Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He descends from the thesis to the hypothesis, that is, from the praise of God's works in general to the praise of His particular works. He therefore celebrates the magnificence of God from the beauty of the sky, v. 1; of the sun, v. 2; of the moon, v. 6; and of the stars, v. 9; of the rainbow, v. 12; of snow, lightning, and clouds, v. 14; of hail, thunder, winds, and whirlwind, namely, v. 16; of frost, ice, and glaciers, v. 21; of the sea and islands, v. 25. Whence he concludes that God is to be praised and celebrated with the whole heart and all one's strength, because He is infinitely greater than all praise.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiasticus 43:1-37
1. The firmament of the height is His beauty, the appearance of the sky in a vision of glory. 2. The sun in its appearance announcing at its rising, a wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High. 3. At noon it scorches the earth, and in the sight of its heat who can endure? Keeping the furnace in works of burning; 4. the sun in three ways scorching the mountains, breathing out fiery rays, and shining with its rays it blinds the eyes. 5. Great is the Lord who made it, and at His words it hastens its course. 6. And the moon in all things in its time, a showing of the time, and a sign of the age. 7. From the moon comes the sign of the feast day, a light that wanes at its fullness. 8. The month is according to its name, growing wonderfully at its completion. 9. A vessel of the camp on high, shining gloriously in the firmament of the sky. 10. The beauty of the sky is the glory of the stars, the Lord illuminating the world on high. 11. At the words of the Holy One they will stand for judgment, and they will not fail in their watches. 12. Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him who made it: it is very beautiful in its splendor. 13. It has encircled the sky in the circuit of its glory; the hands of the Most High have opened it. 14. By His command He has hastened the snow, and He hastens to send forth the lightnings of His judgment. 15. Therefore the storehouses are opened, and the clouds fly out like birds. 16. In His greatness He has set the clouds, and the hailstones are broken apart. 17. At His sight the mountains will be shaken, and at His will the South Wind will blow. 18. The voice of His thunder will strike the earth, the tempest of the North Wind, and the gathering of the storm; 19. and like a bird settling down He sprinkles the snow, and like a locust sinking down is its descent. 20. The eye will marvel at the beauty of its whiteness, and the heart will be astonished at its rain. 21. He will pour out frost like salt upon the earth: and when it freezes, it becomes like the points of thorns. 22. The cold North Wind has blown, and ice has frozen from the water: it will rest upon every gathering of waters, and like armor it will clothe itself with the waters. 23. And it will devour the mountains, and burn the desert, and extinguish what is green, as with fire. 24. The remedy of all things is in the swift coming of the cloud: and the dew meeting the heat that comes will make it humble. 25. At His word the wind was silent, and by His thought He calmed the abyss, and the Lord planted islands in it. 26. Let those who sail the sea tell of its dangers: and hearing with our ears we shall marvel. 27. There are the splendid and wonderful works: various kinds of beasts, and of all cattle, and the creation of great creatures. 28. For His sake the end of the journey is established, and by His word all things are arranged. 29. We shall say much, and shall fall short in words: but the sum of our words is: He is in all things. 30. If we glory, what shall we avail? For He is almighty above all His works. 31. The Lord is terrible and exceedingly great, and His power is wonderful. 32. Glorifying the Lord as much as you can: for He will still surpass, and His magnificence is wonderful. 33. Blessing the Lord, exalt Him as much as you can: for He is greater than all praise. 34. Exalting Him, be filled with strength, and do not grow weary: for you will not comprehend Him. 35. Who shall see Him and describe Him? And who shall magnify Him as He is from the beginning? 36. Many things hidden are greater than these; for we have seen few of His works. 37. But the Lord has made all things, and to those who act piously He has given wisdom.
First Part of the Chapter: The Firmament
1. The firmament of the height is His beauty, the appearance of the sky in a vision of glory. — He begins with the beauty of the firmament: for although the crystalline heaven is higher than it, and the empyrean even more beautiful, yet these are less visible to us on earth, since the appearance of the firmament sparkles for all through its stars.
The pronoun "His," firstly, can refer to God; for immediately before this came: "Who will be satisfied seeing His glory?" Now this glory of God is most perceived in the beauty of the firmament, which never satiates the beholder; so that the sense is, as if to say: The "firmament" of the "height," that is, the most lofty, "is His beauty," namely God's, or the most beautiful work in which the beauty of God the Artisan shines forth, according to that passage in Psalm 18: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of His hands."
Furthermore, Palacius explains it thus: The most lofty firmament is the beauty of God, that is, the greatest beauty; for whatever belongs to God is the greatest. For just as in Psalm 67, "the mountains of God" are called the greatest, and "the man of God" is called a divine man, and "the sons of God," in Genesis 6, are called the most sublime or most holy, so the beauty of God is called "the greatest beauty." Secondly, it is more fitting to refer the word "His" to "height," by which he understood the height of the sky and the world, so that the sense would be, as if to say: The noblest part of the "height," that is, of the most lofty heaven, namely the "firmament," or the heaven of stars, "is its beauty," namely the beauty of the height, that is, of the most lofty heaven, as if to say: The firmament of the most lofty heaven is the ornament and beauty of that same heaven. For just as glory belongs to God, so beauty properly belongs to the sky and to creatures, in which the glory of God shines forth. For nothing so adorns the whole machinery of the heavens as the beauty of the firmament, inasmuch as it shines with as many gems, carbuncles, and diamonds as it does with stars and constellations, and hence the heaven was said to be, as it were, engraved with stars, Genesis 1:8. Indeed, as many stars as there are, so many torches, so many lamps, so many fiery brands shine in the sky and give light to the whole world. Add to this the order, motion, and influence of the stars, their variety and constancy. Indeed, the array of stars, like a battle line of God's soldiers, seems to represent a most well-ordered army. Hence God is called Sabaoth, that is, of hosts, namely of angelic and sidereal armies.
The word "His" could also be referred both to the firmament and to the height, as if to say: The beauty of the firmament is the beauty of the height, that is, of the most lofty heaven and of the whole world.
Now the Greek reads clearly and elegantly thus: γαυρίαμα ὕψους στερέωμα καθαριότητος, that is, as the Complutensian reads: The pride or glory of the height, the firmament of purity, as if to say: The proud glory of this lofty machinery of the world is the firmament, clean, that is, bright, pure, translucent. The Roman edition reads: The glorying of the height, the firmament of purity; the Zurich Bible: The ornament of the height, the firmament of purity; others: The exultation of the height, the pure firmament; for γαυρίαμα means the same as pride, glory, joy, exultation. For the firmament, proud and glorious with so many and such great stars, brings joy to those who behold it, and thus seems to be the joy and exultation of Angels, of men, and of the whole world, so that the heaven could glory in it, if it were capable of feeling and glorying. Jansenius tries to accommodate the Greek to our Latin Vulgate in this manner: Our reading, he says, will have a similar sense if the genitive "of the height" is not construed with "firmament" but with the substantive "beauty," so that the relative "His" is redundant according to the Hebrew idiom, as when it is said: "The Lord, in heaven is His seat," instead of "The Lord's seat is in heaven." And so the sentence is to be distinguished thus: after "of the height" a small stop is placed, and then follows: "the firmament is His beauty," that is, the firmament is the beauty of the height itself, because it adorns the height itself. But this is a rather forced and obscure transposition and interpretation.
For it is clear that our translator seems to have read differently in the Greek or Hebrew from what is now in the Greek: for he omits τò καθαριότητος and in its place substitutes τò "His." Again, if he had read as the Greek now stands, he would have clearly translated: "The glory of the height is the firmament of purity." For why would he have inverted and obscured such orderly and clear Greek words, translating: "The firmament of the height is His beauty"? He therefore seems to have read in the Greek thus: ὕψους στερέωμα γαυρίαμα αὐτοῦ ἐστι, that is: "The firmament of the height is His beauty"; which reading demands the sense that I gave in the second place. Hence, explaining further, he adds:
The appearance of the sky in a vision of glory — as if to say: The appearance and beauty of the firmament, which is the appearance and beauty of the whole sky and world, is that in which the glory both of the sky itself and of God, who is the author and creator of the sky, is seen. It is a hypallage inverting the order; for in proper order it should have been said: The vision of God's glory is in the appearance of the sky. Here is relevant the exposition of Palacius: The appearance of the sky, he says, is in a vision of glory, that is, the appearance of the sky is a vision of glory, that is, it is as if you were seeing glory itself. Thus it is said in Psalm 75: "His place was made in peace," that is, peace is His place. Hence the sky in Greek is called οὐρανός from ὁρᾶσθαι, that is, "to be seen," because it is exposed to the sight of the eyes, says St. Basil, homily 8 on the Hexaemeron, or because it is pervious to vision and sight; or, as Aristotle (or Apuleius, as others claim), in his book On the World, says, it is called ἁλύσμος, as if the boundary of the supreme bodies.
The same is called Olympus, as if ὁλολαμπός, that is, wholly shining. For light and splendor are the glory of the sky, which draws the sight to itself and delights it. Philo agrees with Aristotle in his book On the World; in Latin it is called cœlum as if cælatum (engraved), because it is stamped with seals and, as it were, sculpted, says Sipontinus. For "the appearance of the sky is the glory of the stars," says Sirach, verse 10, or properly "a vision"; in Hebrew מראה mare often signifies metonymically the object itself, namely the thing seen or visible, as if to say: The appearance and beauty of the sky is discerned in the visible glory that the sky displays, namely in the spectacular display of brilliance and stars, and it is itself the magnificent spectacle of the sky, as the Zurich Bible translates. Thus Jansenius says: By apposition, he says, "the appearance of the sky" is joined with "firmament," so that the sense is: The firmament, that is, the appearance of the sky, in a vision of glory, that is, having a glorious and splendid aspect; this, I say, the appearance and form of the sky is the beauty and glory of the height.
Metonymically and mystically, the beauty of the sky, or the appearance and glory of the firmament, represents the beauty, appearance, and glory of God, who, as the uncreated heaven, inhabits the created heaven; and therefore the glory and majesty of the created heavens is but a shadow of the uncreated and immeasurable glory and majesty of the Most Holy Trinity: for the heaven is its throne and seat; its symbol likewise is the one, the true or beautiful, and the good. For the One is appropriated to God the Father, who is the one and first source of the Most Holy Trinity; the True or Beautiful to God the Son, who is "the splendor of glory and the figure of His substance," Hebrews 1; the Good to the Holy Spirit, who is goodness, love, and the bond of the Father and the Son. Similarly, Plato explains and harmonizes these three: the one, the good, and the beautiful. For he, in the Meno, Protagoras, and Alcibiades, defines the beautiful thus: "Beauty is a vital splendor flowing from the good itself, poured out through ideas, reasons, seeds, and shadows, stirring souls so that through the good they may be brought back to unity." For Plato held that the one, the good, and the beautiful are so joined that he thought one could not be found without the other. He said that God is the One itself, the Good itself, the Beautiful itself: for these in God are God Himself: the One is, as it were, the head; the Good, the essence and the end; the Beautiful, the splendor shining forth from them. God, as One, most sweetly binds all things together; as Good, He begets and perfects all things; as Beautiful, He stirs, invites, and binds. Beauty, since it is splendor, excites admiration: therefore God, as Beautiful, begets admiration, love, and desire; as Good, He fulfills desires and perfects love; as One, He most eminently and most happily binds together all things, even those that in our experience are conflicting. God is that most eminent trinity of the one, the good, and the beautiful, as origin and principle: the mind and each of its ideas are such through their own form; the soul through reasons; nature through seeds and shadows, stirring souls so that through the good they may be brought back to unity.
Allegorically, the firmament represents the Church founded on the rock by Christ. Thus Rabanus says: "The beauty of the firmament, through the brightness of the stars, shows the power of the Creator; but more abundantly the beauty of the Church in the virtues and miracles of the Saints manifests the excellence of the Redeemer, because He alone with His eternal splendor illuminates believers, and with the burning of His judgment will punish sinners." Hence the heavens are the Apostles, who declare the glory of God, Psalm 18:1. And "lofty" is derived from "heaven," as if sublime and heavenly, says Isidore, book 10 of the Origins.
Anagogically, the firmament represents the empyrean heaven; for with as many Saints and their endowments and aureoles as the firmament has stars, the empyrean heaven shines, according to that passage in Daniel 12: "Those who are learned shall shine like the splendor of the firmament, and those who instruct many to justice, like stars for all eternity." And 1 Corinthians 15:41: "One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead." Hither, therefore, we ought continually to turn and fix the eyes of our mind and body, torn away from earth, so that with St. Ignatius of Loyola, who frequently gazed up at heaven, we may say and sigh: "How the earth disgusts me, when I look upon heaven."
Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus, says that a good bodily figure is a sign of a good mind, or at least an aid to it. St. Ambrose, in book 2 On Virginity, says: "The appearance of the body is an image of the mind, and a figure of uprightness." And the anonymous author in the most elegant Panegyric to Constantine says: "Not without reason, he says, do the most learned men say that nature itself measures out dwellings of bodies worthy of great minds, and that from the face of a man and the beauty of his limbs it can be gathered how far the heavenly spirit has entered as its inhabitant." Latinus Pacatus has the same in his Panegyric to Theodosius, after which he adds: "Your virtue merited the empire; but your beauty added its vote to your virtue; the former brought it about that you had to become a prince, the latter that it was fitting." To the same point belongs that saying of Porphyry from Euripides: "Priam's appearance was worthy of empire." And that of Pliny, in his Panegyric to Trajan: "Already, he says, the stature of his body, the dignity of his head, and the majesty of his face far and wide display the prince." So also Claudian, On Stilicho: Already then you walked conspicuous, already then venerable; The fiery brightness of your lofty face promised the leader, And the proportion of your limbs.
And with Fulgentius contemplating the splendor and pomp of the Roman court: "If earthly Rome shines so brightly, how will the heavenly Jerusalem shine?" So the holy mother of the Maccabees, encouraging her son to martyrdom, said: "I beg you, my son, to look up at heaven, etc. So it will come about that you will not fear this executioner, but, made worthy of your brothers, accept death as a partaker, so that in that mercy I may receive you with your brothers," 2 Maccabees 7:28. Similarly the mother of St. Symphorian encouraged him to martyrdom, calling out to him: "My son, my son, remember eternal life, look up to heaven, and behold Him who reigns there; for your life is not being taken from you, but is being changed for the better." Wherefore the young man, bravely offering his neck to the executioner for the cause of Jesus Christ, underwent the noble contest of martyrdom at Autun, on the 22nd of August, on which day the Church annually celebrates his renewed memory.
Furthermore, the Zurich Bible, linking this first verse with the second, considers all these things to be praises not of the firmament but of the sun. For it translates thus: The ornament of the height and the firmament of purity, and the magnificent spectacle of the sky, is the sun announcing light, etc., as if to say: The sun is the ornament of the most lofty sky, and the firmament and foundation of the purest light, and the magnificent spectacle of the sky. But all others take these things as referring to the firmament or starry sky, not to the sun: for what concerns the sun follows next. Here it is pleasant to exclaim with the great and holy Boethius, at the end of book 2 of the Consolation: O happy race of men, If the love by which heaven is governed Were to govern your hearts!
Symbolically, St. Bernard takes the firmament to mean the Blessed Virgin; for he says thus in sermon 3 on the Salve Regina: "Let there be a firmament, he says, and let it divide the waters from the waters; firmer than all firmaments is the firmament that is you, O Lady; you who received and conceived Him whom the heavens of heavens could not contain; you carried Him and did not fail; you gave birth to Him, nourished Him, raised Him. You in the midst of the waters divided the waters from the waters, namely the affections of eternal things from the affections of temporal things. God placed in this firmament the sun and the moon, Christ and the Church; and the stars, the many prerogatives of graces." And shortly after: "She herself is the tabernacle of God, she the temple, she the heaven, she the earth, she the sun, she the moon and the morning star."
Symbolically, the sky, delighting all with its beauty, and giving life and fruitfulness to all things by its influence and motion, signifies that great and magnificent persons ought to be supremely beneficent to all. The same thing is represented by Cyril, in book 3 of Moral Apologues, chapter 21, whose title is: That the generous person should give to all whom he can, using an apt apologue of the sky and earth, with beautiful maxims like a sky engraved and eyed with stars: "The earth, looking up, he says, and seeing that the first mover, besides itself, swept along with itself all visible things by the divine motion communicated to all, spoke to it saying: Why do you disturb all things? Why is it not enough for you to impart your motion to one alone? But the heaven, answering from above, said: You have spoken well, like the earth that you are — dark in madness, dry in tenacity, perpetually thirsting with cupidity. Do you not perceive that my disturbing is to fly, my moving is to illuminate, and my seizing is to give most generously? For to all things that move with me I communicate my nature, I bestow my power, I distribute my causality: but if you wished to illiberally bestow my superabundant benefit on one or a few, then surely it is me, not others, that you have cruelly envied. Consider, I ask, that just as the universe receives, so universal power acts in common. Therefore, just as true justice, so also free beneficence extends to all." He then demonstrates the same by the example of the sun, the liver, and the brain: "Thus the Sun most generously sprinkled all things with its ray, and never narrowed the boundaries of the splendor of its outpouring. The liver distributes nourishing blood to all the members, and the heart diffuses vital vapor through the whole body. The brain also pours sense into all the members, and the soul makes the whole body subject to it alive. Therefore he who gives generously accommodates those whom he can: because he is not a respecter of persons, but a common bestower of benefits. Having heard these things, the modest earth fell silent."
The Sun
2. The sun in its appearance announcing at its rising, a wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High. — The Arabic version reads: He created the sun, so that by it they might be illuminated, and the fathers might glorify Him (it is an exclamation)! A wonder, the art of the Most High. The Zurich Bible reads: The sun announcing light when it rises, a wonderful machine, the work of the Most High. The Syriac refers these words to the sky or firmament, of which verse 1 speaks; for it translates: He made the sky for seeing and for glorifying, a vessel of admiration, the work of the Most High. From the firmament he passes to the sun, as the primary and most magnificent work of God. The participle "announcing" depends on the verb "scorches" in the following verse. But what does the sun announce? Jansenius answers: the glory of God; for this is understood. Hence instead of ἐν ἐξόδῳ, that is, "at its going out," the Complutensian reads ἐν ἐνδόξῳ, that is, "in glory," as if to say: The sun announces the glorious and supreme glory of God. But more simply, through a Hebraism, one may explain it thus: The sun in its appearance, that is, announcing its appearance; for the Hebrews construct verbs of contact, both mental (such as "I announce") and bodily, with ב, that is, "in," and the ablative. Thus they say: "I believe in God," that is, "I believe God." Now by "appearance" he understands light and rays: for with these the sun looks upon and illuminates the earth. The sense therefore is, as if to say: The sun announces its appearance, that is, light, dawn, and day — that is, the time for working — at its going out, that is, at its rising and emergence. So Vatablus says: The sun, announcing light, when it rises.
Or, what amounts to the same thing, as if to say: "The sun in its appearance," that is, at its rising when it begins with its light to look upon the earth, "announces at its going out," that is, announces its going out or rising, namely the dawn. For then the golden-haired sun, rising and proceeding in beauty like a bridegroom by displaying its appearance, as it were greets men and all creatures, and silently wishes them well, saying: Hail, mortals, I wish you a good day. Behold, having scattered the darkness of night, I rise for you; behold, I bring you light, joy, and life. Rise then, and awake with me. Flowers, bloom; fronds, put forth leaves; trees, bear fruit; birds, sing praise to God; animals, go out to your pastures; let men hasten to their works, according to that passage in Psalm 104:22: "The sun has risen and they have gathered themselves, etc. Man shall go forth to his work, and to his labor until the evening." Therefore "going out" here does not signify the setting (as Palacius would have it, as if to say: The sun at its setting announces fair weather, or winds, or rain; for these things are known from the setting of the sun), but the rising of the sun: for the Hebrews call this מוצא motsa, that is, going out or rising, according to that passage in Psalm 18:6: "He Himself is like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber. He has rejoiced like a giant to run his course, from the highest heaven is His going forth."
For at its rising and at dawn the sun appears most beautiful, like a bridegroom crowned with a golden and purple diadem of rays. Hence it is called by the Poets ῥοδοδάκτυλος, that is, rosy-fingered, golden, golden-haired, flaming, fiery. Thus Virgil, Aeneid 7: The saffron dawn was shining in her rosy chariot. And in book 8: As when the morning star, bathed in the Ocean's wave, Whom Venus loves above the other fires of the stars, Has raised its sacred face to the sky and dissolved the darkness.
Note: The sun has three names in Hebrew. First, it is called שמש schemesch, that is, minister, from the root שמש schamas, that is, "he ministered," because it administers light to all and because it was established by God as the universal minister of light, through which it warms, enlivens, and makes fruitful all things. Second, it is called חמה chamma, from heat, because it heats all things and thus vivifies them: for חמם chamam means to heat. Third, it is called חרס cheres, from dryness and desiccation, which it produces by its heat and burning: for cheres means a dry and arid pot. Hence concerning the sun, Ecclesiasticus says in this chapter, verse 3: "At noon it scorches the earth, and in the sight of its heat who can endure?" In the sun, therefore, three things are to be admired: namely, supreme light, supreme heat, and supreme speed. Hence St. Ambrose, book 4, Hexaemeron 1, says: "The sun is the eye of the world, the delight of the earth, the beauty of the sky, the grace of nature, the preeminence of creation."
Mystically, our Pineda, commenting on Job 36:33, on the passage: "He announces to His friend concerning it (the light), that it is His possession." As the Wise Man, he says, wrote: "The sun in its appearance announcing at its going out." What does the rising sun announce? Some think it announces light; but this is feeble: for why does what is seen need to be announced? This is truer: that it announces the glory of God, which the heavens also declare. But what do you think the rising sun announces as the glory of God, other than that He is the Lord and King of glory? That is, in the image of the sun and the splendor of light, it announces to God's friends that light itself is God's possession and treasure.
A wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High. — Dionysius, chapter 4 of On the Divine Names, says that "the sun is a significative, express, and evident image of the divinity and divine goodness." Just as the sun, so much more does God, he says, "illuminate, produce, vivify, contain, and perfect all things, and He is the measure, and the eternity, and the number, and the order, and the embrace, and the cause, and the end of all things that exist." And with a few words interposed: "A clear, he says, and express image of divinity is this great sun, wholly shining and ever splendid; it shines together with all things that can receive its light, and has its light diffused through all things above and below, and if there is anything that does not participate in it, this is not to be attributed to the thinness or smallness of its light, but to those things which, because they are not apt to receive light, are not opened to receive it. And so its ray, with the immense magnitude of its splendor, penetrates, stirs to life, nourishes, increases, completes, purifies, renews; and light is the measure and number of hours, of days, and of our entire time; it gathers and turns to itself all things that are seen, that die, that are illuminated, that grow warm, and in one word all things that are contained by its splendor: and so ἥλιος, that is, the sun, is so called because it ἁολλέα ποιεῖ, that is, gathers together and binds things that are scattered, and all things that are perceived by sense desire it, whether to see, or to feel, to be illuminated, to grow warm, and to be wholly contained by light."
The sun is therefore "a wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High," because it not only clearly represents God, but generously pours out and distributes the treasures of His divinity upon all creatures of the earth.
Note the word "vessel." For the Manicheans believed the sun to be, as it were, a vessel and a ship, as I shall soon show; but the sun is called a "vessel," not because it has the form of a vessel or a ship, but a "vessel," that is, an instrument, an organ. For thus the Hebrews call כלי kele, that is, vessels — meaning instruments — "of war"; thus Simeon and Levi are called "vessels," that is, instruments, "of iniquity," Genesis 49:5; and St. Paul is called a "vessel of election," that is, a chosen instrument for preaching, Acts 9. Add that the sun has the form of a round vessel, or a spherical globe, which like a vessel contains within itself the powers of lower things, says Palacius. The sense therefore is, as if to say: The sun is a vessel, that is, an admirable organ and instrument of God, and therefore an exalted work worthy of the exalted God, and of His majesty and magnificence.
And this, first, by its unity: for the sun is unique in the world, as the arbiter of light and the monarch of the world, and thus the phoenix of the ages: for the phoenix is nothing other than the sun, as I showed in Genesis. Hence the sun is a symbol of the one and only God, and therefore the most beautiful image of God, "whom, because He alone looks upon all things, you could truly call the sun." Hence also it is called sol (sun), because it alone among all the stars is so great, or because it alone, when it has risen, appears while all others are obscured, as Cicero says, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods.
Second, by its purity and splendor: for the sun seems to be nothing other than total purity, total light and brightness. Hence it is the leader and prince of all the stars. Whence Secundus the Philosopher, when asked by the Emperor Hadrian: "What is the sun?" answered: "The eye of the sky, splendor without setting, the ornament of the day, the distributor of the hours." And Alcuin, or Albinus Flaccus, in his Disputation with Pippin, the son of Charlemagne, says: "What is the sun? The splendor of the world, the beauty of the sky, the grace of nature, the honor of the day, the distributor of the hours."
Third, by its magnitude: for the sun is one hundred and sixty times larger than the earth; hence it could contain and embrace 160 globes of the earth within itself. Others think the sun is far greater. I heard at Rome a distinguished mathematician who asserted that the sun is eight hundred times larger than the globe of the earth, and that he had ascertained this with certainty through telescopes and mathematical instruments.
Fourth, by its altitude: for the firmament is distant from the earth by eighty million and a half miles; and between the firmament and the sun only Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars are interposed. Consider therefore how great is the altitude of the sun, namely that at a minimum the sun is distant from the earth by four million miles, as I showed in Genesis 1:16.
Fifth, by its position: for it is situated in the middle of the planets, like a king illuminating and directing them all. Hence Statius, book 5: The sun in the midst of its labors was poising on the summit of Olympus Its shining steeds, as if standing still. Modern astronomers have discovered through the telescope that Mercury and Venus, and even Mars, move and revolve around the sun, and as it were perform a dance and triad around it.
Sixth, by its motion and speed: for the sun each day in 24 hours traverses the circuit of its orbit and of the entire vastness of the sky, from the East through the South to the West and the North.
Seventh, by its circuit: for it circles through all the regions of the world, so as to illuminate all provinces, nations, and other things. Hence Virgil, Aeneid 4: O Sun, who with your flames survey all the works of the earth.
Eighth, by its efficacy: for the sun gives vigor, motion, and life to all things. Hence that saying of Aristotle: "The sun and man together generate man." And therefore when the sun departs during night and winter, all things wilt, grow torpid, weaken, and die.
