that his anger can restrain,\nAnd in anger his tongue also restrain,\nHe that is fed and has his heart's lust,\nWhat pain the hungry has. He will not trust,\nFalsehood is not to caution so applied,\nBut by some folk sometimes it is perceived,\nHis reputation shall be good and long lasting,\nHe that has the fame of truth in his dealing,\nGreat pain is to change condition,\nAfter that age has one in bondage,\nWhoever will enhance himself to great estate,\nMust before he is acquainted with suffering.\nFavor deceives, and many a time it turns,\nThe Right to wrong, & wrong to right returns,\nOne ought to work. While he has liberty,\nFor season lost can not be recovered.\nTo much to think or else having no thought.\nMake one forget such a thing, as he should not\nAn aged man without wit or skill\nIs a vessel lacking virtue\nHe that seeks often to blame others\nGives right cause for them to hear the same\nTrue gentleness can be nothing other than\nThe palace where honor dwells\nBlame and reprieve to have is worthy\nHe that sees the good and judges contrary\nHe that cannot endure evil company\nYet at least let him remove himself soon thence\nFolly is great in him that takes heed\nOf others and not to his own need\nNecessity at times compels\nCauses famine great trouble and torment\nRepented have many a creature\nA thing done away. which in his hand was sure\nCourteous speaking restrains often anger\nFor to the heart it is a great pleasure\nOften is a man in Indigence\nTo high estate come by his diligence\nOpinions with favored sentence\nGuide the world more than true sense\nThere ought none to be proud or cruel\nFor what may fall upon himself, he cannot tell\nRather to bow than break is profitable\nHumility is commendable. He is a fool who enhances his charge with promises without substance. He does not defame a woman for himself, for the blame will return to him. Forgetting a gift or courtesy shows ingratitude clearly. A sure manner and few words well set in women suit them well, where they are met. Serving in court is no secure inheritance. It often fails with little advantage. He who spurns an alms with violence inflicts most grief and offense upon himself. To return to jesting an injury or a wrong is great wisdom to be used among them. Bad reasons not well taken or construed seem like flowers cast among rude beasts. A wretched man or one in fear has no trustworthiness. They often lie. Cruel speaking in a hateful matter is axed with angry and spiteful answers. There can be no good endure in season or space, but only such as come by God's grace. Idle pleasures used customarily are hard to change, though they are blameworthy. He who loves to report evil tales.\nTo make debate seems well his pastime\nNecessity, poverty, and indigence\nCause many great inconvenience\nA mean estate is better to endure\nThan high climbing, lest one descends\nRight to release sometimes is no duty\nSo that it be for a more advantage\nIn well doing having a true reputation\nBrings a man to good conclusion\nForgetting God for this world's riches\nShows no faith, but sloth and great latches (lack of care)", "creation_year": 1478, "creation_year_earliest": 1478, "creation_year_latest": 1478, "source_dataset": "EEBO", "source_dataset_detailed": "EEBO_Phase1"},
{"content": "In ancient times, disputes, pleas, and discord arose between two or three persons. They sought out the grounds for recording these issues. This was the custom of antiquity. Judges were appointed with authority. The cases remained neutral between parties to render judgment. Parties from high and low degrees were summoned to show up in court. They were sworn to tell the truth, without exception, regarding their disputes. The president commanded silence first. Freedom was granted to the parties not to spare their grievances. They were instructed to declare the title of their right and conclude the matter shortly. Nothing from the past was to be considered as I have heard. I found it necessary to use a simile. Two figures were carefully painted on a wall. They sat in royal estate. The famous lion, renowned in all realms, and the imperial eagle perching on the beams were the fearsome judges. In their presence, I kept watch as the parties complained by and by. The horse, the goose, and the simple sheep were not to be understood too deeply in this process.\nOf their debate, a fable was conducted,\nRegarding which of them was most beneficial to man.