The Fifth and Sixth Centuries

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter V: The Fifth and Sixth Centuries

The fifth century saw the break up of the Empire and centralized authority was preserved only in the Church and that was accomplished with much effort.

The Goths took over Italy, the Vandals took Africa, the Visigoths took over in the South of France and the Franks took over France and Germany.

There was also the horror of Atilla and his Hunnic rabble from the east.

The theological hairsplitting of Cyril and Nestorius over a Christological matter erupted into violence. Nestorius claimed that there were two persons in Christ, one human and one divine. Nestorius was condemned as a heretic in a sham of an ecumenical council. Nestorius however did not recant and Nestorian Christianity was popular in Syria and even traveled to China and India where it was rediscovered centuries later by western missionaries.

After the Nestorian heresy came the opposite, the Monophysite heresy, that claimed Christ had only one nature. At the end of two ecumenical councils, the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon Christianity declared that there is only one person of Christ but that he exists in two natures, one human and one divine.

The heresies of Nestorius and Monophysitism weakened the bonds of Christianity and facilitated the Arab conquest. "The heresy of the Abyssinians was given by Mussolini as one of his reasons for conquering them" (Russell, 369).

During the 6th century four men emerged as important: Boethius, Justinian, Benedict and Gregory the Great.

Boethius, author of Consolations of Philosophy was put to death by the Arian ruler of Italy, Theodoric when Justin the Eastern emperor proscribed Arianism.

"Boethius is a singular figure. Throughout the Middle Ages he was read and admired, regarded
always as a devout Christian, and treated almost as if he had been one of the Fathers. Yet his
Consolations of Philosophy, written in 524 while he was awaiting execution, is purely Platonic; it
does not prove that he was not a Christian, but it does show that pagan philosophy had a much
stronger hold on him then Christian theology. Some theological works, especially one on the
Trinity, which are attributed to him, are by many authorities considered to be spurious; but it was
probably owing to them that the Middle Ages were able to regard him as orthodox, and to imbibe
from him much Platonism which would otherwise have been viewed with suspicion." (Russell, 370).

A lot of the morality of Boethius is Stoic in nature. He takes on the privation theory of evil.

He claimed that men become happy by becoming a god. There is only one God, but there are many by participation in God.

Only the virtuous obtain the good.

Given that the book was written in prison under the sentence of death the work is as admirable as the last moment of Platonic Socrates.