1. Prolegomena -- 2. [Without special title] -- 3. Opera theologica.

This article examines the alchemical ideas and practices of the sixteenth-century Italian surgeon Leonardo Fioravanti.

This essay explores the history of the concept of _monstrum_ from Francis Bacon’s _Novum Organum_ to Athanasius Kircher’s _Mundus Subterraneaus_ (1664), as well as its relationship with the origins of science; as in the early modern age, the term _monstra_ is considered as a synonym for _mirabilia naturae_. The introductory part focuses on the difficult definition of “monster”, starting from Aristotle’s famous sentence in _De generatione animalium_: whoever does not looks like his parents, or whatever happens in a different way (...) from the “generality of cases”, is included within the category of the “monstrous”. Monster is a being, whose anomaly represents a warning; therefore, monsters may be considered as signs, susceptible of an allegorical, moral and even political interpretation. In another acceptation of the term, monsters may be considered as the privileged witnesses of the richness and fecundity of nature. In the second part, Bacon’s theory of monsters is exposed: they are classified as _instantiae deviantes_, within that interpretation of nature, through which the Lord Chancellor lays the epistemological foundations of the modern science. In the third, fourth and fifth parts, a taxonomy of monsters is given: at first, by means of the _cabinets des curiosités_, which flourished in sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy, from Naples to Rome, from Bologna to Milan, with famous collectors such as Ferrante Imperato, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Manfredo Settala, Athanasius Kircher; then, through the “books of secrets”, which are at the same time a new, successful literary genre and a way of thinking nature, an aspect of natural history. Among the “professors of secrets”, there are Giovan Battista Della Porta, Ambroise Paré, Leonardo Fioravanti, Jean Fernel, Pierre Borel, Kenelm Digby, and Athanasius Kircher, again, with some disciples of his, such as Kaspar Schott. Secrets of nature and _mirabilia naturae_ are finally compared: the classical list of _mirabilia_, from Pliny the Elder to Kircher, completes the taxonomy of monsters. The sixth and last part of this essay offers an explicative theory of monsters and prodigies: the marvels of nature are magnetic phenomena, which seem to imply a mysterious action at a distance. Such magnetic action can be accounted for on the basis of the Renaissance, Ficinian and Neoplatonic concept of spirit – conceived as the universal vehicle of occult sympathies and antipathies - and then through the seventeenth concepts of corpuscular effluvia, introduced by Pierre Gassendi in his _Physica_ (1658), and _sphaera activitatis_, produced by the effluvia which each body emits, and surrounding it. This sphere is the place when most of marvelous phenomena happen. (shrink)

