Quadrivium Miscellany with Rithmomachia

For before, time original: tempus. The author is distinguishing between the eternity of God and the temporal nature of the created world. is indeed a certain property that compels,
as he says, what is its own. He commands it to go, and to that which is stable he gives the power to remain.
To move in time; for all physical bodies are moved in both space and
time simultaneously. But dimensions original: spatia. Likely referring to the spiritual extension or reach of the soul., like the soul, move in time
and fill every place with its majesty, and measure all times
at once. High things descend from the lower parts of the world
from the august seat of the mind original: augustam... sede. A reference to the divine mind as the source of all worldly forms.. Whom no external
causes original: externae... causae. Boethius argues that God was not driven by external necessity to create the world, but by His own nature. drove to fashion the world. No external accidental causes
forced You, the Creator, to shape the world; but it was
Your own benevolence, naturally implanted within You, not
begrudging Your creature, to form it according to Your
image and likeness.
The work of floating matter. original: Materie fluitantis opus. This refers to the primordial, unformed state of the universe before it was ordered by God. He calls "floating matter" that
unformed matter which existed in the mind of God in the beginning,
before the world was made, when all things were fluid.
For neither the true face of the earth nor the air appeared yet,
for it was truly water, though thin, as if it were a mist.
Nor did the clarity of the air appear, because there was no light
to illuminate it; hence, the floating matter of this...