In Rome, the Greek title "On Nature" (PERIFNSEWS) was translated in the first century BC by Lucretius as "On the Nature of Things". This name did not add anything new to the Greek; simply, the Latin verbal word "natura" – "birth", "origin", "nature, or essence of something" – has not yet acquired a sufficiently strong independent meaning; It has always been the nature of "something," where meaning is expressed by that "something." Therefore, De rerum natura is about the nature-property, or the structure of "things", or everything "really (from the Latin "res") that exists".

At the very beginning of the Western European Middle Ages, in the seventh and eighth centuries, which are often called "dark", two Latin treatises appeared, compiled approximately according to the same plan as the Hellenistic doxographic collections, and entitled, like Lucretius' poem, "On the Nature of Things". The author of the first was the Bishop of Seville Isidore (570-637), who composed the famous Etymologies, or Elements, a universal encyclopedia and poetically and rhetorically embellished reference book on all sciences. At the request of Sizebut, the then king of the Visigoths, Isidore compiled a short treatise "On the Nature of Things" for him personally, after reading which the "barbarian" king replied to the bishop with an astronomical poem in very correct Latin hexameters and with rather complex details. The popularity of Isidore's treatise is evidenced by the speed with which copies of it were distributed (along with the king's reply, of course): before 615 it had been circulated in at least two dozen copies in Spain, by 650 it was already known in Gaul and Italy, and by 700 its manuscripts are available in Germany and the British Isles. Aldhelm, Bishop of Stjernborne, a compatriot and senior contemporary of the Venerable Bede, is already well acquainted with this work. Fontaine J. Isidor de Seville. Traite de la nature. Bordeaux, 1960. P. 151 — 156).

100 years after Isidore, the work "On the Nature of Things" was written in Britain not just under the influence of Isidore's treatise, but as a direct arrangement of it. The compiler, the monk Bede, does not claim authorship; he kept the plan practically unchanged (having published only the entire first part, "Hemerology", to which he devoted several independent works); quotes verbatim many passages of Isidore's text. However, by preserving the structure of the treatise, Bede significantly changed its very character. In the course of the history of European natural science or cosmology, the difference between the treatises of Isidore and Bede can be expressed at best in a single sentence: Bede transcribed the work of the bishop of Seville, using some sources unknown to Isidore, for example, Ptolemy's Almagest, Pliny's Natural History, and, probably, his own observations (which is especially noticeable in the chapter on tides) (P. Duhem, Le systeme du monde. Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic. V. III. P., 1954. P. 17).

Other most significant differences are as follows: Isidore of Seville has a lot of space (about a third of the text) occupied by symbolic interpretations of the phenomena described: the sky, the sun, winds, rains, etc., and the same phenomenon can be interpreted in different ways. Apparently, Isidore cites all the interpretations known to him, not bothering to bring them into any system whatsoever (although the method of systematizing symbolic interpretations by dividing them into historical, allegorical, moral, and anagogical was well known to him from the "Morals" of Pope Gregory the Great). In the same way, Isidore does not care about the systematization of the information he communicates and their explanations — here, too, he apparently cites everything that he knows, not in the least embarrassed by glaring contradictions. For him, the authority of Latin poets (Virgil, Lucretius, Lucan) is often higher than that of Aristotle or Ptolemy, and precisely in purely astronomical questions (he often expounds their opinions on various questions in such a way that one can suspect him of a complete lack of understanding of the essence of argumentation). In other words, Isidore of Seville is truly fascinated by rhetoric, any verbal art, in which he himself was a virtuoso. He enjoys demonstrating his extraordinary erudition and hopes to preserve for posterity some of the wisdom of the "ancients" so revered by him, but the meaning of the excerpts from the works of natural science that he cites occupies him very little. The main changes which the Venerable Bede makes in his treatise On the Nature of Things (and he completely rejects symbolic interpretations, removes all contradictions, and sometimes supports extracts from books with his own observations) suggest that he set himself a task somewhat different from that of Isidore. Simply put, he was much less interested in the question of what the ancients wrote about the universe, and much more interested in how it really works.

For modern historians and readers, Bede the Venerable is known primarily as the author of the voluminous and almost the first "History of the Angles". For his contemporaries and immediate descendants, he was better known and revered as the author of the "Paschalion": in the VI-VIII centuries, the problem of the correct calculation of the Paschal cycle was one of the main tasks facing applied science. It was thanks to her that interest in astronomy, arithmetic and geometry increased enormously in many monasteries in both Western and Eastern Europe; that is why the most detailed and accurate part of Bede's treatise (almost independent of Isidore) is astronomical. Moreover, the difference in the interests of the two authors of the treatises On the Nature of Things may have been influenced to some extent by the difference in their living conditions and social position.

