[I.] We propose, in one [chapter], a threefold question, which are so interwoven among themselves that none can be solved without the [other] two. We must inquire: whether the sidereal and visible heaven was made from elemental water, by condensation and solidification; then, whether the whole sidereal heaven [was so made], or at least the eighth sphere (the supreme of the visible [heavens]); finally, whether the waters above the heavens are liquid and distinct from the solid heaven, or enclosed in it and liquid in potency, not in act. For these [points] are established from sacred Scripture by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church; and [thus] we shall more easily and briefly dispatch many other questions, and be able to bear judgment on the opinions of others with greater and more solid tranquillity. Otherwise it is incredible what a confusion of opinions and questions is found among writers from this passage of sacred Genesis; in which multiplicity we shall choose that opinion which so accords with the letter of Sacred Scripture as to reconcile as many of the Fathers and Doctors among themselves as possible, to be as little as possible repugnant to Astronomical [findings], and finally to exhibit the workmanship of God [as] reasonable. And this we shall try [to do] in the following Questions and Conclusions.
Question 1
Whether some Heaven was made on the second day of the World, from Water condensed and solidified in the manner of ice or crystal.
[II.] The Conclusion is affirmative, and is proved first from the name which sacred Scripture gave to this heaven, namely “Firmament”—in Hebrew Rachiagh (or Rakiing, or Ragnagh; for some pronounce it variously, from the verb Reah, or Rakia, or Raquagh), which signifies both “to expand or extend” and “by extending, to make firm and consolidate,” as Lippomanus notes. Now, since here Pererius and Martinengus teach four ways in which something is “extended”—namely: (1) by the unfolding of a folded thing, as when sails and curtains are spread out (or [when] what was first compressed by hand strives to return to its former occupation of space); (2) by beating, as when metal is hammered out into sheets; (3) by rarefaction, as when water swells into bubbles by heat or breath, or, boiling in a vessel, evaporates; (4) by increase of substance, as when plants and infants grow into trees and men—St. Jerome and Vielmus add a fifth way: namely, Fusion (melting), by which metal, or anything liquefiable, is so cast that it retains the solidity and stability of the figure once received.
Now those who [held] the heaven’s fluidity, or who understand by the name “Firmament” the air, or the ether’s stability in bounding the waters on both sides (taken without hardness or solidity, strictly understood), contend that the name Rachiagh should be rendered according to the first mode of extension, and [that it] should be said “let there be made,” or “let there be, an Expansion or Spreading-out”: so Calvin (per Tanner), Caietanus, Steuchus, Vielmus, and Pererius; and they adduce that [text] of Psalm 103[:2], “Stretching out the heaven like a skin”—or “like a curtain and a tent”; [and Isaiah 40:22] “who stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them as a tent to dwell in.” But these examples they will not altogether take [as conclusive], because they at least suppose that [the things] which they have [so] explained have some solidity. Then, since St. Jerome and the Vulgate rendered [it] “Firmament,” and the Septuagint interpreters steréōma (στερέωμα)—which signifies a solid body (and Velleius, in Cicero, bk. 2 On the Nature of the Gods, said that solid and firm bodies are called by Epicurus sterémnia on account of [their] firmness; and even now the Hebrews who treat of Geometry, when solid and consistent bodies are dealt with, call them steréōma, and the treatment of them stereometría)—we too ought to render [it] in the same sense; or, [if it must] signify extension or expansion, [then] that according to the second mode, for beating or, as it were, hammering, as Pagnino and Oleaster (the Lusitanian) take [it], thus explaining this passage of Genesis, and that of Isaiah 42[:5], “who stretcheth out the earth, and the shoots [that come] from it,” where [the Hebrew] has Rocah, that is, “stretching out”; and [Jeremiah 10:9] “silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish,” where, for “spread,” the Hebrew edition has murecah; and that place of Ezekiel 6[:11], “Strike with thy hand—or rather, stamp with thy foot,” where in Hebrew, for “strike or stamp,” there is Vrechab, that is, “so stretch out” (for he who, with hand or foot, presses metal or mud, extends it). Or certainly the name “Firmament” is to be taken in the fifth sense, so that it signifies an expansion of the kind for which the name (or figure) Rakiah is given—not as when metals are cast into statues, but (what pleases me more, and sets before the eyes, as it were, both the force of this name and God’s mode in this work) as when glass, first melted in the furnace, is blown after the manner of glassworkers, who fashion very large flasks out of a little glass; for thus they expand that material, yet so that it comes out solid and firm.
[Margins: The 1st Conclusion, and its proof from the name “Firmament,” from Sacred Scripture; The five modes of extension; The name “Firmament” defended.]
And indeed this fifth mode is favoured by several other places of Sacred Scripture: namely Psalm 32[:6], “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established [firmati],” where the Septuagint has estereṓthēsan (στερεώθησαν), that is, “were solidified”; and 2 Paralipomenon 6, where the Heaven is called “a most firm habitation”; and Proverbs 8[:?], “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth”; and Job 38, “until the heaven be worn away”—for what is worn away is solid (as St. Thomas teaches, Part III, q. 57, art. 1), and is said more properly of solid bodies than of fluid ones; for if [only] solids are worn away, there was no need of penetration strictly taken; and that [text] of Isaiah 51[:6], “the heavens shall melt like smoke, and [shall be worn away] like a garment”—for what becomes liquid was surely solid; and as for what some, with the Seventy, render “and the heaven was made firm like smoke,” [this is] neither in the Hebrew nor in the Vulgate edition (St. Jerome, Pagnino, and Arias Montanus not consonant [with it]), [but] alludes to the likeness of smoke; and Basil (homily 1 of the Hexaemeron) does not accept the verbose [reading]. But the most famous of all is that place in Job 37[:18], where Elihu says: “Hast thou perhaps fashioned the heavens with him—[the heavens] which are most solid, as if cast of bronze?” For even though that saying is not [a matter] of Faith—since it is not [the word] of the sacred historian himself, nor uttered from the mouth of God—yet, inasmuch as it does not include falsity and repugnance reproved by God [as some of the friends’ words were], it has, like certain moral sayings, great authority, [being the word] of a man very expert, and speaking from ancient tradition about the fabric of the heavens explained by Moses; for the sayings of the [other] two of Job’s friends too have, as it were, great and irrefragable authority. They are confirmed by SS. Peter and Paul: thus (1 Corinthians 3[:19]) they adduce from Job 5[:13] that [saying] of Eliphaz the Themanite, “Who catcheth the wise in their craftiness”; and (2 Peter 2) from the same Eliphaz, “Behold, they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness” [Job 4:18]. So too the holy Fathers use [these]—as that opinion of Bildad the Shuhite (Job 25[:5]), “the stars are not pure in his sight”; and those words of Elihu (Job 34[:19]), “who accepteth not the persons of princes,” and in the same place (Job 34[:30]), “who maketh a hypocrite to reign, for the sins of the people.”
[The sentence continues at the top of p. 217; p. 217 then notes that very many Fathers and Doctors understood “Firmament” in this [solid] sense, to be adduced as the second proof—a matter, Riccioli says, too little discussed by most save Martinengus, Salianus, and Tanner.]
(printed p. 217): The page notes that the holy Fathers likewise make use of the sayings of Job’s friends, citing Bildad the Shuhite’s assertion that “the stars are not pure in his sight” and Elihu’s words that God accepts not the persons of princes and makes a hypocrite to reign for the sins of the people.
Finally, by this notion [as a solid] very many Fathers and Doctors understood this name—who must presently be adduced for the second proof, with selected [passages of] their words, lest the Readers think they are drawn by us to this sense violently, or from too remote a conjecture, or from too general a phrase: especially since this question is of the greatest moment, and, on account of the neglect of these authorities, has by many not been discussed as it deserved—excepting Martinengus, Salianus, and Tanner, whom I have noted [as] the most diligent of all in this matter.
[III.] Secondly, then, the conclusion is proved by the Authority of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church—before whom let me be allowed to bring forward Josephus, who (bk. 1 Antiquities, ch. 1) has thus: “After these things, on the second day, he placed the heaven above all things; and, distinguishing it from the waters, he ordered it to be constituted in itself; and, putting crystal around it, he tempered it [to be] moistened and bedewed for the earth.” And from the Greek mouth of Peter, St. Clement the Pope (bk. 1 Recognitions): “The water, which was in the middle space of that first heaven and earth, [being] as it were congealed by frost and solidified into crystal, is stretched out; and by a Firmament of this kind the middle spaces of heaven and earth are, as it were, shut off; and this Firmament the Creator called ‘heaven,’ named by the term of that older [thing]; and so [it forms] the heaven of the whole world’s machine, and divides two regions”—so the Greek [text]. And if the book On the Trinity is ascribed to Tertullian and to Novatian (as Pamelius contends), or to Tertullian himself: in it those words of Ezekiel 1[:22], “the appearance of the firmament [was] as of terrible crystal,” are explained thus: “all things being covered over with crystal from above, that is, the heaven covering all. What had been in the firmament from the flowing matter of the waters was then solidified, like ice into crystal—a partition by the solidity of the waters that before covered it; then it so tempered [itself] that it might sustain the weight of the upper water by the forces of frost.”
