Mind of the Church

The mind of the Church, faithfully rendered into English

Library / Almagestum Novum, Book IX: On the System of the World

Section I — On the Substance and Certain Accidents of the Heavens and of the Celestial Bodies

Chapter I, On the Work of the First Day; or, On the Creation of Heaven and Earth, of Light, and of Time, drawn from sacred Genesis and according to the mind of the Fathers and the Theologians

[I.] Although it is indeed right to prefer Moses to Plato and Aristotle—so that, in scrutinizing the foundations of this World, there should shine before us rather that twin horn of divine light, by which, from the face of the Lord, the countenance of that same Moses shone, than the half-extinguished spark of profane Philosophy—nevertheless, that satisfaction may be given to all alike, we must select from each light those matters which pertain more closely to Astronomy, deliberately passing over many things the knowledge of which is of almost no concern to us for the intended purpose of this work. Of this kind are: whether the World is one, or whether several or infinitely many [worlds] now exist, or once existed, or are to exist in the future; whether it began at the beginning of time, as the Catholic Faith teaches, or whether it existed from eternity, as the Peripatetic foolishly proclaims; whether it is perfect in every respect, or further perfectible; whether it was created or produced by God alone immediately, or through Intelligences subordinate to Him; whether this whole machine of the Universe rests in some determinate part of the divine Immensity, or in some so‑called “imaginary” space, or whether rather—unknown even to us—the whole is perpetually rolled through that immensity; why this World was founded in this “virtual part,” so to speak, of the divine eternity, and not in another—and other things like these, partly disputable, partly wholly foreign to the bounds of Astronomy. These matters, therefore, being passed over, we shall turn our thought and pen to other things suited to our purpose, having first premised certain points that will seem more necessary to these very questions.

[Margin: Controversies about the World that do not pertain to the Astronomer.]

Question 1

Whether, by those words—“In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, but the Earth was void and empty”—the creation of any determinate body, made on the first day, is signified.

[Margin: Genesis 1.]

[I.] There is no doubt that by the name of “Heaven and Earth” the integrity (the whole) of this Universe is signified—at least sometimes. For so must that saying of Genesis 2 be understood, where it speaks of the day in which “God made Heaven and Earth”; and that of Exodus 31[:17], “In six days God made Heaven and Earth”; and that of Jeremiah 23[:24], “I fill Heaven and Earth”; and finally that of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” In this sense, then, certain authors hold that “Heaven and Earth”—that is, the whole World—was created by Moses[‘s account] “in the beginning,” in such a way that the creation [described in detail] thereafter was [the same work]. According to them, Moses, summarizing the argument of God’s works, did not mean to determine anything as made before the light, but set forth only in aggregate those things which he would afterward narrate as made within the six days: just as a painter might first comprehend everything together in a small panel, as it were, and then set out each thing singly. So St. Thomas (Part I, q. 68, art. 3); likewise Steuchus in his Cosmopoeia, and Paulus Burgensis; St. Chrysostom attributes the same; and, deservedly and according to the more common doctrine of the Fathers, Ascanius Martinengus in his Glossa Magna (p. 162), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, p. 20), and Suárez (bk. 1, On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 2)—and he takes this from St. Augustine.

[II.] For by the conjunctive particle [and], [Moses] at once subjoins: “But the Earth was void and empty, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters.” Therefore he supposes the dry land to have been already made, but void and empty; and the deep, and the waters—whether this was Chaos or something else (of which presently)—which perhaps SS. Cyril and Chrysostom meant to indicate. Wherefore, adhering to the letter, we cannot accept the opinion of Plato—who, as St. Justin noted in the Admonitorium, took from these words of Moses his doctrine of the Ideas—nor that of Philo, who says (in his On the Making of the World) that God, before all things, made in an intelligible world the Ideas of heaven and earth. For Moses did not set before the rude people Ideas scarcely intelligible [even] to the learned; nor are the divine Ideas separate from God (if they be taken formally and not objectively), nor are they anything created or made, but are from eternity connatural to God himself and identified [with him]—as, with St. Augustine, St. Thomas teaches (Part I, q. 15, art. 5) and most Theologians.

[Margin: Whether [the names signify] the Ideas of Heaven and Earth.]

Question 2

On the meaning of the word “Heaven” (Caelum) and “Firmament” among the Latins and the Hebrews.

[III.] As regards the notion of the word: “Caelum” is called in Greek ouranos (οὐρανός), because it is seen above—from horáo (ὁράω), “to see,” and áno (ἄνω), “above”; or [it is derived] from the Hebrew word Or, of which we shall speak below. “Caelum” is also said [to come] from the Greek kalón (καλόν, “fair”), inasmuch as the heaven is the most beautiful of all visible things, or [from caelatura, “embossed work”], as engraved with the stars as with eminent signs—so Beda in his exposition; so Isidore (Etymol. ch. 10, and Etymol. ch. 11); so Varro, and St. Ambrose; and from the Latin “caelo,” to engrave.

[Margin: Etymology of “Caelum.”]

The Hebrews, and our interpreter [Jerome], because they have but one primary word for the heaven first created—namely Schamaim—do not from this possess any perceptible distinction of the heavens by which they might number them by motion. For want of this distinction we have no sensible criterion to mark off the heavens; whence the Chaldaic version and the Septuagint translators, and St. Jerome our interpreter, [render it variously]. Schamaim signifies “the heavens”; the particle He or Ha prefixed to the noun signifies a thing worthy of admiration—as when by Hasamaim he indicated those famous and stupendous bodies.

[Margin: What is “Samaim” to the Hebrews? — What is “Hasamaim”?]

So too “Hanabi” signifies the Prophet, and “Haarez” signifies the dry Earth, just as it likewise designates the Earth; “Eres” or “Erez,” which signifies the Earth, dry alike, [is derived] from the root “Rus,” “to run,” or from “Eri,” etc. Of the noun “Firmament” I shall speak more opportunely below (ch. 1, num. 2).

[Margin: What is “Eres” in Hebrew?]

Question 3

What did Moses signify, by the name of “Heaven and Earth,” to have been created by God in the first instant of the World?

[IV.] It is incredible in how many—and how diverse—ways the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have understood those two names “Heaven and Earth,” with which Moses begins to narrate the first creation of things, as may be seen among the authors who have composed treatises on the Hexaemeron (that is, on the work of the six days), or glosses, or postils, or commentaries, or questions on Genesis ch. 1. To report the words of all of them [would be tedious]; but most diligently of all does Ascanius Martinengus, in his Glossa Magna, set some of them forth (from num. 9 below, and at Questions 4, 5, and 6, where greater proof is needed). But in this question, lest we be too prolix on account of the many interpretations, it will suffice to indicate where the words of the authors may be sought:

[Margins: 1st through 5th Interpretation.]

[V.]

[Margins: 6th through 18th Interpretation; nos. 8 and 9 are also marked “Opinion.”]

With these things surveyed, scarcely anything could be devised that has not had some patron—even though the Fathers who understood the Angels by the name “Heaven” spoke in a mystical sense, or by taking the thing contained under the name of the container. It now pleases [me] to aid the reader’s memory by reducing the preceding opinions summarily into one conspectus, distributing on the one side what they understood by “Heaven,” and on the other what by “Earth”:

Table — The Order of the Interpretations: what is understood by “HEAVEN” and by “EARTH”

№By HEAVENBy EARTH
1The Idea of HeavenThe Idea of Earth
2The formless matter of HeavenThe formless matter of Earth
3The formless matter of spiritual thingsThe matter of corporeal things
4The spiritual nature (invisible & intelligible)The corporeal nature (visible & sensible)
5The perfect AngelsThe imperfect matter of bodies
6The Empyrean with the AngelsMatter under the form of corporeity
7The Empyrean with the AngelsThe elements actually formed
8The AngelsThe elements confused in Chaos
9All the heavens with the Angels (all higher things)All lower things beneath the Moon
10All the heavens with the AngelsAll the elements in act
11All the heavens, with the Empyrean & Angels, & with Fire & airThe dry land with water
12The Empyrean, or all the heavensFormless matter
13The highest HeavenThe elements actually formed
14All the heavensAll the elements actually formed
15All the heavens, with ether & airThe dry land with water
16Heaven taken for the fourth element [fire]The dry land with air & water
17Fire, air, and water mixed togetherThe dry land alone
18Fire & AirThe dry land & Water

(The marginal notes label these “1st through 18th Interpretation”; nos. 8 and 9 are also marked “Opinion.” Riccioli notes he has reduced the many opinions into one conspectus “to aid the reader’s memory,” distributing on the one hand what is understood by “Heaven,” on the other what is understood by “Earth.”)

Our Opinion

[V.] Although under the title of this question several questions may be included—namely, what God created in the first instant of this World; what indeed, and by what persons, and for what reason, Moses willed [these things] by his words; and whether the Holy Spirit, through Moses, meant to signify [it] as created by God in that very first beginning—nevertheless, by one single conclusion we shall respond to them summarily, and then, by expounding and confirming it, [we shall settle them]. The matters of this kind [are these]:

Conclusion

[VI.] In the first instant of the World, God, the Best and Greatest, created the Empyrean Heaven with the Angels, and all the [celestial] bodies down to the sidereal [region]; and likewise all the Elements with their first qualities and forms, in that order, position, and arrangement which the substantial qualities or forms required; but the rest [were made] afterward, by means of secondary qualities or substantial forms [introduced] in the works of the following days. This is what Moses and the Holy Spirit willed to signify, though not all to all men, nor in the same way, nor under one mode.

[Margins: 1st Postulate; 2nd Postulate; 3rd Postulate; 4th Postulate.]

[The four Postulates premised to the Conclusion:]

(Pages 197–198 / Questions on the further senses of the names — “Heaven” taken for the Air or Ether, and “the Earth was void and empty,” “invisible and unformed,” i.e. formless matter — continue below.)

”And the Air is signified by the name of Heaven”

[IX.] I have said that by the name “Heaven” the Air, or Ether (or even Fire, if [it] be granted), is signified—not only among the learned, but also among the unlearned—by reason of the likeness in transparency and rarity; for the common people do not distinguish within that whole most tenuous substance which extends from the surface of the earth and the sea up to the outermost blue heaven. And therefore in Genesis 7[:11] the clouds are called “the cataracts [floodgates] of heaven”; and in Psalm 8[:8], “the birds of heaven and the fishes of the sea”—how familiar this is to sacred Scripture we shall presently show with St. Damascene. Moreover the heaven is said to be “opened” when it rains, and “shut” when it does not rain (Leviticus 26[:19]; Deuteronomy 28[:23]; 3 Kings 8[:35]; 2 Paralipomenon 6[:26]; Luke 4[:25]); and that fire and brimstone “rained from heaven” (Luke 17[:29]); and that the heaven is “lowering” or “ruddy” (Matthew 16[:2–3]; Luke 12[:54–55]); and “the way of an eagle in the heaven” (Proverbs 30[:19]). Wherefore St. Augustine, explaining this passage of Genesis according to the letter (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1), says: “It must by no means be supposed that this element of our world has been passed over in this Scripture; but it is understood to pertain either to ‘Heaven’—if there are in its parts the most tranquil and peaceful spaces—or to the ‘Earth,’ on account of this turbulent and murky region [of lower air], which grows thick with moist exhalation, although it too is more often called by the name ‘Heaven.’”

[Margins: The Air [signified] by the name of Heaven, frequently; The Air, which [is signified] by the name of Earth.]

There is also the well-known division of Heaven into the first (i.e. the aerial), the second (the sidereal), and the third (the Empyrean)—of which we shall speak, from Anastasius Sinaita and St. Damascene, below at Question 6, num. 15. For now it suffices [to cite] from Anastasius those words (1st Hexaemeron): “When you hear that Paul was caught up to the third heaven, think the third heaven to be…”; and St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 8): “Often it is the custom of Scripture to call the air too ‘heaven,’ inasmuch as it is seen above; [it says] ‘the birds of heaven,’ and in this place takes ‘heaven’ for the air.” For “the birds of heaven” are so called in Job 28[:21] and 35[:11], Psalm 8[:9] and 103[:12], Jeremiah 7[:33] and 8[:7], Ezekiel 38[:20], Daniel 3 and 4[:9], and Hosea 2[:18] and 4[:3]; as the Saviour himself [says], more than once (Matthew 8[:20], Luke 9[:58]): “the foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests”; and (Matthew 13[:32], Mark 4[:32], Luke 13[:19]): “so that the birds of heaven come and dwell in its branches.” And so St. Thomas (Part I, q. 66, art. 1): “Under [the name] ‘heaven,’” he says, “the air too is included—indeed fire also,” according to the opinion of Alexander of Hales (bk. 2 of the Summa, q. 4): “‘Heaven,’ that is, fire, [is] heaven too; and the air also, for there is an aerial heaven”; with whom Caietanus agrees (Commentary on Genesis ch. 1), [taking] all the higher [things] as heaven.

And this usage is not [merely] recent. For more anciently Plato (in the Phaedo) [held] that the air is called “heaven” by us; so Homer (Iliad 1, as Eustathius notes), Aristophanes (in the Clouds), and Callimachus. The Latins too take [it] for “heaven,” as do the Latin poets everywhere: Lucretius (bk. 4), “They are set in this heaven which is called air”; Virgil (Aeneid 5): “Great-souled Aeneas, not though Jupiter himself should pledge it to me, would I hope to reach Italy [from] this heaven [sky]”; and (Aeneid 6): “daring on swift wings to trust himself to the heaven [sky]."

"But the Earth was void and empty” (inanis et vacua)

[X.] Where the Latin has inanis et vacua (“void and empty”), the Hebrew has Tohu va-Bohu, that is, “emptiness and vacuity”; thus the interpreters render it variously: Aquila, “vanity and nothing”; Symmachus, “idle and undistinguished”; Theodotion, “void and nothing”; Pagnino, “desolate and empty”; the Catena, Lyranus, and Steuchus, “inane and vacant”; Jonathan [the Targum], “void and waste.” Caietanus, an erudite Hebraist, reads it “void and waste.” Thus the Earth was such that it would have seemed void—because it was made [for now] to be inhabited by animals (Isaiah 45, “Not in vain did He create it”); but at that time it was not yet so inhabited or formed (Isaiah 45, 49). And so the Earth is said to be “empty,” not only as uncultivated, but as void of all those things with which it is now adorned—stones, plants, herbs, fish—so that it had nothing of its own outward covering, nor anything as yet of its own surface beauty.

And this is what Christ said (Matthew 23[:15]): “You traverse the sea and the dry land.” Those words, “he called the dry [land] Earth,” are thus to be understood: that which was “dry” he called “Earth,” just as he called the gathering of the waters “seas.” So too in the Hebrew words; for the ancient Hebrew has Iabbasa with the article He: Vaikra Elohim la-iabbasa erez—where the Chaldaic, Pagnino, Vatablus, and the Vulgate render “and God called the dry [land] Earth,” and the Septuagint kaì ekálesen ho theòs tḕn xēràn gē̂n; although certain Hebrews render the perfect for the pluperfect, “He had called.” Caietanus and Lippomanus (in the Catena) teach that the Lamed, prefixed through the middle of the article to the noun Iabbasa, [is taken] distributively and accusatively, so that it could be rendered “and [God] imposed the name on the dry earth”; and “note,” says Caietanus, “that siccum [‘dry’] was what was named, and terra [‘earth’] is the name.” Tertullian indeed [says], in his poem on Genesis: “the dry [land] would presently rather come into use by nature.”

And in those words too, “and let the dry [land] appear,” the noun “dry” (arida) must be taken substantively, not adjectivally; for [if adjectival] it would mean “dried and parched,” but [the earth] did not yet appear dried or parched—rather, when the water did not appear, the dry [land] appeared, that is, [the earth] to be uncovered of the waters. So, in the first place, understand Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Cyril, Damascene, Theodoret, and very many Fathers and interpreters—this being the primary sense; for secondarily it can be understood quasi-adjectivally, [as] dried and parched on the surface, and made firmer and more solid by God (not by the Sun), and apt for germinating, [made] fit to sustain plants and for germination—so that at the first instant it was created entirely dry.

For although at the first instant the waters were [held] within it, afterward—up to the third day—by the dryness drawing up the moisture, and the upper parts of the earth nearest [the surface] drinking in the waters in the manner of a sponge (God [the while] making the Earth), [the earth], naturally from that contact, little by little drank up the waters as to its upper parts, so that its skin became muddy and marshy. Therefore God commanded the waters to be gathered into one place—that is, [with] the surface of the earth dried, and the receptacle of the sea and the deep lying hidden in the depth of the earth—so that yet by the same motion he drew out, or extracted (or, through the Angels, a great part of [the waters]), that which had penetrated the skin of the earth and had rendered it muddy and stagnant like a marsh. For it is one thing to consider the Earth at the first instant of creation, another after that instant up to the third day’s separation, and another after the separation of the waters: at the first instant [it was] not simply dry, but immediately after [creation] drenched with abundance, and through the two intervening days more and more inebriated with the infused waters; but after the separation it received indeed a greater abundance of waters within [its] channels and subterranean cavities, while on the surface and skin less water remained than before. And of this second [state], not of the first, must the Fathers and interpreters be understood who held that water was mixed with the earth: as St. Gregory of Nyssa (book On the History of the Six Days), [that] the earth, dry of itself, had to gather and collect the coerced water [pressed out] from its own moisture; and St. John Chrysostom (homily 1 on Genesis): “For because the earth sat among the waters, all its surface and skin was filled with waters”; and Junilius (Hexaemeron): “and the earth, which lay muddy and weak, covered with waters, when these were cut off would be made dry and fit to receive the seeds”; so I understand Hugh of St.-Victor (bk. 1 On the Sacraments, tr. 1, ch. 1), saying of the earth that it was “at first slimy and slippery and bare, as having not yet put forth any shoots”; and St. Basil (homily 1 on the Hexaemeron), who calls the Earth—before it appeared uncovered of the waters—“unformed,” and “not composed” while [it was] muddy or slippery, calling it “defiled.”

[The waters were gathered] not [from] the common [surface] only, but whatever of the waters was anywhere in the depth of the earth was separated—saving that particle which was required for the earth’s fertility. Be it that Philo (book On the Making of the World) said, whether from his own opinion or by way of exaggeration: “After the matter had been diffused through the whole earth and had penetrated all its parts—just as a sponge drinks in moisture, so that, like a kind of marsh, it was steeped and confounded out of each element, and in a manner fermented into one undivided and formless nature—God commands whatever of the waters was salt, and hostile to the fertility of the crops and trees, to flow together into one out of all the openings of the earth; and then the dry [land] to emerge, the sweet moisture being left in it for its perpetuity.” For if God had not so created those two elements [already] mixed, but [if] by the water’s moistening and the earth’s drinking the water they had mingled, how could the water in the space of two days penetrate through the whole depth of the earth, which is more than 4000 Italian miles? But Philo also errs in [holding] the water to have been salt before the third day; for the saltness was afterward put into the Sea, made or increased by the Sun’s scorching. Let it stand, then, that at the first instant the Earth was entirely dry.

But you will say: why then was it called by God “Earth”—in Hebrew Eres or Erez? Is not this name from the root Rus, which is “to rush [down],” and so indicates the Earth as, [as it were,] a heap of sand apt to fall downward? I answer that it is called from Rus: first, because of itself, so far as in it lies, it tends downward by gravity, [its] part [resting] beneath the lighter element; then, because afterward, on the third day, part of it was by God [heaped up]—part of it, when it lay in the cavities of the Seas, heaped into mountains; then, because a great part of it was to be dug up by plowing, or [because] stones, metals, and the foundations of buildings were to be dug out [of it]. You will say, then: why, in speaking of that first instant, did Moses use the name “Earth” rather than “dry land”? I answer that he did so most prudently, because by two names he wished to set before [us] the creation [wrought by] God’s workmanship, created at that instant; for had he said “Heaven and Dry-land,” he would by no means have comprehended all things; so, to comprehend Earth and water [together], he used rather that name [“Earth”], [reserving] the name “dry land,” which he imposed on the third day—namely when [the Earth] received the waters within itself.

[Margins: “The Earth was void”—in what way?; Why is the Earth said [to be named] from Rus or “to be dug out”?; Why did Moses use the name “Earth” rather than “dry land”?]

