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Title: Cosmology and Theology in Gerard of Siena's Question on the Empyrean Heaven
Author(s): LAZARI, Elpida , SCHABEL, Chris
Journal: Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales
Volume: 81    Issue: 1   Date: 2014   
Pages: 95-135
DOI: 10.2143/RTPM.81.1.3030624

Abstract :
This article presents the first critical edition of any part of the massive but incomplete commentary on II Sentences by the Augustinian Gerard of Siena, recently redated to ca. 1320 and surviving in three medieval manuscripts. Gerard’s question on the empyrean heaven, question 5 of distinction 2, deals with the purpose, luminosity, and influence on the sublunary realm of the tenth heaven, but also its nature. Against some of his predecessors, Gerard argues that the empyrean heaven is a natural body, not forming a different genus from other natural bodies. Although ignored in the literature on medieval science until now, Gerard is another example of a mendicant theologian in the early fourteenth-century University of Paris breaking with Aristotelian ideas and, in a small way, laying the foundations for future scientific revolutions.

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