Tradition and Success of a Physical Treatise. The Reception of Contarini’s 'De elementis' in the Last XVIth Century

This article aims to reconstruct the tradition of Gasparo Contarini’s physical treatise De elementis, comparing all the extant witnesses. In the second part of the article, it is explored how the treatise reached a widespread diffusion and success in the universities, thanks to its clear exposition of Aristotle’s doctrine. A special attention is devoted to those Renaissance philosophers and professors who quoted Contarini in order to defend Aristotle’s natural philosophy against the new theories of Telesio and Campanella.