But lest anyone should take from this an occasion of error, [Moses] at once, as if correcting or explaining the name “Earth,” [added] “But the Earth was void and empty,” that he might distinguish its nature separately from the water (presently to be named).

What “the Earth was Invisible and Unformed,” i.e. formless matter

[XI.] Since indeed Theodoret (Question 1 on Genesis, on this passage of the names inanis et vacua) reads “invisible and unformed,” inasmuch as the Septuagint interpreters, who rendered “aóratos kai akataskeúastos” (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, “invisible and unprepared”), translate the Hebrew Tohu va-Bohu by “invisible and unformed, not yet prepared”—hence Wisdom 11[:18] says God created the world “from formless matter” (ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης); and St. Augustine reads (on Genesis to the letter, ch. 1, and in Confessions) [that] God created “invisible and unformed matter,” that is, matter without any form, or as it were under a confusion of the corporeal mass, before it was distinguished by the times [days] of the elements—from which afterward, by [the introduction of] forms, all things were established by [their proper] natures, as is treated in the question above. Therefore, “the Earth was invisible and unformed,” i.e. formless [matter], without [definite] kinds, etc.—as St. Thomas notes (Part I, q. 66, art. 1); after St. Augustine (bk. 1 on Genesis to the letter). Yet [St. Augustine] says that “matter” must not be understood to have existed before [in] time, but [only] in origin or by nature; the [formless] state precedes [the formed] not in time, but by nature—just as the sound [precedes] the song; St. Augustine adds (against the adversaries who repugn), as do St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose, who call it “unformed”; and he subjoins: certain holy authors take “unformed matter” to mean not [matter] formed in [actual] kind, but [matter] which excludes every [definite] form—a matter which, according to them, excludes the formation already made in the creature, i.e. corporeal [form]; for thus appears in the creature an unformed matter, and according to this is said the formless matter; for [the holy doctors] say this matter was the principle of visible and formed things—that is, of mixed things, especially of herbs and plants; for it was invisible not of itself, but by accident, inasmuch as …

(The discussion of formless matter continues on the following pages.)

[XI. — continued] …for the water was covered round about by water; and, moreover, [the holy doctors] teach this in the plainest and clearest words: SS. Basil (homily 2 on the Hexaemeron), Ambrose (bk. 1 on the Hexaemeron ch. 7), Augustine (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter ch. 13, and q. 106 on both Testaments; likewise bk. 2 On Time), Athanasius (q. 80 of the Old Testament), and likewise Severianus, Procopius, and Theodoret in the same place (q. 10). But SS. Basil and Ambrose add that [the Earth] was also inundated for this reason—that there was as yet no man to behold it, or for whose sake God might furnish it; and Procopius [adds] that it was not yet a sight worthy [to be seen], since it was stripped of every adornment. It is called “unformed and void” because it was not yet separated from the waters, not yet prepared for cultivation, not yet clothed with shoots and other forms—as the same authors hand down (cited in Martinengus, Glossa Magna, p. 339 ff.). And [the Earth] is said to be “empty,” as it were, because it lacked fish and birds—though these animals do at last rest and nest upon the land and at the bottom of the sea and rivers, and so pertain to the earth; and the dry land contains in itself many more adornments than water and air. Therefore it was enough for Moses to say that the Earth was “void and empty,” so that thereby it might be understood also of those two elements [air and water]; for he speaks of their emptiness, and of that of the heaven and the stars, and was about presently to say that darkness was over the face of the deep—which must now be expounded.

”And darkness was upon the face of the Deep”

[XII.] “Darkness” is called in Hebrew Veh-bsch or Choseh, but in the singular number; and the Latins would have, and could say, tenebra (“darkness”), and “upon the face [there was] darkness”; and “Deep” [is] Thehom or Theehob. The Greek edition of the Seventy renders it epì skótos epáno tês abýssou (ἐπὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου), that is, “and darkness over the deep.” The Chaldaic version here adheres to the Hebrew reading: “And darkness upon the face of the deep.” But in the Royal Bibles it reads: “And darkness upon the deep.” The Lusitanians and Caietanus [have]: “Obscurity upon the surface of the deep.” Pagninus and Vatablus: “Darkness was upon the surface of the abyss.” Caietanus, moreover, says that this is not again the phrase “void and empty,” but conveys the same as what was set down before in the Hebrew: “But the Earth was void and empty, and darkness or obscurity was upon the face.”

[XIII.] “But the Earth was void and empty, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep.” By this “darkness,” primarily, is signified [the absence] of the stars in the heaven and of light throughout that whole diaphanous body which was above the waters—namely in the air, the ether, and the heaven—because that body was and is simply diaphanous, and so that “darkness” was its subject; for water, although it lacked light, was not simply diaphanous, and therefore “darkness” is said to have been upon the surface of the deep, but not in its depth. Hence it is deduced that by “darkness” is understood not [merely the absence of] light, but [a thing that] connotes and signifies its subject deprived [of light]; so that in another way too this subject—that whole diaphanous [body] which is above earth and water—was meant, even though it had been expressed once already by the name “heaven.” Rightly therefore did St. Thomas (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 8) say: “especially since by the darkness which was over the face of the deep is understood the neighbouring air, while as yet no light shone from above.” And so Procopius (on Genesis) rightly holds that it is designated by the name “darkness”; “darkness is nothing of itself, but [comes about] through the water’s not yet being illuminated, nor having the presence of light; for air is receptive of light.” St. Ambrose: “There was darkness, because the air itself is dark”; and Comestor (ch. 1 of the Scholastic History), the Master [Peter Lombard] (bk. 2, dist. 12), and others understood the darkened air, deprived of light. But Caietanus (on Genesis) [holds] that another diaphanous [thing], which was the [subject] of this darkness, was the deep. And Suárez afterwards read (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days ch. 7) that by “darkness” is understood the air, the proper subject of light—not yet fire, since he himself supposes fire to shine naturally; but even if [the air] had had light, by reason of its extreme rarity it would not have been seen, nor would it have illumined the waters or any other surface of the water. Against this, however, Rabbi Moses (in Hamerus) says that by the name “darkness” is signified either fire itself—because of itself, in its proper sphere, it does not shine—which he attempts to confirm from the fact that Moses the Lawgiver, in Exodus, when he had said, “You heard his words out of the fire,” a little after said: “You heard his voice out of the darkness.”

Rightly, then, did St. Thomas (Part I, q. 66, art. 1) judge the interpretation of Rabbi Salomon [Rashi] to be forced. And Hugh of St.-Victor (bk. 1 On the Sacraments, part 1) and Richard [of St.-Victor] (bk. 2 of the Exceptions) call “darkness” the three higher elements confused together in the manner of a mist, and [say] that by their proper name these signified the impenetrable depth of the waters, as St. Basil says (homily 1 on the Hexaemeron).

What does “the Deep” (abyssus) signify? “Copious water, to whose bottom one cannot easily penetrate downward”—so Eucherius ascribes [it] (bk. 1, ch. 1, on Genesis). “The Deeps are whatever depths of waters are [so] called”—St. Augustine (on Psalm 41). “The Deep is a certain impenetrable depth, and is most often said of an infinity of waters”—St. Augustine (bk. 12 Against Faustus, ch. 11). “The Deep is an inestimable depth of waters”; and in exactly the same way define “the Deep”: Theophilus of Antioch (bk. 2 To Autolycus), Junilius and Procopius on Genesis, St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 9), St. Isidore (bk. 13 of the Etymologies), Rupert (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 7), William of Paris (part 1 On the Universe, ch. 34), and Caietanus (on Genesis ch. 1)—although [Caietanus] a little after extends [it] to all diaphanous bodies, as does Vielmus too (lecture 8), saying that by the name “Deep” can be understood the heavens and all the transparent elements together with their depth. But St. Ambrose (bk. 1 Hexaemeron ch. 8) notes [a use referring] the waters to the void: that the swine, driven by the demons, were hurled headlong into the [deep]; so that, although the demons shrank back—when they begged Christ that they might not go into the abyss—yet they ran into [it]. And Suidas (in Hamerus’s rendering), explaining the words of Psalm 103[:6], “the Deep like a garment is his clothing”—that is, the air—thus calls the air the “clothing” of the deep, since it covers it as [it covers] the great depths of waters. Figuratively too the word is transferred to signify the depth of any chasm whatever—e.g. of the underworld—and an abstruse profundity, such as the depth of sins, and the scarcely-intelligible [depth], such as that of formless matter; as Martinengus teaches (from St. Augustine, Eucherius, Caietanus, Lyranus, Tostatus, and others) in his Glossa Magna (p. 555). The interpreters of Psalm 41[:8] may also be consulted, on those words, “deep calleth unto deep.”

[Margin: What is the “Deep” (abyssus)?]

”And the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters”

[XIV.] In Hebrew it stands Veruah Elohim merachephet al pene hamaim, that is, “the Spirit of the Lord moved itself over the face of the waters”; and the Septuagint, kaì pneûma theoû epephéreto epáno toû hýdatos (καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος), “and the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” The noun Veruah signifies in Hebrew both “wind” and “spirit.” Wherefore in this place there may be understood the wind, the air, and the ether—to whose tenuity and mobility the wind is most like; and by the same noun the heaven too may be signified. Indeed, by the pure name “spirit” may be understood that whole body which, besides fire and air, embraced the heavens also—because, by reason of its tenuity, being as yet bounded by no opaque body, [the heavens] were [in]visible. For the heaven which is said to have been made on the second day, and called the “firmament,” was consolidated out of water, and above it, and below the Empyrean, was made visible, and is everywhere acknowledged as such by the Fathers and distinguished from the Empyrean (invisible to us)—as I shall show in Questions 6 and 8. Therefore those “darknesses” were then invisible not only by defect of light but also of opacity, and were in a manner spiritual.

But, restricting this name [in the contrary direction], Pliny says (bk. 2 ch. 5): “Nor do I see any doubt concerning the elements, that there are four: the highest, fire, whence come the eyes of so many shining stars; next, the spirit, which the Greeks call by the same word, aer [‘air’], life-giving and pervading all things, binding [the whole together]; by whose force, suspended together with the fourth element, water, the earth is balanced in the middle space.” Indeed, sacred Scripture too signifies by this name the Spirit of the Lord, by the common [judgment] of the interpreters—as it is said (Ps. 147): “His spirit shall blow, and the waters shall flow”; and (Ps. 148) “fire, hail, snow, ice, the spirit of storms, which do his word”; and (Isa. 40) “the grass is dried up and the flower is fallen, because the spirit of the Lord hath blown upon it”; and [so] Isaiah [elsewhere].

[Margin: Air and Ether [signified] by the name “Spirit.”]

(continued, printed p. 200): …so Isaiah 49, “like a violent river which the spirit of the Lord drives on”; and Psalm 47[:8], “with a vehement wind thou shalt break the ships of Tharsis.” Finally, at 3 Kings 19, where—when a vehement wind indicated Elijah’s excess, and the opposed whisper of a thin breeze tempered [it] for Elijah more manifestly—it is said: “a great and strong spirit overthrowing the mountains and breaking the rocks before the Lord; the Lord [was] not in the spirit,” etc., “and after the fire a whistling of a thin breeze.” And these words, “and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters,” must (they affirm) be understood, with respect to the air, according to the property of the letter: so Tertullian (Against Hermogenes chs. 31, 32), Origen (bk. 1 Peri Archon ch. 3), Theodoret (q. 8 on Genesis), Diodorus of Tarsus, Procopius, the Abulensis [Tostatus], Oleaster, Pererius, and Ludovicus Stella on Genesis; Vázquez (on the First Part, disp. 108, ch. 1); Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days ch. 7). Indeed St. Augustine too admitted the same (On Genesis to the Letter, Imperfect [Work], ch. 4), saying: “A third opinion about this ‘spirit’ can arise, that by the name ‘spirit’—when the elements are enumerated—the four elements are signified, of which this World is seen to arise: namely Heaven, Earth, Water, and Air.” And Anastasius Sinaita (bk. 1 of the Hexaemeron), [setting] this exposition first, subjoins: “This is the more fitting [sense] of the Mosaic letter.” So too St. Athanasius prefers it (q. 81, which is the second of the Old Testament).

[Margins: What and how did Plato understand [this]?; Other interpretations of “the Spirit of the Lord [moving] over the waters.”]

But Plato, reading the history of Moses—and not attaining the mystical [sense], [namely] the Holy Spirit, whom he knew not—understood the same, with regard to the literal sense, as Rupert the Abbot reports (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 8); for he says: “This love was the goodness of the Creator, which is the Holy Spirit, whom Plato knew not when, reading this Scripture, he supposed the ‘Spirit of the world,’ that is, the air, which according to the order of the elements stands above the water; and because by ‘Heaven’ too the same was meant in ‘In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth,’ he supposed that only four elements—namely fire, earth, air, and water—were here enumerated.” Rabbi Moses likewise understood it [so], being skilled in the truth of the Hebrew tongue, as he attests (bk. 2 ch. 30): on the Genesis words “and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of the Lord,” etc., that Rabbi said: “These names too were the elements, according to the order of their natural position: for first he set the earth, and above it the water, above which is the air, over which fire is set on high.” That fire too is comprehended under the name “spirit”—as also in that heavenly [psalm, on the Sun]: “running over all things (in its circuit the spirit goes forth)“—Abenezra affirms; [so also] David [the commentator], and Vallesius (On Sacred Philosophy, ch. 1); nor does Pineda dissent there. But by the name “spirit” Hippocrates (in his book On Breaths) and Aristotle (Meteorology bk. 1, ch. 4) understood fire too.

[XIV.] Nor does it stand in the way that those words, “the Spirit of the Lord,” were understood otherwise by many Fathers. For of the Angels moving the heavens Caietanus understood [it], with Procopius; but of God moving the heavens, Aegidius [of Rome] (on [the Sentences] bk. 2, dist. 12, q. 2, art. 3). Of the good and propense will [of God], St. Augustine (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 5), and with him Tostatus, Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils), Lyranus and the Glossa Ordinaria and Interlinearis, Hugh of St.-Victor (in his Annotations, ch. 7), and Alexander of Hales (part 2, q. 46, member 5). Of the power and eternal Wisdom of God, Steuchus (in the Cosmopoeia). But very many [understood it] of the Holy Spirit: namely Tertullian (book On Baptism, chs. 3, 4, 5); Pope Clement (bk. 6 of the Recognitions); St. Cyprian (sermon On the Holy Spirit); St. Jerome (Epistle 83, to Oceanus, and in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis); St. Augustine (On Genesis [to the Letter], Imperfect [Work], ch. 4, and On Genesis to the Letter bk. 1, ch. 7); St. Ambrose (bk. 1 Hexaemeron ch. 8, and in the prologue to bk. 2 On the Holy Spirit); St. Basil (homily 2 on the Hexaemeron, and Against Eunomius); St. Gregory of Nyssa (in the book Of Testimonies on the Trinity, against the Jews); St. Athanasius (in the sermon Against Heresies, and in the epistle to Serapion); St. Cyril of Alexandria (bks. 1 and 3 Against Julian); St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 9); St. Isidore (bk. 1 On the Highest Good, ch. 10); Anastasius Sinaita (bk. 1 of the Hexaemeron); Procopius, Eucherius, Diodorus, and Claudius Victor (bk. 1 on Genesis); Philastrius (in his book On Heresies); Bede (in the book On the Creation of the Six Days); Optatus of Milevis (bk. 5 Against Parmenian); Rupert (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 8); Peter Comestor (in the History, on Genesis ch. 2); St. Thomas (Part I, q. 74, art. 3, ad 4); Albertus Magnus (part 1 of the Summa, [the treatise] On the Four Coeval Things [De quatuor coaequaevis], q. 12, art. 11); [and] Albinus (q. 29 on Genesis)—whose words Ascanius Martinengus reports in the Glossa Magna (pp. 372–385), contending that this is the spirit by which the whole World is stirred and governed, according to Trismegistus, Plato, and Virgil (Georgics bk. 1), in those verses: “In the beginning, the heaven,” etc., “a Spirit within nourishes [them],” etc.; [identifying it with] that “Mind” of which Anaxagoras [spoke], and that “Love” which Hesiod and Parmenides said was the first of all the gods. But these things, I say, do not stand in the way; for, as Suárez notes (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days ch. 7), they can be understood to have spoken in a mystical sense; and Martinengus himself (p. 376) confesses that it was not fitting that Moses should, for the rude people of the Hebrews, unseasonably wish to propose now—under the literal sense of the history—the most recondite mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, or the Holy Spirit. And indeed, if he wished to expound to them neither the Empyrean nor the Angels, much less the Holy Spirit—nay, not even to learned men, as regards the literal sense—especially since there is no reason why he should either pass over the divine Word in silence, or say that the Holy Spirit alone was “borne above,” and not rather [that it was] poured into the whole world, above and within: whereas the reason why air and ether are above the waters is their natural lightness.

[XV.] But neither does that phrase, “[the Spirit] moved over the waters,” stand in the way. For the Hebrew Merachephet, which they wish to be rendered “moved,” properly signifies a natural motion, just as a bird is moved over its own [eggs], or [over] another [thing] to be brought forth [hatched]. For the Syriac version has, “it cherished the waters,” or “the quiet [spirit] brooded over the waters”; and so Vielmus (on Genesis ch. 1). This word in this place, “air,” etc., does not [denote God’s local motion], but rather connotes and commends [the imparting of life]; just as a hen, cherishing her eggs, quickens [them]—so the [spirit cherished or brooded over] the waters; so Diodorus and Basil and the other Greeks, “it brooded”; and St. Jerome [takes] the same in this place; for “to cherish” or “to brood over” is, as Suárez says (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days ch. 7), to signify a [fostering]. The interpreters here, positing a supercelestial place, suppose this fostering signifies a [quickening], inasmuch as it does not [imply] local motion—so Theodoret teaches (q. 8); thus that fostering motion can be understood [as] a thin air imparted by God; even if Vielmus [thinks] otherwise, it does not displease; yet to Suárez—and indeed to all—God is not moved locally.

Thus far, then, we have [seen] that Moses signified, in an easy sense (at least to learned men), the creation of the ether (i.e. of fire and air), whether these were signified under the name “nothing,” or under the name “heaven,” or under the name “darkness.” Be it that the holy [doctors] intimate these to have been indicated by the name “deeps”—St. Basil (homily 1 on the Hexaemeron), St. Ambrose (bk. 1 on the Hexaemeron ch. 8), St. Jerome (on Job ch. 38), Eucherius, Caietanus, and the Glossa Ordinaria on Genesis—[holding] that within the bowels of the earth air and fire, no less than water, are enclosed; but at that time, certainly, they were not yet enclosed.

Question 4

How many, and which, Elements did the ancients—and especially the Fathers—recognize from Moses?

[XVI.] There are, among the Peripatetics—not to mention the Epicureans and Hippocrates—four simple bodies beneath the heaven, which they call “elements”: namely Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. And they are called “simple” because, although they are composed of matter and form, they nevertheless have no admixture of secondary [elements], but are contained by the properties of the primary qualities. That all mixed [bodies] consist of these, either actually or virtually, is well known from Aristotle (bks. 1 and 2 On the Heaven, and On Generation, etc.), the commentators, and most other Philosophers. Concerning these stands that most forceful argument, drawn from the primary qualities: namely, that just as there is given a dry-and-cold element, which is Earth, and a cold-and-moist, which is Water, so there is given a hot-and-moist, namely Air, and a hot-and-dry, namely Ether or Fire—so that between the extremes of the contraries there may also be given means, that one may pass over into another by a symbol [quality] proximately shared, or may suffer as little as possible from the extreme contrary. Which opinion…

[Margin: 1st Opinion: Four Elements, the four distinguished by the heavens.]

(continued, printed p. 201): …which opinion many have embraced; St. Gregory of Nyssa expounds it elegantly (in his On Philosophy ch. 2), or rather Nemesius (whose work it is), as St. Basil ascribes (homily 4 of the Hexaemeron); St. Ambrose (Hexaemeron ch. 4); St. George of Pisidia in his work on the making of the World; and Michael Psellus in the book he entitles A Mockery of the Gentile Philosophers and Poets (esp. bk. 1).

