Bernardus Silvestris exemplifies the scholastic culture of his
time. Having studied with pioneers in philosophy and science, he
became a renowned teacher of literary and poetic composition. His
versatility as scholar, philosopher, and scientist is apparent in
his masterpiece, the Cosmographia. In alternating verse and prose,
this foundational text for later Latin and vernacular literature
synthesizes important intellectual movements of the early twelfth
century. It owes its deepest debt to the tradition of philosophical
allegory, including Plato's Timaeus, Cicero's Somnium Scipionis,
and the prosimetra of Martianus Capella and Boethius. Bernardus
also displays a masterly awareness of classical Latin poetry.
Though less widely influential than his great disciple, Alan of
Lille, Bernardus is the most subtle of the twelfth-century Latin
poets; the Cosmographia has been aptly compared to the poetry of
Lucretius and Giordano Bruno, and a copy survives written in the
hand of Boccaccio. In Mathematicus ("The Astrologer"), a Roman
hero, faced with an astrologer's prediction that he will kill his
father, resolves to defy fate by committing suicide. This text is
the most substantial of the surviving twelfth-century poems based
on the ancient exercises in rhetoric known as controversiae, and it
illustrates the twelfth century's concern with astral determinism.
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