The Metaphysics of Light in the

Hexaemeral Literature: From Philo of

Alexandria to Gregory of Nyssa
Isidoros C. Katsos
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The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils, ad 431–451
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The Metaphysics of Light in the
Hexaemeral Literature
From Philo of Alexandria to Gregory of
Nyssa

I S I D O R O S C . K ATS O S
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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 Acknowledgements

This book began as a dissertation at the University of Cambridge

under the supervision of Rowan Williams. To my PhD supervisor I
owe a profound debt of gratitude for teaching me ergois and logois
that philosophy and theology should not be pursued merely as an
academic endeavour but should rather be experienced as a way of
life. This study is my response to his teaching. I also wish to thank
Douglas Hedley for being the internal examiner of my dissertation
and for his undiminished support and collaboration over the years,
not least through the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism. I
am deeply grateful to Paul Kalligas, whose scholarship and
mentorship have been fundamental in developing this book. I thank
Tom Perridge from OUP and the series editors Gillian Clark and
Andrew Louth for generously accepting the book for publication in
the Oxford Early Christian Studies series. Andrew Louth has guided
the publication of this book with wise and deeply encouraging
advice. I am also grateful to the two anonymous readers, whose
comments greatly improved the final manuscript. Christian
Hengstermann has been an ideal friend and collaborator since our
Cambridge time together. I thank him for reading the manuscript
thoroughly and giving me precious feedback. I also thank Rachel
Evan Webb, Henry Clarke, and the editorial team of OUP for their
tremendous editorial assistance, together with Artur Suski and
Konstantina Morou for their help in compiling the Indexes of Persons
and Passages.
I also wish to express my gratitude to Oded Irshai, the Director of
the Center for the Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, and my colleagues at the Center, especially Guy
Stroumsa, David Satran, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Yonathan Moss,
David Lloyd Dusenbury, and Francesco Celia, for their tremendous
friendship and support. My Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center
made possible the turning of the dissertation into a book manuscript.
I am also indebted to Diana Lipton and Chaim Milikowski for opening
up their hearts and home, initiating me into the richness and warmth
of Jewish hospitality. Last but not least, I am grateful to the
Fellowship and Community of Campion Hall (Oxford) for their
friendship and support during the editing phase of this book.
The initial dissertation was made possible due to generous
funding from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council,
Pembroke College (Cambridge), the George and Marie Vergottis
Foundation, the Theological Studies Fund at the Faculty of Divinity
(Cambridge), the Leventis Foundation, and the Church of Greece. My
gratitude to them is hereby acknowledged. A preliminary version of
the argument of this book is published in ISIS 110/2 (2019), 270–82
(https://doi.org/10.1086/703515). I thank Floris Cohen, who as
journal editor encouraged its publication and the public discussion
that followed; and the History of Science Society for the kind
permission to use some of the material in this book. I also wish to
show my appreciation to Brill publishers for the kind permission to
use the following translated quotations as epigraphs: in
‘Conclusions’, a quotation from Frederick W. Norris (ed.), Lionel
Wickham and Frederick Williams (tr.), Faith Gives Fullness to
Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory Nazianzen
(Leiden: Brill, 1991); in ‘Appendix B’, a quotation from David Runia,
Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos According to
Moses (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
Finally, I owe my gratitude to His Beatitude Archbishop
Hieronymus II of Athens and All Greece for his constant
encouragement and support of my academic pursuits. Without his
personal blessings, none of this would have been possible. Similarly,
I am deeply grateful to His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew for his permission to continue my liturgical duties while
working academically in Cambridge and Oxford; and to His Beatitude
Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem for his Abrahamic hospitality
during my stay in Jerusalem. This book is dedicated to Metropolitan
Bartholomew of Polyanni and Kilkis, who has been my lifelong
spiritual guide.
 Contents

List of Abbreviations

Introduction
0.1 What Do We Mean When We Speak of the ‘Metaphysics of
Light’?
0.2 What This Book Aims to Achieve
0.3 Old Wine in New Skins: From Light Language to the Concept of
Light
0.3.1 Boyancé’s Challenge
0.3.2 A Challenge Still Not Met
0.3.3 The Need for a Fresh Start

1. ‘From Sight to Light’: A Hexaemeral Guide for the Perplexed

1.1 The Intelligibility of Hexaemeral Light
1.2 The Oculocentric Thesis
1.3 Three Arguments for Oculocentrism in the Hexaemeral
Literature
1.3.1 Sight Fantastic
1.3.2 A World with a View
1.3.3 A Christocentric Vision of Creation
1.4 Rethinking Oculocentrism
1.4.1 Narrowing down the Scope
1.4.2 Sight Is Light
1.4.3 From the Phenomenal to the Noumenal

2. The Light of the World: Hexaemeral Physics and Anti-Physics

 2.1 Science at the Service of Scripture
2.2 In Defence of Hexaemeral Physics
2.2.1 Origen and His Legacy
2.2.2 Introducing Gregory’s Apology
2.2.3 Approaching Nature through the Lens of Scripture:
Physics as Hermeneutics
2.3 Enter Light
2.3.1 A Look behind the Scenes: The Hexaemeral Theory
of Change
2.3.2 A (Meta-)Physics of Power Causality: The
Consubstantiality of Fire and Light

3. The Nature of Light: The Dawn of the First Material Form

3.1 Between Physics and Metaphysics: The ‘Immateriality’ of
Light
3.1.1 Scriptural Questions
3.1.2 Philosophical Investigations
3.1.3 Cappadocian Answers
3.1.4 Hexaemeral Physics
3.1.5 Hexaemeral Hermeneutics
3.2 Going Ballistic: The Singularity of the Light Ray
3.2.1 Rectilinearity
3.2.2 Light Mechanics
3.2.3 Light Kinetics
3.2.4 The Speed of Light
3.2.5 Introducing Field Theory
3.3 The Metaxu of Light: A Metaphysical Note on the Medium
3.3.1 A Medium of Light?
3.3.2 Transparency and Brightness
3.3.3 Light Semantics as Key to Light Hermeneutics
3.4 The Metaphysics of Light: A Hermeneutical Coda
3.4.1 A Dual Aspect Interpretation
 3.4.2 Back to Origen
3.4.3 Philonic Beginnings

Conclusions

Appendices
A. Response to a Critic, or What Is the History of Optics Really
About?
B. What Is the Colour of Light?
C. ‘Light from Light’, or What Is the Meaning of Doxa and
Apaugasma?

Bibliography
I. Critical Editions of Ancient Works Cited
II. Secondary Bibliography
Index of Passages
Index of Persons and Names
Subject Index
Glossary
 List of Abbreviations

Abbreviations of works cited are given in the bibliography. General abbreviations

follow the standard bibliographical practice. Common abbreviations in this work
are:

GCS Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte

GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera
SC Sources Chrétiennes
Now intellect discovers the duality, because it divides until it arrives at
something simple that cannot be analysed further; as long as it can it
proceeds to the depth. And the depth of each thing is matter; this is the
reason why matter is entirely dark, for the light is the form.
Plotinus, Enn. (12) II.4.5
 Introduction

The first corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion

light.
(Grosseteste, De Luce, tr. Riedl)

0.1 What Do We Mean When We Speak of the

‘Metaphysics of Light’?
There are few terms that belong to the trade secrets of both
philosophers and theologians. The ‘metaphysics of light’ is one of
them. The term has been linked to Parmenides, Plato, Philo,
Plotinus, Augustine, the Areopagite, Grosseteste, Bacon, Eckhart,
Cuzanus, and Ficino. And this is just the short list.1 The theme of
light has brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and theologians
to the same table and made them talk.2 Light symbolism has
become a codeword for the Western ‘mystical tradition’, however
defined, giving it a sense of orientation, continuity, and tradition.3
Behind the popularity lies a revived interest in medieval light
speculation, climaxing in a fascination with Grosseteste’s thought.4
Every fascination, however, comes at a price. The references to the
‘metaphysics of light’ are currently so diverse and prolific that they
have nurtured a devalued and exploded term. As David Lindberg
once put it:

There has been much discussion of Grosseteste’s ‘metaphysics of light’ (for

which I prefer to substitute the expression ‘philosophy of light’, since much
of it has nothing to do with metaphysics), but this discussion has frequently
 suffered from a failure to make several indispensable distinctions among
differing bodies of ideas. Within Grosseteste’s philosophy of light, there are
at least four distinct strands, each employing optical analogies and
metaphors: (1) the epistemology of light, in which the process of acquiring
knowledge of unchanging Platonic forms is considered analogous to
corporeal vision through the eye; (2) the metaphysics or cosmogony of
light, in which light is regarded as the first corporeal form and the material
world as the product of the self-propagation of a primeval point of light; (3)
the etiology or physics of light, according to which all causation in the
material world operates on the analogy of the radiation of light; and (4) the
theology of light, which employs light metaphors to elucidate theological
truths.5

Lindberg’s exposition shows why so many disciplines feel attracted to

the ‘metaphysics of light’, yet so little interdisciplinary consensus has
been achieved, meanwhile, as to how to understand the term. In
order to regain its focal meaning, we need to resist the tide, retrace
our steps, and go back to where it all began. The great medievalist
James McEvoy shows us the way:

The term ‘metaphysics of light’ was coined by Clemens Baeumker in 1916

and has been employed widely, though not uncontroversially, ever since. It
designates a whole circle of themes, a current of philosophical and religious
thought that runs right through European culture from ancient times down
to the Renaissance.6

