St. John, on the other hand, although he probably wrote both his Gospels and his Acts in Greek, had an allegiance only to Jesus, and was, therefore, a better, more serious Christian than was either Boethius or Dante, although all three wrote of Christianity. .

             Like Dante in the Inferno, Boethius seemed conflicted about his Christian beliefs. Boethius writes while imprisoned, for example in his The Consolation of Philosophy:.

             . . . when I turned my eyes towards her and fixed my gaze upon her, I recognised my .

             nurse, Philosophy, in whose chambers I had spent my life from earliest manhood. And .

             I asked her,' Wherefore have you, mistress of all virtues, come down from heaven .

             above to visit my lonely place of banishment? Is it that you, as well as I, may be .

             harried, the victim of false charges? ' 'Should I,' said she,' desert you, my nursling?.

             Boethius is a Christian, but his Christianity clearly co-exists with Greek (non-Christian) ideals, and he identifies these in particular as giving him comfort during his last days on earth: for him, a reflective time filled with disappointment and sadness. It is then that Philosophy comes to Boethius, in the form of a woman, to comfort him in prison. Further, Boethius' heroes and inspirations, much like Dante's later, seem not to be Christians, but instead, Greeks:.

             In ancient days before the time of my child, Plato, have we not as well as nowadays .

             fought many a mighty battle against the recklessness of folly? And though Plato did .

             survive, did not his master, Socrates, win his victory of an unjust death, with me .

             present at his side? When after him the followers of Epicurus, and in turn the Stoics, .

             and then others did all try their utmost to seize his legacy, they dragged me, for all my .

             cries and struggles, as though to share me as plunder; they tore my robe which I had .

             woven with mine own hands, and snatched away the fragments thereof: and when they .