Bernard Silvestris

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Bernard Silvestris, also known as Bernardus Silvestris, was a Medieval platonist philosopher and poet of the 12th century.

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Bibliography
4 See also

[edit] Biography

Little is known about his life. André Vernet, who edited Bernard's Cosmographia, believed that he lived from 1085 to 1178; the only certain date in his life is 1147, when the Cosmographia was supposedly presented to Pope Eugene III. There is some evidence that he was connected to Spanish schools of philosophy, but it seems likely that he was born in Tours, due to the intimate descriptions of the city and the surrounding area found in the Cosmographia. Later medieval authors also associated him with that city.

Wherever he was born, he certainly studied and taught at Chartres, home of the most important school in western Europe until the rise of the universities later in the 12th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was assumed that Bernard was the same person as Bernard of Chartres, although this identification has been challenged by more recent scholars such as Julian Ward Jones. Most notably, a contemporary of Bernard, John of Salisbury, who was bishop of Chartres, quotes from works attributed to Bernard but does not know the author by name. He also quotes from Bernard of Chartres and knows him as a separate author.

[edit] Works

Bernard's greatest work is the aforementioned Cosmographia, a prosimetrum on the creation of the world, told from a 12th-century Platonist perspective. The poem influenced Chaucer and others with the pioneering use of allegory to discuss metaphyscial and scientific questions. He also wrote the poems Mathematicus and probably Experimentarius, as well as a number of other minor poems.

Some works were attributed to Bernard Silvester later in the Middle Ages, including a commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, and a commentary on Martianus Capella. The commentary on the Aeneid is the longest medieval commentary on that work, although it is incomplete, ending about two-thirds of the way through book six.

[edit] Bibliography

The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, trans. Winthrop Wetherbee. Columbia University Press, 1973 (ISBN 0-231-09625-9)
The Commentary on the First Six Books of the Aeneid of Virgil, Commonly Attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, ed. Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones. University of Nebraska Press, 1977 (ISBN 0-608-01543-1)
The Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil's Aeneid, trans. Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca. University of Nebraska Press, 1979
Dronke, Peter. Bernard Silvestris: Nature and Personification in Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992. pp. 41-61.
Desmond, Marilynn. Bernardus Silvestris and the Corpus of the Aeneid in The Classics in the Middle Ages. Aldo S. Bernardo and Saul Levin, eds. Binghamton, N.Y.: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1990
Jones, Julian Ward. The So-Called Silvestris Commentary on the Aeneid and Two Other Interpretations. Speculum 64. (1989): 838-48.
Stock, Brian. Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester. Princeton University Press, 1972