A number of works are extant under the name of Bernard Silvester. His interest in rhetoric and poetry is shown by a long _Summa dictaminis_ (or, _dictaminum_) and by a _Liber de metrificatura_, in the _Titulus_ of which he is called “a poet of the first rank” (_optimi poetae_).[266] He also wrote a commentary on the first books of the _Aeneid_.[267] Two other treatises are ascribed to him in which we are not here further interested, namely: _De forma vitae honestae_ and _De cura rei familiaris_ or _Epistola ad Raimundum de modo rei familiaris gubernandae_.[268] The three works of especial interest to us, while no one of them is exactly a treatise on astrology, all illustrate, albeit each in a different way, the dominance of astrological doctrine in the thought of the time. One is _Experimentarius_, an astrological geomancy translated into verse from the Arabic.[269] Another is a narrative poem whose plot hinges upon an astrologer’s prediction and whose very title is _Mathematicus_.[270] The third work, variously entitled _De mundi universitate_, _Megacosmus et Microcosmus_, and _Cosmographia_[271] has much to say of the stars and their rule over inferior creation.[272] It is written partly in prose and partly in verse,[273] and shows that Bernard laid as much stress on literary form in his scientific or pseudo-scientific works as in those on rhetoric and meter. Sandys says of it, “The rhythm of the hexameters is clearly that of Lucan, while the vocabulary is mainly that of Ovid”; but Dr. Poole believes that the hexameters are modelled upon Lucretius.[274] He would date it either in 1145 or about 1147-1148.[275] [Sidenote: Their influence.] The manuscripts of these three works are fairly numerous, indicating that they were widely read, and no contemporary objection appears to have been raised against their rather extreme astrological doctrines. As was well observed concerning the _De mundi universitate_ over one hundred and fifty years ago, “These extravagances and some other similar ones did not prevent the book from achieving a very brilliant success from the moment of its first appearance,” as is shown by the contemporary testimony of Peter Cantor in the closing twelfth century and Eberhart de Bethune in the early thirteenth century, who says that the _De mundi universitate_ was read in the schools. Gervaise of Tilbury and Vincent of Beauvais also cited it.[276] Indeed in our next chapter we shall find a Christian abbess, saint, and prophetess of Bernard’s own time charged--by a modern writer, it is true--with making use of it in her visions. Passages from Silvester are included in a thirteenth century collection of “Proverbs” from ancient and recent writers,[277] and more than one copy of the _De mundi universitate_ is listed in such a medieval monastic library as St. Augustine’s, Canterbury.[278] [Sidenote: Disregard of Christian theology.]