Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/160

 124 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE still a social problem. After the Visigothic Kingdom became Catholic, they were persecuted in Spain through a long period. Theodoric in Italy and the Frankish rulers in Gaul, where the Jews had communities, generally protected them. Some classical culture, like Roman administration and law, still continued. The poet, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Latin other representatives of the last period of Latin literature literature in Gaul found a refuge at the Visigothic court. Even in the last years of Vandal rule in Africa there was a considerable literary output. Under Theodoric in Italy flourished Cassiodorus and Boethius. Besides his let- ters and Gothic history the former wrote some extremely brief textbooks concerning the seven liberal arts — gram- mar, rhetoric, and logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The chief value of these manuals, whose facts are poorly selected and whose style is stilted and affected, is that they show how little one needed to know to be considered educated in that barbarous period. Boethius, in his well-known work, The Consolation of Philosophy, "written in sound, pure Latin prose with occasional inter- ludes of verse," shows himself a much more talented writer with something still of true classical style. Boethius held a high political post under Theodoric. When a man of senatorial rank was accused of treasonable Boethius intrigues with Constantinople, Boethius spoke boldly on his behalf. Thereupon Theodoric cast Boethius into prison, and there, while awaiting trial, he is supposed to have written The Consolation of Philosophy. He tells us that the real reason for the charges against him was the hatred which he had aroused by protecting the lands of the Roman provincials against the greed of the Goths. After a short trial he was tortured by twisting a cord bound tightly about his head, and finally he was killed with a blow from a club. He was regarded as a Chris- tian during the Middle Ages, when a work on the Trinity directed against the Arians was attributed to him. But there is no Christian theology in The Consolation of Philosophy,