Baeumker introduced the term Lichtmetaphysik over a century ago

in an epoch-making study on the anonymous Liber de intelligentiis,
which he then attributed to the medieval thinker Witelo.7 Baeumker
spoke of ‘metaphysics of light’ to denote, very generally, the
identification of the intelligible world with light. And since God was
theorized in the De intelligentiis as the first principle of every
intelligent nature, and every intelligent nature was identified with
light, the ‘metaphysics of light’ ultimately denoted the identification
of God, qua ontological foundation of reality, with some kind of
primordial light. In specifying what that kind of light might be,
Baeumker distinguished three ontological models and respective
modes of language:8
 • An immanentist model, according to which the divine is light
properly speaking, as part of a physicalist metaphysical
universe, in which God is identified with cosmic light or fire.
The examples that Baeumker used include the Brahman of the
Upanishads, the Heraclitean/Stoic cosmic fire, Manichean light,
and, more generally, the astral deities of the Hellenistic cosmic
religion.
• A transcendental model, according to which the divine is ‘light’
metaphorically speaking. ‘Light’ functions here merely as a
façon de parler, one of many possible ways of speaking about
God, who by his very nature exceeds the limits of human
thought and language. Baeumker’s examples included Plato’s
celebrated light images from the central books of the Republic,
the so-called ‘sun simile’ (VI 507a–509c) and the ‘allegory of
the cave’ (VII 514a–520d).
• A mixed model (of combined transcendence and immanence),
building on a metaphysics of mediation or participation. The
participatory metaphysics of this model entailed a unified and
continuous notion of ‘light’, of which sensible light and
intelligible light were the two extremes. Like the physicalist
(first) model, the divine is here, too, light properly speaking.
But unlike the physicalist model, divine light is now the
transcendent intelligible archetype, of which every material-
physical light is the sensible copy. Baeumker saw the
beginnings of this model in Philo of Alexandria and its full
articulation in later Platonism, especially in the works of
Plotinus and Proclus, before it acquired its highest peak in
medieval scholastic philosophy, most notably in the De
intelligentiis.

The metaphysical universe of Baeumker’s third model was,

admittedly, ‘Neoplatonic’ and its light language ‘analogical’. The kind
of analogy that Baeumker had in mind was the scholastic variant of
the ‘analogy of attribution’ (per prius et posterius).9 In this view,
‘divine light’ was not a mere figure of speech but light properly
speaking. The intelligible world was truly light (prior or original
sense), while the light of the senses (like the light of the sun, the
moon etc.) could only be called ‘light’ in virtue of a relation of
participation to an intelligible archetype (posterior or derivative
sense). As regards Christian thinkers, Baeumker’s position was
ambivalent, making three incongruent claims: first, the authors of
the New Testament and early Christian thinkers spoke of God as light
only metaphorically. Second, post-Nicene theologians deviated from
the original tradition by introducing the ‘Neoplatonic’ participatory
metaphysics and its corresponding analogical language to denote the
emanation of divine light to the world. As regards the transcendent
divine essence and the persons of the Trinity, however, post-Nicene
theologians retained the originally ‘Platonic’ metaphorical light
language of the original tradition of the early Church. Implicit in this
scheme was the distinction between ‘theology’ and ‘economy’ or ad
intra and ad extra of God, to which Baeumker correlated the
metaphorical and the analogical use of light language, respectively.
The main protagonists of this binary use of language were, for
Baeumker, Gregory Nazianzen and Dionysius the Areopagite in the
Greek patristic tradition and Augustine and his school in the Latin
tradition. Third, Aquinas criticized the Augustinian tradition for being
closer to Neoplatonism than Scripture, since the scriptural language
of God as ‘light’ (and of Christ as ‘true light’) had to be, under
Thomas’s Aristotelian premises, metaphorical. Baeumker also warned
the reader that the distinction between the three models can be
hard to make, while the classification of a particular author or text as
following this or that model can easily become contentious.
Baeumker’s thesis would have probably remained a minor incident
in the history of Western scholarship, had it not touched upon a
sensitive chord. Throughout the twentieth century, continental
scholars debated explicitly or implicitly, but always passionately and
inconclusively, about Baeumker’s classification and model attribution.
Two examples amply show how a whole century of light dialectics
led to the current standstill. Giles Wetter was an early defendant of
the physicalist model, which he used for the interpretation of light
imagery in Hellenistic religious thought, especially the mystery
cults.10 The response came almost half a century later from Franz-
Norbert Klein, who, in a special monograph, argued for the contrary
position, based on the writings of Philo of Alexandria and the
Hermetic Corpus. Yet Klein remained enigmatic as regards his own
interpretation of Philo: on the one hand, he observed the
compresence of Baeumker’s transcendental and participatory
ontological models in the Philonic corpus; on the other hand, he
insisted that, in spite of the participatory metaphysics and in view of
divine transcendence, the Philonic language of God as light had to
be metaphorical.11 Another famous episode in the hundred years’
war over the premodern light hermeneutics was the debate between
Werner Beierwaltes and Rein Ferwerda, this time with Plotinus as the
apple of discord. Beierwaltes dedicated his life’s work to the
refinement and further development of Baeumker’s thesis, becoming
the leading expounder of the ‘metaphysics of light’ in the second half
of the twentieth century.12 For Beierwaltes it was only the
participatory model that gave rise to a proper ‘light metaphysics’
(Lichtmetaphysik), while the transcendental model allowed merely
the generation of light metaphors (Lichtmetaphorik). From his
doctoral thesis to his erudite studies on Plotinus and Proclus,
Beierwaltes defended the participatory ‘metaphysics of light’ as the
distinctive characteristic of the Platonic tradition: true being was
intelligible being and intelligible being was light properly speaking,
while physical light was so only in virtue of its participation in its
intelligible archetype. The names belonging to this tradition make up
a long list, including Pythagoras and Parmenides as forerunners;
Plato as the founder; and two lines of succession, through which the
‘metaphysics of light’ came to flourish: Plotinus and Proclus on the
one hand, Philo and the Church Fathers, especially Augustine and
Dionysius the Areopagite, on the other.13 Beierwaltes’s interpretation
of Plotinian light imagery caused the emphatic reaction of Ferwerda,
who argued that the dualistic premises of Platonic orthodoxy, of
which Plotinus was a true disciple, necessitated a radical gap
between the intelligible and the sensible realms. Such discontinuity
precluded the possibility of any analogical language of light.
Consequently, Plotinus’ use of light imagery in speaking about the
higher realities was purely pedagogical, hence metaphorical, while
Beierwaltes’s participatory ‘light metaphysics’ was an anachronistic
eisegesis of the medieval theory of analogy, inspired by Baeumker
and projected back onto ancient sources.14 Ferwerda’s argument
may have shaken (though not destroyed) the credibility of
Beierwaltes’s thesis as regards Plotinian scholarship.15 But it only
helped reinforce Beierwaltes’s interpretation as regards the
Augustinian tradition throughout the Middle Ages. Anyone interested
in the analogical talk of God as light (and an alternative to Thomist
Lichtmetaphorik) had only to look here for a safe heaven.16 Hence
the fascination, in English scholarship, with Grosseteste under the
borrowed label of the ‘metaphysics of light’.
Clearly, there is something elusive in a debate that lasts over a
century without reaching a conclusive result. A careful study of the
major protagonists reveals a subtle but crucial detail. The recurring
question in the aforementioned literature has not been the
interpretation of Philo, Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, or Grosseteste
as such. The real issue has been how these thinkers interpreted
another text, namely Plato’s ‘sun-simile’ (together with the adjacent
images of the ‘divided line’ and the ‘cave’), and its reception history.
The real debate, then, has been about the history of interpretation
of the Platonic light language. If we now go back to the original
source, it is easy to see that the Platonic text is itself responsible for
its ambivalent reception through the centuries. In his speech to
Glaucon, Socrates introduces the sun as an analogon of the Good
(tagathon), in the sense that ‘whatever the Good is in the intelligible
realm, in relation to the intellect and intelligible things, the same is
the sun in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things’
(508b13–c2). Socrates then goes on to explain the analogy in terms
of a simile (hōsper…houtōi 509a1–5) but he also says that the sun is
the image (eikona) of the Good (509a9), exhibiting a relation of
similarity (homoiotēta) to it (509c6). The perennial question in
Western light hermeneutics has been, precisely, the meaning of the
sun as an analogon of the Good. The constant challenge has been
how to disentangle two different senses of ‘analogy’, analogy of
language and analogy of being. Behind the distinction hides one of
the most fascinating questions in the history of Western philosophy:
the relation between being and language. For instance, if one were
to approach the analogy of the sun as a solution to the paradox of
talking meaningfully from within language about the Good that lies
‘beyond being’ (epekeina tēs ousias), and thus beyond the
predicative ability of human language, one would have to take
seriously the hōsper (‘just like’) clause and conclude that Plato’s
celebrated light imagery (or any other light imagery with a
transcendent referent) is a clear-cut case of figurative speech, a
veritable simile in the sense of the classical theory of metaphor.17 If
one were to approach the analogy of the sun, however, as an
illustration of Platonic participatory metaphysics (‘theory of forms’),
one would need to take seriously the predicative function of the
Platonic ‘image’ (eikōn) as a type–token relation that links causally
different modes of being and conclude that the sun is the sensible
copy of a supra-intelligible archetype that Plato calls ‘the Good’. Even
though Plato’s light imagery—in its effort to express through
language what escapes ordinary language—remains a simile, the
sensible object that functions as the ground of the simile (i.e. the
sun) is itself causally dependent on the semantic target that it aims
to explain (i.e. the Good). In other words, in Plato’s metaphysical
universe the sun does not merely illustrate, as a figure of speech,
the function of the Good. The sun is what it is, irrespective of any
simile, because of the Good. As G.E.R. Lloyd puts it in his
monumental study Polarity and Analogy, not all types of Platonic
‘metaphors’ are empty figures of speech.18 The ‘sun simile’ contains
an analogical argument as ‘an important means not merely of
instructing the pupil, but also of discovering and intuiting the
truth’.19 It is one of those ‘true and significant analogies’, which are
‘not a mere coincidence, but rather, it seems, the result of a sort of
divine guidance’.20 With these thoughts in mind, and after a century
of debates, it is possible to draw an irenic conclusion. The
‘metaphysics of light’ is a term with a precise reference (the talk of
the divine as ‘light’) and an elusive meaning. Its elusiveness is the
result of the peculiar mixture of metaphorical language with
participatory metaphysics in the central books of Plato’s Republic.
Much of Western light imagery can be traced back to this text.21 To
this extent, the quest for the ‘metaphysics of light’ is the quest for
the role and meaning of Platonic metaphysics in the Western
intellectual tradition.
 0.2 What This Book Aims to Achieve
The aim of this book is not to rehearse the intellectual history of
light imagery in Western thought, nor the history of Platonic
metaphysics; neither does this book aim to explore the reception
history of Plato’s ‘sun simile’; nor to revisit the question of metaphor
and analogy. This book has the modest aspiration of revisiting only a
tiny part of the intellectual tradition that has been classified under
this or that model of the ‘metaphysics of light’, namely the Jewish-
Christian metaphysical tradition of the early Church, and then again
only one episode in the context of this tradition, which is, as we
know today, extremely rich and diverse in its expressions. The
episode I have in mind focuses on the so-called ‘Alexandrian
tradition’ and its Cappadocian interpretation, and has Philo of
Alexandria, Origen, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa as its
main protagonists. There are a few significant reasons for this
choice. As we have already seen, Philo is the point of contention
between Baeumker or Beierwaltes, who place him at the head of the
participatory metaphysics of later Platonism and its analogical light
language, and Klein, who pushes the point that metaphorical
language is the only one adequate to express absolute divine
transcendence. At the same time, Philo is at the head of a
metaphysical tradition, which, through the catechetical school of
Alexandria, reached down to Origen and, through an Origenian line
of transmission via Gregory Thaumaturgus and Macrina the Older,
became a major source of inspiration for the Cappadocian school of
thought.22 Philo, Origen, and the Cappadocians exercised
tremendous influence in the history of early Christian thought. In the
West, they were the great sources of inspiration for Ambrose, who
initiated Augustine into the deeper meaning of Scripture.23 Similarly,
in the East, the unknown Syrian author writing at the turn of the
fifth and sixth centuries under the literary name of Dionysius the
Areopagite is highly indebted to the Alexandrian and the
Cappadocian schools for his doctrine of illumination.24 But it is the
short treatise on Mystical Theology, with its celebrated imagery of
‘divine darkness’, that has contributed most to the author’s legacy as
the mystical theologian par excellence. The treatise is based on the
theme of Moses’ mystical ascent, which the author could not have
developed in this way were he not deeply acquainted with the works
of Philo and Nyssen on the Life of Moses.25 In drawing a line of
succession from Philo to Gregory, I aim to investigate the formative
period of the Christian ‘metaphysics of light’, so much so that my
three main protagonists, namely Origen, Basil, and Gregory, have
been, strikingly, entirely neglected by the previous discussion. In
bringing them into focus, I aim to fill in a gap in current scholarship.
In doing so, some of what we thought we knew about late antique
‘light metaphysics’ might shine under a different light.