[Margins: Josephus; St. Clement; Tertullian; St. Hippolytus.]
How much water was used up in this work, St. Hippolytus the Roman (once Bishop of Portus, and Martyr) declares (in Martinengus, p. 571): “He willed a third part of the waters [to remain] in potency, placed in the middle; a third raised above the firmament; and a third upon the face [of the earth], namely for the use of men.” But although St. Hilary (Enarration on Psalm 135) does not [explicitly] explain this solidity, yet [he says]: “For the waters raised above the solid foundation of the first heaven tempered [its] nature—[waters] which, kindled by the supernal power of God, are by no means to be thought of [the same] nature as the lower [ones]. But the lower heaven he stretched out, not uniform but manifold; the whole of which he called ‘Firmament,’ and solidified [it] with a firmness strong for sustaining the upper waters and tempering our air.” And so, between the kindled heaven (the Empyrean) and our air, he acknowledges all the heavens [to be] solid, and the waters above them. So St. Caesarius, brother of St. Gregory Nazianzen (in the Dialogue, qq. 4, 5, 6), teaches that the Firmament, set between the upper and the lower waters, is diverse from the heaven which Moses mentioned in the first place, and is of crystalline nature, and concreted by divine power, so that it can carry and separate the upper waters.
[Margins: St. Hilary; St. Caesarius; Severianus.]
Let us now hear [an author held in esteem] in the collection of Lippomanus and the Gloss of Martinengus; he says: “The first heaven is not [called] ‘firmament,’ but [has] the name ‘heaven’; but the second is the heaven’s, and received the name ‘firmament’: ‘heaven’ indeed, because it is above us; but ‘Firmament,’ because it was constituted from the flowing essence of the waters; and that flowing and liquid nature, [made] most dense and most solid, was effected by God, the Maker of all.” And a little after he seems [to add] another consideration, when he says: “But this too must be known—that [the earth] too is called ‘firmament’ in Scripture (Psalm 135): ‘Who established the earth above the waters’; as [also Isaiah]: ‘The Lord, who made heaven, and set the earth above the waters.’” And with later words, a writer of the fourth century, namely Severianus (as is had in the same collection and Gloss): “This water (for example) was set, in the meantime, [as] the firmament in the middle of the waters, nor was it long in being compacted. In the midst of the waters, the congealing of the waters is the very thing which [is] the firmament; and, suspending half of the waters with itself, it left the remaining [half] below. Again: this heaven, therefore, [is] not that supreme [one], but that which is visible—[which God] fixed [as] crystalline. Behold the works of the [divine] powers, and admire the Maker: he willed the middle part of the waters [to be] above, the middle below.”
Then St. John Chrysostom (homily 4 on Genesis), although he dares not define how the Firmament was made, yet holds it undoubted that it was made by God and carries the upper waters on its back—which can scarcely be conceived without solidity; for he says: “What is the Firmament? as if one should say, in human speech: ‘Let there be a kind of wall and interstice in the middle of the waters, making a separation.’” And a little below: “He ordered some waters to be borne under the Firmament, but others above the back of that Firmament… [Does he say] a ‘spread-out air,’ or some other [thing]? No prudent person would assent to that. For these things which are said must be received by us with great modesty and gratitude, and we must not advance beyond our nature [to] scrutinize what is above us; but [it suffices] to know and hold among us that the Lord [was pleased] to produce [it], and to make a separation of the waters—[so] that he sees some [waters] contained below itself, others borne above its back.” (Below, however, we shall see that he does not speak of the heaven where the Planets move, since he thinks that immovable; or that he does not acknowledge in this [firmament] solidity with that hardness—which, however, Claudius Marius Victor supposed, bk. 1 Commentary on Genesis, in these verses:)
“When, with most firm mass, emerging from the midst of the waves with concreted body, it raised itself, and—widely solidified with hard rigidity—suspended the divided waters, and set the cold deep against the hot poles, and, propped with a barrier, drew itself over the things [below], which, with vast circuit, it covers: the heaven, exposed [to view] under the name [of ‘ether’].”
[Margins: St. Chrysostom; Claudius Marius [Victor]; St. Jerome; St. Augustine.]
Tertullian too, expounding Ezekiel (as I showed above), agrees. St. Jerome (in the Epistle to Oceanus): “Between heaven and earth the Firmament is built, which—according to the etymology of the Hebrew speech, caelum (that is, Samaim)—they take [as] a stronger word, and [the heavens] are, as it were, ‘heavens’; [the waters] are separated for the praises of God; whence also in Ezekiel the Prophet [are mentioned] the denser waters.” Their sense St. Augustine indicates as an opinion, and does not refute (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1), saying: “The Firmament, as it seems to some, is ice [glacies] of the waters, and is therefore called ‘Firmament’ because, the waters being concreted, [it is] the firm [part] of this [world]—which, from hiding or concealing, was called caelum.” But yet below he holds at least this for certain: “This Firmament was made from the aforesaid water-substance”; and a little after: “The Firmament, therefore (that is, the heaven), was made in the middle of the waters, between the water which was above the firmament and the water which was below the firmament, [so] that by God’s power the firmament should stand in the middle of the waters—having water below itself, within itself, and around itself.” (See him also, q. 106 in the Questions on both Testaments, in vol. 4 of St. Augustine’s works.)
To these may be added Gennadius (a fifth-century author), [who], on Genesis (as the Catena of Lippomanus and the Gloss of Martinengus have it), says: “The Firmament, then, is named from its own making; because, whereas before it flowed forth thin, fluid, and subtle, it received [the property of being] solid and immovable.” To this Theodoret nearly agrees (q. 11 on Genesis), thus expounding his mind: “For we ought, from the ready creature and the mode of creation, to know the diversity of the heavens—the one [made] before the light, the other after the light; and that [first] one [made] not from any matter, but this [second] from water. For he says, ‘Let there be a Firmament in the midst of the water, which may divide the waters from the waters in the middle.’” He alludes to the Hebrew name Samaim, that is, “there [is] water”; and he continues: “Since it is composed from the fluid substance of the waters, and is of a flowing nature, [once it] was condensed and consolidated, he named it ‘Firmament.’” And, more briefly, Eucherius (bk. 1 on Genesis): “By the name ‘Firmament,’ the heaven is signified, for the reason that it is strongly and firmly composed.” Let Junilius close this fifth century, who (Commentary on the Hexaemeron, [ch.] 14) discusses: “Here is described the creation of our heaven, in which the stars are fixed—which, it is agreed, is the firmament in the midst of the waters. For, the waters being supposed, we see them [resting] upon the air and the lands themselves; and that [waters] are placed above [the firmament], we are taught not only by the authority of this scripture, but also by the words of the Prophet, who says: ‘Stretching out the heaven like a skin, who coverest its higher parts with waters’ (Psalm 103[:2–3]). In the middle of the waters, therefore, the sidereal heaven is agreed to be the Firmament; nor does anything prohibit [us] from believing that it too was made from the waters. For we know what is the firmness of the crystalline stone, what its transparency and purity—[a stone] which it is certain was generated from a gathering of waters; what stands in the way of believing that the same Disposer of natures solidified, into the firmament of heaven, a substance of waters?”
[Margins: St. Augustine; Gennadius; Theodoret; Eucherius; Junilius.]
[Junilius’s discourse continues at the top of p. 218: “I have already said that there are not lacking those who [hold the like]…”]
(printed p. 218): The page advances to sixth-century witnesses on the firmament, Procopius of Gaza and Olympiodorus. Procopius, commenting on Genesis, teaches the common theological opinion that the waters were concreted at the making of this heaven, the Hebrew Samaim denoting crystal or congealed water; Olympiodorus likewise says the heaven’s subtle nature was made solid as if water had congealed into stone.
[Margins: Procopius; Olympiodorus.]
Let us now pass to the ninth century, in which Strabo (in the Glossa Ordinaria), expounding the work of the second day, savours of Junilius’s opinion; for, having described his view almost word for word and used the comparison of crystal, he then added his own [words], [referring] to what is written in Job, that [God] “binds the waters in his clouds”: “For he who, below the heaven, binds the waters—retained for a time by the vapors of the clouds, lest they slip down upon [us] in [their] snow-like thinness—who can suspend the waters by solidity, [holding them] from the weight of the earth; and what [is] more useful, unless that he hangs [the earth] upon nothing itself? But of what kind [the waters are], and to what use, he himself knows who founded [them].”
