A Lesson for Bishops: Magistra Philosophia's fidelity to her disciples: Esto Vir (be a man)!

It is because you don't know
the end and purpose of things
that you think the wicked and the criminal
have power and happiness. Boethius

Sed væ non cognoscentibus suam miseriam: et amplius væ illis, qui diligunt hanc miseram et corruptibilem vitam! Kempis, I, 22, 14.


Magistra Philosophia (Philosophy the Teacher) to Boethius, in prison awaiting execution.

...It could not be right that Philosophy should leave an innocent man companionless on the road (Philosophiae fas non erat incomitatum relinquere iter innocentis)...

...Do you think that this is the first time that Wisdom has been attacked and endangered by a wicked society? Did I not often of old also, before my Plato's time, have to battle in mighty struggle with arrogant stupidity?...

...So it is no wonder if we are buffeted by storms blustering round us on the sea of this life, since we are especially bound to anger the wicked. Though their forces are always large, yet we should hold them in contempt, for they are leaderless and are simply carried hither and thither at random in their crazed ignorance (quoniam nullo duce regitur, sed errore tantum temere ac passim lymphante raptatur). If ever they range against us and press about us too strongly, Wisdom our captain withdraws her forces into her citadel, while our enemies busy themselves ransacking useless baggage. But we are safe from all their mad tumult and from our heights we can laugh at them as they carry off all those worthless things; we are protected by such a wall as may not be scaled by raging stupidity.

He who has ground proud fate beneath his heel
Calm in his own well-ordered life
And has looked in the face good and ill fortune
Still able to keep erect his unconquered head (Invictum potuit tenere vultum),
He shall not be troubled by the rage or threats of the sea
Driving the turning tide up from the deep,
Nor by Vesuvius
However often it break from its deep forges
Flinging its smoking fires abroad,
Nor by the blazing thunderbolt
That strikes down lofty towers.
Why are wretched men so stupefied
By cruel tyrants raging with no real power?
Leave hope and fear aside
And anger is impotent, weaponless;
But he who trembles with fear and desire,
Fickle at heart, nor master of himself,,
Has thrown away his shield, and left his post,
And links the chain by which he can be led (Nectit qua valeat trahi catenam).

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978, Bk. I, 2-4, pp. 140-145.


Cf. The final scene of "Criminal Lawyer" (1937), the public self-disclosure of the corrupt official, is a great witness to the freedom of telling the entire truth and coming clean: "I am a man unfit to hold the office I now hold... [He] laughed at justice... I am a free man."