Part 80

Migne, col. 757. This phrase is reproduced in a mediaeval Irish version of the work of Messahalah. See Maura Power, An Irish Astronomical Text, Irish Text Society, London, 1912.

The word cancer is here used, but the crab goes sideways, not backwards. By cancer Hildegard, who had never seen the sea, probably means the crayfish, an animal fairly common in the Rhine basin. It is the head of a crayfish or lobster that is figured in the miniatures of the vision of the macrocosm in the Lucca MS., and a similar organism frequently serves for the sign Cancer in the mediaeval zodiacal medical figures, as in Plate XV of this essay.

Migne, cols. 3, 791-2.

An illustration of this parallelism between Paracelsus and Hildegard is afforded by certain passages in the Labyrinthus medicorum errantium and the Scivias, lib. i, vis. 4. Especially compare p. 279 et seq. of Huser’s edition of the Opera, Strasbourg, 1603, with Migne, col. 428.

A good example is furnished by a work of Isaac Myer, Qabbalah. The philosophical writings of Solomon ben Yehudah ibn Gebirol or Avicebron and their connection with the Hebrew Qabbalah and Sepher ha-Zohar, Philadelphia, 1888.

The most accessible edition is in S. de Renzi’s Collectio Salernitana, vol. ii, p. 388.

Printed in de Renzi, vol. ii, p. 391.

Printed in Methodus medendi certa clara et brevis, Basel, Henricus Petrus, 1541, p. 313.

Printed in Summi in omni philosophia viri constantini africani medici operum reliqua, Basel, Henricus Petrus, 1539, p. 24.

Karl Sudhoff, Tradition und Naturbeobachtung, Leipzig, 1907; Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1908; ‘Drei weitere anatomische Fünfbilderserien aus Abendland und Morgenland’ (with Ernst Seidel) and ‘Abermals eine neue Handschrift der anatomischen Fünfbilderserie’ in Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, Leipzig, 1910 and 1914.

E. H. C. Walsh, ‘The Tibetan Anatomical System’, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, October 1910, p. 1215; Berthold Laufer, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Tibetanischen Medizin, Berlin, 1900; and K. Sudhoff, ‘Weitere Beiträge zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter’, in the Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, vol. viii, p. 143, Leipzig, 1914.

This text, critically treated, has been printed by K. Sudhoff, who, however, regards it as related to the figures: Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, vol. iii, p. 361, Leipzig, 1910.

Hugh of St. Victor, De bestiis et aliis rebus, iii. 60.

Migne, col. 755.

An idea that occurs in Aristotle, Parts of Animals, ii, c. 2, but is rejected by Galen.

Early mediaeval writers held that the lumbus, which we have rendered loin, was intimately connected with the sexual faculties. Thus Hugh of St. Victor (1095-1141), De bestiis et aliis rebus, iii. 60 ‘Lumbi a libidinis lascivia dicti, quia in viris causa corporeae voluptatis in ipsis est, sicut in umbilico feminis. Unde et ab Iob in exordio sermonis dictum est, accinge sicut vir lumbos tuos, ut in his esset resistendi praeparatio, in quibus est libidinis usitata dominandi occasio.’

Migne, cols. 792-3.

The legend reads as follows: ‘Minor mundus scilicet homo. Microcosmus. [Then on the head the names of the seven planets.] Caput microcosmi est rotundum in celestis spere modum in quo duo oculi ut duo luminaria in celo micant quod & septem foramina ut septem celi armonie ornant. In pectore sunt flatus & tussis ut in aere uenti & tonitrua. In uentrem omnia fluunt ut in mare flumina. Os lapides ungues arbos dant gramina crines Ut pede mole corporis sic terra sustinet omnia. [At the four corners the following legends:] Aer huic donat quod flat. sonat. audit. odorat. Ignis feruorem dat uisum mobilitatem. Aqua. Munus aque gustus humorem sanguinis usus. Ex terra carnem tactum trahit & gravitatem.’

Migne, col. 415.

Migne, col. 421.

Migne, col. 424.

The Aristotelian writings also compare the transformation of the material humours into the child’s body with the solidification of milk in the formation of cheese.

Migne, col. 425.

Especially in the Liber Divinorum Operum, pars 1. vis. iv.

The eagle is frequently in mediaeval writings a symbol of the power of divine grace.

Migne, col. 110.

Migne, col. 111.

Migne, col. 384.