[Margin: Strabo.]
At the same time lived St. Anselm of Canterbury, who in his On the Image of the World (bk. 1, ch. 25) wrote not dissimilar things: “The higher heaven is called Firmament, because it is a firmament in the midst of the waters; that is, a spherical form, watery on every side, solidified from waters like ice—nay, [like] crystal—whence it is called Firmament.” By which words he seems to describe the eighth sphere, or heaven of the Fixed [stars]; for this is the higher [one], and everywhere adorned with stars. The tenth century was called the “iron” [age], which scarcely produced one or another [author] of like renown. But at the end of the eleventh century, Anselm of Laon (in the Glossa Interlinearis) said it must be understood thus: “The higher part of the waters, in the world, is congealed [into] crystalline stone; the lower [part] is reduced to matter.” After whom, not long after, Hugh of St.-Victor (bk. 1 On the Sacraments, part 1, ch. 17): [the firmament was raised] into such a form of crystalline stone, [serving] as a kind of middle [partition], so that it might separate from one another, and divide, the thin mass of [the upper] waters and [the lower] waters—[holding] the waters which by its circuit it would embrace, divided within and below, and contain; and [leaving] the waters which it would leave outside and above its limit.
[Margins: St. Anselm; Glossa Interlinearis; Hugh of St.-Victor.]
Clearly Comestor (the [author of the] Scholastic History, on Genesis ch. 1): “God therefore made, on that day, the firmament in the midst of the waters—the outer surface of the world—from congealed waters, solidified within like crystal, and translucent, containing within [itself] the rest, after the image of the shell which is in an egg; and in it the stars are fixed; and it is called ‘firmament,’ not, indeed, on account of its [own] solidity, but because it is firmly [set] of the waters which are above it… and is impassable. It is called ‘heaven’ (caelum), that is, because it hides (caelat), i.e. covers, all sensible things.” Peter Lombard ([Sentences] bk. 2, dist. 14): “Of that heaven… here is described the creation, in which the stars are fixed; since waters are supposed [to be] in the air and in the earth, and others placed above—of which it is said, ‘who coverest its higher parts with waters.’ In the middle, therefore, is the firmament, that is, the sidereal heaven, which we are given to believe was made from the waters; for the crystalline stone, whose firmness and transparency is great, was made from waters.” In very few words Richard [of St.-Victor] (bk. 1 Exceptions, ch. 5) indicated that the stars are fixed in the heaven in the manner of nails, and that [the heaven] is rolled round [with them], and so that the heaven is solid: “the Firmament, namely, [being] a revolving crystal with [the stars] fixed above [it].” Scholastically, Hugh of St.-Cher (in his postils) ascribes this to the Master [Lombard], as appears from those words: “The Firmament, the surface of the sensible world, [made] from waters congealed into crystal—so they say—containing all other sensible things, after the likeness of a shell; and it is called ‘firmament’ because [it is] firm.” Nor does Dionysius the Carthusian depart much from this (Commentary on Genesis, art. 10), where he teaches that the Firmament was not made on the second day as to [its] substantial form, but as to certain qualities, especially solidity; but he adds: “The Firmament, that is, the heaven of the stars, which is the eighth sphere; because beneath it are the seven spheres, or [the] orbs of the planets.”
[Margins: Comestor; the Master; Richard; Hugh of St.-Cher; Dionysius the Carthusian.]
Although the authors cited [up to] the seventh century do not [all] indicate the solidity of the Heaven, [nor] express that firm hardness [as] of ice or stone, but [say] only that it was made from water—yet most of them express that [solidity], or indicate [something] equivalent; and the more recent Theologians have expressly and absolutely taught its Solidity—especially Martinengus (Glossa Magna, p. 590), and, of our Society, Molina (On the Work of the Six Days, disp. 2, last ch.), and Martín Del Río, and Cornelius à Lapide (on Genesis, at the second day), Severianus (on the [Epistle] of St. Peter), Salianus (in the Annals of the Old Testament, at the second day), Tanner (vol. 1 of the Theology, disp. 6, q. 3, dub. 1), etc. And so [it is interpreted] in that [text] of Apocalypse 4[:6]: “and [before the throne there was], as it were, a sea of glass, like crystal.”
[Margin: Martinengus, Molina, Del Río, Cornelius, Salianus, Tanner, etc.]
Question 2
Whether some Sidereal Heaven, made or left on the second day, was fluid; or [whether it was] so solid that it nevertheless did not, and does not, have [hard] solidity, but was called firm and solid for another reason, from Scripture and the Fathers: where also [we treat] of the motion of the Planets in the heaven.
[IV.] I suppose here, from Genesis 1 and from the Fathers (to be cited in Section 3, ch. 1, num. 5), that the Firmament is that whole space in which the wandering [planets] and the non-wandering [fixed] stars were placed by God, or in which [they were] produced.
Let this Conclusion likewise be affirmative; which, although it cannot be positively shown from the Sacred Scriptures, will be made manifest from not a few Fathers and Doctors—nay, even from the scriptures, but negatively (num. 5). For some think the “Firmament” is so called because it is something corporeal, or a body, having three dimensions, and they think this suffices for solidity; some, because it is an impassable boundary of the waters; some, because [it is] incorruptible; but some expressly affirm it [to be] pervious to rains or stars, and to be immovable; some, finally, ascribe solidity not to the whole sidereal heaven, but only to its supreme part, or the eighth sphere—as will presently appear.
[Margin: The 2nd Conclusion.]
Philo (bk. 1 On the Making of the World): “He called the heaven ‘firmament,’ as a corporeal thing. For a body is naturally firm and solid, having three dimensions. And what other notion can there be of a solid and corporeal [thing] than [the notion] of a certain dimension?” The same was [the view] held by Origen (homily 1 on Genesis): “After [the light] he makes the Firmament, that is, the corporeal Heaven. For every body is, without doubt, firm and solid; and this is what divides between the water which is above the heaven and the water which is below the heaven.” In nearly the same sense St. Basil (homily 2 of the Hexaemeron) understood the Firmament, namely [as] a body having three dimensions, and so apt for resisting; for when he had said that on the second day a Heaven diverse from the first, and solid, was made, he explains [its] nature more fully thus: “Outward [worldly] men call that a ‘firm body’ which is, as it were, solid, dense, and full”—distinguishing [it] from a Mathematical body, which consists in dimensions alone (namely breadth, length, and depth)—“but [they call] firm and solid that which, with [its] dimensions, can strive against and resist [pressure]. And sacred Scripture is wont to call ‘firmament’ everything that is very robust and does not yield; so that, even in the case of condensed air, it often uses this very word, as when it says, ‘Who maketh firm the thunder.’ For [Scripture] named [as] ‘the firmness of thunder’ the solidity and resistance of the spirit [air] enclosed in the hollow bosom of a cloud, which, by violently bursting out, produces that sound which we call thunder. Therefore in this place too, I judge, this word was instituted by Scripture for a firm and solid nature, fit to hold back and confine the waters, which of their own nature slip away.”
[Margins: Philo; Origen; St. Basil.]
[The Basil quotation is completed from the top of p. 219, where the discussion continues.]
(printed p. 219): The page presents St. Basil’s rejection of a firmament of ice or crystal: he denies that the firmament, though arising from water, is like crystal or congealed water, calling such opinions the mark of a childish mind, and explains the name “firmament” only by comparison with the most tenuous bodies. In homily 1 of the Hexaemeron he declares the heavens by no means solid, made firm like smoke.
[Margin: St. Nyssen.]
With which there is a wonderful concord [in] his brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the History of the Six Days): “Indeed, I do not think [there is] any dense, solid, and hard body around the firmament… the firmament [being] a certain nature such that it is ‘firmament’ by comparison with itself, [and] incorporeal…” For who does not know that whatever is solid and firm [is so] through a certain hardness [and] density, so that it is consolidated? But what is dense and firm is not, by [its] quality of weight, void of gravity…
[Margins: St. Ambrose; St. Augustine.]
The same as St. Basil[‘s view] St. Ambrose subscribes (bk. 2 Hexaemeron, ch. 3), but has these peculiar [points]: “Firm is everything that God establishes”; and below he asks, “How ought this firmament to be understood? [Some things] flow forth, this is constrained; those run, this remains”; and he answers that it was made by the divine power and virtue (ch. 4): “From [its] firmness, therefore, the firmament is named”; or, as (ch. 6) speaking of the heaven which Isaiah compares to smoke, he says, “wishing to declare its subtle and not solid nature.” But St. Augustine too (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter): “The ‘Firmament’—either, as by [its] proper name, [for] firmness, or on account of the impassable boundary of the upper and lower waters—the word may be understood [thus].” Which very words Eucherius (bk. 1 on Genesis), Bede (book On the Creation of the Six Days), the Gloss (both Ordinary and Interlinear), then Strabo and Anselm, and Hugh of St.-Cher (in postils), and the Master of the Sentences (bk. 2, dist. 14), and [the author of the] Scholastic History (ch. 4), have copied out—though these do not deny all solidity in the heaven.
