Mind of the Church

The mind of the Church, faithfully rendered into English

Library / Annotations on the Old Testament

Folio 535–536

Annotatio XXII — Genesis 1:29

“Behold, I have given you every herb.”

Annotatio XXII

”Behold, I have given you every herb.” — Genesis 1:29

Augustine Augustine, in book 1 On Genesis Allegorically, chapter 20, says that the green herbs and fruit-bearing trees which, in the book of Genesis, are given as food to all birds, all serpents, and every kind of beast, are to be understood in an allegorical signification only.1 He disapproves this same [view] in book 1 of the Retractations, chapter 10.

Footnotes

  1. Left margin: Whether herbs and trees are given as food to the animals. (An herbae & ligna sint in cibum animalibus data.) — and: St. Augustine retracts himself. (D. Aug. se retractat.) ↩