Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

Note 1. That although no mention is here made of the divine punishment upon the serpent, the tempter of the First Parents, yet truly God took vengeance upon it before He did upon Adam and Eve, in these words of Genesis chapter 3, verse 14: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. In which words five punishments are set forth as inflicted upon the serpent in vengeance of its temptation: The first indeed is the thunderbolt of the divine malediction hurled against it: Because, saith St. Chrysostom, Hom. 17, with such malice hast thou ministered, that that imposture might be accomplished in deed, offering evil counsel: therefore because thou didst use thyself in these things as an instrument, I impose upon thee everlasting punishment, that by those things which are done to thee, men to come may be taught never to approach the counsel of the devil, nor to receive his deceits, lest they fall into the same punishments. The second is the going upon the breast: not that the serpent truly walked upright before the temptation, as certain persons judge; but that that gait, which before was natural, was enjoined upon it likewise as a punishment: even as death, which was natural to man before sin — for man is by nature mortal — yet by an excellent and admirable benefit God warded off and restrained death from man in the state of innocence, so that if man had never sinned he would never have died; but on account of sin man, stripped of original justice, deprived of that singular protection of God, and abandoned to his own nature, ran headlong into death: so did God will that to be a punishment to the serpent which before belonged to its nature. The third is the enmity between itself and the woman, and also its seed, that is, mankind, whom serpents fear and must shun, so that at the sight of them after that divine threat every man trembles and flees: which St. Damascene notes, lib. 2, De Fide orthodoxa, c. 10: The serpent, he saith, was more familiar than other animals with man, often approaching him and fawning upon him with gentle movements of its body: whence through it the prince of evil, the devil, instilled into our first Parents the poison of his impiety. There are those who think that the sight of the serpent began to be horrible and terrifying to man only after the sin of the first man and the malediction of that serpent, after those words of God namely: I will put enmities between thee, etc. The fourth is the crushing of the serpent itself by the woman: for experience teaches, saith Rupertus, that if a woman's bare foot forestall the tooth of the serpent and press down its head, straightway with its head the whole body perishes, although if its head be assailed with sword or hammer it can hardly be so crushed that the whole body dies. Yet I confess that by these words there is prefigured the Conception of Christ the Lord and of the Blessed Virgin, whereby the head of the daemon was to be crushed, that is, original sin was to be removed and rooted out.

Note 2. That the opinions of the holy Fathers varied concerning those punishments inflicted upon the serpent, whether namely they were denounced against the natural or against the mystical serpent, that is, the devil; for very many, with St. Augustine book De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 86, judge that those curses which God uttered against the serpent pertain not to the true serpent, the organ of the temptation, but to the devil, the artificer of it: so that all the aforesaid words are to be taken metaphorically: for the daemon is truly called cursed among the beasts of the earth, because he has been condemned to eternal punishments; and whatsoever in beasts is seen corporally obscene, fraudulent, or truculent, that is found far more spiritually in the daemon. The daemon walks upon breast and belly, because he assails men by two ways of seduction: namely by pride, which is figured by the breast, and by lust, which is shadowed forth by the belly. He eats the earth all the days of his life: for, saith St. Gregory, lib. 10, the ancient enemy eats the earth, because he hides every sinner in the belly of his malice; desiring the perdition of men themselves, he is in a manner refreshed while he delights in presiding over their operations: but that phrase, all the days of thy life, designates all the time of this life even unto the consummation of the world, during which time it is permitted to the daemon to tempt, deceive, and destroy men; which he holds as his right and great pleasure, wherefore the daemons besought Christ that He would not send them into the abyss, and others said to Him: Art Thou come hither before the time to torment us? — Nevertheless I think the truer thing to say is, that that malediction and punishment truly pertained to the serpent itself: although it had committed no crime, but the author of its guilt had been the devil; nor had the serpent free will, as though it had been within its power either to give itself or not to give itself to the devil for the executing of that crime. Hence the things which before were natural to the serpent passed into punishment: whereby also the daemon himself, who had used the serpent as an instrument, was tormented with pain unto the punishment of the serpent itself: just as if anyone should break a musical instrument, that thereby he might afflict with grief him who used it for singing; or should cast down a horse by cutting off its feet, that he might harm the rider; or should overturn a ship, that he who sailed in it might perish by shipwreck: so God terrified the serpent with curses, that He might afflict with pain the devil, who had spoken through it: even as also He afflicted the legion of daemons by destroying the swine.

