Theodoric's Mausoleum

Once Theodoric was King of Italy and essentially in charge of the Western Roman Empire, he did what he could to manage Rome as it would have been managed at the height of the Roman Emperors. He embarked on an extensive building/re-building project, restoring many buildings and refurbishing aqueducts, the Senate's Curia, and other valuable infrastructure.

To manage government services, he hired Boethius, a Roman aristocrat, Christian, and "renaissance man." Things were running smoothly enough that the Eastern Emperors during Theodoric's time let him be. After all, he was "letting Romans be Romans" with their own laws, while his Goths lived under their own customs and laws. Tolerance was practiced: when a synagogue in Ravenna was destroyed by a mob in 519, he ordered the city to rebuild it.

A new Eastern Emperor, Justin I, was less open to allowing the Western Empire to function independently. In 522, a problem with the Senate looked like a conspiracy against Theodoric, so he had his chief administrator, Boethius, and Boethius' father, Symmachus, arrested in 523. While in prison, Boethius wrote his Consolation of Philosophy. He was executed in 524.

Two years later, Theodoric died of dysentery while planning to attack the Vandals after their King Hilderic killed Theodoric's sister, Amalafrida (well, she was trying to change succession rules after her husband, the Vandal King Thrasamund, died). With no male heir, Theodoric's grandson Athalaric succeeded him; Theodoric's daughter and Athalaric's mother was regent.

Theodoric's Mausoleum (pictured above) was part of his Roman rebuilding campaign. In it, his sarcophagus consists of a porphyry tub from a Roman bath situated in the center of a second story. Made of very large stone blocks from a quarry 249 miles away, it has a roof made from a single piece of stone 33 feet in diameter. The roof alone weighs 230 tonnes (a metric tonne is 1000 kilograms or 2205 pounds). Its Gothic style is unlike Roman or Byzantine. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is the only example of a 6th century royal tomb.

Theodoric's long reign, success in leading his people, and his management of the Western Roman Empire made him an important Germanic figure; so much so, that he lived on later as a German hero, Dietrich von Bern. Let's look at those legends tomorrow.

The Philosophy of Music

Much of the medieval attitude about music and its forms came from Boethius (c.480-524 CE). In his de institution music [Latin: "On the laws of music"] he distinguished three types of music:

Instrumental music
Human music
Mundane music

Detail from copy of De musica [source]

Although today we use the word "mundane" to refer to something ordinary, it comes from Latin and refers to the world; Boethius uses it to refer to the music made by the world, that is, the so-called "music of the spheres": that sound, inaudible to human ears, that was made by the friction of the spheres surrounding the Earth in which the planets and other heavenly bodies traveled.

Instrumental music referred to music made by one of several different agents. It could come from something under tension (such as with stringed instruments), by wind, by water, or by percussion. It should be noted that Boethius was not referring to "musical instruments" as much as he used the term to mean that some physical agency was causing the sound. That could be a rushing stream, the wind in the trees, and falling rocks as much as manufactured devices in the hands of a musician. Later writers included singing as part of this category.

Human music was therefore not referring to singing by humans. For the Middle Ages, "music" was all about harmony, and the "harmony" between the physical body and the spiritual side was a serious topic. For example, you must nourish the physical body, but you must not eat so much that you fall into the sin of gluttony. Proper proportion was everything.

In fact, music (as opposed to mere noise) was all about harmony and proportion. That is why Music was studied in the medieval university only after mastering Arithmetic. A contemporary of Boethius, Cassiodorus (485-c.585 CE), compared the two by explaining that

Arithmetic is the discipline of absolute numerable quantity. Music is the discipline which treats of numbers in their relation to those things which are found in sound.

Wheel of Fortune

A 12th-century depiction of the Wheel of Fortune
from the "Garden of Delights" book by Herrad of Landsberg

The Wheel of Fortune is a familiar concept to many these days because of a popular game show, but the name and idea originated a lot earlier than the 20th century.