0.3 Old Wine in New Skins: From Light

Language to the Concept of Light

0.3.1 Boyancé’s Challenge

In his review of Klein’s monograph, the French classicist Pierre
Boyancé remarked that Klein had neglected to take into account the
physical theories that supported and further explained Philo’s light
metaphors and ‘light metaphysics’.26 Take, as an example, the case
of a purely metaphorical use of language. Boyancé argued that,
according to the classical metaphor theory, the structure of a simile
consists of the transfer of meaning (i.e. of a semantic property) from
a source domain to a target domain, establishing a relation of
similarity between the two. In the case of light metaphors, the
source domain is physical light and the target domain is an
intelligible agent or object (like the divine intellect or the intelligible
world). In order to understand the meaning of ‘light’ as divine
predicate in Philo and the philosophical literature he represents, we
need to know which properties of light the author had in mind in
each particular context. This requires an investigation into the
physics of light that explained these properties. Boyancé rightly
complained that Klein never conducted such an investigation. His
was a serious accusation. If it is true that the Philonic use of light
imagery is entirely metaphorical, as Klein argued, it is especially dire
that Klein’s research never investigated the ground of meaning of
Philo’s light language. Boyancé’s complaint can be generalized. With
few notable exceptions, the debate on the ‘metaphysics of light’ did
not touch upon the physical theories that ground the meaning of the
language of God as light.27
One might retort that Boyancé’s objection applies only to the
metaphorical interpretation of light images (Lichtmetaphorik). It
does not apply, however, to their analogical interpretation
(Lichtmetaphysik), according to which there is no transference of
meaning from the physical world to the divine reality. The followers
of the latter interpretation might feel that Boyancé’s critique misses
the mark, since, on this reading of the sources, the language of
divine light is logically prior to the language of physical light, in the
sense that the term ‘light’ has its proper and primary significance
with reference to God.28 This is an important point that modern
scholars think was also advocated by pro-Nicene theologians, such
as Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa.29 If so, the heroes of the
Nicene faith would be major exponents of the Christian ‘metaphysics
of light’ in its analogical interpretation. Nevertheless, it is a moot
point. We have no clue what divine predicates such as ‘light’ (or
‘father’, ‘creator’ etc.) might mean if we do not start from familiar
semantic contexts in which the words already have meaning. That is
precisely the point of the Platonic analogy of the sun, whose aim it is
to help the reader intuit something of the unfamiliar meaning of
goodness itself (auto agathon 507b; epekeina tēs ousias 509b) by
comparison to something known to the senses and a commonly
shared experience of goodness. The analogy of the sun proposes, as
such, an experience of the self-communicating nature of heavenly
fire, which illuminates the earth through its light and sustains life
through its warmth. The ‘metaphysician of light’ may here retort that
the philosopher who has attained direct contemplation of goodness
itself has no need for analogical reasoning, apart from pedagogical
purposes. The same is true for the scriptural equivalent of the
Platonic philosophical vision, whether in the sense of Moses’
theophanic experience of the burning bush on Mount Sinai or in the
sense of the disciples’ mystical experience of the light of
transfiguration on Mount Tabor.30 Yet to understand the language of
divine light only by direct theophanic knowledge is an extremely high
bar for the average scriptural (or Platonic) reader who has not yet
attained that experience and genuinely wants to learn about it.
Indirect knowledge is necessary if divine predicates are to make
sense in the first instance.31 Such indirect knowledge can only be
derived from experience known and familiar to the reader, i.e. in the
case of light, from the reader’s acquaintance with the light of this
world. It thus makes no difference whether we understand ‘light’ as
divine predicate in a figurative (Lichtmetaphorik) or non-figurative
sense (Lichtmetaphysik). In both senses, we need to unpack the
meaning of the concept starting from our experience of physical
light. To give a celebrated example of an early Christian use of light
as divine predicate, think of the Nicene formula ‘light from light’: no
matter how we understand its mode of language (figurative or
proper), we still need to ground its meaning in the world of our
direct and immediate knowledge. How does light generate light in
the physical world? What are the physical properties of light that are
theologically relevant? Boyancé’s objection holds regardless of the
mode of language used in the sources. There is still a dire need to
investigate the concept of physical light in early Christian literature.32

0.3.2 A Challenge Still Not Met

The lack of interest in the early Christian theories of light is most
evident in the camp of Lichtmetaphorik.33 Studies which consider the
light imagery to be more than a mere metaphor investigate further
the ground of the analogical reasoning from light.34 Yet they too
forgo a systematic investigation of the early Christian physics of
light, extrapolating some physical properties of light from the
theological debates rather than examining the validity of the
theological arguments invoked in the debates according to the
physical properties of light that ground them.
The lack of a thorough discussion of the ancient physics of light is
also characteristic of a cluster of four seminal studies on the
theological use of light language by the Cappadocians.35 They
significantly advance our understanding of the early Christian
concept of light by showing that it is a physical power, which is
logically construed as a proprium (see Chapter 2, section 2.3.2). If
we ask, however, ‘physical power of what?’ or ‘proprium of what?’,
the answer we get from these studies becomes blurry. In his
landmark PhD dissertation on the notion of power in Gregory of
Nyssa, Michel René Barnes at least once regards light, incisively, as a
property of fire.36 The recurring argument of the book, however, is
that light for the Cappadocians is an example of power causality in
which a cause reproduces itself (or its nature). Barnes thus treats
the cause of light as being itself light ‘in exactly the same sense’ as
its effect.37 Although the premise is correct, it will be shown that
Barnes’s conclusion is ultimately misleading: light as cause and light
as effect do not have the same reference in ancient physics and that
has direct consequences for the theological light language (see
Chapter 3, section 3.3.3 and Appendix C). Something similar can be
said about the brilliant studies of Andrew Radde-Gallwitz and Mark
DelCogliano, which show that light as an inherent physical power is
logically construed as a proprium. DelCogliano does not specify the
physical substance of which light is a proprium. In general, he
follows Barnes’s univocal interpretation of light in Basil’s writings38
and seems at least once as bewildered as Barnes by Eunomius’
(actually correct) claim that light as cause and effect does not
denote exactly the same thing.39 Radde-Gallwitz goes a step further
in the right direction. In his monograph he mentions, correctly, that
light is the inherent power of fire40 but then goes on to construe,
misleadingly, ‘light’ together with other divine predicates such as ‘life’
and ‘goodness’ as ‘analogous to the propria of the elements’.41 He
thus follows Barnes in considering heat (instead of heat and light) as
the typical proprium of elemental fire.42 Similarly, in a seminal paper
which further discusses light as a power and property in Basil’s
Hexaemeron, he identifies, again correctly, light as a power and
property of the sun,43 but then goes on to distinguish the properties
and powers of elemental substances from light as a property and
power of the sun,44 instead of regarding the sun as a particular
instance of (elemental) heavenly fire. The aforementioned studies
contribute only partially to decoding the meaning of (physical) light
in early Christian literature, either because they identify the cause of
light with its effect or because they identify light with a natural
power or proprium without specifying adequately the source of light
as power or proprium. In fact, this book will argue that the meaning
of ‘light’ in early Christian literature is richer than that.
In an influential study, Volker Henning Drecoll shows some traces
of reflection on the Christian physics of light.45 His claim that ‘light’ is
a suitable theological predicate because of its ‘immateriality’46 builds
on a textually verifiable premise, which, however, does not mean
immateriality in an ontological sense, as will be shown in Chapter 3.
In a fascinating footnote, Drecoll alludes to precisely that (i.e. ‘light’,
like pneuma, denotes ‘a finer substance’) but then, mistakenly,
claims that in Basil ‘no clear distinction is carried out between the
divine and the physical light’.47 Finally, the paper of Adrian Marinescu
is a valiant effort to enquire into Basil’s concept of light, but it
unfortunately remains at a superficial level.48
Thus, there is only one study that, to my knowledge, answers
Boyancé’s objection from an early Christian perspective. In his
remarkable book on the use of philosophy in early Christian
theology, Christopher Stead unpacks the theological language of
light in constant reference to ancient physics, most notably the
Platonic and Stoic physics of fire and light.49 But his is a book of
heights and falls. The book offers only occasional, though valuable,
remarks.50 Crucially, the analysis is not always sound: as will be
shown in Chapter 3, Stead’s assumption that fire in early Christian
physics ‘need not involve combustion’ is false and so is his
conclusion that fire was ‘an appropriate symbol for the divine nature,
in that one can ignore its dependence on an exhaustible supply of
fuel’.51 His assumption that in early Christian physics all material
substances are composite is correct, but his conclusion that light
cannot serve as a paradigm of simplicity is not.52 Last but not least,
Stead shows an outspoken distrust in the cogency of early Christian
philosophical analysis, leading to a somewhat biased assessment of
the early Christian theology of light.53

