Augustine
PL 34, col. 312
English
And because the other creatures, which are made below it, are not made without its knowledge, therefore of course the same day is repeated throughout, so that by its repetition there come to be as many days as there are kinds of created things to be distinguished, to be brought to an end by the perfection of the number six: so that the evening of the first day is its knowledge of itself, that it is not what God is; and the morning after this evening, by which the one day is closed and the second begun, is its turning, by which it refers what it has been created to the praise of the Creator, and receives from the Word of God the knowledge of the creature that is made after it, that is, of the firmament.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Et quia caeterae creaturae, quae infra ipsam fiunt, sine cognitione ejus non fiunt, propterea nimirum idem dies ubique repetitur, ut ejus repetitione fiant tot dies, quoties distinguuntur rerum genera creatarum, perfectione senarii numeri terminanda: ut vespera primi diei sit etiam sui cognitio, non se esse quod Deus est; mane autem post hanc vesperam, quo concluditur dies unus, et inchoatur secundus, conversio sit ejus, qua id quod creata est, ad laudem referat Creatoris, et percipiat de Verbo Dei cognitionem creaturae quae post ipsam fit, hoc est firmamenti
PL 34, col. 312 · pd
Notes
Augustine's mature answer, and the one the Glossa puts in the margin of 1:5 by book, chapter and column. There is only one day: the angelic light itself. Its evening is its knowledge of itself as not-God; its morning is that knowledge referred back in praise; and the six days are that one day presented six times over, once for each kind of thing made. On this reading 'one day' is not a counting word at all, which is why the sixfold repetition does not make it 'first'. Two chapters on (I.25, PL 34:313) he draws the corollary the City of God will state more compactly: this is why no night is ever named.
The same day repeatedEvening and morning knowledge
Threads
- → echoes · Augustine
The same author's two answers, a decade apart in the same work: in book I 'one and not first' because the word holds all time, offered and set aside as allegory; in book IV 'one' because there is only one day, the angelic light, presented six times over. - ← echoes · Augustine
Book V supplies the name for what book IV describes: the two knowledges become cognitio matutina and vespertina, and the doctrine is tied to 'creavit omnia simul' (Sir 18:1), which is what makes the six days non-successive. - ← echoes · Augustine
The City of God restates the Genesis commentary compactly and rests it on the textual observation that carries the argument — Scripture numbers six days and never once writes 'night was made.' - ← cites · Wigbod
Wigbod puts the compressed formula first and then, under the label AUGUSTINUS, the doctrine it came from: the creature's knowledge of itself is evening, its knowledge in God is morning, 'plus videtur in arte qua facta est, quam in seipsa quae facta est.' - ← echoes · Angelomus of Luxeuil
The angelic mind turning from God to the creature is evening and turning back is morning; Angelomus keeps Augustine's guard rail — had it stayed with the creature it would have been night — and then adds 'one day' as a name for the unity of angelic dignity, which is his own. - ← cites · Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)
The margin cites 'AUG., de Gen. ad litt., l. IV, c. 22, 23, tom. III, col. 311, 312' and abbreviates the passage with the Glossa's usual 'etc., usque ad' — a pointer to a book the reader is assumed to own, not a quotation. - ← echoes · Honorius Augustodunensis
'Non primus, sed unus dies dicitur, quia idem semper repetitur' is Augustine's repeated day reduced to a clause and given a proof text from Ps 119:91.