The Translatio imperii and the Spatial Construction of History in the Twelfth Century

ABSTRACT Based on the theories of Otto of Freising and Hugh of Saint Victor, scholars widely accept that medieval authors conceived of history as a spatial progression of empires from Babylon in the east to Rome in the west. This article reevaluates that assumption, arguing that influential German scholars of the 1930s to 1960s inflated the perceived typicality of Otto’s writing. We see first that this has obscured the biblical exegetical basis of Hugh’s own theory. Surveying contemporary material from hagiographies of Thomas Becket to eschatological ideas among the ‘School of Chartres’, the article argues that it is these exegetical tropes and metaphors of the sun’s rising and setting that underlie twelfth-century discussions of east and west, not the translatio imperii. This underscores not only the novelty and achievement of Otto and Hugh, but also more clearly contextualises their work within their intellectual environment.

limited influence on his contemporaries, 4 Otto's theory of history has exerted immense influence over modern scholarship as a normative model of medieval historical thought.Although recent work has rightly challenged Otto's representative status, his ideas continue to exert significant influence, often in subtle ways. 5here are real consequences to this often tacit acceptance of Otto's influence for how we understand medieval historical thought.It has rendered what is for Otto a positive theory about the divine ordering of history into a mere topos, with references to east and west being treated by many scholars as interchangeable with Otto's theory of translatio imperii et studii.It likewise flattens the complexities of medieval conceptions of space under the fundamentally modern dichotomy of an Asian east and European west, which as scholars of medieval Orientalism have underscored, cannot adequately capture the realities of our medieval sources. 6East-west frameworks such as we find in Otto represent an exception to the far more typical use of the three 'continents', four directions and eight or twelve winds that structured medieval geographical thought. 7Yet despite the centrality of the westward translatio model to this dichotomous vision of medieval spatiality, it has received little focused research as a theme. 8The object of this study, therefore, is to excavate Otto's influence on our understanding of the medieval conceptions of translatio imperii et studii and to reveal the broader biblical exegetical and cosmological discourse that structured medieval conceptions of east and west, with which it has often been conflated.

A Historiographical Prelude
The theme of translatio imperii long predates both Christianity and the Middle Ages, and at least for Latin Christians, it was fundamentally founded on a series of biblical prophecies, most notably Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Book of Daniel (2:31-45). 9s Daniel describes, King Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of a statue with a head of gold, breast of silver, stomach of bronze, legs of iron and feet of clay and iron, which was crushed by a rock that grew to fill the whole earth.These four metals, it is explained to the king, represent a series of four kingdoms that precede God's kingdom, which will last forever.Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom is of course the head of gold, but we are not told what kingdoms the remaining metals represent.A more or less canonical answer was provided for the Latin world, though, in Jerome's commentary: the gold is Babylon, the silver Medea and Persia, the bronze Macedonia and the iron Rome. 10 Were this not enough to cement the model in Latin Christian minds, the four world empires also served as a structural device for Orosius, who, without reference to Daniel, frames his hugely influential history around a similar series of empires (Babylon, Macedonia, Carthage and Rome), which he links to the four cardinal points: east, north, south and west. 11hese ideas were further developed through the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, particularly under the notion of renovatio, and by the turn of the twelfth century had solidified around the idea of translatio. 12Scholars have tended to focus especially on this latter notion, often conceiving of it not just as a lineal progression of power or knowledge from one kingdom to the next, but as a linear progression of empires through space and time from east to the west, an interpretation that is typically justified in reference to Otto of Freising or Hugh of Saint Victor. 13Their notion of translatio has likewise been understood as representative of a new urge to systematise historical laws within the revival of historical thought during the twelfth century. 14It is on the basis of their writing that John Kirtland Wright, citing George Berkeley's (d.1753) prophecy on the progression of empire and learning from Europe to America, already concluded in 1925 that: 'The idea that "westward the course of empire takes its way" was thus raised in the Middle Ages to a position of theological doctrine and philosophical principle'. 15Between the reification of westward progression as a doctrine, its foundation in the work of Hugh and Otto, and their teleological anticipation of Berkeley, Wright's comment represents something of a leitmotif for subsequent scholarship on the translatio.
