Complexio in the Late-Medieval Latin De animalibus

Abstract

By focusing on the concept of ‘complexion’ in the major medieval Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s so-called De animalibus, this paper identifies and analyzes a case of the use of the concept of ‘complexion’ outside the medical context or, more precisely, at the intersection of natural philosophy and medicine. The preliminary survey undertaken in this paper suggests that ‘complexion’ was a key concept of the De animalibus tradition, i.e., the principle used to explain, in a unified manner, the issues at stake in the medieval scientia de animalibus. The paper further reflects on the reasons why the notion of ‘complexion’ could have served as an organizational principle of the themes treated in the De animalibus commentaries and on the role that the earliest medieval commentaries on the De animalibus themselves could have played in shaping some of the prominent features of the medieval conceptualization of ‘complexion.’