[2nd Opinion — four elements, “Heaven” taken for fire.] Yet others admitted the four elements, but [held] that by the name “Heaven” fire (the aether) is set down—distinguishing it so that “Heaven” is the fiery element. The Stoics call it [a fiery body]; so Pythagoras, Heraclitus (fire), and Empedocles (in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata bk. 4) enumerated the four parts of the World, saying: “Earth, and the swelling Sea, and the moist Air, and the Titan Aether that binds all things in a circle.” Pliny too (bk. 2 ch. 5): “Nor do I see [reason] to doubt that the elements are four—fire highest, whence [come] the eyes of so many shining stars.” So already Tostatus and Plato, reading Moses, judged that by the name “Heaven” is signified Fire, the highest of the four elements; so Rupert (on Genesis ch. 8), and Tostatus in his postils [“the elements are four”]. Plato too understands here what I have explained—that by “Heaven” is meant fire; and that “Heaven” here signifies, together [with the rest], the four elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) enumerated in this place. So St. Augustine (On Genesis to the Letter, Imperfect [Work], ch. 4): “thus these four [elements] are signified, of which this visible World [consists]—namely Heaven, Earth, Water, and Air.” St. Bede follows in his Exposition of Genesis, saying that by this Scripture it is set forth, in fitting order, that the World consists of four elements—Heaven, Air, Water, and Earth—the highest [reckoned] by the air’s exhalations [as warm], the lowest [by the air] upon the level earth. So Hugh of St.-Cher in his postils: “In the creation of the world, Heaven and Earth (the first and the lowest among the four elements) were created at the same time, and together with them likewise the two middle ones—namely air and water—confused and intermixed together, but afterward separated.”

[5th — five elements, according to Pythagoras.] Yet Pythagoras seems to have posited five elements—that is, the heaven and the four common ones—since Plutarch (bk. 2 On the Opinions [of the Philosophers] ch. 6) says: “God, in the creation of the world, [employed] five elements, and the [fifth] the regular bodies”—of which [I speak] at num. 18 [below].

[3rd Opinion — three elements; heaven not among them.] Next to these are those who recognized and asserted three elements only—Earth, Water, Air. Such were Zoroaster, Hermes, and Orpheus, as Francesco Patrizi shows (Pancosmia bk. 12); and among the moderns, Copernicus (bk. 1 ch. 8) and Cardanus (On Subtlety bk. 1, calling Earth and Water “passive” and Air “active”); and Tycho (Progymnasmata vol. 1, pp. 91–92, and frequently in his letters to Rothmann), who contends that there is nothing [intervening] between air and aether, but that air extends almost to the Moon and differs imperceptibly in transparency, like aether or an aethereal aura—yet not for that reason of the same nature and species as [common] air. Kepler holds the same (in his Optics, in [the work on] Mars, and in the Epitome of Astronomy), calling the aether—as the Heaven of the Planets—an “aethereal aura”; whom Claudius Marius Victor, Tertullian, and Strabo (to be cited below at no. 18) strongly favour. Add to these Rothmann, who (Tycho attests, vol. 1 p. 92) recognized, besides Earth and Water, only air, extended up to the supreme Heaven.

[4th Opinion — two elements only.] But only two elements did many of the ancients before Aristotle recognize—namely Earth and Water; for they called the air “void.” Hence Paulus Burgensis (in his Additions on Genesis) reckons that these two only were expressed by Moses, that he might accommodate himself to the ruder [people]. Telesius, on the contrary, recognized only two elements, Fire and Earth—which were indicated by Moses under the names “Heaven and Earth”—holding that Water and Air are by no means primary bodies, but secondary.

Question 5

What was “Chaos” among the Poets, the Philosophers, and the Theologians?

[XVII.] Laertius reports (bk. 1, in the life of Epicurus) that [Epicurus] turned from the teaching of Grammar to Philosophy, after he had asked what “Chaos” was in Hesiod, and neither the Grammarians nor the Sophists had satisfied him. For us, however, the greater necessity lies in declaring that Chaos which Moses indicated in sacred Genesis—and which the Fathers [understood]—as against [the Chaos] which certain Philosophers or Poets dreamed up, teeming with profane error.

“Chaos” is a Greek word, cháos, said [to come] not so much from chéo (“I pour”) as from “the deeper” [pouring]—from chéo, which is “to pour, and by pouring to confound many things into one,” in the way that the burning of Corinth melted diverse metals and fused them into one bronze (called “Corinthian”). Thus it signifies a confusion, and a mingling or aggregation of many things together at once. In Hebrew it is called Aphar, that is, “mud” (so our Salianus thinks, in his Apparatus ch. 11); or rather Tohu (“empty earth”) and va-Bohu (“void”)—or, as our Fernandus renders it, “solitude and emptiness”—whence, by changing the letter Thau into Chav, “Chaos” is said (so in Steuchus’s Cosmopoeia). Hence too, by metaphor or a certain analogy, the darkness and gloom of the underworld are called “Chaos”: so Virgil (Aeneid 6):

“Ye gods, whose is the empire of souls, and ye silent shades, and Chaos, and Phlegethon, regions silent far and wide in the night”;

and Valerius Flaccus (Argonautica bk. 7):

“Through Chaos the blind shades run forth without voices.”

Indeed, even in the Gospel (Luke 16): “Between us and you a great chaos is fixed.” And the same [word] is transferred to night, because of the confusion of colours and things—as in the Church’s hymn at the Vespers of the Lord’s Day:

“Thou who biddest the morning be joined to the evening, and callest it ‘day’… the foul Chaos glides in”—

that is, night comes on. But properly it signifies that rude and undigested mass out of which all bodies were afterward made. Yet among writers there are various other and better-known acceptations of it:

[Margin: The 1st and 2nd notion of “Chaos.”]

First, Hesiod and certain of the ancients imagined Chaos as unbegotten, existing before all the gods—that is, an ingenerate matter. Secondly, very many said that it was a certain formless matter, or [matter] under one rude form, which in act was neither heaven nor any of the elements, but [existed] only in potency, as the seed-bed of all corporeal things. So Trismegistus (in the Pimander): [all things] were enclosed in Chaos by power and virtue before they were separated and set apart; whence Euripides (in Steuchus’s Cosmopoeia):

“Heaven and Earth were of one form; but when they had been separated [from their] mutual embrace, every begotten thing emerged into the light.”

And Ovid (Metamorphoses 1) expressly said—when “nothing kept its own form”—and in the same place:

“Before the sea and the lands, and the heaven that covers all, Nature wore one single face throughout the whole orb, which men called Chaos: a rude and undigested mass, nothing but an inert weight, the discordant seeds of ill-joined things heaped together in one. … Where there was earth, there too were sea and air; cold things strove with hot, moist with dry, soft with hard, things weightless with things having weight. This strife God, and a better Nature, resolved.”

And St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his poem On the Praises of Virginity:

“And once [a darkness] covered all things, horrid with shadows; there was no splendour of dawn… but a reckless motion rolled all things confused together, bound with the heavy chains of darkness, which ancient Chaos poured forth over the whole orb.”

So too Claudius Marius Victor sang (Commentary on Genesis):

“And that rich Wisdom might make this World, it begot all things together; but afterwards the seeds of things [were] adorned…”

“…adorned, [Wisdom] which before had clothed formless things with forms.”

Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel bk. 1 ch. 4) said: “It is handed down that there was at first one form of all things, Heaven and Earth being confused together, but afterward they were set apart,” etc.

[Margin: What is the “void [formless] matter”?]

[XVII. — continued] Chaos taken in this notion [as formless matter], not a few have supposed to have been signified by Moses under the name “Heaven and Earth,” or at least under the name “Earth void and empty”—as also that [passage] of Wisdom 11[:18]: “For thy almighty hand was not unable, which created the world out of unseen [invisible] matter”; and that of St. Paul (Heb. 11[:3]): “By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, that from invisible things visible things might be made.” That [word] of Wisdom in the Greek of the Seventy is ex amórphou hýles (ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης), “out of formless matter”—of which I have already spoken (q. 3, num. 11).

And so, in the first place, St. Augustine (Confessions bk. 12 ch. 10; bk. 1 On Genesis against the Manichees; and On Genesis to the Letter, Imperfect [Work]): “The first matter was made confused and formless, out of which [all things] were distinguished and formed; which I believe is called ‘Chaos’ by the Greeks; and in another place we believe it was said to thee, in [the book of thy] praises, that thou madest the world out of formless matter.” And (ch. 7): “Out of nothing God made that matter; first the Heaven and Earth”—i.e. the angels, and it was said “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth,” not because it was already made, but because it could come to be. And (Imperfect [Work] ch. 4) he calls this matter “the seed of heaven and earth,” which is not yet heaven, but [from which], when [the seeds] meet together among themselves, [things] presently are born. And (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter ch. 14) it is plain that he did not grant to this matter a priority of time, but only of origin, and that thus it preceded the forms as sound precedes the voice [word]; for he says: “Not that formless matter is prior in time to the things formed, since both are concreated together—as the voice is the matter of words, but the words are [the] formed [thing]… just as he who speaks first utters a formless sound which he may afterward gather and form into words, so God the Creator first made formless matter and afterward, as it were, brought it forth [into form]; for by [an act of] forming he created the matter. But because that out of which something is made, even if not prior in time, is in a certain manner prior in origin…”

Philo too (in his On the Making of the World), having said “Moses ascended to the very summit of Philosophy,” subjoins that, by his narration, there was made by God a substance having nothing of good in itself, but able to become anything whatever; “for it was of itself formless, full of rude confusion and, as it were, discord, but capable [of all],” etc. St. Gregory of Nyssa concurs (On the History of the Six Days), where, on the work of God, he says: “But all things [were made] together with the Maker, at once, in which matter [the world] consisted, by a wise and likewise powerful will, so that he did not need to labour beforehand at the making”; and he heaped together the light with the heavy, the solid, the dense, the rare, etc.—“for none of these [is] in the matter by itself, but when they meet together among themselves, the matter coalesces.” And not much after: “For when the whole nature of things had been created at once, in one moment of the divine will, promiscuously and without distinction, and all the elements were intermixed among themselves,” etc.

The other Gregory, Nazianzen, indicates the same matter (On the Holy Spirit): “It is agreed that in six days God formed the substance of the matter,” etc. And St. Gregory the Great (on Job, bk. 4): “The substance of the matter was created at once, but it was not created in [its] forms by species; and what existed at once through the substantial matter did not appear at once through the species of form.” Philastrius expressly agrees (in his Catalogue of Heresies, heresy 63), saying: “There is another heresy which, speaking ambiguously of the earth, [says] that this [earth] alone is, and that the other is not, being ignorant that there is another [earth] which is, as it were, the matter of all things, in virtue—which contains [all]… which is invisible and unformed, [and] was made by God on the first day; whereas this [earth] in which we dwell is shown to be founded upon the water, as David said: ‘Who hast founded the earth upon the waters.’” No less clearly Tatian (Oration against the Greeks): “Thus the matter stands: the whole machine of the world, and whatever is established in it, is constituted of matter; but the matter itself was produced by God, so that before it was discerned it is understood [to be] rude and formless, and afterward [was] partly shaped and arranged [as to] its [distinct] separation.” Theophilus of Antioch too, explaining the first and second verses of Genesis ch. 1 (bk. 2 To Autolycus), concludes [the like].

[Margin: Psalm 103.]

This, in the first place, sacred Scripture does and admonishes—that it may teach that the matter, of which the World consisted, was in a manner made by God and passed into a becoming order. Most briefly, Alcuin (q. 19 on Genesis): “In formless matter [God], who [is] for eternity to sight, created all things at once”; and he repeats the same (q. 11). Let us come to later ages. Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences (bk. 2, dist. 12), explaining the first and second verse of Genesis, says: “Heaven”—that is, the Angels—“and Earth”—namely the matter of the four elements, as yet confused and formless, which by the Greeks is called “Chaos,” and was before any day. Some indeed handed down that all things were created at once in matter and form—which Augustine seems [to hold] in the [literal] sense. Others, however, rather approved this: that by God a formless matter, holding the mixture and confusion of the four elements, was created; but afterward, by intervals (so to speak), those six kinds of corporeal things were formed out of that matter, according to their proper species. This opinion Gregory, Jerome, Bede, and many others commend and prefer; and it seems to agree better with the Scripture of Genesis. Yet afterwards Scripture seems to acknowledge Chaos and that matter [as composed] of the elements in act, but confused and not yet adorned—as we shall say in the fourth opinion, to be cited at num. 19—although St. Bonaventure reckons it in this second class (as is more evident in him, bk. 2, dist. 12, q. 4, art. 1). There is another, more reasonable mode of speaking: that that matter was produced under some form—a single rude and complete [form]—and that it was not “informed” [unformed] in such a way that it would [still] be called formless matter, nor that the matter’s appetite is terminated by [that] form, since the matter as yet demands other forms, under which it was first created. Alphonsus Tostatus, in his postils on Genesis, prefers this opinion, though he does not condemn the other (to be cited below at num. 19); for he says: “The second position [is], that in the beginning of time the incorporeal things—namely the Angels—were created, and the matter of all corporeal things too under a common corporeity, not determined to any species of created things; and afterward, through [the six days], there was the distinction of things into species.” So Strabo, Bede, and other doctors prefer; and this position much conforms with the letter.

[XVIII.] The third opinion places Chaos, or the matter of the Heavens and the elements, under the form of one predominant element or simple body; and this body some called “iron” (Xenophanes), others “watery” (Hesiod, Thales of Miletus, and Xenocrates), others “fiery” (Parmenides—from [its] glowing, or fire, as Epicurus says). As to the order in which the elements were separated out of this Chaos, the natural Philosophers held diverse views, as Plutarch [reports] (bk. 2 On the Opinions [of the Philosophers], chs. 6 and 7). Most of them, called “Physicists,” said their beginning was “from the centre,” and that the earth was made first—because the globe is the principle [origin]. Empedocles…

[Margins: Third Opinion about Chaos; The order of separation of the Elements.]

(continued, printed p. 203): Empedocles [held] that the air was first separated out, then fire, then earth, and last water. Plato judged that the visible world was made in the likeness of the intelligible world, so that—just as in [the intelligible world] the animate was made first, then the body, and in the body first the fiery and earthy portion, then the airy and watery—[so in the visible]: then air and water. So Plutarch (ch. 6); but in ch. 7 he reports Plato’s own words, [to the effect] that in his view [there came] first fire [out of] the confusion, then air, after which earth and water. He [Plato] understood “earth” somewhat differently, as in ch. 6 [Plutarch says] of Pythagoras; for when [Plutarch] had said, “Pythagoras [derives] the beginning of the world from fire and the fifth element,” he adds: “according to the figure and order of the five regular bodies.”

[Margin: The five regular bodies, according to Pythagoras and Plato.]

For Pythagoras makes these five solid figures (which are called “mathematical”): from the cube, earth; from the pyramid [tetrahedron], fire; from the octahedron (i.e. the eight-faced [solid]), air; from the icosahedron (i.e. the twenty-faced figure), water; and from the dodecahedron (i.e. the twelve-faced [solid]), the universe—the whole globe. In all of which Plato “Pythagorizes.” Lastly, St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the History of the Six Days) teaches that fire came forth first from Chaos, and that by it the rest were illuminated; for by “light” [he holds that] the matter was first said [to receive its] separation out of Chaos.

[XIX.] The fourth opinion recognizes in Chaos the elements in act, according to their own simple forms, but mixed—either all or some. Such was that famous Anaxagoras with his homoiomeria [“like-parts”], and Empedocles—except that Anaxagoras went somewhat further [in this]. But St. Basil expressly (homily 1 on the Hexaemeron) first disapproves the opinion (cited in the second place) concerning formless matter, saying: “But the depravers of truth, not accommodating their own mind to Scripture, but drawing the mind of the Scriptures to their own will—and perverting [it]—say that matter is hinted at in these words”; “out of which,” he says, “[that] void and invisible and unformed [thing]—inasmuch as it is shaped by every quality, form, and figure.” Then he explains in what way the earth is called “invisible and unformed”—namely, because it was covered with waters—and (in the first homily) [shows] that the rest of the elements were created [and] then under their forms, saying: “From the two outermost principles… naming heaven and earth.”

Besides these, St. Anselm [and] Caietanus (bk. 1 On the Image of the World) call the matter, out of which all things were created, “the four elements”: “In the matter, as out of four elements, they created all corporeal things.” Lastly, that that Chaos was the heaven and the four elements in act, complete with their substantial forms, teach Theodoret (bk. 1, Questions on Genesis), Rupert (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 7), Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils), Ascanius Martinengus (Glossa Magna p. 17), Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days), Henry [of Ghent] (Quodlibet 6, last question), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis p. 31), and Tanner (q. 2 On the Heaven).

[Margin: The order of the Elements in Chaos.]

Among the authors of this class, the dispositions of these elements in Chaos were various. For according to Empedocles, and SS. Basil, Ambrose, Damascene, and most of the Greeks, [and] St. Anselm, Alcuin, Caietanus, and Pererius, the Earth was, in that first instant, in the lowest place; upon the earth, water; upon the water, air; upon the air, fire; upon the fire, ether or heaven. But according to Junilius, fire and air were enclosed within the Earth, and above the earth was water. According to Strabo, Lyranus, Hugh of St.-Victor, and Richard of St.-Victor, the Earth was lowest, [and] above it the three remaining elements confused, in the manner of a thick mist, up to the Heaven. But according to Pope Innocent [III], the heaven was in the lowest place [as] fire, and earth [too], but water mixed with air in the middle—so [he holds] in [his] fifth penitential [sermon]. In what way this formless matter is called “invisible and unformed” was sufficiently explained at q. 3, num. 11.

[XX.] The fifth opinion, besides the heaven (placed outside Chaos), recognizes in Chaos only Earth and Water in act, but [holds] that out of these all the [other] bodies were thereafter made. Of this opinion was Homer, as he brings in [people] imprecating an utter destruction upon their enemies in that verse:

“But may you all return into earth and water.”

Adducing which verse, St. Justin says: “through vehement wrath [he wished] them dissolved by the earth into [their] ancient nature.” So too Eugubinus (bk. 1 On the Perennial Philosophy). Orpheus thinks almost the same, who called that primary matter hýle (ὕλη)—that is, “mud,” composed of earth and water, which the Hebrews call Aphar—although in Patrizi he posited three elements. This opinion William of Paris learnedly maintains (chs. 3, 39); Alexander of Hales (part 2, q. 4, member 2); Rupert (bk. 1 on Genesis ch. 6); and our Molina (On the Work of the Six Days, disp. 2); and Salianus subscribes (in his Apparatus to the Annals, chs. 6, 11), and our Fernandus (bk. on Genesis ch. 1, sect. 2). And Steuchus (in the Cosmopoeia) says: “The beginning of all earthly things was the hyle or [first] form; and that, for the creating, the earth was the muddy [first matter] of the elements, that all things might come to be from it”; for he shows that hyle is, as it were, illys or “mud”—out of which he teaches that air and fire were afterward made; and he adds that the “void and empty Earth” (i.e. Tohu and Bohu) was rightly so called by Moses; and that this very thing the old Latins [called] Chohum—for so, in its first origin, they named the World, as Festus Pompeius notes—and that among the Greeks [it is] “Chaos,” Thau being changed into Chav; and so from that Hebrew root flowed the names “Chaos” and “Chohum.” But Telesius posits two elements [only], Fire and Earth, which are indicated by Moses under the names “Heaven and Earth.” Three elements, however, were posited by Zoroaster, Hermes, and Orpheus (as has been said, which you may credit to Patrizi, Pancosmia bk. 12); likewise Orpheus [in] Cardanus (bk. 2 On Subtlety); Tycho (vol. 1 Progymnasmata p. 91); and Kepler (in his Optics and in the Epitome)—[holding] that this Chaos, if it coalesced out of elements, was compacted of these three [according to them].

[XXI.] The sixth opinion, midway between the fourth and fifth, places in Chaos three elements only—namely Earth, Water, Air—inasmuch as…

[Margins: Fifth Opinion about Chaos; Sixth Opinion about Chaos.]

(printed p. 204): The page continues an argument that Moses expressly set down three elements under the names “Earth,” “Water,” and “Spirit,” a view supported by Cyprian the Poet in his poem on Genesis and by verses of Claudius Marius Victor on Genesis.