The influence of Hugh and Otto goes back to role assigned to them within the German Ideen-or Geistesgeschichte of the 1930s to 1960s, which founded the modern study of medieval historical thought. 16Otto in particular was made to serve as the paradigm of medieval historical writing.Herbert Grundmann, for example, is entirely typical when he explains that although Frutolf of Michelsberg's chronicle remained authoritative in Germany, it served as but a stepping stone to Otto's Chronica, the most profound work of its kind in the Middle Ages. 17From at least the 1950s on a similar trend emerged among French and English historians who, unbound by a nationalist historiography around Otto, focused instead on the historical thought of Hugh of Saint Victor. 18Paradigmatic here is M.-D.Chenu, who suggests that: 'the translatio led theologians to observe and formulate another law of history: the movement of civilization from east to west'. 19By the 1970s, this idea of westward progression was increasingly presented as a general, normative feature of medieval thought.A. J. Gurevich, for example, contrasts the 'nationalist' interpretation of the translatio in Chrétien de Troyes with the 'general Western European attitude' found in Otto.Hans-Werner Goetz likewise suggests that, given certain difficulties in proving Otto's dependence on Hugh, Otto might be drawing upon a 'widespread view'. 20In this way, Hugh and Otto came to serve as figure-heads for medieval historical consciousness and their idea of westward development as paradigmatic of the translatio imperii.

The Westward Traslatio imperii in Hugh of Saint Victor and Otto of Freising
The idea of westward development in Hugh and Otto is hardly the anodyne repetition of a common topos.It serves an important theoretical function for both authors and imparts a very specific conception of space onto their idea of history and its significance.Hugh describes the core notion with characteristic clarity: The order of place and the order of time seem to run together in almost everything according to the series of events.And thus it seems to have been established by divine providence that those things which were done at the beginning of time would occur in the eastas if at the beginning of the worldand then, as time flows forth towards the end, the sum of things should follow this stream all the way to the west, so that in this we might recognise that the end of the age approaches, since the course of events has now reached the end of the world.For that reason, the first person made was set in the east, in the garden of Eden, so that the offspring of the future might stream forth into the world from that beginning.Likewise after the flood, the beginning of kingdoms and the head of the world was among the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Medes, in eastern parts.It came next to the Greeks.Finally, near the end of the age, the highest power reached the Romans in the west, living as it were at the end of the world. 21e geographical ordering of time reveals the providential ordering of history and its westward flow orients the reader's contemplation of history towards its end.It is significant that Hugh's theory is found only in his three tracts on Noah's Ark, all expressly contemplative theological works. 22No similar discussion is to be found in either his Chronica or Descriptio mappe mundi, nor does their content reveal any influence of a theory of westward progression. 23This should come as no surprise.Hugh is unconcerned about applying his theory of westward development to world history because, like the Ark tracts themselves, his idea of a westward translatio is not about secular history, but rather the visible signs of God's salvific work. 24The explicit aim of Hugh's theory is to turn the reader from earthly things to the divine through contemplation of the eschatological progression of the works of restoration. 25e find the same contemplative and eschatological fingerprints on Otto's theory as well, where westward progression likewise serves to highlight history's approaching end.As Otto explains in the general prologue, the miseries of history have been established by 'a wise and proper dispensation of the Creator' to deter us from its vicissitudes and, 'set down as it were at the end of the time', Otto's contemporaries observe the growing decrepitude of Rome, '[whose] fall foreshadows the dissolution of the whole structure'. 26This is revealed centrally by the westward transfer of human knowledge and power, which occurs 'that thereby the transitoriness and decay of all things human may be displayed'. 27Otto reiterates this point in the prologue to Book 5: As with empire, so now that learning has reached the extreme west (ad ultimum occidentem) 'we are in position not merely to believe but also actually to see the things which were predicted, since we behold the world … already failing and, so to speak, drawing the last breath of extremest old age'. 28he eschatological aim is written into the very fabric of Otto's text, which almost alone among histories of the Middle Ages includes a book on the eschaton. 29lthough Otto's theory of westward development shares Hugh's eschatological aims, it is important to remember that unlike Hugh, Otto is writing a history.As such, he is concerned about applying his theory to world history and remains attentive to this idea of eastwest progression throughout the text. 30We can see this attention to space in his adaptation of Orosius, who extols the universality of Augustus's empire by recounting how, while in Spain, he received gifts from the Scythians and Indians, noting explicitly how the east and north supplicate the west. 31In Otto's adaptation of this story, however, the north has been removed and it is now only 'the nations of the remotest east [who come] to the farthest west (ad ultimum occidentem)'. 32This may anticipate the arrival of Armenian envoys 'from almost the farthest east (ultimo … oriente)' to a council at Viterbo in 1145 (at which Otto was present), where they ask for Rome to intercede on behalf of the Armenian church in a theological dispute with the Greeks and, more importantly, affirm their subjection to the Roman church. 33The change of context from exegesis to history likewise results in a change of focus for Otto regarding the implications of this westward progression.While for Hugh it represents the stability of divine providence, for Otto it serves to underscore his overarching theme of mutabilitas. 34Despite this difference in interpretation, the general theory and its underlying spatiality remain same.