For example, Isidore of Seville comes from a noble Roman family, from childhood he was destined for corrected high, if not the highest, positions in the state of the Visigoths, which at that time was one of the most civilized, cultured and prosperous in "wild" Europe. He received a brilliant education, was distinguished by an exceptional natural mind, and at a fairly young age became the first cleric of the kingdom (and at the same time one of the first secular rulers - the diocese of Seville was vast and rich), the king's closest friend - his mentor and confidant in the mastery of ancient culture, which the barbarian conquerors strove for in these "dark ages". On the contrary, Bede, later nicknamed the Venerable, was an ordinary monk, the son of unremarkable parents, who until the end of his life did not even become the abbot of his small monastery, lost in a remote, God-forsaken country, and moreover on an island, never in his life not only outside the island, but even outside the monastery. The biography of Bede, written by his student Cuthbert, has been preserved. Here are excerpts from it: "The venerable and beloved Presbyter Bede was born in the province of Northanimbro (modern Northanimbrow). Northumberland. — T. B.), on the territory of the monastery of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which is in Girva (modern Girva). Durham), near Wiramuta (present-day Durham). Monk Wearmouth), in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 677... In the care of his relatives, in the seventh year of his life, he was given to this monastery to be raised by the most worthy Abbot Benedict, and then by Keolfrid... Even in infancy he showed great promise and diligently occupied himself with the reading of divine and secular works; for he was to become an instrument of the Holy Spirit and, opening his soul to His rays, to compile many volumes of explanations of the New and Old Testaments, thus strengthening the stronghold of the universal Church. Having received a Latin education, he afterwards acquired a very extensive knowledge of the Greek language, for he was engaged in the sciences in the above-mentioned monastery at the very time when Archbishop Theodore and Abbé Adrian, both men extremely educated and well-read both in the sacred scriptures and in the secular ones, were there. Having passed through the whole of Britain, they gathered around them a crowd of disciples and daily poured into their thirsty hearts the healing streams of science, presenting them with ... also the basics of the art of metrics, astronomy and arithmetic." (Bede himself writes in the History of the Angles about these teachers of his: "Proof of their great learning is that many of their pupils are still alive today, who speak Latin and Greek no worse than their own" (Venerabilis Bedae opera omnia. V. 1 // Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina. Ed. Migne J.-P. V. 90. Col. 41).) "So," Cuthbert continues, "during his lifetime our Bede remained invisible, being hidden in the most remote corner of the earth, but after his death he became famous all over the world, continuing to live in his books... Whatever lands and distant regions he spoke of in his writings, he described the smallest features of their nature as if he had seen them all with his own eyes. In fact, he spent his entire life in the same monastery where he had been nurtured since childhood, despite the fact that he had been invited to Rome more than once; here he also met the day of his calling (i.e., to heaven — 59 years old, according to another hagiography. — T. B.)" (Vita Bedae Venerabilis presbyteri et monachi Girwensis a Cuthberto ipsus discipulo scripta // Ibidem. Col. 36 — 38).

Borodai [142]

Preface

The different nature of things and the swiftly flowing age (saeculum) I have briefly set forth in very short chapters, Servant of God Misfortune; and you, my reader, I beg you, with attention To the eternal day – turn your thoughts to the heavens.

Chapter 1. On the Four Sides of God's Creation[2]

The divine activity which created and governs the world [3] (saeculum) can be divided and considered from four points of view. First, this world is not created in the plan of the word of God, but exists eternally: according to the testimony of the Apostle, God predestined us for the kingdom before the beginning of the time of this world. Secondly, the elements of the world were created in formless matter all together, for [God], who lives eternally, created everything at the same time. Thirdly, this matter, according to the nature of the simultaneously created [elements], was not immediately transformed into heaven and earth, but gradually, in six days. Fourthly, all the seeds and first causes that were created then continue to [develop] naturally throughout the time that the world has existed, so that the work of the Father and the Son continues to this day, and God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies.

Chapter 2. On the formation of the world

At the very beginning of creation, heaven, earth, angels, air, and water were created out of nothing. Then, on the first day, light was created, also out of nothing; on the second day, the firmament in the midst of the waters; on the third, the image of the sea and the earth, together with all that is rooted in the earth[143]; on the fourth, the heavenly bodies, from the light that was created on the first day; on the fifth day – sea fish and birds; on the sixth, all other earthly animals and man, whose flesh was created from the earth, and whose soul from nothing; he was settled in paradise, which the Lord planted from the very beginning. On the seventh day, the Lord rested, not from the control of the created, for it is the only way we can eat, move, and exist, but from the creation of a new substance.