“But when at once they reach the first beginnings of things: the convex vaults of the high pole, and the lands lying [below], are the first part of the work; but a wave covered the lands, [the earth] dripping with an airy mass of foul cloud, and over itself the vast, slippery deep [lay] in darkness.”

[Translator’s note: these verses are corrupt as printed (e.g. the opening word and line 4); the sense is rendered as best it can be construed.]

And Tertullian, disputing against Hermogenes, denies that there are two earths—one previously formless, the other formed—saying (ch. 31): “But God is one, and the earth is one, which God made in the beginning”; and he adds (ch. 32): “For if [it speaks] of darkness and earth—and, by ‘darkness,’ of [what is] over the deep—then without doubt both the darkness and the deep [are] beneath the earth. But under the heaven the spirit, like the waters, lay beneath; for if water [was] over the earth, with which they had covered it, and the spirit over the waters, then likewise the spirit, like the waters, [was] over the earth. And as [the spirit was] over the earth, so [was] the heaven; and because the Earth thus [lay] beneath the deep and the darkness, so also the heaven brooded over the spirit and the water.” From which it plainly appears that by the name [spirit] he understood the air, or took [it] for the same as all that was between the water and the heaven.

Strabo, too (in the Glossa Ordinaria), seems to favour [this], inasmuch as among the elements which were first mixed he places Earth, and Water in all that space which is now air but then mixed with the air, like a thick cloud—unless you also establish darkness in it. And then, to this opinion [belong] Zoroaster, Hermes, Cardanus (bk. 2 On Subtlety), Tycho (vol. 1 Progymnasmata, p. 91), and Kepler (in the Epitome); and so they posited only three elements—namely Earth, Water, and Air.

Lastly, to this opinion can be recalled those who, [reckoning] the heaven among the first elements [as] the beginning, yet posited as elements distinct from the heaven only Earth, Water, and Air, and nevertheless did not take “heaven” for fire: as St. Augustine (On Genesis to the Letter, Imperfect [Work], ch. 4), Bede (in his Exposition of Genesis), and Innocent III (on the fifth penitential Psalm), placing water and air confused together (whose words I cited above); and John Penna the Frenchman; and also some of the more recent [authors] who—Tycho attests (vol. 1, p. 92)—from the air’s [indistinct] transparency gather the heaven to be of the same nature as air, and so [hold] that there are only three elements.

[Margin: Sixth Opinion about Chaos.]

[XXII.] The seventh opinion seems to posit that, in the beginning of the World, only the supreme heaven and the Earth were created from nothing, but that Water and the rest of the bodies were produced afterward; and it is St. Gregory’s, as you may read in his whole discourse on Genesis [and] on Job (ch. 38). Wherefore, according to him, Chaos included only the earth; for the rest of the heavens and the other bodies were produced from water, and the water from earth, as he teaches in the same place. But it is hard to grasp [this]: for the earth never occupied the whole space which is now between the earth and the supreme heaven—and does it afterward, [once] sown [with things], occupy less space? Or was there a vacuum between it and the heaven? Whatever you say will be against the rest of the Fathers and Philosophers, and little consonant with the Scripture of Genesis. We shall suppose the waters created at once together with the earth.

[Margin: Seventh Opinion about Chaos.]

[XXIII.] The eighth opinion is our own, which has as patrons the authors of the third [opinion], and some of the second (if we interpret them [favourably]), and some of the fourth and sixth—provided, namely, that no fire is granted [as a distinct element], or none distinct from the visible heaven; although, as to [the precise] order, not even all [the authors] of the third opinion agree with us. For we assert that the World was not made by God out of ingenerate or formless matter, but that [the elements] were created by God at this first instant—not from the [matter] of the first opinion, for that would be heretical; nor from a formless or indistinctly-formed matter, such that there was not actually Earth, nor Water, nor Air, but only in potency (as the second opinion asserts)—both because that imperfection would not befit God the Maker, and because Moses [names] no moment or day on which God thereafter drew the elements out of that matter, and because, if at that first instant there were not actually heaven or earth but [only] potentially, Moses would [not] have used those names, nor given the rude people occasion to err and to understand “heaven and earth” in the sense in which they are understood in Psalm 101[:26], where it is said: “In the beginning thou, Lord, didst found the earth, and the works of thy hands are the heavens.”

Then especially [we so hold] because sacred Scripture, so long as no manifest contradiction follows from the literal sense, must be taken according to the proper and historical sense which the letter affords; but sacred Scripture (Genesis 1) says that heaven and earth were created by God in the beginning, and that before light was made, or anything else, there was water, and over the water a spirit; therefore we must understand these as created in the beginning by God according to their proper forms—even though fire is indicated by the common name “spirit” or “heaven,” or [unless] in no way is an element of fire granted [as distinct].

Nor do these [our positions] conflict with those words, “the Earth void and empty,” or “out of unseen [or] formless matter”; nay, these words are reconciled, without any violence, with Earth, Water, Air, and Heaven [taken as] substantially complete—and that in three ways: first, by reason of the defect of light; secondly, on account of the unevenness of the Earth, beset on every side by water, so that, even if there had been light and eyes, the eyes of animals could nevertheless have seen nothing of the earth, much less above it; thirdly and chiefly, on account of the defect of the forms of mixed bodies, and of colours and other accidents and secondary sensible qualities—by reason of which [the Earth] was formless and unworthy to be seen, as we have also expounded (q. 3, from num. 11).

But neither does it stand in the way that so many Fathers were adduced for the second opinion; for many can or must be understood of formless matter [as] preceding the formation of the elements only in origin and nature, not in time; so St. Thomas, with St. Augustine, and Augustine’s followers, understood [it]. And granted that God created the Earth, no solid reason can be adduced why he should not [have created] all the elements from nothing—whether this [earth] was first, or whatever [order] it had.

[Margin: The order of the Elements in Chaos.]

As regards the order, I say that God did no violence to those elements, but placed them as their nature required: before he thereafter brought forth the place of the animals, he set the earth at the bottom and middle of the world, water over the earth (since the dry land was not yet made), spirit [air] over the waters, and the ethereal [element]—that is, fire—over the air; so that the Earth could be called simply “void and dry,” even though it had waters within at that first instant, according to what is said more fully at num. 10.

[Translator’s note: the printed text of the element-order phrase is garbled (”& ignem super aquas, & aerem, sed ignem & datur super aetherem”); the natural ascending order—earth, water, air, fire/ether—is clearly intended and is so rendered.]

Question 6

Whether there is an Empyrean heaven; and when it was made, and of what sort it is.

[XXIV.] By the name “Empyrean heaven” is understood the heaven highest of all—invisible to us in this life and devoid of motion—within which, or above whose surface, the holy and blessed Angels and men are and shall be. It is called “Empyrean” from the purest light with which it is believed to be endowed: that is, “splendid,” i.e. endowed with true light; or “flaming” or “fiery,” from the Greek word pŷr (πῦρ), which signifies a flame tending upward, or fire—[so named] from [its] heat or splendour, as Strabo and Hugh and the Master teach (Sentences bk. 2, dist. 12); or because this heaven is the highest of the elements, so that it is fiery or hot (as Suárez says, bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4). Its various names and descriptions we have in the sacred letters, for our solace and the hope of the eternal life which we [there] find—[for] not once [only] does God, under this name, [show himself as] glowing toward those who love him. These names will serve us as our first argument [for] such a heaven [being] distinct from the others. For the one [author] whom we know [to differ], Cajetan (on 2 Corinthians ch. 12), dared, against the torrent of the Fathers and Doctors, to deny such a heaven, and to say that God [confers] his happiness upon the Blessed in no corporeal place; for he speaks thus: “Unto the third heaven, that is, unto the supreme heaven, unto the place where God and the Blessed are said to dwell, unto the heavenly fatherland. And that place is called the supreme third heaven, because in sacred Scripture mention is made of three heavens. The lowest is the aerial heaven, according to that [phrase], ‘the birds of heaven’; the middle is the starry heaven, of which [it speaks] in the beginning of Genesis, ‘And he set them in the firmament of heaven’; the third and highest is the watery heaven—all the water which is above the heavens—which Scripture often mentions, which we call the ‘watery heaven,’ but the Philosophers call the ‘Prime Mobile’; whereas an ‘Empyrean’ heaven, [as] handed down by later [writers], I do not find in Scripture.”

[Margin: Cajetan alone denies the Empyrean.]

[The closing portion of Cajetan’s quotation (“the third and highest is the watery heaven… I do not find in Scripture”) is completed here from the top of p. 205, where the sentence ends; p. 205 then resumes with Vielmus’s inference and the refutation of Cajetan.]

(printed p. 205): The page reports Vielmus’s account of Cajetan’s singular opinion that the ancient Fathers posited the Empyrean heaven without solid cause, since it is imperceptible and God and the Angels, being incorporeal, need no peculiar place. That opinion is rejected by Vielmus himself, Catharinus, Ascanius Martinengus, and Suárez, who holds the contrary to be commonly received by the Church; Riccioli announces he will prove the Empyrean’s existence by many authorities and reasons.

[XXV.] Our first argument we take from the sacred divine letters, where such a heaven is designated and described—especially when it is called “the heaven of heaven”: as Deuteronomy 10[:14], “The heaven [is] the Lord thy God’s, and the heaven of heaven.” And 2 Paralipomenon ch. 2[:6]: “For great is our God above all gods; who then shall be able to prevail to build him a worthy house? If heaven, and the heavens of heavens, cannot contain him…” And in the same book, ch. 6[:18]: “If heaven and the heavens of heavens do not contain thee, how much more this house which I have built?” And David (Psalm 113[:24]): “The heaven of heaven [is] the Lord’s, but the earth he hath given to the children of men.” And Psalm 67[:34], where, of Christ the Lord (as St. Paul interprets, Ephesians 4), having said “He ascended on high,” he subjoins: “Sing ye to God, who ascendeth above the heaven of heaven, to the East.” This same [heaven] is called “the seat of God, and his dwelling-place” (2 Paralipomenon ch. 6); and Solomon [so understood] that [saying] of Moses (Exodus 15[:17]): “the firm seat of thy dwelling which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.” And Moses himself (Deuteronomy 26[:15]): “Look down from thy holy [dwelling], and from thy high habitation”; and (Deuteronomy 33[:26]): “There is no other God like the God of the most upright, the rider of heaven, thy helper, whose dwelling-place [is] above.” For from the earthly sanctuary, tabernacle, and temple, the ancients rose up to contemplate the heavenly and immovable [dwelling]—that Tabernacle which can by no means be moved—of which [it speaks in] Psalm 31[/32:14]: “The Lord hath looked down from heaven, from his prepared dwelling-place”; and Psalm 101[:20]: “The Lord hath prepared [his seat] in heaven”; and Isaiah 66[:1] and Acts 7[:49]: “Heaven is my throne, but the earth my footstool”—[which is] the throne, house, and habitation not of God [only], but of the Elect, according to that [word] of the Apostle (2 Corinthians 5[:1]): “We know that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” And [it is called] the Jerusalem which is above, the heavenly: of which [it speaks] to the Galatians (4[:26]): “But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother”; of which assuredly we think it is said (Psalm 147): “Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem… who hath set peace in thy borders”; and Psalm 121[:3]: “Jerusalem, which is built as a city, whose participation is in itself… and mayst thou see the good things of Jerusalem all the days of thy life”; and Psalm 146[:2]: “The Lord buildeth up Jerusalem; he will gather together the dispersed of Israel”; and Tobit 13: “Blessed shall I be if there shall remain of my seed, to see the brightness of Jerusalem; the gates of Jerusalem shall be built of sapphire and emerald… and through its streets Alleluia shall be sung.” From which it appears that, by a prophetic spirit, [the Psalmist] looked most fixedly to that holy City, Jerusalem, which St. John (Apocalypse 21[:2]) saw descending, like a bride adorned for her husband. And this same is said in that place (Psalm 67[:6–7]): “God [is] in his holy place; God, who maketh men of one manner to dwell in a house”; and in the same place, “The mountain in which it hath well pleased God to dwell; for the Lord shall dwell [there] unto the end.” Finally it is called “the region of the living” and “the land of the living” (Psalm 26[:13] and 141[/142:6]); and “Paradise” (Luke 23[:43]): “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise”; and (Apocalypse 2[:7]): “To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of my God”—to which Paradise, in the third heaven, St. Paul relates that he was caught up (2 Corinthians 12[:2, 4]); and St. Francis of Assisi was rapt in ecstasy at merely hearing the name of Paradise.

[Translator’s note: Riccioli’s citations follow the Vulgate psalm-numbering. The verse “God in his holy place…” which he assigns to “Psalm 47” is in fact Psalm 67:6–7 (Vulgate); the printed “47” appears to be a slip, and is given here as 67.]

[Margins: First Argument: from Sacred Scripture.]

[XXVI.] The second argument is from the authority of the Fathers and Doctors—and indeed of the ancients also, and of very many (besides Philo, of whom [it was spoken] at num. 30). For St. Clement (bk. 1 of the Recognitions), in the mouth of Peter disputing with Simon Magus, so reports: “This visible heaven was made, which is resoluble [destructible] for the sake of the present life; and so it is a kind of partition made of air, since [otherwise] the habitation of the heavenly [beings] and the place full of God would be seen [exposed] among the unworthy.” And again, when Simon had said that he acknowledged and preached one heaven [only] created in the whole world, Peter says: “Not so; but [we hold] in common that there is one heaven [which is] God, who truly is, but [that] there are heavens which were made by him—as the Law also says—[for] there is contained, besides ‘the visible firmament,’ also that visible Firmament; but [there is] that supernal and invisible [one], in which those [blessed] dwell; and this [firm one] is to be dissolved at the consummation of the age.” Which things are, as it were, said by St. Peter (2 Peter 1). After him, Pope Anacletus (in a decretal epistle, at the end) says: “The Lord, from the celestial aura and the Empyrean dwelling, took and assumed flesh in the most chaste Virgin’s womb for our redemption.” From which you see that this name [Empyrean] was not coined by Bede or [Peter Lombard], as Pererius thought (bk. 1 on Genesis, p. 29, against Martinengus in the Glossa, p. 9). Plato too knew this heaven, St. Justin attests (in his panegyric Oration, [the] Admonition to the Gentiles), in these words: “And in the same way, of heaven: there is that [heaven] which is itself [eternal]; and that heaven which was made and falls under sense; the other is that which is comprehended by intelligence and reason, of which the Prophet says, ‘The heaven of heaven [is] the Lord’s’“—as if Plato believed the Empyrean to be unmade, and from eternity. Moreover, St. Clement of Alexandria (bk. 5 of the Stromata) thinks that Orpheus and Homer [placed God] beneath the name of “Olympus-heaven”; and therefore, [on] that “Heaven is my throne, but the earth my footstool,” he adduces those verses of Orpheus concerning God:

“But he himself stands firm and steadfast in great Olympus; and golden is his throne, and the earth [is] at his feet”;

and similar verses of Homer—but more—by which the Lord, the God of gods, is described. So Origen too disputes (Homily 1 on Genesis): “God made heaven and earth—that is, he made this heaven, [which] is the seat; but after that he made the firmament, that is, the corporeal heaven,” understanding by the name [of “heaven”] the visible [heaven]; and (bk. 2 Peri Archon ch. 9): “this whole is called the World, in which certain things are said to be supercelestial, placed in the habitations of the blessed and in the heavenly and more splendid bodies.”

That this was the common opinion even in his own times, St. Hilary sufficiently indicates (in his Enarration on Psalm 122); for when he had said: “This heaven, which is [open] to our sight, lies subject to the matter of its [creation], which yet firmly consolidates [it]; it has received both the nature and the name of ‘firmament’; it shall perish, yet it shall not [wholly] perish; but it sits [fast], and the Lord’s [heaven] remains unto the end”—not long after he added: “But because, according to corporeal understanding, that sense lies subject to us, so that the heaven which is beyond the nature of this firmament,” etc., “is reckoned to be God’s dwelling—let us not exclude that public opinion concerning God’s seat, that the heaven of heaven is also [his] throne,” etc. And he renders the fitness of creating this heaven (in his Enarration on Psalm 129[?]), saying: “When he had gathered together the region of [some infinite power], allocating it above the heaven, and first, and likewise into an orb, he enclosed a certain bound for the powers (virtutes) which were first begotten for the knowing of him; but because, according to [their] created [condition], the powers could not bear the inconspicuable [things] of God, they dwelt in a seat moderated by the interposition of a temper of nature, [accommodated] to the infirmity of their moderation. For the waters, being lifted up, [served] to temper that very nature of the first heaven… whereas the lower heaven—not uniform, but manifold—he extended, [the heaven] which he called the whole ‘firmament,’ strong for the sustaining of the upper waters, and solidified with the temper of our air.” And so, just as the damned in Gehenna inhabit a smoky and dark fire and a dense gloom, so, on the contrary (according to St. Hilary), [the blessed] inhabit a most lucid fire, or region, kindled by God’s name; and perhaps the corporeal eyes of the Blessed see the Divine immensity under the corporeal species of that Empyrean tempering itself to them—even though, by the intellect, or by the elevated light of glory, they behold [God] intuitively and in a nobler manner. And God is said to dwell in this heaven, because by [his] species, and face to face, he shows himself to those dwelling in it.

[Margins: Second Argument: the Authority of the Fathers, etc.; St. Clement; Anacletus; The name “Empyrean” most ancient; St. Justin and Plato; Clement of Alexandria; Origen; St. Hilary.]

[The final sentence of ¶XXVI is completed here from the top of p. 206; p. 206 then continues with St. Augustine (on Psalm 122) and further Fathers—Theophilus of Antioch, Diodorus of Tarsus, and others.]

(printed p. 206): The page marshals St. Augustine’s testimony for a heaven beyond the visible one: on Psalm 122 he distinguishes the corporeal heaven, which shall pass away, from another heaven now invisible to us, and in Confessions bk. 12 he alludes to a heaven not pertaining to earthly sight. Whether Augustine in City of God bk. 10, refuting Porphyry on the demons’ abode, meant the Empyrean or only the sidereal heaven remains unclear.

[Margin: The name “Empyrean” in St. Augustine.]

“But you learned this not from Plato, but from your Chaldaean masters, to exalt human life into the ethereal or Empyrean sublimities and the firmaments of heaven, that your gods might pronounce divine things to the Theurgists.”

But I ought to have adduced earlier the more ancient Father of the second century, Theophilus of Antioch, who says (bk. 2 To Autolycus): “For in the first place, where sacred Scripture treats of the creation, or the genesis of the World, it does not speak of this visible Firmament, but proposes a certain other heaven, invisible to us; after which this visible firmament was named.” Let St. Chrysostom follow—the teacher (as they say) of Diodore of Tarsus—saying (on Genesis ch. 1): “After the visible and intellect-endowed substances, God straightway fashioned the heaven together with the Earth—not that which is visible to sight, but that which [is] beyond all the heavens, and which David is wont to call ‘the heaven of heaven.’”

[Translator’s note: Riccioli has the relationship reversed—Diodore of Tarsus was the teacher of John Chrysostom, not the converse.]

[Margins: Theophilus of Antioch; Diodore of Tarsus.]

Already in the fifth century flourished Junilius, [author of] the Hexaemeron, where, speaking of that higher heaven and earth—or rather, of the higher heaven, which remains secret from all this World’s revolving [motion], immutable in essence, ever quiet—[he distinguishes it]; for of our heaven, in which the luminaries are placed, he wrote [otherwise] in what follows. Then, adducing the authority of St. Jerome, [he expounds] most beautifully [the place where Lucifer first was, among the angels not yet blessed].

[Margin: Junilius.]

St. Jerome too makes mention of the higher heaven, where, writing on that [text] of Isaiah 14, “I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven I will exalt my throne”: “Before he fell from heaven, this devil was saying [it]; and after he fell from heaven [too]. But if [he was] placed in heaven, how does he now say ‘I will ascend into heaven’? But because we read that the heaven of heaven [is] the Lord’s alone… in the firmament, in heaven, pride shall not dwell. But if, after he fell from heaven, he speaks these words, we must understand [his] arrogance—that not even [in his] downfall does he rest, but promises [himself] the great stars: not that he may be among the stars of God, but he adds ‘the stars of God’—perhaps for this very reason it is said that the reprobate, who hate God (that is, the demons), ‘always ascend,’ [those] who even now, with most obstinate desire, have persevered in that ancient but impious and vain purpose, ‘I will ascend,’” etc.

