After 1250, every teacher in the arts-faculty at any university in Europe was required to teach using Aristotle’s natural books. The teaching resulted in commentaries on Aristotle’s works, which contained contemporary discussions about natural philosophy provoked by Aristotle’s text. For this reason, the commentary literature on Aristotle is a rich source of information about medieval theories. In addition, issues in natural philosophy were discussed in the context of theological works, notably commentaries on the Sentences, and in separate treatises. The favorite format, however, was the commentary on Aristotle’s natural books.
Literally hundreds of commentaries were written on Aristotle’s natural books during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For reasons of convenience and historiographical tradition, this survey will devote special attention to the universities of Oxford and Paris. They were the sites of the two most prominent schools in natural philosophy, that is, the network of scholars linked to John Buridan (d. 1361) at Paris and the group linked to Thomas Bradwardine (d. 1349) at Oxford. In recent research, it has been argued that there was no such thing as a Buridan school. More accurately, John Buridan and his alleged pupils Albert of Saxony (d. 1390) and Nicholas Oresme (fl. 1345-1360) were contemporary scholars at Paris, engaged in the discussions of their time. Even so, they remain the key figures in Parisian natural philosophy and its aftermath. Oxford’s main protagonists were Richard Kilvington (d. 1361), Richard Swineshead (fl. 1340-1355), William Heytesbury (d. 1372/1373), and John Dumbleton (fl. 1338-1348). Richard Swineshead (not to be confounded with his contemporaneous namesakes John and Roger) came to be designated by later authors as ‘‘the Calculator” (Calculator), whereas the Oxford group in its entirety has been called “Calculators” (calculatores) (see the entries on Albert of Saxony; John Buridan; John Dumbleton; Nicholas Oresme; Oxford Calculators; Richard Swineshead; Thomas Bradwardine, and William Heytesbury in this volume).
World History
