Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

encourage the Anglo-Saxon people on the road to enlightenment and cultural civilization, which would
ultimately allow for the political and social stability that he so longed for in his newly unified kingdom.
Alfred was keenly aware that in order for a kingdom to survive and ultimately prosper, it first had
to possess a stable and competent ruler that could be trusted and relied upon. In King Alfred and Boethius, F.
Anne Payne discusses the daunting tasks that faced Alfred in the early days of his reign, saying: “[Alfred]
alone had to halt the intellectual and religious decay, spelled out in the loss of libraries and monasteries and
teachers, in the lack of interest in the religious life, in the waning of morale in a people who had every
reason to expect the murder or desertion of their kings” (4). Though Payne states that Alfred “alone” had to
undertake the task of reform, it is clear from the historical sources that the extensive scope of Alfred’s
agenda necessitated a great deal of help from those close to the king, particularly from those that would aid
him in his goal for a revival of religious practice and educational discipline. Alfred took steps to ensure that
the ecclesiastical community, those most responsible for distributing religious and classical learning to the
masses, would be a trained and educated group. By educating those in leadership positions in the church,
Alfred fostered the survival and growth of Christianity in his kingdom and initiated a close bond between
religion and statehood during his reign. Alfred ultimately decided to produce vernacular translations of the
Latin texts he was studying, because he felt that classical scholarship was “necessary for all men to know,” if
they would be considered truly educated (Keynes and Lapidge 30). Of these classical texts that Alfred
and/or his scholars translated for circulation among the ecclesiastics, Alfred’s rendering of Boethius’
Consolation of Philosophy was the most influential.
Alfred saw Boethius as a highly respected classical authority, and the content of the Consolation
proved to resonate with the king since the treatise details the struggle of a man dealing with the injustice
that necessarily results from the reign of a corrupt ruler, a theme prevalent in Alfred’s historical reality.
The Consolation is full of politically-charged language, including a great deal of discussion regarding the
necessity of a good ruler, as well as the heinousness of treachery, and Alfred takes the opportunity to
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