Pietro Pomponazzi and the Renaissance Theory of the Elements: A Study with Editions of Unpublished Texts, by Luca Burzelli

Over seventy years ago, Anneliese Maier demonstrated the vibrancy of debates on the question of mixture among medieval philosophers who attempted to determine what happens to the elements’ substantial forms and qualities when they form a new substance.1 More recently, Nancy Siraisi, Frans de Haas, Christoph Lüthy, Dag Nikolaus Hasse, and William Newman, among others, have shown that debates over the formation of mixtures intertwined with early modern medical teaching, alchemical experimentation, speculation on spontaneous generation, and the emergence of corpuscular theories of matter. Luca Burzelli’s fine study of Pietro Pomponazzi’s theory of the elements enriches our knowledge of approaches to the topic in the early part of the sixteenth century. Editions of six texts, based on reports of classroom lectures, are an invaluable source for understanding Pomponazzi’s teachings on the elements and his approach to the very difficult question of the generation of the forma mixti.