11 Facts About Hector Boece

Hector Boece, known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and the first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen.

Hector Boece was born in Dundee where he attended school and was educated at the nearby University of St Andrews.

Hector Boece died in Aberdeen two years later at the age of 71.

Hector Boece wrote and published two books, one of biography and one of history.

The Historia is the work for which Hector Boece is remembered, as the second scholarly history of the Scots to be written; its only real predecessor was the compendium of John Mair.

The works of Tacitus had been rediscovered, in the 14th century, and contained material relevant to British history; and Hector Boece was concerned to integrate it into the tradition.

Sharp criticism of the sourcing of Hector Boece's history was voiced in the sixteenth century by Humphrey Lhuyd and John Twyne.

Hector Boece shared in the credulity of his age; the approach of Mair, who was writing in parallel at the same time, but with a different focus and with a more critical and less sweeping method, did not represent the current fashion.

The charge of actually inventing his authorities, formerly brought against Hector Boece, has been the subject of recent scholarship.

One example of Hector Boece being cleared of the charge of fabricating his work concerns the Battle of Luncarty, Luncarty, Clan Hay.

Hector Boece was suspected by the Scottish historian John Hill Burton of inventing that battle but, Walter Bower writing in his Scotichronicon around 1440, some 87 years before Boece first published his Scotorum Historia, refers to the battle briefly.