0.3.3 The Need for a Fresh Start

This book begins with the basic assumption that the concept of
physical light grounds the referential meaning and semantic context
of the theological language of light in early Christian literature. To
achieve its goal, this book remains intentionally agnostic as regards
the mode (literal, analogical, or metaphorical) of the theological light
language. Its aim is to shift focus from the language to its referent,
from the sign to the signified, from ‘light’ as a divine predicate to the
concept of light itself. In doing so, this book understands the quest
for the ‘metaphysics of light’ differently than before. It is no longer
interested in classical dilemmas of the sort ‘literal or metaphorical’,
‘figurative or non-figurative’, ‘proper or improper’ etc., which have
been the focus of the ‘linguistic turn’ of the twentieth century and
which have widely monopolized previous discussions. That is not to
say that these are not still interesting and important questions to
ask.54 It is only to say that, unless we ask the logically prior
question, there is little room left for novel contributions in this
regard.55 The logically prior question, which ancient readers had to
ask before they decided how to read the scriptural references to
light, literally or metaphorically, is the question: ‘what is light?’ The
question is important for two reasons. First, it makes us immediately
suspect that its answer is different for us today than it was fifteen
hundred to two thousand years ago, which is the floruit of early
Christian thinkers. Second, it helps us understand that until we have
a better grasp of how early Christian thinkers conceptualized
physical light, the full meaning of their theological light language will
remain sealed to us, regardless of its literal or metaphorical use.
Curiously, it is this question that has been omitted in the previous
discussion. It is this question that is the subject matter of this book.
Due to its novel research question, this book adopts a novel
method. As a working hypothesis, it distinguishes at the outset
between two different senses of the term ‘light’ in the locution
‘metaphysics of light’. In its traditional and extended sense, ‘light’
denotes ‘being qua being’, ‘pure being’, ‘being as such’, and the like,
i.e. ‘being’ as the subject matter of traditional metaphysics in all its
abstractness and generality. This is the sense used by Baeumker and
Beierwaltes, which I will from now on refer to as the ‘metaphysics of
light’ lato sensu. This is a stretched sense of ‘light’ because no
matter how we unpack its meaning (literally or metaphorically), the
term denotes something different than the common and familiar
sense of the agent or state of physical illumination. By contrast, it is
in the latter sense that I will from now on employ the term ‘light’ in
this book. This is a narrow sense, since ‘light’ retains its known and
commonly available usage in ordinary language, as when we speak
of ‘the light of the sun’ or ‘the light that illuminates a dark room’.
This ordinary meaning of ‘light’ is different from its extended
meaning. It no longer refers to the whole of reality but only to a part
of it, namely the natural process, condition, or event that we
phenomenologically attest as making things visible. If we now ask
what this process, condition, or event is, we open up two different
but interrelated fields of enquiry, depending on what we mean by
the question. If we mean how light manifests in the visible world, we
enquire into the phenomenal aspect of light and enter the domain of
the physics of light. If we mean why light manifests the way it does,
we enquire into the noumenal aspect of light, i.e. into the nature
(ousia, phusis) and explanatory cause (aition) of light and enter the
domain of the metaphysics of light. I here speak of the metaphysics
of light in a narrow sense (stricto sensu) and without inverted
commas, which I distinguish from the traditional ‘metaphysics of
light’ in an extended sense (lato sensu), hence in inverted commas.
In a narrow sense then, the metaphysics of light no longer denotes
the traditional subject matter of metaphysics, i.e. ‘being qua being’
or ‘being as such’, but only one kind of being, i.e. ‘light qua being’ or
‘light as such’. Only in the latter sense is the metaphysics of light the
subject matter of this book. This redefinition of the subject matter is
necessary in order to move beyond the linguistic barrier of previous
discussions. In the end, the working distinction may prove somewhat
artificial because the nature of light reveals the nature of being in an
exemplary way. At the starting point of our enquiry, however, we do
not know yet whether it is so. Any a priori identification of light with
being comes at the expense of a petitio principii. For the purposes of
our enquiry, then, the distinction between the nature of light and the
nature of being is methodologically necessary, even if it proves to be
no more than a useful tool that we might need to let go of in the
end. Only after the nature of physical light has been clarified (the
metaphysics of light in its narrow sense) can one enquire further into
the meaning of light as a theological concept (the ‘metaphysics of
light’ in an extended sense). The purpose of this book is therefore to
redirect attention to the question ‘what is light?’ and, in doing so, to
investigate the concept of physical light in early Christian literature.
Yet this is not as straightforward as it seems.
The major obstacle that this book has to overcome is the absence
of a systematic study on the ancient physics of light. What this
means and why this gap exists are thoroughly explored in Chapter 1.
I there discuss the current trend of approaching ancient theories of
light from a purely ‘oculocentric’ perspective, as parts of ancient
theories of vision. I show why this is not the only way to read the
texts and I argue that it is actually the wrong way of reading Jewish-
Christian sources. Thus, the first chapter of this study is devoted to
the task of rediscovering the path that leads to the ancient physics
of light—a path that is blocked by modern historiography. The
second challenge that this book has to overcome is to show that this
path is important for scriptural reasoning, and hence theologically
relevant. It is one thing to show that there exists an ancient physics
of light; it is another thing to show that Jewish-Christian thinkers
developed their own version thereof; and it is altogether another
thing to argue that the Jewish-Christian physics of light is
hermeneutically significant. For this reason, in Chapter 2 of this
study I discuss various objections raised to the compatibility of the
‘logic’ of Scripture with scientific rationalism. This chapter argues
that binary distinctions like ‘Scripture vs. science’, ‘faith vs. reason’
etc. stem from anachronistic or uncharitable readings of the sources.
The connection between Scripture and premodern science is found
in the early Church doctrine of the logos. It is through the logos
doctrine that the physics of light acquires a genuinely hermeneutical,
hence theological, import. With the above caveats and contentions,
Chapter 3 embarks on the investigation of the nature of light from
the perspective of early Jewish-Christian sources. I here collect all
the clues given in the texts, I discuss them from the backdrop of the
major theories of light available at the time, and I reconstruct the
outlines of a systematic theory of light as it would appear roughly in
the timeframe between the Council of Nicaea (325) and the Council
of Constantinople (381). My reconstruction shows that, irrespective
of the question of language, the reconstructed theory comes with
specific ontological commitments which are derived from a certain
reading of Scripture. It thus presupposes a hermeneutically
grounded metaphysics of light in the narrow sense.
The basic source material for an enquiry into the concept of
physical light of the early Church is found in the so-called
‘hexaemeral’ tradition, i.e. the collection of commentaries, homilies,
and special treatises concerned with the exegesis of the biblical
creation narrative of Genesis 1.56 The earliest extant commentary is
Philo’s treatise De opificio mundi, though Philo was certainly not the
first to produce a hexaemeral exegesis.57 His work, however, has
exercised tremendous influence (directly or indirectly) over the
subsequent tradition, giving rise to a body of literature that exhibits
a certain structural and thematic unity. It is only in the latter sense
that this book speaks, somewhat indiscriminately, of a ‘Jewish-
Christian’ hexaemeral tradition, in order to stress the lines of
continuity behind the indisputable exegetical variety.58 As will
become clear, it is the hermeneutical interplay of diversity and
continuity that yields the particular theological import of the
hexaemeral physics of light. To retrieve this hermeneutical interplay,
this study engages in a close reading of the hexaemeral texts. My
effort has been to use existing and easily accessible translations,
even though in many cases they had to be (more or less) modified
for the sake of a more accurate reading.59 In a few cases, an
entirely new translation had to be produced.60

The Metaphysics of Light in the Hexaemeral Literature: From Philo of Alexandria to

Gregory of Nyssa. Isidoros C. Katsos, Oxford University Press. © Isidoros C. Katsos
2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869197.003.0001

