Entertainment / Literature / Boethian: Having to do with the philosophy of Boethius, i.e., a philosophy of predestination suggesting all events appearing evil, misfortunate, disastrous, or accidental are none of these things. Rather, such events are illusions that only appear this way to humans because we are limited in our perceptions while bound by time. In actuality, such events serve a higher beneficial purpose that must remain unknown to us as long as we are trapped by the limits of the physical universe. The term comes from the philosopher Boethius, who formulated an argument concerning it in his immensely influential work, Consolatio Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), which he wrote in 524 AD while awaiting his execution in prison on unjust charges. To give the reader an idea of how popular this book was in the Middle Ages, over five hundred manuscripts of it survive today, in comparison, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales only survives in about eighty-two manuscripts. A common intellectual party-game in medieval times may have been to take turns reciting lines of the Consolatio by memory.
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