Adelard, Aristotle, and the De natura deorum

Abstract

T HOUGH Cicero's De natura deorum was not entirely unknown to the high Middle Ages, as the evidence of manuscripts and contemporary bequests indicates, first-hand uses of it by Latin writers have been so difficult to find as to suggest to some modern scholars that it remained virtually unread during that period. The present article will call attention to an important use of it in the early twelfth. century by the English philosopherscientist Adelard of Bath, and raise the question whether he knew it directly. In Chapter 74 of his Quaestiones naturales Adelard is discussing the problem, often dealt with in Western tradition, whether the stars have souls; and, after an account of their corporeal composition, is led naturally to consider the movement of the heavens and its source, about which he writes: