VISIO QUARTA, cap. LXXXIII
The Earth Held in the Air
The earth is placed at the center of the air, surrounded equally on every side.
The earth is set in the midst of the air as well, and so arranged that the air surrounds the earth equally on every side — above it, beneath it, and on each quarter of it.
The Soul Dwelling in the Body
The soul is given to the human being to obey God patiently in laborious life, and like the air sustaining the earth, the soul dwells within and sustains the body.
The soul too — the living breath God has sent into the body — is given to the human being so that one may patiently obey God's commands in this laborious life; yet it dwells and remains in a separation as vast as the distance between heaven and earth, so that one who cannot fully comprehend by one's own knowledge what one truly is must look toward one's Creator in the struggle of that labor, striving with patience and obedience.12 For just as the air sustains and contains the earth by resting upon it, so the soul dwells within the body, sustaining it entirely, and works within it as the body requires.
The Soul as River of God's Precepts
The bladder and rivers symbolize how the victorious soul should irrigate the body by receiving God's good precepts and releasing evil.
The bladder, which takes in and releases liquid, stands for the courses of rivers that pour across the earth; and so the soul, victorious over the flesh, ought to irrigate its own body by taking in the good things from the flowing precepts of God and releasing the evil things — as the fitting verse of Psalm 118 is placed here as witness.
Read the original Latin
In medio quoque aeris terra posita est, ita scilicet ut aer aequali mensura super terram, ac sub terra, et in utraque parte terrae sit. Anima etiam quae vivens spiraculum a Deo in corpus missa est, hominem ut cum patientia praeceptis Dei in hac laboriosa vita obediat, instruit; in qua in tanta dissocietate quanta coelum et terra distant, inhabitat manetque, ut qui scientia sua quid ipse sit pleniter comprehendere non valet, in labore certaminis sui cum patientia et obedientia ad Creatorem suum tendendo respiciat. Sicut enim aer in medio terrae eam sustentando et continendo est, sic anima in medio corporis, illud totum sustinendo, habitat, et in illo secundum quod ab eo postulat operatur.
Quod vesica, quae potus recipit et emittit, cursus fluminum quae per terram diffunduntur ostendit; et quod in hunc modum victrix carnis anima corpus suum fluentis praeceptorum Dei bona recipiendo, mala emittendo irrigare debeat, apposito in testimonium versu psalmi CXVIII ad hoc competente.
Notes
- 1 ↩dissocietas rendered 'separation' (rare form); the sense is the great ontological distance between soul and body, which the soul bridges by obedience.
- 2 ↩spiraculum rendered 'breath' rather than 'breath of life' to avoid collapsing the term into a generic phrase; the theological sense of God-giving-life is preserved by context.
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