''De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae'' (in English: ''On the miraculous things in Sacred Scripture'') is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

treatise written around 655 by an anonymous

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

writer and philosopher known as Augustinus Hibernicus or the Irish Augustine. The author's nickname is in reference to the philosopher Augustine of Hippo. This pseudo-Augustine was born in Ireland sometime in the first half of the seventh century and is noted especially for his

natural philosophy Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science. From the ancient wo ...

. Around the year 655 he wrote a

treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions." Tre ...

called ''De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae''. It has long been regarded as an exceptional work, in that it demonstrates a strictly

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

approach in the matter of making direct observations of nature and subjecting them to a strictly logical interpretation. His treatise seeks to explain each miracle in the

Scriptures Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual pra ...

as an extreme case of phenomena, yet still within the laws of nature. Augustine also gives a list of the

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

mammals Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur o ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, and solves the problem of how they reached

after the flood of Noah by proposing a solution – hundreds of years ahead of its time – that the island had been cut off from continental Europe by marine erosion.

Sources

Further reading