Of its thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements.
A characteristic specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase, "The arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch.( 208) (208) See Joannes a S.Geminiano, Summa, c.

75.
But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the speculations of Aristotle with theological views derived from the fathers.

In one very important respect he improved upon the meteorological views of his great master.
The thunderbolt, he says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat, forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own eyes.( 209) (209) See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol.xv, p.

137, a.

(cited by Heller, Gesch.d.Physik, vol.i, p.