Peter Comestor

English

'World' is said in four ways: sometimes the empyrean heaven is called world, on account of its cleanness; sometimes the sensible world, which is called by the Greeks pan and by the Latins 'all', because the philosopher did not know the empyrean; sometimes the region below the moon alone, because this alone has the living creatures known to us — of which it is said, 'The prince of this world shall be cast out' (John 12:31); sometimes man is called a world, because he presents in himself the image of the whole world, whence by the Lord man was called 'every creature', and the Greek calls man microcosm, that is, the lesser world. Now the empyrean and the sensible world and the sublunary region God created, that is, made out of nothing; but man he created, that is, moulded. Of the creation, then, of those three the lawgiver says: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' (Gen 1) — that is, the container and the thing contained, that is, the empyrean heaven and the angelic nature. But 'earth' is the matter of all bodies, that is, the four elements, that is, the sensible world consisting of them. Some understand 'heaven' as the upper parts of the sensible world, and 'earth' as the lower and palpable.

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

Latin

PL 198, col. 1055A · pd

Notes

The twelfth-century synthesis, and it is the most systematic thing said on this crux in Latin: four senses of 'world' laid out first, so that when the verse is read the reader already knows which world is meant. Heaven and earth are then 'the container and the thing contained' — the empyrean heaven with the angelic nature, and the matter of all bodies, the four elements. Remigius' empyrean and Abelard's elements are here in one sentence, which is what Comestor is for; and the aside that the philosopher did not know the empyrean is a quiet acknowledgement that the best-attested part of this reading has no ancient authority behind it. He then reports the rival, flatter reading — heaven the upper parts of the sensible world, earth the lower — without deciding.

Threads

• → echoes · Remigius of Auxerre
  The empyrean heaven, fiery from brightness and not from heat, filled at once with the angelic spirits: Remigius states it at PL 131:54D, the Glossa prints it almost verbatim at 113:68C, and Comestor has it as 'the empyrean heaven and the angelic nature'. Comestor adds the admission Remigius does not make — that the philosopher did not know the empyrean.
• → echoes · Peter Abelard
  '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.
• → echoes · Alcuin
  Alcuin's unweighed alternative — 'or else, by the name of heaven and earth the spiritual and the earthly creatures can be understood' — is what Comestor has hardened into 'the container and the thing contained, that is, the empyrean heaven and the angelic nature' on one side and the four elements on the other.
• ← parallel · Chalcidius
  Comestor's container and thing contained is Chalcidius's two species with the Platonism removed. Both split the pair of v. 1 into two orders rather than two places, and both need the split because the chapter names a heaven on day two and an earth on day three. Comestor has the distinction as a schoolroom formula; Chalcidius has it as the position of a named school, alii non ita, set against Philo's.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  Comestor's container and the thing contained, argued from a definition of body instead of asserted as a formula. Both split the heaven of the first verse from the firmament of the second day; Comestor because the schools require the distinction, Philo because stereoma means solid and solid means extended in three directions, so the name itself marks the corporeal off from the intelligible. Comestor is a thousand years later and has the distinction without the reason for it.