Human beings recognized long ago that luck was a dish served in one of two flavors, and that one never knew what flavor one was going to get. Life had its ups and downs, and this became represented as a circle of possibilities. This was similar to the wheel of the Zodiac, turning throughout the year and bringing with it changes in life. At some point, however, the Wheel of Fortune (in Latin, the Rota Fortunæ) began to be represented in a Ferris Wheel configuration, so that the "ups" and "downs" could be portrayed visually.

At the top of the wheel is a man at the peak of good fortune: he is portrayed as a king. The wheel turns constantly, however—Boethius points out in his Consolation of Philosophy that, should the wheel stop turning, then she is no longer Fortune: this changeability is fundamental to what she does. Therefore (in this clockwise-turning representation), on the right side you see the one who was formerly on top, sliding down; near the bottom, his crown has fallen off. All is not dire, however, for on the left you see that fortune is turning better for someone else, who is ascending and will some day be on top.

The concept existed before Boethius. An astrologer of the 2nd century BCE, Vettius Valens, refers to the Zodiac as the wheel of fortunes, and a Roman playwright of the same era, Pacuvius, puts Fortuna on a spherical rock that constantly rolls by chance. Chaucer also mentions Fortune's wheel when, in "The Monk's Tale," he recounts multiple stories of men whose fortunes went from good to bad.

Boethius

Boethius (left, with numbers from India)
debating Pythagoras (right, with an abacus)
while Arithmetic looks on

Boethius has been mentioned in passing before for his writing. An early philosopher whose works were very important to the Middle Ages, in life he was an important public servant from a noble family who rose very high before he fell.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born about 480 to a prominent family that had produced a couple emperors; his father became a Roman consul in 487 but died shortly thereafter, leaving Boethius to be adopted by the aristocrat and historian Symmachus. Symmachus and Boethius were fluent in Greek, which might have figured into their execution—but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Boethius went to work for Theodoric the Great, and some of his actions on behalf of the King of the Ostrogoths have survived in the records.

• Procuring or producing a waterclock for Theodoric to give to Gundabad of the Burgundians.
• Finding a lyre player to perform for King Clovis.
• Investigating irregularities in Theodoric's paymaster.

In his famous work De consolatione philosophiæ ["The Consolation of Philosophy"], which he wrote in prison, he says that his greatest accomplishment was getting his sons, Boethius and Symmachus, appointed co-consuls in 522.

Boethius did so well in his career that he was made magister officiorum ["master of duties"], responsible for overseeing all government services. That's probably where the trouble started. Kings and emperors can be mistrustful of those around them with too much power—even if the emperor gave him the power in the first place. Boethius was put in charge of reconciling the differences that had grown up between the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Empires. His political powers and education and ability to speak Greek (rare in the West) made him ideally suited for this. He was accused (falsely) of treasonous dealings with the Eastern Emperor Justin I against Theodoric. For this he was exiled, then executed. His adoptive father Symmachus was later put to death on the charge of collusion with Boethius to overthrow Theodoric—a charge which seems unlikely.

He was executed in 525, but his writings survived. He wrote many books, including translations of Aristotle's works on logic; Boethius' translations were the only access to Aristotle's logic available to western Europe until the 12th century. He also produced De arithmetica on the four uses of arithmetic: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.*

The Consolation of Philosophy is believed to have been written while he was in exile. It covers many topics, one of which gave the modern era the title of one of its most popular game shows. But that's a story for tomorrow.

*These are the four parts of the quadrivium, taught in medieval universities; it is likely that the curriculum was arranged thus because of Boethius.

The Flat Earth

In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon published Novum Organum ("The New Organon," by which he meant a new interpretation of nature). In it, he claimed that the ancient fathers of the Christian church did not tolerate a belief in a round Earth. It is probably this work that influenced the popular belief ever since that the Middle Ages, or religion, were steadfast in their belief in a flat Earth.