[Margins: Albertus Magnus; Tostatus.]
In another way, however, this firmness—namely, for incorruptibility—Albertus Magnus interpreted (part 1 of the Summa, On the Four Coeval Things, q. 4, art. 19): “The Firmament is so called from the firmness of [its] nature, by which it is neither generated nor corrupted; and [its components] were concreted in a temper of qualities not at all conflicting,” he adds; “for [the qualities] thus concreted impede the harmfulness of each [taken] by itself; and it is called ‘firm’ on this account, because that concord is indivisible, since it is drawn out beyond both the action and the passion of contraries.” Just as also Tostatus (in his Commentaries, or “Knots,” on Genesis): that the name “heaven” [is given to] this [firmament] not from firmness (although the celestial substance is firm and hard); and although he adduces that [saying] of Elihu in Job, “Hast thou perhaps [made the heavens]… cast as if of bronze?”—yet he adds: “But in Hebrew this celestial body is called Raquin [raqia], which signifies expansion, not firmness,” etc.; “and it is called ‘expanse’ because it is expanded over the whole orb, covering all.”
[Margin: St. Damascene.]
But he errs, and speaks [following] the more ancient [authors], whom St. Damascene follows (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 6), [who] makes no mention of solidity; for when he had said, “Then God called the firmament ‘heaven,’ which he commanded to be made in the midst of the waters, bidding it divide the middle of the water, [so] that [the water] which is above the firmament [be divided from that below],” [he holds] the heaven thin, like smoke, as the divine scripture [says]. Before that, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 9) supposes the watery heaven penetrable, saying: “He set the waters above… so that, when the earth needed the irrigation of rains, he might open [them].” I confess, however, that—excepting Basil and Nyssen—[the testimonies] are more evident for the fluidity of the heaven; but the harmony [of the question] rests on the immobility of the whole heaven, [together] with the planetary [motion] and the motion of the stars in it.
[Margins: St. Cyril of Jerusalem; St. Justin; Eusebius Emissenus.]
St. Justin (q. 39 of the Orthodox [Questions]): [asks] by what force they who say [it] speak truly, [when] they say that the stars are borne in the heaven, or below the heaven? If we say [they are] in the heaven, how do they have the action of moving, [if] the [heaven’s] body is immovable? In what sense this is to be understood, Eusebius Emissenus says (in Lippomanus, Catena on Genesis ch. 1, and the work of the fourth day): “How are the luminaries and stars, distant below the heaven, carried round? Are they fixed in the heaven, or do they [move] as travelers in the heaven?” And he answers that they are in the heaven, but not fixed, and they themselves move while the heaven [is] unmoved; and he concludes: “Sacred and divine Scripture attests that the heaven [is] firm and immovable, but foretold that the Sun and Moon are mobile, saying, ‘He set the Sun in the firmament’; for in Joshua it is said, ‘The Sun and Moon stood still’—not ‘the heaven, moving the Moon and Sun, [stood still]’; likewise from Hezekiah, ‘that the Sun go back’—it does not say ‘the heaven, moving the Sun, go back.’”
[Margins: St. Chrysostom; Philastrius.]
Of plainly the same opinion I find St. John Chrysostom to have been (homily 6 on Genesis): “‘He placed them in the firmament of heaven.’ What is ‘he placed’? Is it as if he had said ‘he fixed’? By no means; for let us see what follows [concerning the Sun and Moon]; for in Joshua it is said [the Sun was bidden] to stand, but to perform the course which the Lord commanded it.” And (homily 14 on the Epistle to the Hebrews): “Which God fixed, and not man”; and (to the people of Antioch): “The heaven remained immobile, as the Prophet says”; and elsewhere, “establishing the heaven over the earth like a vault and like a tent; but the Sun, with the rest of the stars, is, as it were, carried round.” But with more graceful words Philastrius defends the same opinion (in his Catalogue of Heresies, heresy 16): “And it is a heresy [to hold] that the stars are fixed in the heaven, and not [to acknowledge them] as from the treasury of light—hidden, and disposed by God, and standing forth at their hours to [perform] their course and ministry by their own light—[a truth] which they who [deny] hold against the catholic faith; and they have more of pagan vanity, and of the empty wisdom of the Philosophers, than fellowship with Christian knowledge.”
[Margins: Procopius; Diodorus.]
Procopius adds his support (on Genesis ch. 2), where, to that proposed question—“whether the luminaries, fixed in the heaven, are carried round; or whether, the heaven remaining stable and immobile, they accomplish their revolutions?”—he satisfies [it] by answering: “…the luminaries seem to me to advance through [their] course, as [if] extending themselves toward us; for not in vain does Scripture have ‘God set them in the firmament’; and indeed they wish the word ‘set’ [to stand] for ‘fixed.’ Wherefore Jesus, son of Nun [Joshua], cries out, ‘Let the Sun stand’; he did not say, ‘Let the heaven stand,’ which moves it.” The same, without doubt, was the mind of Diodorus of Tarsus (on Genesis, which Lippomanus and the Catena on Genesis also report): “Let no one, when he hears [that they are] ‘in the firmament of heaven,’ think that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, fixed in the heaven, are carried round”; he brings the example of Adam, whom God “placed” in paradise, but did not “fix”; and he proceeds: “Wherefore it must be understood that, just as men [are placed] on the earth, so the luminaries are placed in the heaven, performing that supernal journey.”
[Margins: St. Augustine; St. Isidore.]
To these must be joined those who think that the non-wandering [fixed] stars are indeed fixed in the firmament, but that the Planets, contained in it (or in the ether beneath it), move by themselves, and not by the motion of the orb [sphere]: which St. Augustine seems to approve (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 16), and St. Isidore (bk. 3 Etymologies, ch. 49). They say the Sun moves by itself: “For if it remained fixed [to] the heaven, all days and nights would be equal; but since we see it set in one place [one day], and [in] another [the next], it appears to move by itself, and not to be turned with the world.” Nor, indeed, if anything has been erred by him or by others in [a matter of] Astronomical subtlety, [should one] call this [a fault]; but [the weighty point] is, [it would be] something hard [to deny] if we should prove, by the authority of the Fathers, namely, that the Planets are not moved by the motion of the orb; … and Richard of St.-Victor (bk. 1 Exceptions, ch. 7): “On the fourth day he made the luminaries, which in the firmament are proved to be fixed, except the seven Planets, whose names are these: Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn”—where, by the name “luminaries,” he understands the lights of the stars.
[Margin: Richard of St.-Victor.]
[The discourse continues at the top of p. 220 with St. Anselm of Canterbury (On the Image of the World, ch. 24) on fire, “the fourth element,” extended from the Moon up to the firmament.]
(printed p. 220): The page cites St. Anselm of Canterbury on the elemental fire or pure ether extending from the Moon to the firmament, in which the seven Planets are carried westward by the firmament’s immense speed yet revolve eastward by their own course, like a fly on a mill-wheel. Yet Anselm had elsewhere taught that the firmament of the fixed stars is solid, like crystal.
[Margins: Richard of St.-Victor; St. Anselm; Fire, or ether, beneath the [region] of the Planets.]
Junilius: “It must be understood that [the bird] flies [below] the firmament of heaven… that is, the higher space of the heaven’s air, which extends from this turbulent and murky place (in which the birds fly) up to the stars; which [space] is believed to be a tranquil body, full of light. For the stars above—[and] those [borne] in this ethereal space—are said to be carried [along],” [as a fly in the air]. Dionysius the Carthusian reports another opinion, and does not disapprove it (Enarration on Genesis, art. 12)—here he takes the firmament for the starry heaven, or eighth sphere; then: “Plato, in the Timaeus, says that the stars are not fixed in the firmament, but move and lead a dance in it”; and in this [view] Heraclides accompanies Plato; whence they say that neither the heaven [carries them], nor [are the stars merely] carried round. Then Rupert (bk. 1 on Genesis, ch. 23): “Yet it is not so consonant [to hold] that the waters are above the firmament, as [it is] to concede that the stars are [not] concreted [fixed in it].”
[Margins: Junilius; Ether for “heaven”; Dionysius the Carthusian; Plato; Ptolemy; Rupert.]
