Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)

PL 113, col. 67B

Datecompilation 1110–1130PlaceLaonTraditionlatinVerseGenesis 1:1

Bereshit / in principio heaven and earth

English

Verse 1. 'In the beginning he created,' etc. He does not say: In the beginning God says, Let heaven and earth be made. But he said, 'Let there be light, and light was made' — because under the name of heaven and earth was to be comprehended universally whatever God made, and then it was to be set out in parts how he made it. Whence there follows: 'God said, Let it be' — that is, he made it through his Word. Or, because when formless matter, spiritual or bodily, was first coming to be, it was not to be said 'God said, Let it be'; for it was unfitting that 'let it be' should be said by God, since imperfection does not imitate the form of the Word except when a creature is perfected by the turning of its kind to the Creator; so that when it is said 'God said, Let it be', we may understand him to be calling the creature's imperfection back to himself. When therefore it is said 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth', mention is made of the Son, because he is the Beginning; but when it is said 'God said, Let it be', mention is made that he is the Word. By 'beginning' he notes the origin of the creature existing from him; by 'Word', the perfecting of the creature called back from him to himself, that it may be formed by imitating the unchangeable form of the Word. […] 'In the beginning,' etc. (BEDE, Hexaemeron I, vol. II, col. 13.) Scripture, in intimating the creation of the world, shows in its first word the eternity and omnipotence of God: for him whom it declares to have created the world in the beginning of times, it signifies to have existed eternally before times. […] 'In the beginning,' etc. Heaven — not the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, the fiery or intellectual heaven, so called not from burning but from splendour, which was at once filled with angels. […] (ALCUIN, on Genesis, vol. I.) 'In the beginning.' In the Son, by whose becoming man it became plain who were the heavenly and who the earthly. Heaven, the spiritual creature, perfect and blessed from its outset. Earth, bodily matter, still imperfect. […] Mystically. 'In the beginning God created heaven' — namely those who bore the image of the heavenly. 'And earth', that is, those who afterwards, by growing proud, bore the earth, that is, the image of the earthly man, and made themselves deformed. 'But the earth was empty', because it had laid aside its good form. 'And void', of the fruit of good work. 'And there were darknesses', namely the privation of the true light; 'over the face of the abyss', namely the hearts of the proud.

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

Latin

VERS. 1.-- « In principio creavit, » etc. Non dicit: In principio dicit Deus, Fiat coelum et terra. Sed dixit: « Fiat lux, et facta est lux, » quoniam universaliter nomine coeli et terrae comprehendendum erat quidquid fecit Deus, deinde per partes explicandum quomodo fecit. Unde sequitur: « Dixit Deus, Fiat, » id est, per verbum suum fecit. Vel quia cum primum fiebat informis materia spiritualis, vel corporalis, non erat dicendum: « Dixit Deus, Fiat; » incongruum enim erat a Deo dici, « fiat, » quia formam verbi non imitatur imperfectio, nisi cum generis sui conversione ad creatorem sit perfecta creatura; ut cum dicitur: « Dixit Deus, Fiat, » intelligamus eum ad se imperfectionem creaturae revocare. Cum ergo dicitur: « In principio fecit Deus coelum et terram, » commemoratio Filii fit, quia principium est; sed cum dicitur: « Dixit Deus, Fiat, » commemoratur quia Verbum est. Per principium notat exordium creaturae existentis ab illo; per Verbum, perfectionem creaturae ab illo ad ipsum revocatae, ut formetur imitando formam Verbi incommutabilem. Non enim habet vitam informem Verbum Dei, cui est idem esse quod vivere; imo idem vivere quod beate vivere. Creatura vero spiritualis habet informem vitam, cui non est hoc esse quod vivere; nec vivere quod beate vivere: quia, aversa a sapientia Dei, stulte et misere vivit. « In principio, » etc. (BEDA, Hexaem. lib. I, tom. II, col. 13 ª.) Creationem mundi insinuans Scriptura, primo verbo aeternitatem et omnipotentiam Dei ostendit: quem enim in principio temporum mundum creasse perhibet, eumdem ante tempora aeternaliter significat exstitisse. Et quem in conditionis initio coelum et terram creasse narrat, tanta celeritate operationis omnipotentem esse declarat, cui voluisse, facere est. Bene ergo dicitur: « In principio creavit, » etc. Utrumque scilicet, simul, quamvis utrumque simul ab homine non dicatur. Unde propheta terram in initio factam ostendit dicens, psal. CI: « Initio tu, Domine, terram fundasti, » etc. « In principio, » etc. Coelum non visibile firmamentum, sed empyreum, id est, igneum vel intellectuale, quod non ab ardore, sed a splendore dicitur, quod statim repletum est angelis. Unde in Job XXXVIII: « Ubi eras cum me laudarent astra matutina, » etc. Et nota tria hic commemorari elementa. Nomine coeli, aerem intelligimus. Nomine terrae, ipsam et ignem qui in ea latet. Quarti, id est, aquae in sequentibus fit mentio. (ALCUIN. in Gen. tom. I.) « In principio. » Filio, quo humanato patuit qui essent coelestes, qui terreni. Coelum, creatura spiritualis, ab exordio perfecta et beata. Terra, corporalis materies adhuc imperfecta. Coelum, informem materiam spiritualis vitae, sicut in se potest existere non conversa ad Creatorem in quo formatur. Terram, corporalem, sine omni qualitate quae apparet in materia formata. (BEDA in Gen., tom. II, col. 191.) Scriptura ait: « Qui fecisti mundum de materia informi (Sap. XI) . » Materia facta est de nihilo. Species mundi de materia informi. Proinde duas res fecit Deus ante omne tempus, angelicam creaturam et materiam informem. Quamvis enim Salomon dicat: « Qui vivit in « aeternum, creavit omnia simul (Eccli. XVIII) , secundum originem tamen informis materies antecedit formatam speciem. Itaque mundum, et angelos, et animam de nihilo fecit Deus: hominem et creaturas caeteras de aliquo. (Ibid., col. 192.) Septem sunt coeli, quorum haec sunt nomina, aer, aether, olympus, spatium vel igneum, firmamentum, coelum angelorum, et Trinitatis. Hieronymus autem dicit coelum Trinitatis primum, secundum angelorum, tertium firmamentum. Mystice. « In principio creavit Deus coelum. » Eos scilicet qui coelestis imaginem portaverunt. « Et terram, » id est eos qui postea superbiendo, terram, id est terreni hominis imaginem, portantes, se recerunt deformes. « Terra autem erat inanis, » quia deposuerat formam bonam. « Et vacua, » boni operis fructu. « Et tenebrae erant, » veri scilicet luminis privatio; « super faciem abyssi, » corda scilicet superborum.