\nEach, for his party, proudly proceeded\nTo force himself to be recorded in scripture\nBy philosophers, seen and read,\nThe prerogatives granted them by nature\nWhich of these three, to every creature,\nIn republica, is most valuable to a man.\nFirst, the horse began to speak.\n\nTo proceed briefly and not tarry long,\nFrom the truth that I do not err,\nWhat beast is found in all things so necessary,\nAs is the horse, both near and far,\nAnd so notable to man in peace and war,\nIn chronicles, he who reads rightly\nHas saved often many a worthy knight,\nMarshall's prowess in particular,\nGod has given to warriors,\nRecord of Alexander, whose horse Bucephalus,\nHelped him escape from many sharp hours,\nThe golden chariot of old conquerors,\nConceived it was with four white steeds,\nRemember Hector, the Trojan champion,\nWhose horse was once called Galate.\nUpon whose back he played the lion,\nFull often times he made the Greeks flee,\nThe stead of Perseus was called Pigasse,\nWith swift wings, poets say the same,\nWas for his swiftness named the horse of Fam,\nEquus ab equo is said in truth,\nAnd knightly is said of chivalry,\nIn duke a rider is called a knight,\nAragonese tongue also specifies,\nCavalier, which in that part is named,\nOf worship and took beginning,\nOf spears of gold and chiefly of riding,\nThese emperors, these princes, and these kings,\nWhen they are armed in bright plate and mail,\nWithout horse, what were their mustering,\nTheir broad banners or their rich apparel,\nTo show themselves before their enemies in battle,\nWithout horse. spear. sword. nor shield,\nCould little avail for holding a field,\nThe hardy pikemen upon horseback,\nAre sent to find what ground is best to take,\nIn their ordinance that there be no lack,\nBe providence how they the field shall make,\nAn horse will weep for his master's sake,\nChaucer remembers the sword, ring, and glass.\nPresented upon a stance of brass between two hills,\nThe prophet Zachariah saw steeds four;\nThe first was red, in chariots' fiery hue,\nThe field it magnified; the second black, no fear,\nThe third was white, body, neck, and head,\nThe fourth diverse in colors, wonder strong,\nAnd to knighthood all these a lure long.\nThe red horse was a token of hardiness,\nWhich appertains to every manly knight,\nThe coal-black hide, a sign of sobriety,\nPoraille oppressed to help in their right,\nThe white milk steed that was glad of sigh,\nTokeneth that knighthood truly should intend,\nTo defend holy church, maids and widows,\nThe many-fold colors to speak in general,\nBe diverse virtues and conditions,\nAs the four virtues called cardinal,\nLonging to knighthood tenets their renouns,\nIn re publica, called the champions,\nTruth to sustain and show them self strong,\nBound by order to see none have wrong,\nWithout horse, justices none turn not,\nMay not be held in war nor in peace,\nNor in palace, no plays marshal.\nIf horse fails, nothing increases\nNo man truly dares put him in presses\nWithout a horse, for a short conclusion\nTo achieve the palm of triumphal reward\nLower degrees than horses also bring great profit to every commonty\nThe plow and cart could not do without a horse; daily you may see\nTilling was lost and we were without horses, indeed\nThe busiest merchant to his advantage\nNeither ships and horses could have carriage\nThe ship is called the horse of the sea\nWhoever can understand this\nTo lead men and carry them across the sea\nAs a horse does when it comes to land\nThe poor man also leads in a band\nHis little capull. his corn his meal to sell\nAnd when it is ground, brings it from the mill\nIn winter season to make beef broth\nThe horse is necessary for wood and turf to carry\nWine fruit and oil to serve throughout the year\nIs brought to vintners and to the apothecary\nDiverse drugs and many a liturgy\nVarious bales and shortly all provisions\nOf the carriage horse have the labor\nHe who wishes to learn clearly.\nMaybe from the fields near the meadows green,\nTo the granary neither to the barn,\nWithout horse it is seen,\nTo purpose-I say as I mean,\nThere is no beast reckoned as I began,\nSo necessary is horse to man,\nAugust is a season merry and glad,\nWhen every tree with new fruit is laden,\nWith draft of horse the sheaves are home brought,\nThat month passed, the leaves begin to fade,\nWhich made in summer a pleasant, lusty shade,\nWhat do horses then to speak in plain words,\nThe second crop they carry home of rice,\nBy draft of horse from rivers and wells,\nBoughs are brought to brewers for good ale,\nLed stone timber carriage of bells,\nWe bring to churches in truth this is no tale,\nWe led cloth sacks & many a large male,\nAnd gladly summers are sent to fore,\nWith guardians, how might horse be born,\nYou prudent judges the eagle and the lion,\nWhat I have said does wisely advise,\nWeigh this matter in your discretion,\nWhere goose or sheep plainly to devise,\nOf their nature may in any way.