[Margin: And in St. Jerome.]

An author of the same age, Theodoret (bk. 1 on Genesis): “Just as that Heaven is invisible to us, so also [is] the heaven which [is] beyond it”; [and] thus Paul, caught up to the third heaven, holds the first place. In the same fifth [century] flourished St. Prosper, who says (on Psalm 113): “But God in heaven and above the earth made all things; what he willed, he made—not in these heavens above, which all bodies, celestial and terrestrial, pass beyond.”

[Margins: Theodoret; St. Prosper.]

I come now to two authors of the sixth century, of whom the former, Anastasius Sinaita (bk. 1, Commentary on the Hexaemeron), acknowledges three heavens when he speaks thus: “But if in the Davidic hymns [there is] ‘heaven of heavens,’ this is a property of the Hebrew tongue, which often names the singular in the plural; but when you hear ‘the third heaven,’ take the first heaven [to be] the air, the second the starry [heaven], the third the supreme heaven of the Angels.” Nearly contemporary with him, Procopius of Gaza more than once, and not inelegantly, depicted this heaven for us (on Genesis ch. 1); for he says: “God decreed to found most beautiful works—the one subject to change and corruption, which we behold set before our eyes; but the other free [from that], and void of the present age’s stain of evils, into which Christ first of all enters, having put on human nature; and again, [Christ] entering into this splendid workmanship after [his] second glorious advent,” etc.; and he adds that this is that inner Tabernacle (Hebrews 9). Finally he concludes: “For when Christ [had entered] into that Heaven… [the powers being subordinated to] the sensible powers, with [their] virtues intermixed: finally, the heaven which now sustains the office of [the summit] will be the foundation of the highest heaven in the common resurrection; for the first heaven [is], as it were, the heaven of heaven”; for not without reason does the Elder reckon those words, “the heaven [is] the Lord’s, but the earth he gave to the children of men.”

[Margins: Anastasius Sinaita; Procopius of Gaza.]

Nearer to both these authors was Sedulius (bk. 1 On the Marvels of the World), when, in his Collectanea on the Epistle to the Romans, on those words “the hope that is seen is not hope”: “Nothing at all, therefore, is to be hoped for in the future from these things which are seen. ‘Eye hath not seen what God hath prepared for them that love him.’ But the eye has seen heaven and earth; therefore it behoves [us] not [to believe] that this which is seen has been prepared by God for them that love him, but [to hope for] another heaven indeed—nay rather the heaven of heaven, altogether loftier than the firmament which can be seen—and [another] Earth is to be hoped for; for this dry [earth], which lies before the eyes, [is not it], but that will be the land of the meek, which the eye hath not seen.”

[Margin: Sedulius.]

I would add Bede here, but the words attributed to him in the “Work of the Six Days” are by others ascribed to Junilius, together with that whole work; and just as St. Ambrose compiled his Hexaemeron from St. Basil, so Bede [compiled] his from Junilius; and thus, for the Empyrean, we do not lack a suitable witness from the eighth century (in which Bede lived)—just as neither [do we lack] Alcuin (on Genesis ch. 1), an asserter of the same heaven in the same century. In the ninth century, distinguished was St. John Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, chs. 6 and 7), whom he reckons together with Anastasius Sinaita; and he taught (bk. 1 On the Faith, ch. 6): “Since, therefore, Scripture says ‘heaven,’ and ‘heaven of heaven,’ and ‘heavens of heavens’; and St. Paul asserts [he] was caught up to the third heaven—[this heaven] is said to have been founded in the creation of this universe; which [truth] those who flourished in the praise of wisdom among the foreigners [the Gentiles], appropriating to themselves the dogmas of Moses, [expressed by] calling [it] an orb devoid of stars.” He goes on, and a little after adds: “But indeed the first heaven is that heaven which is above the firmament; others hold there are only two heavens, for God called the firmament by the name ‘heaven’; then it is usual and familiar to Scripture to call the air too ‘heaven,’ inasmuch as it is seen above—for it says, ‘Bless [the Lord], all you birds of heaven,’ that is, of the air: behold the third heaven.”

[Margins: Bede; Alcuin; St. Damascene.]

In the same [ninth] century, Strabo (in the Glossa Ordinaria), [on] “In the beginning God created heaven and earth,” said that “heaven” [means] not the visible firmament, but the Empyrean—that is, the fiery or intellectual [heaven], so called not from heat but from splendour—which was straightway filled with Angels. With whom Rabanus [Maurus] agrees (on Genesis ch. 1). Let us pass now to the eleventh century, and hear St. Anselm of Canterbury (bk. 2 On the Image of the World, ch. 28): “Above the firmament is the spiritual heaven, unknown to men, where is the habitation of the Angels, disposed through all the orders”; and shortly after: “This is the heaven which is read [to have been] created in the beginning with the earth; far above this is said to be the heaven of Glory, in which the King of the Angels is said to dwell.” Wherefore, according to this Doctor, the sidereal heaven is subdivided into several heavens (according to the number and order of the Fixed [stars] and the Planets), and likewise the Empyrean into several heavens (according to the hierarchical order of the Saints), and among them the supreme, in which Christ dwells, he calls “heaven” by antonomasia [par excellence]; the others he calls “spiritual heavens” and “sublimities,” and [says] that they are invisible to us.

[Translator’s note: the treatise De imagine mundi is now generally attributed to Honorius Augustodunensis (of Autun), not to St. Anselm of Canterbury.]

[Margins: Strabo and Rabanus; St. Anselm.]

St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians (in his book [on Genesis], ch. 1): “Moses posits two heavens; for he says, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’—[here is] heaven, [which] is one; [and] ‘on the second day the Lord made the firmament in the midst of the waters,’ etc.—behold the other”; he adds that this second is that in which are the stars, and which we see with [our] eyes; “for to see the first heaven is impossible,” he says; and therefore indeed we do not behold [it]. The Fathers of the twelfth century [follow], namely Rupert (bk. 1, Commentary on Genesis, ch. 1), on that “In the beginning God created heaven”: “By the name ‘holy heaven’ is designated that invisible fatherland of the holy Angels”; and (ch. 16) he says that by those words he understands not [the visible] heaven, but [distinguishes it] from these tangible [things]—[those Saints] who can say “our conversation is in heaven,” where (he adds) the Supreme Pontiff, who penetrated the heavens—Jesus Christ the Son of God—is local, and sits locally, according to the true body of [the] man.

[Margins: St. Bruno; Rupert.]

(printed p. 207): The page continues the catalogue of medieval witnesses to the Empyrean heaven, citing Hugh of St.-Victor’s Summa Sententiarum, which calls it the splendid heaven filled with Angels as soon as it was made, distinct from the firmament of the second day; Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, transcribed nearly the same words.

But, connecting this [twelfth] century with the thirteenth, the first to come forward is Alexander of Hales (in the 2nd part of his Summa, q. 47, members 1 and 2), where he teaches that the Empyrean is luminous, and was fittingly made also for the blessed spirits; because the spiritual souls themselves, joined to bodies then incorruptible, require the noblest body in the universe; and between them and the spirits separated from body (which of themselves do not demand a corporeal place) there is nevertheless great affinity and congruity. He adds that this heaven has the nature of a container, and is at rest. From which teacher drew St. Bonaventure (Sentences bk. 2, dist. 1, q. 1) and St. Thomas (Part I, q. 66, art. 3): for since glorious bodies [require something corporeal] also in the bodies to be glorified, it was more fitting that from the beginning—when spiritual glory was begun—there should be also some place incorruptible, immovable, and wholly lucid, which is therefore called “Empyrean,” not from heat but from splendour. But more fully and clearly the same things about the Empyrean teaches William of Paris (and he too belongs to this century), where, in On the Universe (part 1, from p. 3 to 36), he teaches that the Empyrean was founded in the beginning of time, and [is] there most quiet, most lucid, etc.

Finally, the authors of the fourteenth century expressly acknowledge it [as] created in the beginning of the World: Lyranus (in his postils on Genesis), Alphonsus Tostatus (on Genesis ch. 1, and on Exodus ch. 2, qq. 32 and 33), Pico della Mirandola (in the Heptaplus, ch. 1, adducing the most learned Rabbis Abraham and Isaac), Catharinus (on Genesis ch. 1), and, among the more recent, Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, pp. 171 and 236)—as well as all our [theologians] who treat of this matter or of the number of the heavens, but especially Molina and Suárez (the latter, On the Work of the Six Days, bk. 1, ch. 4), Valentia (on the Prima Pars, disp. 5, q. 3, point 1), Pererius (on Genesis, bk. 1, from p. 27), Adam Tanner (On the Heaven, qq. 1 and 2; and vol. 1 of the Summa of Theology, disp. 2, q. 1, dub. 2), Salianus (Apparatus to the Annals, ch. 6), and those who have published notes [and] commentaries on Genesis—especially Cornelius à Lapide, Tirinus, [and] Fernandus; and the Conimbricenses hand [it] down (bk. 2 On the Heaven, ch. 1, q. 1).

[Margins: Hugh of St.-Victor; the Master; Alexander of Hales; SS. Bonaventure and Thomas; William of Paris; Lyranus, Tostatus, Catharinus, Pico; Molina, Valentia, Suárez, Pererius, Tanner, Salianus, Cornelius, Tirinus, Fernandus, the Conimbricenses.]

[XXVII.] The third argument is taken from reason—not, indeed, demonstrative, but resting on most fitting persuasions, which are reduced to two. The one is the perfection of the Universe: that, just as in the World there are given simple corruptible bodies (those four [elements]), so above them let there be given a body incorruptible and immovable; for that the sidereal heavens too are corruptible from within is the more probable [view], as we shall teach below (ch. 2)—just as [it is fitting] that the World be enclosed within two immovable extremes, namely the Earth and the Empyrean. The other is that it was fitting for God, from the beginning of the World, to prepare for the bodies of Christ and of the Most Blessed Virgin and of the other Saints—to be glorified in their own time—a special corporeal place, which would be the kingdom and seat of the Blessed, and in which God, as on a throne, would in a peculiar way reveal his glory to them; just as, among the eternal [things], a prison of the damned is prepared for the Devil and [his] Angels. So in Matthew 25 it is said: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Nor indeed (as Suárez notes, bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4) can this be understood only of spiritual glory; for this [was] not [prepared] from the foundation of the world, but through Jesus Christ… an incorruptible kingdom was prepared; nor was it given in execution to men from the foundation of the world; therefore the discourse there is about a corporeal place fitting for the [bodily] glorification of men. And indeed, since it was fitting that the body of Christ and of the Most Blessed Virgin [be glorified somewhere], [Suárez] says it is glorified in no [lower, mobile] heaven—since the Apostle so often preaches this of Christ, and the Catholic Church of the Blessed [and] the Virgin, [placing] them above this heaven [which is] mobile and carried round with it. Or [is it fitting that they] not have fixed feet in that part of the heaven? Was it not fitting, for the grace and honour of Christ alone and of his most holy Mother, that such a heaven be created, in which their bodies would be throughout all eternity—[seeing] that, for the present temporal use and for the shadow of a momentary felicity, God founded the mobile [heavens]? Now indeed it was fitting that the Seat of Christ, and of the Queen of the Heavens, and the body of all the Saints, be in this Empyrean heaven; therefore the Angels too [are] there, as [companions] of the blessed—even though, [being] in a corporeal heaven, they do not require to be circumscribed by place, nor desire it.

And these are the reasons by which—for the existence of this Empyrean heaven—[the following] bear [it] as a standard: Alexander [of Hales], SS. Bonaventure and Thomas (in the places cited), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, p. 29), Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4), Salianus (Apparatus to the Annals, ch. 6), and Ascanius Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, p. 244).

[Margins: 3rd Argument: from Reason; Ephesians 1.]

[XXVIII.] But when was this heaven created—[to come now] to that question? At least before this World and the elements themselves? Or rather at the first instant of this World? For Steuchus (that is, Augustinus Eugubinus), in the Cosmopoeia and in the treatise On Incorporeal Natures, among other paradoxes, dared to say that the Empyrean is something eternal and uncreated—that is, a certain light and brightness of the divinity, emanating from God’s essence, in which God is, and which [belongs] to the divinity always and necessarily with God, and by whose participation and fruition the angels (both the good Angels and just men) are admitted. For he says: this is the light and brightness of God, and the immense light of the divinity, which is above the heaven, [and] which is neither place nor body; and which Scripture so often promises to the just as their reward; of which he judges that [word] of Psalm 103 must be understood, “clothed with light as with a garment,” and that of Paul, “who dwelleth in light inaccessible” (1 Timothy 6), and that of Christ in John 17, “Glorify thou me, O Father, with the brightness which I had, before the world was, with thee.” And [he says] that a certain specimen of this light was exhibited in the [burning] bush of Moses (Exodus 3), and in the splendour of his face, and [his] colloquy with God (Exodus 34), and in the Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17). Which opinion of his he confirms from St. Basil (homilies 1 and 2 of the Hexaemeron).

[Translator’s note: “Steuchus” and “Augustinus Eugubinus” are one and the same man—Agostino Steuco of Gubbio (1497–1548); Riccioli names him both ways.]

[Margins: Whether the Empyrean was made at the beginning of the World; Eugubinus’s error about the Empyrean; 1 Timothy [6]; John [17].]

But this wholly erroneous opinion is refuted—nay, opposed—by Molina (On the Work of the Six Days, disp. 3, near the end), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, p. 28), Catharinus (in his Enarration on Genesis ch. 1), Vielmus (lecture 3 on Genesis), Ascanius Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, p. 246), Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4), and Salianus (Apparatus to the Annals, scholion on ch. 6). Catharinus, in his Enarration, asserts it to be a manifest error; Pererius [says] it must be refuted and altogether exploded, and [is] a pernicious and impious dogma; Salianus [judges it] similar to the heresy of Arnold of Brescia, in asserting that something besides God was eternal, and something which is neither creator nor creature; Martinengus and Salianus judge it erroneous and impious; but Cajetan thinks it heretical, [taken] materially. For Steuchus submitted these opinions to the judgment of the Church, and offered himself [to have them] condemned, if the Church should condemn them. But it would have been much more prudent—say Catharinus and Pererius—not to propose to the public so dangerous a dogma, nor to give occasion of error to those who, after his death, would read his work; nor [should] the censures of the Church or of the Doctors be borne against it [or] incurred; and that it should afterwards be objected against him, that he had thrust [it] upon I-know-not-whom. Wherefore, they say, [why] did you prefer to deprecate the fault, rather than to be free of it?

[Margin: Censure of Eugubinus.]

[XXIX.] They refute Eugubinus’s error with these arguments. For either he thought that Light of the Empyrean to be God himself—who, objectively illuminating the minds of the Blessed by the species of his divine essence, has [under] his name, truly by [his] immensity, the name of the “Empyrean heaven” (so indeed he seems to be understood, as Daniel [Malonius?] seems [to take it], bk. 1, dist. 2, disp. 7): wrongly, then, did he explain its specimen in the corporeal light of the bush, and of the face of Moses and of the transfigured Christ; and moreover, in this way, he denied the Empyrean heaven to have been created by God in the beginning of time—against the sense and the common authority of the Fathers and Doctors, and of every [age] from Christ down to our own, as we have already shown (num. 26).

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 208; p. 208 then continues ¶XXIX with the dilemma against Eugubinus—that the Empyrean is either really distinct from God yet uncreated (a heresy against John 1 and the Creed), or created by a necessary eternal emanation (likewise heretical).]

(printed p. 208): The page notes that Eugubinus is inconsistent with himself concerning the first light: he professes uncertainty whether it is corporeal or incorporeal, yet judges it visible both to mind and eyes, like the light of Christ’s transfigured face or of Moses’s burning bush.

[The dilemma:] Either he thought the Empyrean to be something really distinct from God and yet uncreated—and [then there is] a manifest heresy against that [word] of John 1, “All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing,” and against the express article of the Creed by which we believe in God the Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. Or this Eugubinus reckoned the Empyrean to be something distinct from God and created by him, but by a necessary and eternal emanation—and in this a twofold heresy is involved: one positing God as acting outwardly (ad extra) necessarily and not freely; the other positing some creature as really existing from eternity, against the common doctrine of the Fathers, and against the definition of the Lateran Council in the chapter “Firmiter”; nay, against Eugubinus himself, who in the same Cosmopoeia attempted—and undertook to demonstrate—that the World not only was not, but could not have been, from eternity.

Moreover, he seems to savour of the error of those who say that the Blessed do not see God in his proper substance, but [see] a clear light emanating from the divinity—whom Suárez impugns (in the Prima Pars, bk. 2 On the Attributes, ch. 7). Hence it is clear how ineptly he adduces that third [proof-text] to shore up his fiction; for that light by which God is described as “clothed” (Psalm 103) is the light of [his] garments [a metaphor]; and the “inaccessible light” which (1 Timothy 6) he is said to inhabit signifies metaphorically either the holy Angels in whose minds he dwells, or the divinity itself—since “God is light, and his Word is Light of Light”—and is nothing corporeal. And [as for] that light [shown in] the face of Moses [and] of Christ: the divine [Word] and Son of God, [shining] from eternity, was the truth of the Divinity, in which he was coequal and consubstantial with the Father, and according to which he wished to be known as the Son of God. Or, if that light is the light of glory—which [is] the express species of God, or something created and in time; finally, if it is that [light] of the Empyrean… and emanates from the bodies of the Blessed, [then] it is something corporeal, visible, and likewise created in time.

[Margins: 1 Timothy 6; John 17.]

But neither could St. Basil [be made to] support this error of Eugubinus; for, often disputing against the Arians for the eternity of the Son of God, he teaches that no eternity can befit a creature, nor [that any creature] was eternal. And so (bk. 1 Against Eunomius), alluding to that [word] of the Apostle (Hebrews 1), “through whom he made also the ages,” he said: “But since all these are the creature of the Son, we understand [them as] below the generation of the Only-begotten”; and a little after: “But if we now deem [certain things] worthy of the appellation [of eternity] because [they are] ‘from God,’ who [alone] always is—[it is] as though [the thing] received the name from him.” [For] nothing that is [truly] eternal is attested of creatures; nor are creatures, by this primary profession, of the same eternity [as God].

[Translator’s note: the sense is that creatures may be called “eternal” only loosely, by derivation from the truly eternal God, not in the proper sense.]

[Margin: St. Basil wrongly understood by Eugubinus.]

Be it [granted]—not absolutely, but on a certain not-improbable hypothesis—that the holy Angels were established, before the creation of this visible World, in a certain invisible place suffused with a kind of spiritual light (whether that be the starry heaven, or [a light] which, compared to the light of the sun, may be called spiritual); or [as] Theodoret interprets it (q. 6 on Genesis), [who] called that place “eternal and perpetual”—that is, incorruptible, and eternal a parte post [for the time to come], as Suárez explains; for [it is] because St. Paul (2 Corinthians [5]) calls the Empyrean “a house not made with hands, eternal,” etc. The words of St. Basil [are] to be cited presently, at num. 35.

[XXX.] But although the Empyrean—as we have said, at least [when] taken for the place where the holy Angels were set from the beginning of their beatitude—[is in question]: that it existed before the creation of this visible World, as an “intelligible World,” several Fathers believed; not absolutely, but with this reservation and [this] not-improbable hypothesis.

[Margin: Whether the Empyrean is older than the visible World.]

For St. Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 38, which is on the Nativity of Christ) says: “Thus, therefore, and for these reasons, the intelligible World was created by him—so far as I am able to philosophize, and to weigh great things with [my] small [capacity]; afterward, indeed, he saw the first [things] of creation excellently established, [and then,] devising another World, consisting of matter and visible—namely this concretion of Heaven and Earth,” etc.; [and in the verses]:

“Now there are two Worlds, of which the one is the more ancient—another Heaven, and the tranquil seat of pious men, conspicuous to such minds, and everywhere clear, etc.; the other is fluxile [transient]—in short, this World [now] founded,” etc.

