Note 59 — THE SCIENTIFIC VIEWS AND VISIONS OF SAINT HILDEGARD (1098–1180)

The Meteorologica had been translated about 1150 by Aristippus, the minister of William the Bad of Sicily. The version of Aristippus passed quickly into circulation (Valentine Rose, ‘Die Lücke im Diogenes Laërtus und der alte Übersetzer’ in Hermes, i. 376, Berlin, 1866), but hardly soon enough for Hildegard’s Scivias, which was completed about 1150. It is, of course, possible that the references to the ignis niger are later interpolations, but this is very unlikely in view of the way in which she speaks of this vision in the Liber Divinorum Operum.