[V.] The second argument is taken from the scriptures, by negative authority—which in this place has great force, from the contrary sense: namely, that motion in the heaven is read [as] ascribed to the Sun, the Moon, and any of the Planets [themselves, not to the heaven]. For whenever there is mention of the rising and setting of the Sun, it is always attributed to the Sun: as Genesis 19[:23], “The Sun was risen upon the earth”; and ch. 32[:31], “the Sun rose immediately.” So the Sun itself is said “to set” or “to go down” (Leviticus 22; Judges 19; 2 Paralipomenon 18; Tobit 2); and Joshua 10[:12–13], “Sun, against Gibeon move not, and Moon, against the valley of Aialon… [and] the Sun and Moon stood still,” etc.—concerning which same miracle, Job 9[:7], “Who maketh the Sun to stand,” and Ecclesiasticus 46[:5], “in his days the Sun went back.” Of the other miracle—of [the Sun] going back on the sundial of Ahaz—now [in] 4 Kings 20 and Isaiah 38[:8]: “And the Sun returned ten lines, by the degrees by which it had gone down.” So in Job 9[:7] we have, of God: “Who commandeth the Sun, and it riseth not.” And Psalm 103[:22], “The Sun arose, and they were gathered together.” And Ecclesiastes 1[:5–6]: “The Sun riseth and setteth, and returneth to its place; and there, rising again, it goeth round by the South, and bendeth toward the North; surveying all things, and the spirit goeth forth in [its] circuits.” And [Matthew 5:45], “Who maketh his Sun to rise upon the good and the bad.” Wherefore, diligently turn over the sacred pages: you will not find motion attributed to the heaven, by whose motion the Sun or Moon may be understood to move; but [motion attributed] only to the Sun and the Moon [themselves].
Either, therefore, [the planets] penetrate in the heaven, [so] that the heaven does not have that impenetrability which the other [solid] bodies have—which Albertus Magnus notes, and does not refute (part 1, q. 4, art. 19), and St. Bonaventure (bk. 2, dist. 14, part 2, art. 1, q. 2). “But only the light passes through the air,” says Albertus; or because “a body of light [passes] together with another light” (as ch. 5). St. Bonaventure [says] what others admit (ch. 7)—except that the greatest [and] highest part [of the heaven] is immobile, and the planet [moves] through it as birds through the air, [the heaven] yielding through which they move; and [so] those heavens through which they pass must at least be admitted [to be] fluid. Or else it must be said that sacred Scripture expresses [the motion] of the conspicuous Luminaries—namely, that [Sun] which is more manifest and meets the eyes—as Martinengus, Pererius, and Argolus say, and [as] I shall adduce below (ch. 7, num. 13).
[Margins: The 2nd Argument, from the motion belonging to the Planets in the heaven; The penetrability of the heavens / of the stars.]
Question 3
Whether, and what, Waters are above the sidereal heavens; and to what end or use; and of how great a mass.
[VI.] Not a few have denied these waters—among whom Clavius (in [his] Sphere, p. 45), Arriaga (the single disputation On the Heaven, sect. 4), and all those to be cited below (num. 11 and 12). Yet [let this be the] Conclusion: Some waters, of the same species as the elemental [waters], created from the second day of the World [down] to these times, are above some sidereal heavens.
It is proved, first, from sacred Scripture. For in Genesis 1, on the first day, a depth and great force of waters is supposed [to have been] made by God (as is the common consensus of interpreters, one or another dissenting); but then these were, at that time, mixed with the other elements; and so of the work of the second day it is said: “Let there be a Firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters which [were] under the firmament from those which [were] above the Firmament. And God called the firmament ‘heaven.’” Where, in the rigour of the Hebrew, that [word] “were” is not [present], at least in the second clause, but must be added there by a kind of consequence: “[the waters] which [were] under the Firmament, from those which [were] above the Firmament”—understanding that they “were to be,” or “were,” or “are”; for not before the Firmament was made were there waters above the Firmament. These [things] premised, it is sufficiently clear that some waters are above the Firmament, and are of those waters which were conjoined and continuous with the waters which remained below the Firmament. Then in Psalm 148[:4] it says: “Praise [him], heaven of heavens, and let all the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord.” And before, in Psalm 103[:2–3]: “Stretching out the heaven like a skin, who coverest its higher parts with waters.” And again, in the Canticle [of the Three Children]: [let the waters that are above the heavens bless] the Lord. Whence that [stanza] in the hymn at Vespers of the second feria [Monday]:
“Immense Creator of heaven, who—lest the mingled [waters] should confound [one another]—dividing the watery floods, gavest the heaven [as their] boundary, making firm a place for the heavenly [waters], and likewise for the earth [its] streams; that the wave might temper the flames, [and] lest [the flames] should waste the soil.”
[Margins: Question 3; The 1st Conclusion.]
[VII.] Secondly, it is proved by the Authority of the Fathers—who are so many that [Augustine] says, in his [comments] on Genesis, that they have the force, as it were, of a single Council; and indeed, in the Sixth Council of Constantinople (action 11) is recited, and (action 13) approved, the epistle of Sophronius, in which, among other errors of Origen, this was reported: [namely, that he held the ocean to contain the waters]—that is, [Origen] disapproved the creation of the supercelestial waters. Now, from the Fathers I have already cited many above (num. 5)—namely Tertullian, Hilary, Hippolytus, Caesarius, Severianus, Cyril, Chrysostom, Claudius Marius, Procopius, Anselm, Theodoret, Junilius, Strabo, Hugh, Comestor—and, in short, all who think the heavens [were] made and made-firm, or solidified, from the waters. But besides the places already adduced: St. Augustine (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 1), when he had said: “What is asserted to me [concerning] the nature of these waters above the firmament of heaven… [cannot be ruled out]—whether they have their own ordered weight, or float above the earth, or [whether], in the air nearest the earth, we are borne [as] vapour”—then concludes (ch. 5): “But in whatever way, and of whatever kind, those waters are there: that they are in the world, let us not doubt; for the authority of this scripture is greater than all the capacity of human wit.” Which very opinion, in the same words, Eucherius and Bede bring forward and prove (on Genesis). But again St. Augustine (bk. 11 On the City of God, ch. 34) says that “this is no more to be wondered at than if one should say that the seat of phlegm, or rheum, is in the head of man; which, if we did not know it, but Scripture said it, would not be believed by certain Philosophers, who are moved by the weights of the elements”—and whom he here calls “treaters of the elements.” And on Psalm 103, expounding that [verse], “Who coverest its higher parts with waters,” he says: “This is read, and [is to be understood] according to the letter…”
[Margins: The 2nd Proof, from the Fathers; St. Augustine; Bede [and] Eucherius.]
[Augustine’s words are completed at the top of p. 221: “…for when he commanded that a firmament be made between the waters and the waters, it came about that there are lower waters which drench the lands, and upper waters removed from sight, yet commended to faith”; whence, although the bodily eye does not discern them, the eye of faith can attain them. P. 221 then continues with Clement’s Recognitions (St. Peter) on the waters.]
(printed p. 221): The page cites St. Peter, as reported by Clement in the Recognitions, teaching that part of the waters was solidified into heaven while the remainder was gathered into the sea. Riccioli therefore supposes the upper waters to be of the nature of the same elemental waters, as St. Hilary also indicates when he says the raised waters tempered the nature of the first heaven.
But St. Basil too (homily 3 in the Hexaemeron), when he had taught that an abundance of supernatant waters was necessary, and [necessary] for tempering the fire, says—refuting the opinion of Apollinaris and Origen, who had understood, for the waters above the heavens, either Angels or some such thing: “Setting aside these [interpretations] of fire and of that kind, as being like to dreams and old wives’ tales, let us understand water as water”—this according to the letter, and taking this name according to the common notion. And in the same place, to those asking how fluid waters can stand upon the spherical surface of the heaven, he answered: even though the surface of [the] heaven be such that it appears round, yet the convex [outer surface] is not necessarily round, and [the inner] can have the figure of a vessel containing water. Which very [point] Ambrose too took from Basil (bk. 1 Hexaemeron, ch. 3), against those who, as he himself says, “wish to destroy that which, by frequent reading of the scriptures, has been ingrained in us and impressed on our minds—[namely] that there cannot be waters above the heavens—saying that that orb of heaven is round,” etc. And a little after, these [objectors] being despised, he subjoins: “But we do not [merely] follow the series and order of the scriptures, and contemplate the work by the estimation of [its] Author… I hear that the firmament was made, by the precept by which the waters were divided into lower and upper. What, then, shall we say—an interstice of waters and a Firmament being placed in the middle—what prevents [us from holding] that the water, [thus] divided, can remain distinct?” Hence, pouring himself out into the praises of [God’s] omnipotence concerning them, he concludes: “Thou who hearest that this is [so], why dost thou wonder if, above the firmament of heaven, so great a mass of the wave of water could exist? For the waters of the Red Sea and of the Jordan were contained—made firm on this side and that into heaps, and, as it were, suspended—until the people of God passed over dry-foot; and [so] the waters being bound in the clouds, and the sea’s swelling not flooding the earth.”
