Part 5

The main outline of the _Liber Divinorum Operum_ is, we believe, borrowed from the work of Bernard Sylvestris of Tours, _De mundi universitate libri duo sive megacosmus et microcosmus_.[79] In this composition by a teacher at the cathedral school of Chartres,[80] the gods and goddesses of the classical pantheon flit across the stage, for all the world as though the writer were a pagan, and the work might be thought to be the last one from which our pious authoress would borrow. The _De mundi universitate_ is alternately in prose and verse and betrays an acquaintance with the classics very rare at its date. ‘The rhythm of the hexameters is clearly that of Lucan, while the vocabulary is mainly of Ovid.’[81] The mythology is founded mainly on the _Timaeus_. The eternal _seminaria_ of created things are mentioned, and it has been conjectured that the work exhibits traces of the influence of Lucretius,[82] but the general line of thought is clearly related to Neoplatonic literature. Thus the _anima universalis_ of Neoplatonic writings can be identified with the _Nous_ or _Noys_ of Bernard. This principle is contrasted with primordial matter or _Hyle_. The parallel character of the _Liber Divinorum Operum_ and the _De mundi universitate_ can be illustrated by a few extracts from the latter. It will be seen that although the general setting is changed, yet Hildegard’s figure of the spirit of the macrocosm is to be identified with Bernard’s _Noys_. _Hyle_, on the other hand, becomes in Hildegard’s plan the monstrous form, the emblem of brute matter, on which the spirit of the universe tramples.

‘In huius operis primo libro qui Megacosmus dicitur, id est maior mundus, Natura ad Noym, id est Dei providentiam, de primae materiae, id est hyles, confusione querimoniam quasi cum lacrimis agit et ut mundus pulchrius petit. Noys igitur eius mota precibus petitioni libenter annuit et ita quatuor elementa ab invicem seiungit. Novem ierarchias angelorum in coelo ponit. stellas in firmamento figit. signa disponit. sub signis orbes septem planetarum currere facit. quatuor ventos cardinales sibi invicem opponit. Sequitur genesis animantium et terrae situs medius....

‘In secundo libro qui Microcosmus dicitur, id est minor mundus, Noys ad Naturam loquitur et de mundi expolitione gloriatur et in operis sui completione se hominem plasmaturam pollicetur. Iubet igitur Uraniam, quae siderum regina est, et Physin, quae rerum omnium est peritissima, sollicite perquirat. Natura protinus iubenti obsequitur et per caelestes circulos Uraniam quaeritans eam sideribus inhiantem reperit. eiusque itineris causa praecognita se operis et itineris comitem Urania pollicetur.... Subitoque ibi Noys affuit suoque velle eis ostenso trinas speculationes tribus assignando tribuit & ad hominis plasmationem eas impellit. Physis igitur de quatuor elementorum reliquiis hominem format et a capite incipiens membratim operando opus suum in pedibus consummat....

‘Noys ego scientia et divinae voluntatis arbitraria ad dispositionem rerum, quem ad modum de consensu eius accipio, sic meae administrationis officia circumduco....

‘(Noys) erat fons luminis, seminarium vitae, bonum bonitatis divinae, plenitude scientiae quae mens altissimi nominatur. Ea igitur noys summi & exsuperantissimi Dei est intellectus et ex eius divinitate nata natura.... Erat igitur videre velut in speculo tersiore quicquid generationi quicquid operi Dei secretior destinarat affectus.’[83]

Hildegard’s conception of macrocosm and microcosm, which was thus probably borrowed from Bernard Sylvestris, has analogies also to those well-known figures illustrating the supposed influence of the signs of the zodiac on the different parts of the body.[84] Such figures, with the zodiacal symbols arranged around a figure of Christ, may be seen in certain MSS. anterior to Hildegard,[85] while the influence of the ‘Melothesia’, to give it the name assigned by Porphyry, has been traced through its period of efflorescence at the Renaissance (Plates XV,[86] XVI,[87] and XVII,[88] compare with Plates VII and VIII) right down to our own age and country, where it still appeals to the ignorant and foolish.[89]

Hildegard often interprets natural events by means of a peculiarly crude form of the doctrine, as when she describes how ‘if the excess of waters below are drawn up to the clouds (by the just judgment of God in the requital of sinners), then the moisture from the _aer aquosus_ transudes through the _fortis et albus lucidusque aer_ as a draught drunk into the urinary bladder; and the same waters descend in an inundation’.[90]

Again, events in the body of man are most naively explained on the basis of the nature of the external world as she has pictured it.