1 See the overviews in Beierwaltes (1980a); Schültzinger (2003); Meyer-

Schwelling (2006); Wallraff (2010), esp. 130–7.
2 See the interdisciplinary contributions in O’Collins and Meyers (2012).
3 Defining the contours and setting the tone, Louth (2007). Still indispensable
is the monumental study of Goodenough (1969). See also, in cross-cultural
perspective, the contributions in Kapstein (2004).
4 For the medieval ‘metaphysics of light’ see Tavard (1950); McEvoy (1978);
Hauskeller (2004); Schloeder (2012); Clarke and Bacchianti (2014). For the
emphasis on Robert Grosseteste see McKeon (1948), 85–97, 156–74; Crombie
(1953), 104–16, 128–31; Koyré (1956); McEvoy (1982); Lindberg (1986); Oliver
(2004); Cunningham and Hocknull (2016).
5 Lindberg (1976), 95.
6 McEvoy (2000), 87.
7 See Baeumker (1908). Baeumker later defended the view that the author
was another ‘metaphysician of light’, Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, a generation older
than Witelo, see Baeumker (1924). The question of authorship is still open.
8 See for the following Baeumker (1908), 357–433, esp. 360 for the tripartite
classification. The criteria of ‘immanence’, ‘transcendence’, and ‘mediation–
participation’ are mine. But I have only provided the categories for what Baeumker
already described in words.
9 On the medieval theories of analogy see Ashworth (2017).
10 See Wetter (1915).
11 See Klein (1962), 78 (two ontological models); 72, 211–2 (metaphorical
language).
12 For the development of Beierwaltes’s thought on ‘light metaphysics’ see
Beierwaltes (1957), (1961), (1965), (1976), (1980a), (1980b).
13 For the reception history see Beierwaltes (1980a), 282–5.
14 See Ferwerda (1965), 2–7, 46–9, 57–61.
15 See Emilsson (2007), 8–9: light as one of many ‘emanative metaphors’. But
cf. Lloyd (1990), 100: light is not a ‘mere analogy or metaphor’, but one of many
‘examples of the physical model of emanation’.
16 It should be noted, however, that Thomas’s considered view is much more
nuanced than occasionally presented, implying a distinction between ‘sensible
light’, which is used metaphorically with regard to God (like the ‘sun simile’), and
‘intelligible light’, which is predicated properly with regard to intelligible beings and
analogically with regard to God, see Whidden (2014), 71–86. One may remark,
with McEvoy (1978), 141, that Thomas recovered, in the end, much of the
‘metaphysics of light’ of the Platonist tradition ‘in categories that were different,
largely original and less ambiguous than those he rejected’.
17 On the classical theory of metaphor see Aristotle, Poet. 21; Rhet. III.2–4;
Cicero, Orat. II.45 (261–2); Quintilian, Institutio oratoria VIII.6–IX.1. See further
Soskice (1985), 3–10; Innes (2003); Hills (2017). On Aristotle’s own metaphorical
interpretation of the Platonic light imagery see De an. III.5 (430a14–17): the
active intellect is ‘like the light’ (hoion to phōs).
18 See Lloyd (1966), 226.
19 Lloyd (1966), 402.
20 Lloyd (1966), 402.
21 See McKeon (1948), 157; Lindberg (1976), 95.
22 For the ‘Alexandrian tradition’ in its line of continuity from Philo to Origen see
Runia (2015). For the Philonic legacy of the catechetical school see van den Hoek
(1997); for the patristic tradition see Runia (1993) and (2014). On the line of
continuity between Origen, Basil, and Gregory see Ramelli (2007) and (2013),
372–440. For the Origenian legacy as part of the intellectual inheritance of Basil’s
and Gregory’s family see Rousseau (1994), 11–14; Silvas (2008).
 23 On Ambrose’s debt to Philo, Origen, and Basil for his scriptural exegesis see
Ramsey (1997), 67. As regards his hexaemeral homilies see Henke (2000), 17–29.
24 See Louth (1989), 40.
25 See Louth (1989), 100–1.
26 See Boyancé (1963).
27 The exceptions I have in mind are the studies of Boyancé (1936), 65–78, for
Stoicism; Schroeder (1981), (1984), and (1992), 24–39, for Alexander of
Aphrodisias and Plotinus; Lindberg (1986), 9–29, for Neoplatonism; Nikiprowetzky
(1989, unfinished draft), for Philo; van Kooten (2005a), for the Johannine
literature. To be clear, Boyancé’s objection holds only for the meaning of light
metaphors in the tradition of philosophical theology which translates theological
language into metaphysical categories, the study of which builds directly on
ancient physics (or is inseparable from it, as is the case in sources of Stoic
inspiration). It does not hold for the lay understanding of the language of God as
light nor for how this language was further unpacked in the broader literary
context of antiquity. The Philonic corpus is an exemplary case of philosophical
theology of the aforementioned style, bequeathed to early Christianity through an
Alexandrian legacy, see Schneider (1999); Kobusch (2006); Karamanolis (2013).
28 I am here referring to the school of Baeumker and Beierwaltes, which
emphatically denies the transference of properties from physical to divine light,
see Beierwaltes (1980b), 289: ‘The cause and ground of all being is “true”, “real”
light, whose “image” is the sensible light—not the other way around.’
29 For Athanasius and Gregory see Osborne (1993), 158–61; for Basil see
Radde-Gallwitz (2009), 114–22, and DelCogliano (2010), 158–63.
30 For the Platonic background to the scriptural theophanic language of light
see the remarkable paper of van Kooten (2005a), with further references to the
modern and ancient sources.
31 But also in the last instance, if claims about theophanic experience are to be
verified through rational discourse, as they are in the Platonic corpus, and as they
ought to be in general.
32 I here assume that the meaning of the language of ‘God as light’
presupposes a notion or concept of light underlying such language. What I mean
is this: when a term (‘light’) is used not as a name (X) but to indicate some
feature or property (Y) of the bearer of a name, so that bearer and property stand
in a predicative ‘X is Y’ relation, such as ‘God is light’, the term signifies something
other than the bearer to which it applies. It signifies a feature or description which
may or may not be true of the bearer, see Osborne (1993), 159. The mental
representation of that feature or description is the concept of Y. Light is such a
concept. The concept of light entails theoretical knowledge that explains why
certain things happen in the world, such as the illumination of a dark room,
analysable in a set of properties and the causal and functional relations between
these properties and the properties of entities represented by other concepts, such
as a dark room. Let us here call concepts whose theoretical knowledge is reducible
to abstractions about relations between variables, as in the case of the laws of
physics, ‘scientific concepts’. Physical light is such a concept. For the reasons
already mentioned, and which I further discuss in Chapter 2, the hexaemeral
authors took seriously in their scriptural exegesis light as a scientific concept. The
theoretical knowledge contained in scientific concepts may vary significantly in
different scientific theories, shaping beliefs in different socio-cultural contexts. The
theoretical knowledge that is part of the early Christian concept of light, then,
requires an investigation into the laws of physics that are relevant to the early
Christian theories of light.
33 See for example the studies of Wallraff (2001); Kariatlis (2013); McConnell
(2014).
34 See the much-neglected but still best study available on the subject by
Pelikan (1962), 21–36 (‘metaphor’ in the sense of a platonic paradeigma); 39–51
(the role of the doctrine of creation in the shaping of light language); 55–72
(history and development of the Nicene light language). See further the seminal
studies of Theodorou (1976); Beck (1981); Hanson (1985); and McGuckin (1994),
as well as the more recent studies of O’Collins (2012), who follows Pelikan, and
Tanner (2012), who follows Prestige (1952).
35 See Barnes (2001), Radde-Gallwitz (2009) and (2017), and DelCogliano
(2010).
36 See Barnes (2001), 159.
37 See Barnes (2001), 119–21.
38 See DelCogliano (2010), 163.
39 See DelCogliano (2010), 159.
40 See Radde-Gallwitz (2009), 160.
41 See Radde-Gallwitz (2009), 167 my italics.
42 See e.g. Radde-Gallwitz (2009), 163, 203 n.85.
43 See Radde-Gallwitz (2017), 201, 210.
44 See Radde-Gallwitz (2017), 211.
45 See Drecoll (1996), 103–11.
46 See Drecoll (1996), 103.
47 See Drecoll (1996), 103 n.162.
48 Confusing, for example, the nature of the medium with the nature of light,
see Marinescu (2013), 87.
49 See Stead (1994), esp. 46–7, 140–3.
50 See Stead (1994), e.g. 71, 101, 156, 169, 170, 209–11, 225–6.
 51 See Stead (1994), 141.
52 See Stead (1994), 132.
53 See Stead (1994), e.g. 132.
54 Indeed, I discuss the traditional questions of the ‘metaphysics of light’ in two
further studies that build on the argument of this book, see Katsos (2022) and
Katsos (forthcoming).
55 I hint at the possibility of such novel contributions throughout this book and
especially in Appendix C.
56 For a heuristic definition of the hexaemeral literature see Robbins (1912), 1.
For a list of the hexaemeral sources see Congar (1964), 215–22. The best
overview of the field is given by van Winden (1988). The most comprehensive
study is that of Köckert (2009). For cross-cultural treatment of the hexaemeral
exegesis see the collection of papers in Centre d’études des religions du livre
(1973). For the influence of the hexaemeral literature in the history of art see
Zahlten (1979).
57 On the literary context of Philo’s hexaemeral exegesis see Tobin (1983);
Runia (2001), 19–20, 30–2; Matusova (2010); and the collection of papers in
Seland (2014).
58 On the exegetical unity-in-diversity of the hexaemeral tradition see the
thematic overviews of Wallace-Hadrill (1968); Bouteneff (2008); Bright (2008);
Louth (2009); Allert (2018). For a systematic perspective see Young (2013), 44–
91. These studies document a gradual shift in patristic scholarship towards a
greater appreciation of the scientific and philosophical sensitivity of the
hexaemeral authors.
59 For extended passages from Gregory’s Apology, I have used (slightly)
modified or (significantly) amended versions of a widely circulating paraphrasis
produced by Casimir/Richard McCambly, available at https://www.lectio-
divina.org/images/nyssa/Hexaemeron.pdf. After the completion of the manuscript
of this book there appeared the translation of Robin Orton, On the Six Days of
Creation (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), while another translation is
being prepared by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz for the Early Christian Writings Series of
Cambridge University Press. Regrettably, it was no longer possible to take the
above translations into consideration.
60 Unless otherwise indicated, the translations provided are my own.
 1
‘From Sight to Light’
A Hexaemeral Guide for the Perplexed