Though there is no direct textual link, there can be little doubt that Otto's idea of westward development was based on Hugh's theory. 35It is quite likely that Hugh was one of Otto's teachers in Paris at around the time he was producing the Ark tracts, but even if they never met in Paris, the diffusion of Hugh's writings in Southern Germany and Austria strongly suggests Otto's familiarity with Hugh's De archa. 36Otto was the driving influence behind his father's foundation, in the mid-1130s, of Heiligenkreuz, the first Cistercian monastery in Austria. 37Otto's father, Leopold III, describes in its charter how Otto inspired the foundation and how Morimond, where Otto was a monk and from 1138 abbot, supplied some of the original monks, including the first abbot, Gottschalk. 38A booklist dating from no later than 1147, coincidentally around the time that Otto was finishing the first recensions of his Chronica, attests to the presence at Heiligenkreuz of a still extant early copy of Hugh's De archa. 39This manuscript is also closely related to another twelfth-century copy of De archa from Morimond. 40ndeed, Morimond had longstanding connections with the German speaking world via the cathedral school in Cologne.Its early community even included another uncle of Frederick Barbarossa besides Otto: Konrad, brother of Judith of Bavaria. 41Even if Otto was not personally involved with bringing this manuscript to Heiligenkreuz, then, he certainly had access to one at Morimond.It is clear, therefore, that Hugh's mystical works were available to Otto and, given the evident similarities, there is no reason to hypothesise further sources.All other things being equal, we ought to read Otto as building upon Hugh's theoretical innovation. 42

Escaping Otto's Influence on Our Interpretation of Hugh's De archa
But are all other things equal?Historians have offered a range of possible exponents of a westward progression of history to fill in the blanks around Hugh and Otto. 43While there is a range of examples of east and west being used as quasi-temporal categories, they are rarely associated with the translatio imperii et studii or the sort of eschatological progression that vivifies Hugh's and Otto's accounts. 44Indeed, the dominant usage has little to do with historical progression at all, but develops rather out of a rich tradition of biblical interpretation and cosmological metaphors going back at least to the early Fathers. 45In this context, Otto's normativity can already be seen creeping into the interpretation of Hugh as a paradigm example of east-west progression.As such, it will be useful to return to Hugh and reconsider his account of westward progression outside of the context of Otto's subsequent historicising development.This will provide a basis on which to consider the ideas of east and west found in some of the other authors that have been proposed for this group.
