VISIO QUARTA, cap. VIII
The Living Clouds of Heaven
The clouds are carried and sustained by God, nourishing the earth like breasts giving milk, and are shaped by fire, air, water, and cold so their rains are measured and gentle.
He himself also carries and sustains the aforementioned clouds, which are sometimes bright and sometimes shady, and which have, as it were, individual breasts through which they send rain down to the earth, just as milk is drawn from breasts; and these same clouds sometimes stretch upward, and from each one they receive force. For through fire they are strengthened, through the upper air they are lightened, through waters they are soaked, and through cold they are congealed, so that the scattering of rain through each individual breast won't be spread too thickly upon the earth.1
The Sky as Mirror of Desire
The clouds mirror the heavens like a faithful soul whose right desire, reaching toward good works, despises earthly things and is wholly transformed toward what is above.
But those same clouds are that mirror-likeliness which people call the sky, because the established local positions of the sun, the moon, and the stars are seen through them as if certain forms through a mirror, so that people think they see the constitution of those bodies themselves — which, however, is not so, since the clouds merely display the offices of those same constellations, as in the shade of a mirror; and just as waters flow in which all opposite things are observed, signifying that the thought of a faithful person, from right desire going out toward the fruitful usefulness that prefers good works, touches the greenness of that desire, so that it may produce the manifold fruits of holiness and elevate the minds of people toward heavenly things, so that they long for them and are strengthened by them — because while a person by right desire stretches toward the fruit of good works, they despise earthly things and fix themselves on those things that are above in the heavens, so that they show themselves, as it were, no longer merely a person, wholly transformed.23
The Milky Cloud and Its Hidden Strength
The milky cloud strengthens the air through its extension or curve, pointing to a deeper spiritual significance.
Regarding the cloud called the Milky Way: it strengthens the air, understood through its extension or its curve, and what this signifies.
Read the original Latin
Ipse quoque praedictas nubes, quae interdum lucidae et interdum umbrosae sunt, super se portat, et sustentat, quae velut singulares mammas habent, per quas pluvias in terram mittunt, quemadmodum de mammis lac extrahitur; istaeque aliquando ad superiora se extendunt, et de singulis vim accipiunt. Per ignem enim confortantur, aethere alleviantur, aquis perfunduntur ac frigore coagulantur, ne sparsio pluviae per singulas mammas supramodum grossa super terram diffundatur. Sed et eaedem nubes speculositas illa sunt, quam homines coelum nominant, quoniam localia instituta solis, lunae et stellarum per eas quasi formae aliquae per speculum videntur, ita ut homines constitutionem illorum se videre existiment, quod tamen ita non est, quia ipsae nubes officia tantum earumdem constellationum, velut in umbraculo speculi ostendunt, atque quemadmodum aqua fluunt, in qua omnia opposita conspiciuntur, designantes quia de recto desiderio fidelis hominis cogitatio ad fructiferam utilitatem bona opera praeferentem exiens, viriditatem illius tangit, quatenus multiplices fructus sanctitatis producat, et mentes hominum ad coelestia elevet, ita ut ad illa anhelent; et ab ipsis roborentur, quia dum homo recto desiderio ad fructum bonorum operum tendit, terrena despicit, seque illis quae sursum in coelestibus sunt ita infigit, ut se, velut homo non sit, totum immutatum ostendat.
De nube quae lactea vocatur, quod aerem extensione vel incurvatione sua comprehensum roboret, et quid per hoc significet.
Notes
- 1 ↩The gloss treats confortantur as passive ('are strengthened'); the form is medieval Latin and not attested in classical Lewis & Short, but the sense is clear from context.
- 2 ↩speculositas is a medieval coinage not found in Lewis & Short; rendered 'mirror-likeliness' to capture the sense of the sky as reflective surface.
- 3 ↩The final clause ut se, velut homo non sit, totum immutatum ostendat is rendered 'so that they show themselves, as it were, no longer merely a person, wholly transformed' — the sense is that the person so fixed on heaven shows themselves wholly changed, as if no longer merely human.
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