This volume deals with the psychological, metaphysical and scientific ideas of two major and influential Aristotelian philosophers of the Italian Renaissance - Nicoletto Vernia (d. 1499) and Agostino Nifo (ca 1470-1538) - whose careers must be seen as inter-related. Both began by holding Averroes to be the true interpreter of Aristotle's thought, but were influenced by the work of humanists, such as Ermolao Barbaro, though to a different degree. Translations of the Greek commentators on Aristotle (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and Simplicius) provided them with new material and new ways of understanding Aristotle - Nifo even put himself to learning Greek - and led them to abandon Averroes, especially as regards his views on the soul and intellect. Nevertheless, both Vernia and Nifo engaged seriously with the thought of medieval scholars such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John of Jandun. Both also showed interest in their celebrated contemporary, Marsilio Ficino.

This study charts the continuing influence of medieval scholastic thought in Renaissance civilization. In the three essays, Paul Oskar Kristellar illustrates the way medieval ideas and issues remained active in Renaissance philosophy, theology, literature and in education, both secular and religious. In his first essay, Kristeller explains the conflicts in various Renaissance literatures - between rigorous scholastic writings and eloquent humanist ones, between texts written in Latin and those in the vernacular - by appealing to a notion of literary genre which aligns different types of text with distinct audiences. The second essay considers the influence of St Thomas Aquinas during the Italian Renaissance, showing that he was widely read and respected by major humanists, and contributed to the debates over the distinction between philosophy and theology and the relative importance of the intellect and the will. The final essay suggests that monks and friars play a more important role in Renaissance thought than is usually realized. They made monastic libraries available to humanist scholars, and actively engaged in the intellectual disputes of their time.