Ninth, by its heat, which is so great that it scorches the torrid zone; hence the sun is an image of the Most Holy Trinity. For just as the sun produces splendor from itself, and through it heat; so the Father produces the Son, who is the splendor of the Father, Hebrews 1, and through the Son produces the Holy Spirit, who is the heat and love of the Father and the Son.
Finally, there is nothing in this visible world more beautiful in appearance than the sun, or more fruitful for the convenience of generating things: it communicates vital and salutary power to plants and animals; it is in the sky what the heart is in an animal; it regulates the changes of the seasons and the year always returning with new bloom according to the use of nature, and so divides its parts that they are linked together no differently than in a chorus; its force and power governs the motions of the other luminaries by an established measure; with its splendor spread far and wide it illuminates all things above and below, and even the fires of the stars; its influence penetrates into the most hidden recesses, and waters the bowels of the earth, and generates gold and gems; like a giant it completes its course with the utmost speed; like a bridegroom it adorns all things with the grace of its appearance; it is, as it were, the heart of the universe, the eye of the world, the delight of the day, the beauty of the sky, the grace of nature; and finally, God has established it in the sky as the most beautiful image of Himself.
Hence Anastasius of Sinai, in book 1 of the Hexaemeron, derives the Greek ἥλιον, that is, "sun," from the Hebrew עליון elion, that is, "most high," which is what God is, because the sun is most high and represents the majesty of God to bodily eyes by its splendor, heat, and power. "Sol" (sun) in Latin is derived from "solus" (alone), "because it alone among all the stars is so great (namely, one hundred and sixty times larger than the globe of the earth), or because it alone, when it has risen, appears while all others are obscured," says Cicero, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods. Hence the Persians and other nations worshipped the sun as God, and the Manicheans believed the sun to be Christ. Varro, in book 4 On the Latin Language, says: "It is called sol (sun) because it alone so shines that from it comes the day; and luna (moon), because it alone shines at night; and so it was called Noctiluca, and had a temple on the Palatine." More truly the Psalmist says, Psalm 18:6: "In the sun He has placed His tabernacle;" the Chaldean version: "For the sun He placed His tabernacle as an illumination in them," as if to say: God placed the throne of His brightness in the sun, so that from there He might cast the rays of His splendor in every direction. Hence the ancient theologians of the Gentiles, such as Iamblichus and Macrobius, in book 1 of the Saturnalia, chapters 25 and 30, placed all the deities of the Gentiles in the sun. Finally, the sun is a symbol of eternity, justice, and truth; hence that saying of Pythagoras: "Do not speak against the sun (that is, against truth)." And Orpheus calls the sun the eye of justice; and the judges in Bithynia used to set their tribunal facing the sun, as if they would judge most sincerely, like the sun. So our Conimbricenses, book 2 On the Heavens, chapter 5, Question 2, article 2.
For more praises of the Sun, see Plutarch, in the book On the Instruction of Princes; Macrobius, book 1 of the Saturnalia from chapter 17 to 23; St. Ambrose, book 4 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 1; St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter 4; St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration On the New Sunday, and oration 2 On Theology; Eugubinus, in his Cosmopœia, chapter 1 on Genesis. Pierius discusses the hieroglyphics of the sun, hieroglyph 44. On account of these outstanding endowments of the sun, St. Francis composed a hymn, which he himself called the Canticle of the Sun, for praising God its maker in the sun, which he wanted his friars to recite daily. He composed it upon receiving a revelation about his predestination and election to glory, as an act of thanksgiving, namely two years before his death, shortly after the five stigmata of Christ's wounds were impressed upon him. Hence also when dying, he wanted the same hymn sung to him. The hymn reads thus:
"Most High, omnipotent, good Lord, Yours are the praises; glory, honor, and every blessing are to be rendered to You alone, and no man is worthy to name You. Be praised, Lord my God, for all Your creatures, and especially for our honorable brother the sun, who makes the day and illuminates us with his light; he is beautiful and radiant, and of great splendor, and bears Your symbol, O Lord. Praised be my Lord for sister moon and the stars, which He created in the sky, bright and beautiful. Praised be my Lord for brother wind, the air, clouds, fair weather, and for all the seasons through which He provides nourishment to all creatures. Praised be my Lord for sister water, who is very useful, humble, precious, and chaste. Praised be my Lord for brother fire, through whom He illuminates the night; he is rosy, ruddy, invincible, and fierce. Praised be my Lord for our mother earth, who sustains and nourishes us, and produces various fruits, many-colored flowers, and herbs." So Wadding, in the Annals of the Friars Minor, year of Christ 1224, no. 32, who also adds that St. Francis, after his friars had recited this hymn before the people of Siena, settled their serious dispute.
Allegorically, the firmament is the Church, the sun is Christ, the moon is the Blessed Virgin, the stars are the Saints. So Rabanus, namely: The star of the Virgin shines among all, As the moon among the lesser fires. Hence it is said of Christ, Malachi 4:2: "The sun of justice shall rise upon you who fear My name, and healing shall be in His wings." See what was said there, and Isaiah 45:1.
Furthermore, it is easy to apply all the endowments of the sun that I have just reviewed mystically to Christ. The Blessed Damascene brilliantly asks in his sermon On the Transfiguration why Christ's face shone like the sun in it; and he answers that the sun bears an express type of Christ. For just as in the sun there are two things, namely light and body, so in Christ there is the Word and the flesh, or divinity and humanity. Again, just as light existed before the sun, that is, before the solar body — for it was created on the first day of the world, but the sun on the fourth day — so the divinity existed before the humanity. Third, just as the light of the sun is indefinite and uncircumscribed, but the body is defined and circumscribed, so also the divinity in Christ is immense, but the humanity is circumscribed by the limits of body and place; just as light, therefore, clothes the solar body and renders it most luminous, so the Word clothed the flesh and made it most radiant with all grace and wisdom. Add that just as the sun makes all things luminous, joyful, vigorous, and vivid, so also does Christ. Hence the Psalmist says of Him, Psalm 18: "There is none who can hide himself from His heat." I have said more about the sun as a type of Christ in Apocalypse chapter 1, verse 16. Hence Christ appeared to St. Lutgarde not as one sun, but as a thousand suns. Hear Thomas of Cantimpre, in her Life, found in Surius, June 16: "When a certain spiritual friend asked her what kind of face of Christ she saw in contemplation, she replied: In a moment there appears to me an inestimable splendor, and like lightning I see the ineffable beauty of His glorification, which, unless it were swiftly withdrawn from the sight of my contemplation, the weakness of this mortal life could in no way bear. But after that brightness there remains an intellectual splendor, and with it I seek Him whom I had seen in a flash, but I do not find Him. She would say that the eyes of Christ sparkled with such ineffable splendor that if that splendor were infused into the light of the sun, it would obscure the sun infinitely more than the rays of the sun cover the light of the stars. A certain religious priest desired to know what those words meant: His eyes are more beautiful than wine. Therefore he saw, while celebrating the divine mysteries at the holy chalice, the face of Christ, and His eyes radiating with such light that they could illuminate the entire world, even in the midst of darkness, far more abundantly than even a thousand suns. Nor could one easily believe how much Lutgarde burned with the desire to see Christ." Thus far Cantimpre, who was privy to and the administrator of all the secrets of St. Lutgarde.
From Christ the most excellent Saints participate, so as to be and be called Suns; because like suns they illuminate and inflame worldly men with their wisdom and holiness, and therefore like suns they will outshine the other Saints, according to that saying of Christ: "The just shall shine like the sun." These therefore are the suns of the sun, of the earth, and of heaven, so that of any one of them it may be said: "This is a wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High"; because by the exalted love and grace of God he heroically surpasses both in action and in suffering. Thus St. Paul was a vessel of election of the most high God, Acts 9. Imitate your Christ, O Christian; be a sun of the world like St. Paul: a sun in the temple, a sun in the street, a sun in the school, a sun in the marketplace, a sun at the table, a sun in the bedroom, everywhere casting the rays of your virtue. Thus St. Remigius, when a heavenly light like the sun shone upon him, was designated Bishop of Rheims, as Hincmar testifies in his Life. The mother of St. Columban, pregnant with him, saw in a dream a shining sun proceeding from her bosom, gleaming with immense brightness, and giving great light to the world, which wise men interpreted to mean that Columban would illuminate the world with his teaching and holiness. This is what Deborah sings, Judges 5: "But let those who love You shine as the sun shines at its rising." So Jonas the Abbot, in the Life of St. Columban, chapter 2, found in Surius, November 21.
But before all and above all, the wonderful vessel of God was the Blessed Virgin. Hear St. Bonaventure, in the Mirror of the Virgin, chapter 7: "Mary, he says, was full of the reflection, or expression, of divine glory, according to that passage in Ecclesiasticus: The work of the Lord is full of His glory. Par excellence, the wonderful work of the Lord is Mary, of whom it is said in Ecclesiasticus: A wonderful vessel, the work of the Most High. Truly a wonderful work, because nowhere is a like one found. Hence it is said of this work: Such a work has not been made in all kingdoms, neither in the kingdom of heavenly beings, nor of earthly beings, nor of those below. For this work is full of the Lord's glory, because above every pure creature it reflects and shines most fully in Mary. For apart from the nature assumed by the Word, there is no work, no creature, in which so much matter of divine glory shines, as in Mary." And below: "The whole earth is full of His glory, as it is said in Isaiah: All of Mary is full, the most complete divine glory shining in her." Thus he. Hence also Christ confessed to St. Bridget, saying: "My Mother is the sweetest food by which I draw men to Me."
3. At noon it scorches the earth, and in the sight of its heat who can endure? — As if to say: The sun at noon, especially in summer, heats and scorches the earth, so much so that hardly anyone can bear and endure its heat. In the Greek: At its noon it dries the earth, and in the sight (that is, before the sight) of its heat, who will endure? The Zurich Bible: When the noonday sun scorches the regions, who can endure its heat? The Syriac: At noon it burns the earth, and before its heat who can stand?
Literally this is a riddle about the sun, mystically about charity. For the sun is a symbol of burning charity and great beneficence, because with its rays it heats and inflames all things. Cyril has a notable apologue about the sun and the night on this subject, in book 3 of the Moral Apologues, chapter 22, whose title is: That the generous person should give grandly: "At the presence of the sun, he says, when day had been made and night had been entirely excluded, immediately night said to it mournfully: Why have you poured out such an abundance of clear light, and driven me from the whole habitable world? Was it not enough for you to pour out light for the necessity of seeing? To which the sun replied: Indeed, you chill the body and constrict the heart, and therefore you speak like a miser. What is virtue? Is it not defined by the Philosophers as the utmost of one's power? Hence one who acts below the strength of his power is shown not yet to have acted virtuously. Therefore one who did not do as much good as he could, straying from virtue, has fallen short. Furthermore, what else is generosity but the great willingness of free beneficence? A man is indeed more deficient if he gives less than he can; for the evident sign of the will is the benefit bestowed. In bestowing gifts, therefore, one should not consider the dignity of the receiver but of the giver, because in benefits it is virtue that is considered, not the person." He then brings forward an example of each: Alexander of generosity, Antigonus of illiberality: "Antigonus illiberally denied a talent to someone who asked for it; for, cloaking his avarice with the unworthiness of the Philosopher, he would say: It is more than it is fitting to give you. But not so Alexander of Macedon; when he was reproached for having given someone far more than was sufficient, he immediately answered generously: I did not look at the dignity of the person, but at the grandeur of royal munificence." Finally, he proposes God as the model of beneficence, most generous in Himself and in His creatures, especially in the soul, the silkworm, and the phoenix, to be imitated by all: "Attend to the primary fountain of generosity, from which every vein of goodness is drawn; how much reality did He bestow upon the world? What beauty did He make the firmament? And how much splendor did He place in it? Did He leave in the universe any point empty of the benefit of His goodness? So indeed the soul, acting generously, bestowed upon the body subject to it as much as it could. So the generous little worm gave all its own entrails for the benefit of all. So the most generous phoenix, in the generation of another, pours out its whole self as seed into dust. Truly, therefore, the benefit of generosity is not dear, but dearer; it is not great, but the greatest; it is not merely so much, but the whole good. Having said this, the master of truth fell silent."
4. Keeping the furnace in works of burning; the sun in three ways scorching the mountains. — For "keeping," the Greek reads φυλάσσων; now they read φυσῶν, that is, "blowing"; but the sense amounts to the same. For one who wants to keep and maintain a furnace lit must frequently blow into it, and by blowing, stir up and sharpen its heat. Here the mark of comparison "as... so" must be understood; for the Hebrews often omit and leave it to be understood. For he compares the heat of the sun with the heat of a furnace, and prefers the former to the latter, as if to say: Just as the keeper who has charge of a furnace, in order to keep it lit for works of burning, for example, for baking bricks by the heat of fire, frequently stirs up a great heat by blowing into it; so likewise, indeed "in three ways," that is, as the Syriac translates, three times more does the sun by its heat scorch the earth, and especially the mountains, which from early morning until evening it continually strikes and beats with fiery rays, as if to say: The sun burns and scorches more than a furnace in which by the force of fire bricks, glass, or metals such as iron, bronze, tin, bells, and artillery are smelted. Indeed I have seen furnaces in the mountains of the Ardennes in which iron is melted, so intensely burning that they presented to me the appearance of the fires of hell; consider therefore how great is the heat of the sun, which surpasses all furnaces in its burning.
Furthermore, the sun achieves this by breathing out fiery rays; and shining with its rays it blinds the eyes — "breathing out," that is, emitting, casting, hurling. Our translator read with the Complutensian ἐκφυσῶν, that is, "breathing out"; now the Roman edition reads ἐμφυσῶν, that is, "breathing into"; but the sense is the same. For when the sun emits and breathes out from itself fiery rays, it emits and breathes them into the earth. For "blinds," the Greek has ἀμαυρόω, that is, "dims" or "darkens," as if to say: So great is the heat of the sun that it scorches mountains; and equally great is its brilliance, so that it dims, dulls, and as it were blinds the keenness of human sight. Hence Vatablus clearly translates: Three times more does the sun heat the mountains than one who blows a furnace for burning works, and exhaling fiery vapor, it dazzles the eyes with the brightness of its rays. Furthermore, St. Augustine, book 2 On the Morals of the Manicheans, chapter 8, says: "This sun, before which you bend your knee, than which truly nothing more beautiful is found among visible things, refreshes the eyes of eagles, but when looked at, wounds and darkens ours; but through habit it comes about that we too can fix our gaze upon it without discomfort."
Note the word "in three ways": for the Manicheans believed the sun to be a triangular vessel, similar to a ship. Likewise the moon, "which they said was filled," says St. Augustine, epistle 119 to Januarius, "as a ship is filled, from the fleeting part of the day, when a great part of the day, purged from its contamination through great labors, fleeing from the whole world and all its sewers, would be returned to the mourning God." The same, in book 20 Against Faustus, chapter 6: "You say that the sun is a kind of ship, and so not only, as the saying goes, do you err by the whole sky, but you also swim. Then, since it shines as round before everyone's eyes, and that shape is perfect for its order and position, you declare it to be triangular — that is, that through a certain triangular window of the sky this light radiates to the world and the earth. And so it comes about that you bend your back and neck to this sun; but it is not the sun itself, so conspicuous in its clear roundness, that you worship, but some ship you have invented, flickering and shining through a triangular opening. This ship that craftsman would certainly not have made if, just as timber is bought to construct the planks of ships, so too words were bought with which the fables of heretics are fabricated." This, therefore, is their madness.
"In three ways," therefore, means the same as "in many ways," or rather the same as "three times more does the sun burn than a furnace." Palacius explains it differently: The sun, he says, operates in three ways, inasmuch as it scorches mountains, it vomits forth fiery torrents, and it shines over the greatest distances. A witness of this is Mount Etna, scorched by the heat of the sun, breathing out fiery streams like rays, and shining with ejected flame. Nor Etna alone, but also other mountains of which Pliny mentions many in book 2, chapter 6. Finally, the sun with its rays blinds the eyes; so great is its abundance of the brightest light that mortals cannot endure it without closing their eyes.
Mystically, the sun scorching the mountains in three ways is the Divine Spirit, or His consolation, which, first, fills the memory with holy thoughts; second, illuminates the intellect; third, inflames the will; and with its brightness it blinds the eyes, for when the heavenly light is increased in us — which reveals how little we know and are — all previously conceived presumption vanishes. So St. Bonaventure, and from him Alvarez de Paz, On the Praise of Humility, chapter 6.
From this passage and similar ones, not a few ancients, and even notable modern Mathematicians, have held and hold that the sun is of a fiery nature, and therefore that it is truly fire and a heavenly furnace. First, because Sirach seems to say this in this passage; second, because its heat seems to argue this, which is so great that it surpasses all fire's heat; third, because every light that casts from itself illumination and rays is fire: for if the light of fire is flame, then equally the light of the sun is flame and fire; fourth, because the spots and faculae that are continually seen through the telescope revolving and turning in the sun seem to argue this; just as in a furnace flame with smoke rolls and turns. For this reason Sirach seems to have aptly compared the sun to a furnace, because the sun seems to be nothing other than a rolling and turning of faculae and flames. Hence the Syriac translates: The vapor stirred up from it (the sun) is like the vapor of fire. For these and other reasons, then, many have held the sun and stars to be of a fiery nature, indeed to be fires, according to that saying: "You eternal fires, and inviolable divinity." Thus the ancient Egyptians held that the stars are fires; Anaximander taught that the sun is the purest fire; Anaxagoras that the sun is a white-hot plate, or iron; Plato, in the Timaeus, teaches that it is necessary, since the sky is visible, that it consist of fire, at least in its greater part; the Stoics likewise all teach that the stars are fiery, and are fed and nourished by vapors raised from the waters and earth and drawn to themselves; which Balbus also follows and defends in Cicero, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods, and after him Pliny, book 2, chapter 9, and Seneca, book 7 of Natural Questions. Plutarch also records similar views, in book 2 On the Opinions of the Philosophers, adding in chapters 13 and 20 that Diogenes thought the stars to be earthy and like pumice, and as it were vents of the world; that Empedocles thought the fixed stars were attached to crystal, but the wandering stars were loose; that Xenophon formed stars from ignited clouds, which would be extinguished during the day and revive at nighttime darkness like coals; and so risings and settings were kindlings and extinguishings; that Democritus and Metrodorus held the sun to be ignited iron or stone; Philolaus the Pythagorean, glass; Epicurus, an earthy density and a mountain of pumice material. But the opinion of Anaxagoras is especially celebrated by writers, who, when a huge stone of a burnt color fell from the sky into the river at Aegospotami in Thrace — whose fall he himself had predicted — affirmed that the entire sky consists of stones, and that the sun itself is a white-hot rock. Hence Euripides, his disciple, in the tragedy of Phaethon, called the sun a golden clod. Plutarch mentions the same stone in his Life of Lysander, Damachus in what he wrote about religion, and Pliny, book 2 of Natural History, chapter 58.
But also St. Augustine, following the same opinions of the Stoics and Plato, indicates in several places that the sky and stars consist of a fiery nature, as the Master of the Sentences also noted, book 2, distinction 14. For in the book On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, chapter 4, since Augustine recognizes only four simple bodies from which this whole world is compacted — earth, water, air, and fire — he assigns fire especially to the sky.
And in book 2 On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, chapter 3, he says: "And so above the air, pure fire is said to be the sky. Whence they also conjecture that the stars and luminaries were made, namely, of that fiery light gathered and arranged in the forms that we perceive in the sky." Clement of Alexandria, book 8 of the Stromata, says: "The Stoics say the sun is ἅναμμα ἐκ θαλάσσης ὑδάτων, that is, an intelligent bond from the waters of the sea, as some translate; but wrongly; for it should be translated as something kindled from the waters of the sea, endowed with intelligence; for ἅναμμα is what the Greeks call that which has been kindled. Chrysippus calls them ζῶπυρα, because the Stoics believed the stars were nourished by marine moisture.
Several other holy Fathers also support the same opinion, namely all those who held that the waters above the firmament were true waters, placed in the sky to cool and moderate the heat of the stars. Moreover, Gregory of Nyssa, in his Hexaemeron, seems to have openly held that the entire firmament is of a fiery nature, and likewise Alcuin, Question 23 on Genesis 1, Anselm, book 1 On the Image of the World, chapter 25, and Denis the Carthusian, Commentary on Genesis, article 20.
There is also an argument from sight and observation; for it seems to be gathered from the perpetual twinkling of nearly all stars that the sun and stars are not only luminous, but also of a flaming and flashing nature. The name of the "ether" signifies the same, not to mention the empyrean heaven, which is named from fire. The ether is therefore fire, not elemental, but celestial. Here also belong those teachers who hold that the stars are of a fiery nature, but the heavens are formed from waters. Thus St. Cyril, in Catechesis 9, expressly teaches that "water is the sky, and fiery within it are the sun, the moon, and the stars." Josephus teaches the same, book 1 of the Antiquities, chapter 1, as does Clement of Rome, book 2 of the Recognitions, Theodoret, Question 11 on Genesis, Gennadius, Severian, the Venerable Bede in the Hexaemeron. That the sun is also fire is expressly asserted by Tertullian, On the Soul, chapter 8, at the end; St. Basil, homily 3 on the Hexaemeron; St. Ambrose, book 2 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 3; Caesarius, Question 68; St. Chrysostom, homily 6 on Genesis; Procopius, on Genesis chapter 1; Arnobius, books 2 and 8 Against the Gentiles; Anastasius of Sinai, book 2 of the Hexaemeron; Lactantius, book 2, chapter 6; Alcuin and Bede, Question 1 on Genesis; Isidore, book 3 of the Origins, chapter 48; Hugh of St. Victor, on Genesis chapter 1. Hence also the Church sings in the ecclesiastical hymn: On the fourth day, establishing The flaming wheel of the sun.
Our Salianus recites the words of the Fathers already cited at the beginning of volume 1 of the Annals, on the fourth day of the world. The Hebrew etymology also supports this. For the sun in Hebrew is called שמש schemesch, as if שם אש schames, that is, "there is fire," just as the heavens, formed from waters, are called שמים schamaim, that is, "there are waters," as I said at the beginning of Genesis. Finally, some more recent mathematicians, who have carefully observed the sun and the sun's figure for many years through very powerful telescopes, assert that the sun is ignited, and they gather this from the spots and faculae, as I said, which they observe ever new within it, so that some continually succeed others. They confirm this same conclusion from the fact that, although light can exist without fire, as is evident in the light diffused from the sun into the air, nevertheless light itself, which diffuses illumination, everywhere seems to be joined with fire, as is evident in the light of a candle, lamp, fire, etc. Therefore the light of the sun is likewise an ignited light, and therefore fire. They gather the same from the effect: for the sun with its light and rays heats the whole world; but heating and heat are the proper action and effect of fire. Some add that from this celestial fire will come forth the fire by which the world will be consumed on the day of judgment, just as from the sky came forth the waters by which the world was overwhelmed in the flood. For what other fire would suffice to burn the whole world? So say they.
But Aristotle, whom Philosophers and Theologians generally follow, teaches that the sky and the heavens are not elements, nor fire, but of a celestial nature, which he therefore calls the fifth essence; and therefore they are not actually hot, but virtually so, because they have the power of heating. See the Conimbricenses and other books On the Heavens.
Allegorically, Rabanus says: "This Sun, he says, which rises upon those who fear God in its appearance, that is, in the presence of His incarnation, preached the kingdom of God, whose unique birth is wonderful; because not from the seed of a man, but from the power of the Almighty, the Word was made flesh. In the sight of His heat who can endure? Because no one can bear with bodily eyes the splendor of His divinity. Therefore He assumed the veil of flesh, so that the frailty of men might in some way be able to bear the divine splendor. He keeps the furnace in works of burning, because He prepares the punishments of the fire of Gehenna for sinners, scorching the mountains in three ways, when He tortures the proud with eternal flame for evil thought, for wicked speech, and for sinful action. With His rays He blinds the eyes of the wicked, when by mystical words He confounds the understanding of those who are proud because of their wickedness," Matthew 13:13.
5. Great is the Lord who made it, and at His words it hastens its course. — "It hastened" is taken actively, meaning it accelerated its course with haste, as if to say: By the word and command of God the sun runs through its course most swiftly, so that it seems rather to fly, according to that passage about the sun, Psalm 18: "It has rejoiced like a giant to run its course"; for the sun in each hour by its motion covers a million miles, and in addition one hundred and forty thousand miles, which is the same as if it were to circle around the circumference of the earth fifty times, as I showed in Genesis 1. The Syriac: Great is the Lord who created it, and at the words of the Holy One it has accelerated its steps; the Zurich Bible: Great is the Lord its creator, at whose command it accelerates its journey. Now instead of κατέσπευσε, as the Roman edition, our translator, the Syriac, the Zurich Bible, and others read, meaning "it hastened, accelerated," the Complutensian on the contrary reads κατέπαυσε, meaning "it caused to cease," which also yields a true sense, as if to say: The sun immediately ceases from its motion, however swift, when God commands it. Thus Joshua, chapter 10, by God's command stopped the sun, and Isaiah, chapter 38, verse 8, drove the sun back ten lines before Hezekiah.
The Moon
6. And the moon in all things in its time, a showing of the time, and a sign of the age. — From the sun he passes to the moon, and celebrates its wonderful light and usefulness; for these are the two great luminaries of the sky, but the sun is the greater, the moon the lesser, Genesis 1. For the sun is one hundred and sixty times larger than the whole earth, while the moon is thirty-nine times smaller than the globe of the earth, as astronomers teach; and yet to us on earth it appears almost equal to the sun, because the moon is near and closest to the earth, while the sun is most lofty and most remote. Hence the moon is the rival of the sun and the beauty of the night, and therefore is called by the Poets Phoebe, as if the sister of Phoebus, that is, the sun; and luna, as if "shining alone," because it alone shines at night, illuminating it, as the sun does the day. For "in all things" our translator read with the Roman edition: ἐν πᾶσι; now the Complutensian reads εἰς στάσιν, that is, "for a state or station." Hence it reads: He made the moon for a state at its time, a demonstration of the times, and a sign of the age; others: And He made the moon for a station at its time, an indication of the times, and a sign of the age; he calls "stations" the fixed changes and alternations of the moon, by which it is now new, now waxing, now full, now waning, and this at fixed times. The Syriac: The moon stands in the times, a designation of the times, and a sign from of old. The Zurich Bible: The same one made the moon, to exist in its time as an indication of the times and a sign of the age.
