Cosmographia (Bernardus Silvestris)
Cosmographia ("Cosmography"), also known as De mundi universitate ("On the totality of the world"), is a Latin philosophical allegory, dealing with the creation of the universe, by the twelfth-century author Bernardus Silvestris.
Hyle is the basis, whom the rational plan of God and Noys has ordered in an everlasting system, although subject to time: "For as Noys is forever pregnant of the divine will, she in turn informs Endelechia with the images she conceives of the eternal patterns, Endelechia impresses them upon Nature, and Nature imparts to Imarmene [Destiny; Greek εἰμαρμένη] what the well-being of the universe demands.
When she reaches the outermost limit of the heavens, she encounters the Genius whose responsibility it is to delineate the celestial forms on the individual objects of the universe.
Urania tells Natura that, in addition to the angels who dwell beyond the created universe and in the heavenly spheres, there are spirits below the Moon—some good, some evil.
9 (prose): Natura and Urania descend to Earth and reach a secluded locus amoenus (called Gramision or Granusion—the readings of the manuscripts are disputed).
10 (verse): Noys explains that Natura, Urania, and Physis can collaborate to complete the creation by fashioning a creature who participates in both the divine and earthly realms.
The ultimate source for much of Bernardus' allegory is the account of creation in Plato's Timaeus, as transmitted in the incomplete Latin translation, with lengthy commentary, by Calcidius.
[4] From the Timaeus Bernardus and the Chartrian thinkers, such as Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches, adopted three fundamental assumptions: "that the visible universe is a unified whole, a 'cosmos'; that it is the copy of an ideal exemplar; and that its creation was the expression of the goodness of its creator".
[7] Along with the Timaeus and Calcidius' commentary, Bernardus' work also draws on Platonic themes diffused throughout a variety of works of late antiquity, such as Apuleius' philosophical treatises, Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio, the Hermetic Asclepius, the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.
[5] In addition to their Platonic elements, the latter two works would have provided models of the prosimetrum form;[8] and Macrobius' commentary had authorized the use of allegorical (fabulosa) methods in philosophers' treatment of certain subjects, since sciunt inimicam esse naturae apertam nudamque expositionem sui ("they realize that a frank, open exposition of herself is distasteful to Nature").
[11] Scholars have traced its influence on "a wide variety of medieval and renaissance authors, including Hildegard of Bingen, Vincent of Beauvais, Dante, Chaucer, Nicholas of Cusa, and Boccaccio—whose annotated copy of the work we possess".
