Remigius of Auxerre

English

'For he created heaven and earth.' By 'heaven' we ought not to understand this visible firmament, but that empyrean — that is, fiery, or intellectual — heaven, which is called fiery not from burning but from brightness, and which was at once filled with the angelic spirits, of whom it is said in Job: 'When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy' (Job 38:7). And note that three elements are named here. For under the name of heaven gather the air; under the name of earth, the earth itself, and the fire that lies hidden in its bowels. Of the fourth element, that is water, mention is made in what follows.

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

Latin

PL 131, col. 54D · pd

Notes

The empyrean enters the Latin gloss tradition here in the form it will keep: not the visible firmament but a fiery heaven, and fiery from brightness rather than heat — the qualification matters, because it is what makes the fire intelligible rather than physical — filled with angels the moment it was made, on the authority of Job 38:7. The Glossa prints this sentence almost word for word at PL 113:68C, inside the VERS. 1 block that K1 slices whole, and from there it reaches Comestor. Remigius then counts the elements out of the two words and finds only three, water being held over to v. 2 — where Ambrose and Abelard find all four.

Threads

• ← echoes · Peter Comestor
  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.
• ← contests · Peter Abelard
  Directly opposed on what 'heaven' names in this verse. Remigius: not the visible firmament but the empyrean, filled at once with angels. Abelard: fire and air, and 'the angels, being of an incorporeal nature, are not included among the creatures of the world at all'. Abelard does not name Remigius, but the empyrean-with-angels is the standing gloss he is writing against.
• ← parallel · Abraham ibn Ezra
  The objection to the empyrean reading, made from the other bench and with no knowledge of it: those who explain that the heavens of the first verse are the heavens of the heavens — what will they then do with the earth beside it? Ibn Ezra's symmetry argument is exactly what forces Remigius, the Glossa and Comestor to turn 'earth' into prime matter or the four elements once they have made 'heaven' the empyrean.
• ← echoes · Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)
  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.
• ← parallel · Chalcidius
  Remigius's empyrean, six hundred years early and argued rather than asserted. Remigius says the heaven of v. 1 is that empyrean, fiery or intellectual heaven, and leaves it there. Chalcidius reaches the same conclusion from the chapter's own sequence and then names two schools for what the intelligible heaven and earth are — Philo's ideas and exemplars, or the two species of all things, incorporeal nature and hyle. There is no line of transmission: Remigius has the doctrine without the argument.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  Remigius says the heaven of the first verse is that empyrean, that is fiery, or intellectual heaven, and stops. Philo says it is the incorporeal heaven established in the divine Reason and gives the argument, from the second name the chapter uses. This is the same relation Chalcidius stands in to Remigius, and for the same reason: Chalcidius got the argument from Philo, and Remigius got the conclusion from a tradition that had lost it.