The outbreak of syphilis in Europe elicited a variety of responses concerning the disease's origins and cure. In this essay, I examine the theory of the origins of syphilis advanced by the 16th-century Italian surgeon Leonardo Fioravanti. According to Fioravanti, syphilis was not new but had always existed, although it was unknown to the ancients. The syphilis epidemic, he argued, was caused by cannibalism among the French and Italian armies during the siege of Naples in 1494. Fioravanti's (...) strange and novel theory is connected with his view of disease as corruption of the body caused by eating improper foods. His theory of bodily pollution, a metaphor for the corruption of society, coincided with Counter-Reformation concepts about sin and the social order. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Disputing the Unity of the World: The Importance of Res and the Influence of Averroes in Giles of Rome’s Critique of Thomas Aquinas concerning the Unity of the WorldG. J. Mcaleer1. introductiongiles of rome (1243–1316) earned, after a decidedly difficult start, the most complete honors open to an academic religious in the Middle Ages. Joining the Hermits of St. Augustine at age 14, he became the first regent master (...) of his order at the University of Paris (1285–1291); his works were made compulsory in the education of students entering the Hermits in 1287; finally, in 1292 he became the general of the order itself.1 Giles is significant, as Mandonnet puts it, because he “est incontestablement au premier rang des théologiens de la fin du XIIIe siècle.”2 But this is not all. Giles is also important to the period because his writings were censured by the same commission that composed the famous Parisian condemnation of 1277. As a result of this [End Page 29] censure, Giles had to leave Paris, returning only in 1285.3 Perhaps of even greater significance is the fact that his teacher was Thomas Aquinas: Giles studied with Thomas at Paris during the years 1269–1272.4 It has been acknowledged for a long time now that Giles did not slavishly follow his teacher but wrought his own subtle and wide-ranging philosophical synthesis out of the various grand traditions of medieval thought.5 As the critical editions of Giles’s works appear (an enormous task currently moving forward under the guidance of F. Del Punta and G. Fioravanti) it will become clearer on how many issues Giles saw fit to criticize the positions of Thomas. It is one of these issues, Giles’s dispute with Thomas over the unity of the matter of the universe, that I wish to elaborate and analyze in this essay.6The thirteenth century is surely one of the greatest for philosophical innovation. Thinkers of the stature of Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Giles of Rome engaged great metaphysical themes ranging from the unity of being and creation to the composition of material substances. These speculations were prompted by their efforts to systematize the vast theological heritage of Christian thought and their encounter with the rich and varied traditions of Greek, Islamic, and Jewish thought newly entering the Latin West in translation. Questions involving matter were especially common amongst these speculations, carrying special significance in that they redounded upon conceptions of human nature and thus upon the Incarnation and Resurrection. Moreover, disputes about matter demanded arduous thought on the interrelations of the fundamental metaphysical notions of the period: act and potency; substance and accident; generation and corruption; essence and existence; principle and thing; and so on. The productivity of these thinkers, and the range and complexity of the [End Page 30] questions they treated, was stunning, and ultimately led to a massive condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions at the University of Paris in 1277. The Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, with the aid of a theological commission that included Henry of Ghent, hoped to efface certain errors contained in these speculations. A large number of the condemned propositions were associated with Siger of Brabant and other so-called “Radical Aristotelians.” However, theses found in the works of Aquinas were included, and, as already mentioned, Tempier soon turned his attention to Giles of Rome.7A dominant issue throughout the condemnations and the works of the period, especially in questions concerning matter, is that of unicity and plurality. This is true of perhaps the two most famous debates: whether human nature is a composition of one or many forms and whether the intellect is one for all human persons. The latter is probably the most studied of all the disputes of that time and the controversy most often associated with Averroes. The question of whether there is one matter in the universe or two is very much connected with the plurality of forms debate. Regarding this debate, thinkers wanted to know not only the number of forms in material composites but also what material... (shrink)

Le volume rassemble 25 études concernant la cosmologie médiévale, abordée à travers ses diverses composantes, à l’intérieur d’une fourchette chronologique allant de Calcidius jusqu’au XIVe siècle. Dix contributions sont consacrées à des questions de cosmologie hébraïque et islamique, traitant en particulier de Gersonide (R. Gatti), Maïmonide (L. Pepi), Avicenne (C. Di Martino, O. Lizzini), Sohravardî (I. Panzeca), Qûnawî (P. Spallino), les Frères de la Pureté (C. Baffioni) ainsi qu’aux interférences qui existent entre moyen âge islamique et latin : la grande (...) question de la cosmologie alchimique (M. Pereira), des textes traduits comme le De secretis naturae (P. Travaglia), la doctrine de la grande année dans Thebit et Pietro d’Abano (F. Seller). Les travaux de E.S. Mainoldi et de R. Gambino consacrent une large place à l’influence de la patristique grecque sur la pensée occidentale. D’autres études présentent le développement de la pensée cosmologique et scientique latine à partir de Calcidius (C. Militello), par l’intermédiaire d’Adélard de Bath (P. Palmeri), de Guillaume de Conches (G. Pellegrino) et d’autres documents divers (A. Tarabochia Canavero) jusqu’à l’avènement de l’aristotélisme physique, en particulier dans les commentaires universitaires aux Météorologiques (G. Fioravanti), au De caelo (C.A. Musatti, A. Vella) et chez Dante (M. Gallarino, P. Falzone). Quant à la littérature scientifique en langue vulgaire, elle est représentée par Restoro d’Arezzo (U. Villani-Lubelli) et Raymond Lull (J.Gayà). La communication de G. Alliney est dédiée à des questions de méthode historiographique, tandis que la contribution magistrale de Tullio Gregory sur “Cosmogonie et cosmologies chrétiennes” reconstitue de manière idéale l’ensemble des liens constituant les coordonnées générales de l’ensemble de la problématique abordée sous ses différentes facettes par les auteurs du volume. (shrink)