‘The humours at times rage fiercely as a leopard and again they are softened, going backwards as a crab;[91] or they may show their diversity by leaping and goring as a stag, or they may be as a wolf in their ravening, and yet again they may invade the body of man after the manner of both wolf and crab. Or else they may show forth their strength unceasingly as a lion, or as a serpent they may go now softly, now violently, and at times they may be gentle as a lamb and at times again they may growl as an angered bear, and at times they may partake of the nature of the lamb and of the serpent.’[92]

Having completed her general survey of the macrocosm (Vision II), and having investigated in detail the structure of man’s body, the microcosm, in terms of the greater universe (Vision III), and discussed the influence of the heavenly bodies on terrestrial events (Vision IV), Hildegard turns to the internal structure of the terrestrial sphere (Vision V). This vision is illustrated by the figure in the Lucca MS. reproduced in Plate XI.

Upon the surface of the earth towards the east stands the building which symbolizes the _aedificium_ of the church, a favourite conception of our authoress. This church is surmounted by a halo, whence proceed a pair of pinions which extend their shelter over a full half of the earth’s circumference. As for the rest of the earth’s surface, part is within the wide-opened jaws of a monster, the Destroyer, and the remainder is beneath the surface of the ocean. Within the earth are five parts analogous, as she would have us believe, to the five senses. An eastern clear arc and a western clouded one signify respectively the excellence of the orient where Zion is situated, and the Cimmerian darkness of the occidental regions over which the shadow of the dragon is cast. Centrally is a quadrate area divided into three zones where the qualities of heat and cold and of a third intermediate ‘temperateness’ (_temperies_) are stored. North and south of this are two areas where purgatory is situate. Each is shaped like a truncated cone and composed also of three sectors. Souls are seen suffering in one sector the torment of flame, in another the torment of water, while in the third or intermediate sector lurk monsters and creeping things which add to the miseries of purgatory or at times come forth to earth’s surface to plague mankind. These northern and southern sections exhibit dimly by their identically reversed arrangement the belief in the antipodean inversion of climate, an idea hinted several times in Hildegard’s writings, but more definitely illustrated by a figure of Herrade de Landsberg (Fig. 5).

Macrocosmic schemes of the type illustrated by the text of Hildegard and by the figures of the Lucca MS. had a great vogue in mediaeval times, and were passed on to later ages. Some passages in Hildegard’s work read curiously like Paracelsus (1491-1541),[93] and it is not hard to find a link between these two difficult and mystical writers. Trithemius, the teacher of Paracelsus, was abbot of Sponheim, an important settlement almost within sight of Hildegard’s convents on the Rupertsberg and Disibodenberg. Trithemius studied Hildegard’s writings with great care and attached much importance to them, so that they may well have influenced his pupil. The influence of mediaeval theories of the relation of macrocosm and microcosm is encountered among numerous Renaissance writers besides Paracelsus, and is presented to us, for instance, by such a cautious, balanced, and scientifically-minded humanist as Fracastor. But as the years went on, the difficulty in applying the details of the theory became ever greater and greater. Facts were strained and mutilated more and more to make them fit the Procrustean bed of an outworn theory, which at length became untenable when the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Galileo replaced the geocentric and anthropocentric systems of an earlier age. The idea of a close parallelism between the structure of man and of the wider universe was gradually abandoned by the scientific, while among the unscientific it degenerated and became little better than an insane obsession. As such it appears in the ingenious ravings of the English follower of Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian, Robert Fludd, who reproduced, often with fidelity, the systems which had some novelty five centuries before his time (Figs. 6, 7, and 8). As a similar fantastic obsession this once fruitful hypothesis still occasionally appears even in modern works of learning and industry.[94]

VIII. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

Hildegard’s ideas on these subjects are set out in the fourth vision of the _Liber Divinorum Operum_, which is devoted to a description of man’s body according to the macrocosmic scheme. This setting makes her account by no means easy to read, while it increases the difficulty of tracing the origin of her views.

The list of works containing anatomical descriptions available to a German writer in the early Middle Ages is not long. Avicenna was hardly yet accessible, and only such scraps of Galen as appear in Constantine and the Salernitans. The available works may be enumerated thus:

(_a_) The short _Anatomia porci_ of Copho of Salerno, dating from about 1085.[95]

(_b_) An anonymous Salernitan anatomy,[96] written about 1100 and largely based on Copho and Constantine.

