From R. Fludd, _Historia utriusque cosmi_, Oppenheim, 1619, pp. 112 and
113.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8. THE MICROCOSM
From R. Fludd, _Philosophia sacra seu astrologia cosmica_, Frankfurt,
1628, p. 52.]
Macrocosmic schemes of the type illustrated by the text of Hildegard
and by the figures of the Lucca MS. had a great vogue in mediaeval
times, and were passed on to later ages. Some passages in Hildegard’s
work read curiously like Paracelsus (1491-1541),[93] and it is not
hard to find a link between these two difficult and mystical writers.
Trithemius, the teacher of Paracelsus, was abbot of Sponheim, an
important settlement almost within sight of Hildegard’s convents on the
Rupertsberg and Disibodenberg. Trithemius studied Hildegard’s writings
with great care and attached much importance to them, so that they may
well have influenced his pupil. The influence of mediaeval theories of
the relation of macrocosm and microcosm is encountered among numerous
Renaissance writers besides Paracelsus, and is presented to us, for
instance, by such a cautious, balanced, and scientifically-minded
humanist as Fracastor. But as the years went on, the difficulty in
applying the details of the theory became ever greater and greater.
Facts were strained and mutilated more and more to make them fit the
Procrustean bed of an outworn theory, which at length became untenable
when the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Galileo replaced the
geocentric and anthropocentric systems of an earlier age. The idea
of a close parallelism between the structure of man and of the wider
universe was gradually abandoned by the scientific, while among the
unscientific it degenerated and became little better than an insane
obsession. As such it appears in the ingenious ravings of the English
follower of Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian, Robert Fludd, who reproduced,
often with fidelity, the systems which had some novelty five centuries
before his time (Figs. 6, 7, and 8). As a similar fantastic obsession
this once fruitful hypothesis still occasionally appears even in modern
works of learning and industry.[94]