In decided contrast with these more or less rationalistic theories was Michael Scot’s bold assertion that beyond the realm of fire and above the eighth heavenly sphere comes a “multitude of waters,”[822] or Gervase of Tilbury’s extraordinary account of a sea either in or above the atmosphere. To prove the existence of such a sea Gervase told[823] how “in his time some people coming out of a church in England found an anchor let down by a rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope, who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water” (White).[824] William of Auvergne, Platonist of the early thirteenth century and staunch opponent of Aristotelianism, also found no difficulties in the way of literal belief in the waters above the firmament. Ignoring the arguments of Peripatetic physics, he wrote:[825] “Nobody in the world is either amazed or horrified at the presence of fire beneath the waters and more especially beneath the earth. This is proved to the eye by the fiery outbreaks from three mountains (that is Vulcano, Etna, and Chimaera). Why then should one wonder so much that water is found above the heavens?” Hildegard of Bingen gave expression to some views, probably original with her, regarding the waters above the firmament. In the _Causae et curae_ she speaks of “the waters of the great sea which surrounds the world and forms as it were a flank to those waters which are above the firmament, because the height (_summitas_) of those which are above and the extreme edge (_extremitas_) of those which are below the firmament are mutually joined together.”[826] In the _Solutiones_ she characterized the celestial waters, asserting that they neither increase nor decrease (implying perhaps that they are disturbed by no tides) but that they have remained just as they are now since God created them. They are unlike the waters of the earth inasmuch as they are far more fine in texture and entirely invisible to human eyes.[827] PURPOSE OF THE WATERS