Note 660 — Chapter VI · COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY

Liber div. op., pars I, visio II, in: Migne, Pat. lat., vol. cxcvii, cols. 751–755, 759–760. In a previous vision referred to in the passage just cited and described in Scivias, I, visio III (Migne, op. cit., col. 405), Hildegard saw the universe as an egg, in which the earth appeared as follows: “Et in medio istorum elementorum quidam arenosus globus plurimae magnitudinis erat; quem eadem elementa ita circumdederant, quod nec hac nec illac dilabi poterat. Sed dum interdum eadem elementa cum praedictis flatibus se invicem concuterent, eumdem globum sua fortitudine aliquantulum moveri. Et vidi inter aquilonem et orientem velut maximum montem, qui versus aquilonem multas tenebras et versus orientem multam lucem continebat; ita tamen quod nec lux illa ad tenebras, nec tenebrae ad lucem pertingere poterant.”

Singer in his Visions of Saint Hildegard, 1917, pp. 22–30, discusses Hildegard’s theories of the structure of the material universe as revealed in the records of her visions. Particularly striking are the colored illustrations taken from miniatures in manuscripts of her works. Singer asserts (p. 22) that “the concentric structure of the universe is a commonplace of mediaeval science, and is encountered, for instance, in the works of Bede, Isidore, Alexander of Neckam, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Dante. To all these writers, however, the universe is 424spherical. The egg-shape is peculiar to Hildegard. Many of the Mappaemundi of the Beatus and other types exhibit the surface of the habitable earth itself as oval, and it was from such charts that Hildegard probably gained her conception of an oval universe. In her method of orientation also she follows these maps, placing east at the top of the page where we are accustomed to place the north.” This statement would seem to be misleading if it means that the comparison of the universe with an egg is peculiar to Hildegard. As is shown by the texts cited above, p. 151, and below, note 100, ad fin., this comparison was a frequent one throughout our period. It does not, however, necessarily imply belief that the universe is shaped like an egg, but merely that its concentric structure corresponds with that of the egg. Furthermore, in the opinion of the present writer, the fact that the Beatus and other maps of the period show the surface of the habitable earth as an oval or rectangle should not necessarily be taken as meaning that the draftsmen of the maps believed that the earth was oval or rectangular. The maps were highly conventionalized, and their shape was often determined by the shape of the page upon which they were drawn. On the other hand, Hildegard in her Scivias unquestionably meant to describe an egg-shaped universe. Otherwise she would not have been so careful to point out at the opening of the Liber divinorum operum that in the earlier vision described in Scivias the universe had appeared as an egg whereas in the vision she was about to describe it appeared as a wheel.