The angels were made before heaven. Heaven and everything below
were made afterwards. The angels, then, stood by at creation. Heaven
was fixed, the angels were praising. Because they did not see
themselves being made, they marvelled as heaven was made. They
were seeing the sun being kindled, the moon bringing light, the stars
being made, and they were astonished. For God tells Job: “When I
made the stars, all of my angels sang my praises” [Job 38:7].
(Ad Gen. 1:1 from the Catenae)

This book begins with the basic contention that illumination is

perceived as a change in the world. If, after Aristotle, physics is the
study of change and the things that are subject to change (Phys.
I.2, 185a12–13), physics holds the key to answering the question:
‘what is light?’ The physics of light would be the part of physics that
studies illumination as a change in the natural world, while the
history of the physics of light would be the kind of enquiry that
answers the question: ‘what is light?’ in a historical context. Early
Christian philosophical theology offers such a context. The ancient
physics of light would, therefore, hold the key to answering the
question: ‘what is light?’ in an early Christian context. A closer
acquaintance with the history of science, however, reveals that it
may not be so simple to take the ancient physics of light as a
starting point for enquiry into early Christian sources. The starting
point assumes that there is such a thing as an ancient ‘physics of
light’. Yet this is extremely contentious in the contemporary history
of science. According to one school of thought, light was the proper
object of enquiry in premodern physics. Ancient theories of light
were, therefore, early intimations of modern optics in the sense of a
proper ‘physics of light’. According to another school of thought, the
object of enquiry of premodern optics was sight, not light. This
approach understands the passage from premodern to modern
optics as the passage ‘from sight to light’ in the sense of a paradigm
shift. The paradigm shift does not allow us to speak meaningfully of
a premodern ‘physics of light’, certainly not in the way that we use
the term today. What is at stake is the possibility of a premodern
discourse on the nature of light. Simply put, the question is whether
the ancient sources are able to theorize light as an autonomous
subject of change, an autonomous physical agent in the world. The
question becomes particularly pressing once we realize that the early
Christian theological language of light is deeply rooted in biblical
hermeneutics.1 If we follow the first approach, it is possible to speak
of a premodern ‘physics of light’ and hence enquire about its biblical
version, starting with the interpretation of Gen. 1:3–5. If we follow
the second approach, there is no ancient theory of light independent
of a theory of vision. This complicates things from a biblical
perspective since the biblical text does not mention any spectators of
the first light of creation other than God: ‘And God saw the light,
that it was good’ (Gen. 1:4). But should we understand this vision of
God in a physical sense?
This chapter aims to address the preliminary question whether it
is possible to speak of a genuine physics of light in hexaemeral
literature. This invites us to link the hexaemeral sources with
contemporary questions raised in the history of science, more
specifically in the history of optics as the scientific discipline
interested in the study of light. In what follows, I shall argue that
hexaemeral light is part of the late antique physics of light. My
argument is going to be dialectical in the sense that I am not going
to refute the optical paradigm as irrelevant to the sources. Instead, I
am going to show that it has been mistakenly interpreted as
subordinating light to sight when, in fact, it is the other way around.
In pursuing my argument, I shall situate ancient theories of light
within the framework of hexaemeral hermeneutics. I aim to show
that the hexaemeral physics of light as part of a comprehensive
theological project does not exhaust itself with the study of the
physical world. Much more than that, it aims to guide the reader of
the biblical creation narrative from the phenomenal world to the
world of intelligible causes.

1.1 The Intelligibility of Hexaemeral Light

Scripture begins with a thought experiment:

In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. Yet the earth was
invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss; and the spirit of
God was hovering over the water. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and
there was light. And God saw the light that it was good; and God separated
between the light and the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the
darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning,
day one. (Gen. 1:1–5)2

The opening chapter of the book of Genesis invites the reader to go

back to the beginning of time (en archē) and visualize the universe
in its early, still ‘unformed’ (akataskeuastos) state. The story narrates
the formation of the universe in several cosmic periods: ‘six days’,
hexi hēmerai, whence ‘hexaemeron’, denoting synecdochically—
together with the seventh day of the Sabbath, to which later the
Christian eighth day of the Lord was added—the whole of God’s
creative work. ‘Heaven and earth’ were created first, but the earth
was ‘invisible’ (aoratos) since there was no light. Then a speech act
happened, a luminous epiphany of a divine command: ‘And God
said: “Let there be light”; and there was light.’ The narrative
continues with the reader visualizing God seeing the light,
acknowledging that it was good, and dividing light from darkness.
Thereupon the measurement of time appeared, ‘day’ and ‘night’,
revealing a pattern of regularity of succession, ‘evening’ and
‘morning’. That was ‘day one’ (hēmera mia), the first stage of the
new-born universe.
There are several hints in the biblical account of the
cosmogenesis that there is more to the narrative than first meets the
eye. The perspective is clearly geocentric, as the measurement of
time in days and nights betrays—a bizarre choice if the intended
perspective is the point of view of God. And there are signs that the
narrative might be more sophisticated than it initially appears. If
measured time begins with the first divine speech act—fiat lux—that
set creation in motion, what is the state and nature of the pristine
cosmic elements: ‘heaven’, ‘earth’, ‘spirit’, and ‘water’? Which of our
cosmological categories best befits the biblical notion of the ‘abyss’?
Why does the earth subsist in the beginning alone and ‘unformed’,
while all the stars and planets were created much later and fully
adorned? And why is it that only the earth is invisible and not both
heaven and earth? The biblical narrative begins with the
cosmogenesis, and a storm of thoughts blows through the mind of
the contemporary reader. In this confusing state, only one narrative
element sounds familiar and recognizable, an element with which
even a lay newcomer to this strange new biblical world can relate:
‘light’—pure natural, physical light. Yet again, the sense of familiarity
vanishes once we read more closely. If ‘heaven and earth’, the
‘spirit’, the ‘water’, and the ‘abyss’ do not match, prima vista, our
known cosmological categories, why should ‘light’? If there was
nothing ‘out there’ apart from some strange dark cosmic ‘stuff’—viz.
the invisible and unformed ‘earth’ etc.—where did light come from?
Moreover, we are told, ‘God saw the light that it was good’ (kai eiden
ho theos to phōs hoti kalon, Gen. 1:4).3 Surely this is a figure of
speech unless God has a body and sense organs and can see. If
God’s vision is meant metaphorically, why should the object of this
vision—viz. light—be understood literally? Or perhaps God’s vision of
light is not a metaphor and God does indeed have some kind of
strange visual apparatus. Why should then this light that God saw be
less strange than the eye that contemplated it? Why assume that an
awkward, if literal, divine vision has as its subject matter a less
awkward, literal, light? Just a little bit of reflection on one of the
most widely cited biblical commonplaces—fiat lux—and neither the
fiat nor the lux is as innocuous as a naïve cosmological narrative
would suggest. No wonder then that the interpretation of the first
chapter of Genesis, especially the opening verses, has been hugely
debated since antiquity.4 Anything but perspicuous itself, the first
light is paradoxically meant to illuminate everything else. If so, God
works in mysterious ways indeed. Or perhaps the light of Genesis is
simply what it says it is, namely physical light, and it does what it
says it does, namely to illuminate, but we do not yet have the right
eyes to see. If one thing is clear, the question of the nature of this
‘light’ cannot be settled by the biblical text alone. It also requires an
act of interpretative decision. Basil, who has been extremely
influential in the patristic tradition, describes, colourfully, in his
hexaemeral homilies the interpretative crux of the biblical exegete:

I know the laws of allegory although I did not invent them of myself, but
have met them in the works of others. Those who do not admit the
common meaning of the Scriptures say that water is not water, but some
other nature, and they explain a plant and a fish according to their opinion.
They describe also the production of reptiles and wild animals, changing it
according to their own notions, just like the dream interpreters, who
interpret for their own ends the appearances seen in their dreams. When I
hear “grass,” I think of grass, and in the same manner I understand
everything as it is said, a plant, a fish, a wild animal, and an ox.…Shall I
rather give glory to Him who has not kept our mind occupied with vanities
but has ordained that all things be written for the edification and guidance
of our souls? This is a thing of which they seem to me to have been
unaware, who have attempted by false arguments and allegorical
interpretations to bestow on the Scriptures a dignity of their own imagining.
But, theirs is the attitude of one who considers himself wiser than the
revelations of the Spirit and introduces his own ideas in pretence of an
explanation. Therefore, let it be understood as it has been written. (Hex.
IX.1 GCS 146.11–147.23 tr. Way)