Nicetas, the interpreter of this passage (who flourished in the twelfth century), [explains] whether [Gregory held] that intelligible World to have been [made] “not on account of necessity, but on account of goodness alone, and because that good ought to be propagated.” To this opinion subscribed Anastasius Sinaita (bk. 1 Hexaemeron), calling Gregory “the Theologian” by antonomasia [par excellence]; for he says: “‘In the beginning [God created] heaven and earth’—naming ‘heaven’ [as] comprehending at once all the heavenly [beings] and the intelligible [Powers]… so that you may understand the World to have been first fabricated, agreeably to the discourse of the Theologian [Gregory], which he quotes,” etc.; and he cites the words of St. Gregory Nazianzen.

Then St. Basil (homily 1 of his Hexaemeron): “Nor yet [is it] altogether unfitting that there was, before the constitution of the World, something intelligible by hidden contemplation—which was also not committed to Moses’s writings, as little suited to little ones and to those [still] needing [instruction]. Yet there was a certain state, prior to the generation of the World, accommodated (as was fitting) to those Powers abstracted from the World’s concretion—anterior in time, and eternal and perpetual; and in it the Creator, the Maker of all, perfected the spiritual light, the beatitude of those [Powers],” etc.; of which St. Jerome and others [speak]. Hence (bk. 2): “We judge indeed that—if anything was before the constitution of the sensible and corruptible World—it was at least in light; for the dignities [orders] of the Angels did not dwell in darkness, but in a light congruous to themselves, [in] joy, [in] that spiritual state which they had,” etc. These words Theodoret took up (on Genesis, q. 6), who also (qq. 11 and 14) teaches that the first heaven was made from nothing, and before the light, and [yet was also] made after the light, etc.; although it cannot be defended unconditionally that those Angels were established before the World, yet it is not altogether repugnant, nor does he think it a stumbling-block to many authors—provided they be said [to have been] created, and in some determinate place. For he says: “For that divinity, as [being] by no means circumscribed, is not subject to place”; and at the end: “Moreover, this must be known: that all things which exist, except the Holy Trinity, have a nature subject to creation [and change]; but if, in this manner, [one] should say that the heaven, and the troops of Angels, [were] established before the heaven and the earth [now founded], he will not offend the word of piety.” And Junilius too—or Bede—in his Hexaemeron, reports St. Basil’s opinion, and does not refute it.

[Margins: Nicetas; Anastasius Sinaita; St. Basil; Theodoret; Junilius or Bede.]

These things notwithstanding, however, it is now certain that the Angels—and therefore the Empyrean—were not created except at that first instant of time, of which Genesis 1 says, “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.” For so the Lateran Council defines (in the chapter “Firmiter”); and so we have taught, in [accordance with] the common [doctrine] of the theologians, in our treatise On the Angels; and it is sufficiently gathered from those very passages of the Fathers by which we showed (num. 26) that the Empyrean is given—especially those of St. Hilary, Theophilus of Antioch, Origen, Diodore of Tarsus, Junilius, Hugh of St.-Victor, St. Anselm, St. Bruno, [Alexander of] Hales, St. Thomas Aquinas, William of Paris, Rupert, [and] the Master—so that there is no need to repeat them here. And so teach Molina (disp. 2 On the Work of the Six Days), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, disp. 27), Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4), Tanner (q. 2 On the Heaven, and vol. 1 of the Summa of Theology, disp. 6, q. 2, dub. 2), and Salianus (Apparatus to the Annals, ch. 6)—even though Ascanius Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, p. 242) says that Moses, as one speaking with a rude people, handed down only the genesis of this sensible World, suppressing the creation of the Empyrean and of the Angels. But we have already said (at the third [Postulate]) that Moses was speaking not to the rude people only, but also to all the wise of the World—though not all things to all, nor explaining or indicating [them] in the same way; for he comprehended whatever can fitly and properly be understood by the name “Heaven,” and according to each one’s capacity. And so Philo (most skilled, indeed, in the Hebrew idiom) understood him (in the book On the Making of the World), when, expounding Moses, he says: “‘In the beginning he made’ is equivalent to ‘he first made heaven’; for it is indeed consonant with reason that this came forth first in [the order of] generation, inasmuch as it is the most excellent of the things that were made, and consists of the purest essence; wherefore it was destined [to be] the most sacred dwelling of the ‘gods’ [the divine beings]—both the not-apparent and the gradually-appearing—namely, of the Angels and of Men.”

[Translator’s note: the printed source-name before “disp. 2 On the Work of the Six Days” reads “Aedilia,” a garbling of Molina (whose De opere sex dierum is cited elsewhere on this page); rendered here as “Molina.”]

[Margins: The Empyrean is not created before the visible World; Philo.]

(printed p. 209):

[XXXI.] It remains that we briefly indicate of what nature and condition the Empyrean is, and what its functions are. And first, indeed, we say that it is incorruptible—or at least not to be corrupted or dissolved at the end of the World; for so the Fathers cited at num. 26 expressly teach. [They teach] also that it is invisible to us who dwell in this life, because between us and it are interposed the Firmament and the watery heaven, which block its sight from us by their opacity; or because it cannot be otherwise—it being of the nature of that heaven to be luminous, [yet] it is not usually [visible to us].

[Margins: The Empyrean is incorruptible; And invisible.]

Next we say that it is uncertain whether it is a wholly simple body—being of the “quintessence”—or [whether it is] mixed; though [Tostatus calls it] “a certain sixth essence, in no way agreeing with material things” (the Abulensis, on Exodus ch. 13, q. 13); or rather [whether it is] composed of matter and form—and this Suárez asserts (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 5), [asking] whether [its matter] be elemental or celestial, [and] whether it consist of the [matter] of the other heavens or of the same as the elements. But it is far truer that it was created not from elemental matter, but from nothing; and from a matter nobler than not only the elemental but even [that] of the other heavens—by so much nobler and far more excellent—created in a proportionate way, as Suárez concedes in the same place. Nor is it abhorrent to the mind—being congruent with the perfection both of the universe and of the Blessed themselves—that it be wholly simple, if a body can be given which does not consist of matter and form really distinct from one another; on which matter, see Suárez (Metaphysics, disp. 13).

[Margin: Whether, and of what matter, it consists.]

Add that it is also immovable—not that it could not be moved by God, [as though] of itself incapable of motion, but because in fact it is not moved, as the eighth sphere or the lower orbs are said to be moved; for it was not made for carrying round the stars. Perhaps because of this immobility, or because it is incorruptible, or because of the perpetual stability of the beatitude of the Saints, it is said to be “foursquare” (Apocalypse 21); for the square and cubic figure signifies stability. Or perhaps, because of the excellence of the spherical figure, it is round, as Aversa thinks (q. 31, sect. 4, of [his] Physics); and in this it is a symbol of the divinity. [So] St. Hilary (Enarration on Psalm 135), in those words: “the heaven [being] higher and first, and placed likewise into an orb [sphere].” Even though the Conimbricenses (bk. 2 On the Heaven, ch. 1, q. 1, art. 2) think that that heaven is really to be [taken as] extended; and Molanus ([Sentences] bk. 2, dist. 2, disp. 7, sect. 4) thinks it more probable that it is fluid, and as it were a fluid body, so that it may serve both the customary motion of the bodies of the Blessed—who run about in it like sparks in a reed-bed—and also their speech and respiration, and lest the perpetual penetration of bodies be required without necessity (though he confesses these reasons are not necessary). But Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 5) thinks the opposite more probable; for, since it is truer (as the Fathers teach) that it is fixed and immovable—otherwise, by the access and motion of other bodies (namely of the Blessed), it would be moved, and almost the whole would fluctuate, [suffering] condensation and rarefaction in an incorruptible body. Now, just as the bodies of the Blessed, by their subtlety, can penetrate the other bodies, they can also penetrate the Empyrean—according to that [word] of the Apostle (Hebrews 4): “Jesus Christ, who penetrated the Heavens.” Wherefore that most lucid air [will suffice]… in place of excrement and nourishment, nor will there be need of respiration. Add that the Blessed are for the most part on the convex surface of the Empyrean, as Suárez taught of the Body of Christ (vol. 2, on the Third Part, disp. 1, sect. 1 and the last).

[Margins: It is immovable; The figure of the Empyrean; Whether fluid or solid.]

The light of the Empyrean is believed to be connatural [to it], even if it be increased incredibly by the light attributed to the bodies of the Saints, and especially of Christ, according to Apocalypse 21: “And the city has no need of the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, for the brightness of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.” But its light does not reach us—either because it is impeded by the opacity and density of the interposed heaven, or supreme Firmament (so, with Basil, Ambrose, Theodoret, and others, thinks Ascanius Martinengus, Glossa Magna p. 249); or because it is too rare [to be perceptible], or because it is not proportioned to our eyes by reason of its excessive splendour (as St. Thomas thinks, Part I, q. 12 [and q. 66]); for the excessive distance, or the resistance of the waters which are above the heavens, and similar causes which Richard of Middleton ([Sentences] bk. 2, dist. 2) and other Scholastics bring forward—that is, [these things] are not seen.

[Margins: The light of the Empyrean, of what kind; Why it is not seen by us.]

[We ask] whether the Empyrean influences these lower things. The affirmative they think more probable—St. Thomas (Part I, q. 66, art. 3, ad 5; and Quodlibet 6, q. 11, art. 19), Durandus ([Sent.] 2, q. 2), Aegidius (on 1 and 4), the Argentine [James of Strasbourg] (on 1, q. 2, dub. 1), Richard ([Sent.] 2, dist. 2, art. 3, q. 5), and Suárez (bk. 1 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 5)—not that it has a necessary action, but [in] that it is a place containing and conserving the heaven immediately subject to it… [and that] it has some active power; and because the unity of the Universe requires some subordination, and an influx of the higher upon the lower; and finally because, since the other heavens are moved, that stable diversity of colour and of inclinations and complexions which is found in the various regions of the earth ought not to be referable to anything else than to the diverse zones of the supreme immovable heaven, such as is the Empyrean. The contrary, however, seems to me more probable: because the Fathers speak of it as a heaven having no commerce at all with natural things, and created for another end—the supernatural beatitude of the Saints—and [because] all that diversity of regions [is] for tempering the earth by a diverse temperament. So thinks of this heaven Alexander of Hales (2nd part of the Summa, q. 47, member 1), and formerly St. Thomas ([Sent.] 2, dist. 4, q. 1); now, through these [comes] Procopius of Gaza (on Genesis ch. 1), when he said: “The first heaven, on account of its immense remoteness, was by no means commensurable with the earth; hence none of its parts could aid [the lower things].” Finally, many Fathers teach that the Sun and Moon exist so that it might be clear that earthly things do not depend necessarily on the Stars, but on God alone; but if the Empyrean naturally [influenced] these lower things, for the same cause it ought not [to have needed] to be created from the beginning.

[Margin: Whether the Empyrean influences these lower things.]

But before we conclude this question: to some it [seems] not incredible—nay, probable—that either the Empyrean or the watery heaven is a spiritual mirror, in which the most beautiful things that now on earth delight the eyes of men are represented in a more eminent way, and with far more vivid colours; and that this, perhaps, is signified in Apocalypse 21, when [that city is described as built] of jasper, crystal, and the colours and kinds of other gems and stones—so that not even these [delights] should be wanting to the amenity and delight of the eyes of the Blessed; and thus a “new heaven and a new earth” are said to be created. Indeed Eusebius (bk. 11 On the Preparation for the Gospel, ch. 19) thinks that nothing pertaining to the beauty of earth and sea—which is reserved as an inheritance in the “Land of the living”—will [be wanting], but [will be] expressed in better forms, or painted with nobler colours; and he adduces the authority of Plato (in the person of Socrates) describing such a land of the blessed. But perhaps these are dreams of those unable to tear their sense and imagination away from the figure of this world, which passes away.

[Margin: Whether the Empyrean has solar [influences] and heats.]

Question 7

What was the Light made by God on the first Day of the World?

[XXXII.] On that first day, on which God created Heaven and Earth—when darkness was over the face of the Deep—“God said, Let there be Light, and Light was made.” In Hebrew it stands Yehi Or, wa-[yehi] Or, that is, “Let there be Light, and there was Light”; or, better, the Vulgate, “let light be made, and light was made”; and the [Greek] interpreters [render it] kaì egéneto phôs (καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς), “and light came to be.” This [light]—as St. Augustine [holds] (City of God bk. 11, chs. 7 and 9; On Genesis to the Letter bk. 1, chs. 3 and 9; Against Faustus bk. 12, ch. 10; and often elsewhere)—was spiritual, [namely] the Angelic nature; because on this side the Angels existed before those “morning stars” were made, which (Job 38) are said to have praised the Lord, “all the sons of God rejoicing,” when, under that name [of “light”]—more fitting than [that] of light—their creation was indicated by Moses; since indeed no other material and corporeal light was emitted, except that which was deferred to the fourth day, on which the stars [were made]—even though others [hold] that the Sun was founded on the first day. But both [views] are false.

[Margin: The light of the first day—corporeal or spiritual.]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 210, where Riccioli adds that St. Jerome (allegorically), Eucherius, Bede, Isidore, the Glosses, and especially Rupert lean to the “spiritual light” view, while the common opinion of the Fathers and Doctors holds it a corporeal light.]

(printed p. 210): The page weighs the two opinions on the nature of the first-created light. Jerome, Eucherius, Bede, Isidore, the Glosses, and above all Rupert incline to a spiritual light, while Hugh, Alexander of Hales, the Master, and St. Thomas merely decline to censure that view. The common opinion of Fathers and Doctors, upheld by Pererius, Martinengus, Suárez, and Tanner, is that it was a corporeal light, as the literal sense demands, opposed to the pre-existing darkness and marking the first visible days.

[Margin: Hebrews 1.]

Moreover, [there are] the reasons which the Fathers adduce, for which this was most fittingly first of all made by God—the first light, [a light] of corporeal light: namely, because light is the first of all active [things], and befits both higher and lower bodies, and is necessary that the rest be rendered visible; for which [end], together with the Stars, God had decreed to produce plants and herbs and make them conspicuous to the world, that from insensible [things] visible [things] might come to be. Then, God wished to show that all that light—which makes day for us, and by the motion of the Sun and Moon measures the times, and is the universal ornament of the Heavens and the elements, and the vehicle of species and influxes—does not depend elementally on the Stars; and so [he wished to show] that they are not to be venerated with divine worship. But it was required that [the first light] be of the same species as that which afterward he granted to the Sun and Moon as [his] servants, and to the rest of the world. Finally he argues [from] what the Church supposes, [when] in the hymn at Vespers on the Lord’s Day it sings:

“O best Creator of light, bringing forth the light of days, who, with the first-beginnings of new light, preparest the origin of the world; who biddest the morning, joined to the evening, to be called ‘day’…”

[XXXIII.] But what, or of what kind, was that corporeal light? [1] That it was elemental Fire—which, separated from the other elements (being the lightest of all), would illuminate everything—was the view of St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the History of the Six Days), Hamer (in St. Cyril, bk. 2 Against Julian), St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 7), and nearly so Alcuin (on Genesis) and Hugh (ch. 6). But elemental fire is reckoned too rare to be apt by [its] force for illuminating and constituting the day.

[Margin: Whether the primigenial light was fire?]

[2] Others say it was a luminous cloud, or something similar, established either in the East or in the Meridian of that Horizon where Paradise [later was], which would perform the office of the Sun: so Strabo (Glossa Ordinaria), Hugh of St.-Victor, Richard of St.-Victor (bk. 1 On the Sacraments, chs. 9 and 10), Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils, via Comestor, ch. 1 of the Scholastic History; [Hexaemeron] chs. 5 and 6), Catharinus (in his postils), Tostatus, the Master ([Sentences] 2, dist. 13), St. Bonaventure ([Sentences] 2, dist. 1, art. 1, q. 1), and Alexander of Hales (part 1, q. 46, member 1).

[Margin: Whether a luminous cloud?]

[3] Others said it was the Sun, but [endowed] with a determinate power and particular effects—whether without the usual assumed density of the globe and [its] figure, and endowed with a slight light: so St. Thomas (Part I, q. 67, art. 4, adding St. Dionysius the Areopagite; and q. 70, art. 2, ad 3), Vielmus (lectures 3 and 10 on Genesis), Aegidius (part 2 of the Hexaemeron, chs. 5 and 6), the Carthusian (on Genesis, disp. 2), Suárez (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 2). Or the Sun indeed, but of an ampler figure than is now given (as Steuchus thinks, in the Cosmopoeia); or the Sun equally as [it is] afterward, but not shining—then moved only by the motion of the prime mobile, but afterward (from the fourth day) receiving its own [motion] with the other planets.

[Margins: Whether the Sun?; Whether [moved] only by the motion of the prime mobile?]

[4] Others [said] it was a splendour put into the Empyrean: as St. Bruno insinuates (in his book on Genesis, bk. 2) and William of Paris (in the part On the Universe, chs. 40 and 41)—which greatly pleased [Alexander of] Hales (part 1, q. 46, member 2). [5] But others [held] that it was indeed [the light] of the Sun, but not yet added to the globe, [a light] which afterward, on the fourth day, was inserted into it; and very many have thought so (to be cited below). This opinion especially pleases Adam [Tanner] (disp. 7 On the Work of the Six Days), Eugubinus (bk. 7 On the Perennial Philosophy, ch. 8), [and] Tanner (vol. 1, disp. 6, q. 2, dub. 3) for the first day of the world; and it greatly appeals to me too (provided we say that that light was of the same species as the light of the Sun, and sustained by the heaven and air as [its] subject, rather than the same in [numerical] individual). For thus it is expounded according to the letter: how on the first day light was made, and on the fourth day a Luminary or the Sun; and [how] on the fourth [day] this globe of the Sun [was made], which would produce light of the same species, dependently on God—light of which species God alone had also produced before, by himself or through an Angel, varying [it] in that way in which the Sun now [does]; for as long as the Sun does [it] now, God alone could do [it], drawing it out of the potency of diaphanous bodies successively. For it comes [out] truer, the species being distinguished by days and by names. And so on the first day light, and on the fourth day the vehicle of light, was made—[so] Basil, Isychius, or Procopius; and this indeed the Church seems to hold, when, after those words [“Lucis Creator optime”], it sings [in the hymn Caeli Deus sanctissime]:

“O most holy God of heaven, who paintest the bright centre of the Pole with fiery brightness, increasing [it] with comely light; who, on the fourth day, constituting the flaming wheel of the Sun,” etc.

The reason why God willed to produce that very light (that is, of the same species) which afterward he granted to the Sun to propagate, is that which we have already indicated: namely, that men might be kept from idolatry, and from [rendering] divine worship especially to the Sun; which [reason] more surely [is] touched on by St. John Chrysostom, Philo, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, Severianus, Procopius, [and] St. Dionysius the Areopagite (bk. 4, adducing [it]). And these things, [taken] literally [in Dionysius] ch. 4—for from the Greek it is more faithfully rendered: “Light is the measure of hours, days, and of all gliding time”—as much as to say, [it is] such; and if then there was light, Greek phôs aschēmátiston [unfigured light], by whose force the divine Moses too says that there was that first day and night, which yet [were] distinct, and which he distinguished. He wishes, therefore, [the first light] to have been of the same species as today’s Solar light; and he calls it “formless,” or lacking figure, because it had a figure determined to no body.

[Margins: SS. Chrysostom, Philo, Basil, Ambrose, etc.; St. Dionysius the Areopagite.]

Which same thing, in clearer words, St. Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 43) [says]: “…having imparted the first force of this light to the lower [things]”; for he joined his workmanship to the Great Light, and “to begin [the world] with light,” by which to lay waste the darkness, he dispelled that heap and confusion of things occupying all. “Nor indeed did he produce it organically from the beginning, nor (in my judgment) as Solar, but devoid of body and of [the] Sun”—in Greek ásōmon kaì aschēmátiston [“bodiless and unfigured”]—“but afterward it was handed over to the Sun for illuminating the world. For although in other things [God kept the confusion], so that he might first compact the matter and then adorn it with form—namely, imparting to each [thing its] order, figure, and mass—here he displayed the specimen of a greater miracle, [in that] he brought forth the form before the matter (for the form of the Sun is light), but afterward introduced the matter—namely, subjecting this Sun to the eyes,” etc.

[Margin: St. Gregory Nazianzen.]

