Peter Abelard
PL 178, col. 733C
English
By the name of heaven and earth I judge the four elements to be taken in here, out of which, as out of a material first beginning, all other bodies are agreed to be composed. By 'heaven' he means the two light elements, that is fire and air. The remaining two, which are heavy, he calls generally 'earth'. For we call heaven both the airy — as in 'the birds of heaven' — and the ethereal, which is fiery. Whence it is not unfitting that he here names both air and fire 'heaven'. It is agreed too that the ethereal heaven, in that its fire is purer, is properly wont to be called heaven; whence with reason the name of heaven, since the purer the fire the lighter its nature, is here put, as has been said, for the two light elements, fire and air. Just so, on the contrary, by 'earth', whose nature is most heavy and weighty, he marks out both the earth itself and the water that clings to it. These four elements, then, as the first principles of all other bodies, he announces that God made in the beginning. And what he says is as if he said: In the beginning, before all those things which he enumerates in order, and of whose completion he adds afterwards, 'Thus the heavens were finished' (Gen 2:1). What he says, 'in the beginning' of the works that follow, is as if he said: In the beginning of the world, that is, before he brought about anything of those things which belong to the world. For the angels, being of an incorporeal nature, are not included among the creatures of the world, as men are, of whom the philosopher makes mention in the third book of the Topics: 'The world,' he says, 'is governed by Providence; but men are a part of the world; therefore human affairs are governed by Providence.'
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Coeli et terrae nomine hoc loco quatuor elementa comprehendi arbitror, ex quibus tanquam materiali primordio caetera omnia corpora constat esse composita. Coelum quidem duo levia elementa, ignem videlicet atque aerem dicit. Reliqua vero duo quae gravia sunt, terram generaliter vocat. Coelum quippe tam aereum dicimus, juxta illud, volucres coeli, quam aethereum quod est igneum. Unde non incongrue tam aerem quam ignem coelum hic nominat. Constat etiam coelum aethereum: quo purior est ignis, coelum proprie solere dici. Unde merito nomen coeli, quod quanto purior est ignis, tanto levioris est naturae, pro duobus, ut dictum, levibus elementis igne scilicet atque aere hic positum esse intelligitur. Sicut e contrario per terram, cujus maxime gravis est et ponderosa natura, tam terram ipsam quam ei adhaerentem aquam determinat. Haec itaque quatuor elementa tanquam caeterorum corporum principia Deum in principio fecisse praenuntiat. Et tale est quod dicit, In principio, ac si diceret, ante illa omnia quae consequenter enumerat, et de quorum etiam consummatione postmodum subdit: Igitur perfecti sunt coeli, etc. (Gen. II, 1.) Tale est quod dicit in principio sequentium operum, ac si diceret: In principio mundi, id est antequam quidquam de his quae de mundo sunt efficeret. Non enim angeli, cum incorporeae sint natureae, inter mundanas creaturas comprehenduntur, sicut homines, de quibus in III Topic. philosophus meminit. « Mundus, inquit, Providentia regitur, hemines autem pars mundi sunt; humanae igitur res Providentia reguntur. »
PL 178, col. 733C · pd
Notes
The most thoroughly physical reading of the verse on the Latin bench, and it ends by throwing the angels out. Heaven names the two light elements, fire and air; earth names the two heavy, earth and the water that clings to it; and the whole verse announces that God made the four elements as the first principles of bodies. Then the consequence, stated without embarrassment: the angels are not included among the creatures of the world at all, being incorporeal, so 'in the beginning of the world' does not touch them — and Boethius' Topics is quoted for the premise that men are a part of the world. That is the exact position Remigius and the Glossa deny, and it is what Ibn Ezra argues for in Lucca, from the other direction, when he asks those who make the heavens of v. 1 the heaven of heavens what they will then do with the earth.
The four elementsOne earth, and no heaven of heavens here
Threads
- ← parallel · Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides)
'The word ha'aretz includes these four elements' and 'by the name of heaven and earth I judge the four elements to be taken in here' are the same reading of the verse, reached in Girona and at the Paraclete a century and a half apart with no possible contact. The distribution differs: Abelard splits the four between the two words, Ramban puts all four under 'earth'. - → parallel · Ambrose
'In these two the four elements were created' (Ambrose) and 'by the name of heaven and earth the four elements are taken in' (Abelard) are one doctrine, and both argue it from the mixture of the elements in each other. Abelard does not cite Ambrose, and his division of the four is his own: Ambrose puts all four in the pair without assigning them, Abelard gives fire and air to heaven, earth and water to earth. - ← echoes · Peter Comestor
'Terram vero materiam omnium corporum, id est quatuor elementa' is Abelard's reading of the second word, absorbed into a scheme that keeps the empyrean for the first; Comestor then reports the rival reading — 'some understand heaven as the upper parts of the sensible world, and earth as the lower' — without deciding between them. - → contests · Remigius of Auxerre
Directly opposed on what 'heaven' names in this verse. Remigius: not the visible firmament but the empyrean, filled at once with angels. Abelard: fire and air, and 'the angels, being of an incorporeal nature, are not included among the creatures of the world at all'. Abelard does not name Remigius, but the empyrean-with-angels is the standing gloss he is writing against.