It is clear from Basil’s militant report that the literal reading of the
first chapter of Genesis was not at all evident to ancient readers—
just as it ought not to be to the reflective contemporary readers.5
Basil opts in this context for a literal reading.6 ‘Grass’ is grass, he
says in the ninth homily, and ‘fish’ is fish. So, too, ‘water’ is water
and ‘light’ is light, i.e. pure natural, physical light, as he makes clear
in his second (II.4) and third (III.6, 9) homilies. Many Church
Fathers, like most biblical scholars today, made the same
interpretative choice as Basil and understood ‘light’ literally.7 Given
the aforementioned aporiai that the text generates, the literal
interpretation is not the easiest route to take. Augustine initially
thought it an impossible task. He then tried and, admittedly, failed.
Later, he tried again, and it took him fifteen years to come up with
an interpretation that would hardly comply with modern standards of
literal exegesis. It remained an attempt ad litteram, ‘according to the
letter’.8 Nevertheless, the literal interpretation is perhaps the safest
way into the biblical text. In the end, if ‘light’ is not light, there is
little left to make sense at all of the opening verses of the Bible.
This study too adopts as its starting point Basil’s basic assumption
that the reference of the biblical ‫–אֹור‬phōs–lux of Gen. 1:3–5 is
physical light. The question is: whose physical light? Clearly, for Basil
phōs is what Basil took physical light to be. Similarly, for us phōs is
our notion of physical light. I would here like to be able to add
effortlessly that Basil’s concept of light is the same as ours. But that
might not be so easy as it sounds after sixteen centuries of scientific
progress. Surely there have been significant changes in how
scientists theorize the physical world—recall only the change caused
by the use of the telescope—and the mere logical assertion that
‘light’ is light will not do. ‘Hesperus’ is Hesperus (i.e. the ‘evening
star’) and ‘Phosphorus’ is Phosphorus (i.e. the ‘morning star’). As we
know today, the evening star is the morning star, namely the planet
Venus. But people were not always aware that the two names have
the same referent. At the time of Basil, the memory was still alive of
the evening and the morning star being considered as different
heavenly bodies.9 Or, to take another trivial example, ‘atoms’ are
atoms. But ‘atoms’ in ancient physics occupied the place of
elementary particles, while in modern physics the place of
elementary particles is occupied by other subatomic structures
(‘fermions’ and ‘bosons’). The same term (‘atom’) has lost its
previous theoretical content (elementary particle) resulting in a
different concept. Why should we assume otherwise in the case of
light? The examples show that one should be wary of projecting
one’s own familiar concepts back into the ancient sources. The
history of science teaches us that the theoretical content, even the
object of scientific concepts, may fluctuate between different
scientific communities and change over time. It is not to be excluded
that Moses or Basil, or any premodern reader of Scripture for that
matter, understood something entirely or partially different than we
do today when they thought of the word ‘light’. That is the reason
why my first task is to lay out the assumptions under which
premodern biblical exegetes conceptualized physical light. Whether
‘light’ signifies the same thing in ancient and modern physics is in
fact a disputed question. In what follows, I will situate hexaemeral
literature in the context of this controversy and draw the necessary
conclusions for the hexaemeral theories of light.

1.2 The Oculocentric Thesis

The question of the nature of light occupies the central stage in the
contemporary history of science. Significant milestones of twentieth-
century historiography have been the groundbreaking, but
contested, work of Vasco Ronchi, Storia della luce,10 and David
Lindberg’s authoritative work Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to
Kepler.11 They both established the contours of the field that is now
recognized as ‘history of optics’. Both works bequeathed to younger
generations of scholars a hidden tension: on the one hand, they
recognized the centrality of the question of light; on the other hand,
they skewed the question by shifting focus from light to sight. It is
still instructive to remember how this shift occurred.
 Ronchi began his historical survey with a theologian’s approach:
the biblical account of the creation of light. Ronchi did not make any
reference to the great Jewish-Christian hexaemeral tradition. But his
remarks sound like a modern version of a hexaemeral commentary
on primordial light. The first verses of Genesis entail, for Ronchi, ‘a
theory on the nature of light’, according to which light has ‘an
existence of its own, independent of its source and of its receiver’.12
Since the hexaemeral tradition remained elusive, if not unknown, to
Ronchi he did not have the necessary material to pursue the Genesis
lead further. In trying to unfold the story of light, he was left only
with ancient Greek theories of light to work with. If Ronchi had
paused right there, the purpose of my study would have been very
simple: to compare Ronchi’s account of Greek theories of light with
the respective hexaemeral theories and continue the story that
Ronchi left untold, as the reception history of Greek theories of light
by late antique biblical exegetes. But at this point Ronchi’s narrative
took a rather unexpected turn, expressed in the following
astonishing remark:

The Greek philosophers do not appear to have taken upon themselves the
task of determining the nature of light. What interested them most was to
explain the mechanism of vision. In those days the main goal of thinkers
was to learn to understand man, his functions and his faculties. Vision was
one of the important faculties of man, and hence the answer to the question
“how do we see?” became fundamental. Every physical entity exists because
it produces effects. At that time the only known effect of light was vision,
and it was natural therefore, that the study of light should begin from this
point.13

For Ronchi, who at this point has been influential for all subsequent
discussion, Greek thought did not ask the question: what is light?
Instead, it asked the question: what is sight? This shift in the object
of enquiry, sight instead of light, was, for Ronchi, empirically
attested: that is what we get from the known sources. One may
wonder whether Ronchi would be willing to reconsider if he were
shown different textual evidence. Be it as it may, with him started a
process of assimilation between the history of light and sight in
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Title: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz — Mitteilungen

Band XIII, Heft 5-6
Monatsschrift für Heimatschutz, Volkskunde und
Denkmalpflege

Author: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz

Release date: October 28, 2023 [eBook #71976]

Language: German

Original publication: Dresden: Landesverein Sächsischer

Heimatschutz, 1924

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

LANDESVEREIN SÄCHSISCHER HEIMATSCHUTZ —
MITTEILUNGEN BAND XIII, HEFT 5-6 ***
 Anmerkungen zur Transkription
Das Original ist in Fraktur gesetzt. Im Original gesperrter ist so ausgezeichnet.
Im Original in Antiqua gesetzter Text ist so markiert.
Weitere Anmerkungen zur Transkription befinden sich am Ende des Buches.
 Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz
Dresden

Mitteilungen
Heft
5 bis 6
Monatsschrift für Heimatschutz, Volkskunde und Denkmalpflege
Band XIII
Inhalt: Weinberghäuser in der Lößnitz und den Meißner
Bergen – Herrensitze der Lößnitz – Die Lößnitz und die
Dresdner Heide – Der Untergang des Weinbaus – Die
Rotalge Hildenbrandia rivularis (Liebm.) Bréb., ein
ausgestorbenes (?) Naturdenkmal Sachsens – Vom
neuen Weinbau

Einzelpreis dieses Heftes 2 Goldmark

Geschäftsstelle: Dresden-A., Schießgasse 24
Postscheckkonto: Leipzig 13 987,
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Bankkonto: Commerz- und Privatbank, Abteilung Pirnaischer Platz,
Dresden
Bassenge & Fritzsche, Dresden
Dresden 1924
 An unsere werten Mitglieder!
Wir bitten wiederholt um Einsendung der Monatsbeiträge (1 Mark,
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Band XIII, Heft 5/6 1924

