VISIO QUINTA, cap. IV
The Uninhabitable Extremes
The southern and northern regions are each divided into three uninhabitable parts—by heat, cold, and serpents—mapping the outer limits of the moral landscape.
And so both of these regions — the southern, that is, and the northern — are each divided into three parts, which are uninhabitable for people: here because of the heat, there because of the cold, and there because of the serpents.
The Soul as Mean Between Body and Works
The middle regions signify the soul poised between body and works, groaning toward God in fear of evil, while body and works rise or fall together.
This also makes clear that when the sense of smell rises to the fragrance of the virtues, but the sense of taste turns aside to the pleasures of the vices, they touch a person's body, soul, and works in different ways — and in that respect they show the person as almost incapable of being settled, if he does not understand what the body is, what the soul is, or what the works in him are, and if even in himself he cannot discern a right balance.1 Of these, the two middle sections of the regions are of the same form and the same measure, since the southern region and the northern region exist in a straight measure. By their own uprightness they also grant just bounds, and they signify that the soul, existing as it were as a mean between the body and its works in the fragrance of the virtues and in the taste of vices, is of a single ordering and disposition when it groans toward God in fear of evil.2 But the remaining four, which border the edges, have a different form — yet one that is equal to themselves and a similar distinction — because they are broadened on both sides from the aforementioned middle regions in either the southern or the northern part, yet are somewhat narrowed along their inner edges, which face toward the aforementioned fifth region. Along their outer edges, however, they have a certain breadth, where they appear to have a different form from the aforementioned middle regions, yet are similar to one another and exist in the same form and in their own disposition. This signifies that a person's body and its works, which are imposed on it as a limit when they feel their own deficiency, have a different function — one in which they nonetheless agree with each other — from what the soul has, when it fully brings to the person the vitality of the body and of the senses.3 For when the body declines, its works are weakened; but when the soul has taken hold of the body, the works of the body are lifted up.
The Curved Boundaries of the Outer Regions
The four outer regions match the middle regions in length but are narrower on the inner edge and broader on the outer, shaped by the curvature of the eastern and western boundaries.
And they are equal in length and in breadth to those two middle regions, except that along their inner edges they appear somewhat narrower, and along their outer edges somewhat wider than the other two, according to how the aforementioned eastern region and the aforementioned western region curve themselves at both ends — granting a narrower space here, a broader one there — as was said above. This is so because the parts on either side of the middle ones are the same length as those middle parts, but their width toward the aforementioned fifth part is narrower than those same middle parts; toward their outer boundary, however, it is broader than those, but elsewhere it is equal to them, because both boundaries — that is, of the part directed toward the east and of the part extended toward the west — are drawn inward in a curve along the inner boundaries of the aforementioned four similar parts.
Body's Excess and the Soul's Upright Measure
The body and its works extend in the same measure as the soul's stirring, yet they contract in security and expand in doubt more than the soul, which seeks uprightness while the body tends toward excess.
But all these things signify that the human body and its works are, in themselves, extended for their own sustaining in the same measure that the soul within it is stirred up for its strengthening; and because of this the same body and the same works of the person often contract more tightly in security but expand more broadly in doubt than the soul's longing desires, since the soul seeks the measure of uprightness, but the human body more often runs toward excess in its works.
The Fifth Region: A Square Divided Three Ways
The middle fifth part of the earth appears square and threefold—uninhabitable by heat and cold on two sides, temperate and habitable on the third—signifying something in human conduct.
Now the middle fifth of the whole earth, appearing square and itself divided into a threefold distinction, is uninhabitable on one side by heat, on another by cold, and on yet another temperate and habitable — and what is signified through these things in human conduct.
