Peter Comestor

English

'And there was evening, and after that there was morning.' And so one natural day was completed. For first, with heaven and earth, light was created; and as it set little by little, there was made the evening of the first usual day; and as the same light passed under the earth and came to the rising, there was made morning — that is, the night was ended and the second day began. And so, with the light of the day preceding and the night following being ended, one day came to be.

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

Latin

PL 198, col. 1057D · pd

Notes

The textbook settles it: dies unus naturalis, light first and night following, on Bede's travelling light. Nothing of Augustine's day survives in the sentence, and the question 'why not first?' is not raised at all — it has been answered so often that the schools' handbook no longer needs to ask. Comestor does keep one older reading a few lines earlier: the division of light from darkness is also the division of the angels, the standing ones light and the fallen ones darkness.

Threads

• → echoes · Bede
  The light setting little by little, passing under the earth and coming to the rising, is Bede's travelling light; Comestor names the result dies unus naturalis and drops the argument Bede built it to support.
• ← parallel · Bonaventure
  The schools' settled reading in its two registers within a century: Comestor simply narrates a natural day and never raises Augustine's question, and Bonaventure raises it in order to rule against it. The literal six days win by handbook and by disputation at once.