(_c_) The _Liber de humana natura_ of Constantine the African, written probably between 1070 and 1085 at Monte Cassino.[97]

(_d_) Constantine’s _De communibus medico cognitu necessariis locis_, written about the same time as the above.[98] This work is in four books, of which the second, third, and fourth are devoted to anatomy and physiology.

(_e_) Here may be placed also Constantine’s translation of the _Viaticum_ of Isaac Judeus. Both these latter works of Constantine are long and technical, and designed for the use of the trained physician.

In addition to these there was in the Middle Ages a definite anatomic tradition, which expressed itself constantly in:

(_f_) A series of five anatomical diagrams representing respectively the arteries, veins, bones, nerves, and muscles[99] (see Plate XXXIII, opposite page 92 of the present volume). These diagrams were copied in the most servile fashion for centuries, and something very like them has remained in use to this day in Tibet.[100] The versions, whether in Persia or England, in Germany or Italy, were remarkably uniform.

(_g_) In several MSS. there has been found attached to these remarkable diagrams a short text describing the five systems, arteries, veins, nerves, bones, and muscles. This text, however, purporting to be from Galen, has little relation to the figures, which it does not really explain, and it should therefore be regarded as a separate work.[101]

Of these seven sources it appears to us that (_c_) and (_f_)--the short _De humana natura_ of Constantine, and the five-figure series--are those on which Hildegard drew. The absence of Arabisms and the scarcity of technical anatomical terms in her writings, her failure to distinguish between veins and arteries, the absence of anything of the nature of myology or osteology, together with the neglect of the spinal marrow as an important organ, make it very unlikely that she consulted Constantine’s longer works or the Salernitan authorities or the text of the five-figure series. Her anatomical descriptions resemble those of Constantine’s shorter work, on the other hand, in the description of the three vesicles of the brain and their relations to the faculties of the mind, in the treatment of the five senses, in the view of the influence of the planets on the child and the emphasis laid on epilepsy, as well as in the absence of any distinction between arteries and veins, and in the loose doctrines of the humours and of the causes of deformities and monstrosities. In some of these respects also her account of the human body presents points of resemblance to the _De hominis membris ac partibus_ of Hugh of St. Victor,[102] with whom, however, her contact appears to be less close than with Constantine.

We may infer that Hildegard had consulted anatomical diagrams and was accustomed to this method of representing the organs from a passage descriptive of the microcosm, in which she says that ‘in the mouth of the figure in whose body was the disk, I saw a light brighter than the light of day, in the form of threads, some circular, some in other geometrical forms, and some shaped like human members belonging to the figure, which was clearly portrayed on the disk upright and accurately limned’.[103] These ‘circles and geometrical figures’ fairly describe the highly diagrammatic manner in which the five-figure series represents the internal organs, and several points suggest that she does indeed refer to this series. Her description of the abdominal muscles (_umbilicus_) ‘covering the viscera like a cap’, her general descriptions of the vessels (_venae_) and the muscles, and especially her account of the vessels of the leg and of the intimate relations of the main _venae_ to the organ of hearing, fits in perfectly with the form of these remarkable diagrams (Plate XVIII).

We here render some of the most important of her general anatomical descriptions:

‘The humours may pass to the liver, where wisdom is tested, having been already tempered in the brain by the strength of the spirit, and having absorbed its moisture so that now it is plump, strong, and healthy.

‘In the right of man is the liver and its great heat, so that the right is swift to act and to work;[104] but towards the left are heart and lung, which fortify the body for its task and receive their heat from the liver as from a furnace. But the vessels of the liver, affected by the agitation of the humours, trouble the venules of the ear of man and sometimes confound the organ of hearing....

‘I saw also that sometimes the humours seek the navel, which covers the viscera as a cap, and holds them in, lest they be dissipated, and maintains their course and preserves the heat both of them and of the veins.... But sometimes the humours seek the loins (_lumbos_),[105] which mock, deceive, and endanger the virile powers and which are held in place by nerves and other vessels; in which, nevertheless, reason nourishes so that man may know what to do and what to avoid....