[Margins: St. Prosper; St. Clement; St. Hilary; St. Basil; St. Ambrose.]
And (ch. 4), when [Ambrose] had brought forward Origen’s opinion—who, by the name “Waters,” interpreted the intellectual or Angelic nature, because those “waters” would strive to praise God—he added: “But it does not seem to us alien and absurd, if we understand [them as] true waters, for that cause which we have said; for both dew, and frost, and cold, and other [things], according to the hymn of the [three children], bless the Lord; and these we refer not to intelligible natures, but to the truth [literal sense].” The same error of Origen, Epiphanius relates (in the epistle to John, Bishop of Jerusalem), disputing [thus]: “How [shall we explain it], [when] we read that in the deluge the gates of heaven were opened, and the waters flooded [in] the deluge?” We heard above (num. 3) St. John Chrysostom too; but let us hear him again: there is [a passage] for us in [his] homily on Psalm 148, on that [verse], “And all the waters which are above the heavens.” “Thou hast heard: [praise him,] heavens of heavens; … [there are], from the waters, certain lower ones [as] remnants, but [it] made those [others] sublime, and these [it] made more firmly sublime—[as] the firmament, stable.” To which I subjoin Theodoret (q. 11 on Genesis), speaking thus: “God divided the nature of all the waters in two ways, and placed some above for [the sake of] heaven, which, by their liquid and coldness, did not allow the firmament to be corrupted by the fire of the luminaries; but the remaining waters stayed below, [from] which the air below [was] exhausted and dried, as vapours, by the upper fire.”
[Margins: St. Epiphanius; St. Chrysostom; Theodoret.]
St. Damascene too is to be read (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 6), who expressly teaches that these waters are above the firmament. And Jodocus Clichtove, his commentator—who, although he takes [it] for a ninth heaven, yet confesses that it seemed otherwise to Damascene—adds: “Whether truly there are thin and transparent waters, standing above the firmament adorned with so great a multitude of stars, as if nearly condensed; and for some cause which the Creator himself knows, even if it be hidden from us—as the sacred letters in very many places, and here Damascene, seem to hold.” Now, many opinions being reviewed, Procopius (Commentary on Genesis, ch. 1) concludes: “They say the firmament is called ‘heaven,’ either because its nature was decreed and compacted from the simplest water—that is, the Empyrean—and separated from the lower [things], [being] most thin… and comprehensible by no sense; and [the firmament being] in the midst of the waters, he teaches clearly enough that there was an equal division of the waters on both sides.”
[Margins: St. Damascene; Jodocus Clichtove; Procopius.]
We named above Bede [as] subscribing to St. Augustine; now let us adduce him again (book On the Nature of Things, ch. 8), discoursing thus: “The waters placed above the heaven—[some say they are] for the spiritual heavens, that is, the Empyrean and the lower Angels; but [others, that they were] soon [made] a creature of corporeal fragility; some [say they were] kept for the inundation of the deluge; others, more truly, affirm [they were] for tempering the fire of the stars.” And in the Questions on Genesis: “At last the heretics cease to rave, and, confounded, acknowledge that He who could create all things from nothing, could also establish that nature of the waters [as] ice—and, for tempering the fire of the stars, as if solidified, [fix it] in the heaven.” Cassiodorus too (though more ancient) (on Psalms 103 and 148), where he supposes these waters, adds the cause: that even if the thinness of the heavens stands firm, and the waters are placed above the firmament, since they are heavier… [they remain]. But most acutely Haymo [and] St. Bruno on Genesis [explain] those two psalms to this same [point]—that those waters “praise God,” that is, [are] not [literally] excited to his praise, but are retained [in their place], even if their use is hidden from us. Most simply, Remigius of Auxerre (on Psalm 148): “That there are waters above the firmament, he plainly proves from Genesis; but what they are, I do not know.”
[Margins: Bede; Cassiodorus; Haymo; St. Bruno; Remigius.]
Let Rupert also come forth for us, who (bk. 1 on Genesis, ch. 23): “Others of the Doctors,” he says, “wish [the waters] which are above the firmament to be understood as nothing other than waters, simply. Their opinion is, without doubt, the juster, and pleases me more—namely, so as not to disagree with the letter of the sacred history in [its] sense.” Yet he denies that they were congealed; and (ch. 24) [says] the firmament is, as it were, the roof of heaven; and (ch. 25): “And it is indeed a magnificent work of God, that the mass of waters, poured above, [is] of a subtle nature beneath the firmament”; which he confirms by the example of the air and water everywhere sustaining the mass of the earth. (And ch. 12: “The waters which are below the firmament are the rest, or a part, of the waters which are above the firmament.”) But that they are attenuated in the manner of a cloud, St. Anselm of Canterbury thought (bk. 1 On the Image of the World, ch. 8), saying: “Above the firmament are waters, suspended like a cloud, that they may temper the heaven in its heats; whence it is also called the ‘watery heaven,’ above which is the spiritual heaven, etc., and the Paradise of paradises.” Yet (ch. 1) he posited the firmament itself solidified like crystal, as I reported (num. 3). But Hugh of St.-Victor chose the half of this opinion (in his Annotations on Genesis, ch. 6): “That there are waters above the firmament is had both in Genesis and in the Prophet, etc. But what those waters are does not pertain to us; yet some say that they are glacially solidified. To me, however, it seems most true… that they are suspended in the likeness of vapour—namely, that they consist [as] the water of the clouds.” The contrary, plainly, Peter Comestor holds—but under a disjunction—(in the Scholastic History, ch. 4): namely, that both the Firmament and the waters above it are concreted in the manner of ice; for after he had said, “The firmament divides the waters which are below it from the waters which are above it,” he added: “and they are, like it, congealed as crystal, lest they could [be melted] by the fire of the sun, or be thus surmountable as waters.” In almost the same words Hugh of St.-Cher uses [it] (in postils), who says of the waters above the Firmament: “And these waters are congealed in the manner of crystal—whence by some they are called ‘crystalline heavens’—or they are vaporable, in the manner of a cloud.”
[Margins: St. Anselm; Hugh of St.-Victor; Comestor; Hugh of St.-Cher.]
Prudently the Lusitanian (Jerome by Oleaster), on Genesis ch. 1, [says] concerning these waters: “When Scripture cries out that they are there, many Theologians prefer to follow the blind Philosophers than to believe the authority of Scripture.” And he concludes: “I would rather err with Scripture (if it could err) than speak the truth with the Philosophers.” And presently: “Yet I think they are of the same nature as the lower [waters]; for it is clear from the text below that they were continuous with the lower [waters]; but the firmament being made (or the division), they do not seem to have changed [their] nature.” It pleases [me], on this occasion, to report against those who respect neither the Divine letters nor the interpretations of the Fathers, a sentence full of gravity [from] Bishop Vielmus (lecture 14 on Genesis); where, having brought forward the objections against waters of this kind—as if they were above the heavens, and [there] in vain, and by violence [against nature]—he says: “Rightly indeed [might one object], etc.—unless the word of God stood in the way, [and] especially [as it was] almost [universally] interpreted by the ancient saints, who, by these words, understood waters of one kindred and nature with ours to be placed and to exist above the heavens.”
[Margins: Oleaster; Vielmus.]
[Vielmus’s words continue at the top of p. 222: having adduced the words of Genesis, he subjoins a lament—“But we are, in this, in such a Christian calamity at this time, that more of our own (if indeed they deserve to be called ‘ours’)…”]
(printed p. 222): The page continues with Vielmus, who, after adducing the words of Genesis, laments the Christian calamity of his time, in which many steeped from youth in profane philosophy dread holy antiquity. The authors cited held that a great quantity of those upper waters was solid, upon which the World hangs suspended.
I pass over now, for brevity’s sake, many of the more recent [authors] on Psalm 103 (on that verse, “Who coverest its higher parts with waters”) and Psalm 148 (on that [verse], “And all the waters which are above the heavens”). Even though St. Gregory of Nyssa (in the Hexaemeron) said [these waters are] indeed not of a nature different from the elemental ones—because [they are] lighter than fire, free from all [interchange], and comprehensible, like the elemental [waters]—[and] likewise [Alexander of] Hales, Albertus, Scotus, Durandus, Bonaventure, Aegidius, Catharinus, Peter of Tarentaise, and St. Thomas (in the Disputed Questions, q. 4, ad 5; in [Sentences] 2, dist. 14, q. 1; and in the Prima Pars, q. 68, art. 3, ad 1)—for [Thomas] teaches that, by [its] solidity, [the upper water] is likened to crystal, by [its] transparency to water, [and] is of the hard heaven’s kind. With whom our Tanner agrees (vol. 1 of the Theology, disp. 6, q. 3, dub. 1), where, in his assertion, he concludes that, of all the “waters above the heavens,” [it is] more probable to understand the Empyrean, or a simple celestial body—diaphanous, liquid, and spirable—destined for the habitation of the Blessed; which Empyrean William of Paris [so describes] (part 1 On the Universe, ch. 3). But why would one call it “air” rather than “water”? … let it be [reckoned] air, by [the figure of] breathing.
