Annotation CXLV
”And Moses and Elijah were seen in majesty.” — Luke 9:30–31
Whether Moses and Elijah truly appeared at Christ's transfiguration.
The Postil of Hugh of Saint-Cher [Hugo Carensis] on Luke reports that Moses and Elijah were present and appeared at Christ’s transfiguration not truly, but imaginarily: and it cites as witness of this Ambrose, in a certain gloss, saying thus: “It must be known that not the bodies, nor the souls, of Moses and Elijah appeared there, but that those bodies were formed in a subject creature [an underlying substance]. For it can be believed that this was done by angelic ministry, so that the angels assumed their persons.” These [things are] in Hugh’s Postil: whence they are taken, I know not. Certainly, so far as I know, they are nowhere found in Ambrose. I suspect that in this place the name of Ambrose was rashly added by some smatterer; who, with no reckoning of the times, also inserted there the name and opinion of John Scotus [Duns Scotus], who wrote almost sixty years after the death of Hugh. St. Thomas, in the last part of the Summa, question 45, article 3, refuting this kind of opinion as absurd and false, reports that by some it is believed these words were taken from the work On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture; which, since it is falsely inscribed to Augustine, its authority is not received. And yet [it is] so far [from being the case] that the words of this gloss were sought from the work On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture, that in the third book of the same volume, chapter 10, an entirely contrary opinion is affirmed in these plain words: “But since Elijah, remaining in the body, had come to such a meeting; what is to be said of Moses? — whether he was present in the body again for this showing; or whether, simulated from air, as Samuel was seen, he feigned a semblance: even if he came clothed in his own body, did he on this occasion complete his resurrection, which for the rest is to be [only] at the last [day]?” Concerning which question the authors, having brought forth one and the same opinion, say without difference that, while the Lord is not doubted to have met with his three disciples and Elijah — not with imagined, but with true bodies — Moses too seems [to have been present] in his own true body, resumed from the sepulcher. But the Lord Jesus, the firstborn of the dead, is rightly believed to have again, after this vision, committed the body of Moses to burial, that he might be hoped to assume it at the last day, when the dead shall rise. See above, Annotation 74 of this book.