ABSTRACT
Thus when our Franciscans were studying light, they were studying God Himself, or the emanations of God, or the agency of God for the whole of creation.1 Light was God in operation: the visible universe was light or the product of light; it was visible through the operation of light; it was intellectually graspable because the intellect too operated through light, and proper knowledge was illumination. And light was 'The Good': hence created nature was good. 'All the bodies of the universe are products of radiating light ... Light is the universal agent of causation ... it gives active powers to substances'.2
