ABSTRACT
Of the philosophies of Ant iqui ty recovered and revived during the Renaissance, those proclaiming the infinity of the universe,1 and those confounding the corporeal and the incorporeal/ threatened the coherence of the medieval cosmos and eventually brought on its ruin. Their undermining of its material structure was however only to take wide effect once the astronomical evidence accumulated from the close of the sixteenth century onward had started to be interpreted in support of them. It was mainly from Renaissance Italy that these philosophies reached the rest of Europe and their reception there remained unt i l the end of the seventeenth century largely confined to circles outside the universities. In Catholic countries their spread was retarded by the institutional structure of the universities which were closely allied to the Church.
