Abstract This article distinguishes between two historical ways of presenting the catchphrase “Once true, always true” (semel verum, semper verum), associated with the twelfth-century logical school of the nominales. Within the Time-Jumping Model, a hypothetical tenseless propositional content (enuntiabile) is treated as the common significate of differently tensed statements, such as “Socrates will die” and “Socrates died,” uttered before and after Socrates’s death. This hypothetical enuntiabile is “always true” thanks to its tenseless nature. By contrast, the Fixed-Present Model preserves the tensed character of enuntiabilia. By revealing an implicit temporal index, the nominales could apply “Once true, always true” to enuntiabilia such as Christum venisse (that Christ has come), which not only is true and will always be true but also – paradoxically – has always been true. It has always been true because it amounts to the propositional content that Christ came before this instant, where “this instant” rigidly denotes the present moment. The Fixed-Present Model alleviates the worry that the nominales confused truth-bearers with truthmakers.

Abstract Continuing the tradition of Oxford Calculatorial physics, the late fourteenth-century British Carmelite Richard Lavenham authored an amplification of the popular short textbook commonly referred to as Termini naturales. A copy of this amplification, preserved in a late fourteenth-century manuscript (Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ms Lat. Z. 300 [= 1872]), is followed by a short series of notes and comments on some of the principles introduced in Lavenham’s treatise (drawn from the first four books of Aristotle’s Physics). The present article offers an edition of the text, and analyses its content and relationship with fourteenth-century physics, especially with the physical doctrines of Richard Lavenham.

Abstract The idea of reconciling Ptolemaic planetary theory with Aristotelian natural philosophy by imagining epicycles and eccentric deferents as three-dimensional orbs or orb-segments within larger spheres is frequently associated with Georg Peurbach and his widely read astronomy textbook, the Theoricae novae planetarum (1454). This article cautions against existing tendencies to overstate the originality or revolutionary force of this work by taking a closer look at the early history of the same Ptolemaic-Aristotelian compromise in a Latin European context. Using previously unpublished or unused source material from the twelfth to early fourteenth centuries, it documents the gradual spread and acceptance of an orbicular interpretation of Ptolemy’s planetary models among astronomers and university teachers.

Abstract The present article focuses on the questions on matter by the Franciscan Alexander of Alexandria (Lectura ii, d. 12). The article is divided into two main sections. The first section provides a philosophical-historical overview of Alexander’s questions on prime matter (qq. 1–2, 5). The second section provides insight into Alexander’s questions on heavenly matter (qq. 3–4), expounding the author’s solutions to the issues related to that subject. Appendix 1 contains a question list of Alexander’s unedited Lectura ii. An edition of Alexander’s Lectura ii, d. 12, qq. 1–5 is given in Appendix 2.

Abstract The Distinctio divisionis terrae et paradisi deliciarum (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms Barb. lat. 2687, ff. 12v–16v) is an anonymous treatise on the place of the earthly Paradise. An unknown author asks whether the earthly Paradise could be located in the land of the Antipodes and rejects this hypothesis. This article demonstrates two points. First, it attributes the Distinctio to the Franciscan friar Gerard Odonis (d. 1349). In fact, this text is a distinction of his commentary on the Sentences (book ii, d. 20, qq. 1–2). Second, the article argues that Odonis’s opinion on the location of Paradise is quite unusual, since he reverses the Aristotelian order of elementary spheres. Odonis places the earthly Paradise so high on a mountain that it is necessary to deny the existence of the sphere of fire. While explaining how the Flood did not inundate Paradise, he asserts that water is naturally lower than earth. The article provides the first critical edition of the Distinctio.

Abstract This study aims to shed new light on Nicholas of Cusa as a reader of Plato by examining the autographic marginalia transmitted in the Codex Cusanus 177, the most significant Platonic collection within Cusanus’s extant library. More specifically, the article focuses on Cusanus’s reading of three Platonic dialogues translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni (Apology of Socrates, Phaedo, and Phaedrus) and illustrates their common reception in a specific phase of Cusanus’s production, from the composition of the Apologia doctae ignorantiae (1449) to the redaction of the Idiota trilogy (1450). The article not only shows how the thought of Cusanus developed in the margins of the Platonic manuscripts, but also reconstructs Cusanus’s specific working method. Finally, it proposes an interpretation of Cusanus’s reading practices against the background of the critique of book learning and authority that he developed in his works of the period.

Abstract This article examines the doctrine of minima naturalia (i.e., the smallest quantity of matter able to preserve the substantial form of a material substance) in three of the earliest extant Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics: the two traditionally ascribed to Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292), i.e., Questiones supra libros octo Physicorum Aristotelis and Questiones supra libros quatuor Physicorum Aristotelis, and the anonymous In Physicam Aristotelis, which Rega Wood attributes to Richard Rufus of Cornwall (fl. 1231–1256). The position presented by Bacon in Questiones supra libros octo Physicorum displays striking similarities with the one adopted by the author of In Physicam Aristotelis, but also important differences. Moreover, the fact that the view defended in Questiones supra libros quatuor Physicorum is openly rejected in Questiones supra libros octo Physicorum provides additional support to Silvia Donati’s hypothesis that the former is not an authentic work by Bacon.