In line with the longstanding tradition of viewing Hugh as standing fundamentally at the intersection of history and theology, there is a tendency to present Hugh's idea of east-west progression as a standalone theory of history. 46This decontextualisation obscures both the fundamentally exegetical basis of Hugh's presentation and the broader spatial context within which he presents it.As already noted, Hugh's theory of east-west development is found at the very end of De archa within the context of his discussion of the opera restaurationis.As Hugh explains in his De sacramentis, the opera restaurationis are first and foremost the 'subject matter of all the Divine Scriptures', to be contrasted with secular literature whose subject matter is the opera conditionis. 47he transition between these works corresponds with the neoplatonic ascent from the visible to the invisible: 'The elect ascend from the works of foundation through the works of restoration to the author of foundation and restoration'.48 This process of discerning meaning through the works of restoration is therefore exegetical at its very foundation, since only in the scriptures do things themselves hold meaning, by which we may recognise the divine wisdom.49 Returning then to Hugh's theory, the exegetical foundation becomes evident when we fill in the broader spatial context of the passage.In all three cases, Hugh addresses not just east and west but also north and south, with both De archa and the Libellus presenting them as Babylon and Egypt respectively.50 These also serve as Hugh's example of the significative potential of space in his exegetical handbook, De scripturis.51 Hugh asserts that what happens in the north and south is proof of divine providence, as can be seen in the placement of Egypt to the south of Jerusalem and Babylon to the north.52 To the modern reader, this comparison may seem rather more puzzling than the ostensibly straightforward idea of westward progression.The geography is already somewhat unusual, for while Egypt is plausibly south of Jerusalem, Babylon can hardly be considered north.Rather, as in Orosius, it is typically located in the south of Mesopotamia on most medieval maps and thus east or northeast of Jerusalem.53 Likewise in Hugh's own geography Babylon is situated at the south end of western Asia, and on the socalled 'Munich Map' (the closest extant map to the one used by Hugh in the abbey of Saint Victor) it has been set even further south on the Euphrates than usualalmost directly east of Jerusalem.54 In keeping with the opera restaurationis, Hugh is not describing earthly geography, but biblical geography. 55Babylon's presentation as northern is based especially in the book of Jeremiah, which begins with God's warning that 'from the north shall an evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land' (Jer.1:14), foretelling the Babylonian exile described later in the book.56 The point is further underscored when we come to Hugh's interpretation of Babylon and Egypt as northern and southern, which is not spatial but etymological in the first instance.Egypt means 'darkness' and Babylon 'confusion'.These are commonplace patristic interpretations of their Hebrew names.57 The role of north and south is next grounded in a cosmological analogy. Egt, due to the warm south wind, represents the world 'set in the heat of carnal desire' and, with the implicit coldness of the north, Babylon signifies hell 'where eternal trembling dwells'.58 The opposition of north and south is characteristically associated with the opposition of winds in Song of Songs 4:16, which are normally understood as the devil and Holy Spirit respectively.59 Hugh's negative characterisation of the south is therefore unusual, albeit not entirely unprecedented.There is an important line of interpretation based in Bede's commentary, according to which the north and south winds represent two trials for the church: the world's harshness and pleasures.60 Hugh's contribution is to conjoin this idea of the south with the more typical presentation of Egypt as representing carnal desire.61 It is through this clever blending of exegetical tropes that Hugh interprets the Israelites' departure from Egypt and subsequent exile in Babylon as the fall of man, which subjects humankind to sin through ignorance and concupiscence, and thereafter to the torments of hell.That Hugh's understanding of north and south can only be properly appreciated within the exegetical tradition ought to raise similar suspicions about his interpretation of east and west.Here too we can find clear engagement with the biblical text and patristic tradition.The use of the Bible is already evident in Hugh's phrase: 'in the east (oriente), as if in the beginning (principio) of the world'.62 The self-conscious parallel of oriens and principium clearly echoes the double reading of Genesis 2:8, where God planted paradise either 'from the beginning (a principio)' in the Vulgate or 'in Eden to the east (ad orientem)' in the common vetus text, found especially in the writings of Augustine.63 This double reading is highlighted explicitly in Bede's commentary on Genesis, which was incorporated into the Glossa ordinaria, and was evidently well known to Hugh's students, at least through that version.64 Finally, Hugh's subsequent reference to Eden further underscores the allusion. 65While less directly grounded in the biblical text itself, Hugh's association of west with finis can also be linked to the patristic tradition and again Augustine.Notions of finality, particularly of humans or the world, are central to its exegetical image.66 In this case, we can find a plausible basis for Hugh's presentation in Augustine's interpretation of the setting sun in a vetus version of Genesis 15:17: 'when the sun had already set (erat ad occasum), a fire was made, and behold a smoking furnace and torches of fire … ' 67 For Augustine, the setting sun represents the approaching end of the age, looking towards the darkness and fire of Antichrist and the last judgement.But if we attend to the ambiguity inherent in the phrase solis occasus as between 'west' and 'setting sun', we can find an almost Hugonian spatiality in Augustine's fundamentally temporal interpretation: 'Just as the affliction of the city of God … under Antichrist … is signified by Abraham's "horror of great darkness" near the sunset [or west], that is the now approaching end of the age; so also at the sunset [or west], that is at that very end, the day of judgement is signified by the fire'.68 While Augustine, no doubt, has a very different interpretation in mind from Hugh, the flexibility of the vocabulary and imagery creates space for this sort of adaptation.Thus here too, as with north and south before, it is the exegetical tradition, and especially Augustine, that forms the fundamental basis of Hugh's presentation.