Furthermore, Jansenius clearly explains the sense of our version thus: After the sun, he says, also "the moon in all things," that is, among all nations, or rather in all its changes, which happen to it in its time, is "a showing of the time and a sign of the age," that is, of time: for it signifies the beginnings of the months and their subsequent parts, because it completes its circle each month. The sun indeed also shows the time, because by its departure and approach it shows summer, winter, spring, and autumn, and by the completion of its circuit it shows that the year is complete. But it is especially attributed to the moon that it is a showing of the time, because more quickly, more frequently, and more distinctly from the moon's various changes, the frequent and continuous change of time is perceived.
Finally, the moon is not only a sign of the age and of secular things, but also a cause; for it governs moist things. Hence it is said by astronomers to preside over infancy, silver, and phlegm; hence also in the full moon oysters are fuller. Again, the ebb and flow of the sea is caused by the moon; and at night when the moon shines, moist things increase, such as dew, rain, and waters: "Great waters flow more at night," says Aristotle, book 3 of the Meteorology. The cause is the moon, as I said, and the absence of the sun, which during the day draws out vapors from the waters, and so diminishes them. Hence Palacius says: Note, reader, that expression: "And the moon in all things in its time," which expression contains the highest philosophy and the highest praises of the moon. For the sense is that almost all these lower things are subject to the moon and governed by the moon. See the tides of the sea, the planting, cutting, and grafting of trees, the harvesting of fruits, the afflictions of lunatics, the bloodlettings of the sick, and in short there is scarcely anything in this world of ours that does not in some way depend on the moon.
Furthermore, Palacius takes "for a sign of the age" or epoch as if it were the same as that passage in Genesis 1:14: "Let there be luminaries, etc., and let them be for signs," namely of fair weather, winds, rains, heat, etc. Hence Secundus the Philosopher, when asked by the Emperor Hadrian: "What is the moon?" said: "The purple of the sky, the rival of the sun, the enemy of sorceries, the solace of travelers, the presage of storms." Apuleius, in On the God of Socrates, says: "The moon, the rival of the sun, the beauty of the night, is the helper of the day, the eye of the night; the stars are the fates of men." But these fates are fictitious inventions of astrologers. And Alcuin Flaccus, in his Disputation with Pippin: "The moon is the eye of the night, generous with dew, foreknowing of storms; the stars are the painting of the summit, the guides of sailors, the beauty of the night." Here is relevant that saying of the astrologers: A pale moon means rain, a ruddy one means wind, a white one means fair weather. See the Conimbricenses on the presages of the sun and moon, tract. 7 on the Meteorology, chapter 3.
Here belongs the riddle of the moon and its cycles, or of the lunar year, which the moon describes in its revolution through twelve months, which was proposed by Cleobule, daughter of Cleobolus of Lindos, as Giraldus testifies in his Riddles: There is one father (she says) whose offspring are twice six; These too have thirty daughters, but of unequal form. On one side they are snowy in appearance, on the other they have dark faces. They are all immortal, and yet they all die. The solution of this riddle is: The moon, or the lunar year, has twelve lunations or months, each of which is completed in thirty days, distinguished by light and darkness. They are immortal generically, because the succession of days and nights and months never ceases; but specifically, or rather individually, each one dies and ceases. Hence Theodectes proposed this riddle thus: There are twin sisters, he says, of whom one gives birth to the other, and the one that was born kills the one that bore her, and gives birth to another, by whom she in turn is killed. For the preceding day gives birth to the following one, and is killed by it; because it yields its place and ceases to exist.
A sophist of Nectanebo, king of Egypt, proposed a similar riddle to Aesop: "There is, he says, a great temple, and in it a column having twelve cities, each of which is supported by thirty beams; and two women circle around these beams." Resolving this, Aesop said: "The temple is the world, the column is the year, the cities are the months, the beams are the days, and the two women are day and night." Finally, Albinus Flaccus, in his Disputation with Pippin, son of Charlemagne: "What, he says, is the year? The chariot of the world. Who drives it? Night and day, cold and heat. Who is its charioteer? The sun and moon. How many palaces does it have? Twelve. Who are the governors of the palaces? Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces."
7. From the moon comes the sign of the feast day, a light that wanes at its fullness. — As if to say: From the moon we Jews receive the sign and indication of the feast day. For the feast of the New Moon, that is, of the new moon, fell on the new moon; but the feast of Passover, from which the others were calculated, fell on the full moon, namely on the 15th moon or the 15th day of the first month Nisan. He calls the moon "a light that wanes at its fullness," that is, at its perfection, namely at the full moon; for when this is accomplished, the moon immediately wanes, becomes crescent-shaped, and decreases, while the sun always remains the same and full in its orb.
Hence others translate: A light waning at the end; in Greek, φωστὴρ μειούμενος ἐπὶ συντελείας, that is, as the Roman edition: A luminary that wanes upon completion. The Complutensian: at its completion. The Syriac: For from the moon come the signs of feasts, a luminary that fails at its end. The Zurich Bible: By the moon the feast day is designated with light decreasing until it fails. Therefore although the waxing of the moon from darkness to the supreme glory of light is wonderful, nevertheless the change and decline depresses all the wonder. Hence the moon is a symbol of inconstancy and mutability, according to that passage in chapter 27:12: "The holy man remains in wisdom like the sun: for the fool changes like the moon."
The Hebrew name represents the same thing; for "fool" in Hebrew is called כסיל kesil, on account of inconstancy, as if to say: One who stands with a rather unstable mind, and is not always of the same counsel and purpose, but is a weathervane who changes by the hour and is agitated by various desires; he is most like the inconstant moon, which does not always display the same face, and does not so much repair its daily losses by its speed as it continually loses the gains it has made.
Pearls imitate the moon: Dioscorides wrote that they are found full when the moon is waxing, and those gathered after the full moon diminish and decrease with time, as Cesalpinus reports from certain experiments, in book 2 On Metals, chapter 22.
Mystically, our Aleazar, commenting on Apocalypse 12:1, note 2, says: The moon, he says, is the Blessed Virgin. First, because she draws from Christ, who is the Sun of Justice, a greater light of grace than the other stars, that is, the Saints; and through gratitude she directs all the light she has drawn back to Him from whom she receives it, which Pliny likewise writes of the moon. Second, because just as the moon especially governs the earth and sea, so also the Blessed Virgin governs those who dwell on earth, and shines before them with a clear light in the night of this age. Third, because just as the moon, according to Pliny, "is both humble and exalted, since sometimes it is near the sky, sometimes near the mountains," so also the Blessed Virgin was humble in her own eyes, but exalted in the eyes of God. She called herself the handmaid of the Lord when she was greeted by the Angel; and therefore she was made the Mother of God. Therefore marvel at the triple marriage in her of things supremely disparate, which is represented by her very name Mary. The first marriage is of humility and loftiness or majesty — that she, humble and poor, was made the Mother of God and Queen of Angels; both are signified by the name Mary. For Mariam (as the Syrians pronounce it) signifies a "drop of the sea"; for מר mar in Syriac means a drop, or a drip from a bucket, and ים iam is the sea. Behold humility. For what is more minute than a drop? Again, Maria is derived, as it were, from מרום marom, that is, "loftiness." She herself therefore is a drop of the sea through humility, and therefore she is likewise the loftiness and star of the sea, as St. Bernard, Euthymius, St. Jerome, and the whole Church call upon and invoke her in the hymn: Hail, Star of the Sea. Finally, she is the sea of wisdom and graces. The second marriage is of purity and penance or the cross. Purity is again suggested by "drop of the sea"; for pearls, or gems (which are symbols of purity and virginity) grow in sea shells from drops of dew. Again, Maria in Hebrew means the same as myrrh or bitterness of the sea, which is a symbol of penance and the cross, which the Blessed Virgin endured throughout her whole life, especially standing by the crucified Christ, to teach us that the mother of purity and chastity is penance and mortification. The third marriage is of poverty and wealth. For Blessed Mary, that is, "a drop of the sea," was most poor for herself; the same, as "Mariam," that is, "mistress of the sea," was made most wealthy by Christ, so much so that, like מורה more, that is, the early rain, she rains down from heaven every grace upon those who invoke her. Just as, therefore, the moon "wanes at its fullness," so the Blessed Virgin was humble and diminished in her perfection and exaltation, so that when she was becoming the Mother of God, she called herself a handmaid.
Allegorically, Hugh takes the moon to mean the Church. See him adapting each detail to the Church.
Furthermore, Xenophanes, according to Cicero, book 4 of the Academic Questions, believed that the moon was inhabited, and that it is a land of many cities and mountains. Others think the same of Mars and other planets, because Mars was discovered through the telescope to have other stars around or above it which illuminate its surface, just as the sun and moon illuminate the earth for its inhabitants and dwellers. Furthermore, Plutarch, book 2 On the Opinions of the Philosophers, chapter 30, says: "The Pythagoreans say that the moon appears to be earthy, because just as our earth is inhabited all around by animals that are larger and more beautiful, containing fifteen times the size of ours, and producing no excrement; and with such a length of day." The same, in his treatise On the Face in the Orb of the Moon, discusses at length the inhabitants of the moon, and among other things says: "I think that those who dwell on the moon marvel much more when they look at the earth, appearing as the dregs and mud of the universe through so many humors, clouds, and mists — a dark, low, immobile place — that it can produce and nourish animals endowed with motion, breathing, and warmth." But these things are paradoxes of the philosophers.
Cyril adorns this maxim and riddle tropologically with an apt and learned apologue of the moon and the ape, in book 1 of the Moral Apologues, chapter 9, whose title is: Love only the eternal, and you will never grieve: "At the full moon, he says, a fox soon approached an ape exulting with joy of heart, and said: Tell me, sister, why you exult so, that I may rejoice with you; what is the reason for such great delight, and what is the cause of the exultation? And the ape, happy, joyfully replied: Indeed, I am now enjoying the full light of the moon, which I love; because I love it, and I rejoice in that which all other things enjoy. To this the fox added: I thought indeed, dearest (do not be disturbed), that by your hand, nose, nearby eye, and excellent estimative faculty, you of all animals had come closest to the nature of reason; but as I recognize from your vain congratulation, you still remain far from it. For the more we are separated from reason, the more we differ from man. For I think, unless I am mistaken, that to love true light is good, if only its foundation is stable; because to love something perishable is nothing other than ultimately to grieve. For as much as we rejoice at possessing what we love, so much also we soon grieve when it is lost. Hence it happens that delight in a thing that has been lost is immediately turned into grief, and love and joy into mourning." Then the fox explains further: "Therefore I praise you for loving light; but I do not praise you for enjoying the changeable light of the moon. For if this night you rejoice in the full moon, when it wanes the following evening, you will be sad. For it is impossible not to grieve at the loss of what is loved; and so what will remain to you from past joy but present pain? For the beloved thing carries joy with it wherever it goes; but once it has passed, mourning immediately occupies its borders. But it is not the wise man's way to rejoice only to grieve, but to mourn for a time, so as to rejoice forever. For unhappy indeed is the exchange from joy to mourning; but blessed is the exchange from groaning to joy. Therefore, dearest, so that your love and enjoyment may be joyful and lasting, love only that light, and enjoy that which is eternal, unchangeable, and supreme. For its joy is secure and full. For this reason, as we love, so also we are; for love has the gaze of the chameleon, by which we pass along with the things we love, or we stand still; and with the same things we become worthless or become dear. But have you not heard what the shrewd raven answered to the mourning chameleon whose color had changed from gold to mud? Close your eyes, place the gold on the ground, cover it with mud, and then look at the gold again. Having said these things, adding farewell, the fox departed."
8. The month is according to its name. — "Its" refers not to the month, but to the moon; for in Greek it is the feminine αὐτῆς, which can only refer to the moon. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: The month receives its (the moon's) name. Thus in chapter 6:23, he said: "Wisdom is according to its name," namely, harsh and difficult, as preceded. The sense is, as if to say: Just as the month receives its beginning, middle, and end from the moon, so likewise it also receives its name from the same. For in Hebrew (for the elder Sirach wrote these things in Hebrew, which the younger translated into Greek) the month is called חדש chodesch, that is, renewal, from the new moon and its renewal; for the root חדש chadesch means to renew. Similarly, the Greeks call the new month νουμηνία, and the Latins novilunium (new moon) from the new moon; indeed, "lunation" is the same as "month." Whence there follows about the moon and its renewal, which occurs at the beginning of the month.
Growing wonderfully at its completion. — Because the moon grows and changes its crescent shape in various and wonderful ways, until it is completed, that is, until it receives its full and complete light at the full moon. Hence Vatablus translates: And growing, it is wonderful in its changes. See Pliny, book 2, chapter 9. The Syriac: The month is according to its name, and it grows sublimely in change.
Again, "month" in Hebrew is called ירח iereach, from ירח iareach, that is, the moon, because the moon by its lunation, that is, by the course and circle of its orbit, describes the month. For the sun requires a year in its course and circuit through the zodiac, while the moon requires a month; hence "month" received its measure and name from the moon; for it is the same as a lunation. So also among the Greeks the month is called μήν, ἀπὸ τῆς μήνης, that is, from the moon; indeed Macrobius derives the Latin word mensis from the Greek μήν, although Cicero, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods, derives "month" from "measuring." For he says: "Because they complete measured spaces, they are called months." Similarly, the Belgians and Germans from maen, that is, the moon, call the month maent. Likewise among the English, monat (month) is called from mon, that is, the moon. In a similar way, the author of the book On the Spirit and the Soul, attributed to St. Augustine, volume 3, chapter 10, derives the word mens (mind) from the moon; because "just as the moon, he says, grows and wanes, and is changed by various alternations, yet in the end restores itself to what it was by a certain perfect renewal: so the mind now thrusts its head among the highest things, now falls into the lowest, now asserting itself refutes false things with true ones; sometimes it turns to governing bodily things, sometimes it clings to inspecting or consulting eternal reasons. The mind, capable of all things and distinguished by the likeness of all things, is said to be all things." The same author, however, shortly after says: "The mind (mens) is so called, as it were, as eminent (eminens), because it is eminent in the soul and rises to contemplate divine things."
Instead of "growing wonderfully at its completion," the Complutensian reads αὐξανόμενος ἐθαυμάστωσεν ἀλλοιώσει, that is, "growing, or having grown, it made wonderful by change," that is, as the Zurich Bible: "Growing, it is wonderful in its changes." The Roman edition, reading θαυμαστός with our translator instead of ἐθαυμάστωσεν, translates: Growing wonderfully by change; others: with change. For the moon alone among the stars continually grows and wanes, fills and diminishes each month. Hence the moon with outstretched horns was among the Egyptians a hieroglyphic for the month, according to Pierius, hieroglyph 44, chapter 18.
The Stars
9. A vessel of the camp on high, shining gloriously in the firmament of the sky. — He calls the moon "a vessel of the camp," that is, a warlike and military instrument of God: both because by its light it stands out among the stars, which in Scripture are called the camps and the army of God — hence Rabanus and others read "shining gloriously" — and because it is, as it were, the light, indeed the sun, the leader and standard-bearer of the stars, and thus seems to be a nocturnal sun illuminating the sky, the stars, and the whole world. Hence among them it proceeds like a queen, preeminent and admirable in the glory of its light and beauty; and hence the moon (luna) is so called because it alone shines with light (luce luceat una) through the night, or because it shines with borrowed light (luce luceat aliena).
He alludes to the nightly stations of the camp, whose four watches of the night, during which the sentinels and guards were changed, were divided according to the movement of the moon.
Allegorically, Rabanus says: "The moon, he says, is the Church, which borrows its light and grace from Christ as from the sun, which at times seems to be diminished by persecutions, and again, when tranquility is restored, is filled with the brightness of the clearest light. Hence it is said that it grows wonderfully at its completion. Indeed the Church is the vessel of the camp on high, shining gloriously in the firmament of the sky; because in it consists the multitude of faithful souls, which shines gloriously throughout the whole world in the firmament of truth and divine preaching."
Secondly, by an enallage of number, "vessel of the camp" can be taken for military equipment, such as the stars are, as if to say: Like instruments and weapons of war of God are the stars, which shine gloriously in the firmament; for the stars are called arms, indeed soldiers and the army of God, because in great number, in orderly and constant array, they advance and proceed like a battle line arranged by God. So Palacius and Jansenius say: He calls "vessel of the camp" the entire array of stars that is seen in the skies, beautifully ordered and arranged like a camp. Hence it is also called "the army of heaven" and the army of God, which God uses to fulfill His commands. For in Greek it is σκεῦος παρεμβολῶν, which can rightly be translated as apparatus, equipment, or armament of the camp; for from σκεῦος, which means vessel and any kind of arms, is derived the verb σκευάζω, which means to prepare and equip. He says, therefore, that after the sun and moon there is also on high a notable "vessel of the camp," that is, as it were, a military array shining in the firmament of the sky, which also wonderfully declares the glory of God. Hence the Syriac translates: The vessel of the army on high, which shines in the firmament of the sky. The Zurich Bible: The military array on high, in the celestial vault, is the refulgent beauty of the sky, the glory of the stars; which our translator renders in the following verse as: The beauty of the sky, the glory of the stars. For this verse seems to look toward the following one, and to be completed there.
For in the stars, first, there is a wonderful and, as it were, military order, and this is certain and constant. Hence the word stella (star) is derived from stando (standing), because the stars seem to stand in the sky: "But the good of the universe (and of each thing) consists in order," says Aristotle, book 12 of the Metaphysics.
Second, Cicero holds the stars to be of a fiery nature, book 2 On the Nature of the Gods, as do Plato, Pliny, and others cited above. Hence they are also called burning by the Poets. A modern poet truly says: "Bright stars, lamps of the sky, little fires of nature, eyes of the night, handmaids of the moon, little flames of the sun."
Third, the multitude of the stars is great, like that of soldiers in a camp. Pliny, book 2, chapter 45, asserts that there are 1,600 stars in the firmament notable for their effect and appearance. But astronomers count 1,022; yet there are far more which either are not seen, or are seen only confusedly, like those which in the Milky Way exhibit a mixed light and make up the Milky Way. Hence "the more keenly anyone gazes at the stars, the more he sees," says St. Augustine, book 16 of the City of God, chapter 23.
Fourth, the stars are distinguished by their magnitude. For each star in the firmament is far larger than the whole earth. Astronomers distinguish stars into six grades of magnitude, and teach that those of the first and greatest magnitude contain the magnitude of the earth one hundred and seven times; those of the second, ninety times; those of the third, 72; those of the fourth, 54; those of the fifth, 39; those of the sixth and lowest, eighteen times.
Moreover, astronomers have arranged the stars they have noted into 48 constellations, or figures. A constellation is a certain number of stars representing the image of some animal or other thing by their position and arrangement. Hence the star was a hieroglyphic of God, says Horus Apollo. Hence also Pan, the god (as if
the author and comprehender of all nature) was depicted adorned with stars, of whom Orpheus says: Great Pan by name, who contains the whole world. See Pierius, book XLIV of the Hieroglyphics, chapter 24. Therefore, whenever at night we behold the sky shining and adorned with so many stars like gems, let us rise in mind to God their maker, and with the Psalmist let us sing in congratulation: "Give thanks to the Lord of lords: for His mercy endures forever. Who made great luminaries, etc., the sun to rule (to have dominion over) the day: the moon and stars to rule the night: for His mercy endures forever." Furthermore, how from the sun, moon and stars we may ascend to God, contemplate, admire and venerate Him, Cardinal Bellarmine piously and learnedly teaches in his book On the Ascent of the Mind to God, step 7, so that from there we may learn to pursue heavenly things, despise earthly things, do brave deeds, and suffer bravely. For by this path one goes to the stars, this is the road to the empyrean. By this path the Saints went to heaven, and therefore they shine in heaven like stars. See what I noted at Daniel 12:3; Genesis 1:16; Apocalypse 2:28, where I gave various analogies between the Saints and the stars.
For God in heaven, amid the gold of light, diamonds and gems, engraved and inscribed His Saints and elect like stars with the chisel of His eternal decree, according to that saying of Christ: "Rejoice that your names are written in the heavens," Luke 10:20. Yearning for these stars and for this heaven of theirs, Saint Martin, now on his deathbed, when burning with fever and lying on his back he gazed up at the sky, and his disciples humbly asked him to turn his body and rest a while until the force of the illness subsided, said: "Allow me to look upon heaven rather than earth, so that my spirit, about to go on its journey to the Lord, may be directed aright." Wherefore, with his eyes and hands always directed toward heaven, he did not relax his unconquered spirit from prayer, says Sulpicius in his Life.
even of the philosophers and pagans, hear Lactantius teaching, book VI, chapter 20: "The philosophers say, he writes, that it is far more excellent and more worthy of a human being to gaze upon the sky rather than upon engraved works, and to admire this most beautiful work adorned with the gleaming lights of the stars, as if with flowers, rather than painted and sculpted objects adorned with gems. But although they have eloquently exhorted us to contempt for earthly things and aroused us to the spectacle of the sky, nevertheless they do not despise these public spectacles." From among them I shall bring forward one, Seneca: "As long as my eyes are not drawn away from that spectacle of which they are insatiable, as long as I am permitted to gaze upon the moon and the sun, as long as I may fix upon the other stars, as long as I may investigate their risings and settings, their intervals and causes, as long as I may watch so many stars twinkling through the nights, as long as I am with these and mingle with the heavenly bodies (as far as is permitted to a human being), as long as I keep my mind always on high, reaching toward the sight of kindred things — what does it matter to me what I tread upon?" Thus Seneca, Consolation to Albina, chapter 9.
Finally, that the sun, moon and stars are moved by God through intelligences, that is, angels, who, as the Apostle says (Hebrews 1), are ministering spirits of God and of divine governance — this is the constant opinion of philosophers and theologians, and from this it is clear that such constancy and order of their motion flows. So teaches Saint Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, chapters 5 and 8; Saint Augustine, book III On the Trinity, chapter 11; Origen, homilies 13 and 14 on Numbers; Saint Gregory, Dialogues IV, 4; Saint Thomas, Opuscule 10, Question 3; Bonaventure, in book II, distinction 14, article 3, Question 2; Plato, book I of the Laws; Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, 8; and others. See the Conimbricenses, book II On the Heavens, chapter 5, question 5.
11. AT THE WORDS OF THE HOLY ONE (less correctly Rabanus reads "by the saints") THEY SHALL STAND AT JUDGMENT, AND THEY SHALL NOT FAIL IN THEIR WATCHES. — That is to say: The stars, like the most obedient and ready soldiers, "shall stand," that is, they are accustomed to stand and continually do stand, "at the words of the Holy One," that is, at the command and precept of the most holy God, "at judgment;" so that they may inviolably execute His just sentence and holy command, whether by avenging His enemies or by protecting His faithful servants. Then they perpetually watch and keep guard, and never grow weary or fail so as to rest or cease from their watches and guard duties committed to them by God, as our soldiers and sentinels on earth grow weary. Then for kata krina, that is, "at judgment," the Complutensian edition by synaeresis reads it as one word katakrina, that is, immediately, continuously, at once — meaning: The stars stand before God promptly, so as to immediately execute His commands; or rather, as the Complutensian renders it: At the words of the Holy One they shall cause to stand (for choura is active, meaning "they shall cause to stand, they shall make to stand") condemnation — meaning: At God's command the stars shall immediately present His sentence of condemnation, so as to bring the vengeance and plagues decreed by Him into effect. By stars, understand both the stars themselves and the angels who move the stars and
10. THE BEAUTY OF THE HEAVEN IS THE GLORY OF THE STARS, THE WORLD ILLUMINATING IN THE HEIGHTS IS THE LORD. — That is to say: "The beauty," in Greek kallos, that is, loveliness; the Syriac has: the ornament of the sky, is the glory, that is, the glorious brightness, the number and order of the stars, through which the Lord dwelling in the heights illuminates the world. Our translator read kosmos photizōn, that is, "the world illuminating"; now they read kosmos phōtizōn, that is, "an ornament illuminating." Again, our translator read Kyrios, that is, "the Lord"; now they read Kyriou, that is, "of the Lord," in the genitive. Whence they translate thus: The beauty of the sky is the glory of the stars, an ornament illuminating in the supreme places of the Lord. The Complutensian: In the highest places of the Lord. The Roman edition reads: The beauty of the sky, the glory of the stars, the ornament illuminating in the heights, is the Lord. But the Vulgate Latin reading flows better, and therefore is more correct. The Tigurina: The splendor of the sky is the glory of the stars, and a distinguished ornament in the lofty region of the Lord. These last words signify the reason why the stars adorn the sky — namely, because the Lord resides in them; and it is fitting that the Lord's throne be adorned with these luminaries. Furthermore,
how this beauty of the sky and of the stars feasts the eyes, their governors. For "they shall not fail" our translator read ou dialythēsetai,
that is, they shall not be dissolved, they shall not grow weary, they shall not fail; the Complutensian reads ou ekkausthēsontai, that is, they shall not be kindled, they shall not burn out — meaning: the stars, although they continually watch, shine and burn, nevertheless never blaze up and are inflamed with fire, much less with anger and impatience, so as to abandon their order and station and set the earth on fire and burn it; as the poets fable that Phaethon, son of the Sun, who fell from heaven, did. Some Greek codices read both; the Tigurina: At the command of the Holy One they maintain their order, nor do they desert their stations once assigned. The Syriac: By the words of the Holy One they shall stand according to what is prescribed to them, and in their course they shall not vary. This alludes to Baruch 3:33: "He sends forth the light, and it goes; and He called it, and it obeys Him in trembling. And the stars gave their light in their watches (in Greek the same word as here, namely phylakais) and rejoiced: they were called, and they said: We are here: and they shone with gladness for Him who made them." And at Judges 5:20: "The stars remaining in their order and course fought against Sisera;" for the angels who move the stars, from the stars and from heaven
hurling and raining down stones, thunders and lightnings upon Sisera and his camp, scattered them, just as they likewise routed Pharaoh and the Egyptians in the Red Sea, Exodus 14:24.
Palacius explains it slightly differently, meaning: "at the words of the Holy One," that is, if God the Holy One has spoken that the stars should stand, they shall stand ready, awaiting God's judgment and decree, and they shall hold their course, even though they run with the most rapid speed.
