Amalia Cerrito

This volume offers a comprehensive examination of medieval conceptions of foreknowledge—understood both as divine prescience and as the human capacity to anticipate future events—across a range of intellectual traditions. It investigates key themes such as future contingents, prophetic discourse (both divinely inspired and natural), divinatory dreams, eschatology, scientific prognostication (in astrology and medicine), and conjectural disciplines such as geomancy, physiognomy, meteorology, and magic. Through historical reconstructions and doctrinal analyses, the contributions illuminate the theoretical frameworks and distinctive positions advanced by medieval authors within diverse cultural and scholarly contexts. Building on an extensive body of prior research, the volume documents the multiplicity of medieval strategies for engaging with the future, thereby challenging the historiographical assumption that the notion of an open and indeterminate future emerged only in the Modern period.

In the 13th century, the availability of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy encouraged forms of integration between libri naturales and sapientia biblica. Instead of diving into allegory and symbolism, several Dominican exegetes began to explore more realistic approaches. The foremost figure is Albert the Great. In his biblical commentaries, philosophy of nature and theology join forces as complementary forms of knowledge. By focusing on Albert’s De vegetabilibus, this paper is aimed at analyzing in which ways the Dominican master reuses his naturalistic and, especially, botanical knowledge as an exegetical tool to deepen both the historical and the allegorical sense, realism and spiritual interpretation.

This essay explores the theoretical treatment of leprosy in 13th-century theological discussions on the transmission of the original sin. According to scholastic theologians, both the existence of the original sin and its transmission from parents to progeny were factual truths, whose dynamics could be explained by analogy with inherited diseases, such as leprosy. Different uses of natural philosophy and medicine in discussing the transmission of leprosy will be shown in theological and biblical-exegetical works of William of Auvergne, Roland of Cremona, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Henry of Ghent.

This essay is devoted to Albert the Great’s theoretical treatment of fatherhood and motherhood, male and female genders, in the generation of the vegetabilia. While animals reproduce by the mating of female and male individuals, plants do not display a sexual distinction through a male and female configuration. Moreover, in the generation of plants, the maternal and paternal functions are not performed by individuals of the same species as what is generated. To fulfill the generative process, plants require the external agency of the Sun and the ground, traditionally deemed as “pater et mater plantarum”. The question of the generation of plants is dealt with at length in Albert’s De vegetabilibus et plantis, where he gives an extensive treatment of plants’ life modeled after the epistemology of Aristotle’s works on animals. This theoretical approach is not confined to Albert’s natural philosophical works but extends also to his theological investigation. By adopting an interdisciplinary standpoint, this essay will show how Albert progressively develops an explicative model for plants generation that, through the comparison with animal generation, aims at identifying the respective domains of matter and form, fatherhood and motherhood, male and female genders, also in the generation of plants.

In his De vegetabilibus et plantis, Albert the Great reorganizes the entire botanical knowledge of his time, creatively resorting to Aristotelian epistemic principles. Plant complex physiology is theoretically relevant for the theological-philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, plant life is mostly hidden, preventing direct investigation. This is borne out by unclear and fragmentary arguments ascribed to the ‘philosophers’ in the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis. To rebut ‘those who treated the life of plants confusedly’, Albert explains the vegetative soul in a more rigorous way, exploring innovative themes such as sensitivity and the levels of touch. Going deeper into the reasons for the vegetative power, Albert also highlights the relationship between plant and matter to more general issues.

In the 13th century, the availability of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy encouraged forms of integration between libri naturales and sapientia biblica. Instead of diving into allegory and symbolism, several Dominican exegetes began to explore more realistic approaches. The foremost figure is Albert the Great. In his biblical commentaries, philosophy of nature and theology join forces as complementary forms of knowledge. By focusing on Albert’s De vegetabilibus, this paper is aimed at analyzing in which ways the Dominican master reuses his naturalistic and, especially, botanical knowledge as an exegetical tool to deepen both the historical and the allegorical sense, realism and spiritual interpretation.