For although in this sense I admit that that light was created by God independently of a sustaining subject (just as [independently] of a primary subject), and without the concurrence of the air and heaven producing it—even if it was [in fact] sustained by the air, heaven, and water—[I hold this], for there was no need of a greater miracle, for the end which God had set himself; nor [is it right] to multiply miracles in [the matter of] darkness without necessity. For rightly St. Augustine (On Genesis to the Letter, bk. 8, ch. 1): “For now [we must consider] in what way God [established] the natures of things according to the Scriptures”; wherefore miracles are not to be multiplied… [and God] does not expend [more] of his power upon a miracle [than is needed]. But Scripture says, “God said, Let there be light”—which formula he used when he created not properly [from nothing], but from pre-existing matter, or produced something in matter; therefore he did not create the light properly nor absolutely, but [only] relatively to its proper subject; and in this sense I accept that it was an accident subsisting without a subject.

[Margin: The miracles of the natures of things [are] according to the Scriptures.]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 211; p. 211 then continues with St. Basil’s words (homilies 2 and 6 of the Hexaemeron) and the analysis of light as an accident.]

(printed p. 211): The page argues that St. Basil’s words in the Hexaemeron do not bind us to any contrary view: in homily 2 he says God’s first voice created the nature of light, and in homily 6 that the body of the Sun was founded on the fourth day as a vehicle for that primigenial light.

Lest, however, what I have said seem incredible—namely, that light and splendour are something other than the body underlying the light and [other than] its subject—[consider that] all composite things are wont to be divided into a receiving substance and into that [quality received] in it. As, then, whiteness and the whitened body are diverse, so also those things differ of which we have just spoken—[though] they are seen [to be separable only] by the power of the Creator. Therefore do not say to me that it cannot be that [light] be separated from the body of the Sun; for I do not say that the separation of light from the Sun’s body is perfect (and this suffices me), but I judge it must be asserted that they can be disjoined from one another by the mind’s mere thought—[and that God could separate them in fact] by that power by which he created [their] nature.

[Margin: St. Basil.]

Most beautifully too, for our purpose, [does] Theodoret (on Psalm 148), where, weighing that verse “Praise him, Sun and Moon; praise him, all ye stars and light,” he does not approve the version of Symmachus, who renders “stars of light,” as if the stars were the same as light, but [holds them] the principal causes of light; that is: “And so, according to the Septuagint, it must be understood thus: on the first day God made light, but on the fourth the luminaries; and therefore the Psalmist made separate mention of light—not that [the stars] are luminous of themselves, but because [light] needs the luminaries of the stars [as vehicles].” So too (q. 14 on Genesis), distinguishing creation taken most broadly from creation taken more strictly, he says: “The Lord God [created]… for first he created heaven from heaven; but afterward made [the rest] in the water,” etc.; “therefore he created light also, just as [he created] similar things; and he created that light at his own will: he made the great luminaries,” etc.

[Margin: Theodoret.]

And St. Athanasius, gathering that that light was distinct from the body of the Sun, and was made before [it], then collected and attributed to the luminaries, hands [this] down (q. 83 on Genesis), on those words “Let there be light,” saying: “That light is not the Sun. But of what kind that light is, hear: This light is that morning [light] which rises at dawn and illumines the world before the Sun rises. Since this light was great and most splendid, God divided it into the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon,” etc.; and (qq. 84 and 85): “He divided into luminaries that great light which God had made; which, [being] thus distributed hither and thither, was somewhat diminished—which, had it not been done, the animals could not have borne the great blaze and splendour of so great a fire.”

[Margin: St. Athanasius.]

The same distinction of light from the substance of the Sun St. Ambrose inculcates (bk. 1 Hexaemeron, ch. 9), thence declaring how the light was first produced by God, and then the luminaries: “The light of day is one thing, the light of the Sun, Moon, and Stars another”; which he proves from the light of the Dawn preceding the day, without the presence of the Sun.

[Margin: St. Ambrose.]

And St. Augustine (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1), having raised that Question—“If, then, something was made in the power of the day… and that light of the day sufficed for making [day], by which it was also called ‘day’“—answers: perhaps the Sun was made for illumining the [whole] earth, since that first light perhaps illumined only the higher [regions]; then he adds: “This too can be said—that there is a brightness of the day; the Sun being added, [the first light] remains less bright [than the Sun’s].” For he alludes to that [text] of Psalm 135[:8–9]: “the Sun for the power of the day, the Moon and the Stars for the power of the night,” or for [their] prefecture, as St. Chrysostom reads (on Genesis): “that is, that the Sun too may make the day brighter by its rays,” he says.

[Margin: St. Augustine.]

Excellently too, for us, Procopius of Gaza (bk. 1 on Genesis) indicates the same—more fully, but [more] forcibly—[in] these words: “In the first place, by the intervening divine voice [the light was made]; then at last the receptacle of light was founded—as the soul is [one thing], and fire [another], and the lamp another. For [the body] was made for the light, which lacks matter, or [is] as it were a body; since composite things too are divided into a substrate and a quality which inheres in the subject.” For he shows the material [aspect] of light, the potency of the day… [and] confirms [it] both from the fire shining in the bush of Moses, not burning, and from [the consideration] that the splendour was separated from heat or calefaction; and [from] that [text] of Psalm 28[:7], “the voice of the Lord dividing the flames of fire”; and he adds, perhaps according to some opinion, that on the last day that fiery light will be rendered to the pious [as light], but the burning force of the fire attributed to the impious; and, finally, he calls the light of the Moon (now full, now waning) a “quality.”

[Margin: Procopius of Gaza.]

The other Procopius (in his Commentaries on Genesis, ch. 1): “God, taking the purest part of the primigenial light, transferred it into the Sun, and distributed the rest among the Moon and the other stars”—which Apollinaris also holds. Nor is the opinion of Junilius (in the Hexaemeron) to be repudiated, who teaches that by that “Let there be light” the elemental light was in the waters and in the abyss of waters (which he thought then reached up to the Empyrean); nor is it to be wondered at if light shine in water, since oil poured from the mouth of those who swim under water shines in the water. On those words “Let them be for signs and seasons,” he adds: “For that whole three-day [period] passed in its own undivided course, having no [measure] of hours; because the light, [as] yet primarily and generally filling all and having no head [focus]—which now happens with the Sun—nowhere had approaching rays shone forth.” That the light was made before the [luminary], Tertullian also supposes (in his book Against Hermogenes); [and that] the Sun and light were not at once impressed on the stars. Various poems of the Fathers on Genesis are adduced, and the Sibylline [verses]; but, lest I be too prolix, [I refer] the reader to Ascanius Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, pp. 482–488).

[Margins: The other Procopius; Apollinaris; Junilius; Tertullian.]

Paulus Burgensis, too, plainly agrees with us—namely, that that light was the three-day light, and the Sun [came] only on the fourth day; and since in Hebrew [the word is] Or [for “light”], but for the Sun Maor [for “luminary”], by the name and by the verbal distinction he sufficiently indicates the diversity of the lights produced. Burgensis favours us in the same [comment] on Genesis, where he notes that it is said “Let there be light,” not “luminary”—that is, not “let there be a lucid [body]”; for [a luminary] is not [merely] light, but a luminous body containing light, and therefore expressed by Moses [as] a substance on the fourth day; and then that that light was [received] in the subject of the Sun, [so that] the Sun, once produced [on the fourth day], ought to be said to produce light, [and] whatever is luminous; [and] because earth and water [already] existed, it is said (Genesis 1): “let the earth bring forth the herb, and let the waters bring forth the creeping thing.” And most subtly he observes that on the fourth day it is said “luminaries, that they may divide the light from the darkness,” but on the first day this is not said, because then the light [was alone]. And in this he dissents from us—in that he thinks that light was of a different species from the light which the Sun now produces, because [he holds] it inconvenient that the Sun’s light should have been without the Sun as [its] subject, and before its subject. But there is no [difficulty]; for, against [this], many of the already-cited Fathers teach clearly enough both that [the light] was [there] by common reasoning, and that it was created by a miracle by God alone—then produced, without the Sun sustaining and producing it.

[Margin: Burgensis.]

But you will say, with Pererius: the first day, on which the World was created—and which the Church calls “the Lord’s Day”—was called by the ancients “the day of the Sun” (dies Solis); therefore [it is] a sign that that light was of the Sun. But Martinengus answers that this argument is very weak, since “the day of the Sun” was so called by the heathens, out of superstition or astrological vanity (the same who also called the Sabbath “the day of Saturn”); nor would Pererius concede that, on the last day of that first week, on which God rested from [his] work, it was “[the day of] Saturn”—or that, on account of the primacy of light, the first day was written [as] the Sun’s.

Question 8

On the distinction of the first three days from the nights, from those words: “And he divided the light from the darkness; and he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was made evening and morning, one day.”

[XXXIV.] “Day,” in Hebrew, is called Iom, from the verb Ham, which is “to make a din”—from the future din [of activity]; or [the day is named] either from horror, or from the weariness [it brings] by reason of the long watch and want of rest. And “evening” [is named] from the verb Ereb, from Harab, which is “to join”—that is, the evening [joined] to night; “morning,” finally, is called Boer, from the verb Bacar, which is “to discern.” These [things] premised, I suppose those darknesses which were over the face of the deep to have preceded the primigenial light not only in origin, or as it were in nature (as St. Bonaventure problematically defends, [Sentences] 2, dist. 13, art. 1, q. 2), but also in duration—as St. Thomas supposes, with the common [opinion] of the Fathers (Part I, q. 74, art. 3; indeed q. 66, art. 2; and [Sentences] 2, dist. 13, q. 1, art. 4). Nor do I think it probable—whatever Suárez may say (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 2)—that [the darkness] was in one hemisphere only (Palestine’s, say), but [it was] simply over the whole face of the deep.

[Margins: The darkness prior in time to the light, and everywhere; Whether [there was] time before the light?]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 212; p. 212 then continues with the supposition that the whole duration up to the production of light may be called “time,” even with no motion yet.]

(printed p. 212): The page argues that the whole duration before the production of light may be called “time”—or at least measurable time—even if nothing then moved, comparable to the Sun’s standing still under Joshua. How long that duration lasted is uncertain; opinions differ on whether the light was first made at noon or on the horizon, most recent doctors supposing the first artificial day was equinoctial, of twelve hours like the night.

Finally, I suppose that the primigenial light was not so produced as to be radiant in the middle of that hemisphere in which the darkness was, even if [it shone] to that whole hemisphere—even though Anastasius Sinaita said: “The first light, expanded and dispersed through the whole universe before the [following] days, showed the light of the uncreated Trinity to reach everywhere, and to leave no place empty” (which you may understand of its successive propagation, as happened… it left no place empty except, during that three-day [period], [where it shone only] with a very faint splendour). For thus it is better explained how God “straightway divided the light from the darkness”—namely by place (or subject) and by time: in that, by placing that light in one hemisphere [of the world], he willed it to be light; he produced light in that [hemisphere], [distinct] from the [other] hemisphere where the darkness was; and at a different time, in the same hemisphere, he willed there to be light and darkness. These things being laid down, let us dispatch in a few brief [words] the chief matters pertaining to Astronomy.

[Margins: The darkness prior in time to the light, and everywhere; Whether [there was] time before the light?; That light in one hemisphere only?]

[XXXV.] I say, first, that that primigenial light [was produced] in the lower hemisphere of Palestine, or of the terrestrial Paradise (afterward to be founded)—as Jerome wished (reported by Oleaster), and Catharinus (Enarration on Genesis ch. 1), positing it, or the Sun, produced on the first day in the [region of] sunset; or [holding] that the natal day began from the beginning of night, that is, from the evening; but [the light shone first] in the upper [hemisphere], in which the future human habitation was [to be], in which Christ would afterward work salvation, as in the middle of the earth. For that this hemisphere was first illumined, Junilius and Bede teach (in the Hexaemeron), Comestor (ch. 1 on Genesis), Strabo (Glossa Ordinaria), Hugh (on this passage), Molina (disp. 2 On the Work of the Six Days), and Salianus (on the first day of the world). I said “of Palestine, or of Canaan,” on account of Christ, and most of the Patriarchs [and] the Prophets—which Molina, Tostatus, Martinengus, and Salianus also suppose; even though St. Augustine (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 10) and Suárez (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 1) [specify] neither [hemisphere], seeming to suppose only that it was done in that land in which God had made Adam, or the Paradise; while Steuchus [places it] in Armenia, Chaldaea, and Mesopotamia, where the first men dwelt before and after the flood.

[Margin: Light produced in the upper hemisphere of Palestine.]

Secondly, I say that that vicissitude of days and nights was made with some succession; for it cannot have happened all at once—which Junilius seems to wish (in the Hexaemeron, on those words “let them be for signs and seasons”), saying: “For that whole three-day [period] above passed in its own undivided course, having no [measure] of hours at all; because the first light, generally filling all and having no head,” etc., “no shadow grew cold under heaven or tree.” For although there was no gnomon to cast a [shadow], no one to distinguish the day into hours, and [although] the local motion of light [is] not, properly [speaking], time—[yet], because… the time of night succeeded to day, nor through that three-day [period] was it everywhere day (which Junilius himself afterward conceded, as I shall show below at num. 36)—[so] in some way God did “divide the light from the darkness.” Or how would “evening and morning” have made the first day, and the second, and the third?

[Margin: That light successively applied to different horizons.]

[XXXVI.] Thirdly, therefore, I say that that vicissitude of light and of nights was [made] successively, according to turns and different Horizons, by a translation or transfusion equivalent to local motion. For that division of light from darkness was such that not only did day then exist (and darkness, night), and represent [day and night], but also then Morning succeeded to Evening—[as] now most easily [it does] in its proper [way], in that manner in which it can [be done] even now (the Sun aside, and for us [now] bounded by the Sun’s rays)—God, namely, producing the diurnal light successively in that way in which the Sun now produces it. And this St. Augustine (bk. 1 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1) expressly said was then done: that when it was day in Palestine—that is, [day] beginning—it was night elsewhere, in Africa. Because, at the time when the Sun was not present in [that] part… nay, [it was] as if the presence of the light illumined, as though the Sun returned from the West to the East, and through this, in all 24 hours, [light] was not lacking—by the reckoning of a circling gyre—here day, there night; and that those [days] were similar to ours (the Sun aside), St. Justin teaches (q. 26); for he says of that light: “[It is] of the same kind which now, with the Sun [as its instrument, God] causes to make [the day],” etc. Strabo too (in the Glossa Ordinaria): “The light setting little by little, and—after the space of a day’s length—the lower parts [coming into shadow] one after another, evening was made, just as now you see it wont to be done [by] the Sun going round the earth. And morning was made, as it were [with the light] returning over the earth and beginning another day; and the day was completed in the divine space of 24 hours.” Then Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils) affirms differently: that that light, carried round in the manner of the Sun, illumined both the upper and the lower hemisphere.

[Margins: That succession [made] by a translation equivalent to the Sun’s local motion; St. Augustine; St. Justin; Strabo; Hugh of St.-Cher.]

[¶XXXVI continues on p. 213.]

(printed p. 213): The page adds Junilius, who preferred to call the first periods “Evening and Morning” rather than night and day, the primary light’s circuit anticipating the day now borne by the Sun. It is commonly noted that those first three nights were darker than now, since the stars were lacking and the air outside the earth’s shadow was not yet illumined by reflected sunlight.

[Margins: Junilius; The first three nights darker; Cajetan.]

Most clearly Cajetan (on Genesis): “If the light had been fixed, and it had been certain that the light was fixed [in place], there would have been perpetual day in one hemisphere and perpetual night in the other, and there would never have been an evening terminating the artificial day. Whence, from this—that there was an evening terminating the artificial day, and there was a morning terminating the night—it is manifestly signified that the light was made in motion; for, on the contrary, it is by the light’s motion around the earth that evening is made and morning is made.” But if he understands a local motion of the light—an accident migrating from subject to subject—he multiplies a new miracle without necessity, and such as does not now happen. Therefore, just as now the production [of light] is made, one [ray] after another in number, by straight lines from the Sun, so then it happened: by a mere [successive] production equivalent to local motion. And so [I conclude] on these [matters], with Salianus (on the first day of the world) and Tanner (vol. 1, disp. 6, q. 2, dub. 3, num. 11).

Question 9

Whether the Day preceded the Night, or the Night the Day.

[XXXVII.] It must be repeated from what was said (bk. 1, ch. 24): the more ancient [authors], and those more skilled in Latin speech, called “Natural Day” that which is the staying of the Sun above the Horizon, and distinguished it from night; [it is] legitimate to call “day,” or “light,” [the period opposed] to night not only by [bare] opposition. But most of the more recent Astronomers, or interpreters of Scripture, call “Natural Day” that which is composed of [the] day[light] and night [i.e. the 24-hour day]; and the staying of the Sun above the Horizon they call “Artificial Day”—with whom, as [being] far more numerous, we shall henceforth speak.

These premised: [1st Opinion — the Night/Evening preceded.] That the Natural Day, begun from the Evening as [its] starting-point, was begun at the first beginning of the world, the Manichees of old thought; [whom] Augustine reports (bk. 1 On Genesis against the Manichees, ch. 10), on those words “and there was made evening and there was made morning, one day,” thus: “And here the Manichees calumniate, thinking it [was] so said as if the day began from the evening.” But [the night-first view] has as supporters Thales of Miletus—who, asked which preceded, the darkness or the night, answered that the night preceded; likewise the Abulensis [Tostatus] and Fernandus (in their commentaries on Genesis, on those words “and there was made evening and morning, one day”), Melchior (disp. 2 On the Work of the Six Days), Salianus (in the Annals, on the first day of the world), and Tirinus (in the Sacred Chronicle, ch. 1)—who think that those prior Darknesses were of 12 hours, undivided, and, as [it were] the first night, preceded the first artificial day; and that from both [night and day] the first natural day was constituted; and so the natural day began from night, although the artificial [day] began from the rising of the light. Therefore [Moses, in saying] of the first natural day “and there was made evening and morning,” named the evening (that is, the night) in the prior place.

Which they confirm from that [text] of Leviticus 23[:32]: “from evening to evening you shall celebrate your sabbaths”; which seems an argument that the Hebrews, from the very origin of the world, began the natural days from the beginning of night—as most cities of Italy reckon [from] the evening, and as the Athenians did of old (witnesses Pliny, bk. 2, ch. 77; Gellius, bk. 3, ch. 2; Macrobius, bk. 1 Saturnalia, ch. 3; Censorinus, ch. 23), counting 24 hours from sunset to sunset. And indeed this opinion is very probable, and I have elsewhere chosen it; and they confirm it: First, because God divided the primigenial light from the darkness; but as soon as this is heard, there occur to the reader of Moses those darknesses which were over the face of the deep—therefore, since God called the darkness “night,” he comprehended those [pre-existing] darknesses too under that name; wherefore both properly and literally they were night, [and so] that natural day began from night. Secondly, Genesis 2 says, “in the day in which the Lord God made heaven and earth”; and Exodus 20[:9–11]: “Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy works; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work in it, thou nor thy son,” etc.; “for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it” (repeated, Exodus 31). Since heaven and earth were created at the first instant of the time of this world, and before the production of light, that whole time—from the first creation of heaven to the production of light—belonged to the first of those six days; for it would seem very absurd that there was some time which did not pertain to those six days, or [that it] pertained only as an extraordinary appendix; [a time] which, with the artificial day and the following night, constituted one natural day, longer and unlike the rest. Thirdly, it is certain (from Leviticus 23, and from the Hebrews’ custom of celebrating the Sabbath and resting from all work, taking the beginning from the evening, by God’s command) that the reason of this precept was that they might remember and imitate that first Sabbath, on which God rested from all the work he had prepared; so that, just as they ceased from all servile work immediately at the beginning of night, and thence began the Sabbath (and now too begin it), so God too seems to have ceased from all work at sunset, or at the beginning of night, and so to have numbered the six natural days thence, and there completed them—not from sunrise to sunrise.

Whence it is clear that what Martinengus says (Glossa Magna, p. 545) is neither certain nor more probable: that the Hebrews, just as they had a double year (per Philo), so had a double day—namely a natural and ancient [day], which they began from sunrise, and a legal [day], which [they began] from sunset; and that the true cause of this change was that they departed from Egypt in the evening. For although the beginning of the Sabbath was confirmed also for this cause, and they explained it on that occasion (which perhaps could come into question), yet the prior—and prior in reason—[ground] was the imitation of the Lord, who [began] working at the beginning of night. Nor does it seem to be despised, that not only the Athenians (as we said above) but also the Egyptians of old began the day from sunset, as Alexander ab Alexandro teaches (bk. 4 Genial[es Dies], ch. 10)—[a usage] which the Jews [too had learned]; and that “Night, born of Chaos,” is said by Hesiod (in the Theogony) to be, as it were, prior to day—just as Chaos was prior to the distinction of things.

