Chapter 11 - George Colvile’s Translation of the Consolation of Philosophy

Summary

The Consolatio philosophiae of the Roman statesman and philosopher Boethius (fifth/sixth century) was read and studied intensely in medieval western Europe and repeatedly translated into vernacular languages. Medieval commentaries on this text and translations of it claim attention today as case studies in a history of reading, for they exemplify the practices of medieval literary scholasticism. In an English context, the final flowering of this reading tradition may be placed in the year 1556, when John Cawoode printed a new translation of the Consolatio by a ‘George Coluile, alias Coldewel’. The translator remains unidentified. The translation is a medieval throwback in its treatment of Boethius’s text. Whereas subsequent English translators of the Consolatio separate text from commentary, Colvile permitted these categories to interpenetrate. He transmitted a wealth of exegetical material traceable to a commentary on the Consolatio attributed falsely to Thomas Aquinas. Pseudo-Thomas’s commentary and Boethius’s Consolatio were often printed together after their editio princeps in 1473. Colvile probably worked from a book printed in Lyon between 1486 and 1498.