Note 3. That although death was the chief punishment inflicted by God upon the first Parents and their posterity for their treachery, nevertheless I judge that no mention of that punishment need be made here: for it was said above that death itself was natural to man, nor did it pass into a punishment of man except through the subtraction of original justice; whence it came about that although death is natural to man, we find it attested in the sacred Letters that it befell him in punishment and vengeance of his sin, even as the bow in the clouds had been indeed before the deluge, and is such naturally; yet God willed that it should never thereafter be the sign of a future deluge. Wherefore there remain to be discussed here the special punishments prescribed for Adam and Eve.

First Conclusion. — Threefold is the punishment enjoined by God upon the first Parents and their posterity: namely the multitude of conceptions, the pain in childbearing, and subjection to the power of the husband. This is gathered from Genesis chapter 3, v. 16, where we read: To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee.

Rupertus, lib. 3, De Trinitate, cap. 22, weighs these three punishments of this divine sentence upon the female sex thus:

But the woman, he saith, is punished with a threefold punishment, because threefold greater was her sin than the man's. First because, believing the serpent more than God, she was seduced. Next, because she concupisced delightfully the beauty and sweetness of the forbidden tree. Thirdly, because not content with her own transgression, she led the man also into transgression: therefore deservedly for threefold sin a threefold vengeance was rendered her, besides the death common to her with her husband. For because she believed the serpent saying: You shall be as gods: justly against this — that God is the God of the living and not of the dead — she deserved to be mother not of the living but of the dead, God saying: I will multiply thy conceptions. For all her conceptions die in soul and body in sin, and none of them lives unless he be quickened through Christ. Likewise because, seeing the beauty of that tree, she intemperately coveted its fruit, for that delectation of sight the contrary is rendered in the pain of the womb. In sorrow, he saith, shalt thou bring forth. Thirdly, because with womanly importunity she enticed the man to eat, therefore thou shalt be, he saith, under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. Thus for seduction, the multiplicity of conceptions; for the delectation of gluttony, the pain of the womb; for rash dominion, and the scandal which she exhibited to her husband, the punishment of servitude to the husband was rendered. Or, as St. Chrysostom says, Homily II. on Genesis, because thou hast abused the dignity of honour, thou subjectest thyself to the man: because, having left him whose dignity thou didst share, and whose nature thou dost partake of, and for whom thou wast formed, thou wouldst have familiarity with the serpent, that evil beast, and wouldst take counsel from him, therefore hereafter thou subjectest thyself to him, and I make him thy lord, that thou mayest acknowledge his dominion, namely.