[Margins: Vielmus; The authors who place in the heaven waters of a nature different from the elemental; 1st Opinion: on the quality of these waters.]
[VIII.] From the Authors adduced, we may gather four opinions about the condition of these waters.
The first opinion (though later in time than many) was that they are, as to substance, diverse from the elemental waters (whose authors we adduced a little before); which is the more favoured [view, as being] consonant with the literal [sense] of Sacred Scripture and [with] most of the ancient Fathers (cited at num. 3 and 7).
The second is the contrary: that those waters are indeed of the same kind as to substance [as the elemental], but that they are rarefied and expanded above the Firmament in the manner of vapours, like a cloud—or [are] cloudy; as we see a nebulous air besetting cities and towns, or thin vapours and smokes above valleys and stagnant waters, or dewy mists covering the whole surface of the horizon; and that, from this lightness, it comes about that, even if [they are placed] above the solid firmament, yet they cannot remain there in the way in which vapours and clouds [remain] above our air. So think, more or less, St. Augustine (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter)—especially the rarefaction being supposed possible [to proceed] from finite to infinite, and [given] the opinion of those who assert that “all things are infinitely divisible, [so] that every part of a body is a body, and every body must [contain] the half of its quantity.” To which Eucherius subscribes (bk. 1 on Genesis, ch. 3), saying: “For just as these clouds, which are everywhere, are borne above the air, so I judge that the third [region] of waters can be made vaporous, [so] that, [being] subtle, they are borne above the heaven.” And [Augustine again, q. 14, using his own words]; and also St. Anselm, both Hughs, and Comestor (as is clear from their words adduced near the end of num. 7); to whom add Anselm of Laon (in the Glossa Interlinearis), distinguishing the upper waters from the lower by this mark: “in the midst of waters vaporously suspended, and gliding over the earth”—[the former] to be understood of the vapours above the firmament. But St. Thomas (in the Disputed Questions, q. 4, art. 1, ad 5) refutes this opinion, on the ground that water cannot transcend the mode of [its own] rarity—[that it] could not naturally exceed the spaces of fire and air, unless, the nature of water being lost, [it] surpassed their rarity. And certainly clouds and vapours, however thin (and the spirit [air] which constitutes a body for them), [are such] that the thin air, in [its] equal mode, is compared with the magnitude of [the water] itself, and so is borne above the [lower] air. But St. Thomas speaks of what is [the case] naturally; for God could expand the waters—attenuating them so that they were rarer than the air or ether—and yet not [wish] to subtract, from their consenting concourse, the requirement of their pristine substantial form (namely both coldness and humidity). From the aforesaid Doctors, however, St. Anselm, Comestor, Hugh of St.-Cher, and the Master admitted the Firmament below [to be] of solid ice or crystal, as is clear from what was said (num. 3).
[Margins: 2nd Opinion: on waters attenuated into vapours, and its authors.]
The third opinion was that these waters are liquid and flowing, in the way the other elemental waters flow, and therefore not falling, because they are sustained by the firmament: of this opinion were Tertullian and SS. Basil, Ambrose, Hilary, Caesarius, Cyril, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Junilius, Procopius, Strabo; nor [only these]—St. Augustine, Hugh of St.-Victor, and Comestor approved it; and it will be clearly evident to one re-reading their words, recited by us from num. 3 to 8. From which [authors], some think those waters [are] so far [from] falling [that they are held] from below in the vessels and outermost cavities of the supreme heaven; others refer this to the power of the divine Omnipotence. But it could be added: whether [that suffices], or whether they are carried round (with an equal distance from the center of the World) by the rapidity of the Firmament; or whether that ring of waters be established as the Prime Mobile. For those waters seem [to be], as it were, an element circumrotated… and [so do not] flow downward, or do not gravitate there, because [they are] then outside their proper place—as Oviedo [holds] (in [his] Physics, p. 466).
[Margin: 3rd Opinion: on liquid waters sustained below a solid Firmament; its Authors.]
The fourth opinion seems to have been [that] of those who established both the waters above the heavens and the Firmament itself [as] solid, in the manner of crystal or ice—[some speaking of] fiery crystalline heavens, or adamantine [ones]—and acknowledged the Firmament consolidated in a mass of ice, or at least its upper part [so]; so that thus both [statements] are true—namely, both that by it the waters are divided from the waters, and that they therefore do not fall down, because they have concreted into that hardness. So seem to have thought Josephus the Hebrew, Clement the Pope, and Severianus (adduced at num. 3); which Strabo admitted (in the Glossa Ordinaria), in these words: “Not by a corporeal thinness, but by a glacial solidity, [God] could suspend the waters.” And in the Glossa Interlinearis, Anselm of Laon, saying: “The higher part of the waters is congealed in the manner of crystalline stone; the lower [part] reduced to a matrix [matter].” And Bede (book On the Nature of Things, ch. 7): “We judge, however, that that nature of the waters [hangs] now not by a vaporous thinness, but by a glacial solidity, for mitigating the nature of the stars.” But no one, that I know, more distinctly posits two crystalline heavens than Comestor (ch. 4 of the Scholastic History), when, concerning the firmament and the waters above it, he said: “And they are, like it, congealed as crystal”—even though he would not deny that they can be attenuated in the manner of a cloud. Into this class can be reduced those who—as Hamerus reports (in [his] Commentary on Genesis)—by the upper waters understand the crystalline heaven (so called for [its] hardness and transparency), but by the lower [understand] the heaven of Saturn… and [by the lowest] the aerial heaven, as [the] Aplanes [the starless sphere]. Our [Jesuit] Clavius too (ch. 1 of [his] Sphere, formerly p. 45, but more recently [otherwise]) [holds it] not [by] right judgment to understand that above the heavens are fluxile and falling waters, such as these lower ones are, but [that] the ninth and tenth heaven must be understood—called “waters” for [their] transparency and uniform rarity, and so crystalline or glacial. So too Cajetan (on 2 Corinthians, ch. 12) says the watery heaven is the Prime Mobile, which he calls the “third heaven”; and Io. Antonius Delphinus (On the Celestial Globes, p. 62) [says] those waters are the ninth crystalline heaven, or Prime Mobile.
[Margin: 4th Opinion: on waters and firmament solidified by congelation; its Authors.]
[IX.] But you will ask: how great is that quantity of waters above the heaven? I answer that it is most uncertain. Some, however, moved by that phrase, “let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,” have judged that half of the whole deep (or of the waters created on the first day) was left on the earth, and the remaining half, by expansion or solidification, passed into the heaven; so hold Severianus, Damascene, and Procopius (adduced at num. 3 to 7), and Theophilus (to be cited at num. 10). But St. Hippolytus thinks a third part of them was left on the earth, a third compacted into the firmament, and a third placed in the waters above the heavens.
[Margin: The quantity of the waters above the heavens is asked.]
[¶X begins at the top of p. 223: the end for which these waters were carried up—unknown to men, known to God alone; some [say they are reserved] for dew, others for rains (especially the deluge’s “cataracts of heaven”).]
(printed p. 223):
[X.] But the end, for which the aforesaid waters were carried up into heaven, is said by some to be unknown, and known to God alone. Others think [they were] reserved there for the dew which drops upon the earth—as Comestor reports from the opinion of others (ch. 4 of the Scholastic History), saying: “Why they are there, God knows; unless [it be] that some hold that thence the dew descends in summer.” Others [reserved them] for the rains—especially at the time of the deluge; and [hold] that these are the “cataracts of heaven,” which are said to be opened then (Genesis 7), and of which it is said [elsewhere], “so he opened not the cataracts of heaven.” So the Master (on Psalm 103) says of these waters: “which [come down] only through rains, just as it is said that the cataracts of heaven are opened, [the water] descending through rain.” The same thinks St. Epiphanius (epistle to John, Bishop of Jerusalem), Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 9), Cassiodorus, Richard, and Haymo (on Psalm 148), the Lusitanian (on Genesis ch. 7), and, before these, Josephus (bk. 1 Antiquities, ch. 1), and Theophilus of Antioch (bk. 2 To Autolycus), saying: “The second heaven—which this visible firmament is called—snatched up half of the water above, that it might pour out, for the use of men, rain, showers, and dew.” But some [say] that [the waters serve] that the heaven, unshaken by the storms of the winds, might be made firm—and this, among other causes, St. Justin reckons (q. 93 Orthodox [Questions]). Some, that they might cool the star of Saturn and preserve cold influences in the World (from the same Justin, in the same place). Others, that they might repel the rays of the stars downward: “For fire, by its nature, tends upward,” says Procopius (in his Commentary on Genesis); “and so [the waters], conjoined to the supreme heaven, beat back and impel the splendour toward the heavens.” Others, that they might beat back the heat of the first, or Empyrean, heaven: so St. Hilary (on Psalm 135) and Bede (book On the Nature of Things, ch. 7). Others, that—[the] firmament of visible [things being] variegated, which can receive [colours] from the daily light through crystal and water, as appears in the rainbow—they might delight the eyes of the blessed men: as Cornelius à Lapide teaches by no light conjecture (on the Pentateuch, at the first day of the world), and Salianus (in the Annals, at the same day, num. 20).
