Bruno of Segni

English

'In the beginning,' he says, and before every creature, God created heaven and earth. For this the Psalmist too testifies, saying: 'And you, God, in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands' (Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26]). Not, therefore, heaven before earth, but God created heaven and earth together. Whence also this: 'He who lives for ever created all things at once' (Sir 18:1). For even if God is narrated in this same book to have made all things in six days, it is not to be doubted that he nevertheless created all things at once out of nothing. He created at once the very matter of all things, out of which he commanded the rest to be made at distinct times, as he willed. Let it be said, then: In the beginning of all creatures God created heaven — and those things, namely, which are contained in it, that is, the angels and the heavenly powers — and the earth, already as it were pregnant and in labour, and the matter and mother of all those things that arise from it.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 164, col. 147B · pd

Notes

Bruno takes the second of Augustine's three readings, the one nobody else on the bench builds on: not in the beginning of time and not in the Son but 'in the beginning of all creatures', that is, before anything else — and he takes it in order to get simul out of the verse, so that Sir 18:1 and the six days can both stand. His pregnant earth, matter and mother of what rises from it, is the same instinct as Bereshit Rabbah 1:1's architect's plans: read the first verse as a statement about what was available to the maker. The Corpus Corporum text of Bruno is the dirtiest on the bench (K7 found Dei. vero, K10 found tuce for luce); nothing in this slice looks corrupt, but it is not collated.

Threads

• ← parallel · Bruno of Segni
  One commentator giving both answers in order and treating them as layers rather than rivals: the literal exposition takes in principio as 'in the beginning of all creatures', and then, the letter disposed of, 'in what beginning? in him, surely, who says: I am the Beginning.' Neither reading is asked to yield to the other.
• → echoes · Augustine
  Augustine's second reading — 'or because they were made first of all' — is the one Bruno builds on, and he builds on it to get simul out of the verse, so that Sir 18:1's 'he created all things at once' and the six days can both stand.
• ← parallel · Peter Abelard
  Both read the phrase as a place in a series — Bruno 'in the beginning of all creatures', Abelard 'as if it were said, on the first day' — and both do it to keep the six days without losing the simultaneity of the first making.
• ← echoes · Peter Comestor
  Comestor's third sense, 'in the beginning of all creatures he created heaven and earth, that is, he made these primordial creatures, and made them at once', is Bruno's opening sentence and Bruno's simul, carried into the schools' handbook.
• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Phase 4. The closest Latin analogue to Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel anywhere on the bench, and it turns on the same psalm. Bruno quotes Ps 102:25 [Vg 101:26], 'you in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands', and concludes: 'not, therefore, heaven before earth, but God created heaven and earth together'. R. Yehuda bar Ilai brings the identical verse for Beit Hillel to prove the earth was first, and R. Shimon ben Yoḥai closes the section with the stewpot and its lid. Written at Phase 4 because `bruno-gen-1-1` was built for K1.
• → echoes · Ambrose
  Phase 4. Both answer the order question with Sir 18:1, 'he who lives for ever created all things at once', set against a psalm that names the earth first, and both conclude that the sequence of the words gives heaven no privilege. Bruno does not name Ambrose and the argument is the same argument.