Abstrakt
In his prosometric work Cosmographia (1145-1153), which is a re-mythologizing paraphrase of Plato´s Timaeus, Bernardus Silvestris distinguishes time in the sublunary realm from a double eternity: (1) simple eternity, lasting as present (simplex eternitas), and (2) its reflection in the regular movement of stars (eternitas of the stars and of the ethereal realm). Time is a product of this second, moving eternity and it is this time which rules the realm of generation and corruption.
For Bernardus, time seems to be, above all, the limited period of individual life, the period of human existence being an opus temporis. Compared to it, the duration of the world, divided into periods by the movement of stars, does not seem to be a time, but rather a form of eternity, mediating between the transcendent eternity and the sublunary time of individuals.