[Margin: The end and use of these waters.]
[Chiefly], however, by a threefold end—because to this end they hold those waters [were] carried up into heaven: that they might temper the heat of the stars and of the ether, and defend the heaven and the earth from conflagration. For this St. Justin too teaches (q. 93 Orth.), St. Basil (homily 3 Hexaemeron), St. Ambrose (bk. 2 Hexaemeron, ch. 3), St. Damascene (bk. 2 On the Faith, ch. 9), Theodoret (q. 11 on Genesis), Procopius (on Genesis ch. 1), Bede (On the Nature of Things, ch. 8)—who prefers this opinion to others—St. Thomas (in postils on Genesis), Claudius Marius Victor (on Genesis), and the Church herself, in that hymn:
“That the wave may temper the flames, [and] lest [the flames] should waste the soil.”
But perhaps they serve, by their own motion of 24 hours, [as] the office of the Prime Mobile—as we shall say below (Section 4, ch. 3).
Question 4
Whether the upper Waters are the holy Angels.
[XI.] From what has been said hitherto, it is sufficiently clear that the Waters which the sacred letters teach to be above the heaven are some watery body—either of the same nature as elemental water (as, with the more common [opinion], we taught from num. 6), or at least analogically agreeing with their transparency and with the hardness of crystal; from which [premises], and chiefly from sacred Scripture, [they are] so to be understood, as is plain. And [there is] the constant figment of Origen, who says that the waters above the heaven are Angels, but below the heaven [are] the evil demons—because of the upper waters it is said “that they may praise the name of the Lord.” But this error the literal sense, and the [historical reason], refute: St. Basil (homily 3 Hexaemeron), St. Ambrose (bk. 2 Hexaemeron, ch. 4), St. Epiphanius (epistle to John of Jerusalem), St. Augustine (bk. 11 City of God, ch. 34), St. Thomas (Prima Pars, q. 68, art. 3), likewise Procopius (ch. 1 on Genesis) and Rupert (in the same, bk. 2, ch. 23), and among the more recent, Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, p. 64), Suárez (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, ch. 4), Martinengus (Glossa Magna, p. 616), and Tanner (vol. 1 Theol., disp. 6, q. 3, dub. 1). Yet, [saving] the sense of the letter, the waters can [also] be taken mystically, or tropically, for Angels, or spiritual creatures—as SS. Nyssen [did], and Jerome (on Psalm 76, adducing that [verse], “The waters saw thee, O God”), and that [text] of Apocalypse 17[:15], “Many waters [are] many peoples”; and St. Augustine (On Genesis, the imperfect [work], ch. 8, and bk. 13 Confessions, ch. 32)—although, lest hence an occasion of error be given to anyone, he holds himself back (bk. 2 Retractations, ch. 6).
[Margins: Origen’s error; Question 5.]
Question 5
Whether the upper Waters are Clouds and Vapours above the Air, or in the Air.
[XII.] It has seemed to some that elemental waters are unfittingly placed above the heavens (especially the incorruptible ones), since they are a heavy, gross, and ignoble body; nay, [placed there] in vain, and to no probable use; and [it is] against the nature of the elements, against the order of the elements and heavens, and finally against decorum. Finally (if, to avoid these [difficulties], it be asserted that [they are] not elemental [waters]), [it is] without any valid foundation to affirm the waters to be of a different species. Wherefore they have come down [to this]: that, by the name “the waters which are above the heavens,” are to be understood the waters which are enclosed, as to substance, in clouds, vapours, and mists, which are in the highest and middle region [of the air]; and that the “Firmament” is, in this place, the lowest air, or the whole region composed of air and ether… up to the stars, expanded between those [upper] waters and the waters of the sea and rivers, as a firm and stable boundary. This opinion [the following indicate]—[holding] the firmament here [not] the immovable [heaven]: St. Thomas (Prima Pars, q. 68, art. 3, ad 1), Durandus ([Sentences] 2, dist. 14, q. 1); and from St. Augustine (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 4), Eucherius, Bede, and the Glossa Ordinaria on Genesis [indicate it]; indeed, to the Rabbis and Abenezra, the Abulensis (in postils) and Vielmus (lect. 14) attribute it. But it is vigorously maintained by Rupert the Abbot (bk. 1 On the Works of the Trinity, ch. 22), Eugubinus (in the Cosmopoeia), Arias Montanus, Castro, Pineda, Pererius (bk. 1 on Genesis, from p. 65), Valentia (Prima Pars, disp. 5, q. 3, point 2), Suárez (bk. 2 On the Work of the Six Days, chs. 4 and 5), Tirinellus (in the Annals, at the first day of the world, ch. 4), and Kepler (in the Introduction to [his Commentaries on] Mars).
For they try to persuade that the air is called “firmament,” from Proverbs 8[:27–28]: “When he prepared [the heavens] I was present; when he made firm the ether above, and balanced the fountains of waters; when he compassed the sea with its bounds”—where, for “ether” (that is, air), the Hebrew has Shechaqim, which properly signifies “clouds,” so that the Septuagint rendered [it] tà ánō néphē (τὰ ἄνω νέφη), “the upper clouds”; and thence [they say] the “fountains of waters,” which [God] then balanced by his ministry, were the upper fountains of clouds, or the cataracts of heaven (of which it is said in Genesis 7 and Malachi 3); and that the same is to be understood of clouds [in] Job 26[:8] (“who bindeth up the waters in his clouds, that they break not out together downward”)—since Pliny himself (bk. 31, ch. 1) said: “What is more wonderful than waters standing in the heaven?” Finally, hither they try to refer that [text] of Jeremiah 10[:13]: “At his voice God giveth a multitude of waters in the heaven, and lifteth up the mists from the ends of the earth.” And [they say] that the space which is between the Sun and the Moon was full of rainy, dewy water-matter—according to that [text] of Job 38: “Who shut up [the sea]… when I made a cloud the garment thereof, and wrapped it in darkness as in swaddling-bands?”—and Ecclesiasticus 24[:6], “I [dwelt] in the heavens, that an unfailing light might rise, and like a mist I covered the earth.” (But this [last] I should easily grant of the air.)
Nor are there lacking Fathers who patronize this opinion: for St. Augustine (bk. 2 On Genesis to the Letter, ch. 4) said it was “laudably devised, and not against the faith”; and Bede approved it (bk. 2 On the Elements of Philosophy). But Catharinus rejected it (on Genesis ch. 1); and Martinengus (in the Glossa Magna), saying it is supported by no arguments, and (frag. 185) that their opinion is discordant from many Fathers, and that by the name “firmament” only the air is understood (and ch. 58, p. 583, [holds] this sufficiently refuted); and Molina (in the same place, and On the Work of the Six Days)—[holds it] thus plainly false; and Tanner (vol. 1, disp. 6, q. 3), who says the opposite is the common [opinion] of the Fathers, and shows (On the Heaven, q. 8, p. 179) that the opposite is certain and firm. Nor to me is it ever very probable: both because the Sun, on the fourth day, was not yet present, to lift up the vapours; and because it was more fitting to the divine workmanship that, on the first day, [God] should create the pure elements, not [things] confused with mists—nay, for several days there existed no rains, Moses saying (Genesis 2[:5–6]): “For the Lord God had not [yet] rained upon the earth, but a fountain went up [from the earth].”
[Margins: Authors against this opinion; Arguments against this opinion.]
[The argument continues at the top of p. 224: that whole Firmament (Genesis 1:6–7) divides the upper waters from the lower—but such is not our air, nor a firm interstice dividing cloud-waters from the lower waters, since we often see clouds brood upon the sea and marshes.]
(printed p. 224): The page argues against identifying the firmament of the second day with the air: the air is no firm interstice dividing waters, and Genesis does not allow the firmament of the second day to differ from that of the fourth, in which the stars were placed. Far more probable and worthy of God is that on the first day He created all the heavens and elements, on the second made the Firmament—at least the heaven of the fixed stars—from condensed water, separating the Empyrean from ether and air, and on the third distinguished Earth and Sea.