Remigius of Auxerre

English

'Let there be light.' Light (lux) is so called from cleansing (luendo), that is, from purging away the darkness. But that light was not of the kind that now is, with the sun set above; rather it was such as it is wont to be before the rising of the sun, or after its setting.

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

Latin

PL 131, col. 55B · pd

Notes

Two sentences, and the second is the answer the twelfth century will build a physics on: the light was twilight — what the sky is like before sunrise or after sunset. Honorius says the same (a brightness such as there is now before sunrise), Comestor calls it a luminous cloud thin as the dawn, and Hugh gives it a body and an orbit. The etymology in the first sentence is Isidore's manner and is false; it is kept because Remigius is arguing from it.

Threads

• ← echoes · Honorius Augustodunensis
  Remigius' twilight — 'not of the kind that now is, with the sun set above, but such as is wont to be before sunrise or after sunset' — becomes Honorius' 'such a brightness as there now is before the rising of the sun', with twelve hours above the earth and twelve below added.
• ← echoes · Peter Comestor
  'Claritate tamen tenui, ut fieri solet diluculo' is Remigius' before-sunrise light, two hundred and seventy years on, stated in a handbook as fact rather than as opinion.