to be understood allegorically or spiritually. Olivi understood creation literally, as a six/seven day event in which God formally created the universe. It is this literal view that informs the naturalist aspect of his commentary, and also prompts him to take on the Augustinian reading of Genesis as a spiritual text rather than as an accurate account of the physical nature of the world. Olivi takes on Augustine early in his commentary, again when discussing Genesis 1:3. Here Olivi argues that the light of Genesis 1:3 refers to actual light and the division of the days rather than the enlightenment of angelic or human nature. Augustine was deeply interested in drawing out the spiritual dimensions and lessons of Genesis, a general sentiment to which Olivi was quite friendly, but did so at the expense of what Olivi considered to be a representation of the physical composition of the cosmos. This allows Olivi to agree with some of Augustine’s more specific assertions, such as the fact that the Hexaemeron suggests the Trinity, and pay lip service to Augustine’s insight. Both authors agree that Genesis is a meditation on the relationship between the divine and the human, but disagreement on the details overshadows Peter’s claims of broad thematic agreements.65 Augustine for his part sees Trinitarian unity expressed in the first two verses of Genesis. The pericope “In the beginning God made heaven and earth” contains two persons of the Trinity—the Father (God) and the Son or Word (the beginning).66 The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is found in Gen 1:2, “And the Spirit of God was being borne over the water.”67 This is, to Augustine, a “complete reference (conpletam commemorationem)” to the Trinity, already established before the work of creation, which is signified by lux fiat in Gen 1:3.68 At issue for Augustine is the coeternal nature of the persons of the Trinity, a much debated point of theology in the early Church. Augustine therefore considers that the six-day course of creation was nothing more than an allegory and that creation occurred all at once. Olivi, for his part, sees the Trinity as being revealed over time. This is not to say that he denies the coeternality of the Trinity (he does not). This was, in Olivi’s era, assumed to be true. For Olivi, the Trinity always existed, but scripture reveals the nature of the three persons gradually over the six-day work of creation, as part of a series of patterns of threes.69 Temporality thus becomes the crux of Olivi’s dispute with Augustine.
What bothers Olivi is that Augustine’s contemplation of the text—that is, a broadly allegorical reading—does not meet Olivi’s understanding of a literal commentary.70 Olivi is so put off by Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1:3 that he cannot help but blurt out that Augustine’s reading is just flat out untrue according to any reasonable interpretation of the text. Taking an implied shot at the title of Augustine’s work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Olivi continues, “It certainly isn’t literal, since the whole of scripture prior to the first day up through the seventh clearly points out that it is talking about real days and nights.” To be clear, Olivi stresses his agreement with Augustine that Genesis has a spiritual message, as his Joachite approach would suggest, and he often validates mystical readings of Genesis and relies on Augustine elsewhere.71 Yet, Olivi makes a clear break with exegesis that, in his mind, appears to twist the words of scripture to mean something that a plain reading would not suggest, that is, Augustine’s claim that everything was created in an instant and that the subsequent description of creation existed only to assert certain theological truths.
Where earlier generations of exegetes had passed over literal readings of the scriptures as a kind of preamble to the meat of exegesis, the drawing out of the moral and spiritual meanings of a text, Olivi was keen to suggest the value of the literal. Some of his concern likely stemmed from his attachment to Joachism. For one, the Joachite principle of concordia relied heavily on the chronology or chronologies of the Bible. Seeing harmony between the texts relies not only on a typology of persons, but also on typologies of events—chronological and numerical patterns that emerge over and over within the text and, hence, within history. Augustine’s compression of creation to a single moment of “God created the heavens and the earth” is antithetical to the parallelism of Joachite readings.
Olivi was also concerned with demonstrating the philosophical order of creation, asking whether or not the sequence of the six-day creation was a mystery or whether there was some other reason behind it. While admitting that there were many mysteries, he first put forth a rational and philosophical justification for how creation unfolds. The first three days, he argued, dealt with distinguishing undifferentiated confusion (via the lux fiat), and then fixing distinct bodies into place (dividing the waters and separating the land). This was also the period during which the terrestrial elements became distinguished from one another and heaven became incorruptible as a means of distinguishing it from the terrestrial world. The next three days dealt with “adornment,” that is, the populating of the cosmos, with celestial bodies, birds and fish, and finally animals and human beings. Human beings came last, Olivi says, because they were the most important part of creation, and relied on everything created before.72
Olivi also weighed in on a number of additional issues that would have been critical to alchemists. For instance, Olivi frequently makes reference to the protean stuff of creation (moles). Olivi discusses it as an intermediate step (intermedio modo) in creation, but not necessarily as prime matter. Rather, Olivi seems to understand it as a confused mix of elements, all tangled up with one another.73 They must have existed by the third day in some form, he argues, since Genesis does not say they were created (rather that they were separated or passed over). Yet, if they were fully formed, then Olivi believed Genesis would be talking only about accidents or particularities, rather than about creation. Instead, some kind of confused or indistinct matter existed.74 It would be wonderful to know if Olivi thought this indistinct matter might be made by art, but Olivi does not oblige. What his text does show is that the Hexaemeron was a ripe source for speculation on questions of natural philosophy. While Olivi himself does not take up alchemical questions, it is clear that he is quite interested in in dissecting the composition of the world. His concentration on these questions, often to the exclusion of more spiritual readings, is very much in line with the kind of speculation recommended by Bonaventure.
The Franciscan exegete Nicholas of Lyra, writing a generation later, reflects Olivi’s concern for the literal interpretation.75 Nicholas’s principal concern is to demonstrate the appropriateness and the order of the account of creation in Genesis. For instance, the mixtures of inanimate elements were made for the benefit of animate creatures, which likewise were made for the benefit of human beings. However majestic the act of creation, Nicholas wants his readers to see the obvious logic embedded in the creative act itself. Unsurprisingly, then, Nicholas relies heavily on Aristotelian terminology.76 Following Averroës, he describes the work of creation as subdivided into discrete acts of creating new specific forms (forma seu distinctio), such as light. Light generally then, after its creation, is subdivided into specific lights, such as the various heavenly bodies. Nicholas describes this as the act of adornment and disposition in which specific qualities are attached to created forms.77 It is important to note that the philosophical description of creation is Aristotelian rather than Platonic. The notion of form Aristotle uses in the description of light is not ideal. Nor is there a sense that the distinction of light (lumen) into lights (luminaria) diminishes their “lightness.” Nicholas relies on other aspects of Aristotelian philosophy more specifically later in the text.
There are two points, however, that need to be emphasized in Nicholas’s description of creation. First, not only is creation described in Aristotelian terms, but God works like a philosopher, carrying out creation according to a logic that is knowable to human beings. To Nicholas, this is the clear meaning of the text of Genesis, not an approximation. His literal reading of the six days is designed to tell his readers not just what to think about Genesis, but what really happened. And, in this case, God creates the universe according to an Aristotelian logic. By extension, then, Aristotelian accounts of matter, its mutability, and properties are also true. A second key point to emphasize is that this Aristotelian creation account is not a separate explanation from the sacral account of creation. Rather, the sacrality of creation is expressed within the frame of Aristotelian logic, and vice versa. For example,