Exegetical and Cosmological Ideas of East and West
Whether or not we ultimately find a verbal echo of Augustine's setting sun in Hugh's approaching western seaboard, this sort of cosmological imagery of the rising and setting sun is ubiquitous in the interpretation of east and west throughout the patristic and medieval tradition.Now that we have seen how this functions in Hugh's text, we can turn to our list of putative proponents of a westward progression of history to show how this solar imagery, rather than any notion of translatio, grounds their understanding of east and west. 69his is especially evident in what is perhaps the most enduring example in anglophone scholarship, Severian of Gabala. 70In his fifth homily on Creation, Severian explains that Eden was set in the east: 'so as to make clear that just as these lights rise, travel to the west and set, so too [the human being] must travel from life to death and set, on the model of the lights, likewise having a different rising in the resurrection of the dead'. 71This transition from east to west does not represent, as Wright suggests, the development of history from the beginning of the world to its end, but the salvation-historical relationship of Adam and Christ in the Fall and Incarnation.As Severian explains, just as Adam moved west to his death, so death is imparted upon all earthly things.This is a very typical presentation of westward movement as the Fall of Man. 72In keeping with the solar imagery, this movement also involves a return to the east (rising) in the Incarnation of Christ: 'Christ came and caused the one who had set to rise'. 73This is because the second east is not a place, but Christ himself, whose name is east (Zech.6:12).As such, the key to this interpretation is not an underlying notion of the progress of civilisation or the history of the world, but Paul's statement: 'as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive' (1 Cor.15:22), which Severian cites at the end of the passage.So while there is, no doubt, a kernel of geography in Severian's reference to the placement of Eden, the overarching use of east and west is cosmological not geographical, and the movement is sacramental not literal-historical.This fits comfortably within the extensive exegetical and liturgical tradition of using east and west as symbols of beginning and end, life and death, and Christ and Satan, that goes back to at least Origen. 74This opposition is seldom geographical in focus and can hardly be equated with a historically progressive translatio. 75Rather, the core image in the exegetical tradition is Christ's salvific work and its representation through the rising and setting sun.
While the exegetical function of these solar metaphors by no means presupposes an east-west historical progression, the two are not wholly unrelated.We find this solar metaphor operationalised in a range of para-exegetical contexts and, as with Severian, this is often what we find when we look more closely at our list of candidates to fill in the blanks around Hugh and Otto.The illuminating role of the sun and its connection with east and west are fundamental metaphors for Christianisation.This idea is based paradigmatically on the role of Christ as sol iustitiae: 'For Christ will be revealed in the full light of his majesty, and just as lightning comes from the east and spreads its light over the whole world all the way into the west, so also the son of man coming with his angels will illuminate this world so that every man shall believe and all flesh shall be saved'. 76This imagery has a wide influence outside of biblical exegesis proper.Peter the Venerable, for example, makes use of this trope in praise of the Patriarch of Jerusalem: 'the eternal sun, more brightly by far than the morning sun, illuminates the darkness of our west from your east'. 77Avitus of Vienne makes use of this imagery in his correspondence on behalf of Sigismund of Burgundy to navigate the political-religious landscape between the emperor Anastasius and the Frankish king Clovis. 78Aeneas of Paris leveraged these exegetical categories in a ninth-century polemic to emphasise the equality of the Greek and Latin churches. 79This imagery of illumination did not need to be restricted to an east-west framework either and could also be situated within a quadripartite schema terminating in the north, as in Sigebert of Gembloux's second life of St Lambert. 80here is also a common inversion of this illumination metaphor, which Klaus Oschema identifies as the trope of ex occidente lux, that underlies the ideas of two further figures on our list: Gerald of Wales and Notker the Stammerer. 81Oschema finds this trope developing especially around the cult of Thomas Becket, as exemplified by Benedict of Peterborough's suggestion that Becket's life and martyrdom 'illuminate the whole world, like rays emerging from the west'. 