Mystically, Rabanus says: "The ornament of the Church is the beauty of the saints; these, remaining in the holy words, that is, in the doctrine of the true faith, await the judgment of God; nor are they broken by the adversities of this age, nor are they roused to anger; but patiently bearing all things, they persist in the guardianship of the flock committed to them, always mindful of, and diligently turning over in their hearts, that saying of the Lord: Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you yourselves like men waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding. Be ready: for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. In your patience you shall possess your souls."
Second Part of the Chapter: The Rainbow
12. BEHOLD THE RAINBOW, AND BLESS HIM WHO MADE IT: IT IS VERY BEAUTIFUL IN ITS SPLENDOR. — After the firmament, the sun, the moon and the stars, in the fifth place he presents and celebrates the rainbow, as a beautiful work of God; so that from it we may be stirred to the praise of God, and as often as we behold the rainbow, so often may we rise up to God and praise the magnificence of God in the rainbow. He says therefore: "Behold the bow," namely the celestial one, that is, the rainbow, "and bless Him," that is, praise and glorify God, "who made it," because "it is very beautiful in its splendor." For the rainbow is three-colored; it displays a triple color, and that a bright and shining one — namely scarlet, green and purple — and the first subordinated and blended with the second, the second with the third in beauty, so as to present to the eyes of onlookers a beautiful harmony of colors, and as it were a kind of music. The physical cause of why the rainbow occurs and is three-colored is given by Aristotle, book III of the Meteorology, chapter 3. The Syriac omits these words and what follows up to chapter 24. The Tigurina: Contemplate the bow, most elegant in its splendor (others: in its brilliance), and congratulate its Author, saying: Blessed are You, O Lord, who created so beautiful and brilliant a rainbow. And if it shines so beautifully, how beautiful, how brilliant are You, our God, who infinitely surpass the beauty and brilliance of the rainbow and of every creature, so that compared with You they appear deformed, dim and dark.
Furthermore, the cause of the rainbow is the reverberation of the rays of the sun opposite in a dewy, opaque and concave cloud. Wherefore, although the three primary colors of the rainbow have already been mentioned, it nevertheless takes on and assumes many other colors according to the diversity of the clouds and the reverberation of the sun's rays, and so, as Virgil says, Aeneid V: It draws a thousand varied colors from the opposite sun. The same author, in book IX, calls the rainbow the ornament of heaven. Ovid, in Metamorphoses VI, graphically describing the rainbow, sings of it thus: As the bow struck by the sun after rain is wont To tinge the vast sky with its great curve, In which a thousand different colors shine, Yet the very transition deceives the eyes that gaze upon it.
13. IT HAS ENCIRCLED THE HEAVEN IN THE CIRCUIT (in Greek, en kyklōsei, that is, in a circling: so the Complutensian) OF ITS GLORY: THE HANDS OF THE MOST HIGH HAVE OPENED IT. — He celebrated the rainbow for its beauty and brilliance: now secondly, he celebrates it for its shape, namely for its curvature through the middle of the sky, saying "it has encircled," that is, it has girded, it has encompassed the sky "in the circuit," that is, through the circumference, "of its glory," that is, of its glorious beauty and splendor. For the rainbow, like a great bow, by curving encompasses our entire hemisphere, and extends from East to West, or from South to North. Vatablus beautifully renders it: With its glorious curvature it girds the sky with a circle. The rainbow therefore seems to be a glorious belt, zone and girdle of the sky. Others: It encompasses the sky with a glorious circle; for the curvature of the rainbow is everywhere so precise and exact that it seems to have been shaped and traced with a compass on a lathe. Whence Manilius, book I: And as the rainbow traces its arcs through the clouds with a compass.
Thirdly, he celebrates the rainbow for its amplitude, saying: "The hands of the Most High opened," in Greek etanysan, that is, unfolded, extended, "it." Whence the Tigurina: With the hands of the Most High extending it; for the rainbow is extended and stretched from one extremity of the sky to the other; therefore no human or angelic hand, but only the divine hand extends it. These therefore are three marvels and quasi-miracles of the rainbow. Add a fourth, namely its constancy. For the rainbow never changes its three colors, its splendor, or its curvature amid whatever diversity of clouds, and whatever density, rarity, dewiness, etc., although the phenomena of the air and clouds often change in appearance, color, form and position due to the varying disposition of the clouds: but the rainbow in all things, everywhere, and through all things always preserves the same tenor, color and form — which is truly admirable, and a certain indication that it is formed by the hand of God, who is always constant to Himself.
The fifth marvel is that a morning rainbow portends rain, an evening one fair weather. So Julius Scaliger, Exercise 80. For in the morning it occurs in a dewy cloud, ready to dissolve into water. Whence Ovid, Metamorphoses I: The rainbow gathers waters and brings nourishment to the clouds. Seneca, however, book I of the Natural Questions, chapter 6, says: "A bow rising from the South, he says, brings a great force of waters. If it shines near the West, it will dew and gently rain. If it rises from the East or thereabouts, it promises fair weather." Some read "it will thunder" instead of "it will dew"; whence from Seneca they judge that a rainbow arising from the South portends rain, from the North wind, from the West thunder, and from the East fair weather.
The sixth marvel is that the rainbow is rain-bearing, and through the rain which it brings, it makes the earth fruitful. Moreover, the rainbow is formed from the opposite sun, as if looking down upon the earth and upon the cloud; but in such a way that the earth is in the middle, as it were, between the cloud and the sun; whence it happens that the lower the sun and the nearer it is to setting, the higher the rainbow; and the higher the sun, the lower the rainbow — because it is opposite the sun. So Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 78.
The seventh marvel is that the rainbow, as Aristotle teaches (History of Animals, book V, chapter 22), greatly contributes to the generation of manna, or aerial honey. Furthermore, Pliny (book XII, chapter 24, and book XVII, chapter 15) teaches that the rainbow breathes a wonderful sweetness and fragrance upon the aspalathus and other herbs and plants. Lucretius asserts that roses moistened by the most healthful rain of the rainbow give off a more fragrant scent.
The eighth marvel is the order of colors; for in the rainbow there are three semicircles of three colors. The first and highest is scarlet or citrine: the middle one is green, and the lowest is purple. The cause is that a ray of light with slight opacity produces the scarlet color, with moderate opacity the green, and with greater opacity the purple. Such a variety and order of opacity exists in the cloud when the rainbow is formed in it. Hence the rainbow is called iris aeris (rainbow of the air), because it descends through the air to the earth. So Saint Isidore, book XIII of the Origins, chapter 10.
Wherefore Plato, in the Theaetetus, judged that Iris was called the daughter of Thaumas (Wonder) because of the admiration it arouses. Whence Ovid, Metamorphoses IV: Thaumantian Iris purified with dewy waters.
The ninth marvel is that the colors of the rainbow are not true but apparent; for from the transparency of sunlight through cloud and water, this appearance of colors is caused. Thus an apparent, not a true, multicolored color exists on the neck of a dove, in halos, sun pillars, parhelia, and other phenomena that appear in the air and clouds. Wherefore the natural philosophers define the rainbow thus: "The rainbow is a multicolored bow in a dewy, opaque and concave cloud, appearing to the eyes of spectators from the reflection of the rays of the opposite sun." Hence a rainbow also forms and appears near fountains, when in the morning they are struck by the rays of the sun. Likewise near the light of a lamp, when it is refracted by soot and smoke. For this reason the rainbow does not fall under our sight unless we are positioned between the cloud in which the rainbow shines and the sun itself; because the cloud itself is like a mirror, from which the reflection reaches our eyes, as Aristotle teaches, Meteorology III, chapter 4.
The tenth marvel is that several rainbows can be formed at the same time, and this in two ways. First, if each rainbow is formed directly by the sun — for example, if the sun is in the middle of the sky, and on each side, namely to the East and to the West, there is a cloud suitable for the impression of a rainbow; then one rainbow will appear to the East, another to the West. Second, when from the reflection of the first rainbow a second is formed, which is therefore weaker; and from the reflection of the second a third is formed, which is consequently very weak, so that it is scarcely visible.
The eleventh, and the greatest, is that the rainbow is a sign of divine clemency and beneficence, and of the covenant with Noah and mankind, that henceforth He would bring no flood upon the world; for thus God made a covenant with Noah, Genesis 9:13. And for this reason, on account of the rainbow, He is especially to be blessed and glorified.
Hence the rainbow has been celebrated by the wisest men with a unanimous accord of praises: by Chrysostom it is called the bond of God reconciled to men, by Jerome the image of heavenly clemency and the pledge of celestial truce, by Damascene, by Augustine the token of divine friendship, by Bernard the hostage of an everlasting covenant, by Ambrose the specimen of God's inviolable power and manifold grace, by Cyprian the type of heavenly benignity, by Gregory the idea of the Holy Spirit, by Nazianzen the testimony of a most benevolent Deity, by Basil the mediatrix of peace, by Bede the symbol of divine propitiation, by the pagans the Mercury of the gods, by Anaxagoras the prelude to fair weather, by Plato the daughter of Thaumas or wonder, by Pythagoras the image of divine splendor, by Philo the manifold ornament of light, by Macrobius the most benign prodigy of the sky, by Homer the tongue of the stars, and by others finally a certain divine astrologer, the ambassador of the gods above, the index of happiness, the herald of tranquility, the joyful
forerunner. Furthermore, by a modern poet it is saluted with these praises: Most illustrious pupil of light, nursling of the air, Born of the sun as mother, with heaven as fatherland. Lavish with light, messenger of the divine, Ambassador of serenity, harbinger of happiness. Hostage of the covenant, guest of the ether, citizen of the stars. Cupbearer of peace, lantern of nature. Spectacle of the day, miracle of God. Offspring of colors, assemblage of colors. A face irradiated by a thousand lights, varied with spots. Empress of heat, and at the same time its moderator. A more illustrious offspring than her illustrious parent.
What the rainbow signifies mystically and symbolically, I have discussed at length at Genesis 9:13; Apocalypse 4:3; and Ezekiel 1:28. To which add that the rainbow is a symbol of the cross of Christ; for on the cross, as if stretched and extended on a bow, Christ shot forth the most powerful arrows of prayer and love upward to God the Father; with which He wounded His heart, so that He would have mercy on us and forgive us our sins; and even adopt us as His sons and heirs.
Finally, fittingly, Saint Basil, in Epistle 43 to Gregory Bishop of Nyssa his brother, on the difference between ousia and hypostasis, compares the Most Holy Trinity to the rainbow. First, because just as the rainbow is one yet three-colored, so God is one in essence and three in Persons; second, just as the rainbow produces these three colors by the refraction of the sun's rays in a cloud, so the Trinity of Persons arises from the understanding of the divine Sun, that is, of the eternal Father, which has the power of generation and spiration; third: "Just as in the rainbow, he says, we clearly perceive the distinctions of colors, and yet the difference of one from another cannot be perceived by the senses: so also the properties of the three hypostases, like a certain flower of those colors which are seen in the rainbow, shine separately in each of the Persons believed in the Holy Trinity; but of the property which is according to nature, no difference of one Person from another can be conceived; rather, in the communication of the divine nature, the proper notions in each shine forth in common." Thus far Saint Basil.
Third Part of the Chapter: Snow, Lightnings, Clouds, Frost
14. BY HIS COMMAND HE HASTENED THE SNOW, AND HE HASTENS TO SEND FORTH THE LIGHTNINGS OF HIS JUDGMENT. — For "lightnings," the Greek is astrapas, that is, flashes and thunderbolts. For "he hastened," the Complutensian reads katepausen, that is, "he caused to cease." But the Greek codices corrected at Rome, and the rest, have katespeusen, that is, "he hastened." Whence the Tigurina: By His command He urges the snow (that it may quickly come to light) and stirs up the lightning flashes according to His judgment. The sense is, that is to say: God, not with lengthy effort as men do, but swiftly and almost in an instant produces and sends forth snow so dense and copious that it fills the entire air with its flakes, to such an extent that it intercepts the rays of the sun and the very sky itself from our sight. For the snow, like other things, so obeys God that, summoned by His word and command, it immediately presents and stations itself before Him: so great is the efficacy of God's word, so great is the obedience of the snow toward
God when He calls. Furthermore, not in vain, but for the great benefit of the earth and of men, God wonderfully sends forth snows. For first, He sends forth snows like birds of the air, so that flying through it, they may purge and purify it; for as many as are the flakes of snow, so many quasi-birds of the sky, so many quasi-white feathers of swans they are; second, snow breaks the cold — for it cuts through the rigidity of the air compressed and quasi-frozen by cold; third, snow makes the earth fruitful. Whence the Spaniards have this proverb: "A snowy year is a fertile and abundant year." Finally the Psalmist, Psalm 147: "He gives snow, he says, like wool." For snow in whiteness, lightness, density, warmth and softness, says Theodoret on that passage, is similar to wool. For snow, like wool, covers the earth to cherish it, warm it, and make it fruit-
ful; since it holds back the exhalations and breathings of the earth and drives them inward; and when dissolved, melted like sugar, it gradually irrigates and enriches the earth. Wherefore this riddle about snow exists: Whiter than the plumes of a swan, I am a daughter of winter, Less hard than ice, but no less chilly: More thin, and I melt away into liquid with warmth. I signify nine, if the first letter is removed: If you join 'cor' to me, there is scarcely a blacker bird.
Mystically, snow is a symbol of temptation and tribulation, by which the virtue of the faithful is tested and strengthened. Whence Saint Ephrem, in his Ascetical Sermon in imitation of Proverbs: "In the time of snow, he says, the wild beast is tracked, and in the time of temptation Satan investigates the monk; but the testing of the monk appears in temptations." And earlier: "Many are monks in habit, but few are fighters; in the time of struggle, however, the monk's testing becomes apparent."
Again, much more does God "hasten" the "flashes" and lightnings; because almost in a moment the lightning flash appears and passes from East to West. Similar, but more powerful, is the thunderbolt, which is nothing other than an exhalation ignited by the collision of clouds, and thence bursting forth or hurled out with great force. The marvels, and quasi-miracles, of the thunderbolt are these: first, its speed; second, its fiery nature and also its efficacy, for nothing is so strong that it does not strike it down; third, its variety — for one type of thunderbolt pierces, because it is very fine and flame-like; another shatters, because it is very compact, and formed with an admixture of compressed air; the third
burns, because it is ignited; fourth, that thunderbolts more often strike high mountains and very tall towers. The cause
is that since they are carried obliquely, the highest things are in their path, and therefore they frequently strike against them. Whence Claudian, to Hadrian: Never did the celestial flame press upon willows, Nor did small shrubs earn the wrath of the Thunderer: Lightning strikes mighty oaks and ancient ash-trees.
The fifth marvel is handed down by Pliny (book II, chapter 55; book XXXVII, 10), that the laurel is not struck by lightning, nor the eagle, nor coral, nor the sea calf. But these seem either fabulous or at least doubtful. For Vicomercatus recounts that a laurel was struck by lightning, in his commentary on Meteorology III, chapter 10. The sixth marvel is that lightning does not harm rare and soft things, because it passes through them very quickly, but strikes and levels things that are dense and hard, which resist. The reason is that in hard things, in order to overcome their resistance, it lingers longer and gathers and exerts all its forces, says Saint Damascene in his Physics, chapter 17. Thus lightning melts a sword enclosed in an unharmed sheath; in an untouched purse it fuses the enclosed gold, bronze and silver; in unviolated wood around a spear-shaft it dissolves the iron; in intact flesh it shatters the bones. Albert the Great, in his book On Thunder, chapter 21, reports that a barrel struck by lightning is broken and burned, but the wine itself suddenly solidifies and stands, so that the rigidity lasts for three days. They say moreover that wine which was solidified by lightning, when it returns to liquid, kills the drinker or induces madness. The reason is that lightning has in itself the noxious qualities of sulfur or of some similar material, with which it infects the wine. Finally it is widely known that poisonous creatures sometimes lose their venom after a lightning strike; and conversely, those that had no poison before acquire it. The reason is that from the former the lightning burns away the venom; but to the latter it imparts a sulfurous and noxious quality. So the Conimbricenses, treatise 2 on the Meteorology, chapter 6.
Furthermore, he says that the "lightnings" are of "His judgment," namely the divine judgment. First, because God according to His own, not men's or angels' judgment, when it pleases Him, creates and sends forth lightnings. Second, because through lightnings He exercises His judgments, that is, His threats and vengeances; since through them He strikes sinners with fear and from time to time strikes them with death; and the etymology of lightning and thunder signifies this. For as Saint Isidore says, book XIII of the Origins, chapters 8 and 9: "Thunder is so called because its sound terrifies; for tonus means sound; lightning and thunderbolt, the stroke of a celestial javelin, are named from striking; for fulgere is to strike and to smite." Hence that saying of the poet: I flash lightning, and thunders destined to move human minds. See what was said there, chapters 16 and 18.
Third, because the day of judgment will be terrible with the most frequent and violent flashes of lightning, according to Psalm 96: "His lightnings illuminated the world." The same is clear from Apocalypse 8:5 and 16:18.
Fourth, "by the force of His judgment" signifies that God sends forth lightnings not rashly, but with great deliberation, judgment and reason. So Vatablus. And it is a marvelous judgment of God that the thunderbolt strikes down high and hard things, but passes through lowly and soft things, as I said a little earlier.
Mystically, snow is the purification of sins through penance and tears, according to that saying of Isaiah, chapter 1:18: "If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow: and if they be red as the worm, they shall be as white wool." So Saint Jerome on Psalm 147. Whence David, Psalm 50: "You will sprinkle me, he says, O Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: You will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow."
15. THEREFORE THE TREASURIES WERE OPENED, AND THE CLOUDS FLEW FORTH LIKE BIRDS. — For "clouds" (nebulae), the Greek is nephelas, that is, clouds (nubes), because a nebula is a cloud that has descended, or one occupying the lower region of the air. The Tigurina: On account of this the storerooms are unlocked, and clouds fly forth in the manner of birds. For he calls them "treasuries," that is, vaults and storerooms in which coins, grain and riches are kept; not that God truly has such storerooms, but because the clouds and mists are stored away in God and in God's will and omnipotence as if in a treasury and vault, and at His nod, as if the vault were opened, they are brought forth into the light and leap out into the air, according to Job 38:22: "Have you entered into the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail? Which I have prepared for the time of the enemy, for the day of battle and war?" By "clouds" understand all kinds; for even those that are in the middle region of the air fly like great birds, and from them fly forth snows, rains, hailstones, etc., like smaller birds; whence of them he immediately adds: "In His greatness He set the clouds." Then understand in particular the mists and frosts; for these are like white-haired and white birds of winter, which fly through the air in bitter frost and settle on trees and plants. Of these the Psalmist says, Psalm 147: "He scatters mist (in Hebrew kephor, that is, as Saint Jerome translates, frost) like ashes." For frost is similar to ashes in color, abundance and effect; for like ashes it burns and consumes excessive moisture from the earth, and thus makes it fertile and fruitful. For otherwise, a nebula properly speaking is that part of the cloud which, unfit for generating water, remains after the cloud has been resolved into rain, as a kind of excrement of the cloud. Whence Aristotle, Meteorology I, chapter 9, calls a "nebula" a sterile cloud, and asserts that it is a sign of coming fair weather. Hence mystically, frost is sorrow for sins and compunction. For this burns the mind with grief as much as with love; and so it purges it and makes it capable of grace and fertile in virtues. So Saint Jerome, on Psalm 147.
Second, very aptly Palacius says: Because, he says, after a flash of lightning a great rain usually descends, he rightly says "therefore," that is, on account of the light-
ning, "the treasuries were opened," both in the sea and in the air, so that rain might rush forth from them. Whence there follows: "The clouds flew forth like birds;" for it is wonderful to tell how, when the flashes of lightning have vanished and the rain has ceased, the clouds fly away, the sky having become clear, as if there had been no storm, according to that saying: "After the storm, You make calm," Tobit 3:22.
Fourth Part of the Chapter: Hail, Earthquake, Thunder, Winds, Whirlwind, Snow
16. IN HIS GREATNESS HE SET THE CLOUDS (in Greek en megaleiō autou ischyse nephelas, that is, in His magnificence He strengthened or fortified the clouds; our translator, instead of ischyn, that is, "he strengthened," seems to have read istēn, that is, "he stationed, he set"), AND THE STONES OF HAIL WERE BROKEN. — The Tigurina: He increases the clouds with His great power so as to cast down stones of hail. The past tenses — "he set," "he strengthened" — are taken in the Hebrew manner for the present: "he sets," "he strengthens." The sense is, that is to say: God by His great power "sets," that is, stations, packs, condenses and strengthens the clouds; and from them thus condensed He breaks off, as it were into pieces, the pebbles and globules of hail — not that He immediately converts the clouds into hail, as Isidore holds, but that He dissolves the clouds into drops of water, which by the force of cold are immediately compressed and freeze into globules of hail. So from Aristotle Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 54: Hail, he says, seems to some to be formed from clouds, first hardened into ice; then broken into pieces by the cold of the winds, or even by the heat of the sun: and thus hail consists of fragments of broken ice, which become round in their very descent, rolled about as it were by that long fall. This was the opinion among ancient philosophers of Epicurus; among Christians, of Saint Isidore of Seville; who seem to be supported by those words of Ecclesiasticus chapter 43: "In His greatness He set the clouds, and the stones of hail were broken." For these words seem clearly to suggest that from broken stones (that is, of ice) hail was made. However, Aristotle quite evidently refuted this opinion in Meteorology I, chapter 12, with these words: "Moreover it is absurd to suppose that water freezes in the upper region; since it cannot happen that this occurs before it becomes water, nor can water remain suspended at any time"; thus Aristotle. From which it is clear that drops of water are first formed from the cloud, then as these fall separately and freeze, hail is formed, retaining the shape of the drops themselves. That passage of Ecclesiasticus, however, you will understand thus: the stones of hail were broken off, that is, cut away from the cloud — not indeed from one already frozen, but from one dissolving particle by particle into drops; for even so, it is true that the stones of hail were cut from the cloud, even if they were not cut as already-formed stones, but turned to stone after being cut away. This is what Job says in celebrating God, chapter 38:30: "Waters are hardened into the likeness of stone," namely in ice and hail; for this is water compressed by cold and turned to stone-
like. And the Psalmist, Psalm 147:17: "He sends forth His crystal like morsels," meaning: God sends forth hail frozen like crystal, "like morsels," that is, like pieces and fragments. For crystallus in Greek is derived from kryos, that is, cold, and stellō, that is, I contract, I compress. Whence also the gem crystal, according to Pliny, is nothing other than ice compressed and hardened by excessive cold beneath the earth, so that it cannot be dissolved — on which see verse 22.
Furthermore, hail makes the earth fruitful; for the grains of hail, like grains of sugar, sweeten, moisten and nourish the earth. Clouds do the same even more, when dissolved into rain they pour down upon the earth and impregnate and make it fruitful, according to Psalm 146:8: "Who covers the sky with clouds: and prepares rain for the earth. Who produces hay on the mountains, and grass for the service of men. Who gives food to the beasts." And Psalm 103:13: "Watering the mountains from His upper chambers: the earth shall be filled with the fruit of Your works, etc., that You may bring forth bread from the earth: and wine may gladden the heart of man: that he may make his face cheerful with oil." For the earth, impregnated by rain, produces grain, wine, oil, and all crops, herbs, trees and plants.
Mystically, hail signifies the threats of hell, of the wrath and vengeance of God, which no one can bear; God melts these when He softens and soothes them with His consolations and promises; and thus He sweetens, moistens, nourishes the earth of our heart, and makes it fertile in good works. So Saint Jerome on Psalm 147. Likewise, hail signifies persecutions; such was the hail of stones with which Stephen was assaulted, and who by his prayer converted Saul who was raining those stones, and thus made him Paul. Whence Prudentius, Peri Stephanon: The number of the martyrs always grew Under every hailstorm. These are the treasures of God in the snow and hail of persecutions, says Rabanus, who also adds: "Hail is also the free rebuke of the saints. For hail when it comes strikes, and in liquid form it waters. Holy men both strike the hearts of their hearers with terror and pour in with soothing; for that they strike, the Prophet testifies, saying: They shall speak of the power of Your terrible deeds, and shall declare Your greatness; and that they soothe and water, he added next: They shall pour forth the memory of the abundance of Your sweetness, and shall exult in Your justice," Psalm 144, verses 6 and 7.
Symbolically, clouds are a symbol of loftiness and ambition, which produces hailstorms of turmoil and humiliation. With an elegant fable of the clouds and the earth, Cyril places this before our eyes, book II of the Moral Apologies, chapter 12, whose title is: Against the desire for worldly eminence: "A little cloud, he says, having arisen from the earth, immediately began to be carried upward by an innate desire. The mother earth said to it: Tell me, from what and where were you born? Was it not in me and from me? Why then do you raise yourself above your mother, and having become a stranger, leave your native soil, most dear to all? Indeed, raised up on high, you will either be entangled by storms or consumed by the heat that meets you. I ask you therefore, daughter, be still, and recline in the fatherly bosom of salutary humility. But she answered less prudently: A certain desirable appetite for loftiness compels me to ascend upward, and even if it were permitted to resist it, I would not wish to. To this the earth, feeling great compassion for her, said: Tell me, I ask, to what height do you desire to be raised? The cloud answered: I yearn to reach the heights of the North, where once established, I may be set above the entire visible universe. Hearing this, mother earth, mocking the blindness of the mist, added: It is quite clear that, as one born but a short time ago, you have spoken childishly. For you have not at all learned the order of the celestial positions, nor have you attended to the wonderful arrangement of the world." She demonstrates this same point by physical and astronomical reasoning: "Answer me, which part first moves in the sky — is it not the Eastern? For from there the daily star rises, and by its motion, as it were, since the stars rise there, it is rightly called the East. Therefore this part is the right side of the sky; for whatever part in an animal moves first is called the right. Therefore if, as is clear, the East is judged to be the right of the sky, it necessarily follows that its South Pole is above. For the philosophers teach that the principle of the Eastern motion is derived from it. Moreover, in the body of an animal, that part is the right into which the head first sends its influence. Furthermore, that the first motion of celestial revolution takes its beginning from the Southern pole is recognized by this reasoning: Because, namely, when a man's head is positioned toward that pole, then his right hand, if he turns, moves from the East. And so if the South Pole in the sky is above, the Northern will consequently be below." From which she concludes, and gathers this epimythium as the aim and fruit of the fable: "Wherefore, dearest, if your mind inclines to be tossed toward it, thinking you are being raised, you will be plunged down; and when you believe you are going upward, then you will be submerged in the world's greatest abyss, and it will happen to you as to the proud who are deceived: for while they think they are being elevated upward by the breath of boasting, they plunge downward to the depths of hell and are sunk by the stroke of divine justice; and when they seem to be raised to the very highest, deceived by the mirror of illusion, then they are most deeply submerged. For whoever raises himself against the true course of the world, his place is necessarily prepared in the opposite direction, in hell. From the Creator's
providence, however, the habitable place of the proud is placed in the Northern region, so that from the arrangement of the world they may learn that what according to the aspect of worldly vision seems to be higher, will in truth be lower. Wherefore, fleeing the deceptive 'upward' of this age, let us tend toward the true 'downward' of humility. For thus nature, where she had arranged the members equally, nevertheless, having placed the head below, sends the little infant from the mother's womb into this world, and as a teacher of humility positions the apex of the heart and the foot accordingly downward. Having settled these matters, she was silent."
