Humanist Aristotelianism in the vernacular: two sixteenth-century programmes

This study presents a comparative survey of the works and endeavours of two sixteenth-century humanist scholars: the Italian Alessandro Piccolomini and the Spaniard Pedro Simon Abril. Within a period of about forty years, they undertook a rather similar enterprise, with the aim of making the basis of Aristotelian philosophy available in their respective vernacular languages (Tuscan and Castilian). The idea is to look for both common features and differences between their proposals, taking in account that both authors developed alternative pedagogic programmes aiming at a better diffusion of basic philosophical lore among people who would not attend university courses (including an explicit mention of women, in Piccolomini's case). In a period of profound epistemic polemics with a characteristically rich variety of opinions about the reorganization of the sciences and the disciplines, their particular innovations and methodologies, may reveal new trends and possibilities which, despite being neglected by their contemporaries, did in fact offer a real alternative to current curricula.