82exegetical backdrop shines through especially with William FitzStephen, who sets Thomas the Apostle in India and Becket in England on either side of Christ who, situated in Jerusalem, represents the unifying centre of their illuminative roles. 83This is precisely what we find in Gerald of Wales's Expugnatio Hibernica. 84After noting this parallel with the Apostle Thomas, he includes the same trope in a prophecy of Merlin Silvester: 85 'while the sun rises in its setting … the daylight illuminates with a new brightness the mists of the western land and of the closing age of the world'. 86While Gerald's equation of western space and time certainly evokes Hugh's own use of east and westand given Gerald's education in the schools of Paris just a few decades after Hugh's death, this may not be a coincidencethis is hardly a vision of linear westward progression, let alone translatio. 87The trope, however, has a longer history than Oschema identifies, as we see in Notker the Stammerer's praise of Bede in his Notatio de viris illustribus: 'God the regulator of natural things, who on the fourth day produced the sun of earthly creation from the east, in the sixth age of the world directed a new sun from the west to illuminate the whole world'. 88As both Notker and Gerald show, this trope could serve as a point of connection between spatial and temporal conceptions of the west, but this can hardly be considered a central feature of the trope.It builds rather upon the exegetical connection of west with notions of finality and the eschaton as we have already seen in Hugh and Otto, as well as the rising-setting-rising triad that we saw with Severian.

East and West beyond Exegesis in the Twelfth Century
I have argued thus far that by rereading Hugh without looking towards Otto as an endpoint, we can better appreciate the rich exegetical tradition he draws upon.It is this exegetical material that grounds his interpretation of the north-south and east-west axes of the Ark, and it is Hugh's own theoretical innovation to connect these exegetical ideas of east and west with the translatio imperii through the idea of an eschatological, spatiotemporal progression. 89What is more, I have suggested that many authors who have been identified as espousing such a westward translatio are instead building upon these cosmological and exegetical tropes.But this is not the whole story.From the twelfth century on, we start to see more clearly temporal uses of east and west in contexts that are not so closely connected with the exegetical tradition.It is here that I would like to suggest a new, wider context for Hugh's and Otto's temporal and eschatological ideas about east and west in writings of the schools, and ultimately among authors associated with the so-called 'School of Chartres'.
Probably of southern German origin, Honorius Augustodunensis spent some time at Canterbury around the turn of the twelfth century, before settling for the majority of his life in Regensburg. 90It is here that Honorius likely completed his hugely popular encyclopedia, the Imago mundi, in which he provides a striking analogy for the flow of time: 'It is as if a rope were drawn from east to west, which collected daily by coiling would eventually be entirely taken in'. 91To my knowledge, no clear precedent for this metaphor has been identified.Karl Kinsella notes an interesting parallel with Honorius's presentation of James and John as two ropes encompassing east and west, but highlights more broadly the connection with Hugh's Ark. 92 Christian Gellinek also points to the use of rope as a metaphor for time by Hildegard of Bingen, whose five quasi-Danielian beasts in the north each have a rope extending from their mouth to the west, which she tells us represent their duration. 93But Hildegard also makes use of a solar metaphor here, interpreting the west as 'these unstable times [that] fall with the setting sun'. 94So also with Honorius, as Fabian Schwarzbauer is surely correct in noting, the fundamental basis is once again a solar metaphor. 95As we have seen, east and west already contain notions of beginning and end.Indeed, this is how Isidore defines the terms east and west, since the sun rises in the east and the day 'perishes' (interire) in the west. 96With this in mind, we can readily see how Honorius may have adapted the definition of time that he found in the Munich computus, preserved in a ninth-century manuscript from St Emmeram in Regensburg: 'time is the interval extending from the beginning (principio) to the end (finem)'. 