Climata et temperamenta: the Influence of Climate and Environment on Human Complexion in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract

The present paper addresses the way in which local conditions – geographical, biological or astrological – were believed to influence the general constitution of human nature from the viewpoint of natural philosophy. What were the material conditions that constituted the diversity between peoples and individuals? The focus of this paper is on the relation between climatic zones and the complexion of their inhabitants. This relation and the ensuing natural determinism are present in Albert the Great’s De natura loci. While not being as specific as Albert in laying out the ethnographic specifics, Thomas Aquinas shared the general framework set out by his teacher that astrological and geographical conditions greatly affect the complexion of the inhabitants. In his unedited commentary on Aristotle’s Parva naturalia, John Buridan sticks to the general Aristotelian paradigm, to which Albert and Thomas also adhered, but considers in greater detail the way climatic conditions affect the individual human complexion.