17. AT HIS SIGHT THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BE SHAKEN, AND AT HIS WILL THE SOUTH WIND SHALL BLOW. — In Greek, en orasei autou, that is, at His sight — meaning: When God with an angry, or powerful and efficacious countenance has looked upon the earth and the mountains, which stand with such great and heavy mass, by His sight and nod alone He will shake them and induce an earthquake, according to Psalm 103: "Who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble." And again, when He wishes to be gracious to the earth and to men, "at His will the south wind shall blow," that is, the Auster. The Tigurina: The mountains are shaken when He looks upon them; and the south wind will blow when He wills. This alludes to Habakkuk 3: "He looked and dissolved the nations: and the mountains of the ages were shattered." And below: "They saw You, and the mountains were in anguish." The earth is therefore like a timid servant who trembles if his master looks at him with an angrier expression, says Palacius. Furthermore, the Complutensian edition inverts and combines this verse with the following one thus: The voice of His thunder makes the earth grieve (tremble); and at His sight the mountains shall be shaken, by thunder and earthquake: At His will the south wind shall stand, and the storm of the north wind, and the whirling of the wind, like birds flying He scatters the snow. But the Greek codices emended at Rome clearly agree with the Latin Vulgate.
Mystically, Rabanus says: Mountains are the proud. The south wind, or Auster, is the grace of the Holy Spirit, who disperses sins constricted by the frost of death with the ardor of His warmth; and so He shakes the proud with the fear and love of God.
18. THE VOICE OF HIS THUNDER SHALL BEAT THE EARTH, THE STORM OF THE NORTH WIND, AND THE GATHERING OF THE WIND. — "The voice of thunder" is the sound and crash of thunder; or by hypallage it is the thunder of voice, that is, vocal thunder resounding with a great voice; for both the thunder itself and its voice and crash beat the earth and its inhabitants. "It beat," that is, it beats — that is, it is accustomed to beat. For all these past tenses are taken in the Hebrew manner for the present, and signify the manner and habit of divine action.
For thunder beats the earth, first, because it arises from the violent collision of clouds, which creates a violent impulse of the air, by which the earth is beaten; second, because this collision stirs up a horrible crash, which beats the ears of men; for it is so great that the fabric of the world seems to be shaken and wrenched from its center; third, because with immense fear it strikes and smites the minds of those who hear it, even
of kings and emperors, according to that verse: Thunders destined to move human minds. Indeed Augustus Caesar was so terrified by thunder that he would retreat into a hidden and vaulted place, and always and everywhere carried with him the skin of a sea calf as a remedy," says Suetonius in his Life, chapter 90. So also today many people, even the faithful and the holy, are greatly terrified when it thunders and the thunder resounds with such a great sound. Fourth, thunder hurls forth lightning bolts and fiery stones, which not rarely strike down and overturn towers, mountains, trees, houses, men and animals, as we have often seen.
Furthermore, the material cause of thunder is a dry and hot exhalation; the formal cause is the collision of clouds with crash and noise; the efficient cause is the struggle of the exhalation striving to burst forth from the cloud; the final cause is to strike men with fear of the thundering deity, so that men may fear God. So Aristotle in the Meteorology. Whence Silius Italicus, book XVII, graphically depicts this terror of the thunderbolt thus: When thunders mixed with lightning bolts terrify the world, And the lofty house of the supreme father totters: Every race of men on earth trembles; and the fierce light Itself flashes as it rises, and Jupiter is believed To stand present before each one, striking the terrified with aimed fire.
Who would not fear the thunderbolt-hurling and high-thundering right hand of the Almighty?
For "beat" (verberavit), the Greek is ōdinēse, that is, He made the earth grieve and be in labor — that is, He so moved it as if with immense fear and pain it were about to give birth and bring forth offspring. So the Complutensian, the Roman, Jansenius and others. Whence the Tigurina: With the sound of His thunder He moves the earth with pain. It is a very fitting catachresis; for the shaking of the earth, as if trembling at the thunders of God, is represented by the pain and pallor of a woman in labor.
Instead of ōdinōse, some read ōneidise, that is, "He rebuked." Whence Rabanus reads: The voice of His thunder reproached the earth. The Vatican Codex has syneseisen, that is, "He shook, He struck"; which agrees more with our "beat." Furthermore, thunder comes before lightning, since it is its cause. For thunder is the collision and crash of clouds, which draws out and produces the lightning bolt; and yet we see the lightning before we hear the thunder: both because sight is faster than hearing, and because sound is slower and strikes the hearing more slowly than a visible appearance, especially of a flash, strikes the sight; and also because the blow of thunder, which beats the ears just as it beats the clouds and the air, is so heavy and weighty that it requires more time and reaches the ears more slowly. The case is similar with military artillery; for the fire is seen before the crash that produces the fire and hurls the ball by its force is heard: whence soldiers, upon seeing the fire of the artillery, have enough time to withdraw from the ball that it hurls.
With a similar figure the Psalmist, celebrating the magnificence of God in the voice of His thunder throughout Psalm 28, says: "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters, the God of majesty has thundered. The voice of the Lord is in power: the voice of the Lord is in magnificence. The voice of the Lord breaking the cedars, etc. The voice of the Lord dividing the flame
of fire." For thunder hurls forth cut and divided lightning bolts, as it were, one after another continuously. "The voice of the Lord preparing the stags," through terror for giving birth; Saint Jerome renders it: acting as midwife; Symmachus and Aquila: causing to give birth; the Chaldean: making the hinds give birth. For hinds have a narrow womb, which is dilated by the terror of thunder, so that they may give birth more easily.
The voice therefore of God — horrible, powerful, magnificent — is thunder. For nothing so celebrates the magnificence of God and makes Him terrible and fearsome to men as thunder and its thunderbolt. Whence Job 40:4: "If you have an arm like God, He says, and if you thunder with a similar voice." And 38:35: "Will you send forth lightnings, and will they go, and returning will they say to you: Here we are?" Indeed Horace, though an Epicurean and a despiser of the gods and of deity, was nevertheless compelled by the terror of thunder to acknowledge and confess God. Hear him, book I of the Odes, ode 34: A sparing and infrequent worshipper of the gods, While an adept wandering in insane wisdom, Now I am compelled to set sail backward And retrace my abandoned courses. For the Father of Day (That is, Jupiter or God) Dividing the clouds with gleaming fire, Usually through a clear sky drove His thundering horses and flying chariot, Which shook the dull earth and wandering rivers, The Styx and the horrid seat Of hateful Taenarus and the Atlantean boundary. He is able to exchange the lowest for the highest, And God diminishes the distinguished.
Moreover, the Lithuanians, in the time of Jagiello in the year of the Lord 1326, worshipped the thunderbolt as a deity, as Martin Cromer testifies, book XV of On Polish Affairs.
Hence God is called by the Greeks hypsibremetes, in Latin Altitonans (High-Thunderer); because thunder makes all Olympus tremble. And Job 37:4: "After Him, he says, the sound will roar, He will thunder with the voice of His greatness; and it will not be traced, when His voice has been heard. God will thunder marvelously with His voice, who does great and unsearchable things." The etymologies support this. For, as Isidore says, book XIII of the Origins, chapters 7 and following: Thunder (tonitruum) is so called because its sound terrifies (terreat); for tonus means sound; which therefore sometimes shakes everything so violently that the sky seems to have split apart. Lightning (fulgur) and thunderbolt (fulmen) are the stroke of a celestial javelin, named from striking (feriendo); for fulgere is to strike and to smite. Mists (nebulae), as if nubila (cloudy), and clouds (nubes) from obnubendo, that is, from covering the earth; whence also brides (nuptae), because they veil their faces; and Neptune, because he covers (nubat), that is, covers the sea and earth. Rains (pluviae), as if fluviae (flows), because they flow. Hail (grando), because it is similar to a grain (grano). Ice (glacies) from frost (gelu) and water (aqua), as if gelacies, that is, frozen water.
Frost (pruina) from perurendo (burning thoroughly). Dew (ros) from the Greek drosos, or because it is rare (rarus), not thick like rain. Fog (caligo), because it is generated by the heat (calore) of the air. Darkness (tenebrae), because they hold (teneant) shadows. A storm (procella) because it strikes (percellat), that is, smites and tears away. Water (aqua) as if aequa (equal), because its surface is level. Hence also the sea (aequor) is so called, because it is level
on top. Wind (ventus), because it is vehement (vehemens) and violent. Crash (fragor), from the sound of broken (fractarum) things. The north wind (Aquilo), because it constricts waters (aquas) and disperses clouds. The south wind (Auster), because it draws up (hauriat) waters. The sea (mare), because its waters are bitter (amarae)." These and more from Saint Isidore.
Anagogically, the voice of thunder will be the voice of Christ the Judge, who will adjudge the Saints to heaven and the impious to hell, saying: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels," Matthew 25. For this voice will so strike the impious that they will say "to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills: Cover us," Apocalypse 6; Luke 23. And it will be so efficacious that it will immediately roll them up and hurl them down into the underworld. If therefore we so dread thunder that passes in an instant, how much should we dread the thundering voice of Christ, which will hurl and launch the thunderbolt of eternal damnation against sinners?
Tropologically, the voice of thunder was Saint John the Baptist; for he was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," Isaiah 40. See Saint Basil adapting the entirety of Psalm 28, which is about the voice of thunder, to Saint John.
Allegorically, the voice of thunder is the preaching of the Gospel, or the voice of Christ and the Apostles proclaiming the Gospel, which moved the earth and waters, that is, many peoples, to repentance; broke the cedars and mountains, that is, the proud, both demons and men; divided, that is, split, the fire — namely of charity — when He sent and placed the Holy Spirit in the form of divided fiery tongues upon the Apostles at Pentecost; and shook the desert regions of the Gentiles. The same voice prepared the hinds, that is, the timid and slow to give birth to virtues, through fear of the judgment of God; it brought a flood, that is, baptism, in which as in a deluge all sins are submerged. So Saint Basil, Theodoret, Didymus, Origen, Saint Augustine, on Psalm 28. Hear also Rabanus here: "In the thunder, he says, the incarnate Lord Himself is figured: because from the concurring prophecy of the ancient fathers He was brought forth to our knowledge, as if from the collision of clouds; He who, appearing visibly among us, sounded terribly the things that were above us. Whence the holy Apostles themselves, begotten from His grace, were called boanerges, that is, sons of thunder: and sometimes (as was said) thunder is taken for His very preaching, through which the terror of heavenly judgments is heard. The voice of thunder indeed reproaches the earth, when divine preaching, by rebuking the carnal (who are rightly designated by the name of earth), makes known their vices; so that, having set these aside, they may prepare themselves to hear the divine precepts. Of this thunder also it is written: The voice of Your thunder in the wheel:
Your lightnings illuminated the world: the earth was moved and trembled. And this also is said comparatively; because the voice of thunder revolves as if it were heard coming from rolling wheels. For thus, when it is poured out from on high, it passes through the spaces of the heavens with a rolling murmur, so that the sound itself is perceived as wheeling and winding; or rather by 'wheel' we should understand the globe of the earth, which is enclosed in the shape of a wheel with perfect roundness. In the wheel therefore, that is, in the world, the voice of His thunder went forth, when the preachers of Christ filled the circuit of the whole world with thundering words.
THE STORM OF THE NORTH WIND, AND THE GATHERING OF THE WIND. — In Greek, systrophē pneumatos, that is, a vortex of wind, a whirlwind, which rotating in a circle whirls and spins everything with it, so violent and tempestuous that it overturns houses, ships and chariots — indeed, snatches them away; such as the ecnephias, the prester, and the whirlwind or typhoon, the chief plague of sailors; which breaks and swallows not only sails but even the ships themselves, twisted apart, and sometimes carries them off with it high into the air; and similarly on land it transports uprooted trees and enormous rocks to other places. Whence Olympiodorus considers the typhoon to be named dia to typtein sphodrōs, that is, because it beats and shakes bodies violently and vehemently when it falls upon them. Furthermore, when he says "the storm," etc., supply "beat the earth." For the wind, especially the north wind, so beats the earth that it constricts it with rigidity and ice; and when it is impetuous, it lays low crops, trees, and even towers. Whence Albinus Flaccus, in a Disputation with Pippin, son of Charlemagne: "What, he says, is the wind? A disturbance of the air, the agitation of waters, the dryness of the earth. What is frost? The persecution of plants, the destruction of leaves, the bond of the earth, the source of waters."
Again, the Greeks and Jansenius and other Latin interpreters refer these words to "He scatters the snow," which follows: for the north wind brings snow. Whence the Tigurina, connecting these words with the following verse, translates: The northern storm and whirlwind of the wind, in the manner of birds swooping down, scatters the snow, descending like settling locusts; so that the eye may marvel at the beauty of its whiteness, and the mind be amazed at the rain.
19. AND LIKE A BIRD SETTLING DOWN TO REST, HE SCATTERS THE SNOW, AND LIKE A LOCUST PLUNGING DOWN IS ITS DESCENT. — So the Roman, the Complutensian and other Latin editions, although the Greeks, Jansenius and others delete the first "and." For with it deleted this verse connects with the preceding one. The sense is, meaning: God through the north wind scatters snow upon the earth, so as to cover and cherish it, just as flocks of birds are accustomed to swoop down and settle and sit upon the earth, and so to cover and conceal it. Or just as swarms of locusts plunge down upon the earth and cover it: so likewise the snow descending copiously covers the earth. For he compares the density and frequency of snowflakes with the dense swarms of birds and locusts; because just as these cover the earth completely, so too do the snowflakes. Palacius adds: God, he says, scatters snow upon the
earth, as if placing a hen upon eggs; for as a bird by its warmth makes the eggs fruitful, so snow by its falling upon the earth cherishes and renders it fruitful; for that year is happy which is snowy — namely, with snow making the earth fruitful — and its descent is like a locust descending; for the flakes of snow falling are likened to locusts coming from on high to the earth. That this is the sense is clear from the Tigurina already cited, and from the Greek, which clearly has thus: He scatters snow like birds flying; and its descent is similar to a locust settling; the Complutensian: And like a locust destroying, is its descent. For the Greek katalyousa means both "settling" and "destroying"; for locusts settling upon the earth are accustomed to devour and destroy it. But the first meaning of "settling" better fits the comparison; for the snow, which is here compared to the locust, settling upon the earth does not destroy it but cherishes, warms, waters and makes it fruitful.
20. THE EYE SHALL ADMIRE THE BEAUTY OF ITS WHITENESS, AND THE HEART SHALL BE ASTONISHED AT ITS RAIN. — For snow is so white that it gleams and shines, and with its whiteness and splendor it dazes and dulls the eyes of those who gaze upon it. By "rain" understand figuratively the abundance of snow; for snow descends and pours down copiously like rain. Or he calls "rain" the water into which the snow melts and dissolves, which is so great that it immediately creates enormous torrents, doubles and even triples rivers, to such a degree that they overflow and sweep away and engulf fields, crops, houses and herds; wherefore the hearts of men rightly tremble at this rain of snow. Finally, most rivers either originate from or greatly increase from melted snow. Whence the origin of rivers is in the Alps and other mountains filled with snow; for the snow there, dense and copious, melted by the rays of the sun, creates enormous streams and rivers. These then are the admirable qualities of snow.
The first is its exceptional whiteness. Whence in Christ's transfiguration, His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as snow, Matthew 17. The second, the abundance with which it covers the air and the earth. The third, that it cherishes and makes the earth fruitful. See Pliny, book XVII, chapter 2. The fourth, that touched by the ray of the sun it melts. The fifth, that when melted it produces enormous torrents and rivers. Whence this riddle about snow exists in Symposius: A fine dust of water, falling with little weight, Wet from the sun, flowing in summer, dry in cold, About to make rivers, I first occupy all the lands. Similar to this is that riddle about the gourd which he adds: I hang while being born, and again while hanging I am born; Hanging I am moved by winds, and nourished by waters; If I am not hanging, I shall soon cease to exist.
Wherefore, on account of these similar quasi-miracles of nature, we ought to exclaim with the Psalmist: "How
magnificent are Your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom: the earth is filled with Your possession," Psalm 103. And: "O Lord our Lord, how admirable is Your name in all the earth! For Your magnificence is elevated above the heavens," Psalm 8. And: "Praise the Lord from the earth, you dragons and all depths. Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds: which do His word," Psalm 148.
Hear our Conimbricenses describing the causes, origin and qualities of snow, in their treatise on the Meteorology, tract. VII, chapter 5: When a cloud, they say, in the middle region of the air, on account of intense cold, freezes before it dissolves into water, snow is produced. And so snow is a cloud frozen with a crumbly density; which cloud obtains a greater degree of dryness than the one that changes into water, in proportion as it solidifies by the effect of more powerful cold; since cold, while it constricts, squeezes out moisture and draws it out. Snow is nevertheless softer than frost; because frost, just as it forms near the earth, so it has in itself a greater amount of earthy excretion, by whose force it hardens more. And so snow is drier than water, and therefore falls continuously; and yet it is less dry than frost, whence it spreads in the manner of wool. The whiteness in snow arises especially from the merit of those parts which are more airy. For the same reason foam becomes white, and water with oil mixed in, as Aristotle teaches (On the Generation of Animals II, chapter 2), where he also says that snow is a kind of foam — which Pliny then adopted (Natural History XVII, chapter 2). But the whiteness of snow, as Albert the Great and some others have thought, is not merely an apparent color, as in many formations of the air, but a true and distinct one; otherwise it would not persist so long even in compressed snow that is not at all translucent. And a little further on: But indeed another cause of the aforesaid whiteness is usually adduced, namely cold, which in some things is the author of whiteness. The evidence is that those who inhabit cold regions, such as Northerners, are whiter in complexion; for snow is whiter in proportion as its foam is looser, because thus it has more of the translucent element. So the Conimbricenses, who also at the end of the chapter inveigh against those who abuse snow for the delicacies of drink and have set up workshops for storing frozen water to serve their stomachs. "Alas, says Pliny, Natural History XIX, chapter 4, alas the prodigies of the belly! Some drink snows, others drink ice, and turn the punishments of the mountains into the pleasure of gluttony. Cold is preserved for summer, and it is contrived that snow should be cold in months foreign to it. Others boil waters and then freeze even those. Nothing therefore pleases man as much as it does nature." Pliny also reports (book XXXI, chapter 3) that it was Nero's invention to boil water and then cool it by lowering it in glass into snow.
Symbolically Rabanus says: "The storm of the north wind and the gathering of the wind" are the various temptations of the devil (for he, cold as the north wind, strives to corrupt all good things through cold and sloth, he who wished to sit on the sides of the north, Isaiah 14:13): "He is rightly compared to a bird on account of the pride of his heart; because he scatters snow to settle, since through the rigidity of malice he prepares a dwelling place for himself wherever he may settle. He, like a locust, submerges by his ascent; because whatever green or fruitful thing he finds, he strives to gnaw away and uproot. The eye will admire his beauty when he pretends to be a minister of light and an ambassador of
peace; the heart trembles at his rain when he stirs up open storms of persecutions; so that those whom he could not deceive by pleasant pretense, he overwhelms by force."
Fifth Part of the Chapter: Frost, Winds, Ice
21. HE SHALL POUR OUT FROST LIKE SALT UPON THE EARTH: AND WHEN IT HAS FROZEN, IT SHALL BECOME LIKE THE POINTS OF THISTLES. — For "frost" the Greek is pachnē, which properly means hoarfrost, as the Complutensian, the Roman, the Tigurina and others translate. Furthermore, frost is defined by Aristotle in the book On the World as drosos pepēgmenē, that is, frozen dew; for when dew is intensified by nocturnal cold and freezes, frost is formed. Our translator correctly rendered it as "frost" (gelu); both because hoarfrost is a kind of frost, and because pachnē signifies not only hoarfrost but any kind of frost; whence pachnoō means the same as "I condense, I compress, I constrict, I freeze." For "it has frozen" (gelaverit), Rabanus, Lyranus and Dionysius incorrectly read averit; for the Greek is pageisa, that is, "frozen," from pagoumai, pachnoō and pachna already mentioned.
For "points" (cacumina), Rabanus less correctly reads acumina (sharp points); for the Greek is akra, that is, tops, peaks, summits. Nevertheless the sense comes to the same thing, which is: God pours out frost and hoarfrost like salt upon the earth; and when it has frozen and adhered to roofs, trees, plants, etc., it becomes like "the points of thistles," that is, like the tops of thorns — namely, prickly and rough. This is evident in the icicles which in a harsh winter hang from roofs, long and pointed, like ranks of spearheads in continuous series and order. For "thistles" the Greek is skolopos, that is, as the Complutensian renders it, stakes; the Roman, thistles; others, poles. The Tigurina: He pours out frost on the ground in the manner of salt, which when frozen places a peak upon poles. Our translator rendered it "thistles" (tribuli); because the tribulus is a kind of thorn named from its triangular seed, or because it stabs in three directions from its pointed form; of which Ovid says, in the Metamorphoses: ...Darnel and thistles weary The wheat harvests.
Our Conimbricenses describe the cause and generation of frost and dew in the same way, treatise 7 on the Meteorology, chapter 8. The material of dew and frost is a slight and fine vapor; the remote efficient cause is the same as that of the other impressions, namely, the celestial heat drawing forth the vapor; the proximate efficient cause is the cold of a clear night; which, if temperate, forces the vapor into dew; if intense, freezes it into frost. Aristotle teaches (chapter 10, book I of the Meteorology) that dew and frost are generated in the lowest part of the air, because the heat exciting such vapor is weak; otherwise, if it were intense, it would carry it higher, or consume it entirely.
Then the same authors describe the benefits as well as the harms of dew and frost thus: Frost and dew, if they come at the right time, are accustomed to be of no small benefit to the
fields. For frost in wintertime encloses heat within and drives it into the roots, and provides almost the same benefit as snow. Dew moistens and irrigates the earth, and draws forth and nourishes the sprouting verdure of the crops. But these same things, when they occur at the wrong time, are equally harmful; since late frost scorches the milky buds of shoots and kills the youth of plants and vines invited by the mildness of spring; and sometimes snatches away all hope of fruit in the space of a single night — with nature warning men that just as they flower most conspicuously, so they most quickly wither. Moreover, untimely frost is more destructive than snow; because snow, just as it is less compact due to the admixture of airy substance, so it presses less upon those things upon which it settles; and consequently scorches less. This scorching happens, as Theophrastus teaches (On the Causes of Plants V, chapter 16), by squeezing out (the heat having first been consumed, which cold directly opposes) and drawing forth all the moisture — once this is exhausted, the flowers, buds and similar things necessarily dry up, as if by fire. Cold squeezes out moisture because it restricts and compresses from every side: and things that are compressed, if they are moist, give up their moisture.
Furthermore, Sirach compares frost to salt, because it is similar to it: first, in color, for it is white like salt; second, in shape, because the grains of frost scattered over the earth are small and round like grains of salt — so much so that if you scatter salt over the earth, someone looking from a distance cannot discern whether they are grains of salt or of frost; third, because just as frost is formed from water constricted and frozen, so also salt is formed from seawater compressed and condensed. Whence frost, says Valesius (Sacred Philosophy, chapter 77), has the same generation as snow, differing only in that it forms near the earth; for frost is to snow as dew is to rain, and ice is to hail. However, in many other respects salt is entirely different in kind from frost. For salt, says Valesius, has a remarkable nature scarcely similar to anything else; since it is not among metals, because it is not dissolved by heat; nor among stones, because it is dissolved by water; nor among types of earth, because by dissolution it entirely turns into water — not indeed settling in it, but dissolved making the water thicker; nor indeed is it water, because it is not consumed by fire but rather burns, like earth. What then would you say it is, except autogenes, that is, of its own kind? But what that kind is, or what mode of mixture, must be investigated. First, that the salt taste by a diminution of the bitter
is produced, and that the bitter is produced by the burning of earth, Galen clearly indicates; for from burned things ashes remain, which are nothing other than the earthy part of burned things retaining ignition. This tastes bitter, which when the ignition is deposited into water becomes cold earth; and it turns the water into a salty lye, and thus the bitter is produced by the greatest burning of earth; the salty by this very removal of moisture, somewhat tempered. Salt then is that burned earthy substance, which mixes easily with water, and when mixed renders it salty. This is clearly perceived, because from salt water collected either from the sea or from salt works, salt is separated by distillation; and a liquid fit for drinking is produced; since therefore by the separation of salt it becomes sweet, by the admixture of salt it was salty; and salt is that burned earth which mixes easily with water; it is not, however, burned to the point of bitterness, but less: the proof being that where the burning has increased the most, the sea itself is bitter instead of salty, like the one called the Dead Sea. Thus Valesius.
Symbolically, Rabanus says: "In frost the cold of unbelief is figured; and in salt the barrenness of seed. Therefore the ancient enemy pours out frost like salt upon the earth, when through the cold of unbelief he renders the hearts of the earthly and the fruits of good works incapable: and when the storm of temptations has blown, he makes them like the points of thistles, that is, most harsh with the thorns of vices: so that in these they are hardened like crystal, that is, ice, as follows."
22. THE COLD NORTH WIND BLEW, AND ICE FROZE FROM THE WATER. — From frost he passes to the winds, especially the north wind, which is the cause of frost and crystal, that is, ice (for the Greek krystallos is the same as ice). For the north wind by its cold constricts water, and the water, constricted, becomes and is ice, according to Job 37: "When God blows, frost solidifies." Hence this riddle about ice is celebrated: "My mother bore me, and soon the same mother is born from me." For water, as it were a mother, through cold generates ice, which when dissolved by heat returns again to its mother and generates water. Sirach here repeats and emphasizes the north wind and snow; because the north wind excels among winds and is the fiercest, just as snow and frost excel among condensed and frozen vapors. Moreover, the supreme marvels of nature, and quasi-miracles, are these three: thunder, lightning and wind; for of these the natural philosophers cannot give an adequate and clear cause that fully satisfies the mind. Wherefore they themselves go off into various opinions about the nature, origin and motion of the winds.