97If this is the case, it presents an interesting parallel with Hugh's equation of oriens/principium and occidens/finis.Honorius's text, however, almost certainly predates both Hugh's and Hildegard's. 98What this shows, therefore, is the prevalence and malleability of our solar metaphor in the early decades of the twelfth century, as we see Honorius branching off the same root out of which Hugh's and Otto's idea of westward progression sprouted. 99e find the same malleability at work in the broader reception of Hugh's writings through Hermann of Carinthia.A student of Thierry of Chartres, Hermann was foremost a translator of Arabic scientific works.Alongside Robert of Ketton, he was one of a group of translators based between the Languedoc and Ebro valleys around the 1140s.In 1143 he produced his own magnum opus, the De essentiis, a cosmological treatise that represents an early fusion of traditional Latin and new Arabic sources. 100Discussing the location of Paradise, Hermann presents a highly original adaptation of the Hugonian theme.Unique among the authors surveyed here, he explains that 'a substantial opinion' sets Paradise roughly a 44-day journey west of Lisbon, since we find signs of it both in the east and the west. 101After noting the typical arguments, that humans were created in the east and that the blessedness of Fortune Islands in the west suggests their proximity to Paradise, Hermann introduces his own observation: Finally, it is reasonably certain that the series of things, as we have said, came to be in the east, and has gradually advanced into the rest of the world, because very many things survive in that part of the earth up to the present dayeven kinds of animalswhich have not reached as far as us yet.For no one ever has truly heard that there have existed round the Don and the Mediterranean Sea, giants or pigmies, griffens or yales, the unicorn or bristle-bearing bulls, or others of that kind, unless in so far as legends mention that Sicily once was inhabited by Cyclops, and Hercules drove the Centaurs from Greece.Why mention these?For up to now no tigers, panthers, lions or ostriches live in Europe, nor have the very many other kinds of animals, of which some have now reached as far as the lower parts of Asia, and some as far as the furthest boundaries of Libya … 102 Hermann alludes here to Hugh of Saint Victor's theory of a westward translatio. 103His spatial progression, however, is completely different.Insofar as history is progressing towards the west, it is only by the implication that Europe is the farthest point from the east.Furthermore, there is no reference here to translatio or eschatological expectation.Finally, insofar as translatio studii lies in the background here, as Burnett suggests, it cannot be related to Hugh's and Otto's spatial model, but would have been drawn rather from one of the two dominant classical traditions of translatio artiumspecifically the Greek-Patristic tradition where 'east' is a generic designator for an Indian, Egyptian or Chaldean origin. 104here is a wider context to Hermann's interest in the east as a point of historical origin within the so called 'School of Chartres'.We can see this especially in a strand of eschatological thought in the work of William of Conches and Bernardus Silvestris. 105Given his intellectual reputation, the details of William's life are surprisingly opaque.He likely took up a post either in Paris or Chartres around 1120 and sometime later came to serve as tutor to a young Henry II in the household of Geoffrey Plantagenet. 106In his Dragmaticon, dedicated to Geoffrey, William takes an even more scientific approach to the location of Paradise, linking it to his quasi-evolutionary account of life. 107Just as different imbalances in the elemental composition of the primordial mud produced different animalslions from fire, cows from earth and pigs from waterso also humans are a product of elemental harmony: 'The human body was made from certain mud, in which the qualities of the elements harmonise equally, in the eastern region, since it is more temperate than other regions'. 108This theme leads William to an eschatological aside about lifecycles.For just as the common year has four seasons (of birth, growth, decline and death), so the 'great year' has two seasons of creation and two of decline and death, 'whence we believe that the end of the world approaches, for we see the sizes of bodies diminishing and lives shortening … and as at the beginning of the new year we see those things which are dead return to life, so at the beginning of the following age those who are dead will be able to return to life'. 109The section concludes with William's note that, as it is the most temperate season, the world was created in spring. 110Thus from spring to spring, Paradise brings with it a notion of cosmic temporality and a scientific eschatology grounded in its eastern location and a similar set of cosmic metaphors.
