Part 11

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. Such figures, with the zodiacal symbols arranged around a figure of Christ, may be seen in certain MSS. anterior to Hildegard, 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, XVI, and XVII, compare with Plates VII and VIII) right down to our own age and country, where it still appeals to the ignorant and foolish.

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’.

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; 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.’

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).

Plate XV. AN XIth CENTURY FRENCH MELOTHESIA]

Plate XVI. A MELOTHESIA OF ABOUT 1400]

Plate XVII. A GERMAN BLOCK BOOK

First Half of XVth Century. Heidelberg University Library]

Plate XVIII. AN ANATOMICAL DIAGRAM OF ABOUT 1298

From the Five-Figure Series. Cp. Plate XXXIII]

MELOTHESIAE

From R. Fludd, Historia utriusque cosmi, Oppenheim, 1619, pp. 112 and 113.]

From R. Fludd, Philosophia sacra seu astrologia cosmica, Frankfurt, 1628, p. 52.]

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), 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.

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.

(b) An anonymous Salernitan anatomy, 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.

(d) Constantine’s De communibus medico cognitu necessariis locis, written about the same time as the above. 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 (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. 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.

Plate XIX. BIRTH. THE ARRIVAL AND TRIALS OF THE SOUL]