‘And the same humours go to the vessels of the reins and of other members, and pass in their turn to the vessels of the spleen, and then to the lungs and to the heart; and they meet the viscera on the left where they are warmed by the lungs, but the liver warms the right-hand side of the body. And the vessels of the brain, heart, lung, liver, and other parts carry strength to the reins, whose vessels descend to the legs, strengthening them; and returning along with the leg vessels, they unite with the virile organ or with the womb as the case may be.

‘And as the stomach absorbs food, or as iron is sharpened on a stone, so do they bring the reproductive power to those parts.

‘Again, the muscles of the arms, legs, and thighs contain vessels full of humours; and just as the belly has within it viscera containing nourishment, so the muscles of arms, legs, and thighs have both vessels and the [contained] humours which preserve man’s strength.... But when a man runs or walks quickly, the nerves about the knees and the venules in the knees become distended. And since they are united with the vessels of the legs, which are numerous and intercommunicate in a net-like manner, they conduct the fatigue to the vessels of the liver, and thus they reach the vessels of the brain, and so send the fatigue throughout the body. But the vessels from the reins pass rather to the left leg than to the right, because the right leg gets its strength more from the heat of the liver. And the vessels of the right leg ascend as far as the renal and kindred vessels, and these latter vessels unite with those of the kidney. And the liver warms the reins which lie in the fatness derived from the humours....

‘The humours in man are distributed in just measure. But when they affect the veins of the liver, his humidity is decreased and also the humidity of the chest is attenuated; so that thus dried, he falls into disease of such a nature that the phlegm is dry and toxic and ascends to the brain. There it produces headache and pain in the eyes and wasting of the marrow, and thus if the moon is in default he may develop the falling evil [epilepsy].

‘The humidity also which is in the umbilicus is dispersed by the same humours, and turned into dryness and hardness, so that the flesh becomes ulcerated and scabby as though he were leprous, if indeed he do not actually become so. And the vessels of his testicles, being adversely affected by these humours, similarly disturb the other vessels, so that the proper humidity is dried up within them; and thus, the humours being withdrawn, impetigos may arise ... and the marrow of the bones and the vessels of the flesh are dried up, and so the man becomes chronically ill, dragging out his days in languor.

‘But sometimes the humours affect breast and liver ... so that various foolish thoughts arise ... and they ascend to the brain and infect it and again descend to the stomach and generate fevers there, so that the man is long sick. Yet again they vex the minor vessels of the ear with superfluity of phlegm; or with the same phlegm they infect the vessels of the lung, so that he coughs and can scarce breathe; and the phlegm may pass thence into the vessels of the heart and give him pain there, or the pain may pass into the side, exciting pleurisy; under such circumstances also, the moon being in defect, the man may lapse into the falling sickness.’[106] #/

Sometimes Hildegard’s anatomical ideas can be paralleled among her contemporaries. Thus the following passage on the relationship of the planets to the brain is well illustrated by a diagram of Herrade de Landsberg.

‘From the summit of the vessel of the brain to the extremity of the forehead seven equal spaces can be distinguished. Here the seven planets are designated, the uppermost planet in the highest part, the moon in front, the sun in the middle and the other planets distributed among the other spaces’ (Fig. 9).

IX. BIRTH AND DEATH AND THE NATURE OF THE SOUL

The method by which the soul enters the body is set forth in a very striking vision in the _Scivias_ and is illustrated in the Wiesbaden Codex B by a no less remarkable miniature (Plate XIX). The soul, which contains the element of wisdom, passes into the infant’s body while yet within the mother’s womb. The _Wisdom of God_ is represented as a four-square object, with its angles set to the four quarters of the earth, this form being the symbol of stability. From it a long tube-like process descends into the mother’s womb. Down this there passes into the child a bright object, described variously as ‘spherical’ and as ‘shapeless’, which ‘illumines the whole body’ and becomes or develops into the soul.

The birth scene is strikingly portrayed. In the foreground lies the mother with the head and shoulders supported and the right arm raised. In her womb is the infant in the position known to obstetricians as a ‘transverse presentation’. Around the child may be distinguished clear traces of the uterine membranes. Near the couch are ranged a group of ten figures who carry vessels containing the various qualities of the child. Above and to the left the Evil One may be seen pouring some noxious substance into one of these vessels, or perhaps abstracting some element of good. The whole scene suggests the familiar fairy tale in which, while all bring pleasant gifts to the child’s birth, there comes at last the old witch or the ill-used relative who adds a quota of spitefulness.

The scene is described and expounded as follows: