 In the background of the discussion of the high middle ages was also the theory of divine creation endorsed in inherited Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought. This required a distinction between the first origin of species in historical time, and the normal generation of the individual. If the origin of species was attributed to divine action, the temporal emergence of these species was not necessarily instantaneous. Such a doctrine was the basis of Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) theory of the original creation of primordial seeds (rationes seminales) of each species at an original moment in time, but with the emergence of species in historical time a possibility (Augustine, VI.13.23–25, [GL, 175–76]). This theory of a temporalized creation, put forth explicitly in detail in his treatise The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, allowed Augustine to argue that species emerged sequentially in historical time rather than all at once.