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, however. True, there was "evidence" in the Middle Ages of a flat Earth. The Mappa Mundi (Map of the World), meant to portray the part of the world believed to be habitable, does make the world look flat and finite. Way back in he 3rd century BCE, however, Eratosthenes had coined the term "geography" and measured the circumference of the clearly round Earth by noting the difference in shadows of a stick at noon on two points many miles apart; the angles and length of the shadows told him that the sun was shining down on the surface at different angles, and the surface was therefore curved.

As revered an early christian as Boethius (480-524, mentioned here) in De consolatione philosophiæ (The Consolation of Philosophy) reminds us of how small we are in the grand scheme of things with this:

It is well known and you have seen it demonstrated by astronomers, that beside the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point; that is to say, compared to the magnitude of the celestial sphere, it may be thought of as having no extent at all.

Medieval sources even quote Pliny the Elder's figure of 29,000 miles for the circumference, a remarkably accurate figure.*

So was there a conflict between science and Christianity? Depends who you talk to, I suppose. William of Conches (1085-1154), who may have been a tutor to the young man who became King Henry II of England, wrote extensively on reconciling the origin of the cosmos in Plato's Timaeus with Genesis. The Bible may have described the earth as flat, but William knew this should not be taken literally, explaining:

The authors of Truth are silent on matters of natural philosophy, not because these matters are against the faith, but because they have little to do with the upholding of such faith, which is what those authors were concerned with.

As learning spread—specially with the advent of mass printing—perceptions of the Earth's shape would have spread thanks to re-printed classical works. Columbus' idea to go west to arrive at an eastward point was not a risky gamble or a brilliant insight. Other "facts" in the Bible were also understood to be not literal: Pope Innocent III, for instance, knew that the Moon shone with reflected light, even though the Bible refers to the Sun and Moon as "two lights."

So what account for the learned Bacon's statement? It may have something to do with the conflict between Galileo and the Church. Although the famous trial would not take place until 1633, Galileo had received a formal Admonition in 1616, warning him:

to relinquish altogether the said opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves; nor further to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing; otherwise proceedings would be taken against him by the Holy Office; which injunction the said Galileo acquiesced in and promised to obey.  [link]

It is very likely that Bacon and the rest of Europe's scientific community was aware of this growing conflict. In this historical context, Bacon's statement can be seen as a condemnation of the Church because of a recent action—even though for centuries the knowledge of a round Earth was common.

*In fact, the original figure might have been more accurate than we suspect: it was given in Greek stadia, a measurement which meant different things to different users. Our best interpretation is 29,000 miles, but if Pliny were using stadia of a slightly shorter length... .

Battle of the Numbers

Among the accomplishments of Hermann of Reichenau, he also provides us with the set of rules for one of Europe's oldest board games, developed by a monk to teach Boethian number theory, called Rithmomachy or Arithmomachia, "Battle of the Numbers."

The pieces on the rectangular 8x16 board, their "ranks" and their allowed moves are determined by mathematical rules based on their geometry (Circles, Squares, Triangles, Pyramids) and the numbers marked on their surfaces. I could not possibly explain the rules in a short post—nor should I be able to, since the intent was to design a game that truly requires a grasp of mathematical functions and the skill to apply them quickly. Feel free to educate yourselves on the rules here and here.

Laser-etched pieces. [link]

It was more than just a game of strategy like chess (to which it has some resemblance). According to a 2001 book, Rithmomachy

combined the pleasures of gaming with mathematical study and moral education. Intellectuals of the medieval and Renaissance periods who played this game were not only seeking to master the principles of Boethian mathematics but were striving to improve their own understanding of the secrets of the cosmos. [The Philosopher's Game, Anne Moyer]

The game became popular as a teaching aid in monasteries in France and Germany, and even reached England where Roger Bacon recommended it to students at Oxford. Over the centuries it spread as an intellectual pastime, and by the Renaissance it had spread enough that instructions were being printed in French, German, Italian and Latin. Sadly (mercifully?), the game fell out of popularity and the public's consciousness after the 1600s until modern historians re-discovered it.