Hippocrates (book II On the Regimen) says that winds blow from snow, ice, intense frost, rivers and marshes, and moist and cooled earth. Anaximander also maintained that wind is the flow of air, whose thinnest and most moist parts the sun has consumed. The Stoics called every wind the force of flowing air, which obtains various names according to the diversity of places and regions. Vitruvius (book I of Architecture, chapter 6) said that wind
is a flowing wave of air with an uncertain surplus of motion. Saint Isidore, book XIII, defines wind as air set in motion; Saint Damascene (On the Orthodox Faith II, chapter 8) defines it as the flow or agitation of air. Finally, the astrologers determined that wind is air set in rapid motion, and since they refer everything to the force and aspect of the ruling stars, they say that the air is set in motion by the uneven impact of the wandering stars and the manifold action of their rays, and that the gates of the winds are opened when Jupiter has looked upon the Sun, Moon and Mercury, or Mars has looked upon the same Mercury, by diametral radiation, or has been joined to it in a square aspect: or when both are in airy signs, such as Gemini and Libra: or when the Moon and Jupiter have been equally placed in Aries and Scorpio: and then when the Moon has come together with Mercury by an equal power of association. So our Conimbricenses, treatise On the Winds, chapter 6.
Various causes of the generation of winds are given by various authors. For some think the cause of winds to be clouds spread out in the air, pressing and pushing the air this way and that by their mass; and that from such motion and impulse of the clouds wind is produced. Others say that wind is generated from the collision of the bays of the sea in the four parts of the earth: for when the southern and northern bays collide in the East, they say that from that motion of the sea arises the wind called the East Wind (Subsolanus): when such bays collide in the West, they say that from the agitated air due to the motion of the sea arises the wind called Favonius (the West Wind): if the eastern and western bays send forth their collision in the South, the wind called Auster (the South Wind) is produced: if in the North, the one called Boreas (the North Wind) is generated: and from other intermediate refluxes of the sea the collateral winds proceed. Some think that winds arise from caverns of the earth, because air is of a flowing nature and penetrates its caverns and emerges from them: and they say that when one part tries to exit while another tries to enter, a collision occurs and the air is moved, and such impulse and motion of the air is wind: and therefore the Aeolian region is windy because it is cavernous. See more in Frederick Bonaventura, throughout his book On the Cause of the Motion of Winds. Furthermore, Aristotle, whom philosophers now generally follow, teaches that the matter of winds is a hot and dry exhalation, and proves this by many arguments. The motion of winds is therefore produced in this manner: by the attraction of the sun and other stars, many vapors — which (as we said) are the matter of winds — raised together on high reach the middle region of the air: from there, pushed back by that cold and dense air, they rebound with a broken and scattered force: and because they are driven downward by the impact, and strive upward because of their innate lightness, while neither part prevails, as if the struggle were divided, they flow neither upward nor downward, but obliquely.
These are the views of the philosophers, and our Conimbricenses (treatise 6 on the Meteorology, chapter 3), regarding winds. But the same authors
truly and wisely add: Indeed, to confess frankly, this is one of those things which largely remain hidden in the contemplation of nature: so much so that on account of this, in Psalm 134 and Jeremiah 10, God is said to bring forth "winds from His treasuries" — that is, from the hidden causes of nature, especially when we see so many kinds of winds. For the primary winds are four: namely, the East wind (Eurus) which blows from the East, Zephyr from the West, Auster from the South, and the North wind (Aquilo) from the North. But the secondary winds are twelve; for each of these four has three others as collaterals, so that in all there are sixteen kinds of winds: indeed some count 32, assigning to each primary wind not three but seven collaterals. Rightly therefore does Sirach here celebrate the magnificence of God from the production of winds, especially the North wind, because it is the fiercest.
AND ICE FROZE FROM THE WATER. — "Crystal," as I said, is ice. Whence the Complutensian translates: and it shall freeze from water; the Tigurina: with ice forming from water; others: water solidifies into ice. For krystallos in Homer, Plutarch, Thucydides and other Greeks means the same as ice; indeed from this the crystal stone, or that translucent gem, was named apo tou stellesthai apo tou kryous, that is, from being contracted by frost, as Pliny teaches (book XXXVII, chapter 2): "The opposite cause produces crystal, he says, frost being solidified more intensely: nor is it found anywhere else than where winter snows are most rigid, and it is certain that it is ice: whence the Greeks also gave it its name." Following Pliny, our Conimbricenses (treatise on the Meteorology, chapter 5) teach that the gem crystal truly solidifies from frost and ice, and therefore this gem is of two kinds: one frozen from frost, the other metallic and mined. Pliny, they say (book XXXVII, chapter 2), affirms that in extremely cold regions snows sometimes solidify into crystal; therefore it is not found except where winter snows are most rigid, as in the crags of the Alps: whence they usually extract it from inaccessible places, hanging by ropes. And so he says that crystal is ice, whence the Greeks gave it its name. For it is called from kryos, that is, ice, and stalō, that is, I contract: because from ice it hardens into stone by the intensity of cold. Present experience confirms that crystal is thus formed: since even in our time it is brought from the very high and coldest rocks, as from the Persiniani, which are at the extremes of Noricum. But crystal is also known to be found within the earth, as in both metallic and proper veins, like other precious stones.
UPON EVERY GATHERING (incorrectly Rabanus reads "contraction"; for the Greek is synagōgēn, that is, gathering) OF WATERS IT SHALL REST (the crystal, that is, ice), AND IT SHALL PUT ON THE WATERS LIKE A BREASTPLATE. — That is to say: Ice constricts and freezes every gathering of waters, and indeed even rivers, however great, and upon them it sits and rests firmly and securely:
because, with the waters frozen and condensed, it clothes and fortifies itself as with a breastplate, so that it is easier to pierce and break through a breastplate than to break through waters deeply and strongly frozen. For water of itself is fluid, delicate and soft; but through ice it hardens like an iron breastplate. Therefore frost then rests upon every gathering of waters: for lakes freeze, so much so that laden carts pass over them, and even military artillery; and finally the sea freezes, for that is why the Glacial Sea is so named. In Greek it reads: kai hōs thōraka endysetai to hydōr, that is, the ice shall clothe the waters as with a breastplate — namely, the solidified and frozen waters. So the Complutensian, understanding to hydōr as accusative case. But the Roman editors take it as nominative, whence they translate: and the water shall put on as it were a breastplate — meaning: The water clothes itself in ice as in a breastplate, and with it, as with a breastplate, fortifies and protects itself against other elements hostile to it. All these are true and come to the same thing: for both the ice clothes itself in frozen waters as with a breastplate, and in turn the frozen waters clothe themselves in ice as with a breastplate; for frozen waters are in reality nothing other than ice. Furthermore, the Tigurina renders this whole sentence thus: Then the cold wind blowing, the North wind, with ice forming from water, covers over every collection of waters, as if clothing them with a breastplate. Truly wonderful is the power of God, which through ice so compresses, condenses and strengthens waters — so slippery, perishable and fluid — that they turn to stone and assume the hardness of stone and of an iron breastplate. Marveling at which, Job says, chapter 38: "From whose womb, he says, came forth the ice? and who begot the frost from heaven?" And the three youths in the Babylonian furnace said: "Bless the Lord, dew and frost: bless the Lord, cold and winter: bless the Lord, ice and snow: praise and exalt Him forever," Daniel, chapter 3.
23. AND IT SHALL DEVOUR THE MOUNTAINS, AND SHALL BURN THE DESERT, AND SHALL EXTINGUISH THE GREEN, AS WITH FIRE. — Incorrectly Rabanus and others read "as it extinguishes fire"; and thus they explain it, meaning: Ice by its cold extinguishes what is green, just as by the same cold it extinguishes fire. In Greek: it extinguishes grass like fire; the Tigurina: It devours the mountains, scorches the deserts, and destroys the grass like fire — meaning: Ice, by drying, devours all the grasses of the mountains and all their verdure; in like manner it quasi-burns and extinguishes the shrubs, herbs and all green things of the desert by parching them, just as if it were blasting and drying the green herbs with fire. This is a catachresis: for fire alone properly burns; but the north wind and cold burn improperly — because, namely, they sharply sting and torment the sense of touch, and excite a pain similar to that which fire excites when it scorches a hand or some limb; and because they dry up herbs and plants like fire: for excessive cold extinguishes in them the natural warmth which was drawing in the moisture necessary for life and verdure. Whence, when this warmth is extinguished and moisture consequently fails, they dry up and wither. This is what Jacob says, Genesis
31:40: "By day and night I was scorched by heat and by frost;" and the Psalmist, Psalm 91: "By day the sun shall not burn you, nor the moon by night" — namely, by causing the sharp and scorching cold of the night. Saint Basil, in his Homily on the Forty Martyrs, says they were wholly scorched by cold. Lucan writes: "Mountain snows were burning them." Hence cold is called "burning." Virgil, Georgics I: "May the piercing cold of the North wind scorch." And Tacitus, Annals XV: "The limbs of many were burned by the force of the cold, and some died among the sentinels." Whence Pompeius Festus says: Frost (pruina) is so called from perurendo (thoroughly burning), because it scorches leaves and grasses: just as the Greeks call halōn the frost and morning cold, from halō, that is, I burn.
24. THE MEDICINE OF ALL THINGS IS IN THE HASTE OF THE CLOUD: AND THE DEW MEETING IT FROM THE VEHEMENT HEAT SHALL MAKE IT HUMBLE, — namely, the crystal, that is, the frost and ice. Incorrectly Rabanus reads "meeting the heat"; for the Greek and the Roman Latin have "from the heat." The sense is, that is to say: The remedy for all the hardships that frost and ice bring is the cloud and dew suddenly stirred up by the blowing of the south wind, from the moist warmth and vehement heat: for these humble, that is, overcome, moisten and dissolve the ice, and force it to return to the waters from which it solidified. The Greek has: The dew meeting from heat, or after heat, cheers; the Complutensian: gladdens. For the dew, tempering the heat by its coolness, cheers men and plants. The Tigurina: Of all of which the present remedy is the cloud, and the dew relieving from the blight cheers the same. Hence Alcman the lyric poet calls dew the daughter of Jupiter and the Moon: because at night by the warmth of the moon a vapor is raised from the air, which, solidifying by the nocturnal cold and falling upon herbs and grasses, becomes dew, which is their quasi-gem. Whence Lucretius, book II: "Grasses gemmed with fresh dew," and to sheep and cattle
it produces most grateful pastures, according to that saying of Virgil, Georgics III: And dew on the tender grass is most grateful to the flock. And Ovid, book III of the Fasti: The earth was soft, sprinkled with the morning frost. The grasses had whitened four times with fresh dew, etc. It was the time when first the earth is sprinkled With glassy frost. Marveling at these things, holy Job says, chapter 38: "Who is the father of the rain, or who begot the drops of dew?"
Symbolically, Rabanus says: All the cold and ice of the North wind, that is, of the devil and of sinners, is cured and driven away by dew, that is, by Christ's incarnation, teaching and grace — which Isaiah, longing for it, says in chapter 45: "Drop down dew, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One." See what was said there. And the Psalmist: "He shall come down like rain upon a fleece: and like drops falling upon the earth," Psalm 71:6. Whence its type was the dew descending upon the fleece of Gideon, Judges 6:37. Again, "the drops of dew, says Rabanus, are the holy preachers themselves, who pour upon the fields of our breast, amid the evils of the present life — as amid the burning darkness or night — the grace of heavenly bounty: for this dew made the devil humble, that is, brought him low; because it brought his hidden snares into the open by clear preaching; so that the world might now cease from idolatry and the storm of persecution, having realized that it had long been deceived by the ancient enemy."
Tropologically, our Alvarez de Paz (treatise On Mortification, near the beginning) understands by the cloud mortification, which is the medicine of all vices. For the coldness of the soul, and the frost of the body, which is accustomed to consume the herbs and flowers of holy desires, mortification — which, like a cloud, is somewhat obscure and has something of sadness — dissolves not without wonderful power, and repels all sloth and negligence.
Sixth Part of the Chapter: The Sea and the Islands
25. AT HIS WORD THE WIND WAS SILENT, AND BY HIS THOUGHT HE APPEASED THE DEEP, AND THE LORD PLANTED ISLANDS IN IT. — For insulas (islands), instead of nēsous (islands), some read Iēsous, that is, Jesus. So the Greek codices corrected at Rome, and many Latin ones, who with Jansenius read thus: And the Lord Jesus planted it — meaning: Christ planted the deep, that is, the sea, not as man but as God and the Word of God: for by the word of the Lord the heavens were established; so too the sea, the earth, and all creatures. So Rabanus. But it should be corrected with the Complutensian and the other Greek and Roman Latin editions to read nēsous, that is, islands.
The sense is, that is to say: God by His word and command stops and restrains the wind, however powerful, and causes it to be completely silent. Likewise, by His "thought," in Greek logismou, that is, by His thought, word and command — that is, when He thinks, wills and commands — "He appeased the deep;" that is, He calmed the sea raging with waves and hurling its billows to the sky — that is, He calms it and makes it peaceful and tranquil. Likewise in it, namely in the deep, that is, in the sea, He planted islands, so that amid the deep and vast expanse of waters they either stand firm or float and swim: for in Belgium and other places there are islands floating in the waters, which is truly a marvelous work of God. The Complutensian: At His word the deep was quiet, and He planted islands in it; the Tigurina: By His counsel He calms the deep, and in it He establishes islands; others: By His prayer He quiets the deep, etc. Thus Christ commanded the winds and the sea, Matthew 8. For, as Saint Jerome says in the same passage: "All creatures perceive their Creator: for those which are rebuked and commanded perceive the com-
being in wonder—not by the error of heretics who think all things are animate, but by the majesty of the Creator, for whom those things that are insensible to us are sensible to Him." So also Rabanus. Mystically, Hugo says: Christ, he says, calms and pacifies the abyss of human cupidity and ambition. Note: the word "He planted" signifies that islands were planted in the sea and rise up like trees. For just as God, in Genesis 2, planted various trees in paradise, so likewise He planted various islands in the sea, which adorn the sea just as trees adorn paradise; and just as the latter are grafted into paradise, so islands are, as it were, inserted and grafted into the sea as God's garden. Again, "He planted" signifies that islands are firmly established and rooted in the sea, just as plants are rooted in the earth—which is truly marvelous, since the sea is in perpetual motion and flux. "Whence the sea (mare) is named from wandering (meando), says Rabanus, because it always goes and returns." Finally, "He planted" signifies that islands, like plants, are fertile and produce great and many kinds of crops and fruits; for they are surrounded by sea and water on every side. Hence "islands" (insulæ) are said to be, as it were, "in the deep" (in salo), that is, placed in the sea, says Sextus Pompeius, and St. Isidore, book XIV of the Origins, chapter 6.
Moreover, how great is the beauty of islands in the sea, and how wonderfully admirable a work of God, the queen of them all—Sicily, I say—teaches us through Pliny, book III, chapter 8: "But before all others in fame stands Sicily, called Sicania by Thucydides, Trinacria by most, or Triquetra, from its triangular shape: its circuit extends, as Agrippa attests, to 638,000 paces. Once joined to the Bruttian territory, it was then torn away by the intervening sea, the strait being 12,000 paces in length and 1,500 in width near the column of Rhegium. From this evidence of splitting apart, the Greeks gave the name Rhegium to the town situated on the coast of Italy. In that strait is the rock Scylla, and likewise Charybdis, a whirlpool sea, both famous for their ferocity. Of Triquetra itself, as we said, the promontory called Pelorus faces Scylla toward Italy; Pachynum toward Greece, with the Peloponnese 144,000 paces distant; Lilybæum toward Africa, at an interval of 180,000 paces from the promontory of Mercury, and 120,000 from the Caralitanian coast of Sardinia." And shortly after: "The promontory Drepanum, the colony Tauromenium, formerly Naxos, the river Asines, Mount Etna marvelous for its nocturnal fires. Its crater extends to a circuit of 20 stadia. The burning ash reaches as far as Tauromenium and Catana, while the roar extends to Maro and the Twin Hills. The three Rocks of the Cyclopes, the harbor of Ulysses, the colony Catana. The rivers Symethus and Terias. Inland lie the Læstrygonian plains. Towns: Leontini, Megaris, the river Pantagies. The colony Syracuse, with the fountain Arethusa."
Mystically, the Lord Jesus calms the seas of temptations and tribulations, indeed the very stormy seas for Religious men sailing to the Indies, Japan, and China, to spread His faith: and in those very places He establishes islands, that is, Churches of the faithful, which, though surrounded on every side by the sea of unbelievers and persecutors, nevertheless endure and stand firm like islands—indeed, like gardens and paradises flourishing with every flower of graces and all the fruits of virtues. Come then, Apostolic Argonaut, you who sail to the Indies, who traverse the immense expanses of the seas with love and zeal for Jesus—take great courage! Let not the vastness of the Ocean terrify you, let not the waves rising almost to the stars dismay you: Jesus, a better helmsman than Jason, is with you. With Him as your guide, why do you tremble? If heat, if cold, if calm, if winds clash and afflict you—look to Jesus, call upon Jesus: Jesus commands the winds and the sea. If sandbanks, if shallows, if shipwrecks threaten, say: For You I sail, my Jesus, for You I live, for You I die. "Christ is the solution to all dangers," says Cyril of Alexandria. If pirates, if heretics assail you, say with St. Athanasius: "The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against me, in this I will hope." If death, if prison, if martyrdom, if fires threaten—these things Jesus endured for you, and again He will endure them in you, for Himself and for you, if you bear and prefer Him not only in name but also in imitation and deed. "For he deserves the fellowship of the name who deserves the fellowship of the work," says St. Ambrose, Sermon 2. You are a companion of Jesus; be then a companion in tribulations, a companion in labors, a companion in life and death, that you may be a companion in happiness and glory: "For if we suffer together, we shall also be glorified together." And: "As you are sharers of the sufferings, so shall you be also of the consolation," II Corinthians 1:7. Therefore, "those whose breastplate is Christ do not fear the force of enemies," says Ennodius.
26. LET THOSE WHO SAIL THE SEA TELL OF ITS DANGERS: AND HEARING WITH OUR EARS WE SHALL WONDER. — When we hear them narrated. So the Roman edition. Others, following the Greek, read "we wonder" in the present tense; the Tigurina: Those who sail the sea tell of its dangers, which we marvel at when heard with our ears. He alludes to Psalm 106: "They that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in the great waters. These have seen the works of God, and His wonders in the deep."
Hence Cato, as Plutarch reports, used to say he regretted three things: first, that he had gone any day in this fragile and unstable life without making a will; second, that he had entrusted a secret to a woman; third, that he had committed himself to the sea and sailed to a place where he could have traveled by land. I have recited the maxims of other wise men on this subject at Lamentations 2:13.
Mystically, Rabanus says: The sea is this world, full of temptations and dangers: "Where diabolical snares, he says, creep without number, where the malicious works of demons are tested, and the instability of souls is stirred as if by certain waves. For they make it a sea by compelling shipwreck; because there is no doubt that he suffers the most monstrous waves who is submerged in the whirlpool of sins."
27. THERE ARE SPLENDID WORKS AND MARVELS; VARIOUS KINDS OF BEASTS, AND OF ALL CATTLE, AND THE CREATION OF GREAT SEA CREATURES. — In Greek, ktisis keton, that is, the creation or nature of sea monsters: for these are called beasts on account of their vastness. The Complutensian edition, instead of ktisis, reads krisis, that is, the distinction of sea monsters. For "splendid" the Greek has eparadoxa, paradoxical. The Complutensian: unexpected; the Roman: incredible; the Tigurina: miracles. The Greek Roman text reads thus: There are incredible and admirable works: the variety of every animal, the creation of sea monsters. The Tigurina: Incredible are the miracles there; the manifold variety of living creatures, and the nature of sea monsters.
the creation or nature of sea monsters: for these are called beasts on account of their vastness. The Complutensian edition, instead of ktisis, reads krisis, that is, the distinction of sea monsters. For "splendid" the Greek has eparadoxa, paradoxical. The Complutensian: unexpected; the Roman: incredible; the Tigurina: miracles. The Greek Roman text reads thus: There are incredible and admirable works: the variety of every animal, the creation of sea monsters. The Tigurina: Incredible are the miracles there; the manifold variety of living creatures, and the nature of sea monsters. Our translator perhaps read physis instead of ktisis, that is, the nature of sea monsters. For their nature is indeed marvelous: first, in their vastness of size; for in the Indian sea there are whales "of four acres," says Pliny, book IX, chapter 3; second: "Whales have mouths on their foreheads, and therefore when swimming on the surface of the water they blow storms on high," says Pliny, ibid. chapter 6; third, marvelous is the battle of whales with orcas, which Pliny describes in the same place; fourth, marvelous is the appearance of sea monsters, for there are many and very diverse species of sea monsters, which Aldrovandus and Rondeletius catalogue in their book On Fishes; fifth, although the whale is such a vast mass of flesh, it nevertheless delights in light and sun—whence some think the whale (balena) is so named para to eis phos hallesthai, because it leaps toward the light and delights in basking in the sunlight, though others give other etymologies for the whale, which Aldrovandus catalogues in chapter 2 of On the Whale; sixth, the pilot fish (musculus) directs the course of the whale, which is nearly blind, having been provided by nature as a guide for its journey. So Pliny, book IX, chapter 62: "Examples of friendship are, he says, the whale and the pilot fish: when the whale's eyes are overwhelmed by the excessive weight of its brows, the pilot fish swims ahead and points out the shallows that threaten its great size, serving in place of its eyes;" seventh, whales have a blowhole instead of arms; eighth, when the whale's young cling to the earth due to lack of water, it takes in water like a river through its mouth and sprays it upon them so they can swim, and thus frees them from danger—Philostratus is the witness, book II of the Life of Apollonius; ninth, the eyes of whales exceed the size of a human head and are four ells apart from each other; tenth, some whales contain ambergris in their belly. See more in Aristotle, Aldrovandus, and Rondeletius.
Moreover, there are many marvels and quasi-miracles of the sea, which continually proclaim and celebrate to us the magnificence of God the Creator. The first among these is the immense variety, length, breadth, and depth of the sea, on account of which it is called the abyss, as if a depth without a bottom.
Second, the storms and waves of the sea, which sometimes seem to rise to heaven almost to the stars, and then immediately subside and plunge into the deep as into an abyss. Again, the clashing of waves, their roaring and crashing—so that you seem to hear roaring lions or thunderbolts striking each other—which indeed create both danger and terror for sailors.
Third, that in an element so unstable and fluid, islands stand firm.
Fourth, that this very element, so fluid, liquid, and tempestuous, is navigable, and spreads itself beneath ships like chariots as if it were solid ground. Indeed, we see the largest ships laden with the heaviest burdens freely plowing the seas and crossing the vast expanses of the Ocean from west to east. In our fathers' age there was Magellan, who by an example unheard of since the beginning of time circumnavigated the entire globe in three years, visiting now us, now those Antipodeans, and from this the ship was given the name Victory, and the strait discovered by him was called the Strait of Magellan.
Fifth, that in it there are various kinds of beasts, not only fish, but also crabs, shells, oysters, amphibians, insects, zoophytes, etc. Many, says Palacius, count 153 species of fish—precisely as many as the fish that St. Peter enclosed in his net at Christ's command, John, last chapter. But others count far more; whence the Psalmist, Psalm 103:25, says there are in the sea "creeping things without number"—which you may refer not only to individuals but also to species.
Sixth, that in the sea there are kinds of all cattle, as Sirach says; therefore all terrestrial cattle have their counterparts in form and shape in the sea—but the sea moreover produces many other things that are not found on land. The sea therefore has its own sea dogs, horses, calves, oxen, foxes, woodpeckers, monkeys, pigs, elephants, salamanders, weasels, swallows, goats, hares, fawns, wolves, leopards, hens, roosters, cranes, crows, cuckoos, sparrows, partridges, pheasants, eagles, etc., whose images, nature, and character Ulysses Aldrovandus and William Rondeletius describe in their book On Fishes. Indeed, in the sea there also grow aquatic herbs and trees, and even moons and stars, living creatures in the same, as Ælian attests, book XV, chapter 4; Pliny, book IX, chapter 60; and Aristotle, book V of the History of Animals, chapter 15. Finally, in the sea there are Satyrs, sirens, monks, and parasites. See Pineda, on Job chapter 26, verse 5, at the end.
Seventh, that in the sea there is "the creation of great beasts," that is, of sea monsters; for it produces various species and prodigies of sea monsters. Moreover, whales or sea monsters are sometimes so large and immense that they not only equal four elephants but even resemble houses, palaces, and islands themselves. Therefore marine fish, says Aldrovandus, are the largest among animals, birds the smallest, and land animals are of moderate size. Because the sea can sustain and nourish such vast bodies as the land could not nourish, still less the air; and therefore birds, which live in the air, are the smallest. Moreover, the character and sagacity of fish is wonderful: to pass over other examples, the dolphin is so sociable and ingenious that it loves humans as brothers, delights in music, is devoted to its parents, is a companion to fishermen, grateful to its benefactors, and escapes nets by its own cunning. Aldrovandus has more on its prudence and sagacity. Pliny says that dolphins playing together in a calm sea presage a storm.
Hence the poets fable that men were transformed into dolphins. Finally, the dolphin is called the king of the sea. Why? Is it because it is the swiftest of all animals, faster than a bird or a javelin, as Pliny attests, book IX, chapter 8?
The eighth wonder is the motion of the sea. For the sea flows from east to west. The Spanish discovered this when sailing from Spain to the West Indies: they complete the voyage in one month because they sail with a following sea; but returning from the Indies to Spain, they need four months, because they sail against the sea and against its thrust. The sea also has three other motions, which our Conimbricenses catalogue, treatise VIII on the Meteora, chapter 8. Moreover, the cause of the sea's motion from east to west is the motion of the sun and the whole heaven from east to west: for from the sun and heaven a hidden force flows into the Ocean, which carries the sea toward the same direction.
