Note 594 — Chapter VI · COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY

Though Comestor here denies the teachings of Plato in regard to the existence of matter prior to the “Creation,” he adopted a traditional medieval view based on the Timaeus of Plato and given expression by Augustine: that God created time and the universe simultaneously (see above, p. 52). How these two conceptions were reconciled is shown by Daniel of Morley where he writes: “Primus mundus est in eternitate figuratus, secundus cum tempore creatus, tercius in tempore formatus” (De philosophia, Sudhoff’s edit., p. 8). (For Daniel of Morley’s views on hyle see Singer, Daniel of Morley, 1920, p. 267.) Essentially the same Platonic doctrine was shared by Hugh of Amiens, archbishop of Rouen, who wrote in his Tractatio in hexaemeron that God precedes the world by eternity, not by time (Migne, Pat. lat., vol. cxcii, col. 1249). The De imagine mundi (II, 1) applied the term aevum to God alone; tempora aeterna, beginning before the world and continuing with and after it, to the architypus mundus and to the angels; and tempus to the world (Robbins, Hexaemeral Lit., 1912, p. 7, note 1).