Boece

Boece (or, more properly, BOYIS), HECTOR, a distinguished Scottish historian, was born of an old family about 1465 at Dundee. He completed his education at Montaigu College, in the university of Paris, where from about 1492 to 1498 he was a regent or professor of Philosophy. Among other learned men whose friendship he acquired here was Erasmus. About the beginning of the 16th century he was invited by Bishop Elphinstone to preside over the university newly founded by him at Aberdeen. Boece accepted the office after some natural hesitation, the yearly salary being but 40 marks, or about £2, 4s. 6d. sterling. The value of money, however, it has to be remembered, was immensely greater then than now, and the learned principal was at the same time made a canon of the cathedral, and chaplain of St Ninians. During his tenure of office the university was highly prosperous and produced many excellent scholars. In 1522 he published his lives, in Latin, of the Bishops of Mortlach and Aberdeen. This work, a great part of which is occupied with the life of his excellent patron, Bishop Elphinstone, was reprinted by the Bannatyne Club in 1825. In 1527 Boece published the Latin History of Scotland, on which his fame chiefly rests, a work which, though proved to contain a large amount of fiction, was deemed distinctly critical at the time of its publication. The author was rewarded by the king with a pension of £50 Scots, until he should be promoted to a benefice of 100 marks, which appears to have occurred in 1534. By the excellence of his Latin style, and his sympathy with Erasmus, Boece may fairly be counted a humanist. He died in 1536, and was buried in the chapel of King's College. See BELLENDEN, JOHN.