Fourthly, if anything stands against this opinion, it is chiefly the opinion of many Fathers and Doctors; but they seem able to be reconciled, by conceding to them their principal intent—namely, that the first artificial day, and the rest thereafter, began from the East (that is, from the rising of the light in the East first, and thence propagated to the other regions)—against those who [hold] it produced in the meridian or in the west, so that the [first] natural day, from the first instant of the creation of the World, began under darkness for some hours to come. Nor does it stand in the way that this opinion favors that of the Manichees; for in this [view of theirs] there was nothing established as erroneous [merely by the precedence]; [their error lay] in this as a tacit foundation—saying that there were two principles: one of evils, which preceded and produced darkness and evil as something positive and a kind of substance; the other of goods. And therefore the holy Fathers, with St. Augustine, contended that evil and darkness are not some substance produced by a positive action, much less [from] a diverse principle—though, to undermine their [Manichee] foundation, St. Augustine [argued the point against] those [who held things] began from the dark. Finally, St. Jerome (on ch. 1 of Jonah) says: “For in Genesis too, the night is the morning of the following day; therefore [it is] the beginning of the future [day], not the end of the past.”

[Margin: Arguments that the Night preceded—i.e. that the natural day [began] from night.]

[XXXVIII.] The second opinion maintains the precedence of the Day; and indeed, if we follow the mere authority of the Fathers, [it has the wider support]; for, except St. Jerome, [most]—[who] would call those prior darknesses “night” only from [the time] when [the day] first began—hold rather that [the natural day began] from the rising of the first light, that night succeeded to it, and that from these, up to the following morning, the first natural day was constituted. And St. Basil supports [this] (homily 1 of the Hexaemeron); for he said: “Evening, indeed, is the boundary both of day and of night”—therefore common [to both]—“but morning, likewise, is the neighbourhood of night and day.” So that, in the primigenial creation, to give the prerogative of priority to the day, he commemorates the end of the day itself in the prior place; then he adds that [the evening] is the last [part] of the night, since the night follows the day.

[Margin: 2nd Opinion: that the Day preceded; St. Basil.]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 214, where Basil adds: “that prior state of the world—before the rising of the primigenial light—was not called ‘night,’ but ‘darkness’; for night is that portion of time which is distinguished and opposed to day”; and Riccioli notes that by “evening and morning, one day” Basil seems to express only the two parts of the artificial day, the night being implied as the less-principal complement.]

(printed p. 214): The page continues the discussion of the first day’s reckoning: the state before the primigenial light was called “darkness,” not “night,” since night is defined by opposition to day. St. Basil’s phrase “evening and morning, one day” expressed only the two parts of the artificial day, with night understood implicitly as the less-principal complement of the natural day, as in the scriptural idiom “the days of our years.”

And in all these St. Ambrose subscribes to St. Basil (bk. 1 Hexaemeron, ch. 10); for he raised this question: “Some ask why Scripture mentioned the evening first, [and] then the morning—lest perhaps it seem to signify the night before the day.” [He answers] that, since [Scripture had just said] “God called the light Day, and the darkness Night,” and since the evening is the end of the day and the morning the end of the night, therefore, by the prerogative and the natural primacy of the day, he first signified the end of the day, and then, after [naming] the darkness of night, as it were added the end of the night; for Scripture could not put our [whole reckoning of the] day first, lest by the appellation “day” the times of day and of night [both] be comprehended—[and so] he vindicated the principal authority to the name [day]. He confirms it from that saying of Psalm 89 and from Jacob, as St. Basil [did]. And so, according to these holy Doctors, the sense of those words “and there was made evening and morning, one day” resolves into this: “There was made, in the evening-time and the morning-time, one day”—understanding the night as a complement, [extending] to the beginning of the following artificial day.

[Margins: St. Ambrose; St. Chrysostom; St. Nyssen.]

St. John Chrysostom confirms [this] (homily 3 on Genesis), expressly naming the end of the day and the end of the night [as] one, so as to establish some order and sequence of visible things; and (homily 4 on Genesis), where “although one may rightly say… [that evening is the end of the day], but morning the end of the night, [and] the complement [is] the day; for this Scripture wishes to make manifest, saying ‘and there was made,’ etc.” In the same way St. Gregory of Nyssa (in his book On the History of the Six Days) understood the names “evening” and “morning”: “He names the retreat and setting of the light ‘evening’; and again, when the [fire] had run through the lower circle and restored splendour to the upper parts, he calls that dawning ‘morning’” (remembering that, in his view, the light was fire, separated first of all from the rest of the elements).

St. Athanasius (q. 90) [says] distinctly: “From the primitive creation of the world, etc., the day was prior—as the divine Scripture also speaks, in that it said ‘God said, Let there be light, and light was made,’ and that God called the light ‘Day,’ but the darkness ‘Night.’ First the light was set, for through it the first day existed; and from the light it first began, [and] into the darkness we came afterward.”

[Margins: St. Athanasius; Procopius.]

More fully on this once-celebrated controversy disputes Procopius (in his Commentary on Genesis ch. 1): “Much has been disputed [as to] whether day or night preceded.” [Those] who believe night [to be first] proceed thus: “God therefore, when first the day flowed forth, set first the end of the day, namely the evening”—as if, the day [being] antecedent, when it failed into darkness, then at last, from its end, night was begotten; for night, as [it were] the other side of the work, is brought to us from the preceding day. But that [period] which [is called] night before the rising of the light is properly called not “night” but “gloom and darkness.” And since the Greeks call the natural day nychthḗmeron (νυχθήμερον), as it were “night-day” (consisting of night and day), Procopius in the same place thinks it should rather be called hēmerónykton (ἡμερόνυκτον), as it were “day-night,” because the day preceded in this composition. Further, St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Orthodox Faith, ch. 7): “But the first [period] was not called night, but day; wherefore the day is first; the night therefore follows the day; and from the beginning [there is] day [extending] to the next day—one [whole], so as [to be] a ‘day-night’; for Scripture says, ‘and there was made evening and morning, one day.’”

[Margin: St. Damascene.]

Thus far from the Greek Fathers (though, on account of the affinity of interpretation, we have already woven in St. Ambrose with St. Basil). Therefore, [to come] to the rest, the Latins: St. Augustine (bk. 1 On Genesis against the Manichees): “But after this operation—that is, of the light made—as from a finished day, evening was made; yet, because the night too belongs to its own day, one day is not said to have passed unless the night too is finished, [at which point] one day was made”; and so the rest of the day is reckoned from morning until morning—which he repeats (On Genesis to the Letter, Imperfect [Work], ch. 7, and bk. 1). Eucherius too uses almost the same words as St. Ambrose above (bk. 1 Commentary on Genesis, ch. 1); and Julian, Archbishop of Toledo (bk. 3 Against the Jews): “In six days God made heaven and earth, and founded every creature formed by him on distinct days; and we behold the day beginning with this [morning], [and] consummated at evening, Scripture saying, ‘there was made evening and morning, one [day].’”

[Margins: St. Augustine; Eucherius; Julian.]

Junilius too supports these (in the Hexaemeron): “Evening was made, the light departing little by little, etc., the space of a day’s length being completed as the lower parts of the World came under [shadow], etc. And morning was made, the same [light] returning little by little above the lands and beginning another day; and so far one day was completed—namely, of twenty-four hours. For it was fitting that the day, beginning otherwise from the light, should reach forward into the morning of the following [day].” These very words Strabo has (in the Glossa Ordinaria).

[Margins: Junilius; Strabo.]

In exactly the same way understood those words “evening and morning, one day”: Hugh of St.-Victor (adding that the primigenial light, risen in the East, was without a preceding Dawn, and that the day naturally soon precedes—so he, bk. 1 On the Sacraments, part 1, ch. 9); also Richard of St.-Victor (bk. 1 Exceptions, ch. 7): “That light, at first, and in the place where God now daily [makes it] rise, and by the same way by which the Sun [goes], is believed to have moved, and so to have completed evening and morning; and this was the work of the third day.” Add to these Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils): “For the light,” he says, “proceeding in the East toward the West in the manner of the Sun, [and] poured back—evening was made; and [going] under the earth and coming to the East, morning was made, and the day was completed; and thus [it is] natural, of twenty-four hours.” So too think and speak Comestor (ch. 3 of the Scholastic History on Genesis), the Master of the Sentences (2, dist. 13), Lyranus (in postils), Albertus Magnus (part 1, On the Four Coeval Things, q. 12, art. 1), St. Thomas (Part I, q. 74, art. 3), St. Bonaventure (2, dist. 13, art. 1, q. 2, on Genesis), a certain Dionysius the Carthusian (Commentary on Genesis, art. 9), Caietanus (on Genesis ch. 1), Vielmus (same, lect. 3), Lippomanus (in the Catena), Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, ch. 54), Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna, from p. 540), and Suárez (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 3, num. 12)—whose words it would be too prolix to report. Nor does Tostatus disapprove this opinion in his Commentaries on Genesis, but reports it also as probable.

[Margins: Hugh of St.-Victor; Richard; Hugh of St.-Cher; Comestor, the Master, Lyranus, Albertus, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dionysius the Carthusian, Caietanus, Vielmus, Lippomanus, Pererius, Martinengus, Suárez.]

[XXXIX.] The third opinion begins that first natural day from the Evening—reckoning the Evening from Noon—and, placing the [Sun] or primigenial light at the Meridian, judges that that day went from Noon to Noon; and therefore [holds] it [was] said by Moses, “there was made evening and morning, one day,” so that the first artificial day had only six hours, from noon to sunset, and that these six hours, [together with] the six preceding hours in which the World was in darkness, did not pertain to the first artificial day, but to the complement of the natural day. Wherefore this opinion is midway between the two extremes aforesaid: both because, with the former, it begins the day from the Evening (which rather inclines and declines toward sunset), and begins the natural day from the preceding darkness; and because, with the latter, it begins the artificial day from Noon, which pertains rather to day than to night. So think Augustinus Steuchus (i.e. Eugubinus) (in the Cosmopoeia, on Genesis ch. 1), Aegidius (2nd part of the Hexaemeron, chs. 2 and 6), and Cornelius à Lapide (on Genesis ch. 1); and St. Bonaventure reports the same opinion and thinks it not improbable (2, dist. 13, art. 1, q. 2); to which [view], concerning the fourth day too, Marsilius Ficinus assents (book On the Sun and Light, ch. 10), where he teaches that the Sun was produced at the Meridian, and that the day began from noon with respect to our hemisphere. From this view it follows that the rest of the days, both artificial and natural, began from the rising of the light or Sun above the horizon; since [this opinion], to pre-fill the first natural day, reckons the 6 hours in which the world was in darkness, nor does it understand the following “morning” as the time from the rising of light to noon (for this, it teaches, pertains to the following day), but as the moment at which the first night was completed and the light risen—[for] the Sun extended [its course] from noon, through sunset and midnight, to [its] rising. And these Authors add—besides that reason, [namely] that the Evening is named first by Moses—this too: that God’s perfect works of the day, and the Sun (or light) at the Meridian, illumine the hemisphere more perfectly and equally on every side; and that most Astronomers are wont to begin the day from Noon, as from a more certain point of the day.

[Margins: Lippomanus, Pererius, Martinengus, Suárez; 3rd Opinion: which begins the day from noon, etc.; St. Bonaventure, Steuchus, Aegidius, Cornelius, Ficinus.]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 215; p. 215 then begins Riccioli’s rebuttal of this third opinion—that, speaking with most of the Fathers (num. 37–38), the first day began from the East and most probably had 12 hours of light and 12 of night, not six and eighteen.]

(printed p. 215): The page states and rejects the opinion that the first day began at noon. With most Fathers and Doctors, Riccioli holds it more probable that the light began the first artificial day from the East, and that the first day, as pattern of the rest, was equinoctial, with twelve hours of light and twelve of night; beginning the day from noon is too subtle a method for common observation, which relies on the Sun’s rising and setting.

[Margin: This opinion is disproved.]

[XL.] The fourth opinion, already indicated at the beginning of num. 35, is that of Catharinus and the Lusitanian (the Portuguese)—or [rather] of Jerome [as reported] by Oleaster—on Genesis; who, for this reason, hold that the Evening was [named first] by Moses, [though it was] morning-time, because the Sun, or primigenial light, was placed first in the western horizon (with respect to Palestine), and began to rise from there in the hemisphere set opposite to that region; and, the night of 12 hours having passed as [the light] coursed to the East of Palestine, it first made morning; and thence, after another 12 hours, returning to the west, it thus completed the natural day. Wherefore this opinion agrees with the first in that it begins the natural day from the beginning of night, but differs in that, in the first natural day, it does not reckon the time of the darkness preceding the primigenial light. For Catharinus confirms that opinion both from the Hebrew words “and evening, and from evening you shall celebrate your sabbaths” (Leviticus), and because the Egyptians—and perhaps many of the ancients—were wont to begin the day from sunset; and therefore Thales of Miletus, when asked, answered that night was prior to day. But what could be more improbable than what the Lusitanian says—when [he holds] the light straightway produced and [then] hidden, [that is] subjected to that hemisphere which was to be the chief habitation of men (and to which Moses was especially writing), and which was first more acceptable to the divine knowledge and to the Mosaic and Evangelical law—but [that it was] first shown to that [other] hemisphere, which was to come far later to civil cultivation and to the knowledge of the true religion? Then, since on the first day heaven and earth are said to be created under darkness: either those darknesses which, after that first instant, were over the face of the deep were only over the hemisphere of Palestine, and were there, but their time was a supernumerary appendix to the first day (and so [the first day was] longer than the rest and unlike them—which does not so well fit the letter of Moses); or, if that time in no way pertained to the first day, it follows that heaven and earth were not created on the first day, but before the whole first day. Since, therefore, of the four aforesaid opinions the third and fourth have far fewer patrons, and [the fourth] is much more improbable than the first and second, it remains that one of those two [first and second] be chosen.

[Margin: A fourth opinion—another [view] beginning the day from night: Cajetan, Oleaster.]

[XLI.] But before I bring forth my own opinion, it must be noted that “Evening” can be taken in five ways, and “Morning” in as many. First, so that “evening” signifies the indivisible moment at which the Sun sets, and “morning” [the moment] at which it rises. Secondly, so that “evening” signifies the twilight which follows after the Sun’s setting—or the earlier part of that twilight, in which the star of Venus, when it follows the Sun, appears (which star is called, at that time, Vesperugo by Plautus, Vesper by Ennius, Hesperus and Vesper by Virgil; Censorinus notes this, On the Natal Day, ch. 10, and St. Isidore, bk. 5 Etymologies, ch. 31, for they allude to that Virgilian verse: “Before [I finish], Vesper would close the day and lay [all] to rest in shut Olympus,” etc.). And “morning,” in this way, will signify either the morning twilight or its part nearer the Sun—that is, the Dawn (Aurora); and in this way the Lusitanian and Vielmus take it (bk. 11 on Genesis), which they confirm both from the Hebrew word Ereb, which signifies “Evening” from the verb Harab, “to bind or join together” (because [the twilight] is a kind of bond between day and night), and from Plautus, who called this twilight “the first evening” (the Lusitanian, “the first darkness”; Macrobius, “the first torch”)—whence they explain that [text] of Exodus 12[:6], where the Jews are bidden to slay the lamb “between the two evenings,” that is, about the middle of this twilight; for others divide [it into] the earlier part (the Sun now hidden, the twilight already done) and the later part (more like night). And “Morning” in Hebrew is called Boquer, from the verb Bacar, “to discern,” because in the morning twilight visible things begin to be discerned.

Thirdly, “Evening” can be taken for the whole time in which the Sun, descending from the meridian, sinks toward the West, and “Morning” for the time in which the Sun ascends from [its] Rising to the Meridian—in which sense we are said to “dine in the morning, sup in the evening,” even if it be high summer; or [so] that “Morning” is the time from midnight to sunrise. Fourthly, “Evening” can be taken for the time in which the Sun descends from the Meridian to midnight, and “Morning” [for] the time in which it ascends from midnight to the Meridian. Fifthly, finally, so that “Evening” signifies the whole night succeeding from sunrise [i.e. from the day], and “Morning” the whole artificial day; and in this way that [text] of Exodus 12, “between the two evenings,” can be understood for the moment of the Sun’s setting. In as many ways too can that [saying] of Genesis, “evening and morning, one day,” be understood—whether those words be taken for either indivisible terminus, or for a divisible one within which the day and night are concluded (as in the first and second acceptation), or for the contraposed parts composing—either adequately or inadequately—the day and the night.

[Margins: Vielmus; “Evening” and “Morning” taken five ways.]

[XLII.] These premised: since the arguments brought for the first opinion (num. 37) are valid, and more and weightier authorities are adduced for the second (num. 38), they seem to me [to need] reconciling—thus: that the first natural day began from night (taken broadly, for darkness)—or from a duration equivalent, by motion, to the artificial [day]—[that is, from] the darkness, through 12 hours (or a duration commensurable and equivalent to them) preceding the light, [the light] first produced in the East of Palestine or thereabouts; but the first artificial day took its beginning from the first production of light, at whose time—the first evening being completed (taken in the first, second, or third way)—the first day, both natural and artificial, was completed. Although it is only the artificial [day that] is expressed by “evening and morning,” and [although] the Hebrews understood that day in this way (both in sanctifying the Sabbath and before)—whence it follows that the natural day (the third, and the rest, and so the sixth, as they are numbered in sacred Genesis, among which is reckoned the day whose work was the light, the Sun’s substitute), and [that] God began to rest from work on the night preceding the day taken as the Sabbath in the artificial [sense]. When I say these things, I do not thereby say that the evening was named by Moses before the morning—for those [pre-light] darknesses could be called “evening” neither strictly nor broadly; nor, by those words “evening and morning,” did he wish to express the night, but only the parts of the artificial day, composed of the evening-time and the morning-time; or [he wished] to signify to us that those days were not unlike ours, but had the same vicissitudes—even though he named first that part of the day which contained the consummation, maturity, and perfection of the day and of the works wrought on that day (as the fruit), rather than that which [contained only] the inception, and as it were the flower, of the day.

But taking “Natural Day” strictly, for the aggregate of the artificial day and the night taken strictly (that is, [the night] which is the privation of the light once produced), and “time” taken strictly for the measure of the motion of the Sun, or of the light [that was] the Sun’s substitute: I say that that [first] light—from the rising of the light, whence the artificial day began—and the artificial Day, preceded the night taken strictly, as the second opinion holds. Wherefore, according to this [view], the same moment, the rising of the light, was the beginning of the day, both natural and artificial; but the same [moment] was not the end of both. Whereas, on the contrary, according to the first opinion, the same moment [was] the end of both days, even though the beginning had diverse moments. A fifth opinion, indeed, can be devised: namely, that the first natural day was composed of the prior six hours of darkness, the 12 subsequent hours of light, and the remaining six hours from sunset to midnight—which [opinion], however, I do not embrace, because I have found no author who has asserted it, even though the Romans, and some Astronomers, reckon the days from midnight to midnight.

[Margin: Our opinion.]

[The sentence is completed from the top of p. 216; p. 216 then opens ¶XLIII—whether that pre-light time of darkness was the time of the angels’ battle, and the first instant of light the moment the holy Angels were confirmed in grace.]

(printed p. 216):

[XLIII.] Finally, the time from the first instant of the creation of the world under darkness, up to the first production of light (whether of 12 hours, or thereabouts), being supposed: it could be asked whether it is probable that that time of darkness was that in which the battle was fought between the good and the evil Angels, and that first instant of light [was that] in which the holy Angels were confirmed in grace and elevated to the light of glory—so that that corporeal light is to be understood literally, but was symbolically and mystically a sign of the spiritual light in the minds of the Angels? This indeed Rupert the Abbot expressly thought and discussed (bk. 1 Commentary on Genesis, ch. 10), and Aegidius (in the Hexaemeron, part 2, ch. 2). But these things are nothing to us now.

[Margin: The light produced, and the Angels beatified, at the same time.]

Spotted an error in this section? Report it