Our Alexander of Hales weighs this same thing lucidly, quaest. 105, art. 9: Three punishments, he saith, are inflicted on the part of the woman: 1. multiplication of sorrows in the multitude of conceptions: 2. pain in childbearing: 3. subjection under the power of the husband. For there is a triple power of the soul, cogitative, rational, and natural: on the side of the rational there is taken the punishment of subjection: on the side of the sensible a twofold punishment: one according to multitude, when he saith I will multiply thy sorrows: the other according to harshness, when he saith: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth. Or otherwise: The individual tends toward one end: toward the conservation of itself according to the time determined: toward the conservation of the species simply: But the woman is called the passive sex, because mutably she contracts from sin punishment in both respects: for in the act of generation in the womb, which is for the conservation of the species, she draws a twofold punishment: in bearing the foetus, and in labouring in birth, whereof one pertains to progression, the other to consummation; but in the beginning there is choice, and there it seems to be without punishment: and perhaps God willed to designate this under the name of conception: or this was on account of the delectation, in which punishment does not seem to be. On the part of the man, however, who is for the conservation of the individual, since liberty of doing what is expedient for oneself is a good: the evil, by opposition, is servitude, namely to be necessarily subjected to the domination of another: this is that punishment which is designated when it is said: thou shalt be under thy husband's power. — To these Severianus bishop of Gabala adds: the woman was mulcted with a threefold punishment: first, that notwithstanding the distress of childbirth she is constrained to love her husband. Secondly, that she herself chiefly sustains the anxieties of the procreation and education of children: for she grieves in bearing, she is anxious in mind in rearing; when the boy grows up, she is anxious lest he be demented and out of his mind. When he has gone forth, that he die not, fall sick not, be not involved in hardship and grief. This the man has not. For although the father also is solicitous, yet not so as the mother, but he consoles himself, saying, he is a man: let each know that he ought to preside over his own affairs, and he is not tormented with anxiety of just cares. Why so? Because he did not hear: In sorrows shalt thou bring forth children. Finally the third kind of the divine chastisement upon the woman is that teaching be forbidden to her further. A new kind of vengeance, saith Severianus; it is a sad experience. When the pains of childbirth have seized the woman, not even in those labours does she reject her husband. She does not say: Would that there were no marriage! Would that there were no procreation of children! God suffers her not, as even the trial made, to hate her husband. Nor is it hidden from her what befell her, and what she endured, and yet she loves her husband. Therefore, in sorrows shalt thou bring forth children, and thy turning shall be to thy husband, or, and he shall have dominion over thee. Because already thou hast ruled him ill, and made captive to thy own will, I dissolve the order: let him be lord who was not seduced. Therefore saith Paul: But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over the man. For ill she first taught in paradise; nor to have dominion over the man, for ill indeed she ruled. It is not we who cavil at this sense in which Paul commands the woman not to teach; hear him speaking himself: But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over the man. And that he may show he established this on account of the cause of the first guilt, he adds: For Adam was not seduced: but the woman being seduced was in the transgression.

You will object 1. The multiplication of offspring is a great good and a great joy of parents, future also, if man had not sinned in Paradise, and in the state of innocence: therefore that is not denounced against the woman for the crime committed as a certain immense evil in place of punishment. — I deny the consequence: for the multiplication of conceptions, as Pererius rightly observes, lib. 6, in Genesim, cap. 3, is understood after sin to be a punishment of the woman, and a certain great evil, on four accounts. First, because many conceptions, before they arrive at maturity and perfection, perish by abortion in the womb of the mother. Next, because many are begotten depraved and monstrous, whether in bulk, or number, or figure, or position of the parts of the body, or from weakness and deformity, or defect of the senses, or of mind and reason: which is of greatest grief to those bearing them. Besides, of those who are begotten few are elect and predestinate, but very many are destined to eternal torments on account of their crimes. To these it is added that the multitude of offspring is wont generally, either on account of the poverty of the Parents, to whom it does not suffice for educating them, or on account of the flagitious and disgraceful life of the sons, or on account of most miserable accidents and exits, to be a most bitter torment and misfortune to the Parents. Whence Rupertus, lib. 3, De Trinitate, cap. 22: It is not, he saith, a multiplication of blessing, but of damnation: not of grace, but of wrath: not of clemency, but of vengeance. Wherefore He said not only, I will multiply thy conceptions, but added moreover, and thy sorrows: for the woman, the more fruitful, so much the more sorrowful.