Read the original Latin
Nam et hae utraeque partes, scilicet pars australis parsque septentrionalis, in tres partes distinguuntur, quae hinc pro ardore, hinc pro frigore, hinc pro serpentibus inhabitabiles hominibus sunt. Hoc quoque demonstrat, quod odoratus cum ascendit ad odorem virtutum, gustus vero cum declinat ad saporem vitiorum, hominis corpus animamque ejus ac opera ipsius diverso modo tangunt, ubi et illum quasi inhabitabilem ostendunt, si non intelligit quid corpus, quid anima, quid opera in ipso sint, et si etiam in semetipso nec rectum temperamentum discernere novit. Quarum duae mediae ipsarum partium unius formae uniusque mensurae sunt, quoniam pars australis et pars septentrionalis in recta mensura existentes. his etiam sua rectitudine justa moderamina concedunt, atque designant quod anima in odore virtutum et in sapore vitiorum velut media inter corpus et opera ipsius existens, unius moderaminis et dispositionis est, cum mala metuendo ad Deum suspirat. Sed et reliquae quatuor, quae finetenus sunt, aliam, sed tamen parem sibimet formam paremque distinctionem habent, quia illae tam australi quam in septentrionali parte ex utroque latere praefatarum mediarum partium dilatatae, in interioribus finibus suis, qui versus praedictam quintam partem respiciunt, aliquantum constrictae sunt. In exterioribus vero finibus suis aliquantam latitudinem habentes, ubi aliam formam quam supradictae mediae partes habeant videntur habere, sibi autem invicem similes et in forma et in dispositione sua existentes; quod demonstrat quia corpus hominis operaque ejus, quae velut terminum illi imponunt cum in se defectum sentiunt, aliud officium habent, in quo tamen pariter sibi consentiunt, quam anima habeat, cum homini vegetationem corporis et sensuum pleniter infert. Nam cum corpus labitur, opera ipsius attenuantur; cum autem anima corpus sustulerit, opera corporis sublevantur. Atque longitudini et latitudini earumdem duarum mediarum partium aequales existunt, excepto quod in interioribus finibus suis constrictiores, in exterioribus vero latiores caeteris duabus videntur, secundum quod supradicta pars orientalis parsque occidentalis in utrisque finibus suis ut praefatum est se incurvando, hinc constrictius, hinc largius spatium istis concedunt.
Hoc ideo est quoniam partes istae quae in utroque latere mediarum sunt, longitudinem earumdem mediarum quidem habent, sed latitudinem versus praefatam quintam partem eisdem mediis partibus minorem; versus autem exteriorem terminum suum illis latiorem, alibi vero ipsis aequalem, quia utrique fines, scilicet partis quae ad orientem dirigitur, et partis quae ad occidentem extenditur, secundum modum arcus juxta interiores fines supradictarum quatuor similium partium contrahuntur. Sed et omnia haec designant quod corpus hominis et opera ejus ita in ipso ad sustentationem sui extenduntur, secundum quod anima in illo ad confortationem excitatur, propter quod idem corpus eademque opera hominis in securitate arctiora, in dubio autem ampliora multoties se reddunt quam suspirium animae desideret, quoniam illa modum rectitudinis appetit, corpus autem hominis ad immoderationem in operibus suis saepius currit.
Quod media quoque omnium quinta pars terrae quadrata apparens, et triplici etiam ipsa distinctione divisa, hinc calore, hinc frigore inhabitabilis, hinc temperata habitabilis reddatur; et quid hic per haec in hominis conversatione significetur.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin plays on odoratus/gustus and odorus/sapor as an allegory of moral perception; 'fragrance of the virtues' and 'pleasures of the vices' render that sensory-moral pairing in plain English.
- 2 ↩The soul is presented as a mediating principle between body and works; 'mean' captures the Latin media in its sense of an intermediate, ordering principle.
- 3 ↩The body-soul-works analogy is mapped onto a spatial allegory; 'function' renders officium, and 'vitality of the body and of the senses' renders vegetationem corporis et sensuum.
Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) companion
Don't stop at Day 30
All 317 chapters live in the free Chosen Portion app, paced for daily reading
Hildegard's practice of daily attention to God's work in creation becomes a paced daily devotional through all ten visions in the Chosen Portion app
- One vision passage a day, readable in under 10 minutes
- The complete Book of Divine Works plus Hildegard's other major works, free
- Progress tracking so a 317-chapter classic actually gets finished