The ninth is the tide of the sea, by which the sea in a reciprocal movement now advances toward the shore, now retreats and withdraws into itself. The cause of this tide is the moon; for it rules over the sea and moist things. Hence the sea flows and rises with the moon from its rising to noon, but ebbs when the moon declines from noon to its setting. Again, when the moon proceeds from its setting beneath the earth to the height of the night, that is, to the point opposite noon, the sea also rises and flows; and finally, from the height of the night to the rising, it decreases and ebbs with the moon. So St. Basil, Hexameron VI; St. Ambrose, Hexameron IV; St. Thomas, Scotus, and philosophers generally. Remarkable is the tide of the Euripus, which flows and ebbs seven times per day; since Aristotle was unable to discover its cause, he is said to have died there, worn out by weariness and labor. Whence the saying: "Aristotle does not grasp the Euripus, but the Euripus grasps Aristotle."
The tenth is the purification of the sea. Pliny, book II, chapter 98, says that all seas are purified at the full moon, certain ones on fixed days—understand this especially: for seas at every time of year cast upon the shore various things as well as floating bodies. For fresh corpses cast into the sea are first carried to the shallows, then after some days they emerge and float on the surface, until they are cast by the rolling waves onto the seashore. Grant, therefore, that the sea is impure because of the filth that flows in—for which reason Pythagoras said the sea is the tears of Saturn—yet the sea itself, being a lover of purity, purifies and cleanses itself.
The eleventh is that the sea changes its place and position. Hence in certain places where there was once land, the sea now occupies them, and vice versa. Thus Delos and Rhodes are said to have risen again from the waters. Thus beyond Melos, Anaphe emerged, situated between Lemnos and the Hellespont. Thus certain islands were formed that had previously been attached to the mainland: for Sicily is said to have been torn away from Italy, Cyprus from Syria, Eubœa from Bœotia, Besbycum from Bithynia.
The twelfth is the seashore, which constrains the sea within its own bed, so that although it rages, it nevertheless does not overstep the boundaries of the shore appointed for it by God, according to Job 38:8: "Who shut up the sea with doors?" And the answer, verse 10: "I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors; and I said: Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here you shall break your swelling waves."
Finally, the sea is like the belly of the world. The Macrobian verses teach this, which liken the mass of the world to a man and his members: The heavenly world is the head, the dark sea is the belly, The earth is the feet, the ears dwell in the highest ether, The light of the eyes is the image of the shining sun. Therefore heaven is the head of this great man, the sea is the belly, the earth is the feet, the air is the ears, the rays of the sun are the eyes. For just as man is a microcosm, so conversely the kosmos, that is, the world, is a great man.
Therefore, whenever we see, hear, or read about the sea, let us raise the eyes of our mind to God, the author of the sea, and contemplate and admire His omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness in the sea, and let us say with the Psalmist: "How great are Your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom: the earth is filled with Your riches. This great and wide sea: therein are creeping things without number, creatures small and great. There the ships pass through. This great serpent, which You formed to play therein: all things look to You to give them food in due season," Psalm 104:24.
28. FOR HIS SAKE THE END OF THE JOURNEY IS ESTABLISHED, AND BY HIS WORD ALL THINGS ARE COMPOSED. — In Greek, synkeitai panta, that is, all things hold together. Lyranus and Dionysius refer these words to the shores of the sea, which contain and constrain the sea lest it overflow, as if to say: "For its sake," namely the abyss (for abyssus in Greek is both masculine and feminine in gender), that is, the Ocean, to restrain it, "is established," that is, firmly placed, the "end" and boundary of its "journey," as it were of its flow and motion; beyond which it does not advance to occupy the land, namely the shore, according to Psalm 104: "You have set a boundary which they shall not pass over, neither shall they return to cover the earth."
the earth—and this on account of the end appointed and proper to each one. That they firmly tend toward the end of their journey and motion and attain it—this is through God as the efficient cause, and for the sake of God as the final cause, because God is the ultimate end of all creatures and all motions. All creatures, therefore, tend by diverse paths to diverse proximate ends; but all these ultimately converge in God, who is the ultimate end of all things, namely that in all things His goodness, power, wisdom, justice, etc. may shine forth and be praised. Hence all creatures in reality say that word of St. Augustine: "You have created us, O Lord, for Yourself; and our heart is restless until it rests in You."
But the phrase "for its sake," or as the Greek has it, di' autou, that is "through Him," is more properly referred to God: for it is to God, not to the sea, that what follows pertains: "And by His word all things are composed." Therefore he calls the "end of the journey" the end of creatures, toward which each one tends and proceeds by, as it were, a continuous journey; because this end has been "established" for them by God, that is, firmly placed and stabilized, as if to say: All creatures are in perpetual motion and journeying toward their end; for they firmly and constantly tend toward their end and do not desist until they attain it. For, as I have said, the sun, moon, and stars are in perpetual motion; snow, dew, frost, winds, etc. continually descend upon or blow through the earth—and this on account of the end appointed and proper to each one.
Wherefore, explaining further he adds: "And by His word all things are composed," that is, disposed, ordered—namely, the beginnings, means, and ends of all things are so aptly composed by God among themselves that one looks to another, and is strengthened, completed, and perfected by it. So Palacius. The meaning, he says, is as follows: The journey of all creatures is confirmed and prospers on account of God. Because God is the end of all things, therefore those things that come prosperously to their end, come for God's sake; for He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Therefore, for the end of the journey to be established means for a thing to come firmly to its end. If therefore trees come to the ripeness of their fruits, if crops ripen, if animals are perfected—they are perfected for God's sake, namely that they may be pleasing to Him by obeying His will. For it has been said: "God has made all things for Himself." The Author adds that God is not only the end of all creatures but also their means; because by His word and decree all things are composed, constituted, and stabilized. Therefore God is not only the beginning and end of things, but also the means through which the life of things subsists. Therefore from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things.
Mystically, Rabanus says: "For His sake, he says, that is for the sake of the Son of God, the order of passing things is established, and the boundary of the age is set. Because just as all things received their origin from the Word of God, so also they find their end in Him. For He Himself says in Revelation, chapter 22, verse 13: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."
The Greek text, which reads as follows, supports the meaning already given: di' autou euodoi telos autou, that is, through Him the end of it is well directed, or prospers. The Romans, reading euodei instead of euodoi, translate: Through Him is the prosperous success of its end, or, for His sake its end is prosperity—which amounts to the same thing, as if to say: Through God directing all things, every work or every thing created by Him proceeds prosperously and tends happily to its end and attains it. The Tigurina: All things through Him shall attain their happy end, and stand by His command. Our translator, instead of euodoi, read hodoi, that is, of the journey; and thus there is a beautiful paronomasia between euodei and hodou, as if to say: Each thing, with God directing it on its hodos, that is, its way and journey, has euodian, that is, a happy journey and prosperity, by which it attains its goal and end.
The Complutensian edition and certain others read differently, namely thus: di' autou euodoi ho angelos autou, that is, for His sake the Angel is prospered and prospers, or is well and rightly directed and directs, His Angel—as if to say: From God and through God the Angel who presides over the sea, or the Angel who presides over the whole universe, has the power to rightly govern and direct it through himself and his Angels and the men subordinate to him, because he himself in turn is governed, directed, and prospered by God.
But the former reading is more fitting and more correct, and the Latin Vulgate conforms to it. For it seems that from hodou, which is contained in euodoi, when connected with telos—since this was not understood—angelos was formed and corrupted. Vatablus suspects that in the Hebrew of the elder Sirach there was originally מלאכתו (melactho), that is, "his work," namely that it prospers, for which in the margin was written מלאכו (malacho), which means "his Angel."
Moreover, the Greek codices vary remarkably here. For besides the two readings already catalogued, the codex of Aldus Manutius has: di' autou euodoi telos autou, that is, for their sake, or for these things' sake, his end has success (fragrance). The German codex: di' auton euodoi telos autou, that is, for their sake his end is prospered. Others: di' autou euodoi telos auton, that is, for His sake (the Lord's) their end is prosperously directed.
Whence instead of "is established," manuscript codices read "is consummated," as if to say: With God as guide, all things created by Him will attain their end toward which they are directed, and by the instinct of nature implanted in them by God, they are, as it were, carried and run of their own accord: for there their creation, nature, and good are consummated.
29. WE SHALL SAY MUCH, AND YET SHALL FALL SHORT IN WORDS. — As if to say: Although we have said much about the works of God, yet we shall fall short in cataloguing, explaining, praising, and celebrating them. See the nine things to be considered and admired in the works of God, which I catalogued at Genesis 1:31. Moreover, each person ought to consider each and every work of God as if He had made it for him alone: for thus they serve him as if they served him alone, and God attends to him as if He attended to him alone and cared for him alone, says St. Augustine in the Soliloquies, chapter 14. Admirably St. Basil, Homily II on the Hexameron: "The entire mass of this world, he says, is like a book written in letters, openly attesting and proclaiming the glory of God, and declaring His most august majesty to you, the intellectual creature, so that in it you may contemplate, admire, worship, and revere now God's wisdom, now His goodness, now His omnipotence, now His other attributes."
BUT THE CONSUMMATION OF WORDS IS: HE IS IN ALL THINGS. — As if to say: Since we cannot enumerate and celebrate all the works of God in words, let the end and sum of our words and discourses be that God is in all things, and therefore God is all things: because He is the beginning, middle, and end of all, He is the efficient, conserving, and final cause of all. For in Greek it reads: synteleia logon to pan estin autos, that is, but the end of what has been said is: He Himself is all. Clearly the Tigurina: We have said much (about God and God's works), and yet have not done justice to the subject: the sum of what has been said is that He is all things. God therefore is pan, that is, all, the universe.
The Complutensian and Roman editions translate as our Vulgate: He is in all things, because, namely, God is not formally all things—for God is not the sun, not the sky, not the air, not a horse, etc.—but causally God is all things, because He is present in all things, making them, preserving them, directing, moving, governing them, and showing Himself wonderful in all things. Jansenius translates: The consummation of words is: He is the universe—that is, the sum of things said and to be said about God's works is this: God is all things, that is, all things must be referred to Him; all things must be attributed to Him, both that they exist, and that they endure, and that they accomplish anything. He is the beginning, middle, and end of all things; from whom all things, through whom all things, and in whom all things—He is the one to be attended to in all things. And so in our reading, the phrase "in all things" should not be joined with what follows, as many distinguish it, but with "He is"—and a period should be placed after "But the consummation of words"; so that the meaning is: The sum of everything, and to say it summarily, He is in all things; just as Paul also says of Christ that He fills all things in all.
In the Greek there is the greatest praise of God: for they read in this manner: "The consummation of words: He is all," or "He is the universe." This saying is found frequently stated by Hermes Trismegistus, as can be seen in Dialogues IX and X, but especially in Pimander V, where he says: "That we may confess the clear truth, we shall confess that God is all things." Nor indeed does Paul greatly differ from this theology when he says: "Then the Son shall be subject to Him, that God may be all in all." And John, saying: "What was made, in Him was life"—that is, all things made are life in Him. Solomon also alluded to this when he called the Holy Spirit the subtle world. This passage explains everything. For this corporeal world is such that it embraces all corporeal things in a corporeal manner. But God is a better world, containing all corporeal things in an incorporeal and immutable manner, so that we all exist better in God than in ourselves. Therefore God is all things eminently. Therefore He is the beginning, middle, and end; therefore the way, the truth, and the life. When therefore our Author says the sum of everything is that God is in all things, understand this as: the beginning, middle, and end—the cause of things, namely the efficient, conserving, and final cause of all things, says Palacius. In which only correct this: that the word "world" in Wisdom 7:23 seems to be taken for the globe or universe, when in fact "world" there means the same as "pure"—for in Greek it is katharos—although the Wise Man in the same passage, verses 18 and 22, sufficiently indicates that God and God's wisdom contain and embrace all things that are in the world, and consequently that God is the transcendental world.
Hence again God is the consummation both of things and of all discourses: both because by discoursing about and praising created things, we implicitly discourse about and praise God, their maker and creator; and because the aim, end, and center of all our thoughts, works, and discourses ought to be God. And with St. Dominic and St. Thomas Aquinas, "let all our discourse be with God or about God"—either formally and expressly, or virtually and implicitly. "For in His hand are both we and our words," Wisdom 7:16.
Symbolically, "The consummation of words: He is in all things." First, as if to say: God is He who consummates, that is, perfects, all words, that is, all things that we express in speech. Again, He consummates, that is, brings to their end, so that having completed their course, they cease, are terminated, and come to an end, according to Psalm 118: "I have seen an end of all perfection: Your commandment is exceedingly broad." As if to say: God consummates and ends all things, and alone survives after all things, as the terminus and consummation of all things, in which all things are ended and cease, just as rivers flow and drain into the sea. Whence in Greek it reads: autos esti to pan, that is, He is all things. Second, properly the consummation of discourses is God; because all discourses about creatures are unconsummated, imperfect, and incomplete, since creatures themselves are incomplete and imperfect. But discourse about God is consummated and perfect, because He Himself is in every direction consummated and perfect, indeed immense and infinite.
Note: God is to pan, that is, all and everything: both because God formally has in Himself the ocean and fullness of being, namely all existence, all life, all wisdom, all power, all majesty, all strength, all glory, etc.; and because He eminently contains all things; and because He is causally all things, for He creates and produces all things. God therefore is to pan, that is, all and everything: because He is to on, that is, the first essential being, immense, on whom all other beings necessarily and essentially depend, so much so that if, per impossibile, God did not exist, it would be impossible for any other being to exist. Hence it follows that every being depends on the first being, that is on God, just as rays depend on the sun and heat on fire—indeed far more so, to the point that every thing depends more on God and on the divine being than on its own being. Thus God is the first entity, the first truth, the first holiness, the first light, the first goodness, the first sweetness, the first life, the first reason, the first mind, etc., on which all others that exist or can exist so necessarily depend that if it did not exist, none of the others could exist; because from that first being, as from its idea and essential cause, flows all created entity, truth, holiness, life, mind of angels, of men, and of all things. So great is the divinity, so great is our God, so great is the dependence of creatures upon God. He therefore is to pan, He is all being, both His own and that of all creatures. Whence His name is "Jehovah," that is, "He who is," or "I am who am," Exodus 3:14 and 6:3. See what was said there.
Hence it follows that God is the foundation, soul, spirit, and as it were the body of all things and of the whole universe. For He preserves, contains, and sustains creatures like shadows, which otherwise, if they were not continually preserved and contained by God, would relapse into the nothingness from which they were drawn by God. Just as shadows depend more on the body that casts them than on themselves, so much more do all creatures depend on God than on themselves; and all ought to confess and say with St. Francis: "My God and all things"—You are my pan and that of all things.
Therefore God is to pan: first, locally, because He permeates and occupies all places of the universe, being everywhere by His essence, presence, and power. Whence He Himself is, as it were, the first and uncreated space, or immense place, receiving and locating all places and all things placed in them, as our Lessius beautifully teaches, book II On the Divine Attributes, chapter 2, from St. Dionysius, chapter 1 of On the Divine Names, where he calls God "the seat and foundation on which all things are established and rest." Wherefore the whole world is in God like a small sponge in the vastest sea, or like a glass ball in the light of the sun, because it is everywhere penetrated and surrounded by Him.
Second, God is to pan arithmetically: because containing in Himself all species, numbers, degrees, and orders of things, He bestows upon each its own number, species, and degree, according to the text: "You have disposed all things in measure, and number, and weight," Wisdom 11.
Third, God is to pan metaphysically: because He is the being of beings, the essence of all essences, the act actualizing the potencies of all things. Hear St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter 1: God, he says, is "every beginning, every end, all life, all immortality, all wisdom, all order, all harmony, all power, all preservation, all firmness, all distribution, all intelligence, reason, sense, possession; all stability and motion, all connection, all temperament, all friendship, all agreement, all division, all boundary, and all other things."
Fourth, God is to pan physically, because He is the nature that gives nature to all natures: for He distributes to each its own nature and the endowments of nature. Just as a candle draws its light from the flame and a stream draws its water from the spring, so every thing begs and receives its nature from the nature of God. Whence Plato thought God to be the soul of the world, whom Virgil followed when he sang of Him thus: A spirit nourishes within, and a mind infused through the limbs drives the whole mass and mingles with the great body.
Fifth, mathematically and optically. For if you mentally abstract things from matter and gaze upon the foundation of all things, you will see God hidden there, who sustains, orders, and measures all things. Whence the Poet: "Jupiter is whatever you see"—not that the creature is God the Creator, but that God is the base, foundation, column, quantity, and substance of all things, because He creates, preserves, and sustains the substance and quantity of each thing.
Wherefore St. Dionysius, in On the Divine Names, asserts that God is the center of the universe. For just as the center is the base of a circle, so God is the base of the universe. Again, just as in the center all diametrical lines running to the circumference converge and unite—and the further they are from the center, the more they also depart from and distance themselves from each other—so likewise all creatures converge and are united in God. Whence when men or angels depart from God through sin, they likewise separate from each other and fall into hatreds and schisms. Therefore, when you gaze upon a creature, penetrate with the eye of the mind to its foundation, and there behold, admire, and venerate the God who lies hidden. But for this lynx-like vision, lynx-like sharpness is needed: for God, although most clear in Himself, is to us a most subtle spirit and dwells in inaccessible light. Eagles and lynxes, therefore, are those who with lynx-like eyes penetrate creatures to their very foundation and perceive God residing there.
Sixth, actively and operatively: for God not only gives to each thing its nature, measure, endowments, and qualities, but also works in them all their operations, according to the text: "In Him we live and move and have our being," Acts 17.
Therefore when you see the sun coursing through the sky with such velocity and illuminating the earth, think of God, who gives both its course and its illumination to the sun, and so impels, drives, and stirs the sun that it runs so swiftly and lights up the earth. When you see plants beautifully leafing, flowers beautifully blooming, trees producing remarkable fruits, etc., think of God, who works and produces those leaves, flowers, and fruits. Think the same in the operations of all things, and especially of the soul—both your own and anyone else's: for when your soul sees, hears, tastes, imagines, thinks, reasons, understands, wills, and remembers, it is God who works each and all of these things in your soul. Therefore behold, love, and adore God so present and active in your soul. Wherefore St. Bernard, in his Sentences: "Those, he says, who devote themselves to God alone, considering what God is in the world, what in men, what in angels, what in Himself, what in the reprobate, contemplate that God is the ruler and governor of the world, the liberator and helper of men, the savor and beauty of Angels, in Himself the beginning and the end, the terror and horror of the reprobate: wonderful in creatures, lovable in men, desirable in angels, incomprehensible in Himself, intolerable in the reprobate." See more on this subject in the same author, Sermons 46 and 23 on the Canticle.
Allegorically, God and Christ is to pan, because He is the author and cause of all faith, grace, and virtue for all the faithful, according to Paul: "There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who works all in all," I Corinthians 12:4. For God in Christ summed up and gathered all things, so that Christ is the recapitulation, perfection, end, epilogue, crown, sum, and compendium not only of the law and the Prophets but also of all the works of God and the whole universe, according to the text: "He proposed to restore all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on earth," Ephesians 1:10. Hence Christ is called the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Revelation 4:8. See what was said there. Whence also Christ dying on the cross exclaimed: "It is consummated."
Anagogically, God and Christ in heaven is to pan for the Blessed, that is, all good, all happiness, all glory, according to I Corinthians 15:28: "That God may be all in all."
Finally, St. Bernard elegantly describes to pan in book V of On Consideration, chapter 11: "What, he says, is God? With respect to the universe, the end; with respect to election, salvation; with respect to Himself, He alone knows. What is God? An omnipotent will, a most benevolent power, an eternal light, an unchangeable reason, the supreme blessedness. Creating the mind to participate in Himself, vivifying it to feel, moving it to desire, expanding it to receive, filling it for happiness, surrounding it for security. What is God? No less the punishment of the perverse than the glory of the humble: for He is a certain rational direction of equity, unalterable and unbending, reaching everywhere—against which all wickedness that dashes itself must necessarily be confounded."
Tropologically: O creature, O man, O faithful soul, call back your hope and love from creatures and bestow them upon God, who is your pan. You came from nothing, and therefore you need many things—indeed, all things. You seek and beg them in vain from creatures, since they themselves are not to pan but, like you, need to pantos (the whole). Why do you pursue shadows, why streams? Why do you not go to the fountain, indeed the ocean of all good things? If you need wisdom—God is wisdom itself, the fountainhead from which all wisdom flows. If you lack health and strength—God is immortality itself, health and strength. If you are destitute of charity, holiness, and virtues—God is holiness itself, charity, and virtue. Do you need everything? Go to to pan. Are you everywhere vexed by sorrows, slanders, poverty, afflictions? Go to God; He is to pan, which is the remedy for every sorrow, slander, poverty, and affliction. Just as He is to pan of majesty, omnipotence, and omniscience, so likewise He is to pan of all patience, all fortitude, all counsel, all grace; and therefore He is to be worshiped and venerated as the panteion (universal temple) of all religion, all obedience, all fear, and all love. For all creatures, by a kind of natural sense, feel their Creator, venerate, adore, obey, fear, and love Him; and therefore, to pass over other things, at the Passion of Christ the sun and moon were darkened and mourned the death of their God, the rocks were split, the tombs were opened, and the whole world shook, convulsed from its center. What then should man not do here? Surely he should love, worship, obey, and fear his God, to pan, with his whole heart. For, as I said before, he depends more on God than on himself; and therefore he is bound to love the good of God more than his own proper good, and to die for it, and, if it were necessary, to be annihilated. For the good of God is the good of each and of the whole universe, and this is a greater good than any individual good or the common good of the whole universe. If therefore the fear of a man—for example, a king or a tyrant—urges one to offend God, let the man fear offending God more than the king. For a king can destroy only the body, but God can destroy both body and soul in hell, Matthew 10:28. For just as God is the pan of sweetness and joys for the elect, so He is the pan of bitterness and torments for the reprobate—inasmuch as He can torment them with all, indeed infinite, punishments. If the love of a creature entices to sin, let one say: I love to pan more than a drop or a shadow of good. If anxiety, anguish, or care distracts the mind, let one cast it upon God, who is to pan, that is, the provider, caretaker, and orderer of all things. If a difficult task must be undertaken that surpasses our strength, let one look to to pan and say with the Apostle: "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me"—I can do all things in the Omnipotent; for the Omnipotent makes those who hope in Him omnipotent, says St. Bernard. In this Ocean of God, therefore, swim as fish in the sea; fly, as birds circle and circle again in the air, as atoms dance in the rays of the sun. Admirably St. Bernard, Sermon 48 on the Canticle: "Nothing, he says, among human things can fill a creature made in the image of God, except God who is charity, who alone is greater than it." And St. Anselm: "If I love something because it is good, what is a thousand times better I ought to love more. Why then do you wander through many things, O man, seeking the goods of your soul and body? Love the one good that is every good, and it suffices. Desire the simple good that is the supreme good, and it is enough. The streams of desirable goods are diverse; the one fountain of all is God. But the fountain is better and more desirable than the stream, the cause than the effect—indeed, incomparably better."
Morally: Therefore the consummation and perfection of wisdom and virtue, for both man and angel, is God—namely, union with God, that is, to direct all our thoughts, intentions, and actions toward God, and to love Him in all creatures and all things in Him, if we continually imagine Him present to us. For the soul, wounded by the noonday sight of its Creator, is kindled with that eternal love by which it not only clasps Him in the dearest embraces but draws all things to Him, sees all things in Him, and gazes upon Him alone in all things, panting and sighing toward Him, saying: As often as I sigh and aspire, toward You, O my God, I sigh and aspire. Wherefore, wherever it may be, whatever it does—whether it eats, or drinks, or studies, etc.—it looks to Him whom it loves; it does all things for His sake who loved it; and in Him it lives, dies, and rests through the repose of love and contemplation, and sits in the beauty of peace and in rich rest. O Lord God of my heart, O fire who sweetly burns and secretly shines, who sweetly gives forth fragrance! Occupy the whole region of my mind, O King of kings, King of eternal glory, that I may hunger and thirst for You alone, sigh toward You, and ardently desire to see Your honey-flowing face. Pierce, O lovable Jesus, the marrow of my soul with the sweetest dart of love; perforate my heart with fiery charity, that my soul may utterly languish with desire for You, and be wholly dissolved in love, wholly melted, wholly pass into You. Separate, O Lord, my mind from all things that are under heaven, that it may freely attend to You alone, and You alone may inhabit it as its proper possessor. Let Your sweetest fragrance descend upon me; let the ineffable scent of Your divine charity come to me, which may arouse in me pure and everlasting desires.
The Gentiles saw these things as through a shadow, but did not perceive the reality itself; therefore they twisted them into superstitions. For the Arcadians invented a god to whom they gave the name Pan, because he was the lord of all matter. Pan, says Servius, is a god formed in the likeness of nature; whence he is called Pan, that is, all: for he has horns in the likeness of the rays of the sun and moon. His face is red in imitation of the ether; on his breast he has a spotted fawnskin in the image of the stars; his lower part is shaggy, on account of trees, bushes, and wild beasts; he has goat's feet to show the solidity of the earth; he carries a flute of seven reeds on account of the harmony of heaven in which there are seven tones; he has a shepherd's crook, that is, a curved staff, on account of the year which curves back upon itself—because he is the god of all nature. By the Poets he is imagined to have wrestled with Love and been defeated by him, because love conquers all. Wherefore Eusebius, book III of the Preparation for the Gospel, affirms that Pan is a symbol of the universe: horns were given to him on account of the sun and moon; a panther's skin on account of the variety of celestial things. Whence that saying of Orpheus: I invoke Pan, the great one who contains the whole world, Who holds the sea, the sky, the fruit-bearing lands, And the eternal fire: all these are the members of Pan. And Homer in the Hymns: And they called him Pan, because he had aided all alike. Giraldus has more on Pan in On the Gods of the Nations, Syntagma 75, and Natalis Comes, book V of the Mythology, chapter 6. Therefore, for the reasons already stated, the ancients and the Philosophers called God to pan, that is, the universe, as Eugubinus teaches in On the Perennial Philosophy, book III, chapter 8, because He embraces all things that in any way participate in being. And in that oracle "The Great Pan is dead" (which Plutarch mentions in his book On the Failure of Oracles), Christ is "the Great Pan," as some hold, because He is the lord of all things and contains all things in Himself—although others understand it differently. To the same point, according to the interpretation of many, belongs what the Lord said to Moses, Exodus 33: "I will show you all good"—namely because in God are all things.
Wherefore Blessed Lawrence Justinian, Patriarch of Venice, used to say: "True knowledge is to know these two things, namely that God is all things, and that oneself is nothing." So his Life records.
