Page "Thomas Bradwardine" Paragraph 5

Chaucer in The Nun's Priest's Tale ( line 476 ) ranks Bradwardine with Augustine and Boethius.

His great theological work, to modern eyes, is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum.

Bradwardine's major treatise argued that space was an infinite void in which God could have created other worlds, which he would rule as he ruled this one.

The " causes of virtue " include the influences of the planets, not as predestining a human career, but influencing a subject's essential nature.

This astrophysical treatise was not published until it was edited by Sir Henry Savile and printed in London, 1618 ; its circulation in manuscript was very limited.

The implications of the infinite void were revolutionary ; to have pursued them would have threatened the singular relationship of man and this natural world to God ( Cantor 2001 ); in it he treated theology mathematically.

He wrote also De Geometria speculativa ( printed at Paris, 1530 ); De Arithmetica practica ( printed at Paris, 1502 ); De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus ( 1328 ) ( printed at Paris, 1495 ; Venice, 1505 ); De Quadratura Circuli ( Paris, 1495 ); and an Ars Memorative, Sloane manuscripts.

No. 3974 in the British Museum — earning from the Pope the title of the Profound Doctor.

Another text, De Continuo is more tenuously credited to him and thought to be written sometime between 1328 and 1325.