The link between this 'Chartrian' material and our historical eschatology is at last brought into clear focus with the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris. 111Bernardus is a no less enigmatic figure, who likely taught at the school in Tours and finished his Cosmographia in time to present it to Eugenius III when he visited France 1147. 112Bernardus's analysis of Paradise, like William's temperate east, is grounded in a contrast with the disorder of the wider world.The climax of the Microcosmus, the second of the work's two parts, is the creation of humankind; it begins with the goddesses Urania and Nature fleeing the chaos of the elements on earth for Gramision, 'a secluded and remote spot near the eastern horizon'. 113All manner of delightful and useful flora grow here constantly in the perpetual spring the region enjoys. 114Unlike William's looser association of the east with the first spring in the dynamic progression of cosmic seasons, Bernardus crystallises this spatio-temporality in the eternal spring of Paradise: 'upon which the Sun, still mild at its first rising, shines lovingly, for its fire is in its first age, and has no power to harm'. 115With this first description of Paradise (not yet named Gramision), in the Megacosmus, the first part of the Cosmographia, the eternal spring is represented by the sun's perpetual first rising and constant 'primeval' fire. 116The static perdurance of this state is highlighted by the shift to and from mundane geography.We get to Paradise by moving east from India's burning sun and are returned to the scattered paradisal groves of the world with the note that: 'the first Man dwelt [here] as a guestbut too brief a time for a guest'. 117he eschatological force of this idea is made explicit in the parallel discussion of humanity's creation in the Microcosmus.Urania, Nature and the newly met Physis are tasked by Noys with creating humanity.Each is given a plan of their domain in the form of the mirror of providence, table of fate and book of memory.Studying the table of fate, Urania eventually finds a page on which the first man, from whom the 'long chain of fate' flows, is depicted and 'the succession of the ages, introduced by the pure primal state of gold is seen degenerating little by little, to end in an age of iron'. 118This eschatological vision, with its evocation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, may seem out of place in the Timaean cosmology of the schools, but the 'out of Eden' spatiality here is just the same as Hermann's.The eastern Gramision, guest residence of the first human, is a physical manifestation of the spatio-temporal beginning of history in Adam through a return to our solar metaphor, but even within this eschatological frame there is no spatial terminus; all we have is the expulsion from paradise.

Conclusion
I hope to have shown that Otto of Freising's east-west translatio imperii et studii, with which I began this article, cannot be considered interchangeable with the wider exegetical and cosmological ideas just examined; nor can the association of the translatio imperii with a westward progression of history that Otto drew from Hugh of Saint Victor be considered representative of medieval historical thought.Their work is, rather, built upon a deeper and more pervasive set of exegetical traditions that had their origins in the Patristic era around the sun's westward movement and the eastern location of Paradise.From the twelfth century on, we see their influence spread across a broader range of para-exegetical and cosmological writings, especially flowing out of the burgeoning schools from Honorius and the circle of Thomas Becket to the 'School of Chartres'.Yet the application of these ideas to geographical space or historical time is both rare and presents a raft of interpretive difficulties.While east is frequently understood as a site of spatio-temporal origin, there is no clear tradition that determines its trajectory from there.It is specifically in the work of Hugh and Otto that we find a clear notion of westward development and it is only by dispensing with their representative status that we can look beyond their own achievement to the much richer and more varied tradition within which their ideas were situated. 119rom the twelfth century on, we do find an increasing use of east-west frameworks in historical writing and for good reason. 120Growing concern about and discussion of the relationship of eastern and western Churches, the advent of the crusades and the growth of Islam in the European imagination all provided contexts for discussions of east and west, as we see clearly in histories of the First Crusade. 121But we must not overstate the significance of east-west opposition.Medieval conceptions of space did not revolve around such a single, monolithic framework, but were characterised precisely by the intersection of multiple spatial models. 122The translatio rarely served as a basis for these models and still less Otto's westward progression.Moving beyond the midtwelfth century, David Louis Gassman details how Hugh's and Otto's east-west model remained a marginal theme, adopted by Godfrey of Viterbo, following Otto, and John of Garland, but dying out rapidly in the thirteenth century as the translatio studii focused increasingly on the University of Paris. 123The idea of westward progression reemerges with the discovery of the new world in the sixteenth century and the foundation of the United States in the eighteenth, but it is only in the work of thinkers like Voltaire, Hegel and especially Comte that our modern notion of the 'West' and westward progression solidifies. 124These ideas remain with us today, but we must not mistake their familiarity for common currency in the past.