Finally, just as God's name is pan, that is, all, so man's and the creature's name is oudeis and ouden—that is, nobody and nothing. By calling himself this name, Ulysses cleverly eluded the wrath of Polyphemus and escaped his hands, as I have recounted elsewhere. Let man therefore say to God: Who are You, Lord, and who am I? You are the pan of all good; I am ouden, that is, nothing and nothingness, whether you consider being, or wisdom, or power, or virtue. It is Yours, therefore, O pan, to fill my ouden. Of myself I am nothing, I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am worth nothing. From You I am something, I know, I can do, and I am worth only as much as it has pleased You to communicate and freely bestow upon me. Have mercy, therefore, on the oudenos, that is, on the nothing, O pan, and from Your abyss of good things impart a few drops of goodness to it, that from no one and nothing I may become someone and something—and thus a participant, subject, eulogist, and herald of Your fullness. This is the wisdom of the Saints.
30 and 31. GLORIFYING (that is, glorify) HIM, HOW SHALL WE PREVAIL? FOR HE IS ALMIGHTY ABOVE ALL HIS WORKS. THE LORD IS TERRIBLE, AND EXCEEDINGLY GREAT, AND HIS POWER IS ADMIRABLE. — From here to the end of the chapter he exhorts all to praise God the Creator, that they may praise and celebrate Him with all the powers of soul and body, since He is greater than all praise, and His majesty and excellence cannot be comprehended by the mind and therefore cannot be expressed in words. The Greek reads: doxazontes, pou ischysomen, which the Romans translate: "glorifying, how shall we prevail?" As if to say: How little it is that we can glorify God! For "glorifying," that is, in glorifying Him, "how far shall we be able to reach?" We shall certainly never attain to the summit of His majesty; indeed, we shall scarcely follow His faint traces from afar. The reason is that we can know and celebrate God only from His works. But God's works are infinitely less and lower than God: "For He is almighty" and immeasurably transcends and towers "above all His works." He is "the terrible Lord, and exceedingly great, and His power is admirable." As if to say: God surpasses all the glory we can give Him—both because He is almighty and terribly great, while we have little power in praise, just as in every other thing and action; and because He is exceedingly great, while we are small, and compared to Him we are not even ants. How then shall we be able to measure or worthily celebrate that gigantic majesty with our minds or words? Also because His power is admirable; whence we can admire it but cannot express or penetrate it, for admiration arises from ignorance, says Aristotle at the beginning of the Metaphysics. So the Tigurina: How much, it says, shall we prevail in praising! For He is greater than all His works. The Lord is terrible and exceedingly great, and admirable in His power.
Wherefore St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Hymn to God, celebrates Him thus: O living Trinity! I shall sing of You, the one Monarch, Who has no origin and no change: All the power of speech falls short of expressing Your being, And Your supreme splendor escapes every gaze. Indeed the Psalmist also says: "Great is the Lord and exceedingly worthy of praise, and of His greatness there is no end," Psalm 144:3. Explaining this, Rabanus says here: A wondrous combination, he says, and a true proclamation: to praise the Lord in such a way that, as great as He is, you do not think it can be fully expressed; for the perception of every creature falls short, and the retraction before those realities ever increases. For just as He is confined by no place, so neither can the most ample eloquence bring His praises to an end: His power is inexplicable, His mercy incomprehensible, His wisdom ineffable; whose true definition is to have no end in holy praises.
Wherefore it is proper to God that the more He is known, the more He shows that there is yet more to be known. For the more anyone meditates on God and God's power, the more he perceives His immensity, and ever more and more things present themselves for him to search and meditate upon into infinity—just as the deeper one enters into the sea, the more and deeper expanses one discovers yet remain to be traversed. For God, as the Psalmist says, Psalm 17:12: "He made darkness His hiding place." Wherefore Gregory Nazianzen wisely says in the Apology: "As much as God is perceived, He withdraws Himself equally; and those who love Him, from the very fact that He flees and, as it were, snatches Himself away as if caught, He draws upward to higher things." The same author, Oration 49, which is on faith, thus defines or rather describes God: "Certainly, he says, this is God: that when He is spoken of, He cannot be spoken of; when He is estimated, He cannot be estimated; when He is defined, He grows by the very definition—whom all things do not know, and by fearing, know." This is what Sophar, the friend of Job, says in chapter 11:7: "Can you perhaps comprehend the traces of God, and find the Almighty unto perfection? He is higher than the heavens, and what will you do? Deeper than hell, and how will you know? His measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea." And the Psalmist: "I believed, he says, therefore I have spoken; but I have been humbled exceedingly," Psalm 115, verse 1. On which text St. Chrysostom says: "Whoever, he says, contemplates the unspeakable majesty of God with the eyes of the heart, and recognizes that God is as much more sublime than man as the heaven is more sublime than an ant—it is no wonder if he is struck with awe within himself and says: But I have been humbled exceedingly. Whence Abraham also, in comparison with God, said he was earth and ashes," Genesis 18:27. And St. Gregory, book XVIII of the Morals, chapter 27: "All the saints, he says, the more they perceive the inner things of the divinity, the more they recognize themselves to be nothing. Nowhere indeed do we read that Abraham professed himself to be ashes and dust except when he merited to have a conversation with God. For perhaps he would have believed himself to be someone, had he not in the least perceived the true essence that is above him. Nor indeed does this happen only to men, but also to angels, and even to the Cherubim and Seraphim. For therefore with two wings they veil both the face of God and their own, Isaiah 6, because gazing as it were from close by upon such a radiance of divinity, they are dimmed, darkened, and as it were blinded by His immense splendor. If God is so admirable in the works of creation, how much more admirable is He in the works of redemption?
32. GLORIFYING THE LORD AS MUCH AS EVER YOU CAN: FOR HE WILL YET SURPASS, AND ADMIRABLE IS HIS MAGNIFICENCE. (The Malmundarian codex, which Francis Lucas cites, placing the word "and" before "yet," reads thus: He will surpass, and yet admirable is His magnificence.) BLESS THE LORD, EXALT HIM AS MUCH AS YOU CAN: FOR HE IS GREATER THAN ALL PRAISE. — "Glorifying," that is, glorify the Lord. This is a Hebraism; for the participle is used instead of the imperative, just as in Romans 12:12. The meaning is, as if to say: Glorify God as much as you can, because however much you glorify Him, you will never have done so worthily of Him, nor will you match His majesty and glory; but it will infinitely transcend your praises and acclamations. For the Creator of all men and Angels is immeasurably greater than all created praise.
The Greek combines these two verses into one, in this way: Glorifying the Lord, exalt as much as you can; for He will yet exceed. The Complutensian: for He will exceed still more. Others: for He will yet tower above. The Tigurina: As much as you can, extol the Lord in praising; since He is always greater than praise. Wherefore, just as St. Bernard in his treatise On Loving God truly and wisely said: "The reason for loving God is God: the measure of loving God is to love without measure," because God is infinitely lovable—so likewise you may truly and wisely say: The measure of praising God is to praise without measure, because He is infinitely praiseworthy. However much, therefore, you praise Him, He will still surpass. Because the more one knows about God and celebrates those things, the more one sees in Him that is immense and incomprehensible, far more worthy of praise and celebration. Just as the higher you climb a mountain, the more fields and lands you see and the farther you extend your gaze—indeed, seeing a lofty mountain from a distance, you think its summit touches the sky, and when you have climbed it, you see how far it is from the sky. This is what Gregory Nazianzen says, Oration 1: "Such is the nature of God: He recedes as much as He is grasped." Here that saying is true: "The abyss" of ignorance "calls upon the abyss" of God's wisdom. And that of the Psalmist, Psalm 63, verse 7: "Man shall come to a deep heart, and God shall be exalted." Explaining this, St. Cyprian, in the book On the Cardinal Works, in the prologue, page 3, 21, 25, says: "Whatever, he says, can be heard, or seen, or known, does not befit the majesty: in this contemplation every edge of the senses is blunted and the gaze grows dim. This invisible light and inaccessible nature the Seraphim with six wings, on this side and that, surround and hide by their standing and flying—by their standing showing the immobility of eternity, but by their flying His height, so elevated above that however much man may ascend to a deep heart, God is exalted and escapes the importunity of comprehension." And below: "We taste, we sip, we adore, and He is near... and when you draw near, He moves further away." Therefore the higher you ascend toward God, the more you see how sublime God is, and the higher you see God exalted above you and your knowledge. So the more you worship and love God, the more worthy of worship and love you judge Him, and the more you desire to worship and love Him. The same is true in perfection: for the more you advance in virtue, the greater fields of virtue you see into which to run; the further you perceive yourself to be from the goal and summit of virtue, and the more you are spurred to run forward on the path of perfection, to reach its goal and apex.
He alludes to Psalm 144:3: "Great is the Lord and exceedingly worthy of praise, and (that is, because) of His greatness there is no end." As if to say: Because the greatness of God—whether you consider His deity, His providence, His power, His goodness, His duration, or His kingdom and dominion over men, angels, and the whole universe through all ages—is infinite in every direction, therefore equally infinite praise, as well as service and worship, is owed to Him. Do not therefore think you have praised and worshiped God enough, or labored enough for Him, because He by His greatness immeasurably surpasses and transcends all your labor, worship, and praise. Strive therefore each day more and more to praise and worship Him, so that what you cannot achieve in reality, you may attain by the endeavor and desire of infinitely praising and worshiping Him as He deserves. Whence St. Augustine, on the verse of Psalm 144 just cited: "Therefore, he says, he said 'exceedingly' (so St. Augustine reads instead of 'very much'), because of His greatness there is no end—lest perchance you begin to want to praise and think you can finish praising by your praise, when His greatness can have no end, etc. Therefore, just as there is no end of His greatness, so there shall be no end of your praise." And St. Chrysostom on the same verse: "And of His greatness there is no end—which another translator rendered 'discovery' (another, 'investigation'). What he means is this: Since you have a great Lord, be yourself also lofty, and disentangle yourself from the things that pertain to this life. Take on a spirit that surpasses the lowliness of present things—not to be proud and insolent, but great-souled and lofty, etc. For he is truly lofty of soul who is humble of mind and considers the shadows of the present life to be nothing."
34. EXALTING HIM, BE FILLED WITH STRENGTH, THAT YOU MAY NOT LABOR IN VAIN: FOR YOU SHALL NOT COMPREHEND HIM. — For "that you may not labor," the Greek is me kopiate, which can also be translated "do not grow weary."
First, then, Palacius, Dionysius, the Gloss, Lyranus, and others translate with our Vulgate: "do not labor"; and they explain it as a correction, as if to say: If you have great talent, sharpness, and strength, put on the man, bring forth all your powers, flex your muscles, so as to praise God worthily. But do not labor in vain, wishing to match God and God's praises with the words and acclamations you have conceived; for you will not comprehend or match Him, because He surpasses and exceeds your praises immeasurably. Whence the Gloss, Lyranus, and many theologians prove from this passage that God is incomprehensible, in that He cannot be perfectly known and comprehended by us.
Second, and more plainly, the Tigurina, Jansenius, and others translate: "do not grow weary." As if to say: Exalt God as much as you can; exercise all your strength, that is, all your powers, in His praises, and do not grow weary of praising Him with all your might. Because whatever powers you exert, however much you labor and exhaust yourselves in praising Him, you will never comprehend Him, that is, you will never attain a full, perfect, and adequate praise worthy of His dignity. Therefore labor and exhaust yourselves in His praise, because all your labor, all your weariness, all your praising does not suffice for you to praise Him as He deserves and is worthy. Therefore the phrase "do not labor" is, by catachresis and metalepsis, the same as "do not grow weary in the labor"—but persist and grow in it with alacrity. Thus in chapter 16:27, speaking of the heavens, he said: "They neither hunger nor labor (that is, grow weary), and they do not cease from their works." So the Tigurina: Therefore, it says, in extolling Him, exercise your powers and do not grow weary; for you will not be able to satisfy. Others: Exalting Him, apply the utmost strength, lest you be exhausted; for not even so will you attain. Sirach gives the reason, saying: "Who has seen Him and shall describe Him?"
Morally, Sirach here teaches that there are various degrees both of intensity and of extension in divine praise, and that the worshiper of God ought to ascend gradually through these degrees, so as to praise God more and more perfectly each day, and if possible, to find a manner of praising God that matches Him, and to praise Him as much as He is praiseworthy. For the praise of God is manifold, and in many modes and degrees God can be praised and glorified by us, as I briefly indicated in passing on another occasion at chapter 15:9. But here it must be treated more fully.
The first degree is that by which all creatures with a mute voice continually celebrate their Creator, while in themselves they commend and display His power, wisdom, and goodness to all, according to Psalm 18:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands." Let every faithful person claim this for himself, inviting with David all creatures to the praise of God: "Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord," etc.
The second is that by which men, especially the faithful and saints, on earth, considering the immense majesty, beneficence, and perfection of God, proclaim it with mind and voice; and because they cannot fully accomplish this in this life, they aspire to the next, saying: "Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, O Lord; they shall praise You forever and ever." Thus St. Francis, perpetually considering the immense beauty of God, aspired to it and languished with desire, and indeed died unto it, saying: "Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name; the just wait for me until You reward me." St. Bonaventure is the witness, in his Life.
The third is that by which the blessed in heaven—men and angels, especially the Seraphim burning with love and admiration of God—forever sing to Him: "Alleluia, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory," Isaiah 6, Revelation 4. Just as nightingales sing whole days and nights and praise God at the beginning of spring, and delight in nothing other than their song, and strive constantly to increase and intensify it and to surpass all others—to the point that sometimes they burst and die from this vocal exertion—so too the Blessed and the Seraphim exhaust all their powers in praising God; and when they see that they cannot praise Him worthily as He deserves, but that He is immeasurably more beautiful and praiseworthy, they wish to praise Him immeasurably more; but because they see themselves surpassed by Him, they rejoice in the fact that God is so great as to be above all praise.
The fourth is that by which the Blessed Virgin and Christ praise God. For the Blessed Virgin, just as she far surpasses all men and angels in grace, so also in glory and in the vision of God; whence, penetrating more deeply into the beauty and attributes of God, she celebrates them more excellently than all. But Christ does this far more as man, whose grace and glory is the grace and glory of the Head, from whom all others participate their grace and glory. Who can comprehend with what ardor, what perfection, what jubilation Christ glorifies God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Himself and in the work of the Incarnation, which He accomplished in Himself and bestowed upon Himself—namely, that this humanity of His might be united to the Word, and therefore this man might hypostatically be God and the Son of God, and through it He might work our redemption and the salvation of the whole universe? We may employ and claim for ourselves all these modes, by desiring and offering to God with gratitude the praises of all the Saints, all the Seraphim, the Blessed Virgin, and Christ the Lord, and by joining our voices and praises with theirs, as the Church does in the Mass, in the Preface of the Canon. Yet no praise, not even Christ's as man, since it is finite, equals the dignity of God, which is infinite.
The fifth and adequate mode of praising God, therefore, is that by which the Most Holy Trinity itself, contemplating itself, infinitely praises and glorifies itself from all eternity unto all eternity. The Church frequently employs this very praise of God Himself—indeed, individuals do so whenever at the end of each psalm they sing: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." For here what is understood is not created glory but uncreated, essential, and eternal glory of God, which He has in Himself, through Himself, from Himself, and which is God Himself, as is evident from what we add: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." As if to say: May God ever be praised and glorified with that praise and glory which He had before every creature, in His immense eternity and eternal immensity—namely, by which the Father praises the Son and the Holy Spirit, and They in turn praise the Father with infinite, perpetual, and most intense praise. Wherefore St. Francis frequently jubilated: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." For by this means he gave thanks for each individual benefit of God. Whence he could not be sated with the repetition of this little verse, which he most highly commended to all—and specifically to a certain lay brother who was greatly tempted and sought permission to devote himself to study: "Learn, dearest brother," he said, "this little verse: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and you will possess all of Sacred Scripture." When the tempted brother did this, he no longer felt any trouble and overcame all temptation to pursue studies. So Lucas Waddingus reports, in the Annals of the Friars Minor, year of the Lord 1221, no. 30.
Imitating the doxologies of Sirach to God, St. Francis composed this hymn from Revelation and the Psalms, which he himself used to recite before the Canonical Hours so that he might sing the psalms more fervently and resound the praises of God. Lucas Waddingus cites it from Pisanus, Firmianus, and others, in volume I of the Opuscula of St. Francis, page 103, and it is as follows: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God our Almighty, who is, and who was, and who is to come. Let us praise and super-exalt Him forever. You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive praise, glory, honor, and blessing. Let us praise and super-exalt Him forever. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Let us praise and super-exalt Him forever." Verse: "Let us bless the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit." Response: "Let us praise and super-exalt Him forever." Verse: "Speak praise to God, all you His servants, and you who fear God, small and great." Response: "Praise and super-exalt Him forever." Verse: "Let the glorious heavens and earth praise Him." Response: "And let them super-exalt and praise Him forever." Verse: "And every creature that is in heaven, and upon the earth, and under the earth, the earth and the sea, and all that is in them." Response: "Let them praise and super-exalt Him forever." Verse: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." Response: "Let us praise and super-exalt Him forever." Verse: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be." Response: "Let us praise and super-exalt," etc.
Admirably the Venerable Bede says, in his commentary on Proverbs: "By works, he says, God is praised and proclaimed better than by words." He himself accomplished both: whence on the feast of the Ascension of Christ, while chanting at Vespers "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit," he rendered his doxological spirit to God and ascended with Christ into heaven, there to praise God perpetually with the Blessed, in the year 731 from the Incarnation of the Lord. So Baronius in the Annals, in the year just mentioned.
Moreover, just as the hymn and mental as well as vocal praise that equals God's dignity is no other than this one already stated—"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," etc.—so too the real hymn and praise that equally matches it is no other than one alone, namely the sacrifice of the Eucharist. For in it we offer to God a victim equal to Him, namely His only-begotten Son, immolated on the cross for His praise and glory, as the divine holocaust of the Most Holy Trinity. Both of these praises of God are therefore most divine, and should be frequently employed. Moreover, the saints praise God not only with heart and mouth but also with works and life, and they strive with all diligence to praise Him better and more perfectly each day—and this in three ways: first, by acting; second, by suffering; third, by preaching. By acting, because they continually perform works of virtue—of humility, prayer, charity—by which God is glorified and others are kindled to glorify God; wherefore their whole life is a continual praise of God. By suffering, because all things whatsoever they suffer, whether from nature, or from the devil, or from friends or enemies, or from God, or from themselves by mortifying their members—all these they refer to the praise and glory of God. And indeed this glorification, as it is harsh, so it is strong, real, and solid, and therefore wonderfully pleasing and delightful to God. Thus Christ most greatly glorified God when on the cross He offered Himself to Him as a holocaust for His praise. And the Martyrs most greatly glorified God when, bravely and cheerfully enduring racks, fires, crosses, wild beasts, claws, and scorpions, they sang: "I will bless the Lord at all times." Hence Blessed Teresa: "Lord," she said, "let me suffer or die." By preaching, because by their preaching or discourse they convert others to God, who once converted praise God and lead others to the same. Therefore the conversion of souls and zeal for them is a great praise of God. These, then, are the heavenly nightingales—indeed, Angels who perpetually praise God; for the leisure of the Blessed is the business of continual doxology to God.
35. WHO HAS SEEN HIM, AND SHALL DESCRIBE HIM? AND WHO SHALL MAGNIFY HIM AS HE IS? — As if to say: Who has seen the majesty and magnificence of God, immense in every direction, so as to be able to narrate it worthily and truthfully in equal measure? No one, as if to say: "For no one has ever seen God; but the only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared Him to us," says St. John, chapter 1—not all things, but those things which God willed to be declared, and which suffice for the faith and salvation of men. And who will be able to magnify and celebrate Him "as He is from the beginning?" That is, with such dignity as to equal by praising Him and His majesty, which from all eternity has always subsisted as the same, immense, and most blessed? No one, as if to say, even if all the voices and praises of all Angels and men were to conspire together. So the Tigurina: Who, it says, has seen Him so as to be able to describe Him? Who extols Him worthily? In Greek, literally: who has seen Him, so as to describe Him?
WHO SHALL MAGNIFY HIM AS HE IS? — The Angels and the Blessed do indeed see God as He is; whence by their narrating they glorify Him "as He is," that is, they see and praise Him intuitively. But they do not magnify Him "as He is," that is, according to the dignity and merit of His essence and majesty—which is what Sirach intends. Those who praise God, therefore, take up the office of the Angels and are like earthly Angels. Whence St. Bernard, Sermon 7 on Psalm Qui habitat: "The holy Angels are wont, he says, to graciously mingle with those who sing psalms, as the Psalmist says: The princes went before, joined with the singers. Whence he also said: In the sight of the Angels I will sing psalms to You. Let us therefore take up the office of those whose fellowship we share. Let us say to them: Sing psalms to our God, sing psalms to our King, sing psalms."
36. MANY THINGS ARE HIDDEN GREATER THAN THESE (the works of God which I narrated shortly before, and which we see with our eyes or conceive with our mind): FOR WE HAVE SEEN BUT FEW OF HIS WORKS. — For we know little about the multitude, nature, species, choirs, hierarchies, and endowments of Angels. Likewise about the heavens, the sun, the stars; and especially about those things which God has prepared for the Blessed in the empyrean heaven. Furthermore, about those things hidden in the depths of the sea and earth, or lying concealed among foreign nations and the antipodes unknown to us. I omit the possible: for God can create infinite new worlds that would not only surpass our world but would also gradually surpass one another immeasurably. If therefore we are ignorant of very many works of God, we certainly cannot praise them worthily; much less can we praise their Author, God, who is immeasurably more perfect than they.
37. BUT THE LORD MADE ALL THINGS, AND TO THOSE WHO ACT PIOUSLY HE GAVE WISDOM. — This is the conclusion, as if to say: Let the sum of what has been said be this: that all existing things were made and created by God, even though we neither see nor know many of them since they are hidden; and that to "those who act piously," in Greek eusebesi, that is, the pious, those who worship God, He "gave wisdom"—not all wisdom, but enough for this: that from the works of God they may recognize, praise, fear, and love God, and obey His commandments, and thus attain the salvation, happiness, and eternal life for which they were created and called by God. For this is the practical and true wisdom that God gave only to the pious. For the impious, although they know much speculatively about God and about created things, nevertheless, because they do not rise from those things to the love, fear, and worship of God so as to be blessed by Him, are therefore destitute of true and salvific wisdom.
From those things that have been said in this and the preceding chapter, gather how great, how vast, how ample, how immense is the ocean of God's omnipotence. And that you may perceive this more fully and measure it, as it were, geometrically, take five equally immense measuring rods from the most intimate theology, which our Lessius suggests, book V On the Divine Perfections, chapter 1.
First, the immensity of God's omnipotence is gathered from the fact that He made this entire universe embracing all kinds of things. Whence it is incidentally clear that He can produce other similar things without end—just as a painter who can paint one form most excellently can also paint any others that he can embrace in his mind; and an architect who can conceive one plan for a palace in his mind and execute it in practice can also conceive any others. Therefore God can produce other heavens, other elements, other angels, and any creatures whatsoever—indeed, innumerable worlds distinct from this one which He created—and this without end or limit, both in multitude and in degree of excellence. For He can create another world more excellent than the one He has made, and in it produce other Angels, heavens, and creatures more excellent than those He has made; and again from this another still more excellent, and a third time yet another more excellent than that, and so on in a continuous series to infinity. Indeed, it is a common axiom of theologians: "God can bring about anything that does not involve a contradiction."
Second, from the manner of making, both on the part of the action and on the part of the terminus. On the part of the action: because He acts with the utmost ease, namely by His word and command alone. "For He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created." Nothing is easier than a word, and thus the utmost ease is a sign of the utmost power, and consequently of omnipotence. On the part of the terminus: because from no matter but from nothing—which the philosophers were never even able to conceive in their minds—and therefore on this count as well His power has no limit. This is confirmed because the further a thing is from being, the greater the power needed to bring it back to being. But that which lies furthest from being is what does not lurk in the potentiality of matter, but in true nothingness and mere objective potentiality. Therefore this requires the greatest power, which alone is omnipotence.
Third, it is gathered from the infinity of the essence; for power follows essence. For it is either the very essence of a thing, considered as productive, or something that follows the essence in the manner of a natural property. Therefore, since the essence is utterly infinite, the power will also be entirely infinite; for these are commensurate with each other.
Fourth, from the communicability of the essence; for the power is as great as the essence in its capacity to be participated externally. But the essence is capable of being participated or imitated in infinite ways, and this according to each individual degree of things—which are being, living, sensing, understanding. Therefore the power is infinite. See St. Thomas, book II Against the Gentiles, chapter 22, where he elegantly adduces some similar reasons.
Fifth, from the nature of wisdom; because the power is as great as the wisdom. For whatever God can conceive through His wisdom as something that can be made, He can bring about through His power—just as a perfect painter can externally depict whatever he can imagine. But that infinite wisdom conceives infinite ideas and species of things; therefore He can produce them all. And so all possible things are contained in the divine essence as in their original root, and as in a formal exemplar, in which they also exist objectively in the most perfect and most illustrious manner—for they shine more brightly there than in their created natures. In the power, as in the efficient cause.
Wherefore, gathering the recapitulation of what has been said and venerating this ocean of God's omnipotence with gratitude and wonder, let us exclaim: O adorable, fearsome, and reverently to be venerated in religious silence is Your omnipotence, O Lord, King of the ages, who can do all things through Yourself—whatever all Your creatures can do. From You all power, all force, all energy of all things is established and depends. You who created all things from nothing by Your word alone and preserve what You have created by the same life-giving influence, holding them as if suspended from the hand of Your omnipotence, lest they fall back into their nothingness. Before whom the whole world is like a small ball, and all nations like a drop of morning dew. Who can in reality bring about and accomplish not only whatever all men and Angels can conceive in their minds, but also whatever Your infinite wisdom can devise; for Your power is equal to Your wisdom, and they extend and spread equally far, since wisdom alone is the rule and measure of power. For what other measure could immense power have, except an immense one? Hence You possess and hold no less those things that have not actually been brought into being than those that have received existence and form externally. For they lie hidden in the treasures of Your power and wisdom, and at the least nod of Yours they will spring forth into being and say: We are here at Your service. You have no need of our praises and services; for if You wish, infinite servants will immediately be at Your disposal, who will worship You incomparably better and celebrate You with all praise.