Peter Comestor

English

And God saw the light, that it was good — that is, which had pleased him in his presence, or in his foreknowledge, that it should be made; it pleased him in its being, that it should remain. Or figuratively, he saw, that is, he made to be seen. And he divided the light and the darkness; here the disposing begins. And yet he says something of creation too, as though he created the darkness together with the light — that is, the shadow made by bodies set against the light; and he divided the created things by distance of place, and by quality, so that they should never be together, but always claim opposite hemispheres in turn. Here too the division of the angels is understood: those who stood were called light, those who fell darkness.

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

Latin

PL 198, col. 1057B · pd

Notes

The twelfth-century summary, and the sentence in it that nobody else on the Latin bench writes: 'as though he created the darkness together with the light — that is, the shadow made by bodies set against the light.' It is a physical account of what darkness is that makes it a real effect of a real cause and not a privation, and Comestor slips it in with quasi and moves on to Bede's distance of place and the angels, keeping all three answers as Angelomus did three hundred years earlier. On the approval he splits the moment cleanly in two — it pleased God in his foreknowledge that it should be made, and pleased him in its being that it should remain — which is Alcuin's answer with a distinction added, and then offers 'he saw, that is, he made to be seen' as a figurative alternative, which is Remigius'. The Historia scholastica is at its most useful here: not a position, a map.

Threads

• → echoes · Bede
  'Et creatas divisit locorum distantia, et qualitate' is Bede's pair of terms four centuries on, with the mechanism supplied — 'so that they should never be together, but always claim opposite hemispheres in turn' — and with the darkness made a created shadow rather than an ancient dark left in place.
• → echoes · Alcuin
  'Quae placuerat in praesentia, vel praescientia, ut fieret; placuit in essentia, ut maneret' is Alcuin's answer with the moment divided in two, foreknowledge and being; the doubling is Comestor's and the pattern — what pleased to be made pleased to remain — is Alcuin's.
• ← parallel · Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides)
  The two most physical accounts of what the darkness is, from benches that cannot borrow. Ramban: the darkness is elemental fire, which is dark, 'and were it red, it would redden the night for us'. Comestor: God created the darkness with the light, that is, the shadow made by bodies set against the light. Both make the darkness a real thing with a cause, and Comestor has to introduce his with quasi because Augustine stands behind him; Ramban states his as the plain sense.
• ← parallel · Nicholas of Lyra
  Comestor has the physics and cannot commit to it: the darkness is as it were the shadow made by bodies set against the light, and the quasi is doing the work of keeping Augustine's doctrine intact. Two hundred years later Lyra states the same physics flat -- the sun moves over one hemisphere and the earth's opacity puts the other in shadow -- and does not signal that anything is being conceded. The distance between those two sentences is the distance the Latin bench travelled on this crux.