You will object 2. The subjection of the woman to the man stood also with innocence; for the woman, drawing her origin from the man, hung necessarily upon him, as upon the principle of her formation: therefore this subjection was not inflicted upon her by God in punishment of her treachery. — I distinguish the antecedent: voluntary and pleasant subjection, I concede; involuntary and burdensome, I deny: the woman would indeed have been in the state of innocence under the power of the husband, but not coerced, nor grievously, nor with any repugnance of will: for since the woman would have been of whole soul and upright mind, weighing nothing but what was honest and right, she would have been gladly and joyfully under the rule of the husband: because she understood that to be consonant with the divine will and reason: and the rule of the man also would have been full of equity and charity, nor would the wife have been held as a slave and handmaid, but as the dearest companion of life, sharer of the counsels and duties of the husband, and helper in the generation and education of offspring. But after sin it is a grave punishment for the woman to be subject to the man: both on account of the levity and vanity of the womanly intellect, and the pride of soul of her bearing with perverse spirit that the husband should preside over her: and also because very often men treating their wives proudly, angrily, and harshly make their rule burdensome, bitter, and odious to them. Whence elegantly St. Ambrose in the Exhortation to virginity affirms that married women purchase their servitude at a price: She who has married, he saith, is sold for money from her servitude: slaves are procured on better terms than marriages: in the former the merit of servitude is bought: in the latter a price is added to servitude; the bride burdened is weighed down by gold, is appraised by gold.

Second Conclusion. — By a threefold reason was the punishment of multitude inflicted upon Adam for his transgression: namely by the malediction of the earth in his very labours, by the germination of the same thorns and briars: and by the scantiness and toil of his food. These plainly stand from Genesis chapter 3, vv. 17, 18, and 19, where God addresses Adam thus: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and shalt eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.

Alexander of Hales, our author praised above, weighs the truth of this conclusion and the aforesaid divine chastisement upon Adam thus: By these, he saith, said words of Scripture are distinguished the punishments of man both in life and in death. In life indeed as to beginning, as to progression, and as to consummation. As to beginning there is noted: Cursed is the earth in thy work, etc. As to progress, when it is said: Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. As to consummation, when it is said: thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth: and, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. In the first appears the laborious difficulty in the cultivation of the earth; in the second the unfruitfulness of the same, when it is said: Thorns and thistles: in the third the scantiness of food. But the punishment, as it regards death, is likewise twofold: namely the necessity of dying, and incineration: the former is designated in these words: Till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken. But the latter is denoted in what follows: Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. — It must moreover be considered that God cursed not Adam as He had cursed the serpent: both because He had before consecrated him as it were with His blessing; and because Adam was about to recover again sanctifying grace by doing penance; and finally because Christ the Lord was at some time to assume human nature. And although the earth committed no sin, yet it is smitten with the divine malediction, not indeed absolutely and simply, but respectively to man; and therefore God says to Adam: Cursed is the earth in thy work: that is, as Rupertus expounds, Laborious be it to thee working or tilling it. Because, saith Hugh of St. Victor, it will not bear of itself spontaneously the fruit whereby thou mayest live; or when at any time it answers not to thee according to thy work: which sense appears truer; for as in the sacred Letters the blessing of God signifies plenty and abundance of goods, so the curse means want and sterility of goods, and redundancy of evils and miseries. — Man therefore on account of sin experienced the earth to be cursed to him, inasmuch as whereas before by a certain sweet exercise, not however laborious study and tillage, he had been able to render the earth fertile and abounding to himself, he feels it stricken with an anathema: that is, sterile of useful things, fruitful of harmful and useless ones, and bringing forth what is necessary for man's sustenance not without great labour and many sweats of man. — But the earth was cursed rather than the water or another element: Either because, saith Alexander of Hales, by means of the fruit springing from the earth Adam sinned: or, saith Alcuin, the earth is cursed, not the waters; because man ate of the fruit of the earth against the prohibition, he drank not of the waters: and because in the waters was the sin contracted from the fruit of the earth to be washed away, doubtless the Lord had respect to holy Baptism, wherein the offences of the old Adam are submerged and utterly washed away.