Die Mitteilungen des Vereins werden in Bänden zu 12 Nummern

herausgegeben
Abgeschlossen am 1. Juni 1924
 Weinberghäuser in der Lößnitz und
den Meißner Bergen
Von Reg.-Baurat Dr. Paul Goldhardt
Wenn wir von den Elbhöhen unterhalb Dresdens, etwa vom
Standpunkte des Spitzhauses, ins weite lichte Land hinausblicken
und, die tektonischen Massen der herüber- und hinübergrüßenden
stolzen Ufer abwägend, das Bild des breit und majestätisch
dahinziehenden Elbstromes in uns aufnehmen, werden die zu
unseren Füßen sich ausbreitenden Niederungen gar bald unsere
Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen. Welch ein unübersehbares
Häusermeer! Kauert sich doch von Dresden bis nahe an Meißen,
zwischen Gärten und Alleen eingebettet, ein Häuschen neben das
andere; kleine Giebelfenster blitzen unter roten und dunkelblauen
Dächern auf, in nicht endenwollender Zahl sind menschliche
Siedlungen und Arbeitsstätten zwischen Strom und Berg verstreut.
Vor solcher Übervölkerung der heimatlichen Erde erschrickt man,
und leise mischt sich die ständig mit uns wandelnde Sorge um das
Los unseres gequälten Volkes in die fröhliche Wanderstimmung. Und
doch, wer die trauten heimatlichen Täler und Höhen ins Herz
geschlossen hat, den werden die üppigen Gärten und die von weiter
Sicht so simpel daliegenden und in der Nähe gesehen so kompliziert
auf die modernen Bedürfnisse der Menschen eingestellten
Siedlungen auch mit Zuversicht erfüllen, denn sie versinnbildlichen
ihm mit eindringlicher Macht die unüberwindliche Kraft des Volkes,
die auch durch jahrzehntelange Unterdrückung hindurch zum Lichte
strebt. Sind doch all diese Gehöfte und Werkstätten innerhalb
weniger Jahrzehnte aus dem Erdboden geschossen und haben eine
vollkommene Umwertung der Landschaft hervorgerufen.
Der Wanderer, der gegen Anfang oder um die Mitte des
verflossenen Jahrhunderts die Elbhöhen erstieg, konnte noch
landschaftliche Bildungen von vollendeter Reinheit und Lieblichkeit
bewundern, von denen der heutige Zustand kaum noch einen
matten Abglanz widerspiegelt. Wem ständen, wenn er sich jener
Zeiten erinnert, nicht Ludwig Richtersche Radierungen vor Augen,
auf denen die Poesie der Weinkultur verherrlicht wurde? Sie sind für
immer dahin, jene anmutigen Zeiten der Bergeinsamkeit, die Tage
farbenreicher ländlicher Feste, der wandernden Gesellen und
versonnenen Zecher.
Und nur unsre Phantasie kann uns von der Unberührtheit der
damaligen Lößnitzberge eine Vorstellung geben, als dort noch ein
weiter großer Garten Gottes war, umzäunt und durchschnitten von
tausend Steinmäuerchen und Treppchen, die sich bergab und
bergauf zwischen saftigem Weinlaub, knorrigen Nußbäumen und
uralten Linden dahinzogen, als dieses ganze sonnige Berg- und
Hügelland samt der vorgelagerten breiten Talsohle, über und über in
Grün getaucht, noch frei war von städtischen Ansiedlungen, und als
dieses ewige Grün nur an ganz wenigen Stellen und wohlberechnet
durchsetzt war von den fröhlichen roten Ziegeldächern und weißen
Mauerflächen der kleinen Winzerhäuschen und Weingüter. Uns
bleibt, wenn wir jene alten schönen Zeiten neuerleben wollen, nichts
übrig, als sehenden Auges umherzuschweifen und den alten trauten
Zeugen einer verklungenen Kultur nachzuforschen. Mit der Freude
des Entdeckers werden wir zwischen Rebstöcken, abgebrochenen
Alleen und verfallenen Mäuerchen diese malerischen Häuschen eins
nach dem anderen auffinden und mit steigendem Entzücken
feststellen, welch große künstlerische Einheit sie umfaßt, wie immer
und immer wieder das trauliche Walmdach wiederkehrt, wie
hinsichtlich der Stellung des Häuschens zur Straße und zum
Weinberg und der künstlerischen Verflechtung von Haus, Garten und
Berg überall dieselbe ordnende Hand tätig gewesen zu sein scheint.
Stand doch das Winzerhaus wie das vornehme Landhaus immer
unten im Tal und überließ das sonnige Berggelände dem Rebstock,
der sich bis zum Bergkamm hinaufzog. Dort aber an höchster Stelle
entstanden allerliebste Wachthäuschen, denn zur Zeit der reifenden
Trauben war dort Aufsicht geboten. Welche anmutige Lösungen
fanden unsere Vorfahren hierfür, welche entzückenden Türmchen
und Pavillons krönen allerorts die Weinbergsgrundstücke und
erzählen von der fröhlichen Schaffenslust der Bewohner und von
ihrem feinen und natürlichen Gefühl für bauliche Aufgaben!
Wenden wir uns kurz dem geschichtlichen Ursprung und
Werdegang der Weinbergsbauten in der Lößnitz zu, so ist zunächst
festzustellen, daß aus der Zeit vor 1550 nichts Bemerkenswertes
erhalten ist, und daß die überwiegende Zahl der baulichen Anlagen
vom Anfang des achtzehnten bis zum Anfang des neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts errichtet wurde. Da aber die Rebenkultur in den
Elbbergen viel älteren Ursprungs ist, glaubt man sie doch, auf
gewisse Urkunden fußend, bis ins zwölfte Jahrhundert, also in die
Zeit der Neubesiedlung des Landes durch die Deutschen,
zurückverfolgen zu können, so scheint die Geschichte des
sächsischen Weinbaues nun schon dreiviertel Jahrtausend mit der
Entwicklung unserer engeren Heimat verknüpft zu sein. Im frühen
Mittelalter, als Sorben und Deutsche um den fruchtbaren Boden
gerungen haben, wurde der Weinbau von den Klöstern und
Kirchenfürsten gefördert, und gewiß war Meißen auch der
Ausgangspunkt dieser wichtigen Kulturerscheinung, deuten doch
gewisse altüberlieferte Orts- und Gebäudebezeichnungen, so z. B.
die der Bischofspresse in Zitzschewig, auf diese Tatsache hin.
Jahrhundertelang war die kleine Rebenstadt das Herz des Landes,
bis sie infolge von dessen politischer Umbildung das Zepter an
Dresden abtreten mußte. Der Weinbau aber hat indessen nicht
aufgehört, im Wirtschaftsleben des Landes eine große Rolle zu
spielen, und wir können annehmen, daß die Rebenkultur im Verlaufe
der Jahrhunderte von ausschlaggebender Bedeutung für die
landschaftliche Gestaltung des Elbgebirges und für sein bauliches
Bild gewesen ist.
Von Dresden aus übernahmen dann die weltlichen Fürsten die
Fürsorge für den Weinbau, höfische und städtische Kultur ist es, die
von jetzt ab im Gefolge des Weinbaues in die Berge vordringt. Es
sind die reichsten und schönsten Blätter der sächsischen
Kulturgeschichte, die sich uns nun eröffnen, die Zeit des
farbenprächtigen Barockes, jener wundervollen Stilgebundenheit, die
dem gesamten Leben der damaligen Zeit Glanz und Weihe verlieh.
August der Starke und seine schönheitstrunkene Zeit! Die Strenge
des Hofzeremoniells löste ein um so freieres, ungebundeneres
Landleben aus; erschöpft von den gesundheitraubenden Hoffesten
und überdrüssig des Staubes der bewegten Stadt, bestiegen die
zierlichen Perückendamen und höflichen Kavaliere die breiten
Staatskutschen, und hinaus in die weinumrankten Berghäuschen
ging die fröhliche Fahrt, anmutigen Schäferspielen und neuen
Intrigen entgegen. Und nun beginnt ein herzerquickender Wetteifer
der baulustigen Stadtherren, immer schönere Weingüter zu
ersinnen, immer lieblichere Gebilde aus Stein und Dachwerk
zwischen malerischen Bergtreppen und schnurgeraden Alleen
hervorzuzaubern. Freilich die Namen der Künstler sind verschollen.
Sei es drum, war doch das ganze schönheitsgierige Jahrhundert
kunstbegabt, war doch jeder ein Meister. Waren auch viele der
damals entstandenen Weinbergshäuser kleineren Umfanges und
von bescheidenem Äußeren, so erscheinen sie uns, die wir der
baulichen Verwilderung der letzten Jahrzehnte müde sind und gierig
dem Schatz unserer guten alten einheimischen Kunst nachforschen,
doch alle wie Zeugen aus einer besseren Zeit, in der anständige
künstlerische Durchbildung des Hauses noch eine
selbstverständliche Forderung war.
Als Auftakte der Lößnitzbaukunst sind in erster Linie das launige
mit reicher den Wein verherrlichender Plastik geschmückte Portal im
Garten der Hellerschänke, sodann das an der Baumwiese gelegene
Fachwerkhaus (Abb. 1) zu nennen. Es soll der Gräfin Cosel als
Zuflucht gedient haben und zeigt im Innern noch einige Reste
reicherer Raumdurchbildung, worauf ja schon der prächtige
Fachwerkserker, der in unserer Gegend selten vorkommt, hindeutet.
Zu diesen auf die Lößnitz vorbereitenden Bauwerken gehört aber
auch der gut umrissene Gasthof »Pfeifer« in Wahnsdorf und das alte
Weingut am Wilden Mann, Döbelner Straße 108 (Abb. 2).
 Abb. 1 Fachwerkhaus an der Baumwiese
Aufnahme von Josef Ostermaier, Dresden-Blasewitz

Inzwischen gelangen wir in die Oberlößnitz und stoßen an der

Wettinstraße auf ein rechtes Märchenhaus: das Kiauhaus (Abb. 3),
versteckt hinter einem dichten Schleier knorriger und
hochaufstrebender Zweige und gemütlich umgürtet von einer breit
geschwungenen Steinmauer. Sollen wir die Entstehung dieses
seltsamen Baumindividuums dem Zufall zuschreiben oder hat feiner
Gestaltungssinn diese wundervolle Einheit zwischen Menschenwerk
und Naturgebilde geschaffen? Man kann wohl nur letzteres
annehmen.
 Aufnahme von P. Georg Schäfer, Dresden
Abb. 2 Weingut in Dresden, Döbelner Straße
Noch schlichter und ländlicher wirkt Haus Breitig in der
Kronprinzstraße mit seinem dunklen Fachwerk und hellen
Putzfeldern, es steht so fest verankert mit dem Boden und innig
angeschmiegt an die Naturumgebung (Abb. 4).
 Aufnahme von J. Pfeiffer, Oberlößnitz
Abb. 3 Kiauhaus, Oberlößnitz, Wettinstraße
 Abb. 4 Haus Breitig, Oberlößnitz, Kronprinzstraße

An der Ecke der Nizza- und Sophienstraße treffen wir auf einen
besonders rassigen Bau, (Abb. 5), ohne jede schmückende Zierat ist
er in strenger Gesetzmäßigkeit aufgebaut, das obere Geschoß ist
kräftig zurückgesetzt und mittels breiter Dachschräge mit dem
Unterbau verbunden.
 Abb. 5 Haus Ecke Nizza- und Sophienstraße, Oberlößnitz
Wem daran gelegen ist, zunächst die architektonisch reicher
behandelten Bauten aufzusuchen, dem wird man empfehlen, in
allererster Linie das reizende kleine Bennoschlößchen zu
besichtigen (Abb. 6). Es liegt noch weiter ab vom Bergfuß an der
mittleren Bergstraße und ist einer der ältesten Zeugen der hier
behandelten Hausgattung. Da die Weinpresse später angebaut
wurde, ist es nicht ganz sicher, ob das aus der Zeit um 1600
stammende Häuschen schon von seiner Errichtung an als
Weinbergshaus gedient hat, es ist dies aber anzunehmen.
Bewundernswert ist der trotz bescheidener Größe mit
Renaissanceformen ausdrucksvoll gegliederte Gesamtumriß,
nebenbei erwähnt ein Beweis dafür, daß Bauwerke kleineren
Umfangs nicht immer auf reichere Formen verzichten müssen. Im
Innern freilich erinnert wenig mehr an alte Lebensfreude und
Weinlaunigkeit.
 Aufnahme von J. Pfeiffer, Oberlößnitz
Abb. 6 Bennoschlößchen, Oberlößnitz
 Abb. 7 Haus in der Bennostraße, Oberlößnitz

Das auf Abb. 7 gezeigte Haus in der Bennostraße zeichnet sich

durch gute Stellung in der Straße und durch einen interessanten
Dachgiebel aus, wie wenig an Zutaten bedurfte es doch, diesen
schlichten Häusern Eigenart und Reiz zu verleihen.
 Abb. 8 Haus Sorgenfrei, Oberlößnitz
Aufnahme von J. Ostermaier, Dresden-Blasewitz

Ein charakteristischer Vertreter der Lößnitzbaukunst aber ist

»Sorgenfrei«, an der Schulstraße gelegen, in den Jahren 1786 bis
1789 herrschaftlich und breit angelegt (Abb. 8). Das
Hauptwohnhaus, von stattlicher Baumallee zugänglich und mit
breitem mittleren Dachaufbau im Stil des Empire, Fruchtgehängen,
Vasen und Türmchen, alles in allem eine bauliche Erscheinung von
soviel Anmut und Fröhlichkeit und soviel bodenständiger Eigenart,
daß man sich nur mit wahrer Freude an seinen reizenden Eindruck
erinnert. Man lernt aus solchen Werken, daß man Bauten nicht
erzeichnen, sondern plastisch erfassen soll, wir sind freilich heute
weit entfernt von der Naivität, die hierzu erforderlich ist.