Bernardus Silvestris

Bernardus Silvestris, also known as Bernard Silvestris and Bernard Silvester, was a medieval Platonist philosopher and poet of the 12th century.

Little is known about Bernardus's life. In the nineteenth century, it was assumed that Bernardus was the same person as Bernard of Chartres, but scholarly consensus now agrees that the two were different people. There is little evidence connecting Bernardus to Chartres, yet his work is consistent with the scholarship associated with Chartres in the twelfth century and is in that sense "Chartrian". Bernardus dedicated his Cosmographia to Thierry of Chartres, who became chancellor of Chartres in 1141; he most likely wrote the letter in order to win the favour of a powerful figure, known for his interest in science.

André Vernet, who edited Bernardus' Cosmographia, believed that he lived from 1085 to 1178. The most secure date in his life is 1147–48, when the Cosmographia was supposedly read to Pope Eugene III, though it could have been finished before then, perhaps between 1143 and 1148. There is some evidence that Bernardus was connected to Spanish schools of philosophy, but it seems likely that he was born and taught in Tours, because of the intimate descriptions of the city and the surrounding area found in the Cosmographia. Later medieval authors also associated him with that city.

Bernardus' 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 its pioneering use of allegory to discuss metaphysical and scientific questions. Bernardus also wrote the poem Mathematicus and probably the poem Experimentarius as well as some minor poems.

Among the works attributed to Bernardus later in the Middle Ages were a commentary on Virgil's Aeneid (Bernardus' authorship of which has been questioned by modern scholars) and a commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. 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.

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