You ask 1.: Whether by that malediction of God the fertility of the earth was taken away, or at least diminished, and sterility introduced. — I answer, that it seems more probable that the earth has always existed in exactly the same state: otherwise man, while the felicity of innocence endured, would have dwelt in Paradise, whose soil was most fertile and most pleasant: moreover the need would then have been less for man, and consequently he would have expended less labour on tilling the country, and the celestial influences would have attended the sown and tilled earth more opportunely, more gently, and more surely: but after sin man was cast out from that most blessed soil of Paradise; then, mortal men scattered over the world having spread into various and greatly dissimilar portions of lands, one found a soil salty and barren, another sandy, another bald, another pestilential, another fruitful in noxious things and unfruitful in useful plants, and they were compelled by immense labours and sweats to procure for themselves food from the earth; especially since the celestial impressions, as now often happens, either do not help the farmers, or overturn the very crops utterly.

You ask 2: Whether truly thorns and briars existed before the sin of man. — I answer, that many of the sacred Interpreters, with Rabbanus, judge that before sin neither unfruitful trees nor useless and noxious herbs, nor thorns and briars, were to spring up; but that they burst forth from the earth in punishment of sin, and for man's perpetual admonition. Wherefore the thorn, he saith, and the briar admonish man, that they may ward him off from sins, for they were created poisonous unto punishment and the retribution of the dead, because we were made mortal on account of sin: by unfruitful trees men are insulted, that they may understand how shameful it is to be without the fruit of good works in the field of God, that is, in the Church: and that they may fear lest God forsake them, because they themselves in their fields forsake unfruitful trees, nor apply any cultivation to them. Thus he. St. Basil, Homily 5 on the Hexaemeron, philosophizes likewise, saying: The rose then lacked thorns, but afterwards thorns were joined to the outward beauty, that we, taking from thence a nearer delectation, might be made by pain unto the recollection of the offence: whose effect the cause is, that the cursed earth should bring forth to us thorns and briars for an anathema. Thus Basil, whom Procopius following speaks thus on cap. 1: From the beginning of creation the rose was rough with no thorns. Afterwards at length there were added to its beauty those harsh prickles: that while we enjoy and delight in taking its odour, we may also feel the contrary sorrow, mindful of the sin by which the earth was cast down by condemnation, that it may bring forth to us thorns, briers, and briars. — Yet I think the truer thing to say is, that the earth truly produced thorns and briars before sin: yet this germination would then not have been penal to man, but useful and pleasant to the animals using them, either for the adornment of the earth, or for raising man to the praise of God by the manifold kind of creatures: but now it is penal, because they impede the production of useful seeds, and spring up more abundantly in their place.

Here the fable of the Indians — or rather, let me say, of the impious Jews — must not be passed over, who say that Adam, after the crime committed, was for one hundred and thirty years separated from Eve and excommunicated, and that he lay with a female daemon, namely Lilit, but Eve with a hermaphrodite daemon, and that from these Adam and Eve received children. These things occur in the Talmud, Salomon Iarchi relating: Rabbi Hieremias the son of Eleazar used to say that in those months and years in which Adam was in that state of excommunication he begat spirits, and daemons, and nocturnal spectres; as it is said: and Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begat sons in his image and likeness — which teaches that in that time he did not beget unto his likeness, but had received other children, namely daemons and nocturnal spectres. This also is clear from Bereschit Rabba, section 20: During all the one hundred and thirty years in which Eve was separated from Adam, there were masculine incestuous spirits from her, who lay with her, and she bore from them; and feminine spirits lay with Adam and bore from him. That is what is read in Scripture: He hath wrought perversity, chastising him with the rod of men, and with the strokes of the sons of men. An absurd indeed and altogether impious exposition of the sacred words of the Psalmist. Therefore, since the Jews, ever occupied and ensnared by vain and fabulous traditions, believed that daemons could both be begotten and that some were the sons of Lilit, that is, of night and darkness, it is no wonder that the Apostles said the sons of the Church were not sons of darkness but of light: thus 1 Thess. V. 5: For all you are the children of light, and children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. By which allusion Simon Magus is called the firstborn of Satan by Ignatius, Marcion the firstborn of the devil by Irenaeus and Eusebius, and he who denies that Christ has come in the flesh is called by St. Polycarp antichrist and firstborn of the devil.