\nI justify it. Late it should not be spared,\nTo an horse I have likened and compared,\nThis is truth and no feigning,\nNo man of reason against it apply,\nGoose or gander, green gooseling,\nBut if they enter the bounds of envy,\nLate they come forth and say for their party,\nGoose, yes, trust me well, for I will not spare,\nLike as I feel my verity to declare,\nWhereas thou hast unto thy pasture,\nBut one place / to make in thy repair,\nIt is granted to me by nature,\nTo abide on water, land and eye,\nNow among flowers and greens that be fair,\nNow bathe in rivers swim in many a pond,\nFor storm or shower as dry as on the land,\nTo my intent many things you may see,\nAs men experienced know that are old,\nWhen wild geese fly up in their upfleeing,\nWith their wings displayed and unfolded,\nA prognostic of snow and frost cold,\nCalends bring plainly to say,\nAgainst winter how men should provide,\nThe grease of geese is good in medicine,\nWith various games tempered for the goose's ailment,\nDiverse aches to swage and decline.\nIn the extremities to draw the malice out,\nFeathers of geese when they fall or mount,\nTo gather them herds delight,\nTo sell to archers the gray with the white,\nMen pluck stalks out of my wings twain,\nSome to portray, some to note or write,\nWhen rhetoricians have done their best pain,\nFresh epistles and letters to endite,\nWithout writing a veil is not a might,\nFor if pens and writing were away,\nOf remembrance then were lost the key,\nOf geese also the deed is provided often,\nIn many a country and many a region,\nTo make pillows and feather beds soft,\nOf prudence men plucken from the down,\nThus to make a plain comparison,\nAs pillows are to chambers agreeable,\nSo is hard straw litter for the stable,\nThe fate of geese and green gooselings,\nGathered in May among the sweet herbs,\nAgain burning, scalding, and other things,\nTempered with oil or butter does cure,\nTo swage pain, perch to the root,\nBut horse dung as refuse is cast away,\nIs good for furnaces tempered with clay,\nA dead horse is but a foul carcass.\nThar is infecting, it is so corruptible. But a fat ghost, when it is newly slain, In dishes of gold, a muskelline is scoured upon a king's table Swimming alive in crystalline waters Tenderly roasted requires to have wine Through all the land of brutes Albion For feathered arrows, as I have heard tell Ghost is the best for making comparison Except for feathers of a peacock and a swan Bow and arrows since the war began Have Englishmen remembered in story Of their enemies had many a victory Horses in the field may muster with great pride When they hear the trumpets here the bloody sow Sound, an arrow having pierced its side, Goes and casts its master down Entering the field it plays the lion What follows after, its carcass stinks sore Save skin and shone there leaves no more Mighty captains and knights in the field Make their wards and their ordinance First men of arms with poleaxe and shield Set in order deep to have the governance Whiche at Peters took the king of France.\nThank you to those who were present,\nWho in the field so proudly took their flight,\nI lagged behind due to hasty negligence,\nPresumption left the ghosts behind,\nThe famous and worthy Duke of Clarence,\nRode Bayard with his eyes blind,\nThe memory of my father was erased from my mind,\nAnd he set that day no force upon me,\nSo little or none, what a veiled him his horse,\nOld books remember well in this sentence,\nOnce upon a time, when he came upon us,\nThe capitol was kept with great defense,\nNoise of a goose, the captain awoke,\nWhich remembered, they set up for his sake,\nIn their temples wide and old,\nA large goose forged of fine gold,\nHis capture, the captain ran upon the wall,\nThus, the town was recovered by the goose,\nCalled the most brilliant city in the world,\nCity of cities that day most principal,\nWas ever horse in book that you can read,\nPro re publica, he who did such a deed.", "creation_year": 1478, "creation_year_earliest": 1478, "creation_year_latest": 1478, "source_dataset": "EEBO", "source_dataset_detailed": "EEBO_Phase2"}
]