SOURCE: "Philosophy in the Sixth Century," in The Gateway to The Middle Ages, The Macmillan Company, 1938, pp. 142-212.

In the excerpt below, Duckett provides a general overview of Boethius's life and influence, asserting that "it was he who fanned the flame of conflict that was to occupy philosophical minds through all the Middle Ages -the struggle between Nominalism and Realism in their various forms. "

[Boethius's] Consolation of Philosophy has been the meat of souls in distress, of minds in doubt, of editors, commentators and students in mediaeval browsings, all down the years from the sixth century to modern times. It was every whit as popular in the Middle Ages as Martianus Capella's famous text-book on the Seven Liberal Arts, and reaped a far more varied harvest of readers; it is still studied in our times, largely because of its influence upon Chaucer. But it loses some of its...