PL 113, col. 67B · pd

Notes

The margin as a settlement rather than an argument. Five glosses stand on this verse: an unattributed Augustinian one distinguishing Beginning from Word (the Son is called the Beginning where origin is meant and the Word where perfecting is meant); three from Bede, on eternity, on the simultaneity of heaven and earth, and on the empyrean heaven; and then Alcuin's, which is one word — Filio. That is the whole apparatus a twelfth-century reader met: Jerome's refutation is nowhere on the page, and the reading he had called false stands unargued in the margin under a great name. Elisions marked […] are Bede's house-building simile, his Ps 102 argument, the seven heavens list with Jerome's three, and the Sapientia 11 gloss on unformed matter, all of which are on the making rather than on the word 'beginning'. Wilson's edition of the Glossa (migne.app/glossa) supersedes this draft when its English reaches Gen 1:1.

In the SonIn the beginning of time

Threads

→ cites · Bede
Three of the five glosses on this verse are Bede, the first of them cited by book and Migne column ('BEDA, Hexaem. lib. I, tom. II, col. 13'), and the margin keeps his eternity argument, his simultaneity argument and his empyrean heaven while dropping the house-building simile that carried them.
→ cites · Alcuin
The Glossa prints Alcuin's answer as a gloss of one word — '(ALCUIN. in Gen. tom. I.) « In principio. » Filio' — so that the twelfth-century reader meets the reading Jerome refuted as a bare equation under a great name, with nothing on the page to argue with.
→ parallel · Isidore of Seville
The Glossa's Mystice paragraph reads heaven and earth as those who bore the image of the heavenly and those who grew proud and bore the earthly; Isidore's Quaestiones read the same two words as the spiritual and the carnal in the Church. Same allegory, same verse, five centuries apart, and the Glossa does not name him.
← contests · Nicholas of Lyra
The Glossa's first word on this verse is Filio: in the beginning, that is, in the Son. Lyra's Postilla litteralis, printed in the same Bibles two centuries later and often on the same opening, gives in principio, scilicet temporis vel productionis rerum, and does not mention the Son at all. Nothing is denied; the Christological reading is simply not the literal sense any more. This is the end of the line this crux has been tracing since Jerome refuted the reading and Wigbod dropped the refutation.
→ cites · Augustine
Phase 4. 'Quia universaliter nomine coeli et terrae comprehendendum erat quidquid fecit Deus, deinde per partes explicandum quomodo fecit' is De Genesi ad litteram I.9 reproduced almost word for word at the head of the standard gloss on Gen 1:1. Written at Phase 4 because the VERS. 1 block was sliced whole for K1 and carries several cruxes' glosses at once.
→ echoes · Remigius of Auxerre
Phase 4. The empyrean gloss inside the Glossa's VERS. 1 block — a heaven fiery not from burning but from brightness, filled at once with the angelic spirits — is Remigius at PL 131:54D almost verbatim, and it is how the empyrean reading became the schoolroom default that Abelard and Ibn Ezra each attack from their own side.