Problem of his identity.
Bernard Silvester, of whom this chapter will treat, is now generally recognized as a different person from the Bernard of Chartres whom William of Conches followed and on whose teaching John of Salisbury looked back.[261] From John’s account it is plain that Bernard of Chartres belonged to the generation before William of Conches, and Clerval has shown reason to believe that he was dead by 1130.[262] Bernard Silvester, on the other hand, wrote his De mundi universitate during the pontificate of Eugenius III, 1145-1153. Moreover, one of his pupils informs us that he taught at Tours.[263] This last fact also makes it difficult, although not impossible, to identify him with a Breton, named Bernard de Moelan, who, after serving as canon and chancellor at Chartres, became bishop of Quimper from 1159 to 1167.[264] At least they appear to have had somewhat similar interests, and Silvester seems to have had some connection with the school of Chartres, since he dedicated the De mundi universitate to Theodoric of Chartres.[265]
His works.
A number of works are extant under the name of Bernard Silvester. His interest in rhetoric and poetry is shown by a long Summa dictaminis (or, dictaminum) and by a Liber de metrificatura, in the Titulus of which he is called “a poet of the first rank” (optimi poetae).[266] He also wrote a commentary on the first books of the Aeneid.[267] Two other treatises are ascribed to him in which we are not here further interested, namely: De forma vitae honestae and De cura rei familiaris or Epistola ad Raimundum de modo rei familiaris gubernandae.[268] The three works of especial interest to us, while no one of them is exactly a treatise on astrology, all illustrate, albeit each in a different way, the dominance of astrological doctrine in the thought of the time. One is Experimentarius, an astrological geomancy translated into verse from the Arabic.[269] Another is a narrative poem whose plot hinges upon an astrologer’s prediction and whose very title is Mathematicus.[270] The third work, variously entitled De mundi universitate, Megacosmus et Microcosmus, and Cosmographia[271] has much to say of the stars and their rule over inferior creation.[272] It is written partly in prose and partly in verse,[273] and shows that Bernard laid as much stress on literary form in his scientific or pseudo-scientific works as in those on rhetoric and meter. Sandys says of it, “The rhythm of the hexameters is clearly that of Lucan, while the vocabulary is mainly that of Ovid”; but Dr. Poole believes that the hexameters are modelled upon Lucretius.[274] He would date it either in 1145 or about 1147-1148.[275]
Their influence.
The manuscripts of these three works are fairly numerous, indicating that they were widely read, and no contemporary objection appears to have been raised against their rather extreme astrological doctrines. As was well observed concerning the De mundi universitate over one hundred and fifty years ago, “These extravagances and some other similar ones did not prevent the book from achieving a very brilliant success from the moment of its first appearance,” as is shown by the contemporary testimony of Peter Cantor in the closing twelfth century and Eberhart de Bethune in the early thirteenth century, who says that the De mundi universitate was read in the schools. Gervaise of Tilbury and Vincent of Beauvais also cited it.[276] Indeed in our next chapter we shall find a Christian abbess, saint, and prophetess of Bernard’s own time charged—by a modern writer, it is true—with making use of it in her visions. Passages from Silvester are included in a thirteenth century collection of “Proverbs” from ancient and recent writers,[277] and more than one copy of the De mundi universitate is listed in such a medieval monastic library as St. Augustine’s, Canterbury.[278]
Disregard of Christian theology.
In the De mundi universitate we see the same influence of Platonism and astronomy, and of the Latin translation of the Timaeus in especial, as in the Philosophia of William of Conches. At the same time, its abstract personages and personified sciences, its Nous and Natura, its Urania and Physis with her two daughters, Theoretical and Practical, remind us of the pages of Martianus Capella and of Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso. The characterization by Dr. Poole that the work “has an entirely pagan complexion,” and that Bernard’s scheme of cosmology is pantheistic and takes no account of Christian theology,[279] is essentially true, although occasionally some utterance indicates that the writer is acquainted with Christianity and no true pagan. Perhaps it is just because Bernard makes no pretense of being a theologian, that at a time when William of Conches was retracting in his Dragmaticon some of the views expressed in his Philosophia and the Sicilian translator was conscious of a bigoted theological opposition, Bernard should display neither fear nor consciousness of the existence of any such opposition. And yet it does not appear that the Sicilian translator engaged in theological discussion. Yet he complains of those who call astronomy idolatry; Bernard calmly calls the stars gods, and no one seems to have raised the least objection. At least Bernard’s fearless outspokenness and its subsequent popularity should prevent our laying too much stress upon the timidity of other writers in expressing new views, and should make us hesitate before interpreting their attitude as a sure sign of real danger to freedom of thought and speech, and to scientific investigation.
The divine stars.
What especially concerns our investigation are the views concerning stars and spirits expressed by Silvester. Like William of Conches, he describes the world of spirits in a Platonic or Neo-Platonic, rather than patristic, style. He differs from William in hardly using the word “demon” at all and in according the stars, like Adelard of Bath, a much higher place in his hierarchy. “The heaven itself is full of God,” says Bernard, “and the sky has its own animals, sidereal fires,”[280] just as man, who is in part a spiritual being, inhabits the earth. Bernard does not hesitate to call the stars “gods who serve God in person,” or “who serve in God’s very presence.”[281] There in the region of purer ether which extends as far as the sun they enjoy the vision of bliss eternal, free from all care and distraction, and resting in the peace of God which passeth all understanding.[282] He also repeats the Platonic doctrine that the mind is from the sky and that the human soul, when at last it lays aside the body, “will return to its kindred stars, added as a god to the number of superior beings.”[283]